POWER POLITICS: Weird War

Last week a diplomatic drama as strange as a Wagnerian opera unrolled in the Bavarian Alps. The setting was Wagnerian—Führer Adolf Hitler’s Berghof at Berchtesgaden, a mountain hideaway 15 miles from music-haunted Salzburg, 600 miles from Danzig, 1,300 miles from Moscow, and 3,000 feet above sea level. Facing the cloud-capped mountains the brown and white Berghof itself—huge echoing rooms, wide halls, bedrooms for 40 guests, guards’ turrets, flower gardens, machine-gun nests—seemed as unreal as the home of the Troll kings.

At this ethereal haunt there arrived one day last week Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italy’s Foreign Minister, son-in-law of Il Duce. Already there were German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Ambassador to Rome, the Italian Ambassador to Berlin, sundry legal experts, advisers, retainers. They were to have lunch with the Führer.

Count Ciano, dressed in a white suit, was half an hour late. The Führer, who has recently been in a beaming, expansive mood, and who at Berchtesgaden likes to sleep late in the morning and talk late at night with his old cronies, was cordial. Lunch was long. Long was the talk after it. At tea time Count Ciano was still there. Then, literally as well as figuratively, the Führer took his guest, emissary of his Axis partner, up in the mountains to look at the view.

Panorama. Not far from his Berghof the Führer has built an even stranger retreat—a steel-and-glass “eagle’s nest” atop Mt. Kehlstein. Few Nazis have seen it. Magnificent as is the view from the Berghof, it is surpassed by the panorama that opens below the eagle’s nest—mountains stretching on over South Germany, into Ostmark, disappearing into the blue haze of distance in the south. Southeast lies Yugoslavia with its rich land of Croatia and the seacoast of Dalmatia stretching down the Adriatic. Eastward lies fertile Hungary, and Rumania with its oil wells, its grain, its ports on the Danube and Black Sea. Northeast, across what had been Czecho-Slovakia, lies Poland and the minute spot on the map known as Danzig, the present battlefield in Europe’s war of nerves.

No correspondents could confidently guess the main topics of the Führer’s talk. But they had a lot to talk about—Hungary, where Nazi economic dominance has steadily increased; Yugoslavia, where negotiations between Croats and Serbs were broken off, whose Premier made a mysterious flight to Italy; Spain, where General Franco set up a new Cabinet; Italy, where economic conditions were reported increasingly bad and where some mysterious reversal upset the maneuvers of the Army of the Po; The Netherlands, shaken with political crises, a far-reaching bank failure, and alarmed for her Pacific Empire; Russia, where the Anglo-French military mission began its staff talks with top-ranking Russian officers; Japan, where trouble was developing in the Cabinet over the question of adherence to the Axis; Great Britain, where, with a truculence that astonished visitors, Britons were parading their naval might and displaying confidence in any impending struggle; Rumania, where natives, irritated at charges that they are lukewarm in their resistance to aggression, are now declaring they can resist alone; Turkey, key to the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean; Poland, unshaken by the struggle over Danzig, counting on its muddy roads to bog down motorized infantry in the event of invasion and on the spirit of its people to fight if necessary, to ignore provocations until it is.

War. Führer Hitler and his ally had a lot to talk about, because the Europe that spread before them is already at war. It is a war of words and nerves, a war fought with weapons so strange and novel that they make machine guns look like good old cross-bows—rolling barrages of slander timed to the minute; ceaseless bombardments of rumors, blankets of lies and alarms as blinding as poison gas; provocations exploding like mines before advancing troops; flank attacks of economic reprisals, feints with threats, promises, atrocities, radio broadcasts, newspaper assaults launched simultaneously and redirected at noon and at 6 p. m. each day; a war of barter deals, whispering campaigns, mystification, currency raids, posters, mass meetings, blackouts—weapons against which military men can only point their guns in vain. Military maneuvers are but an adjunct in this weird conflict. It has its positions that must be taken, its genius, Adolf Hitler, its victims, like Dr. Benes of Czecho-Slovakia, its troops, the hardened ranks of editors and orators, its battlegrounds, like Danzig, its staff headquarters, like Berchtesgaden. And it has its heroes.

Danzig. Checking every assault, and sometimes counterattacking, Poland, guided chiefly by Foreign Minister Josef Beck has shown Europe’s chancelleries that much has been learned of the new war since Czecho-Slovakia was conquered by it. When Nazis interfered with Polish customs officials, Foreign Minister Beck countered by closing the Polish frontier to offending Danzig concerns. When Nazis threatened to precipitate a crisis by disregarding Polish authorities, he sent an ultimatum to the Nazi Danzig Senate, demanding that interference cease—but added a conciliatory offer to negotiate, postponing a showdown. When the Senate agreed to negotiate, the frontier ban was lifted.

Last week, Germany’s journalistic big guns, their aim corrected twice daily, poured an unceasing barrage on Poland. Danzig’s Nazi Gauleiter Albert Forster spent two hours with the Führer, hurried to Danzig to thunder still another demand for its return to the Reich—but significantly set no date nor hour for the return. Danzig itself was in a bad way. Its business had gradually approached a standstill—and Nazi papers accused Poland of strangling its trade. Its armed force of Nazis was estimated at 15,000, augmented last week by 1,500 spade-equipped members of the German Labor Service.

Führer Hitler had said that Danzig would be returned to the Reich. He also said it could be gained without war. Leaving this riddle for the world to ponder, he then vanished into the mountains like a figure from Wagnerian mythology. As Poland showed no signs of giving in, it began to look as though the riddle could be solved only if Foreign Minister Josef Beck agreed to its solution.

As the Führer and his ally ended their talk, the press attack on Poland did not end, but slacked off perceptibly. Customs negotiations between Danzig and Poland, scheduled to begin the next day, were postponed a few days—obviously, said correspondents in Danzig, to let Nazis find out what had been decided on the mountaintop. League of Nations High Commissioner for Danzig, Dr. Carl Burckhardt conferred with Herr Hitler, launching a new crop of rumors: 1) that a settlement of the Danzig problem was in the air; 2) that Danzig might be part of a general European settlement. Count Ciano went back to Rome. The Premier of Yugoslavia returned to Belgrade. The Regent of Hungary made an unexpected “private” visit to Berlin. Poland’s line remained—in Marshal Smigly-Rydz’s artful words—peace could not mean “take” for nations, “give” for others. And all over Europe the 8,000,000 men under arms lined up like marksmen preparing to shoot at a ghost, training their guns against radio waves, trying to surround words in newspapers.