Note: Malaparte, an Austrian named Stuckert, was a writer for Italian newspapers. He wrote a book, “Coup D’Etat: The Technique of Revolution” that was first published in 1932 by Dutton. This book was considered politically dangerous in the Depression years and was never reprinted. Malaparte had taken part as an observer during the Warsaw campaign and wrote from first hand experience. His excellent, but unknown, book deals extensively with the techniques of the Coup d’Etat and in specific, the sections on Trotsky and Stalin are of great historical value.
Historical Note: When Poland broke away from Russian control in 1918, the Russian Bolsheviks expressed their fury at this defection and stated that they would militarily force Poland back into the Russian fold. The Poles were commanded by Marshal Josef Pilsudski and the Soviet armies by Marshal Tukhachevski when the war broke out in April of 1920. At first the huge Russian military machine, commanded by Tukhachevski but politically directed by Josef Stalin, surged forward, driving the badly equipped Poles before them. Finally, in August of 1920, with huge Soviet armies in front of Warsaw, Pilsudski launched what proved to be a devastating attack on the overextended Russians and crushed them. Malaparte writes of the days just before the Polish counterattack when defeat for them seemed almost foregone.
“The vanguard of the Bolshevik army had already reached the gates of the town. In the workers’ suburbs the first shots were heard. Now was the moment for a coup d’Etat.
Warsaw these days looked like a town waiting to be pillaged. The great heat seemed to suffocate all voices and noises. The crowds in the streets were perfectly noiseless. Now and then an endless convoy of trams carrying the wounded would slowly steer through these crowds. The wounded sometimes looked out of the windows shook their fists and swore. A ceaseless hum spread from pavement to pavement, from street to street. A group of Bolshevik prisoners, battered, bend and limping, with red stars on the front of their uniforms, marched between hedges of mounted Uhlans. The crowd opened in silence to let them pass and immediately closed again. Fights broke out here and there only to be squashed at once by the surging crowds.
The main railway stations were besieged day and night by bands of famished deserters, refugees of every race and condition. The Jews alone seemed to feel at home during these chaotic days. The Nalevski quarter, Warsaw’s ghetto, was rejoicing. Here the hatred for the Polish persecutors of the children of Israel was fierce and consequently
There was pleasure in witnessing the wretched end of Catholic and intolerant Poland. The Jews of Nalevski generally so silent and passive both from prudence and by tradition, betrayed their feelings by very exceptional acts of courage and violence. The Jews were becoming seditions: a bad omen for the Poles.
The news which was brought by refugees from the occupied areas rekindled the spirit of sedition: they said that in every village and town occupied by the Bolsheviks a Soviet mainly composed of local Jews had been set up. Were the persecuted Jews really becoming persecutors? Liberty, vengeance and power were fruits so luscious that the wretched inhabitants of Nalevski longed for a taste of them. The Red Army only a few miles out of Warsaw found a natural ally in the enormous Jewish population of the city which grew daily more numerous and more excited. At the beginning of August there were at least 500,000 of them in Warsaw. I often used to wonder what kept this great seditious mass of people from trying to revolt, filled as they were with a fanatical hatred and hungry for freedom.
What with a dismembered State, a government on its deathbed, a great part of the country invaded and the capital besieged and in disorder, only a thousand men who were determined and ready for anything, could have taken possession of the town without firing a single shot. But my experience of those days taught me that though a Cataline may be Jewish, the instruments of the coup d’Etat could not be recruited from among the Children of Israel. In Petrograd in October 1917 the Cataline of the Bolshevik insurrection was the Jew Trotsky and not the Russian Lenin.: but the executors the Catilines, were practically all Russian sailoars, workers, and soldiers. In his struggle with Stalin in 1927, Trotsky learnt to his cost how dangerous it was to rely on a chiefly Jewish following for carrying out his coup d’Etat.”
This chronicle certainly can be said to show the relationship between the Jewish and Polish communities. Warsaw and parts of Poland had a disproportionately large Jewish population, due in part to the forced removal of Russian Jews to what was called the Pale of Settlement. In the main, most Russian Jews were not of Semitic origin but instead originated in the Kahnate of Kazar located on the western shores of the Caspian Sea. Originally a mixture of Mongol and Turk, the Kahn forcibly converted his subject to Judaism and when the Kahnate eventually disintegrated, its converted Jewish population emigrated westwards, settling in parts of Russia and Poland.
