Europe and Eisenhower
By 'GOROMN Y REES' IN a recently published book, Kann West Europa Verteidigt Werden ?, a distinguished German general has drawn up a balance-sheet of Western Europe's military assets and liabilities. As• seen through the eyes of an ex-Chief of the German General Staff, the liabilities greatly outweigh the assets. Measured against the U.S.S.R.'s one hundred and fifty fully mobilised divisions and the additional divisions which can be mobilised at short notice, the forces which the Western European Powers can put in the field are pitifully inadequate. Those who feel any complacency about Western Europe's capacity for self-defence should reflect on General Guderian's observation that the two most powerful military nations in Europe at the present time are the two neutrals, Sweden and Switzerland. In the light of such facts a detached observer of the situation in Europe (and there are thousands of millions of such observers in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, America, waiting patiently for what they believe to be the approaching end of Europe) may well be forgiven for thinking that there is a strong element of farce, the atmosphere of a Hans Andersen fairy-tale, in the military arrangements of the North Atlantic Treaty Powers, and even the bravest and most convinced defender of Western civilisation is forced to think twice when he sees that civilisation offer itself disarmed and distracted to the embrace of the barbarian.
This is a conclusion which may be reached by a simple enumera- tion of those military weapons which can be counted and measured, by a mere order of battle of the men under arms, and the rifles, guns, shells, tanks with which they will have to fight. General Guderian, however, is not content with comparing these measurable factors ; he attempts a comparison of the imponderables also. And here again the comparison is not in our favour. High among those imponderables General Guderian names the fact that the Soviet Union possesses a unitary military command, acting in accordance with agreed and established principles of war which are shared by all its subordinate formations, and by these means exercising over its vast armies a system of control which is at once firm enough and flexible enough for the needs of modern war.
There is yet another factor to be taken' into account, though General Guderian does not include it in his depressing calculation ; this is the political factor, and this again, unfortunately, does not work to our advantage. For the Soviet Union has the invaluable asset that, either in the initial stages of a war or in the period of preparing for it, there is no possibility of conflict between policy and strategy, no possibility that the efficiency of the military and industrial machine will be thwarted, frustrated or distracted by the separate and conflicting aims and ambitions of its component elements. In Western Europe we arrange things differently.
This is the situation in which, last week, the North Atlantic Treaty Powers unanimously and without hesitation invited Cseneral Eisenhower to assume supreme command of their united military forces ; and no one can have any appreciation of the almost insuper- able difficulties of the task to which General Eisenhower has been called unless he realises the three gigantic weaknesses under which the West labours. The first is the tragic impotence of the land forces as compared with those of its potential enemies. The second is the lack of a unitary system of command and control, firmly based on an agreed military doctrine, on agreed methods of military training and agreed principles of conducting military operations. The third is the lack of any firm political concept, or any firm political organisation which makes it possible to reconcile the con- flicting aims, fears and interests of the nations whose forces General Eisenhower is to lead.
What qualities does General Eisenhower possess which make it likely, or even possible, that he can, under existing conditions, make an effective European army out of the weak, ill-armed and hetero- geneous forces which are all the Atlantic Powers have at the moment to offer ? There are two qualities which one must admit imme- diately he does not possess. Firstly, General Eisenhower has no magical power of calling armed men out of the ground where none existed before. He is no conjurer who can create the will to fight in men who have only the will to be defeated. Secondly, there is no reason to believe that General Eisenhower is possessed of overwhelming military genius. He has no military tricks or devices in his bag which will get Western Europe out of the hole into which we have fallen.
What then can he do ? - His greatest quality has always been to act, in a positive sense, as a catalyst, to change situations in which nothing has been or can be done into situations in which everyone's capacities contribute to a practical result. If one asks how this is done, the answer is that General Eisenhower's magic is directed almost entirely to overcoming the negative and inhibiting elements in any situation, which nearly always are those of prejudice, partisan- ship and sheer narrow-mindedness. He possesses, in an extra- ordinary degree, one of the rarest of human virtues, that of magna- nimity. This is a virtue so rare, especially in high places, that those to whom it comes without effort can resolve any difficulties unless they arise simply out of lack of resources ; and fortunately these are not the real difficulties from which Western Europe suffers.
I have observed General Eisenhower closely in two absurdly different situations—one, in the presence of our own Sovereign, in which he watched an army-group commander, with the greatest theatrical abilities, display, criticise and sometimes humiliate his sub- ordinate commanders ; another in which he had to talk directly to men who in twelve hours might well be dead. On neither occasion were the embarrassments of the occasion too much for him. Why ? One can never satisfy one's curiosity about the springs of action of great men, and one is never satisfied with observations that redound to their credit ; in General Eisenhower's case one is forced to accept the fact that he is able to overcome the weaknesses of human beings, especially of great ones, because he sees them clearly, he sees them whole, and he sees that they are a part of their strength.
For this reason people, even Europeans, will forgive General Eisenhower what they would forgive no one else. Though he might have been, and though he still may be, the President of the United States, I do not think his mind is a particularly interesting one ; in Western Europe, especially if one includes Germany, I believe there are many professional soldiers whose ability is equal to his. But there is no professional soldier, and there is no politician, amateur or professional, who has the same dispassionate, unprejudiced, and unself-seeking view of men's capacities, who judges men so con- sistently by the criterion, not of how best they can serve him but of how best. they can serve the very nearly hopeless cause to which he has committed himself ; and for that reason alone he may return to Europe the faith, the hope and the strength which she confidently expects to give him and receive from him. This is an old conti. nent ; General Eisenhower is one of those generous loose- and large- limbed Americans whom Henry James so loved to depict ; the greatest compliment one could pay him is to say that only someone of his great liberality, generosity and magnanimity of mind could deserve to lead a Europe which, in spite of all disasters, is the only hope of the world.
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