Page 88 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

The British Diplomats 75

against Germany. in fact, he thought that the treaty of Versailles was unjust
and that Germany had a legitimate moral claim to the area where sudeten
Germans lived, and he did not advocate military action against Hitler to
protect Czechoslovakia. But he harbored no illusions about the nature of
National socialism, which prompted him to send a stream of dispatches
to london on the brutality of Hitlerism and the dangers it represented for
europe. in one of his first reports to Halifax during Henderson’s absence
(dated december 6, 1938), Ogilvie harked back to the warnings of ambas-
sador rumbold. He quoted at length from chapter 14 of Mein Kampf, in
which Hitler spoke of the need for Germany, if it was to regain its position
as a world power, to seize territory in the east from russia and from russia’s
“vassal border states.” Hitler, Ogilvie pointed out, had already removed two
major obstacles created by the peace treaties: Germany had engaged in a
large-scale rearmament program and had reoccupied a fair portion of the
lands severed from it after 1918. Ogilvie then warned that it was generally
believed in political circles in Berlin “that Herr Hitler is about to embark on
the third stage of his programme, namely, expansion beyond the boundaries
of the territories inhabited by Germans. How exactly this is to be achieved
is the subject of much speculation. One thing is certain: Nazi aims are on a
grandiose scale, and there is no limit to their ultimate ambitions.” Political
circles also speculated at length that in 1939 Germany might seek to estab-
lish “an independent russian Ukraine under German tutelage.” the Nazis
would try to achieve this goal peacefully but were prepared to resort to force.
Neither France nor Great Britain was expected to come to russia’s defense.
Once the eastern advance had been completed, it seemed likely that Ger-
many would seek to achieve hegemony in the Balkans and would also es-
tablish an “outlet in the Mediterranean via italy” to prevent the imposition
of a blockade. according to Ogilvie, another school of thought predicted
that Hitler would move against the West before advancing in the east. the
goal would be to “liquidate” France and england before they implemented
their rearmament programs. a senior German official had told Ogilvie that
Hitler was still pondering his possibilities, but “it is indeed the profound
conviction of almost every thinking German that the tiger [Hitler] will
jump soon.” Hitler, Ogilvie also learned, was sorry that he had not taken a
“stronger line” in Munich, when he acceded to Chamberlain’s wishes and
refrained from a military attack on Czechoslovakia. Hitler was now “abus-
ing his moderate counselors for their pusillanimity” in urging restraint. it
was widely known that the Führer had “dubbed all his generals as cowards.”

On the Munich agreement, see below, pp. 80, 89, 90, 131–32.