1940-04-23 — Page 14

PAGE 4-HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

Sir Nevile Henderson

INSTALMENT TWO

How Hitler planned to win over British opposition to his European plans until he was ready to attack the British Empire is explained to-day.

until Sir Nevile was British. Ambassador in Germany from May, 1937, September, 1939, and in this dramatic story, "My Two Years with Hitler," he is. telling, EXCLUSIVELY in the "Hongkong Telegraph," the historic sequence of events that led up to the war......

Yesterday he described his first meetings with Hitler, with the comment, "It was always my fate to find him in à temper." "Of Ribbentrop, whose influence on Hitler he described as sinister, he wrote, "History will attribute a large share of the blame for September, 1989, to him.”

THE FIRST of my purely personal efforts to improve relations with the Nazi rulers of Germany had been a speech of friendship which I had made at a dinner given to me in May, 1937.

The second was my attendance at the Nuremberg Party rally in September.

No British, French or United States Ambassador had hitherto gone to Nuremberg, on the ground that as a Party Day it would not be regarded as a purely official meeting.

For the first time, my French colleague, M. Francois-Poncet, Mr. Gilbert, the United States Charge d'Affaires, and myself, were authorised in 1937 by our respective Governments to attend the Rally,

1

Nobody who has not witnessed the various displays given at Nuremberg during the week's Rally, or been subjected to the atmosphere thereat, can be said to be fully acquainted with the Nazi movement in Germany.

I attended a review of the Party leaders, 140,000 in number

and representing at that time over two million members of the. Party.

I was present at a rally of the Hitler Youth, 48,000 strong, Avith 6,000 girls, and nå ja mup- per party to Herr Himmler's S.S. camp of 26,000 blackshiris. I had talks with Hitler himself. Neurath, Guering and Goobbels, as well as a number of other less important personagcA,

The displays themselves were most impressive. That of the party leaders (or heads of the party organisations in the towns and villages throughout the country) took place in the even- ing at eight pin, in the stadium, or Zeppelinfeld.

Drassed in their brown shirts, these 140,000 men were drawn up in alx great columns with passages between them.

Hitler himself arrived at the far entrance of the stadium. some four hundred yards from the platform; and, accompanied by several hundred of his fol lowers, marched on foot up the central pissage to his appointed place.

My

Rudolph Hesa AVIL the Fuchrer's deputy.

In a sense, he seemed to me to be a sort of adopted son to Hitler, and on the outbronk of war he was named as second after Goering in the order of succession to the leadership of the German nation.

In Jess troublous times he might well have been named first, but his authority with the Army would scarcely have been great enough in war time to hold the balance between the soldiers and the Nazi Party.

Tali and dark, with beetling eyebrows, a famous smile, and ingratiting manners, Hess was perhaps the most attractive looking of the leading Nazis.

He was not inclined to be talkative, and in conversation did not convey the impression of great ability.

I would have summed him up as aloof and inscrutable, with a strong fanatical streak.

Al the Youth Rally it was Von Shirach's speech which, in

Impression site of its painfully adulatory

of Nuremberg

His arrival was theatrically notified by the sudden turning into the air of the 300 or more searchlights with which the sta- dium vas surrounded.

The blue-tinged light from these mel thousands of feet up in the air at the top to minke a kind of square roof, to which a chance cloud gave added realism.

The effect, which was both solemn and beautiful, was like being inside a cathedral of Ice.

At the word of command the standard bearers then advanced

references to the Fuehrer, im- pressed me most.

One part of it surprised-ne- when, addressing the boys, he said, "I do not know if you are Protestants or Catholics: but that you believe in God-that I do know."

to re-

I had been under the impres- sion that all reference ligion was discouraged among the Hitler Youth.

In

Theoretically, however, spite of the revolt against the sacred books of the Jows re- ligion was free to the Hitler Youth: but, where and when- ver it was possible to do so, it was in practice discouraged by

arious effective methods.

from out of sight at the far end. Sinister and

up the rain line and over the further tiers and up the four alde lanes.

