Page 128 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The French Diplomats 115

the men accused of participating in the conspiracy; (2) at a reception given
by Count von Bassewitz, the chief of protocol, the French ambassador was
seen talking at length with röhm; and (3) numerous German emissaries
had recently visited France to “test the waters,” and schleicher himself had
been in France “on a mysterious voyage.” to the ambassador’s astonish-
39
ment, the German press swallowed the charges and publicized them widely.
François-Poncet complained to Neurath and warned that the “newspaper
campaign,” stoked by Goebbels, could lead to a serious deterioration in re-
lations between France and Germany. Neurath “formally denied” that there
was any basis to the charges against France and assured the ambassador
that he had urged the newspapers to desist from implicating France in the
röhm affair, but despite his best efforts the rumors continued to be widely
disseminated. 40
François-Poncet also expressed surprise that the German government
had not published any documents to prove the existence of a plot to over-
throw Hitler. Neurath responded that such a step was “not opportune” be-
cause it would stir up “too much emotion” in the country. But the foreign
minister understood that a “primitive plan” had been scheduled for august
or september. röhm, however, had learned that the police were close on
his heels and therefore moved up the date of the putsch to June 30, when
Hitler and his ministers were to be arrested by followers of röhm. the
Führer decided that he had no time to lose and ordered his subordinates
to unleash the massacre before the other side could strike. François-Poncet
urged Neurath to make these facts available at least to the diplomatic corps
in Berlin because, as he put it, “the events of 30 June were not such as to
evoke sympathy abroad for the third reich.” Neurath simply repeated that
he had ordered the press not to cast suspicion on foreign powers. For the
rest, he predicted that the excitement would soon abate. But François-Pon-
cet observed that “he did not have the demeanor of someone who was very
sure of this.” 41
in diplomatic circles, few accepted the government’s claim that röhm
had plotted to remove Hitler from power, and certainly no one believed
that foreign powers were involved. to be sure, there had been bad blood
between several leading figures in the Nazi Party (Göring, Himmler, and
reinhard Heydrich) and röhm, it was no secret that röhm favored an
agenda different from Hitler’s, and—most troubling to the Nazi leader-
ship—röhm had not discouraged the emergence of a personality cult of
his own within the sa. still, most foreign diplomats thought it highly
42
unlikely that he would have staged a coup. But they all agreed that as a