Page 121 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

108 The French Diplomats

çois-Poncet was troubled, as he indicated a few weeks later in a dispatch
of august 31, by the extraordinary emphasis the Nazi leaders placed on
military training of young people, who formed a large cadre of reserves.
“Germany has now become a vast camp of military instruction.” Officers of
the reichswehr were deeply involved in the program, and the ambassador
predicted that the country would soon have a trained force of one million
men, far more than the one hundred thousand permitted by the treaty of
Versailles. 26
Nevertheless, François-Poncet could not resist pointing out that Hitler’s
attractive personal traits appealed to many well-meaning Germans. He had
met various prominent people who had told him that even though they
did not support Nazism they had found Hitler to be a man of charm, quite
different from the person depicted by many of his political opponents. this
theme was advanced with special force by Kurt schmitt, who was appointed
minister of economics after alfred Hugenberg’s departure from that office
in the summer of 1933. the Frenchman met schmitt at about this time and
was impressed by the new minister, who claimed to have been won over
by Hitler after recently meeting him. Only then did schmitt realize how
impressive Hitler was as a leader, he said. in this regard, schmitt was not
truthful. although he had not been a member of the Nazi Party, as early as
mid-1931 he had contributed two and a half million marks to Hitler’s move-
ment, which François-Poncet may not have known. He simply knew that
schmitt was a loyal member of Hitler’s cabinet, and his personal contacts
with him had persuaded the ambassador that the minister was a “man of
good will. His honesty is evident, his patriotism is sincere and merits sym-
pathy.” schmitt also struck the ambassador as a man of candor and integrity
who worked with Hitler’s subordinates without realizing that they were
duplicitous. 27
François-Poncet made his most favorable and, one might add, most du-
bious, comment about Hitler on May 9, 1933. after recounting Hitler’s
numerous attempts to overcome the mistrust of foreign statesmen and
his frequent affirmations of peaceful intentions, the ambassador wrote the
following: “When Hitler swears that he wants nothing as much as peace
and denies that he harbors any bellicose intentions, one can grant that he
does not lie.” Germany, according to François-Poncet, was in no condi-
tion to wage war, and consequently the Führer adopted a nonbelligerent
foreign policy. Hitler’s primary goal was to secure for Germany “the means
to speak, in europe and in the entire world, the language of a great power.”
He also wanted to bring about changes in the postwar treaties, in particular