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In Germany Author Taylor did a little detective work of his own. He "cased" Fritz Thyssen, who once subsidized, later broke with Hitler, and was rumored (TIME, Oct. 13) to be in a concentration camp or dead. Says Taylor: "First I found that Thyssen is not in the hands of the Gestapo. ... I found he is not dead. He is back in Berlin. He is in a hospital. The Nazis are liking Thyssen better and better again since their attack on Russia, which he had always advised. ... I found . . . that Hitler called on Thyssen in the hospital. . . . Hitler . . . wants to use [Thyssen] ... to soften up unsuspecting people in other countries."
New Navy. Taylor also discovered "irrefutable evidence of an immense new German Navy being built. The great shipyards are working twenty-four hours a day on it. Officers are being taken out of the Army and trained for and assigned to the German Navy. Why? The Nazis have made a new guess on the length of the war. Diplomats and generals I saw in Berlin now agree on one thing. ... It will be a very long war. Certainly many years. No one of importance in Berlin sees it any other way. Neither does Hitler."
Author Taylor believes that when World War II began, the Germans were trained and equipped only for "certain continental objectives. With the fall of France, Hitler did not attempt to invade England—a fact which still puzzles most British—because from the very beginning he had not planned to cross the Channel and was not prepared to do so." For in Hitler's view there are two wars—the "Civil War of Europe" (which began in Spain and is continuing in Russia) and an Interocean War between the world powers, which the Nazis did not intend to fight until years after they had consolidated their gains from the civil war. "By fighting when she did, England rushed the Germans' hands by at least five years and upset the whole fundamental sequence on which the Nazis intended to operate."
Interocean War. Now Hitler is preparing to begin the Interocean War. "Hitler's Navy and the Japs are his answer and his final play for world domination." There will be a simultaneous attack on Iceland and the North Ireland bases. And this time there will be an attempt to invade Britain. Whether Hitler succeeds will not depend "on the Channel or a foggy night, or even on British and American soldiers quartered in England. It certainly does not depend on the British Navy." It depends, Author Taylor believes, on how much power the Allies allow Hitler to concentrate against England. It depends on the war in Russia and in North Africa "to begin with, and whether we can hit the Nazis simultaneously on widely separated fronts. Our fighting, divided in space, cannot be divided in timing."
To meet such far-flung needs, U.S. production is growing. But "as our production grows, the Axis will spread us further and further in sea distances, while the Germans strike at the British Isles and work down the pole through the Near East, the Caucasus, Iran, Iraq, to liaison on land with the ascending Japs. That is the cold, agonizing outlook."