A few months ago, in honor of the editor's birthday, I scanned in the cover of my paperback "Time Capsule 1939" to contribute as a graphic. The Capsule contained highlights of the year as reported in Time Magazine, whose influential publisher, Henry Luce, was no fan of FDR. Thinking I'd give it a glance before putting it back on the shelf, I opened the Capsule and read its succinct answer to a question about World War Two that has puzzled me ever since I got woke many wars ago.
Why, after blitzkrieg conquests of Poland and Czechoslovakia, did Hitler attack France and England instead of advancing further East into Russia? The standard answer is that the terms imposed by the Western powers after World War One had been so hard on the German populace. But by 1939, the German economy already been revived by rearmament. The factories of the Ruhr region had reverted to German ownership. What had the Third Reich not regained from France and England by that year?
From the Capsule: "Feb. 6: the German Reichstag met in Berlin's Krull Opera House one night early this week to hear the address of Fuhrer Adolf Hitler on the occasion of the sixth anniversary of Nazi rule. While Germans listened with pride to the recital of past Nazi victories, an anxious world combed the speech for cues as to what Nazi moves could be next expected. The cues were not long in coming, and they were sensational. First, Herr Hitler notified Europe in the most direct manner possible, that Germany wanted back the colonies she lost in the world war, colonies, now largely held by Britain and France. The theft' of the former German colonies, the Fuhrer said, was 'morally wrong' and 'sheer madness.'"
In other words, reclaiming German coloni was literally at the top of the Nazis to-do list!
Turning to other sources I learned (or re-learned, given my excellent forgettery) that at the start of WW1, German holdings in Africa included lands that now comprise Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Cameroon, Namibia, and parts of Nigeria and eastern Ghana. German holdings as of 1914 are yellow on the map below:
It was Germany's Chancellor Bismarck who in 1884 had called a conference to formalize the European nations' division of control in Africa. After WW1, the Versailles Treaty stripped Germany of its colonies and "mandated" them to England and France; but by 1925 German settlers were returning with a mind towards regaining control. According to a paper entitled "A Foot in the Door" (Cambridge University Press, 2024), "The German Foreign Office's Colonial Section took on a proactive role to facilitate these Germans’ settlement in their former colony, including working with German ministries to release funding and navigating the British administration and settlers on the ground in Tanganyika. While Germany had lost its overseas colonies, these officials, many of whom had served in the pre-war empire, did not view their activity in colonial spaces like Tanganyika as belonging to the past. Officials in the Colonial Section navigated the appearance of political neutrality while also promoting their ‘colonial-political’ goals, hoping to create footholds of Germanness in Tanganyika that would keep open the possibility of future empire."
It was to this crowd that Hitler was playing on the eve of World War Two when he called the Allies' takeover of Germany's colonies "Morally wrong."
The editors of Time Magazine could hardly conceal their admiration for him.
• March 27 "In power politics, Adolf Hitler exhibits all the amazing intuitive timing and swift footwork of a boxer. The speed, precision and preparation with which he moves should no longer surprise the world. But last week he outdid himself. The four steps of a Hitler conquest – preliminary propaganda, conference with victims, march of troops, and triumphal entry – followed each other like the rapid fire of a machine gun. His accommodating campaign in Czechoslovakia lasted exactly 3 days.
Imperialist positioning was uppermost in FDR's mind, too, according to the Time Capsule:
• April 24: Personal Message: Franklin Roosevelt addressed a new warning to the Dictators... Even while the President spoke, a far more dramatic message by him was being handed around secretly by his closest advisers for final editing. This was a direct personal message to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Coupled with the message in the President’s mind was a momentous order to the US Navy. The President had decided that the 11th hour had struck. With one hand he would beckon the Dictators to a peace conference table, with the other he would make the largest gesture of 'force to force' that he knew how: move the Battle Fleet back into the Pacific, where it could offset any Japanese menace to Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands in the Orient."
