20-Oct-39: Germans to Formally Re-Annex Former Reich Territory on 1-Nov; Lindbergh Lampooned in London; Oxford Psychologist Pronounces Hitler a Parnoid Megalomaniac
Today is 20-Oct-1939, the 50th day of World War II; there are 2,143 days left in the conflict.
According to a directive signed by German Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler, Field Marshall Herman Goering, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Deputy National Socialist Party Leader Rudolf Hess and State Secretary Hans-Heinrich Lammers, Germany will annex 11,500 square miles of territory which it had lost to Poland due to its loss of World War I and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The “re-annexation of former Reich territory” will occur on 1-Nov.
The German government in Berlin also announces a warning to neutral merchant ships: if they join Allied convoys, they will be sunk without warning by the Kriegsmarine.
Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies announces in Melbourne “compulsory military training for home service.” It will be instituted beginning in January 1940.
People around the British Empire continue to react to Colonel Charles Lindbergh’s speech the previous week in which he criticized Canada for going to war. A new theater review at the Gate Theatre in London’s West End including a song lampooning prominent individuals and included this verse:
“Then there’s Colonel Lindbergh
“Who made a pretty speech
“He’s somewhere in America
“We’re glad he’s out of reach.”
The Canadian Press report noted that the audience in the theater, many of who were in uniform, “held the show up momentarily with lusty cheering.”
In a letter to the The Times of London, Dr. William Brown, director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University and “a world authority on diseases of the mind,” announces that he has completed years of study of the “character and mentality” of German Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler. His conclusion:
“… the German Chancellor is suffering from a chronic form of insanity, known as paranoia, that will gradually impair his intellect until he destroys himself or becomes a raving maniac. … [British Foreign Minister] Sir Nevile Henderson’s final report on the actions of Herr Hitler confirms my conclusion, reached six months ago, that he has ever symptom of the paranoiac who is suffering from persecutory mania and whose brainstorms and megalomania will increase until his madness is so apparent that he must be isolated.”
Dr. Brown says that Hitler’s mental makeup has the following tendencies:
“First, a hysterical tendency, shown in the emotional appeal to crowds in which his mind seems to undergo temporary dissociation through the very intensity of his concentration upon the matter in hand. With his mind so narrowed down on one point he may be temporarily oblivious of other considerations and thus may appear perfidious. There is also a probably hysterical identification in subconscious fantasy with Frederick the Great and a tendency toward mechanical imitation of the less admirable political maneuvers of him and of Napoleon, which makes him appear, judged by modern standards, as an atavistic monster.
“Second, a paranoid tendency amounting almost to persecutory mania. He is a very aggressive person and projects this aggressiveness upon the world around him, being acutely on guard against aggression from others with the suspicion, and possibly delusions, that such hostile aggressiveness is active against himself and his nation.
“Third, a growing megalomania with Messianic feelings. This is a further development of his paranoid tendency, making his followers paranoid and producing collective paranoia.
“Fourth, a compulsive tendency — in his case a power impulse — toward more and more bloodless victories in which his latest claim to territory or power is called his last — like the alcoholic who calls his latest drink his last.”
At the time dismissed as mere propaganda, Dr. Brown’s analysis and predictions would prove chillingly accurate.
14-Oct-39: HMS Royal Oak Sunk in Scapa Flow By Surprise U-Boat Attack; 800 British Sailors Dead; Protests Over Lindbergh Radio Broadcast Arise
Today is 14-Oct-1939, the 44th day of World War II; there are 2,149 days left in the conflict.
Based on German Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance photos which reveal a 50-foot-wide gap in the Royal Navy’s antisubmarine defenses at the Kirk Sound entrance to the Home Fleet’s base at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, Unterseeboot Kapitänleutnant Günther Prien scores a major success for the German Kriegsmarine.
Commanding the U-47, Kapitänleutnant Prien pilots his submarine through the gap and, at 01:30 in the morning, launches seven torpedoes at the British battleship HMS Royal Oak, which has 1,200 sailors on board. Three of the torpedoes hit the battleship and she capsizes and sinks within 13 minutes. Estimates of the dead range from 786 to 833, and are usually rounded off to 800. 414 survive. The sinking is major blow to British naval prestige, a worrying indicator of serious deficiencies in the Empire’s defenses, and a significant triumph for the Kriegsmarine and Kapitänleutnant Prien and his crew.
The Royal Oak was a Revenge-class battleship which had been launched at the outset of World War I in 1914; it was completed in 1916 and first saw action at the Battle of Jutland. In the intervening years, attempts to modernise her could not address weaknesses of her age, including a fundamental lack of speed, so she was no longer considered as suitable for front-line duty in the new war. In spite of this fact and that its loss means little in terms of the numerical superiority enjoyed by the British navy and its allies and thus the naval balance of power, the sinking has a tremendous impact on British wartime morale. The raid demonstrates that the Germans are capable of bringing the naval war to their home waters, and security in harbors and dock areas is greatly tightened.
In Germany, the raid makes an immediate celebrity and war hero of Kapitänleutnant Prien, who becomes the first Kriegsmarine submarine officer to be awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross.
In other news, French Commander-in-Chief General Maurice Gamelin issues an Order of the Day predicting a massive German offensive “at any moment.” He is premature by eight months. At the same time, in Paris, escaped Polish intelligence team members resume their efforts to break German military codes with their replica of the legendary Enigma machine which they had smuggled out of Poland after the invasion and successfully brought to France.
