Читать книгу Failure of a Mission, Berlin 1937-1939 - Nevile Meyrick Henderson - Страница 11

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Before proceeding with the relation of actual events, I would like, in this chapter, to describe, as briefly as I can, the position in Germany as I found it on taking up my post there on May 1st, 1937.

Hitler had been in power for over four years and during that period had achieved gigantic progress in the military, industrial, and moral reorganization of Germany. It was patent that she could no longer be coerced except by the actual use of force.

The Saar territory had been recovered in 1935 by means of an overwhelming plebiscite in favor of the Reich; and the Rhineland had been occupied and remilitarized in March, 1936. All the internal disabilities imposed on the Germany of the peace treaties had thus, to all intents and purposes, been liquidated; and the vast preparations for the achievement of the next step, the unity of Greater Germany, i.e. Austria, the Sudeten Lands, Memel, and Danzig, were in full swing. Military preparedness was the keynote of Nazi policy. The Army and Air Force were being rapidly expanded, air defense on a large scale was being developed, compulsory military service had been extended from one to two years, the Labor Service Corps had been greatly increased, and the whole youth of the country was in process of being incorporated in the Hitler Youth.

Germany, as I wrote in one of my earlier dispatches, was being militarized from the cradle to the grave. The writing was thus on the wall for all to read. The only real question was whether it was intended to use this German might as backing for the attainment of not illegitimate aims or for the prosecuting of illegitimate ambitions. The “I told you so’s” will say that there never was any doubt on the subject. That may be so; but, nevertheless, the contrary had first to be proved.

The Ministry of Economics was being filled with soldiers, and in fact the whole economy of the country was being harnessed to the military machine. The slogans of the Nazi party were still “Purity of Race” and “Guns instead of butter”; and all industrial considerations were being subordinated to the Four Years’ Plan, or in other words, to the necessity of rendering Germany independent of supplies from abroad. The Nazi system was calculated, better perhaps than any other could have been, to weld the German people into an efficient war machine; and to the appreciation of this fact may possibly be attributed the tolerance shown by the Army to a party whose political activities it must often have found irritating and embarrassing, as well as subversive of discipline.

While the steady forging of the Siegfried sword was the most obviously alarming symptom of the situation from the point of view of the outside world, the rise in the cost of living, the downward trend in the standard of life, the exactions of the party, and the restrictions on individual liberty were a heavy burden on the people and the cause of considerable internal dissatisfaction. Many Germans have, in conversation with me, attributed Hitler’s dynamic impatience to his alleged conviction, to which he himself frequently alluded, that his life was not destined to be a long one. He was so full of tricks that I often wondered whether that assertion was not one of them. It seems to me at least as likely that Hitler suspected that his own people might not submit indefinitely to the hardships imposed upon them by the regime. He had, therefore, to excuse his own impatience and to act quickly, if the economic situation were not to break or the people to become too dissatisfied before he had had time to perfect the military machine which was necessary for the execution of his long-term plans and the satisfaction of his far-reaching ambitions. It was for him a race between the readiness of his army and the possible collapse of German economy.

On the other hand, Germany’s growing military strength had enabled her to take a more independent line in foreign affairs than she had hitherto done; and the political situation in Europe had, in the year preceding my arrival, greatly changed, to Germany’s advantage. By 1937, there was no longer any risk of foreign intervention in Germany’s internal affairs. The Berlin-Rome Axis had been invented; and the unity of Italo-German interests was to be affirmed a few months later in September, when Signor Mussolini officially visited Berlin. The Axis served the immediate interests of Italy during the period of sanctions against her and in view of the support which she was giving to the Franco party in Spain; but its ultimate benefits were of far greater value to Germany than to Italy. Among other things it removed for the former the most dangerous obstacle to Nazi intrigues in Austria and the actual stumbling block which had caused them to fail at the time of the Dolfuss murder in 1934.

The Nazi party and the press were still hard at work at that time beating the anti-Bolshevist drum, mainly for purposes of internal consumption but also with a view to making the outside world believe that Germany was the sole bulwark against universal communism. The opportunity offered by Japan’s bad relations with Russia had been seized in the preceding year to sign the German-Japanese agreement. This so-called anti-communist but equally anti-democratic front was to become a triangular one toward the end of 1937, when Italy joined it. The ten-year German-Polish agreement had been signed in 1934, and thus, by 1937, Germany, so far from being friendless in the world, as she was so apt in self-commiseration to depict herself to be, had greatly fortified her political situation. The success of Nazism was attracting many sympathizers abroad, particularly in Hungary with irredenta of her own, but also in other European countries, as well as overseas. The Auslandsdeutschen, or Germans living in foreign countries, were busily organizing themselves abroad in, support of the movement in the fatherland and as an advance guard for political invasion by that fatherland.

