The Time for Decision

by Sumner Welles

Here is unquestionably one of the more important books of the day. As Under Secretary of State from 1937 to 1943, Mr. Welles was in an unrivaled position to know what was going on in American and world diplomacy. This book, though it cannot be described as indiscreet, nevertheless abounds in hitherto unpublished information. After reviewing the mistakes of Versailles and the unhappy, often sordid, story of our inter-war foreign policy, Mr. Welles takes us part way behind the scenes of his trip to Europe in the spring of 1940, the Good Neighbor Policy, and America's involvement in World War II. He concludes with a number of concrete suggestions for implementing a real peace, including the division of Germany into three separate parts and the creation of a world organization superimposed on regional arrangements. -- Robert Gale Woolbert

Genres: History, United States

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1944

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bestseller when published in 1944, Sumner Welles' combined memoir and proposal for a postwar world is most interesting for his account of the extraordinary diplomatic mission he undertook in February-March 1940 at President Roosevelt's behest to see if a just and durable peace could be brought about. He met with Mussolini (twice), Hitler, Ribbentrop, Goering, Rudolf Hess, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, the King and Queen of England, President Albert Lebrun, Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, Léon Blum, David Lloyd George, Pope Pius XII, and a number of more minor officials including Anthony Eden, Clement Atlee, and Count Ciano (Mussolini's son-in-law who would later be executed by the Mussolini government). Welles' acute eye takes in the physical, mental, and psychological aspects of each man he meets.

Mussolini seemed 15 years older than his age (56) and moved elephantinely. Welles brought with him a handwritten letter from Roosevelt in which the president hoped that he and Mussolini could meet in person at some remote spot, which brought a smile of gratification to the Duce's face. "I will answer this letter personally," he said. This never happened, Welles presuming that Ribbentrop had interfered. At a second meeting he told Welles he had recently taken up tennis, which he had thought of as a young lady's game, but was impressed that it required nearly as much exertion as fencing.

Welles described the meeting with Ribbentrop as "perhaps the most astonishing experience of my entire mission." Although fluent in English, Ribbentrop gave no greeting, remained unsmiling, and insisted on speaking in German and having Welles' words interpreted for him. He "then commenced to speak and never stopped for well over two hours, [sitting] with his arms extended on the sides of his chair and his eyes continuously closed. The pomposity and absurdity of his manner could not be exaggerated. One could only assume that he envisioned himself as the Delphic oracle." Ribbentrop's "outpourings [were] such an amazing conglomeration of misinformation and deliberate lies that I could not possibly have remained silent if I had not been afraid of jeopardizing the arrangements for the interview which I was scheduled to have with Hitler on the following morning."

Ribbentrop insisted that German foreign policy did not conflict with American's interests, that the German occupation of the Rhineland was "accepted by the entire world as a rightful step," that Austria had desired to be reunited with Germany, that Germany's occupation of the Sudetenland was due to the Czech government's atrocities against the Sudeten people, that Hitler's foreign policy sought close cooperation with England but was repulsed, that Hitler had no ambitions against England or the British Empire, that Germany had invaded Poland to protect Germans living there who were being tortured and mutilated by Poles, that Germany had not wanted to declare war on England and France but that England and France had insisted on it, that Germany in prosecuting the war was only protecting its vital interests, that Germany had no designs on the smaller nations of Europe, that the only thing Germany wanted was its own Monroe Doctrine in Europe, that Germany must achieve a complete and total victory in order to extinguish England's intent to destroy Germany, and that the war would be short.

Welles made immediate notes: "Ribbentrop has a completely closed mind. It struck me as also a very stupid mind. The man is saturated with hate for England to the exclusion of any other dominating mental influence. He is clearly without background in international affairs, and he was guilty of a hundred lies in his presentation of German policy during recent years."

He met with the State Secretary von Weizsaecker, who told him, "I am going to be quite frank with you. I have been strictly instructed not to discuss with you in any way any subject which relates directly or indirectly to the possibility of peace," then moved their chairs to the center of the room, away from the listening devices in the walls. Welles told von Weizsaecker that if Germany was intent on a complete conquest and a war of devastation, Welles was wasting everyone's time and would leave. "It is of the utmost importance that you say that personally to the Fuehrer when you see him tomorrow," responded von Weizsaecker. Welles gathered from their conversation that if Mussolini could meet with Hitler secretly, Mussolini might be able to influence him, but if Ribbentrop became aware of a meeting, he would block it.

The next day at the new Chancellery, after a long procession through enormous halls and galleries, Welles was received by Hitler, who "was taller than I had judged from his photographs. He had in real life none of the ludicrous features so often shown in his photographs. He seemed in excellent physical condition and in good training. His color was good....He was dignified, both in speech and in movement. His voice, in conversation, was low and well-modulated. It had only once during our conversation of an hour and a half the raucous stridency which is always heard in his speeches, and it was only at that moment that his features lost their composure. He spoke with clarity and precision and I was able to follow every word in German, although Dr. Schmidt interpreted - and at times inaccurately."

Hitler then repeated the same outline of German aims, history, and foreign policy that Ribbentrop had given, and that Rudolf Hess would repeat the next day. It was obvious their narratives had been coordinated. Hitler complained that he had made repeated overtures to England about arms and military limits, which had been either rejected or ignored. Hitler didn't appear to understand international trade issues, believing it would be profitable for Germany to increase industrial trade with central and southeastern Europe, countries which could not afford Germany's luxury products. The German empire of a thousand years earlier must be restored. Germany could not tolerate Czechoslovakia, a state created at Versailles solely for strategic reasons. German provinces and German populations sprinkled throughout eastern Europe had to be rejoined under one aegis. Anything east of Germany which threatened it needed to be demilitarized.

