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Dictators Denounced
With, therefore, all the prestige of his election behind him, he proceeded to take what steps he could to reinforce the cause of peace. One of them was to continue patiently to foster his ‘good neighbour’ policy in regard to the South American countries. When in 1941 Japan struck her blow he was to reap the advantage of the wise course Washington in his days had pursued towards the Latin American nations and of the established machinery of Pan-American cooperation. Nine Caribbean republics joined in at once in North America’s war of defence, and what had formerly been an almost hostile attitude on the part of South America towards its northern neighbour was as time passed to be one of increasing friendliness. As a result, America as a whole was to become the most disappointing of all continents to the Axis, and what might have been a fruitful field for the tares of Nazi diplomacy was very largely denied to it. Neither, however, the ‘good neighbour’ policy nor his desire to prevent war was to keep him from forceful comment on the increasingly aggressive and tyrannical acts of the German and Italian dictators, and he denounced Germany’s disregard of treaties soundly. When, moreover, he went to Canada in 1938 to open the new international bridge over the St Lawrence he made the historic pledge: ‘I give you the assurance that the people of the United States will not stand idly by if Canadian soil is threatened by any other Empire.’
In 1938 also Roosevelt began more fully to employ his influence in the affairs of Europe. Consequently when the crisis in regard to Czechoslovakia was at its height he addressed messages to both sides begging them to reach a peaceful solution by negotiation: and not to break off their deliberations. He sent, too, a second appeal to Hitler urging the maintenance of peace and then, when all negotiations seemed to have broken down at Godesberg, he established touch with Mussolini and had a hand in bringing about the Munich Conference, thus delaying war for a season. Throughout, however, the several critical years before it came he had no illusions in regard to the sinister nature of the dictators’ policies. ‘It is no accident,’ he had said, when he visited Buenos Aires for the Pan-American Conference, ‘that the nations which have carried the process of erecting trade barriers the farthest are those which proclaim most loudly that they require war as an instrument of policy.’ Incidentally, he concluded on that occasion with the remarkable words, ‘We took from our ancestors a great dream. We offer it back as a great unified reality. We offer hope for peace and more abundant life to the peoples of the world.’
Opposition to Hitler
Roosevelt saw far too deeply into the European situation to be set at rest by the achievement of Munich. At the beginning of 1939 he told Congress that he would go to any length short of war to stop the aggressor, and added that there were effective means of doing so. His speeches during the months which followed contained strong declarations for peace, but still more powerful vindications of democracy. His policy, he declared, was the defence of civilization against militarism. Thus he opposed to the morbid race theory and overweening demands of Hitler the broad and humane sanity of his democratic faith. At the same time he proceeded to strengthen the material defences of the United States and, as a precaution, ordered a comprehensive survey of American industry.
When in March Hitler seized what remained of Bohemia he sent messages to him and Mussolini as a ‘friendly intermediary’ asking them to give a guarantee not to attack for 10 years a specified list of nations. If they agreed he said he would be prepared to ask for reciprocal guarantees and call an international conference to which the United States would give every support in order to try to reach a settlement of all international difficulties. It was, in fact his last great bid; but Hitler would have none of it.
During the summer of 1939 the King and Queen toured Canada and took the opportunity of visiting the United States. The President and Mrs Roosevelt received them at Washington and were their hosts at the White House and then for a weekend at Hyde Park. It was a happy interlude in grave and anxious days. Then, as towards the end of August war drew nearer, Roosevelt appealed twice to Hitler to preserve peace and to the President of Poland to continue negotiations. He also sent a personal message to the King of Italy asking him to use his influence in promoting negotiations. Next, on September 1 when war seemed inevitable, he begged the Powers concerned to declare publicly that they would not bomb civilian populations or unfortified cities. The German answer was the devastation of open Polish towns and villages. After this there was nothing for him to do except to fulfil his obligation to proclaim neutrality, and, under the laws which had been adopted in recent years with the purpose of keeping America out of war, he had to forbid American ships to enter the zone of combat, to warn Americans not to travel there, and to preclude the supply of ammunition or armaments to the belligerents and the raising of loans by those who still owed war debts in America. In the autumn, however, on his urgent insistence, the ban on armaments was relaxed so as to permit the sale of aeroplanes, munitions, and weapons to France and Great Britain under the ‘cash and carry’ plan. In this country it was a very welcome amendment, and was the beginning of the pro-allied legislation which he was determined to enact. He had indeed many weapons in his armoury and was prepared to use them all. He could warn and thunder and impose embargoes and trade sanctions but he lacked the only one to which Hitler might have paid attention, for he could not offer the threat of war. A biographer has written of him that at this time he was ‘a crusader wielding a sheathed sword’.
