Page 109 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

96 The French Diplomats

ties in Paris were clearly not swayed by the arguments, if for no other rea-
son than that the national mood was not conducive to an assertive foreign
policy. large sectors of the public cringed at the very thought of any action
that might lead to military confrontations such as they had endured dur-
ing World War i, when 1.3 million Frenchmen lost their lives and many
others were crippled for life. Moreover, very few among the political class
3
paid much attention to Hitler’s stated goal of ending France’s position as a
major power, a message he had delivered unmistakably in Mein Kampf. as
the French were “the inexorable mortal enemy of the German people,” he
declared, there would have to be a “final active reckoning with France. . . .
Germany actually regards the destruction of France as only a means which
will afterward enable her to finally give our people the expansion made
possible elsewhere.” it is doubtful that many French people had ever read
4
these words because publication of a French translation of Mein Kampf
completed in 1934 was legally enjoined in response to the petition of eher
Verlag, the publishing house of the Nazi Party. the French political class
was not disturbed by the popular ignorance of Nazi intentions. in fact,
when Franklin Bouillon, a deputy in the French parliament, quoted Hitler’s
words about relations between Germany and France in the Chamber of
deputies, he was met with a round of sharp criticism. it was not considered
wise to alarm the people. 5
in any case, the French political class did not take Hitler seriously; they
regarded him as “something of a half-crazy stooge” who would not remain
in office very long. this attitude was not restricted to educated citizens in
6
France. Many well-informed Germans, who had seen the Führer, had lis-
tened to his provocative speeches, and had witnessed the violence commit-
ted by his followers, could not believe that a man as extreme and irrational
as Hitler could hold on to power for more than a short period in a coun-
try as culturally advanced as Germany, a country known for decades as a
Rechtsstaat (state based on law). it was simply beyond the capacity of many
people to grasp the ideological fervor of Hitler and the growing number
of his followers, their determination to implement the new program, and
their ruthlessness.
even well-educated Jews in Germany, who had special reason to be
alarmed, thought of Hitler as a passing phenomenon. Hitler’s accession
to power, they believed, was only one more in the long procession of gov-
ernmental changes that had taken place in the previous two years. ernst
Marcus, a successful lawyer in Breslau, summed up the views of sophis-
ticated Jews in 1933 as follows: “let . . . [the Nazis] into the government