There was always a conflict between the devoutly Catholic Poles and their Jewish eastern immigrants and this is manifested by the hostility expressed in the foregoing section. Because of this seditious behavior, when Pilsudski became the head of the Polish state, he forced large numbers of Jews out of his country and eventually blocked their return. Many were left behind and when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, a number of small Polish villages rose up against their local Jews and murdered them. In the intervening years, of course, these slaughters were conveniently blamed on the occupying power.
In the section below, we can see the attitude of a high official of the Polish government, Count Jerzy Potocki, Warsaw’s Ambassador to Washington. Count Potocki had taken an active part in the 1920 conflict and his personal views are very clearly set forth here.
The Potocki Reports
After the collapse of the Polish government and the occupation of the capital of Warsaw in September and October of 1939, the Germans located the secret archives of the Polish Foreign Ministery hidden in a bunker. A number of the documents were hastily translated and published by the German government as a White Book in 1940.
The Polish Ambassador to the United States, Count Jerzy Potocki, scion of a famous Polish family, wrote a number of important reports to the Polish Foreign Minister that gave a very clear picture of an educated European's view of American politics and the forces that shaped US foreign policy.
One of these reports dealing with Jewish influence on President Franklin Roosevelt was reprinted in part by General J.F.C. Fuller in his landmark historical work, "A Military History of the Western World" and the General cites this report as having significant bearing on the activities of those who had a great hatred of Germany and Hitler and who also had immediate and significant access to Roosevelt.
The second report under discussion here was also in the Polish Foreign Office files but because it discussed opposition to Hitler, was never included in the German White Paper. Because it reveals very clearly the reasons why Roosevelt hated Hitler and the Germans and intended to force American intervention against him, it is included here.
The first report was written by Count Potocki on January 12, 1939.
To The Foreign Minister in Warsaw:
Public opinion in American nowadays expresses itself in an increasing hatred of Fascism, Chancellor Hitler and everything connected with National Socialism. Above all, propaganda here is entirely in the hands of the Jews who control almost 100 percent of the radio, the films and the daily and periodical press. Although this propaganda is extremely coarse and is designed to present Germany as blackly as possible, when bearing American public ignorance in mind, their propaganda is so effective that people here have no real knowledge of the true state of affairs in Europe.
At the present time, most Americans are taught to believe that Chancellor Hitler and National Socialism are the greatest evil and the greatest peril threatening the world. The situation here provides an excellent program for public speakers of all kinds, among whom are many refugees from Germany and Czechoslovakia who with much effort and many patently false accounts, incite the American public. These speakers praise American liberty which they repeatedly contrast with totalitarian states.
It is interesting to observe that in this carefully thought-out campaign- which is primarily conducted against National Socialism- no reference at all is made to Soviet Russia. If that country is mentioned, it is referred to in a friendly manner and people are given the impression that Soviet Russia is part of the democratic group of nations. Thanks to astute propaganda, public sympathy in the United States is entirely on the side of Communist Spain. Side by side with this pro-Communist propaganda, an artificial war panic is created, The American people are told that peace in Europe is hanging only by a slim thread and that war is inevitable. No effort is spared to impress upon the American mind that in the event of a world war, the United States must take an active part in a struggle for "freedom and democracy." President Roosevelt was the first in the field to give expression to this hatred of Fascism. He had a two-fold purpose in mind: firstly, he wanted to divert American public opinion from difficult and complicated domestic problems, especially the problem of the struggle between capital and labor. Secondly, by creating a war-panic and inventing rumors about threats to Europe, he wanted to induce Americans to endorse his huge program of armaments, a program which far exceeds the United States defense requirements.
