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The most significant evidence of the table is that in most material respects Hitler today has greater armed power than at the beginning of the war. In addition, his fighting men who were untried in 1939 are now veterans with all the experience that helps to win battles. This spring his assets in the bank have reached a new high.
Losses Not Taken. But if his assets are up, Hitler has now acquired a great many contingent liabilities that he did not have when war began. His ally, Italy, is now a hollow shell. And while he has grown in physical strength, his moral strength has waned. This can cause him severe setbacks, and has already cost him one. A tiny nation, Yugoslavia, had dared to defy him, with the result that the plans for his spring campaign in the Balkans had to be completely revised. Now his armies are committed to crush Yugoslavia, from Hitler's standpoint a useless and costly campaign—costly at any rate in time.
Not only are his persecutions of minorities abhorred, but all his overtures are distrusted. No longer has he the advantage, of being able to distract, divide and suborn his opponents. All the world as yet unconquered is united in distrust of him.
According to Nazi accounts, Adolf Hitler's brilliant mind does not merely remember what he reads; it photographs it, frames it, and tacks it to the side of his skull. If this is so, somewhere in Hitler's mind lies the picture of the words he once wrote about his own sensations in World War I: "I felt fully the whims of fortune which kept me at the front in a place where any lucky move on the part of a Negro could shoot me down." If defeat ever comes to his armies, his people may begin to feel as he did 25 years ago.
Victory depends among other things upon relative strength. Although Hitler's legions are greater than ever before, the strength of his enemies is now mounting rapidly. When the U.S.—with perhaps the whole of the Western Hemisphere to follow—gave its aid to Britain, Hitler lost far more in relative strength than all his victories since war began had gained him.
Henceforth, the clock ticks against him. This is his spring. Last week he grasped it avidly.