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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 21, 25 May 1940, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The blinding “total” war unleashed in Western Europe has not only crushed the lives of hundreds of thousands of men and whole countries. It has also brought crumbling down a good many notions about the war in general and the perspectives it offers for the near future. One thing is certain: to the rulers of this country the rumble of Hitler’s motorized divisions across the Netherlands, Belgium, and Northern France have for the first time actually opened up the possibility of an Allied defeat. The New York Herald-Tribune last week declared bluntly that American war plans must be made with that contingency primarily in mind.
Thus, instead of envisaging American intervention at the side of the Allies in Europe, the press and politicians are beginning to rearrange their war propaganda to fit the more terrifying prospect of a Nazi conquest of Europe followed eventually by an invasion of the Western hemisphere, probably via South America, with Japan cooperatively attacking in the Pacific. This was the main burden of the case as it was presented by President Roosevelt in his first open war speech to the Congress last Thursday.
Can Hitler actually inflict a military defeat upon the Allies despite their superior economic resources? The answer is probably in the affirmative. It is quite possible to envisage a German victory in this phase of the war. But it remains only the opening phase of the war. Hitler may win his way to the channel and even occupy Paris but it is doubtful whether his knockout blow can
in this single swoop, as Winston Churchill said in his radio speech, destroy armies of millions of men equipped with weapons almost as modern although not quite as numerous as Germany’s. Neither can it destroy the British fleet. To strike at the rest of the Anglo-French empires he will have to have the help of Italy and Japan and will have to fight American imperialism.
These things all still add up to a long, long conflict, a conflict on a vast world scale even larger than the present initial great battles. Blitzkrieg or no blitzkrieg, the perspectives of this war must still be counted in years, not in months or weeks.
That is why the sudden panicky propaganda over here must be regarded primarily as an attempt to make American intervention in the war in Europe seem like a lesser and necessary evil to the American masses.
Roosevelt & Co. may really be worried whether they can carry out this intervention speedily and effectively enough to save the situation once more for the Allies.
But such intervention is the real purpose of the “defense” program, the whipping up of the new “preparedness” drive, and the beginning of the campaign to ram industrial mobilization down the throats of the American workers. First move is the talk of suspending operation of the Walsh-Healey Act and removing existing meager safeguards from wages and hours of workers in the principal industrial lines needed to transform the country into an armed camp.
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