Читать книгу In the Margin of History - L. B. Namier - Страница 7
Оглавление(“Manchester Guardian,” April 26, 1933)
Disillusioned friends of Germany are inclined to blame the Treaty of Versailles for the rise of Hitlerism. Whether that treaty was as bad as it is painted, or whether a reaction against its obvious mistakes and sympathy for the “under-dog” have carried us too far in condemning it; whether the French policy has greatly contributed to the present crisis, or whether it was based on an understanding of the German mentality sounder than our own—the bearing of the peace settlement on recent developments in Germany should not be overrated. The rise of a pathological nationalism ten or fifteen years after a national defeat seems a recurrent phenomenon, practically independent of the terms imposed on, or accorded to, the defeated country. It comes apparently when the children of the war period attain the age of twenty to thirty; adults may learn the lessons of war and defeat, but those who have experienced the passions of war and the bitterness of defeat while still incapable of critical understanding seem burdened with frantic, almost insane resentments, which break forth in after-life and give a pathological turn to their politics.
The Peace Treaty which closed the twenty-three years of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars left the national territory of France intact; the Franco-German frontier of 1815 coincides with that of 1919. None the less, about 1830 these terms were described as a “wrong” and a “disgrace,” and the Bourbons, who in the peculiar circumstances of 1814-15 had been able to preserve France from real disaster, were talked of almost as the so-called “Marxists” are now in Germany. Even so, the French nationalist movement assumed generous forms and brought men of culture to the fore; but that no attempt was made at overthrowing the peace settlement of 1815 was merely due to the knowledge that such an attempt would have been met by a reconstituted Coalition of 1815.
The Boulanger movement, which swept France during the years 1885-89, bears certain curious resemblances to that of the Nazis. The nation, in search of a saviour, contrived to believe, with a well-nigh religious fervour, in a man devoid of real distinction. In the decisive moment that man, though borne by a powerful wave of popular enthusiasm, refused to transgress the limits of legality, just as Hitler did when this would have implied revolutionary action. From that moment Boulanger was doomed; he had become ridiculous in the eyes of a nation with a tradition of bold leadership.
Probably the most generous settlement ever made after a war is that embodied in the Union of South Africa—which did not prevent the rise of a bitter nationalism about ten to fifteen years later. The same thing has happened in Ireland in De Valera’s victory over Cosgrave.
In short, if my thesis is correct, a wave of nationalist exasperation was bound to sweep Germany about this time, even had the terms of the Peace Treaty been different. All loss of territory, be it only of undoubtedly French, Polish, and Danish districts, would have been described as a grievous “wrong,” while the loss of Germany’s dominant position in Europe, coming after four years of victories and conquests, would have been resented, as the “wound of Waterloo” was after the Napoleonic wars. Besides, it is significant and characteristic that the Nazis should now [April 1933] turn with peculiar anger against their inoffensive, “Nordic,” neighbour, because of the frontier rectification in Slesvig, which is undeniably just, and which, in 1866, the victorious Bismarck had himself promised to make.
But if, in addition to the pathological reaction after defeat, any other outstanding cause is to be assigned for the rise of Hitlerism, it is the economic crisis, with its concomitant unemployment, unprecedented in size and duration; were Germany in the midst of an economic boom, the present outburst would certainly not have come with the same force or assumed so savage a character. Here those obsessed by “Versailles” will perhaps interject a word about reparations. But other countries besides Germany have suffered, and still suffer, from the consequences of reparations and war debts without plunging into a Nazi “revolution”; and anyhow no financial settlement will restore the Russian and Chinese markets, or do away with Asiatic industrial competition, or offer a solution for the problems of “technocracy.”
But in what sense has there been a revolution in Germany? Was it against foreign dominion? The Germans waited until the foreign armies had completed the evacuation of German territory. Was it against a despotism that denied the Nazis constitutional access to power? That road was wide open to them, and while professing contempt for Parliament the Nazis worked and waited for success at the polls. It was not a determined, impatient minority, exasperated by chaos and inertia, which seized office. Hitler went to Hindenburg and asked for “the power of Mussolini”; and when refused, said he could wait, being so much younger—a very curious declaration for a revolutionary hero to make. But after all the power of the State had been peacefully handed over to him, then, and only then, he proclaimed a “revolution.” Of this the unique feature is that lawlessness and outrages are enacted by a Government which has obtained power in a constitutional manner, had it confirmed by a general election, and has met with no resistance whatever from opponents, docile towards those in authority as only Germans can be. Violence is all that it has in common with revolution, of which the name is only claimed as a cover for acts of brutality and for a disregard of human rights.
Other revolutions opened with humanitarian ideas, with generous impulses, and magnificent dreams; and it usually required civil war and the fear of foreign intervention to engender terrorist passions. The present German revolution has dreamt no dreams, has made terrorism and suppression precede resistance, and, with regard to the rights of the individual, to Parliamentary Government, the Press, education, etc., has, by its free and deliberate choice, adopted from the outset all that was most ruthless in the advanced stages of other revolutions. Shirts and salutes borrowed from Italy and a “four years’ economic plan” imitating Russia complete the equipment of that “national revolution,” while the persecution of German Jews, who have fought and worked for Germany, is its only original contribution. History supplies no analogy for that lifeless but horrible counterfeit of revolution.
