A Dream

Last night I had a nightmare: I was back in August 1939, but of the two rivals in totalitarianism it was Russia, not Germany, which started the war. Having annexed the Baltic countries and taken Persia by inciting the so-called Sudeten Persians in North Persia against the Teheran government, she unmasked her game against Turkey. Stalin had sounded out public opinion in Western countries by asserting the traditional Russian claim to Constantinople, and when the weary question, “Die for Constantinople?” had convinced him that he would have his way in spite of guarantees given to Turkey he resolutely pushed ahead. Frantic efforts of the Western powers to conclude an alliance with Hitler against Stalin failed because of Hitler’s claim to Poland and the Baltic countries.

Then, just as it happened in the real August 1939, a pact between the two rival dictators started the war; but in my dream it was Stalin, not Hitler, who first set his army in motion. In 1941 the situation was pretty desperate for the Western powers when suddenly Stalin, in order to get directly at Great Britain, made the fatal mistake of attacking Hitler. The political and ideological alignments were turned topsy-turvy. In the beginning, the war against the detested Soviets and their equally detested Nazi allies was fought by the Western powers under the honest and clear-cut slogan of anti-totalitarianism. From 1941 onward this was changed into anti-Bolshevism, which gave the dynamic Nazis the opportunity to make people forget the common denominator between Bolshevism and Nazism.

WR

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Wilhelm Roepke

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Last night I had a nightmare: I was back in August 1939, but of the two rivals in totalitarianism it was Russia, not Germany, which started the war. Having annexed the Baltic countries and taken Persia by inciting the so-called Sudeten Persians in North Persia against the Teheran government, she unmasked her game against Turkey. Stalin had sounded out public opinion in Western countries by asserting the traditional Russian claim to Constantinople, and when the weary question, “Die for Constantinople?” had convinced him that he would have his way in spite of guarantees given to Turkey he resolutely pushed ahead. Frantic efforts of the Western powers to conclude an alliance with Hitler against Stalin failed because of Hitler’s claim to Poland and the Baltic countries.

Then, just as it happened in the real August 1939, a pact between the two rival dictators started the war; but in my dream it was Stalin, not Hitler, who first set his army in motion. In 1941 the situation was pretty desperate for the Western powers when suddenly Stalin, in order to get directly at Great Britain, made the fatal mistake of attacking Hitler. The political and ideological alignments were turned topsy-turvy. In the beginning, the war against the detested Soviets and their equally detested Nazi allies was fought by the Western powers under the honest and clear-cut slogan of anti-totalitarianism. From 1941 onward this was changed into anti-Bolshevism, which gave the dynamic Nazis the opportunity to make people forget the common denominator between Bolshevism and Nazism.