Regarding the first point, it must be said that the internal situation here on the labor front is growing steadily worse. The unemployed today already number twelve million. Federal and state expenditures are increasing daily. Only these huge sums, running into billions, which the US treasury expends for emergency labor projects, are keeping a certain amount of peace in the country. Thus far only the usual strikes and local unrest have taken place. As to how long this artificial governmental aid can be kept up is difficult to predict at present. The unhappiness and growing indignation of public opinion coupled with the serious conflict between private enterprise and the enormous trusts on one hand and with a radicalized labor movement on the other, have made many enemies for Roosevelt and are no doubt causing him many sleepless nights.
As to the second point, I can only say that President Roosevelt is a skillful expert in domestic politics and a connoisseur of the American mentality and he has effectively turned public attention away from internal domestic problems and focused it on foreign policy. His means of achieving this effective distraction was simple. He needed, on the one hand, to highlight a fictional war menace threatening the world because of Chancellor Hitler, and on the other hand, to create a specter of war and invasion by speaking ominously about an attack of the totalitarian states on the United States. The Munich pact came to President Roosevelt as a godsend. He described it as the capitulation of France and England to growing and aggressive German militarism. As was said here: Hitler compelled Chamberlain at pistol point, Hence, France and England had no choice but to back down and were compelled to conclude a shameful peace.
Furthermore, the brutal treatment meted out to the Jews in Germany, as well as the problem of the large number of Jewish and anti-German refugees flooding this country are both factors which intensify the existing hatred of everything connected with German National Socialism. In this campaign of hatred, individual Jewish intellectuals such as Bernard Baruch, Lehman the Governor of New York State, Felix Frankfurter, the newly appointed Supreme Court Judge, Morgenthau, the Secretary of the Treasury and other well-known personal friends have taken a prominent part in this campaign of hatred. All of them want the President to become the protagonist of human liberty, religious freedom and the right of free speech and be the man who, in the future, will punish trouble-mongers, especially those who are not liked by Jews. This particular group of people, who are all in highly placed official American positions and who are desirous of being representatives of 'true Americanism' and seen as 'Champions of Democracy' are, in point of fact, linked with international Jewry by ties incapable of being torn asunder. For this Jewish international, so intimately concerned with the interests with its of its own race, President Roosevelt's 'ideal' role as a champion of human rights was indeed a godsend, In this way they are not only able to establish a dangerous center of hatred and enmity in this hemisphere, but also is succeeded in dividing the world into two warlike camps. The whole problem is being worked out in a most mysterious manner. Roosevelt has been given the power to enable him to energize American foreign policy and at the same time create huge reserves in armaments for a future war which the Jews are deliberately heading for. With regards to domestic policy, it is extremely convenient to divert public attention from anti-Semitism which is on the increase in the United States, by talking about the necessity of defending religious faith and individual liberty against the assault of Fascism.
/s/ Jerzy Potocki,
Ambassador of the Republic of Poland
The next report is under the date of April 30, 1939 which Potocki wrote immediately following a private meeting in his residence with General Edwin M."Pa" Watson, an aide and confidant of the American President. Two days earlier, on April 28, Adolf Hitler had delivered a scathing and sarcastic address to the German Reichstag in answer to an April 14 public appeal by Roosevelt to Hitler to guarantee the integrity of a number of countries, including Ireland, Syria and Palestine (which was then occupied by the British). This approach to Hitler was designed solely to appeal to the public in America because it contained so many factual and political blunders that Hitler was able to very effectively heap scorn and sarcasm on both its contents and author.
It was after this speech that General Watson came, at Roosevelt's request, to have a private discussion with the Polish Ambassador.
To the Foreign Minister in Warsaw:
This evening I received in my private residence, General Watson, a close confidant of the American President. The General stated he was acting on the instructions of the President and wished me to convey the content of his information to the Polish Government in Warsaw.
It appears that Chancellor Hitler's speech in Berlin of April 28 has infuriated the President who, the General assures me, believes that Chancellor Hitler has held him up to public ridicule and contempt. These were the exact words used by General Watson.
It was also stated that because the President's family, on both his mother's and father's sides has Jewish blood, the President has additional reasons for hating Chancellor Hitler and the Germans.
The President was apparently surprised and most disturbed by the visit by the German Foreign Minister (von) Ribbentrop to Warsaw in January of this year. The President is aware that the Germans were, and are still, seeking to persuade Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact and I assured the General that Poland, while not well-disposed to the French, refused to ally themselves with Chancellor Hitler.
