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The year 1941 was still Hitler's year. His military and political alliances were now worldwide, built on the Tripartite Pact with Italy and Japan. His armies swept through the Balkans, across the African desert to Egypt's gates. But the Battle of Britain had been lost, "and in June 1941 the Führer sought security elsewhere than in England's conquest. The Wehrmacht threw its might against Soviet Russia, rolled to Moscow's suburbs before winter fell. Then the tide turned.
Toward Revolution? In January 1943, Social Democrats Weyl and Jansen write of "The Coming Revolution in Germany": "We know that when the majority of the people is unwilling to continue to live under the existing rule, we have the first prerequisite for a revolutionary change. ... In Nazi Germany today this first prerequisite for revolution is to a great extent present. . . . The way to the revolutionary overthrow of the Nazi regime is still far, [but] the first steps ... are already behind us."
Jansen and Weyl, who have felt Naziism's heavy hand, forecast a reign of terror in the Reich before the Nazis' grip is loosed. This punishment, they believe, is inevitable and must be suffered. But they take issue with those who class all Germans as Nazi brutes whose record bars them forever from a place in future world affairs. They predict for Germany "a government of the people, by the people and for the people" which will be established by a democratic revolution. As Social Democrats and members of the Underground they speak for it:
"Revolutionary Germany will need no Lebensraum outside its own frontiers. It demands no share in colonial oppression. . . . The aim of ... German Socialists is a European Federation . . . which . . . will provide for self-determination by all nations, [with] its goal the free economic cooperation of nations which enjoy extensive autonomy but are not split up by customs and military barriers.
"Always before in German history the forces of democratic revolution have been stopped short before achieving their goal. This time the process must be carried through to its completion."