Page 70 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The British Diplomats 57

has run its course.” 101 a few weeks after sending these recommendations to
the cabinet, simon thanked rumbold for pointing out the “abnormality of
the Nazi regime” and predicted that the ambassador’s warnings would be
of “great and permanent value to His Majesty’s Govt. in determining their
policy towards Germany.” 102
the distribution of simon’s memorandum and the enclosure demon-
strates, first and foremost, that leading politicians in Britain, including the
prime minister and Chamberlain, the future leader of the government, had
been informed early on of the dangers of Nazism to all of europe. equally
important, the two documents pointed to a path that could be taken to
impose restraints on Hitler without unbearable bloodletting.
it is also worth noting that rumbold’s Mein Kampf dispatch, which in-
spired simon’s recommendations to the cabinet, quickly acquired a fairly
wide readership within the political class in Britain and the British empire.
the dispatch was sent to King George V and the representatives of the
British dominions, and it was widely distributed within the Foreign Office.
according to sir Orme sargent, a senior official in that department, the dis-
patch came to be known among its employees as “the Bible of our knowl-
edge about Hitler.” somehow it reached Harold laski, a political theorist
and prominent member of the labour Party, who was so impressed by it
that he asked rumbold for permission to send it to William e. dodd, the
new U.s, ambassador to Berlin. 103
at the senior level of the Foreign service, sentiment for a firm policy
toward Germany was in the ascendant. in addition to temperley, Vansittart
argued passionately that Germany should be warned that it could expect a
revision of the treaty of Versailles only if it abandoned the policy of remili-
tarization. Vansittart was relentless in his warnings to the government that
it was courting disaster in not responding forcefully to Germany’s aggres-
sive moves. He produced one of his more trenchant analyses of the dangers
posed by Nazism early in april 1934 in an eight-thousand-word report that
Foreign Minister simon called a “formidable judgment on Germany’s in-
tentions” and that he passed on to the cabinet. although Vansittart tended
to weaken his case by insisting that Hitlerism was basically a continuation
of long-standing German militaristic traditions dating back to the Ho-
henzollerns—he called it a “continuity of the German spirit”—he correctly
warned that “Germany was making unmistakable preparations for war in
all its phases.” He supported his argument with frequent quotations from
the dispatches of rumbold and to a lesser extent from other British diplo-
mats in Germany. 104