Page 82 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The British Diplomats 69

after Henderson delivered the speech, eden sent him a letter marked “Per-
sonal” asking him to avoid such comments. eden appreciated the am-
bassador’s motives but warned, “as a rule i think it is undesirable—often
dangerous for ambassadors to make anything beyond formal speeches ow-
ing to the danger of misrepresentation.” He urged Henderson to refrain
in the future from any reference to German internal affairs. it might be,
eden suggested, that Britons did not fully understand the domestic situa-
tion in Germany, but “the régime as such [was] profoundly distasteful to
the majority of people in this country.” Henderson’s comments in Germany
had already provoked a hostile reaction in Parliament and the press, and
eden feared that, as a result, the “very purpose you had in view in making
the speech,” namely, an improvement in relations between Britain and Ger-
many, would be undermined. 133
in his reply to eden, also marked “Personal,” Henderson expressed the
hope that he would not have to make any more speeches “for a long time”
and ended his letter on the same note. Other than that, he defended his
speech by declaring that he would have neglected his duty had he not “ven-
tured to be a little indiscreet.” three hundred “leading party men” had at-
tended the affair and he wanted to win “the confidence of these people,”
even if that led to some hostile questions in Parliament. He had sensed
that in Berlin there was a “very dangerous state of mind” not only among
Nazis but “among just about all Germans,” who were convinced that Great
Britain is “putting the spoke in . . . the evolution of the German wheel. as
Goering said to me, ‘if Germany wants to pick a flower, england says ver­
boten.’” Unless the German people could be convinced that their fears were
unjustified, “we are back once more on the fatal slope which led headlong
to 1914.” Henderson, for one, “absolutely” refused to “accept such a disas-
trous view of despair.” all he wanted to convey to his audience was that
Great Britain did not oppose “the peaceful evolution of Germany.” For that
reason he had referred to the “internal regime, which is one of the points
the Nazis are sorest about.” 134
if Henderson felt chastised, he did not show it by giving up his attempts
to placate the Nazis. shortly after delivering his controversial speech, he
told ambassador François-Poncet that he planned to attend “Party day,”
the annual Nazi rally in Nuremberg scheduled for september. it seemed to
him “a pointless irritation to the Germans” to boycott the affair. in previous
years, the British, French, and american ambassadors had declined Nazi in-
vitations to these gala affairs, and Vansittart was disturbed by Henderson’s
decision to abandon this policy, all the more since he had reached it with-