National Defence
With the overrunning of Europe and the fall of France the attitude of the people of the United States began to change. Demands for a vast programme of national defence arose, and Roosevelt, responsive as ever to national feeling, announced that there could only be peace ‘if we are prepared to meet force with force if the challenge is ever made’. The last despairing appeal of France moved him deeply; but he was compelled to point out that assistance by armed forces was not for him but for Congress to give. By June, 1940, American opinion had moved so far that he was able to say of Italy that ‘the hand that held the dagger had struck it into the back of its neighbour’ and to add that America sent forward her prayers and hopes ‘to those beyond the seas who are maintaining with magnificent valour the battle for freedom’. In July, 1940, at a Press conference he defined the ‘five freedoms’, the aims to be realized if peace were to return to the earth.
In the election of 1940 Mr Wendell Willkie was the Republican candidate. There was an honoured and unbroken tradition which forbade a third term to any President, and for a long time Roosevelt refused to say whether he would be prepared to stand. At last, however, having made it clear that he had no desire to do so, he yielded to a unanimous request from the convention at Chicago. Willkie was a strong opponent of the New Deal and of most of Roosevelt’s internal legislation. He was, however, in general agreement with him on a more vigorous defence policy and fuller aid for Britain. It was therefore to those matters that the President confined his attention, inaugurating meanwhile a huge programme for the production of munitions with the aid of leading businessmen whom he called in to assist and advise. He also took two leading Republicans, Colonels Knox and Stimson, into the Cabinet, transferred 50 destroyers to Great Britain in return for naval bases, and worked out a defence policy with Canada. He thus fulfilled his slogan ‘Full speed ahead’ in war production. In the campaign itself, however, he took little part and made only a few speeches towards its close, when he said he had been misrepresented.
Third Time President
Once again, although Mr Willkie did better against him than either Mr Hoover or Mr Landon, he won handsomely – he was elected by a majority of some 5,000,000 on the popular vote – and thus opened up new fields of leadership. Almost immediately he brought forward his lend-lease proposals, which were embodied in a measure entitled ‘An Act to promote the defense of the United States’. These proposals were to enable him to provide war supplies for Great Britain and in fact for ‘the government of any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States’. Thereafter he kept on enlarging his production plans and stated that America would be ‘the arsenal of democracy’. He also pushed her naval patrols farther into the ocean than they had gone in defence of neutrality, and, after the Italians had been driven from Eritrea, sent American supply ships to the Red Sea. Calling for ‘unqualified immediate all-out aid for Britain, increased and again increased until total victory has been won’, he urged that there should be no idle machine and that they should operate 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Speaking in May at the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson, he said: ‘He taught us that democracy could not survive in isolation. We applaud his judgment. We applaud his faith.’ Thus, by arming his country for its own defence and in the meantime sustaining the resistance of Great Britain, he served what was in fact the single purpose of saving democracy.
On May 27, 1941, Roosevelt delivered one of the most momentous broadcasts of his career. He reasserted the American doctrine of the freedom of the seas and announced that he had issued a Proclamation to the effect that an unlimited national emergency existed which required strengthening of the defences of the United States to the extreme limit of national power and authority. He pointed to the sinkings of merchant shipping, and said that all measures necessary to the delivery to Great Britain of the supplies she needed would be taken. ‘This can be done. It must be done. It will be done.’ In June, Lord Halifax, as Chancellor of Oxford University, conferred the degree of dcl upon him, the first time that a Chancellor had officiated at a Convocation outside the walls of Oxford.
Pearl Harbour; Entry into the War
As the year progressed the President became even more assertive in word and action. American troops were sent to Iceland, and in August he met Mr Churchill at sea. The Atlantic Charter recorded their agreement. There were attacks upon the American Navy, and he replied to them with a warning that Axis warships would enter American defensive waters at their peril. A little later he went to Congress to seek a revision of the Neutrality Act. Meanwhile German hatred of him found expression in a crescendo of abuse. Ever since the attack upon Russia he had shown his determination to uphold her resistance, and in November a credit of $100,000,000 was extended to her. Thus as the situation in both the Western and Eastern Hemispheres grew tenser he appeared to be gathering his strength against an inevitable collision. It came on December 7. He had just sent a message to the Emperor of Japan couched in persuasive terms, but protesting against the flooding of Japanese forces into Indo-China. One hour before the reply was delivered by the Japanese Ambassador Pearl Harbour was in smoke and ruin. The next day he gave in person a message to Congress and called for a declaration of war. Except for one member of the House of Representatives the answer was unanimous. ‘With confidence, ’ he said, ‘in our armed forces, with the unbounded determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.’ And so when a few days later Congress no less readily accepted the challenge of Germany and Italy, Roosevelt entered upon the war leadership supported by the national confidence to which his wise and patient handling of a long-drawn crisis had so richly entitled him.
