“A scientifically organized slave state on a continental scale is no dream. It is taking shape before our very eyes… When Napoleon conquered Europe, he brought with him the spirit of the Revolution – the great ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. These carried a message even to the conquered. But Hitler’s philosophy promises the conquered nothing but slavery, and more slavery…”.
You Can’t Do Business with Hitler: What a Nazi Victory Would Mean to Every American – by Douglas Miller, an early analytical survey warning of and detailing the nightmare scenarios and immediate consequences of a possible German victory in the West. Pocket Books. United States, 1942 – copy signed by the author.
“The Nazis have often declared that there are two opposing poles in the world: Germany, the pole of order, discipline, and scientific progress; and the United States, the pole of democratic anarchy, degenerate Christianity, and the decay and loss of efficiency that accompany a system of free enterprise. Hitler’s conquest is only partial and incomplete until we are brought into his world system…” (From the Introduction).
This highly important early publication that was written to alert the American public to the very real danger facing the nations of the world should Nazi Germany succeed in carrying out its plan to conquer the West. In his book, Douglas Miller accurately outlines Adolf Hitler’s true intentions, precisely as they were realized a short time later in the death camps during the war years. One of the earliest works of its kind to issue an explicit and forceful warning that Adolf Hitler’s global hegemony would pose a direct and immediate threat to the future of the United States and its citizens.
Douglas Miller served as the Commercial Attaché at the United States Embassy in Berlin for 15 years (1925-1939). In that capacity, he acquired an extensive firsthand understanding of the economic machinery, methods, and objectives of the Nazi regime. As early as October 1931, about a year and a half before Hitler came to power, he had already prepared a detailed report for Washington describing how the future Nazi state in Germany would operate. Many months before the outbreak of the Second World War, he stated in the American press that a world war was certain to erupt, contrary to those who preferred to believe Hitler’s false promises when he spoke of peace.
Miller wrote the book in 1941 to combat the isolationist sentiment and the illusion then prevalent among certain economic and political circles in America (such as Charles Lindbergh’s “America First” movement), which held that the United States could continue to maintain normal commercial relations and prosper in a world dominated by Nazi Germany. Miller explains in detail, with clarity and directness, how the Nazi economy was founded upon coercion, deception, aggressive barter, and subjugation, making any long-term agreement with Hitler’s state impossible. He explains the principle of power upon which Nazi Germany was founded, in contrast to the Western democracies; describes how human life in Nazi Germany was regarded as worthless; explains the Führer principle; and shows how the German military effectively controlled civilian life, unlike in any other country.Miller also explains, in real time, at a period when the world was still largely unaware of the sinister nature of Nazi racial doctrine, its underlying premise: “Right and wrong are functions of race. If you belong to the right race, everything you do is automatically right, ” and its threat to the occupied countries: “When Napoleon conquered Europe, he brought with him the spirit of the Revolution – the great ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. These carried a message even to the conquered. But Hitler’s philosophy promises the conquered nothing but slavery, and more slavery…”. Elsewhere in the book, Miller explains that lying and the violation of agreements were fundamental principles of Nazism, as Hitler himself wrote: “Truth is anything that serves the German cause.” He describes how, throughout the years he served in Berlin, he repeatedly encountered a policy of falsehoods and manipulation on the part of the Nazi leadership.
In the second part of the book, Miller examines at length the attempts of Nazism to infiltrate the United States through collaborators from within and explains what might occur should Hitler succeed in his conquest of the West. Under the heading “The Scientific Slave State, ” he strikingly foreshadows the reality that would unfold in the death camps a short time later:
“Once Germany’s armies have crushed all opposition, once the secret police have eliminated the dissenters and the concentration camps have received the rebels, the first battle will have been won. There will undoubtedly be an immense amount of human suffering and pain throughout the region, but it will not be able to express itself effectively. The Nazis will be able to use their satellite governments as flexible instruments for ensuring uniformity and security throughout the area. The Nazis will control the supply of food, clothing, and money. Disobedience to their orders will bring starvation… The first years of occupation will be the hardest. Each additional year of peace will allow the Nazis to extend their systems of training and discipline over the subjugated peoples. Children will learn new versions of history in the elementary schools. They will be carefully isolated from contact with the outside world. In the next generation, Hitler will have a passive and obedient population that has lost its hope, though not its love, of freedom… A scientifically organized slave state on a continental scale is no dream. It is taking shape before our very eyes…”.
The book became a major bestseller and one of the foremost instruments of American wartime propaganda and public education. As its powerful message gained traction, the U.S. Government’s Office for Emergency Management (OEM) even produced a popular radio drama series under the same title, based on the book’s contents, to prepare the American public for total war. At the bottom of the cover appears an endorsement describing the book as “must reading” by two prominent American figures of the period: Wendell Willkie, the Republican presidential nominee in 1940, who advocated a firm stance against the Nazis despite being in opposition to Roosevelt; and William L. Shirer, the renowned American journalist and Berlin correspondent, later the author of the monumental work The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
VII, [2], 173, [8] pages. Minor wear to the cover. Good condition.
