Hitler's Hour

On the evening of May 9 last week, Adolf Hitler went to a cinema in Berlin, a sentimental musical film like The Student Prince. His No. 2 man, Field Marshal Hermann Goring, and Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels attended the premiere of Cavour, a play on which Benito Mussolini, onetime journalist, collaborated. Italy's dictator promised his royalty for the first evening, and half of all his subsequent royalties, to the German Red Cross. Field Marshal Goring arrived late, which made his presence, in resplendent white uniform, the more conspicuous.

A few hours later, just before dawn of May 10, began another show--the biggest and ghastliest show of the generation, perhaps of all the age. It was a titanic extravaganza prepared for seven years by Hitler, Goring, Goebbels and all.their Nazi craftsmen. Mere curtain-raisers for this show had been their absorption of Austria, their bludgeoning of Czecho-Slovakia, their rape of Poland. Only the prologue was their swallowing of Denmark, their kidnapping of Norway and imprisonment of Sweden. Now came the reil thing--grand-scale Blitzkrieg across Luxembourg, Belgium and The Netherlands with an end view either to conquering the British Isles or smashing France, or both. Adolf Hitler's visionary exaltation at this historic hour vibrated in his order-of-the-day: Soldiers of the West Front! The hour of the decisive fight for the future of the German nation has come.

For 300 years it has been the aim of the English and French rulers to prevent any real consolidation of Europe and, above all, to keep Germany weak and impotent.

For this purpose France alone has declared war on Germany 31 times in 200 years. . . . What they wanted to strike was always the German people. Their responsible men quite openly admit this to be their aim*: Germany must be dashed to pieces and reduced to small States.

With that the Reich will lose its political power and with it the chance of securing for the German people its living rights on this earth.

For this reason all my peace overtures have been rejected and war was declared on us. . . .

The German people has no inimical feeling toward the English or French people. It stands, however, before the question whether it will live or perish. . . .

Soldiers of the West Front! The hour for you has now come. The fight beginning today decides the fate of the German nation for the next 1,000 years. . . .

Adolf Hitler, "First Soldier" of Greater Germany, sped through the dawn of May 10 to headquarters somewhere behind the West Front. Before the sun rose, a horde of machine-trained German troops began going through their appointed motions.

Several thousand air pilots and secretly but thoroughly prepared parachute troops were awakened soon after midnight. About 1,000,000 ground troops packed on their fighting equipment. Though a few observers had foretold it, until this moment none but the very highest German staff officers had known for certain what commanders now told their units: "It's to begin." Presently in the reddening skies over France, over Belgium, over Holland, over Great Britain, more than 1,000 Nazi bombing planes--more than the world had ever seen in simultaneous action--sought their appointed objectives. Bombardiers focused down through sights which the Germans boast (but U. S. airmen doubt) are equal to the world's best. From watchful gunners below came salvos of antiaircraft shrapnel, like loads from wild fowlers firing on a duck pass at the morning flight. But this pass was a crossroad of civilization. And this dawn lit the beginning of a human event darker than any night.

First Objectives. Airports, radio masts, railroad stations, key highways and bridges were the gigantic bombardment's first objectives. Alarm sirens screamed from Lyon in central France to towns on the North Sea coast of England. Western Europe stumbled out of bed to its air shelters.

Scores of women and children were too late to escape this first total war's wild shots. After the first bombing wave had passed, some people went back to bed--among them, bellicose U. S. Columnist Dorothy Thompson in Paris. Others sat up to hear the radios of Europe chatter the shocking news to the rest of the world.

Many ventured into the streets to see the first war fires burning. A load of bombs in a shot-down Nazi plane in Douai, exploding tardily, destroyed a knot of the curious.

By breakfast time warrior King Leopold's Belgians were killing Germans, and being killed (see below). Prepared to let the whole northeast lobe of their country go undefended, Queen Wilhelmina's little Army made its first stand along the west banks of the rivers Ijssel and Maas until their rear water belts should rise, their Allies come.*By mid-morning Friday, bulletins began to pour in reporting the crash and clank of 40 German divisions invading the Eastern frontiers. (Sixty more waited in reserve.) From Emden one column struck across the Ems estuary at Delfzijl, aiming at the big Groningen air base and at the Great Dike which harnesses the Ijssel Sea, keeps its waters high enough to flood the lowlands if needed. Other Nazi spearheads aimed for Zwolle and Deventer down the Ijssel first defense line. More powerful columns struck for Arnhem, at the base of this line, and Venlo and Roermond down on the Maas defense line (see map). Besides the familiar German power array (tanks, armored cars and motorcycles, troop charabancs, tractor-drawn artillery caissons and ammunition trucks) columns moved over the railroads in armored trains of which the Dutch destroyed four, including one completely blasted with all hands on the bridge at Venlo. Dutch demolition squads opened draw bridges and smashed their mechanism. They touched off dynamite charges wired on trees, to strew the roads. When the Germans unlimbered rubber boats (of which Berlin boasted they had 185,000) to paddle across the rivers and canals, Dutch machine-gunners let fly. But still the crushing avalanche of manpower moved ahead, myriad low airplanes bombing and strafing a passage for them.

