Page 106 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The French Diplomats 93

ership. He pointed out that until 1933, Germany had been ruled by a govern-
ment and parliament that at least to some extent represented the will of the
people, and foreign statesmen could be confident that agreements signed
by the chosen leaders in Berlin would be honored. if a German statesman
refused to uphold a treaty, he would be challenged in the reichstag, and if
he persisted, the question would be put to the people in new elections. But
conditions had changed fundamentally, and there was no longer any “guar-
antee” that treaties concluded by Germany would be honored. the reich-
stag now consisted of “compliant puppets of Mr. Hitler who must vote yes
or no according to instructions. the will of the people is not represented at
all in any organ of the government.” One man ruled the country with the
help of a political party, which, in turn, imposed its will on the nation with
the liberal use of the bayonets of the reichswehr and Hitler’s “brown army”
(the sa).
stark and irreconcilable differences over key political issues now divided
France and Germany, according to X. the primary goal of the National so-
cialists was to rearm Germany, whereas France yearned for “security against
an enemy who in the course of 100 years has devastated the land three
times.” X warned that France should not expect friendly relations with Ger-
many, which was governed by a “clique” that for fourteen years had been
wedded to only one goal, revenge for the defeat in 1918. to achieve that
nationalist goal, the clique relied on a popular speaker who had fashioned
an ideology that was nothing but a “monstrous [set of ideas] plagiarized
from Fascism and Bolshevism.”
in X’s view, no intelligent, enlightened, and thoughtful person who had
read Hitler’s Mein Kampf could put any stock in the author’s declarations
in favor of international peace, and he warned that the Führer and his sup-
porters were only angling for time to position themselves to achieve three
goals: control of the government “in order to enjoy the fruits of power”;
completion of the military training of German youth; and, finally, the ac-
quisition of sufficient quantities of military hardware, “which is now being
produced secretly in italy.” X was certain that for the Nazis the agitation
against the treaty of Versailles was simply a pretext to arouse nationalist
sentiment among the people. Neither Hitler nor his followers had ever
tried to secure changes in that treaty; their only interest was to undo the
outcome of World War i. as a result, the “militaristic spirit” in Germany
was now ten times as powerful as it had been under Kaiser William ii early
in the twentieth century. Moreover, in “the country of racism no one thinks
of upholding agreements with foreign countries.”