The General went on to state that President Roosevelt felt that Chancellor Hitler must be stopped before he began another war and before he mistreated and expelled all the Jews in Germany. The General especially mentioned Polish Jews in this light. There are very strong sentiments in the United States against becoming involved in another European war and the American President must find another way to fan the flames of war in Europe. It appears from my questions to General Watson that President Roosevelt has very little actual knowledge of conditions in Europe and is acting out of a spirit of vengeance alone.
President Roosevelt, his aide asserted, wishes the Polish Government to firmly resist any attempts on the part of Chancellor Hitler to arrive at a negotiated settlement over the question of Danzig and to stand firm. I was able to assure the General that the Polish Government has no intentions of bowing to pressure from Chancellor Hitler in this matter and would not yield an inch concerning Polish control over former German territories.
The General stated that the President was aware of our attitudes but made a very strong suggestion that the Polish Government fight fire with fire, to quote directly, and openly defy Chancellor Hitler. The President has knowledge of groups of prominent Germans, many in high military and governmental offices, who are completely opposed to Chancellor Hitler and National Socialism and who would rise up against their regime at outbreak of a war.
General Watson furthermore has shown me a copy of a draft treaty with the Soviet Union in which it is set forth that the Soviet Army will join with the Polish Army in attacking the Germans at the slightest provocation. The President has further suggested that such a provocation could easily be supplied by the Polish Government and the ensuing aggression by the German forces would be countered by the bravery of the Polish forces and the might of the Soviet Union.
I attempted to explain to the General that the Polish Government was certainly not friendly with that of the Soviet Union and, in fact, viewed them as dangerous potential enemies, not allies. I also pointed out that the Soviets had invaded Polish territory in 1920 with a view to totally resubjugate the newly-formed Polish state. The General had no knowledge of the Battle for Warsaw in 1920, a battle in which this author certainly played a serious part. The General spoke warmly about the Soviet Union, assuring me that Stalin would have no territorial demands on the Polish state after a military defeat of the Germans and would immediately retire back behind their borders.
The President seems to be woefully lacking in any knowledge of the situation in Poland and one should note further that the Polish Embassy here has received no information about any such potential treaty between the Soviets and Americans. Although the General had with him a transcribed copy of this treaty, it was a draft only and had no identifying signatures of any kind.
This appears to this writer as a mere bluff on the part of the American President and as it was completely impossible to have an informed discussion with his communicant, the General was advised that his message would be passed to the Minister at once.
It does appear that the spite of the American President coupled with his ambition to remain in office is a very dangerous business and his devious meddling in matters he does not understand could lead to very serious consequences, not for the United States which would profit from a European war, but for all of Europe.
/s/ Jerzy Potocki,
Ambassador of the Republic of Poland
Roosevelt was rebuffed by the Poles who later refused passage to the Soviet Army when the British sought a treaty with Stalin before the outbreak of the war. It was Hitler, not Roosevelt, who signed a treaty with Stalin's Russia. In a later attempt to involve the United States in the European war, Roosevelt produced what he claimed was a German plan to invade South America and later the United States. This was highly suspect at the time of its appearance and now is freely acknowledged to be a forgery, prepared at Roosevelt's request.
Hitler's response to Roosevelt was certainly one of his best speeches and deserves to be fully translated into English for the benefit of historians who appear to be oblivious to its impact. It obviously had a serious impact on Roosevelt's ego and led him to a clumsy and extremely irresponsible attempt at involving Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union in a war. This would have been another War of Jenkins' Ear with a petty motive but with devastating consequences.
There are two other Potocki documents, one dealing with an interview with William C. Bullitt, US Ambassador to France, and another that was an analysis of the pro-Soviet circle that surrounded and influenced Roosevelt and encouraged his descent into a war that would only benefit Josef Stalin.
The Polish Foreign Ministry documents have long upset pro-Roosevelt historians and are not contained in works about the outbreak of the Second World War or the foreign policy activities of Roosevelt. However, Potocki and other diplomats whose reports appeared in the German White Paper have fully authenticated all of their dispatches, only some of which appeared in the official German document.
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