Q. But if we have nothing to fight with, how can we go to war?
A. Only by going to war can we guarantee the continued existence of the British fighting machine and the control of the Atlantic by the British Navy and our own. As long as the Atlantic is thus controlled we can arm ourselves in safety.
Q. But why can’t we arm ourselves, as we are now doing, without going to war, and after we are thoroughly prepared, then, if it is still necessary, go in and win? Wouldn’t that be more sensible?
A. No, because until we go to war we shall never arm ourselves adequately or send to Britain and Russia anything like the supplies we would send if we went to war. Second, if we do not go to war at once there exists always the possibility of German victory. Although the German Army is busy for the time being in Russia, Hitler knows he has to conquer Britain to win. He intends to return to the Battle of Britain. The Battle of the Atlantic is constantly going on. Events move with such lightning speed in this war that a sudden overwhelming Hitler victory is still quite conceivable. Beaverbrook only the other day said he was convinced Hitler still intended to try to invade the British Isles.
Q. Do you think Hitler could succeed in invading Britain?
A. If Hitler is willing to lose half a million or a million men in a super-Blitz—and we know that he is quite willing to invest that many more German lives in his dream of 1,000 years of Nazi Empire—even British authorities admit he might get a foothold in England. The German tactics would probably be similar to the attack on Crete, except that against the British Isles they would try many more landings by sea. Everything would be on a gigantic scale. The air bombardment to precede the attempt would surpass anything experienced in the Blitz of the autumn of 1940 which I witnessed. In this super-Blitz the Germans would attempt to paralyze the R.A.F. They were not able to do it before. The R.A.F., as Churchill said, won the climacteric victory of the First Battle of Britain by knocking down three German planes to every one they lost, and in that fight the Germans outnumbered the British three to one. But if Hitler gets the airplane factories of Russia, to add to the production of the French, Czech, Belgian, and Greater German production, is there anyone who would undertake to prove that he could not concentrate in one furious attack more force than even the dauntless R.A.F. could repel?
The Germans can never beat the British but they might suffocate them. Hitler so far has never used more than 500 or 600 warplanes in a single attack on England. Suppose he uses 5,000. Why has he not done this before? Every aviation and military authority I talked with during the Blitz in England was baffled at this. There were scores of guesses. The most popular answer now is that the Germans did not have the airfields from which to launch so many planes at once. This is a limiting factor in air warfare which is now given great weight. It is pointed out that it takes a huge airfield to send off 100 planes. It is even argued that the British are bound to lose the war eventually because their island can accommodate only a restricted number of airfields, which fix an upper limit for their R.A.F., while the Germans can build an indefinitely large force. Since the First Battle of Britain the Germans have had plenty of time to build airfields from Norway to France sufficient to take care of the air fleets of all the world. We know they have built many secretly along the coast of Northern France and the Low Countries. Hitler’s tactic of surprise would lead him to keep them in reserve for the great invasion. Few observers would exclude the possibility that the Germans may be able to use thousands of planes in the Second Battle of Britain where they used hundreds in the first.
Q. Why doesn’t Hitler use poison gas?
A. I am convinced he will use it whenever he becomes desperate. Why has he not used it before? The British know he has vast quantities of it. He may be afraid of reprisals. When he uses gas at all I should think it would be in a once-for-all storm. Imagine what the effect of a giant attack with a heavy gas might be on London where as many as 4,000,000 persons sleep in underground shelters. The English have virtually ceased to carry gas masks. At the beginning of the war not one person in a hundred appeared on the streets of London without one. Today not one person in fifty carries one.
Hitler would probably not use gas at all except as a part of a knockout blow so violent that the British would not have a chance to strike back. Whatever the outcome, it is possible that such a mass gas assault might kill hundreds of thousands in one night. While the gas attack was being poured upon the large cities, in the hope also of wiping out the government and other leaders in urban headquarters, swarms of flat-bottomed scows and other vessels would put out from the coasts of the Channel and the North Sea, to make for landings at perhaps a dozen different places, anywhere along the coast of both England and Scotland. Some of these objectives would be feigned to divert English defense forces from the real ones, which might number five or six. Meanwhile great numbers of parachute troops would be landed to capture British airfields and hold them long enough for troop planes and gliders to land reinforcements, and these landings would also be attempted at the immediate rear of the coastal points where the German troops were coming in by sea.