Hotfoot upon the belligerency of the United States Mr Churchill went to Washington to plan for unity of action, and stayed at the White House. It was the beginning of a wartime association founded upon a well-established mutual regard and doubly proofed against external efforts to break it. Never before in history had the leaders of two great democracies worked together on the fraternal terms which came to exist between the President and the Prime Minister. Each stood high in the opinions of the other’s people, and as a result each strengthened the other’s hand. Roosevelt and Churchill together were a combination of scarcely precedented power.
Faith and Courage; All Resources Mobilized
The President’s message to Congress at the beginning of 1942 showed that the attack by Japan had not only failed to stun him but that he had reacted in much the same way as to the economic perils of 1932. In both cases his response was a programme of immediate action on a nationwide scale. All the vast resources of the United States were mobilized for war. A people which justly prided itself upon the largeness of its conceptions was given an almost unlimited scope for effort. The estimated cost was staggering, but the nation accepted it. He was close on 60 and his birthday at the end of the month brought many messages which indicated the regard of the allied peoples for him. He was already in the ninth year of the immense labours in which his own faith and courage had been his chief sustenance.
As Commander-in-Chief of the United States it was Roosevelt’s task to make a peaceful and largely self-centred people strategically minded, and to interpret the war to them as a world conflict rather than an opportunity for the counter-strike they longed to deal Japan. Isolationism was his greatest obstacle, and he said of those who still proclaimed its merits that they wanted the American Eagle to imitate the ostrich. Thus in firm but good-humoured fashion he led his people on, and the fact that the great majority were brought to take the broad, patient, and unselfish view which the character of the war demanded was due primarily to him. Despite, however, the huge measure of support he commanded, he continued to be exposed to a running fire of criticism from sections of the public and the Press.
In April he proposed a seven-point programme to combat the rise which had taken place in the cost of living and included a large increase in taxation. The fear of inflation had begun and was to continue to haunt him, but he was to find Congress somewhat reluctant to incur electoral unpopularity by supporting him in drastic measures. Another danger which he sought to avert was a light-hearted but, as he knew, unfounded optimism on the part of the people. By the summer, however, he was in a position to say that America’s reservoir of resources was reaching a flood stage, and vast amounts of material were being sent over-sea to the assistance of the allies. It was a vindication of his own far-sightedness. His lend-lease agreements were already taking shape as key instruments of national policy and he was beginning to realize his world statesman’s aim of distributing the financial burdens of the war. In June he welcomed Mr Churchill once again and found that they were still at one upon the major problems of the war. In September he made a quick tour of 11 States in order to test the spirit of the nation and reported it ‘unbeatable’. In November came the landing in North Africa – Mr Churchill attributed the authorship of it to him – and what he regarded as the turning point of the war.
Casablanca
The President’s New Year address in 1943 to a new Congress will probably rank among the greatest of many great utterances, for in it he was the inspired realist. He looked backward with a well justified satisfaction and forward with a lively hope. He said it was necessary to keep in mind not only the evil things against which America was fighting but the good things she was fighting for. Never indeed did he stand forth so clearly as the leader of his people’s thought as well as the ruler of their actions or as the possessor of a grasp wide enough to encompass the whole of the struggle for civilization. Then hard up on this call to thought and action came the bill for it – a Budget of $100,000,000,000. These preliminaries to the year performed, he was before the month had ended at Casablanca, when he conferred with Mr Churchill and the Fighting French at what, remembering General Grant, he called the ‘Unconditional Surrender Meeting’. The momentous conversations lasted for some 10 days and every aspect of the war was reviewed at them. Nothing like this had ever happened before, for he was the first President who had ever left his country in wartime. On the way home he stopped at Brazil for a discussion with the President. By thus breaking with tradition and adopting Mr Churchill’s practice of going himself to a vital centre of action Roosevelt achieved a master-stroke of leadership, for not only did he enhance his own authority as war leader but drew the beam of national interest after him. Paramount, however, though his authority was he continued to be engaged by efforts to keep prices down in spite of the hesitancy of Congress and the recalcitrance of active labour interests. In April he went to Mexico to discuss post-war cooperation. It was the first time the chief executives of the two countries had met. At the same time he visited the American forces in the Southern States.
