Page 49 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

36 The British Diplomats

time Phipps saw Hitler on a Berlin street, and he was stunned by how pale
the Führer looked. “something must have changed—the man struck me at
our first meeting, as i reported at the time, as an ‘unbalanced being.’ His
last week-end only has made him still less normal.” the country was now
governed by a “less than ever balanced Führer who is himself flanked by
two such lieutenants as Göring and Goebbels.” Phipps concluded that in a
country ruled by “unstable” men it was impossible to foresee future events
beyond a few weeks. “to attempt any reasoned prognostication on the fu-
ture course of events in Germany would be the height of Unreason.” 45

the persecution of the jews

the reports that emanated from British diplomats during Phipps’s am-
bassadorship provided mounting evidence of the Nazi leadership’s brutal-
ity toward its Jewish minority of about 525,000. it has been suggested that
after the initial round of anti-semitic measures in the first months of 1933,
the regime pulled back somewhat and moderated its persecution of Jews.
46
there is truth to this view, especially if the anti-Jewish legislation and vio-
lence from May 1933 to 1938 is compared with the massive attacks on Jews
on Kristallnacht, the night of November 9 to 10 of the latter year. But, as the
British diplomats noted and as historians have confirmed, the persecution of
Jews had not been abandoned, although there were regional differences in
how they were treated. to draw attention to this point was important, not
only because it enhanced the picture of Nazi conduct, but also because it
served as a warning to British authorities in london: they would make a se-
rious mistake to assume that the Nazis were abandoning their commitment
to violence in pursuit of their goals. in alerting the Foreign Office to the vio-
lence directed against Jews, the British diplomats were also intimating that it
was wrong to draw a distinction between the treatment by a government of
its own citizens and its foreign policy. insensitivity at home was more than
likely to be matched by insensitivity to the interests of foreign nations.
in May 1935, Phipps, who shared rumbold’s anti-Jewish prejudice, re-
ported on a “recrudescence” of the anti-semitic campaign, which took dif-
ferent forms in different parts of the country. Because many of the incidents
were restricted to local areas they were not widely, if at all, mentioned in
the Western press. the harshest attacks took place in Franconia, where Ju-
lius streicher, the leading purveyor of anti-semitism, was in charge, and
where he conducted a campaign against Jews “fortunately unparalleled in