A. That is true and important, but the Chinese economy was decentralized. The Chinese lives locally. Chinese communities could be cut off from the outside world and live almost normally. The Soviet economy is centralized, a closely knit system of collective farms-mines-factories, which if ruptured at one point would tend to go to pieces. Nevertheless there is a significant similarity between the primitive character of the Russian and the Chinese peasants, and their ability to improvise a living and keep on fighting when more highly civilized folk, as the French, would give in. Q. _Under what circumstances do you think Hitler would offer Stalin a compromise peace?_ A. The moment he believes he has defeated the Red Army sufficiently to force Stalin to accept a peace which would include substantial demobilization of the Red Army--enough to ensure that it could not be used for a sudden attack on the German Army after it had returned its attention to the West. It is probable that Hitler had much more totalitarian goals in view when he first attacked Russia; but the Red Army has probably made him content for the moment with less. Q. _Isn’t there some evidence that Hitler is after an all-out victory over Russia and intends no compromise, but complete conquest?_ A. Yes, the most direct evidence we have of such an intention is contained in his speech of September 12, 1936 at Nuremberg, when he said: “If the Ural mountains with their immeasurable wealth of raw materials, Siberia with its rich forests, and the Ukraine with its immense grain fields, were lying within Germany, this country under National Socialist leadership would be swimming in wealth. We would produce so much that every single German would have more than enough to live on.” This does not sound as though he intended to stop short of anything, but the fact still remains that unless he believes he can make peace with the West (and he cannot have much hope for that after the Roosevelt-Churchill proclamations of peace terms), his most advantageous solution of the war would be compromise, with Stalin or some other Russian leader as his Gauleiter. Q. _Wouldn’t Hitler obtain more supplies if he took them than if he trusted to the Soviets to deliver them, even if they promised to do so after having been conquered?_ A. Not for a very long time, probably several years. If Hitler, completely defeating the Red Army, were to try to replace the Soviet system with something of his own devising, imagine the chaos! There are several million employees of the Soviet bureaucracy. Suppose they all sabotaged as the Czarist bureaucracy sabotaged the Bolsheviks when they seized power. It took the Bolsheviks five years to work back up from starvation in 1918 to the level of subsistence in 1923.