In May Mr Churchill, at the President’s invitation, paid his fourth wartime visit to the United States, and it was widely noted that such occasions were the presage of great events. In this case the communiqué announced a full agreement on all points ‘from Great Britain to New Britain and beyond’. At the same time Roosevelt found himself in one of his recurrent troubles with labour – in this case, the miners – and handled it with characteristic firmness. He was not, however, to receive the support he desired from Congress, for late in June an Anti-Strike Bill which he vetoed was passed in spite of him. It was one of a series of setbacks in domestic policy. They were offset by occasional victories; but his supreme task of directing American strategy continued to be complicated by distractions due to the attitude of an increasingly difficult Legislature.
With the collapse of Italy the war entered on a new, and hopeful phase; but he refused to limit his aims even to a total victory over the Axis, and looked beyond it to another over all the forces of oppression, intolerance, insecurity, and injustice which had impeded the forward march of civilization. In August he went to Quebec for yet another meeting with Mr Churchill in which his old friend Mr Mackenzie King sat with them. Then, he travelled westwards to Ottawa, where he addressed the two Houses of the Canadian Parliament. It was the first time an American President had been there, and in his speech he stated that during the Quebec Conference things had been talked over and ways and means discussed ‘in the manner of members of the same family’, a phrase in true accord with both the theory and practice of the ‘good neighbour’ policy.
In November, 1943, Roosevelt left the United States for the series of historic conferences by which the leaders of the Allied Nations sought to consolidate their aims and efforts. At the first meetings in Cairo he and Mr Churchill met Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and discussed future military operations against Japan. They declared that she should be stripped of all her island gains in the Pacific as well as the territories she had stolen from China and other spoils of her aggression. To this end it was agreed to continue to persevere in the serious and prolonged efforts necessary to secure her unconditional surrender. The President with the Prime Minister moved next to Teheran, where for four intensive days they were in council with Marshal Stalin, whom Roosevelt then met for the first time. There in most amicable discussion the three leaders shaped and confirmed their international policy and announced jointly that they recognized their responsibility for a peace that would command the good will of the overwhelming masses of the peoples of the world. Thereupon the President with Mr Churchill went back to Cairo for discussions with M. Ismet Inönü, the President of the Turkish Republic. On the return journey Roosevelt visited both Malta and Sicily, arriving eventually at the White House bronzed and cheerful. One of his last actions of the year was to order the Secretary of State for War to take over the railways where trouble had been threatening.
In early January, 1944, Mr and Mrs Roosevelt presented their homestead at Hyde Park to the United States Government as a historical national site with a proviso that the immediate family might use it. It followed upon an earlier gift of the Roosevelt Library there. Then a few days later the President’s message to Congress embodied his programme for still further mobilization of the resources of the nation. In it he referred scathingly to the ‘pressure groups’ and others who, while he had been abroad, had been busy in the pursuit of interests which he regarded as only secondary to the supreme task of winning the war. This corrective he accompanied by yet another Budget for $100,000,000,000.
In the New Year there were to be still further difficulties with Congress. In late February he vetoed the Tax Bill, and thereby lost one of his staunchest supporters, Senator Barkley, of Kentucky, the Democratic Leader in the Senate, only to be overridden by large majorities in both Houses. It was a protest against what were regarded as the encroachments of the Administration. The obedient Legislature of his earlier years had long since been replaced by one largely hostile to his social policy. The result was the cat and dog relationship between President and Congress which the American Constitution permits, and his caustic description of the Bill as relief ‘not for the needy but for the greedy’ was an appeal over the head of the legislators to the people.
Senator Truman
As the spring lengthened the probability of his running for a fourth term seemed steadily to grow greater. In April, 1944, he had to take a rest, but in May be was back at the White House, himself again, clear of eye and voice. Simultaneously with his return to it the chairman of the Democratic National Committee asserted that he would accept the party’s nomination; but he himself refused to be drawn. At the end of the month, when reminded on one occasion of his support of President Wilson, he stated that he contemplated a new and better League of Nations in the post-war world and a little later outlined the American plan for a world security organization. On July 11 he broke his silence and announced that if elected he would serve a fourth term as President. The news was received calmly because it was widely expected. On July 20 the Democratic Convention at Chicago nominated him with loud applause and the waving of many banners ensigned with his name. Senator Truman was, however, chosen instead of his associate, Mr Wallace, to run for the Vice-Presidency.