At Maastricht, at Gemmenich, at Mal-medy, across Luxembourg (whence Grand Duchess Charlotte fled safely to France) in the direction of Arlon and Neufchateau, rolled more German columns. In the Moselle Valley opposite Sierck, a German division sallied toward the Maginot Line. From the Moselle south to Switzerland, the Westwall lay ominously quiet. Between 20 and 30 divisions were massed at its south end on the Swiss railroad. The Swiss mobilized in full force (525,000), guessing their turn was next now that Adolf Hitler's decisive hour had come. In the North, observers quickly gauged the German strategy so far as it had been unfolded.

Stab and Swing. The pattern of air bombardment and aerial troop landings in Holland indicated the Germans' intention to stab straight through from Arnhem and Venlo to the sea; to isolate and seize rich, populous Zuid (South) Holland and with it the Zeeland Islands at the rivers' mouths. Taking these objectives would put Germany in position to smash across the North Sea from close range at Britain, and down the coast to the Channel ports to cut Britain off from France.

The drives at Maastricht, Malmedy and across Luxembourg indicated the Germans' second purpose: to roll up Belgium's Liege fort system and the Ardennes. If they penetrated, these drives could pivot with the Armies in The Netherlands in a classic Schlieffen Plan swing upon Paris from the North, driving the French Army before it to ultimate envelopment in the east of France.

New Dimension. To hasten execution of these two basic plans, the Germans called into play a galactic pattern of action in the enemy's rear. When the clumsy Russians tried parachute troops in Finland, military men in other countries scoffed. In Norway, the Germans' parachutists looked better, but they were as nothing compared to the droves of hardy, highly trained, self-reliant German specialists who leapfrogged The Nether lands' border defenses in dozens of small independent groups.

Each man was armed and provisioned to fight independently. Each was instruc ted minutely in his mission and costumed for it. The grey green of their coveralls almost matched the Dutch uniform, and some reportedly came down in mufti, or Dressed as farm laborers, even as priests nd nuns. They carried automatic weapons, light machine guns, hand grenades and other explosives, fold-up bicycles, portable radio sets to flash back field reports. Unlike the Russians, whom sharpshooting Finns used to pick off at leisure as they floated down from safe jumping heights, these Germans had been trained to "pull off" from as low as 600 feet.

Their planes swooped behind hillocks or other cover to let them go, after shooting defenders out of the vicinity. By night they came weirdly down with parachute flares to guide them. They even used showers of dummies, complete with fake equipment, to decoy ground watchers to one landing spot while the real jumpers landed elsewhere. On some of the men captured were found instructions about Fifth-Column agents who would meet and guide them. One Nazi parachutist landed in the garden of the U. S. Legation, where no one could think what to do about it.

Dutch housewives nearly lynched such interlopers as they laid hands on.

Crises. Crucial in the first hours of this huge Blitzkrieg in Holland was the parachutists' battle for Rotterdam. After they seized Waalhaven Airport on the left bank and invaded the right bank to capture the Stock Exchange and railroad station, the Dutch rallied fiercely, drove them back across the river. R. A. F. planes bombed the airport Saturday morning, destroying 20 German craft parked there.

The Dutch retook the field and, at a cost of more than 1,000 men killed, drove out all the Germans on nearby Dordrecht Island, important for its shiploading facil ities and big bridges connecting Amster dam by road and rail with Belgium.

More Germans came soon and retook Waalhaven Airport. Fires broke out all over embattled Rotterdam. But the Ger man plan to grab Rotterdam overnight as Oslo was grabbed missed fire. One reason was that the Dutch fought furiously.

Another was that their forewarned and aggressive police had clapped into jail thousands of Nazi agents, Nazi sympa thizers and German nationals -- the tradi tional servant class of Holland. There was some sniping by quislings, but their aid by which the Germans expected to take the coast cities in twelve hours and hamstring from the rear Dutch defense did not materialize on schedule.

Critical early rear-area fighting also raged in the bright tulip fields around The Hague, which the Germans bracketed with parachute parties in an apparent attempt to surround and capture Queen Wilhelmina and her Ministers.* One band was mopped up near Valkenburg. The Dutch troops with light arms and fast U. S. cars were directed to the "fallen angels' " landings by military and commercial radio.

They gave the invaders red-hot hospitality with bullets in it.

Crushed Counter-Thrust. The Lowlands were not fighting alone. Ninety minutes after receiving their call for help, the Royal Air Force and French Air Corps took wing en masse to harry the oncoming German columns in Belgium and Holland, to bomb the Rhineland, including Essen, heart of the steelmaking Ruhr, in retaliation for German attacks on France's industrial centres.