It was the heyday of the movement and of Hitler himself. Though there might be restiveness in Germany itself at the exactions of the party and the recurring food shortages, the Germans are a docile, credulous, and disciplined people who like being governed; and they comforted themselves with the assurance that Hitler had the knack of getting everything he wanted without war. Above all, the malleable German youth were enthusiastic over a movement which appealed so strongly to the young and were being taught to accord to Hitler the attributions of something very near akin to God. When people lightly talk of the German nation’s overthrowing its present rulers, it must be borne in mind that for nearly seven years the whole of the German youth has been taught the cult of force and power and that they are Hitler’s most devoted adherents in its worship.

To an objective observer there was something almost fascinating in the skill with which Hitler was moving the pieces on his chessboard. None of his political maneuvers were really to the liking of his people, who cared little for either Italians or Japanese; but each of these in turn served his purpose at the time. He needed peaceful and good relations with his neighbors while he matured his plans for their destruction; and in the pause which these alliances afforded him he quietly transformed Germany into one vast military camp for that purpose. The pact with Japan was useful not only to contain Russia but also in order to embarrass the Western Powers and to distract their attention in the Far East. The fact that Hitler could count on Italy’s neutrality in 1936 had enabled him to risk the occupation of the Rhineland in March of that year. The new Berlin-Rome Axis was not only a general set-off to the Anglo-French entente but was also destined to make the Vienna coup in 1938 comparatively easy. So long as all these friendships were valuable to him, he was profuse in the warmth of his utterances about them; and a study of his speeches on this subject would make interesting reading. Once they had served their purpose they were, however, discarded as if they had never been.

In the midst of one of his tirades against the Poles in August, 1939, I interrupted Hitler to observe that he seemed to forget how useful the agreement with Pilsudski had been to him in 1934. Hitler’s answer was that it had never been of any use whatsoever and that it had merely made him unpopular with his own people. He had a phenomenal capacity for self-deception, and was able to forget everything which he had ever said or done in the past, if it no longer suited his present or future purpose to remember it. In the same manner, Japan was thrown aside like a squeezed lemon just as soon as Hitler concluded that the U.S.S.R. would suit his immediate purpose better than Japan.

Hitler’s Germany showed no regard for any of her friends; the Führer never took the trouble even to warn Signor Mussolini in advance of his plans; and I am confident that, if the British Government had been prepared to accept the German proposals of August 25th, 1939, Hitler would have lost no time in finding some excuse for scrapping the Moscow agreement which he had signed a few days before.

Verbal or written engagements had absolutely no meaning for him once they ceased to contribute to the greater glory of Adolf Hitler and of Germany. They were merely provisional documents to be torn up whenever it suited him; whereupon he would then offer another agreement in exchange. As I have said earlier, I am ready to believe that Hitler started by working sincerely for Germany. Later, he began to confound Germany with himself; and at the end Adolf Hitler was, I fancy, the sole consideration.

Briefly recapitulated, the position in May, 1937, when I reached Berlin, was accordingly as follows: All power was concentrated in the hands of Hitler. There was control of the press but not of the budget; no rival parties were tolerated, and every official was his nominee, removable at his will. While the economic and financial position of Germany was showing signs of deterioration, her military strength in material and man power was vastly and rapidly increasing; and her foreign alliances were being consolidated and exploited. Europe was being soothed by repeated assertions that nothing was further from Hitler’s mind than any thought of revolutionary or territorial conquests. Respect for other nationalities was still the declared principle of Nazism, which was sometimes euphemistically described as the form of democracy most appropriate to Germany. It was a period of comparative calm; but, as far as Germany was concerned, of concentrated preparation.