In July the President was in Honolulu for a three days’ conference. On his way back he visited the Aleutians and Alaska, and dramatically broadcast from a warship on the Pacific coast. Then in September he went to Quebec to meet Mr Churchill. The discussions, which ranged over a wide field, were conducted, as Mr Churchill said, ‘in a blaze of friendship’. It was only after his return from Quebec that he made the first political speech of his campaign; but his wartime activities as Commander-in-Chief pleaded as strongly for him with the electorate as any words he could have uttered. Things were, indeed, beginning to go well for him, and on October 16 the New York Times came down in his favour. On October 22 he made a 51-mile tour of the City of New York in cold and rain. Meanwhile, his opponent, Mr Dewey, sought to mobilize every hostile and dissentient element against him. The President, however, standing foursquare upon his record, but dealing chiefly with foreign affairs, hit back upon occasion as hard as he had ever done.
Fourth Term
A Landslide Victory
The result of the election was once again a victory for Roosevelt so decisive as to be in fact a landslide. Such strength as Mr Dewey showed was in the rural districts; the workers in the great towns and cities were overwhelmingly for the President. In both the Senate and the House of Representatives he had comfortable majorities. Thus, not only unique in American history but triumphantly so, he prepared himself to enter on his fourth term.
No sooner was Roosevelt back at the White House than suggestions that he would shortly confer with Mr Churchill and Marshal Stalin filled the American Press, but arrangements had still to be made. In the meantime, therefore, he attended to the preparations for his fourth term, and spent a holiday at Warm Springs, in Georgia. On his return he took occasion to allay some disquietude in regard to the validity of the Atlantic Charter by declaring that its objectives were sound and as valid as when they were framed.
Early in 1945 his message on the state of the Union was read to a joint session of Congress. It was of exceptional length and great significance, and, after a masterly and comprehensive review of the military situation, in which he paid a vigorous personal tribute to General Eisenhower, went on to state that his country could not and would not shrink from the responsibilities which follow in the wake of battle. He followed it on January 20 by his fourth inaugural address, delivered from the south portico of the White House. On this occasion he spoke for only 14 minutes, though it was historical indeed as the first wartime Presidential inauguration since that of Abraham Lincoln. Then the next important news of him came from the Black Sea, when on February 8 the Press announced that he, Mr Churchill, and Marshal Stalin had reached complete agreement for joint military operations in the final phase of the war against Germany. In a few days the famous Yalta declaration, which disclosed the full extent of the agreement reached among the three national leaders, was given to the world. For him personally, no less than for the other two, it was a crowning triumph of wisdom and political capacity.
Crimea Conference
On March 1 Roosevelt made what he called his ‘personal report’ of the Crimea conference to the Senate and the House of Representatives and, by broadcast, to the American people. He had, so far as any United States President could, accepted joint responsibility with Great Britain and Russia for the solution of the political problems in Europe – a responsibility, he said, the shirking of which would be ‘our own tragic loss’ – and he asked for approval of the decisions made by political leaders and public opinion. He looked forward with hope to the San Francisco conference. He believed that the three great centres of military power would be able to achieve their aims for security; and in this mood of confidence he approached the full and intricate problems involved in America’s collaboration with the rest of the world. Thus he worked to the end.
Roosevelt was a tall and handsome man with a fine head. In compensation for his weakened lower limbs he had developed a great torso and immense strength in his arms. A direct speaker of remarkable precision and clarity, he had a clear voice with a ring of music in it, which helped him particularly in broadcasting. Instinctively friendly and sympathetic, he was the most approachable of men and had an engaging smile for all. At his Press conferences, which he managed in a fashion of his own, he was the familiar of all who attended them; but nowhere were his immense skill and clever touch in human relationships more apparent. At them he was open to direct viva voce examination and permitted himself a frankness which only the observance by the American Press of the strict code of honour embodied in the words ‘Off the record’ could have rendered possible. He had many interests. In his latter days he was particularly fond of deep sea fishing, and often went for long fishing trips; but his chief hobbies were ships – he had a remarkable collection of prints of them – and philately.
He leaves four sons, James, Elliot, Franklin, and John, all of whom have served in the armed forces, and a daughter who is married to Mr John Boetiger, a journalist, who is now on war service.
Adolf Hitler
Dictator of Germany. Twelve years of force and tyranny.
30 April 1945
Few men in the whole of history and none in modern times have been the cause of human suffering on so large a scale as Hitler, who died in Berlin yesterday. If history judges to be greatest those who fill most of her pages, Hitler was a very great man; and the house-painter who became for a while master of Europe cannot be denied the most remarkable talents. He found Germans depressed, bewildered, aimless. After five years in office he had united the German race in a single Reich, abolished regional diversities of administration, and got rid of unemployment. But these achievements were merely instruments of an overwhelming lust for power. Nazi domination over Germany was a stepping stone towards the domination of Nazi Germany over the world. The process was continuous, and the methods were the same. Hitler effected the triumph of the Nazi Party in Germany by a mixture of deceit and violence; he then employed the same devices to destroy other nations. From the time he became master of Germany he made lies, cruelty, and terror his principal means to achieve his ends; and he became in the eyes of virtually the whole world an incarnation of absolute evil.
