THE CHINA MAIL, NOVEMBER 4, 1939
COMMENTARY ON CURRENT EVENTS
SIR NEVILE HENDERSON'S
LAST REPORT
his constant endeavour to win Bri- tain's friendship, of his respect for the British Empire and of his liking Geniu- for Englishmen generally.... ses are strange creatures and Hitler, among other paradoxes, was mixture of wrong-headed calcula-
Herr
WHEN THE TIME COMES for historians to pass a ver- dict on the causes of the present war there are three docu- ments which they will read and study with the most parti-am and violent and arrogant impulse
cular attention.
These are the series of official reports made to Lord Halifax by Sir Nevile Henderson, our Ambassador in Berlin from April 1937 to the outbreak of hostilities, which have now been published by the Government in London and have (incidentally) become best sellers.
and he is in the end sur- Hitler rounded by more yes-men whose flattery and counsels are alone en- durable to him."
The latest of them, containing Sir him Nevile's final summing up of and his chiefs, sold 4,000 copies in; London alone on the day of 'publica- tion, It was written in the 14 days immediately following the Ambas- sudor's return to England, while the impressions of the drama enacted in
·Berlin were still fresh in his mind. In style it is simple, straightforward, and restrained: but the pictures it presents of the final scenes are so vivid and unforgettable as to fix, once and for all, the characters and the motives of the men who deliberately plunged Europe into war.
INTENSE HOSTILITY
This, for instance, is how Sir Nevile Henderson describes his interview with Herr von Ribbentrop on August 30:-"It is probable that Herr Hitler's mood in the hour when he had to decide between peace and war not an amiable one, It was reflected in Herr von Ribbentrop whose reception of me that evening was from the outset one of intense hostility which increased in violence as I made each communica- tion in turn, He kept leaping from his chair in a state of great excite- ment and asking if I had any more to say. I kept replying that I had and if my own attitude was no less unfriend- ly than his own I cannot but say in all sincerity that I had every justi- fication for it. When I told him that I would not fail to report his com- ments and remarks to my Govern- ment, he calmed down a little and said that they were his own and that it was for Herr Hitler to decide."
GOERING FOR PEACE
Of General Goering the Ambas- sador remarks:-"I think there can be no doubt that Field Marshal Goering himself would have preferred a peace- ful solution, but in matters such as these it was Herr Hitler's decision which alone counted
He
(Goering) had come down definitely on the side of peace before and it may have been difficult for him to adopt this course a second time."
But the greatest interest of Sir Nevile's report is naturally the light it throws on the personality of Hitler himsef, and the record it contains of the reflections which the German Dictator's, behaviour provoked in one who both met him frequently and was expert in judging character. Speak- ing of Herr Hitler, Sir Nevile observes that "one of Herr Hitler's greatest drawbacks is that, except for two of- ficial visits to Italy, he has never travelled abroad. For his knowledge of British mentality, he consequently relied on Herr von Ribbentrop as an ex-ambassador to Britain, who speaks both French and English, and who had spent some years in Canada and whom he regarded as a man gave him consistently false counsels in regard to England, while his successes in other spheres induced Herr Hitler to regard him more and more as second Bismarck, a conviction which Herr von Ribbentrop probably shared to the full.
a
Speaking of the Polish Government's warning early in August that any future German interference with Polish rights in Darizig would be re- garded as an act of aggression, Sir Nevile remarks that "I have little doubt but that the latter phrase ser- ved more than anything else to pro- Herr duce that final brainstorm in Hitler's mind on which the peace of the world depended...... The tragedy of any Dictator (Sir Nevile continues) is that, as he goes on, his entourage steadily and inexorably deteriorates. For lack of freedom of utterance, he loses the services of the best men. All opposition become Intolerable to
VIOLENT LANGUAGE
ex
•
On August 23, the Ambassador re- ports Hitler was "in a mood of treme excitability" and his language was "violent, recriminatory, and exag- gerated.” On August 29, after an in- terview which the Ambassador refers to as "of a somewhat stormy charac- ter", Sir Nevile says: "It was closed, however, by a brief and in my opinion quite honest harangue on Herr Hitler's part in regard to the genuineness of
provoked by resentment."
The final summing up is given in were, in fact, these words:-"There
for Herr Hitler only two solutions the use of force, or the achievement of his aims by the display of force. "If you wish to obtain your objective by force, you must strong;
if you wish to obtain them by negotiation, you must be stronger still." That was a remark which he made to a foreign statesman who visited him this year, and it expresses in the concisest pos sible from the Hitler technique. ..If he could have secured his objec- tives by this display of force he might have been content for the moment, with all the additional prestige which another bloodless success would have procured for him with his own peo- ple. But it would only have been to start again, once the world had re- covered from the shock, and even his own people were beginning to b、
TO-NIGHT
IN THE
tired of these repected crises. Millions of Germans had begun to long for a Guns in- more peaceful existence. stead of butter were becoming more and more unpopular except with the younger generation, and Hitler may well have wondered what might hap- pen to his Nazi revolution if its mo- mentum were allowed to stop. More- over, the financial and economic posi- tion of Germany was such that things could scarcely continue as they were without some form of explosion, in- ternal or external. Of the two alter-
natives the most attractive from the
point of view of his growing personal ambitions, and those of the clique which was nearest to him, was war.
It is scarcely credible (Sir Nevile goes on) that he would have acted as he did if bloody war, rather than a bloodless victory, had not seemed the fairer prospect for him. He had al- ways meant to teach the Poles a les- son for what he regarded as their base ingratitude in refusing the "generous" demands which he had made to them in March. His only manoeuvres since that date were with the object of creating circumstances favourable to his plans or of inducing Britain and France to abandon their Polish ally and to leave him a free hand in Cen- tral and Eastern Europe."
Such then is Sir Nevile's opinion, than whom no one was better placed to judge. We cannot doubt that his- tory will endorse it.
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