Q. Have you any idea what kind of negotiated peace Hitler would consider acceptable? Would such a peace be as desirable for us as Wheeler and Lindbergh say? I notice Lindbergh recently urged that the only alternative to a negotiated peace was “either a Hitler victory or a prostrate Europe or a prostrate Europe and possibly a prostrate America as well.”
A. Fortunately Axis sources have given us a rather complete blueprint of what they would consider acceptable terms of a negotiated peace. Reduced to a few words, their terms are: Surrender by Britain and America of control of the seas by reduction of the British and American navies to parity with the Axis and demilitarization of British and American naval bases outside home waters; German dominion over all Europe, most of Africa, and parts of Asia; Japanese control of the rest of Asia; and the United States to open the doors of Latin America to Axis enterprise.
Q. Do you mean that those are serious terms suggested for a so-called negotiated peace? What is the source of these terms?
A. It is the version put out by the Japanese Foreign Office through its organ the Japan Times Advertiser, April 29, 1941, as a trial balloon. It remains the most comprehensive statement of Axis terms yet issued. Since the British government ignored it, and the British and American press derided it, Germany dropped the idea for the moment, but you may be sure it has not been dropped for good. Seven weeks after its publication Hitler sent his armies into Russia. When he has attained his goal there, it seems highly probable he will again offer peace and when he does, the general outline of his terms will probably follow this statement. One has only to remember that since the issuance of this provisional peace text Russia has been stricken from the list of “the nations called upon to settle world peace” and has been added as a victim.
Q. But didn’t the meeting of Churchill and Roosevelt exclude the possibility of a negotiated peace, since they declared in their eight-point program that “final destruction of the Nazi tyranny” was the precondition to peace?
A. They did, but Hitler, though he may have little hope of actually achieving a negotiated peace, may offer it in order to appeal over the heads of Churchill and Roosevelt to those elements of the British and American populations he considers vulnerable to his propaganda. There are few such elements left in England, but many here. Hitler knows by now that he has only to furnish the ammunition and Lindbergh and Wheeler will do the firing for him.
Q. Have you the text of these Hitler terms?
A. Yes, and it would be most instructive to compare it with the eight-point Atlantic Charter.
Joint Declaration
The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom, being met together, deem it right to make known certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future of the world.