To race for new lines along the Maas and Moselle, three Allied Armies protected overhead by fighter craft and on the ground by anti-aircraft guns spotted along the roads, started from bases along the Belgian border. The French IX Army wheeled right, into position in the Ardennes Mountains. They settled down at Arlon near the Luxembourg border before the Germans got there. The British Expeditionary Force, 200,000 strong and placed in the centre, rolled smoothly out of the Sambre Valley, heading northeast for Liege and the Albert Canal which its advanced forces reached, festooned with flowers from Belgium's women, within 48 hours. The French I Army on the left made for the Albert Canal. The French VII Army, mechanized, whirred up the West Flanders highways through Antwerp to Dutch Breda. The advanced forces of all reached their objectives much faster than most experts had expected.

This was help for Holland, but as the hours wore on, it was not help enough. The French feared they would have to pull out of Breda before they had arrived there in force. On Sunday the Dutch were forced back to their secondary Grebbe Line, after being blasted out of their Ijssel Line by German field pieces fired pointblank into their blockhouses. This week the Germans broke through the Grebbe Line, drove to the sea near Rotterdam, cutting The Netherlands in two. Crown Princess Juliana fled to London with her husband, Prince Bernhard and their children. Princess Irene, aged nine months, traveled in a gasproof box. The Dutch cause shook when it was admitted that resolute Queen Wilhelmina had fled to London, too, and her Government had left The Hague.

Retreat In Belgium. The quick fall of Eben Emael fortress, great new strongpoint of the Liege corner, was a heavy blow, whether brought about by a "secret weapon" (see p. 28) or sheer power. Three bridges across the Albert Canal went with it, one when an officer about to order the bridge's destruction was killed by a bomb and his successor hesitated to act. Another Belgian officer darted back over another captured bridge and blew himself up with it. Through these holes the Germans poured before the mass of the Allied force could reach the prepared outer defenses. Beginning Sunday night, things began to look bad for the Allies, not only in Holland but all down through the Ardennes Forest, where the Germans ripped open with terrific air attacks supporting their Panzer (armored columns).

The Belgians had 24 divisions, the Allies 19, to the 100 the Germans had in use and reserve. Surrounding Liege, the Germans pressed relentlessly ahead to threaten Brussels and Antwerp. In the Coblenz area they reserved five mechanized divisions for a drive on Arlon and Longwy alone. The Belgians and the Allies under General Gamelin began to fall back on their Namur-Antwerp positions.

Sunday night and Monday the situation grew even more critical. "Extremely serious," admitted a London military spokesman. In Berlin "greatest joy" prevailed among the German General Staff. Action on the 80-mile front from Liege through Namur to Sedan, said they, made the Polish campaign look like a "weak prelude." Then came the news that the whole of the Ardennes Forest was in German hands, and that the fighting in the Arlons-Longwy section had resulted in the

Germans penetrating ten miles into the Maginot Line.

Sedan is a fateful name to the French. There in 1870 their Second Empire fell to the Prussians. For four years the soldiers of the German Emperor held it after 1914, not to be ousted until five days before Armistice by the French and the U. S. Rainbow Division. On Tuesday afternoon the soldiers of the Third Reich entered Sedan. There was now very little hope of saving Belgium. It was a question of saving France. A further German breakthrough would imperil the whole of France's western defenses to the sea. The French rear areas were taking an awesome beating from the bombs and strafing of some 7,000 planes.

TOTAL The Western World realized at last that when Adolf Hitler threatened "total" war he really meant TOTAL. Timing his blow at a moment when the irresolute, unprepared Democracies were disturbed by their failure in Norway and politically disrupted within by that failure, he struck with singleness of purpose which ignored all morality but his own, utilized all the psychological and ideological weaknesses of bis enemy. Shortage of war materials, poor crop prospects next autumn, all helped spur him now to the quick war, risking all, which he knew favored him more than a war of any length. Only by stalling Blitzkrieg into a trench-digging war, until they grew stronger, did the Allies have much chance.

The time was coming, if it were not already at hand, for Benito Mussolini to nudge his titular partner's elbow with proffered aid (see p. 31). If the war continued at its last week's pace and direction, he might have to bestir himself in order to give his partnership any appearance of usefulness or sincerity.

Still far from the Allies' elbow was the one source of strength to which they could turn: the U. S. Even if they turned, and were answered as last time, this time it might be too late.

* Reference to Alfred Duff Cooper's toast to the Empire on St. George's Day, in which he named the German people, as well as the Nazi regime, as Great Britain's hated target.

Mr. Duff Cooper last week became British Minister of Information. * Water from the three central rivers -- Lek, Waal and Maas -- was preferred by the thrifty Dutch for flooding. Being fresh, it would not ruin their land for future planting as would sea water. But when the alarm came in the night, they resolutely touched off charges that ripped great holes in the south retaining dike, let in their oldest ally, the sea. *Foreign Minister van Kleffens, speeding to London the first morning, was forced down at the British coast when his plane's fuel tanks ran dry after being riddled by his own anti-aircraft guns protecting him from the Xazi attackers.

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