Page 54 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The British Diplomats 41

in concluding his report, Foley warned that the position of the Jews was
“desperate.” earning their livelihood had become increasingly difficult, and
government regulations restricting access to their assets hampered their ef-
forts to emigrate. in his capacity as passport control officer, he had first-
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hand knowledge of their desperation. Within two months of the Nazi rise to
power, his office had been “overwhelmed with applications from Jews eager
to proceed to Palestine, to england, to anywhere in the British empire.”
the applicants did not complain of having been molested, “but they suffer
under the moral persecution—seelicher Druck—of the present system.” Foley
reminded the Chancery that he had not received any instructions on how
to deal with the applications for entrance into england, but he reasoned
that Jews should be encouraged to emigrate to Palestine rather than to any
other place. He feared that the settlement elsewhere of large numbers of
refugees would give rise to widespread anti-semitism. He hoped that the
British government would “find ways and means of increasing the yearly
quota” for settlement in Palestine. “the persecution,” he informed his supe-
riors on January 17, 1936, “is as relentless as ever though perhaps more subtle
in method.” For his part, Foley concentrated on finding ingenious ways of
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skirting the laws of both Germany and Britain to enable many German Jews
to emigrate to Palestine or the United Kingdom. 59

german rearmament

as disturbing as these reports on Nazi domestic policies may have been
to the government in london, they paled in comparison with the fears
inspired by the assessments of German rearmament. From the moment the
Nazis assumed power, officials in london repeatedly asked their emissaries
for information on Hitler’s aims in building up Germany’s military forces.
the treaty of Versailles had imposed strict limitations on the size of the
German army; it was not to be larger than 100,000, a figure settled upon
after considerable discussion among the allies. in addition, Germany was
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not permitted to conscript men into the army, a provision designed to pre-
vent the creation of a large reserve military force. it was known that even
during the 1920s the German government had ignored the limitations,
but the violations did not at first seem to pose a serious threat. However,
Hitler’s frequent assertions, in Mein Kampf as well as in his speeches, that
Germany must recover its great-power status frightened Western govern-
ments and Germany’s eastern neighbors.