Hanson Baldwin

From The Twenty-Year Revolution, Chesly Manly 1954

The decision to fight a land war against Germany was the first of a long series of tragic mistakes in the prosecution of the war. Hanson Baldwin, military critic of the New York Times, declares in his book Great Mistakes of the War: �There is no doubt whatsoever that it would have been to the interest of Britain, the United States, and the world to have allowed—and indeed to have encouraged—to world�s two great dictatorships to fight each other to a frizzle.�

Russia, in a death struggle with Germany, could not have won without our help. Stalin could not have made a separate peace with Hitler without giving up Russian territory . . . Yet, as Baldwin remarks, the United States put itself �in the role—at times a disgraceful role—of fearful suppliant and propitiating ally, anxious at nearly any cost to keep Russia fighting.� Charitably, he adds: �In retrospect, how stupid!�

Chicago : Henry Regnery 1954, p. 116.

Comment : Robert Stripling 1949 : 'We . . . know that between January 1, 1947, and December 16, 1948, 151 State Department people were removed from the Federal payroll, 91 of whose cases were classified as �of acute significance [of communistic infiltration (WPT)].� And that is only one department. Coincidentally or not, it was State Department policy which abandoned China�s 400,000,000 humans to the advances of Russian-controlled Chinese Red armies . . . Coincidentally or not, it was the State Department�admittedly contaminated at that time�which sold Poland, another ally, down the river.' (The Red Plot Against America, Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania : Bell 1949, pp. 158 � 159). — (WPT)

Baldwin, Hanson W. (Hanson Weightman), 1903- Title Great mistakes of the war. Publisher New York : Harper, [1950] Description 114 p. 20 cm. Note An abbreviated version appeared in the Atlantic, Jan.-Feb., 1950. Note "Notes and bibliography": p. 109-114.