Page 42 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The British Diplomats 29

is a fanatic on the subject.” so certain were “convinced Nazis about any of
their principal tenets” that it was pointless to raise objections to them. it
31
was this fanaticism, coupled with the Führer’s “extraordinary obstinacy”
and ruthlessness, that led rumbold to write to sir Clive Wigram, the pri-
vate secretary to the sovereign, on June 28, 1933: “Many of us here feel as
if we were living in a lunatic asylum” and consider it necessary to warn the
Foreign Office against the hope that Hitler or his entourage would “return
to sanity.” the Nazi leaders, he insisted, would not waver in pursuing their
goals, and if they proclaimed their commitment to international peace, they
would do so only because they wished to “calm the fears of foreign leaders.”
rumbold warned his superiors in london that the rulers of Germany were
“very cunning people” and that it would be dangerous to underestimate
them. 32
On June 30, 1933, just before leaving his post, rumbold sent what he
described as a “summing up of the situation here” to Foreign secretary si-
mon. Here he sought to be “fair” to National socialism by recognizing “the
good points in the Hitler ideology”: the stress on comradeship and devo-
tion to the state, the attempt to restore “the self-respect of the citizen and,
through him, of the state itself.” the ambassador also admired the Nazis’
stated intention to end class warfare and to “ennoble” labor. But rumbold
warned that the Nazis would go to extremes in furthering these worthy
ideas. He pointed out that Goebbels and other Nazi leaders believed that
their ideals would not be adopted by other countries, which had been “cor-
rupted by democracy and by association with the Jews.” thus, Germany
had no choice but to assume the role of moral leader of europe. Finally,
rumbold seemed to back away somewhat from his predictions about Ger-
many’s future aggressive moves. He was not at all sure, he now said, that
Hitler or his ministers “have any clear idea of the course which events will
take, nor have i met anyone who is prepared to venture an opinion.”
But in the rest of this message, rumbold was even more critical of the
Nazi leaders than he had been in the “Mein Kampf dispatch” of april 26.
Outside Germany, he said, only Hitler was seen as an extremist who might
be slightly unhinged, but in fact many men in his inner circle were “not
normal people” either, and within the Nazi movement as a whole the
“strain of hooliganism still survives.” the three most important people in
the Nazi Party—Hitler, Göring, and Goebbels—were “notoriously patho-
logical cases,” the first two because of “wounds and hardships” endured
during World War i, and the third because of “a physical defect and neglect
in childhood. His club-foot is a constant source of bitterness to him, and