Hitler was unimpressive to meet on informal occasions, but became transformed when he was face to face with a crowd, especially if it was an audience of his followers. He would speak to them like a man possessed and give the appearance of utter exhaustion when his speech was over. His speeches betrayed few if any original ideas, and even his belief in the suggestive power of reiteration scarcely justified the repetitions of past history with which most of his public orations were overladen. He was, however, a propagandist of the first order, and his uncannily subtle and acute understanding of the mind of his own people was the ultimate source of his power for evil.
Early Years
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, at Braunau-am-Inn, on the frontier, as he said himself, of the two German States, the reunion of which he regarded as a work worthy to be accomplished by any and every means. His parents were of Bavarian, and perhaps Bohemian, peasant descent, and his father – who until his fortieth year was known as Schicklgruber – was a Customs officer in the Austrian service and married three times – Adolf being the only son of his young third wife. Adolf was sent to the best school available, being intended for the Government service, though he himself had artistic inclinations. In 1902 his father died suddenly, leaving no resources available for the continued education of his son.
From 1904 to 1909 the young Hitler lived a life of hardship. He moved after the loss of his mother to Vienna where he had dreams of becoming an architect, but could earn only a hazardous livelihood as assistant to a house-painter and by selling sketches. For three years he lived the life of the poorest man in Vienna, sleeping in a men’s hostel, eating the bread of charity at a monastery, occasionally reduced to begging. The food for thought also presented gratuitously by life in a great city, to such as care to receive it, was not left untasted by him. Hazy legends like the Nordic saga jostled in his mind with illusions regarding the ennobling effect of war and with more rational dreams of German national unity. He saw and hated the growing Slav ascendancy and the enfeeblement of the German elements in the racially mixed Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. He drank in the pan-Germanism of Luege, in which all the original elements of ‘Hitlerism’ are to be found. He read assiduously the works of Marx and his disciples, and thoroughly disagreed with their conclusions. He discovered the Jews and acquired a fanatical aversion to them. By 1910 he had so far improved his professional position as to be able to set up as an independent draughtsman; and, still hoping to become an architect, removed to Munich thinking to find wider scope in the Bavarian capital.
A year or two later the 1914–18 war broke out, and Hitler, preferring to enrol himself in the German national army rather than in the polyglot forces of the Hapsburgs, although he was an Austrian subject, joined the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment as a volunteer. His war service was meritorious, but not distinguished. He won the Iron Cross, and rose to the rank of corporal. He was wounded in the battle of the Somme in 1916, and badly gassed in the later stages of the war. It was while lying in a Berlin hospital, temporarily blinded, that he learned of the events known as the November Revolution of 1918.
Political Career Begun
On leaving hospital he returned to Munich. That pleasant city soon became the prey of his enemies the Marxists. The reaction against their regime made a breeding-ground for Fascism. It was at that moment that Hitler began his political career. Thousands of bewildered and workless young Germans were meeting and talking and propounding every sort of theory and scheme. Hitler possessed what most of these fumblers lacked, a few definite ideas and a knowledge of the value and of the art of propaganda. One night he attended in Munich a meeting of a newly formed German Workers’ Party, and decided to join it. He was its seventh member, and was not long in making himself its leader and his nationalist and anti-Marxist creed its programme. The movement soon took hold in Bavaria.
Hitler discovered his remarkable oratorical powers and proved himself an adept in the management of large meetings. He realized to the full the value of repetition and of reiterating a single theme over and over again in a slightly different form. ‘All propaganda,’ he said, ‘should adapt its intellectual level to the receptive ability of the least intellectual of those whom it is desired to address.’ A pillar of strength in these days was Captain Röhm, a staff officer at Munich and a valued organizer in the councils of his military superiors. He won for Hitler the tacit approval of the local high command and certain financial resources without which two-fold help little progress could have been achieved.
Thus supported and encouraged, Hitler, in conjunction with Röhm, Göring, General Ludendorff, and others, made his first attempt to seize power in the notorious Munich Putsch of November 10, 1923. They were met outside the Feldherrnhalle by police, who fired upon them, killing Hitler’s nearest companion and 15 others. Hitler lay flat on his face. Only Ludendorff marched straight on. As soon as the firing slackened Hitler, with a dislocated shoulder, fled in a motor-car, but was arrested two days later and imprisoned in the fortress of Landsberg. During the nine months he spent there he wrote the greater part of Mein Kampf, that turgid, rambling, remarkable book of nearly 1,000 pages, which became the Bible of the Nazi movement.