In Moscow, representatives of the Soviet and Finnish governments wrap up their discussions of border revisions with very little change in either country’s terms. Soviet negotiators have refused Finnish counterproposals for a land exchange on their mutual border and are sticking to their original sweeping demands.
In North America, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Key Pittman, D-Nevada, joins with the New York Herald Tribune and many Canadian voices in protest of the previous night’s nationwide radio broadcast by Col. Charles Lindbergh which championed strict neutrality, criticized the Canadian declaration of war and urged rejection of proposed revisions to the Neutrality Act pending in the Senate. Americans are still split on the war, a political divide that will last for almost two more years.
13-Oct-39: Finns, Soviets Continue Meetings; Scandinavian Leaders Plan Conference; Lindbergh Outlines American Neutrality Program, Appeals for Non-Intervention
Today is 13-Oct-1939, the 43rd day of World War II; there are 2,150 days left in the conflict.
Moscow meetings on border revisions between the Finns and Soviets are continuing; no news or breakthroughs are reported. Meanwhile, the King of Sweden invites his counterparts in Denmark and Norway as well as Finland’s president to a conference to discuss the present war situation.
In war action along the German/French border, French troops demolish three Rhine River bridges and skirmishes to the east of the Moselle are reported.
Near Bletchley, England, two express trains collide in the darkness of wartime blackout conditions; three passengers are dead.
In the United States, the Mutual Radio Network broadcasts nationwide a speech by Colonel Charles Lindbergh who has long been an advocate of strict American neutrality. In the speech, made during the ongoing debate in Washington, DC, over revisions to the Neutrality Act, Lindbergh states that a successful policy of neutrality must be backed by strength and arms, not pacifism, and also contains much criticism of Canada for entering the war.
“Tonight, I speak again to the people of this country who are opposed to the United States entering the war which is now going on in Europe. We are faced with the need of deciding on a policy of American neutrality. The future of our nation and of our civilization rests upon the wisdom and foresight we use. Much as peace is to be desired, we should realize that behind a successful policy of neutrality must stand a policy of war. It is essential to define clearly those principles and circumstances for which a nation will fight. Let us give no one the impression that America’s love for peace means that she is afraid of war, of that we are not fully capable and willing to defend all that is vital to us. National life and influence depend upon national strength, both in character and in arms. A neutrality built on pacifism alone will eventually fail.
“This western hemisphere is our domain. It is our right to trade freely within it. From Alaska to Labrador, from the Hawaiian Islands to Bermuda, from Canada to South America, we must allow no invading army to set foot. These are the outposts of the United States. They form the essential outline of our geographical defense. We must be ready to wage war with all the resources of our nation if they are ever seriously threatened. Their defense is the mission of our army, our navy, and our air corps the minimum requirement of our military strength. Around these places should lie our line between neutrality and war. Let there be no compromise about our right to defend or trade within this area. If it is challenged by any nation, the answer must be war. Our policy of neutrality should have this as its foundation.
…
“Sooner or later we must demand the freedom of this continent and its surrounding islands from the dictates of European power. American history clearly indicates this need. As long as European powers maintain their influence in our hemisphere, we are likely to find ourselves involved in their troubles. And they will loose no opportunity to involve us.”
Lindbergh speaks of the clear need for the US to steer clear of European entanglements:
“It is impossible for me to understand how America can contribute civilization and humanity by sending offensive instruments of destruction to European battlefields. This would not only implicate us in the war, but it would make us partly responsible for its devastation. The fallacy of helping to defend a political ideology, even though it be somewhat similar to our own, was clearly demonstrated to us in the last war. Through our help that war was won, but neither the democracy nor the justice for which we fought grew in the peace that followed our victory.
“Our bond with Europe is a bond of race and not of political ideology. We had to fight a European army to establish democracy in this country. It is the European race we must preserve; political progress will follow. Racial strength is vital politics, a luxury. If the white race is ever seriously threatened, it may then be time for us to take our part in its protection, to fight side by side with the English, French, and Germans, but not with one against the other for our mutual destruction. Let us not dissipate our strength, or help Europe to dissipate hers, in these wars of politics and possession.”
The speech also contains some criticism of Canada:
“We must protect our sister American nations from foreign invasion, both for their welfare and our own. But, in turn, they have a duty to us. They should not place us in the position of having to defend them in America while they engage in wars abroad. Can we rightfully permit any country in America to give bases to foreign warships, or to send its army abroad to fight while it remains secure in our protection at home? We desire the utmost friendship with the people of Canada. If their country is ever attacked, our Navy will be defending their seas, our soldiers will fight on their battlefields, our fliers will die in their skies. But have they the right to draw this hemisphere into a European war simply because they prefer the Crown of England to American independence?”
He concludes his speech with a specific program for American neutrality and an appeal to American democracy:
“I believe that we should adopt as our program of American neutrality — as our contribution to western civilization — the following policy:
“An embargo on offensive weapons and munitions.
“The unrestricted sale of purely defensive armaments.
“The prohibition of American shipping from the belligerent countries of Europe and their danger zones.
“The refusal of credit to belligerent nations or their agents.
“Whether or not this program is adopted depends upon the support of those of us who believe in it. The United States of America is a democracy. The policy of our country is still controlled by our people. It is time for us to take action. There has never been a greater test for the democratic principle of government.”