A certain proportion of these standards had electric lights on their shafts, and the spectacle of these five rivers of red and gold rippling forward under the dome of blue light, in complete alience, through the massed formations of brown shirts, was indescribably picturesque.

I had spent six years in St. Peterburg before the war in the best days of the old Russian ballot, but in grandioso beauty I have never seen a ballet to comparo with it.

The German, who has a highly developed hord Instinct, is per- fectly happy when he is wearing a uniform, marching in stop and ninging in chorus, and the Nazi revolution is certainly known how to appeal to theap fratimels.

Hess the Inscrutable

Andleplay of aggregate strength it was ominous; as a triumph of mass organisation combined with beauty it was superb.

The review of the Hitler Youth was no le an object lesson from an observer's point of view. Standards, manic and singing again played a big part in the performance, and the fervour of youth was much in ovidoncs. The speeches on that occasion were made by Hitler. Hose and Baldur von Shirach, the leader of the Hitler Youth.

GOERING

threatens the BRITISH EMPIRE

Own National-Socialist he conceived it religion, with its German God was free, and that was all he cared for.

Furthermore, he could always make himself believe whatover he said.

It was this kind of attitude which made ordinary conver sation and argument with him, and his imitator Ribben- trop, so difficult and unsatis- factory,

The supper in a great tent in ilerr Himmler's S.S. Police Camp at Nuremberg was equally

Menacing Scene instructive in another sense.

The God of the Hohenzollerns had not saved Germany from de- feat in 1918, and though God might still be worshipped, it must be a purely Gorman one, to whom Hitler was so closely allied as to be barely distin- guishable from the Deity Him- Hulf.

Hitler himself in his speeches referred constantly

the to stab not An Almighty. Ile atheist, but merely pro-Hitler and anti-Christian.

In the course of one of my Interviews with him we touched upon the subject of the religion. He was at the moment incensed against certain English bishops

chise for supporting the Pastor Niemociler.

He would not, he shouted, brook any further interference by English Churchmen in the religious affairs of Germany.

of

It was their meddling, he sald, which hnd caused him to give orders for Niemoller to bo put in

a concentration camp after he had been set at liberty by the tribunal which had tried him for sedition,

If, he continued, any English bishops tried to come to Ger- many they would be turned back at the frontier; and he concluded with the astounding statement that "Nowhere was religion freor than in Germany." It was the sort of remark to which I never was able to find an answer, nor would it have served any purpono if I had.

During supper a number of songs were sung by a chorus of Black-shirts, and after it there was a tattoo for the lowering of the Swastika camp flag.

The music, as Avell na tho bearing and drill of the special. colour party, was exceptionally good. The S.5. played big part in ruling Germany for Hitler, and they were picked men of powerful physique.

"But." as I wrote at the time, "the camp in the darkness, dim- ly lit by flares, with the black uniforms in the allont back- ground and the skull and cross. bones on the drums and trumpets lent to the scene a sinister and menacing impression. I folt, In- deod, as if I were back in the days of Wallenstein and the Thirty Years War in the seventeenth century.

Herr Hitler was more friendly to me personally on that occasion than on any of the others on which I saw him. He was un- at the atton- doubtedly pleased dance for the first time of the American British, French, and representatives, and ho indiented that he attributed this Innovation to my initiative,

As it happened, I had had a long talk with Dr. Goebbels at lunch that day on the subject of our respective Presses, and I told Hitler 80. There was nothing very new in that talk, and up to the inst the Press problem re- mained insoluble, but Gocbbola had been friendly and sensible, Tho "little doctor was probably the most Intelligent, from a pure-

ly brain point of view, of all the Nazi leaders. He never specchi- ded; he always saw and stuck to the point: he WUB 1 able debater and, in private conversa- tion, astonishingly fair minded and reasonable. Personally. whenever I hurt the chance,

talking to found pleasure in him.

In appearance and in charac- ter he was a typical little Irish agitator, and was, in fact, pro- He bably of Celtic origin. came from the Rhineland `and had been educated in a Jesuit school.

