Page 120 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The French Diplomats 107

cent public stance in favor of peace with his previous pronouncements?
More specifically, the ambassador asked the chancellor how he conceived
of relations between Germany and France.
Without hesitation, Hitler declared, “my government is sincerely and
profoundly pacifist. We are convinced that a war, even a victorious one,
would be costly in sacrifices for the entire [human] species, more costly
than could be justified.” in any case, he said, the main tasks of the govern-
ment were to solve the problem of unemployment, to provide food for the
hungry, and to overcome the economic crisis in general. “the solution to
such problem[s] cannot be found in war!” then Hitler turned the tables on
François-Poncet and asked him why his government refused to allow Ger-
many to bolster its military defenses since France was doing exactly that. He
found it odd that France had “a sort of phobia against Germany”; it seemed
to him far-fetched to believe that a country of sixty-nine million people that
had just been vanquished militarily and had been thoroughly ruined could
become a major power in the foreseeable future. the Nazi propaganda to
which François-Poncet had referred did not mean, Hitler insisted, “that
we are belligerent.” the ambassador shot back that the Poles feared that
their borders were not secure and that a rearmed Germany posed a threat
to them. He also reassured Hitler that France was firmly committed to
peace.
the ambassador and the Führer did not iron out their differences, yet
François-Poncet ended his report to Paris on a positive note. Unlike his Brit-
ish colleagues rumbold and Phipps, he found nothing strange in Hitler’s
behavior. On the contrary, he thought that “during the entire conversation
the chancellor was courteous and amiable, not at all upset, and definitely
more open than certain of his predecessors; [he was] always very prudent
and careful not to touch on subjects with which he was not familiar.” Fran-
çois-Poncet ended his dispatch with a call for cordial relations between Ger-
many and France. 25
the simultaneous singling out of the dangerous aspects of Nazism and
favorable aspects of Hitler’s character—as if the two were separate—came
to characterize François-Poncet’s dispatches. thus, on april 19, 1933, he
informed Paul-Boncour that Germany had been hypnotized and was in a
state of intoxication; the people were filled with a “collective arrogance.”
at the same time he noted that all that passion lacked a solid underpin-
ning. the economy had not improved, the financial system had not been
stabilized, and the reforms of political institutions and the administration
had achieved little more than to transfer power to reliable Nazis. But Fran-