Hitler told Welles, "I am fully aware that the Allied powers believe a distinction can be made between National Socialism and the German people. There was never a greater mistake. The German people today are united as one man and I have the support of every German." He believed Germany would win the war, but if they didn't, "we will all go down together." Then in a rapid and raucous pitch he barked, "I did not want this war. It has been forced upon me against my will. It is a waste of my time. My life should have been spent in constructing and not in destroying."

Welles gathered from his meeting with the low-foreheaded Hess that this was a man of "the lowest order of intelligence." Hess spoke from a set of typewritten cards, never looking up. "It was so obvious that Hess was merely repeating what he had been told to say to me and what I had already twice heard, and that he had neither explored the issues at stake nor thought anything out for himself, that I made no attempt to enter into any discussion with him....Hess was patently of abnormal mentality. His was a personality easily subject to domination by a stronger character. It has always, consequently, been incredible to me that his notorious flight to England could have been undertaken on his own initiative. He went as an emissary."

Next Welles visited Goering at his Karinhall palace, passing on the road in the enclosure where he kept his herd of nearly extinct European aurochs. The huge Goering "wore a white tunic on which were plastered various emblems and insignia in brilliants....His hands were shaped like the digging paws of a badger." Goering's "manner was simple, unaffected, and exceedingly cordial, and he spoke with far greater frankness and clarity than any other German official whom I met." He adhered to the same narrative as Hitler, Ribbentrop and Hess except on one issue. As Goering spoke, it struck Welles that as ruthless as he was, "he at least had some conception of the outside world and of the psychology of other peoples. If anyone of real authority in the German state at that moment could grasp the eventual impact upon the people of the United States of a German war of devastation," it would be he.

Goering failed to see how the American people could be interested in a war in Europe, he told Welles. Welles explained that the Germans' persecution of the Jews was repugnant to Americans and Goering shouldn't underestimate the importance of their feelings of tolerance and humanity. Goering argued halfheartedly that the "intense racial feeling" Germany felt against the Jews was also felt in other parts of the world, and that Americans were being hypocritical because they were racist against blacks. At the end of their discussion Goering showed Welles his vast art collection; a favorite artist was Cranach, and Welles recognized two of these as being from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich.

Once it had been made public that Welles had met with Léon Blum (the former Prime Minister) in Paris, he received nearly three thousand letters from French citizens angry that he had met with a Jew.

Welles does cut Neville Chamberlain a bit of slack in his account, writing that only after the war is over can his conduct be fairly and impartially evaluated. In 1944, England "was paying for the accumulated errors of many preceding British governments, and, in particular, for the lack of understanding and vision for which Stanley Baldwin was primarily responsible."

Churchill was still head of the Admiralty at the time, and most of their discussion focused on issues of military technology, but Churchill also told Welles that "he was now sitting in the same office in which he had sat twenty-five years before, confronted by exactly the same situation. This was because British governments during the past twenty years had refused to follow a realistic policy towards Germany. The objectives of the German people had not changed and would not change. These were world supremacy and military conquest; objectives which endangered the security of the United States as much as they imperiled the safety of the British Empire. He had foreseen the present crisis; time and again he had pointed out to previous British governments the dangers they were incurring, but he had not been listened to and now the crisis once more was upon them."

Welles emphasized the thuggishness of the Nazi regime. The regime in the U.S. today, and its enablers, contain obvious echoes of the language he used to describe it: "In type, in antecedents, and in their common ends there is no difference between Hitler's agents on the gauleiter level and the craftiest, most brutish racketeers to be found in the United States. With but a few exceptions, the men who have surrounded Hitler and who have carried out his orders have come from the dregs of humanity, have utilized their positions primarily to enrich themselves, and have resorted to the . ...Hess, Himmler, and Hitler...are criminal paranoiacs. Others, like Goering, while they have sought profit at every turn, are even more avid for power. ...Ribbentrop and Goebbels, are motivated by malignant inferiority complexes. ...those individuals of the older and more respectable regime of Imperial Germany - men of the type of von Neurath, Schacht, Meissner - who have prostituted their talents to serve Hitler, have furnished but a veneer for the monster racket."

Welles speculated on what subversive actions the German General Staff would take in Europe and the United States once the war was over, in an attempt to conquer the world once again. It reads like the most wacky conspiracy theory: Germany will try to create doubts in the minds of citizens about the abilities of leading statesmen; will find citizens whose ambition and vanity dispose them to help Germany, whether aware or unaware of what they are doing; will manipulate public opinion; will influence elections. None of it happened, because Germany was completely and thoroughly defanged; that is, it did not happen at the time, and not by the German General Staff. But it has happened in our era, by Russia.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most interesting aspect of this book is that it was written in 1944, during the war. It is not an “after the fact” analysis of a long ago period. The events described are in progress and in a state of flux. The chapters on the authors’ meetings with Italian, German, French, and English leaders are particularly riveting. I suppose the chapter on U.S. relations with South America is irrelevant, however well intentioned. The section on the Soviet Union was effusive and decidedly optimistic, but this reflects the time period or the political correctness of the era.

All in all an interesting read that well projects the immense challenges of the time.