The two main political questions were the civil war in Spain and the future of Austria. Germany was still being represented abroad as the barrier to Bolshevism, and communism was still serving as the justification for much internal oppression. But Britain, to judge from the German press, was public enemy No. 1. The campaign for the return of the German colonies had been revived in 1936 and was still intermittently but consistently prominent; but the chief grievance was Britain’s dog-in-the-manger attitude toward Germany’s rightful place in the sun and her claims to Lebensraum, or living space, in Central and Eastern Europe. As Goering said to me on the occasion of my first visit to him, “Germany cannot pick one flower without England’s saying to her, ‘Es ist verboten’ (It is forbidden).” It was useless to discuss that misused word Lebensraum with the Nazis. They could or would not see that “living room” was only justifiable, if it implied the strengthening of economic relations by legitimate means, but was unjustifiable if it signified political domination by means of military or economic pressure. To them it only meant the latter.

As for the claim for the return of the German colonies, it was quite obvious that it was merely being exploited momentarily for propaganda purposes, partly to keep the claim alive for use later, when Germany’s aspirations in Europe—a prior consideration—had been achieved and digested; partly to make the German people believe that it was the want of colonies and not excessive rearmament which was causing the lack of butter and other comforts. When Goering outlined to me in October of that year an Anglo-German understanding of mutual guarantee in two clauses, I asked him what he would suggest about colonies. His answer was that colonies did not matter. When I spoke to Hitler about colonies in March, 1938, his attitude was that the time had not come for discussion about them. They might wait, he said, four, six, or ten years. It is true that the press campaign was to some extent aggravated by articles and letters in the British newspapers arguing that Germany had never made any use of her colonies before the war, that they had never provided her with more than 1 to 3 per cent of her foreign imports, and that in general they were a quite unnecessary luxury for her. At my first interview with Dr. Goebbels, shortly after my arrival, he talked about Germany’s having been robbed of her colonies. I told him that “robbed” was an entirely incorrect term, since she had lost them as the result of defeat in war. Goebbels’ reply was that that was an argument which he could understand; but what irritated him and all Germans was the sanctimonious and hypocritical arguments put forward in England to prove that colonies were merely a luxury and of no real value to anybody. There was some truth in this retort.

I have the greatest respect for the power and freedom of that “chartered libertine” the British press. I must, however, reluctantly but in all honesty record that it handicapped my attempts in 1937 and 1938 to contribute to the improvement of Anglo-German relations, and thereby to the preservation of peace. Experience has proved that those attempts were foredoomed to failure, but they might not have been. In a letter of Lord Baldwin’s, which was published in The Times last November, he observed that the “weakness of democracy is a certain proneness to short views, hastily formed and vigorously asserted on an inadequate basis of reflection and knowledge.” Lord Baldwin has the knack of hitting the nail on the head. However justifiable the majority of the press criticisms undoubtedly were at this time, they were also sometimes biased and unfair. It would not have mattered so much had Hitler been a normal individual, but he was unreasonably sensitive to newspaper and especially British newspaper criticism and quite unable to distinguish values, or to appreciate the difference between, say, the Manchester Guardian and the more sensational journals. It did not help me in my diplomatic task if Hitler’s back was being constantly rubbed up the wrong way by press criticisms, and I consequently tried on various occasions to persuade those responsible for submitting to Hitler the British press cuttings (which had of course first to be translated) to put some of them in the wastepaper basket before ever they reached him. But I never succeeded, at any rate for any length of time, and always suspected that certain members of his anti-British extremist entourage took special pleasure in seeing that he missed nothing which might inflame his facile resentments.

While the British press comments might be tiresome or even unjust, reflecting as they sometimes did the views of irresponsible individuals and the battle of internal party politics, the German officially controlled press was, on the other hand, utterly despicable. No lie, however great and obvious, was too much for the Völkischer Beobachter or the Angriff and suchlike purely party organs or for the Stuermer, the notorious great anti-Jew newspaper edited by Dr. Streicher at Nuremberg. Common vituperation and abuse were their main stock in trade. They were not newspapers but emetics; and, when they were really on the warpath, as during the Czech and the Polish crises, it was impossible to read them without actually feeling sick. It made me sad to think of German youth being educated on such utter trash and on such complete misrepresentations of the truth.

Alone among the Berlin newspapers, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung attempted to preserve some, at least, of the decencies of normal journalism, as did also to some extent the Börse Zeitung, which was the organ of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, though it was always ill-tempered and deteriorated after Ribbentrop took charge of that Department. But the best and fairest newspaper in Germany was the Frankfurter Zeitung, and I often wondered how it managed among so much censorship and corruption to preserve its last vestiges of independence. Personally, I used to see regularly three morning newspapers and two evening editions. But, as the wife of a Nazi official once said to me, “What on earth do you do that for? If you read one, you have read the lot.”