Page 30 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The British Diplomats 17

of retribution by senior officials in the Foreign Office who might not ap-
preciate his strong opinions. Certainly some of his most notable dispatches
after January 30, 1933, did not mince words.
For the first two years of his stay in Berlin, rumbold largely ignored
Hitler and the Nazi movement. His predecessors had paid some attention
to the political upstart as early as 1920, soon after he made his appearance
on the political scene, but with few exceptions, their assessments were not
strikingly profound. they recognized that Hitler was a central figure in the
National socialist movement and thought of him as a “bulwark against
Communism,” which had come to power in russia and was much feared
in British political circles. there was one exception to these mundane com-
ments, a perceptive dispatch by the British consul in Munich, robert t.
smallbones, a name that will appear again in this study. in a short, incisive
dispatch of september 28, 1920, smallbones noted that the leaders of the
National socialist Party, adolf Hitler and anton drexler, were effective or-
ganizers committed to three central ideas: anti-semitism, the use of force
in furthering political goals, and the merging of socialism and nationalism.
smallbones surmised that the new party was funded by a circle of indus-
trialists close to Hugo stinnes, a wealthy entrepreneur with pronounced
right-wing views. astutely, smallbones predicted that the industrialists
would not have to fear Hitler’s talk of socialism because the central idea of
his movement was nationalism. 4
toward the end of 1922, other British diplomats in Germany had col-
lected many details about Hitler, but these did not add up to a coherent
evaluation of his potential as a leader. after November 1922, they often
referred to him as the “Bavarian Mussolini,” an incorrect designation that
did not reveal much about the man. None of these assessments was based
on personal contact; apparently, throughout the 1920s no British diplomat
stationed in Berlin or Munich had made any effort to speak to Hitler. in
5
truth, there was no reason at that time to devote much time or thought to
him; he was not expected to rise to the heights of political power.
Only in 1930, when Hitler had demonstrated his ability to gain mass
support for his program—in a national election his vote jumped from 2.6
percent to 18.3 percent of the total, and his party secured 107 out of 577
reichstag representatives—did rumbold pay serious attention to Nazism,
but he showed little understanding of Germany’s dire political condition
following the catastrophic depression that had hit the country in 1929, or
of the nature of Nazism. in 1931, he was certain that the country would
not “fail to master its difficulties.” after the presidential election of april