"To avoid upsetting the stock market, announcement of the fleet order was withheld until afternoon Saturday. Then, slowly, using the occasion of an address before the Pan-American Union, the president read his words to A. Hitler and B. Mussolini: 'You realize I am sure that throughout the world hundreds of millions of human beings are living today in constant fear of a new war or even a series of wars… You have repeatedly asserted that you and the German people have no desire for war. I trust that you may be willing to make such a statement of policy to me as the head of a nation far removed from Europe, in order that I, acting only with the responsibility and obligation of a friendly intermediary, may communicate such declaration to other nations.'
• May 8: Adolf to Franklin: had someone reminded Franklin Roosevelt to put into his peace offering message to Adolf Hitler last month some honest acknowledgment of the faults of the Versailles Treaty, Herr Hitler’s reply last week might have been much shorter, less sarcastic. The man-to-man repartee:
[The following was not set off by quotation marks. I assume a Time Magazine editor had done a rewrite and was being more than fair to Hitler. Quotation marks are then suddenly introduced.]
Roosevelt: Millions of people now fear war.
Hitler: This fear has undoubtedly existed among mankind from time immemorial. For instance, after the peace treaty of Versailles, 14 wars were waged between 1919 and 1938 alone, in none of which Germany was concerned.
R: All international problems can be solved at the council table.
H: Theoretically, perhaps. My skepticism, however, is based on the fact that it was American herself, who gave sharpest expression to her mistrust in the effectiveness of conferences. For the greatest conference of all time was without any doubt the League of Nations, which the United States itself declined to enter. It would be a noble act if President Franklin Roosevelt, were to redeem the promises made by President Woodrow Wilson.
All this was smart talk from Adolf Hitler to undermine Franklin Roosevelt at home. But he saved his very smartest answer for his last. To Franklin Roosevelt's declaration that heads of state are responsible for the fate of humanity, A. Hitler cried: “Mr. Roosevelt! I fully understand that the vastness of your nation and the immense wealth of your country allow you to feel responsible for the history of the whole world and for the history of all nations. I, sir, am placed in a much more modest and smaller sphere.
“You possess a country with enormous riches in all mineral resources, fertile enough to feed a half billion people and provide them with all necessities. I once took over a state which was faced by complete ruin. I have conquered chaos in Germany, reestablished order, and enormously increased production in all branches of our national economy. I have succeeded in finding useful work once more for the whole of 7 million unemployed, who so appeal to the hearts of us all. I, who 21 years ago was an unknown worker and soldier of my people, have attained this, Mr. Roosevelt, by my own energy, and can, therefore, in the face of history, claim a place among those men who have done the utmost which can be fairly and justly demanded from a single individual.
"You, Mr. Roosevelt, have a much easier task in comparison. You became President of the United States in 1933 when I became Chancellor of the Reich. In other words from the very outset, you stepped to the head of one of the largest and wealthiest states in the world. Conditions prevailing in your country are on such a large scale, but you can find time and leisure to give your attention to universal problems. Consequently, the world is undoubtedly so small for you that you perhaps believe that your intervention and action can be effective everywhere.”
• Sept. 11. "World War Two began last week at 5:20 AM (Polish time) Friday, September 1, when a German plane dropped a projectile on Puck, a fishing village and airbase in the armpit of the Peninsula. At four5:45AM, the German training ship, Schleswig Holstein lying off dancing fired what was believed to be the first shell: a direct hit on the Polish ammunition dump at investor p in the first five days, hundreds of Nazi bombing plans dumped a ton after ton of explosive on every city of any importance, the length and breath of Poland.
• Sept 25 "Hero Speaks. Last week began the great debate on US Neutrality. Franklin Roosevelt argued for action, short of war. Idaho's Senator Borah for Isolation. Elder Statesman Henry Lewis Stinson for traditional neutrality. In all the talk, there was no fresh voice forBut one night last week that oice was heard. the voice of the one US citizen who could command a radio audience comparable to Franklin Roosevelt – Charles Lindbergh: 'We must not be misguided by this foreign propaganda to the effect that our frontiers lie in Europe. What more could we ask than the Atlantic Ocean on the East and the Pacific on the West? An ocean is a formidable barrier, even for modern aircraft."
Never mind the current Holocaust!