He was a slip of a man, but, in spite of his slight deformity, he and given proof of grent courage when he fought the Communists In Berlin and won the capital for Hitler and Nazism.

#

When, however, he was on public platforma or had a pen in his hand no gall was too bitter and no lle too blatant for him.

Baron von Neurath, whom I saw the following day, was more forthcoming than filler. He told me that he found his Fuhrer less resentful and more anxious for an understanding with Britain than he had been for a long time

He did not, however, on- past. courage me to think that Hitler would reopen the question of his visit to London,

I remember that I asked him, in the course of conversation, what were Germany's ultimate nima.

His reply was, "Austrin is the first and last of our hima; the Sudeten German problem is a matter for compromise and can be settled amicably, pro- vided the Czechs leave the Rus- slan orbit and give true equality to their German sub- "Jects,""

Such a statement was, as I was to discover, a characteristic exam- plo both of the haif-truths In- dulged in whenever it was neces- sary to define German policy, and of the deceptive nature of German nsurancea in general. — f.e., readiness to admit an obvious objective, coupled with a positiva declaration that nothing moro thereafter was aimed at.

Gpering "I found more honest than Hitler

our talks were always on friendly terms."

Anschluss

in Austria

It was so far irua that Austria was, in fact, Hitler's immedinte objective.

Of that there was no shadow of doubt, and in commenting on the greater calmness of the 1937 Party Rally, I had reported, "Ger- many to-day feels that alio can not only afford to wait, but by waiting will be yet stronger and more sure of her goal. And the big goal is German unity. Of that let there be no mistake elther; and if we intend definite- ly to oppose it, we should lose no time in asking ourselves tho first and capital question "How'7" It was already quite evident that it would be futile to say "no" to the dictator without bo- ing propared to go to war to enforce it,

The question of the Austrian Anschluss was also mentioned in a long conversation which I had with Goering at this time,

He insisted that It was in- evitable, and teld me that he had a few days before seen Herr Guido Schmidt, the Aus- trian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and had bluntly told him that the sooner the Aus- trian Government accepted It as such, and without creating bad blood, the better it would be for all concerned.

Destroy the

Tuesday, APRIL 23, 1940.

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As usual, Goering was very outspoken, and at times boll- icose. Yet our many talks, in spite of complete frankness on both sides, were never con- ducted on any but mutually friendly lines.

comparatively

He suffered little from the personal resent- monta which so often inspired Hitler and Ribbentrop, and up to the last I was inclined to believe in the sincerity of his personal desire for peace and good relations with-England.

He laid stress on this at Nuremberg, though at the same time he added that if the British Empire refused to collaborate with Germany, there would be nothing for the latter to do but to devote herself to the destruction of that Empire instend of to its maintenance.

In this connection he men. tioned to me and was the first German to do so the pos- being sibility of the Reich compelled to revise the Anglo- German Naval Agreement.

I told him then, and again some months later, that such

a step would inevitably lead in the end once more to war with Britain.

He regretfully admitted that this might be so, and added that it was against his advice that Hitler had insisted, when he did, on the conclusion of that Agreement.

Baron von Neurath once told me the same thing, the argu- ment of both of them being that Hitler should have kept the naval agreement as a trump dard up his sleeve for eventual use in a final bargain.

They were both more honest In this respect than Hitler since, from Goering's remark, I fancy that the contingency of repudiat- ing that treaty was already in Hitler's mind, and, judging by subsequent experience, I can only conclude that he mover intended to observe its terms longer than it suited him.

It was difficult, or even materially Impossible, for him to rebuild a navy at the same time that he was re-creating ція immensely formidable military and air machine, and the sole oblect, in Hitler's mind, of the Naval Agreement was to disarm British opposi. tton to his schemes in Central Europe until such time as they came to fruition and were realised.

Thereafter it would be the turn of the British Emoire. It is impossible to-lay to draw

any other conclusion.

TO-MORROW you will read of Goering's threat to bomb Britain.

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