Page 59 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

46 The British Diplomats

Herr Hitler and his friends are building up the most formidable military
machine in the world to-day merely to relegate it to the scrap-heap when
threatened with sanctions, even if the hitherto despised italian nation had
yielded to their pressure. On the contrary, this country would rally like one
man to the clarion call of the ‘Führer’ and again astonish the world by its
fortitude and resolution in resistance.” Phipps feared that austria was next
on the list of Hitler’s moves to enhance Germany’s power. the annexation
of austria, he warned, “would be a far greater blow to civilization than even
the inclusion of abyssinia in the new roman empire.” 78

was phipps an appeaser?

some historians have argued that despite these warnings about Hitler
and Göring, Phipps cannot be said to have been a consistent anti-appeaser
during his four years in Germany. too often, these historians argue, he
urged the West to make every effort to defang Hitler by persuading him to
enter into treaties and agreements that would rule out changes in national
borders by means of force. this interpretation misses the complexity of
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Phipps’s views and career. it was only after he arrived in Paris in april 1937
to begin service as British ambassador that he underwent a change of heart.
He increasingly turned to appeasement of Nazi Germany, and by 1938 he
was one of the most fervent advocates of that approach within the foreign
policy establishment. at one point, in september 1938, he went so far as
to declare that he was “against war at any price.” Phipps explained his
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shift as a response to his realization that the French government would
not take a stand against Germany. it is also conceivable that Phipps, who
eagerly sought the approval of the cabinet, adopted views that he knew
would find favor with Chamberlain, who assumed the office of prime min-
ister in May 1937 and quickly made clear that he was committed to reach-
ing agreements with Hitler on all outstanding issues. Vansittart, who had
welcomed Phipps’s reports from Berlin and frequently quoted them in his
analyses of international developments that he wrote for the cabinet, now
sharply criticized his brother-in-law. at the Foreign Office the ambassador’s
reputation plunged. Phipps’s final change of mind in august 1939, when
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he abandoned appeasement for the “war party” that called for immediate
military action to stop Hitler, did nothing to restore his standing as a per-
ceptive diplomat. 82
a careful reading of Phipps’s dispatches, however, as well as some of the