Page 104 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The British Diplomats 91

learned, on October 15, 1939, that 833 British sailors had died on a battle-
ship sunk by a German U-boat he was tempted “to hand over responsibil-
ity to someone else.” Now he referred to Hitler as an “accursed madman”
who was responsible for the carnage. “i wish he could burn in Hell for as
many years as he is costing lives.” 183 it had taken Chamberlain six and a half
years to reach an understanding of Hitler similar to that of rumbold and
Phipps. Chamberlain’s faith in the essential rationality of all human beings,
his abhorrence of war, and his supreme confidence in his own judgment
had prevented him from realizing sooner that the riddle of Hitler had in
fact been solved three months after the Nazis assumed power.
Had the leading officials in Britain (including Chamberlain) heeded the
advice of their ambassadors in Berlin in the first years of Hitler’s rule, they
would have reined in the Führer while Germany was still militarily weak.
More specifically, they would have stopped him from marching into the
rhineland in March 1936, an aggressive move that historians consider to
have been a turning point in the “whole international situation.” the Ger-
man action was a flagrant violation of the treaty of Versailles, and the suc-
cess of Hitler in defying the West without firing a shot emboldened him
to undertake further aggressive measures without fear that the european
powers would stop him. 184 if British statesmen in the years from 1933 to
1935 had acknowledged the validity of the conclusions about the German
leader reached by their ambassadors in Berlin, namely, that Hitler was not
a riddle at all, the history of the twentieth century might well have been
different and that century would not now be known as one of the bloodiest
ever.
Of course, Britain could not have been expected to take decisive action
alone against Germany. it would have needed the support of other demo-
cratic countries, and especially of the other two most powerful democra-
cies, France and the United states. their stance also depended on how the
political class assessed Hitler and Nazism. that, in turn, depended to some
degree on how the French and american diplomats in Germany under-
stood the new order in Germany, the subject of the next two chapters of
this book.