Let the Record Speak

     Journalism made the difference. Americans were reading and hearing plain language assessments of the happenings in Germany. One of those journalists was syndicated columnist Dorothy Thompson. She had been writing columns between 1936 and 1939 when she summarized them in a book titled Let The Record Speak.  

  “This it seems to me, is the lesson of the news in the last three years, National Socialism, or Nazism in Germany, will become the most world-disturbing event of the century, though Nazism is not, in its nature, only a German phenomenon. Nazism is a fusion of elements that are present in the minds of men and women everywhere, and it does offer one answer to political, social, and economic problems that everywhere press for solutions.” She argued, “Americans must understand there is a fundamental incompatibility between any form of social order based upon political and economic freedom, and the dynamic aggrandizing of Fascism, or National Socialism. Nazism is a total Revolution.”  

Himmler in Germany was calling Nazism “Counter-Revolutionary” in that it aimed to reverse all the change, including the American Revolution, that had happened since the European Enlightenment. Thompson described Nazism as a break with Reason, with Humanism, and with the Christian ethics that are at the base of America’s Liberal Democracy. She saw Nationalism as similar to Communism in that they both broke with the ethic or science that elevates the search for truth into the noblest of human passions. She thought Nationalism was worse than Communism, because it denies the concept of the inviolability of the human being. She saw Nazism, unlike Communism, as treating all of life as the unremitting struggle of tribal groups for biological survival. “In this struggle telling lies is openly accepted as a useful means to an end, which is dealing with what Nazis believe to be naïve and decadent democracies.” Since Nazis subjugate and destroy the common sense that grows out of human experience, the columnist wrote, “National Socialism is the enemy of whatever is sunny, reasonable, pragmatic, common sense, freedom-loving, life-affirming, form-seeking, and conscious of tradition.”

Thompson predicted, “Therefore I believe that the conflict will be conjoined, certainly in the realm of ideas and probably by force, not in the East but in the West. And I have believed that, sooner or later, by force or diplomacy, by political means or military means, the western world will have to take a stand against the Nazi challenge. It’s too late to answer the slogans of Fascism with the slogans of Democracy. It’s too late to hope that we shall preserve Democracy without effort, intelligence, responsibility, character and great sacrifice. In the next decade there will be no free rides to freedom; it will not be preserved by geography or by the insistent chant, that no matter where else it is raining, it is bound to be sunny here---if not today, then tomorrow.” 

     As Americans absorbed these journalist impressions by 1940, Montana’s Army National Guard, the 163rd Infantry Regiment, received federal orders. During August 1940, the Pacific Northwest had been experiencing its largest concentration of troops since WWI. Over 14,000 soldiers comprising the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division and the National Guard’s 41st Infantry Division, made up of regiments from Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, practiced maneuvering against each other along the Nisqually River. When the guardsmen went home from their usual summer training, they left much of their equipment and tents at Camp Murray near Fort Lewis. On August 27 the 1750 members of the 163rd Infantry Regiment received letters advising them to be at full strength for induction into federal military service September 16. This meant discharging some for age, health and dependent status and filling their positions with reservists and new recruits from dusty towns and impoverished farms. The day of induction for one year of active duty with the 41st Infantry came on the same day as the first peacetime draft became law. Six weeks after Montana’s 163rd Infantry Regiment entrained, all men between the ages of 21 and 36 were required to register with the Selective Service. Local draft boards were authorized to review physical, mental, moral, marital and occupational details for every man in that age group befor ranking each for mandatory induction into the military. Already yielding to the portents of war, 62 percent of Montanans favored conscription. 

    Wether inducted by federalization, voluntary enlistment or the draft, future soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen from Montana began flowing to military service from family homesteads on narrow twisting roads lined by crooked fence posts, often guarding more agates and arrowheads than fencing out neighbors cows. Compared with today’s 1,132,812 people, the 1940 census counted only 559,456 of us living in our same 56 counties. Changes in other parts of the world caused a huge exodus of workers out of Montana to coastal defense industries and another 57,000 Montanans, including 567 women left our state for military service. At least 1869 Montana men and women were eventually killed.