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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 22, 1 June 1940, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The pace of German conquest in Western Europe has completely upset the war’s timetable for all the powers still “neutral.” It probably has even upset Hitler’s own timetable. It is doubtful whether even he calculated on so disastrous a revelation of Anglo-French weakness. Right now Britain faces the alternative of capitulation or invasion. The new French line along the Somme and the Aisne awaits Hitler’s decision to strike for Paris.
Italy’s entry into the war has been forecast from day to day for weeks. It is pretty clear that Hitler intends to use the Italian threat in the Mediterranean plus his own threat of. blitzkrieg invasion to force British capitulation. If the British refuse, the invasion and Italian entry will probably be simultaneous. It will open a south-front in France and may materially hasten the coup de grace for that country. But it will also open a whole new theater of war in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Near East.
Japan is also pondering an end to its policy of so-called “non-involvement.” This would require termination somehow of the stalemate it has created in China. The trial balloons about Sino-Japanese peace negotiations a week or so ago originated obviously in Tokyo. For Japan wants its hands free to pounce upon the East Indies and upon any section of the British Empire in the East that it can reach as soon as Britain collapses under German pressure.
The United States – i.e., Washington and Wall Street – has not yet definitely adapted its strategy to the prospects of an Allied defeat in Europe. If the Allies should by some remote chance succeed in stemming the Nazi tide and stabilizing a line capable of holding for a period of months, American intervention is likely to come within that period. If the Allies should go down quickly, as now appears quite probable, Washington-Wall Street will have to revise their total strategy. Japan may well be left a free hand in Asia and the U.S. will embark upon the gigantic arms program it will need to carry out to be ready for the resumption of military actions following a longer or shorter interval. A state of war may be declared in either case to facilitate rearmament.
In this changed situation the Moscow government must likewise decide its course. Hitler’s quick victories do not quite accord with Stalin’s timetable either. Stalin has to figure now whether there is any way of slowing down the Nazis without jeopardizing himself or whether he must take his place at Hitler’s boot and hand over the Soviet Union to German exploitation. The mission of Sir Stafford Cripps to Moscow and the talk of a reappointment of a British ambassador indicates that this alternative is already being probed.
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