Foreign News: Encircled

Most of last week’s European happenings were bad news for Germany. Her friends became increasingly critical. Her allies appeared lukewarm, if not positively fickle. Her enemies were unsparing, and, after the Munich bombing, her home front appeared far from secure. In sum, it looked as though Nazi Germany, having long feared and dreaded encirclement, had managed to kick herself in her domestic stomach and encircle herself.

> Spunkiness of the small nations clustered around Germany was one of the best clues to Europe’s rapidly changing lineup. Defenseless Norway dared to disregard a strong German protest that the internment of the Nazi prize crew that captured the U. S. freighter City of Flint was an unfriendly act. Little Yugoslavia mustered enough independence to send home unsatisfied a Nazi trade delegation that had tried to increase delivery of goods to Germany. Rumania, hardest-pressed of the Balkans, felt secure enough from Nazi wrath to decrease her oil deliveries from 4,100 tons to less than 3,000 tons daily.

> Most significant straws in the wind blew down from Moscow. To the often-asked question of “How much of an ally is Soviet Russia of Nazi Germany?” the answer came last week. “No ally at all.” Dictator Joseph Stalin and Premier-Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov diplomatically kept mum on the subject, but the Kremlin’s alter ego, the Communist International, was encouraged to handle the Nazis just about as roughly as French and British capitalists.

A Comintern manifesto declared that “the ruling classes of Britain, France and Germany are waging war for world domination,” while hotheaded Georgi Dimitroff, Bulgarian-born Secretary of the Comintern, scape-goat-elect of the Reichstag fire and personal enemy of Field Marshal Hermann Göring, adopted a “plague-o’-both-your-houses” attitude. In a signed article in the quarterly Communist International, Tovarish Dimitroff performed the neatest logical trick of the week: he called Germany the original aggressor in World War II, said that after the Nazis signed their famed non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union the aggressors became France and Britain. The Comintern’s spokesman laid down this Party line:

“Only the blind cannot see what charlatans deny—that the present war between the Anglo-French and Germany is waged for colonies and raw materials, domination of sea routes and exploitation of alien peoples. Germany presents her claims for division of the colonial loot of the first imperialist war, now in the hands of the British and French bourgeoisie, who do not intend to loosen their grip on their vast possessions.”

This rationalization did much to put a better face on Joe Stalin’s signing up with Hitler; foreign Communists and fellow travelers were given a rebuttal to fling at those who have maintained since August that Joe is just another opportunist dictator. If he was still against everybody’s government, he might still be for the amelioration of the world’s masses.

> The Nazi press chose to ignore the Comintern’s attitude (although the U. S. S. R. had just been asked to take down Dimitroff’s pictures), adopting the convenient fiction that the Third International does not necessarily represent the Kremlin. In London, on the other hand, Lord Rothermere’s Daily Mail gleefully headlined the Comintern’s pronouncements: “Hitler takes a few more kicks from his friend Stalin.”

Meanwhile, rumor had it that the German trade delegation in Moscow was running up against time-honored Soviet methods of delay and haggling. And the Nazis have yet to see even the first arrivals of the millions of tons of Russian foodstuffs promised fortnight ago.

> Neutrals’ suspicion that Italian-German friendship had cooled since Sept. 1 deepened last week. As one indication of Italy’s independence, the Italian Government signed a trade agreement with Britain. As another, the Italian press leaped at the chance to tell the Germans publicly just what Italy thought of the Nazi-Bolshevik alliance.

Comrade Dimitroff had singled out Italy especially as one of the countries which were “waiting the moment when it is clear which side will be victorious in order to join the stronger and pounce on the body of the defeated country to tear off their share.” Next day the Fascist journalists struck back, led by Dictator Benito Mussolini’s famed mouthpiece, Virginio Gayda. “If today Europe is fighting a war of imperialism and plutocratic interests,” declared Signer Gayda, “Russia also is in it no less than other powers.”

> The haste with which the peace appeal of The Netherlands’ Queen Wilhelmina and King Leopold of the Belgians (see p. 17) was shelved last week was an indication of how desperate the Allies thought Germany’s position. And the attempted assassination of Führer Adolf Hitler in such a Nazi sanctum sanctorum as the Munich beer hall lent substance to much wishful thinking that Germany was near an internal revolution. In London, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said that the Allies were sitting pretty because: 1) the repeal of the U. S. embargo opened to the Allies the “greatest storehouse of supplies in the world”; 2) The British-French pact with Turkey was a “powerful instrument for peace in southeastern Europe”; 3) the German-Soviet pact, while greatly benefiting Soviet Russia, had “brought only humiliation and loss for Germany.” The Prime Minister gloated: “The position of the Allies has, as the weeks have gone by, rather strengthened than deteriorated.”