Hitler’s authority declined after the fiasco of Munich, and for a while Gregor Strasser, the creator of the Nazi Party in North Germany, counted for more than he in the party ranks, whose strength in the Berlin Reichstag was no more than 12. Hitler gradually reasserted himself, however, and in the elections of 1930, when Dr Brüning was Chancellor, and when the economic crisis was already creating widespread unemployment and distress, the number of National-Socialist Deputies jumped to 107.
The political situation rapidly deteriorated. Faced by the growth of the extremist vote and the chaotic state of the party system, the Chancellor was forced increasingly to govern by decree, and though his intentions were most genuinely liberal, he led Germany far along the road to dictatorship. On May 30, 1932, he fell after dealing Hitler two shrewd blows – the dissolution of the Brown Army and the re-election of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg as Reichspräsident in face of the fully mobilized Nazi vote in support of Hitler’s own candidature. Hitler regarded himself as heir to the Chancellorship. But he had still 10 months to wait, 10 months of crisis during which he was thwarted, not by the now impotent Liberal and Socialist vote, not even by the vociferous Communists, who by their threats to the bourgeoisie were indirectly a help, but by the veiled resistance of the Right Wing of the old regime, with its backing of Junkers, trade magnates, Monarchists, and the entourage of the now senile Reichspräsident.
The appointment of the shifty von Papen as Chancellor to succeed Brüning was followed by the rescinding of the latter’s ban on the Brown Army as a bait to catch the Nazi support, and by a general election. At the polls Hitler more than doubled his vote, being returned with 230 followers, the largest party in the Reichstag. He demanded the Chancellorship, but Papen manoeuvred him into an interview with the Field Marshal, where Hitler, who was nervous and showed to little advantage, received a pre-arranged rebuff. His prestige suffered considerably thereby, but worse was to follow. After three months of hopeless struggle in a hostile Reichstag Papen held another election. The Nazis lost 2,000,000 votes. A feeling of defeat spread throughout the party. Some of the leaders were in despair. In Germany and abroad it was thought that Hitler had passed his zenith.
In the meantime the affairs of Germany prospered little better than those of the Bavarian ex-corporal. Papen had to resign in November, 1932, and was followed by General Kurt von Schleicher, the last Chancellor of the old regime, a clever man, who came near to destroying Hitler and paid the forfeit on June 30, 1934. Schleicher had the confidence of the Army, and, as far as anyone could, that of President von Hindenburg, but he had no Parliamentary support, and was threatened by Papen, who regarded him as the cause of his own fall from power. Schleicher in December made a bid for independence. He thought to propitiate the Nazi strength by attracting to himself in a semi-Socialist administration Gregor Strasser.
Chancellor at Last
Reichstag Fire
It was a critical moment. Hitler, who had borne the recent setbacks with surprising calm, now lost heart. ‘If the party breaks up,’ he confided to Goebbels, ‘I’ll end matters with my pistol in three minutes.’ Schism indeed seemed imminent. But Strasser himself spoilt the scheme. He dallied and hesitated. The discussions were deferred, and before they could be resumed Schleicher had fallen. The tables had been suddenly turned by von Papen, who in January made an alliance with Hitler in order to overthrow Schleicher. The Nazi leader, whom he regarded as humbled by recent ill-fortune, was to be Chancellor and he himself Vice-Chancellor, with a majority of non-Nazi colleagues, the good will of the President, and, he confidently hoped, the real power. The plan took shape, and on January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was formally invested with the seals of office as Reichskanzler.
The new Government was a minority one, and decided to dissolve the Reichstag and hold another election, the third in nine months. In an unparalleled propaganda campaign, in which the opposition parties had to remain passive observers, voters were belaboured with the Communist menace. Yet the voting gave an absolute majority only to the combined Nazi and Nationalist Parties, and the uneasy alliance between Hitler and Hugenberg, the Nationalist leader, would perhaps have continued but for an event of the first importance, the Reichstag fire. Whoever lit the match, it was the Nazis who arranged and profited by this act of incendiarism. Interpreted by them as a Communist act of terrorism, it was made the pretext for the suspension of all constitutional liberties and the setting up of the Nazi dictatorship under Hitler.
The seizure of power by the Nazis in March, 1933, brought to an end the hollow alliance with the Nationalists under Hugenberg, who was forced to resign shortly afterwards. At the same time the German Press was muzzled and put under the control of Goebbels. Unhampered by Parliamentary restrictions or Press criticism, Hitler and his lieutenants pushed on with the Nazi revolution. Force and unity were the guiding ideals, and every element within or outside Germany which withstood the overriding claims of German nationalism was marked down for destruction.
