Page 85 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

72 The British Diplomats

position, he told eden, was that although he would not welcome austria’s
joining Germany to form one state, it would be “extremely unwise to shut
one’s eyes to the possibility” that it would happen. Henderson, it seems,
was trying to wiggle out of an awkward and embarrassing hole he had dug
for himself. 139
despite his various expressions of sympathy for Nazism during his early
months as ambassador—and he made quite a few during the two years he
served in Berlin—Henderson’s assessment of Hitler’s character and conduct
of political affairs at times could hardly be distinguished from that of his
two predecessors. thus, in a report of March 5, 1938, to lord Halifax, who
had been appointed foreign minister a couple of weeks earlier, Henderson
acknowledged that his recent interview with Hitler “left me with a feeling
of profound disappointment” because he could not obtain answers to the
questions the Foreign Office had asked him to raise: Was Hitler prepared to
further world peace by announcing that he would not force the issue with
regard to his claims on austria and Czechoslovakia? Would he enter into
disarmament agreements, especially ones that would focus on the abolition
of bombers? Would he be interested in acquiring colonies in the Congo
Basin? 140
instead of responding to these questions, Hitler had claimed that “noth-
ing threatened security as much as the intrigues of . . . [the english] press,”
which was leading a campaign of “international incitement” directed, above
all, against him. He regarded himself as “one of the warmest friends of
england,” but his advances had consistently been “ill-requited.” Henderson
expressed sympathy for Hitler’s annoyance and conceded that probably no
one had been attacked as “heavily” in British newspapers as the Führer,
and it was therefore “comprehensible that he would now have withdrawn
into isolation which appears to him more dignified than making advances
to someone who did not want him and who always repulsed him.” Hitler
was certain that “if it had wished to do so, the British government could
have influenced the press in another direction” by issuing a prohibition on
attacks against him. He then declared that he had no intention of interfer-
ing in the relationship between england and ireland, and, similarly, under
no circumstances would he allow “third parties to interfere with Germany’s
relations with Germans in foreign countries,” a reference to austria and
Czechoslovakia.
after recounting the exchanges with Hitler that took place during a two-
hour meeting, Henderson concluded with surprising comments about the
Führer. He noted that he could not find a “common basis for reasonable