Page 57 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

44 The British Diplomats

of increase in the production of bombers was anticipated. He requested
specific data, comparable to the data regularly published in the British “air
Force list.” the interview had already lasted an hour and a half, and dow
had learned nothing of consequence. after contemplating dow’s query,
Göring spoke with “some heat, and said that i can have no details so long
as every German aeroplane is spoken of in Parliament as a ‘flying devil.’”
then he added, “i hate Parliament.” On that provocative note the interview
ended. 70
late in November 1935, the vice-consul in Breslau, r. F. Bashford, sent
some information to london that strongly hinted at Germany’s plans for
territorial expansion. He reported that for some time railway officials and
military authorities had been pressing senior employees and officers to
study Polish. in a smaller town like Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, railway officials
traveled to Breslau two or three times a week to take lessons. One profes-
sor at the technical high school in the Charlottenburg neighborhood of
Berlin complained that he was so busy teaching Polish to military officers,
for whom the program was compulsory, that he could take on additional
students only late in the evening. 71

the rhineland crisis

Germany’s march into the rhineland in March 1936 almost certainly
marked the last occasion when the West could have inflicted a serious de-
feat on Hitler without risking a military conflict, as Churchill contended
in The Gathering Storm. the peace settlement of 1919 had provided for
72
the demilitarization of the left bank of the rhine and a stretch of land fifty
kilometers wide on the right bank. this restriction, later confirmed by trea-
ties, was generally considered the most effective preventive measure against
another european war. Both France and the low Countries counted on it
to preclude an attack. it is therefore all the more surprising that France took
no action when the Germans moved their troops without formal warning
on March 7. there is evidence that the French government considered a
counteraction, but the British authorities made it clear that they would not
support such a move. “england,” the British Foreign Office told the ameri-
can chargé d’affaires, “would make every endeavor to prevent the imposi-
tion of military and/or economic sanctions against Germany.” exactly why
73
Whitehall refused to back a French military action remains a complicated
issue; the most convincing explanation is the inability of British leaders to