The long struggle for power was now ended. The National-Socialist Party was faced with the task of consolidation, and this was set about with more zeal than unity of conception or purpose. The position of Röhm’s Brown Army in the State and its relation to the Reichswehr and the position of the Stahlhelm, the armed organization of the Nationalists, were among the most thorny problems and involved much bitterness and heart-burning.
The ‘Blood Bath’; Shooting of Röhm
On July 1, 1934, the civilized world learnt with horror of the killings that had taken place the day before and have since been known as the purge or the ‘blood bath’. How many people lost their lives will never be known. The outstanding victims were Röhm, Schleicher, and Strasser. On the night of June 29 Hitler flew from the Rhineland to Munich and on to the place where Röhm was staying. Röhm was taken from his bed to Munich and shot. All over Germany similar scenes were being enacted. Leading officials of the party and comparative nonentities alike lost their lives. Many an act of private revenge was carried out that night. Hitler, in his statement to the Reichstag, said he had saved Germany from a plot of reactionaries, dissolute members of the Brown Army and the agents of a foreign Power. The reason for the massacre of June 30 may never be exactly known, but apart from private rancours and rivalries it is generally believed that Röhm aimed at having the Reichswehr embodied in his sa organization – which Hitler had the sense to refuse.
The ‘blood bath’ was officially approved by Field Marshal von Hindenburg, who probably understood nothing of it. A month later, on August 2, the old man died, and within an hour Adolf Hitler was declared his successor. He abjured the title of Reichspräsident and elected to be known as Führer and Kanzler. The poor man of Vienna was now the master of Germany, absolute lord of 60,000,000 Europeans.
Armaments
Hitler’s advent heralded a series of increasingly grave breaches of treaty obligations and challenges to European opinion. Dr Brüning had already claimed equality in armaments. This claim was vigorously repeated by Hitler, and it was on the pretext that it had been too tardily admitted by the Powers that he abruptly left the League of Nations in October, 1933. Franco-British discussions in London in February, 1935, for a general settlement were brusquely forestalled by Hitler’s announcement of conscription for an army of half a million and the creation of an Air Force. The British Government joined the French and Italian Governments in condemning the unilateral repudiation of treaty obligations, but a few weeks later, in June, 1935, it concluded a naval agreement with Hitler granting him 35 per cent of the naval strength of Great Britain and equality in submarines. To ‘his people’, as he now called the Germans, it looked as though their Führer’s tactics paid, while Europe could no longer ignore the fact that Germany was again a great Power.
In March, 1936, Adolf Hitler, taking advantage of the embroilment of Great Britain and France with Italy over Abyssinia, suddenly occupied the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland, at the same time denouncing the Treaty of Locarno, which he claimed had already been abrogated by the formation of the Franco-Russian Alliance. The military occupation of the Rhineland was the most serious as well as the most spectacular breach made so far in the facade of the Versailles Treaty. In conjunction with the introduction of conscription it transformed the military situation. It deprived the Western Powers in one moment of the strongest weapon in their armoury, one that had been used in early post-war years, the freedom of entry into German territory. Henceforward Hitler could hope to hold off an attack on his western front with one hand, while the other was free elsewhere.
The occupation of the Rhineland was accompanied by a series of proposals addressed by Hitler to the world at large, and for the special attention of the French and British peoples. He offered a 25-year non-aggression pact, an aid pact for Western Europe, non-aggression pacts with his eastern neighbours, and he even announced his readiness to return to the League of Nations under certain conditions. None of these proposals was taken seriously enough by the outside world for any concrete result to follow.
Suspicion of Hitler was now growing, though the world did not yet grasp the full baseness of Nazi technique, with its deliberate use of the lie as an instrument of policy whereby to lull future victims into a sense of security while some nefarious scheme was being developed elsewhere. Yet the Führer and Chancellor himself had asserted that the bigger the lie the better the chance of its being believed.
The Rhineland coup was followed by two years of digestion and consolidation, during which time German military preparations were pushed forward with increasing activity, and an economic reorganization aiming at self-sufficiency was undertaken. Events outside Germany in 1936 and 1937 increased the nervous tension in Europe and did much to strengthen Hitler’s position. The policy of sanctions against Italy incompletely carried out through the machinery of the League of Nations made the worst of both worlds. It fell short of what was needed to save Ethiopia, but served to turn Mussolini from friendship and collaboration with the Western Powers to an increasingly close connection with Hitler, the foremost critic in Europe of the League of Nations. This understanding was given substantive form by the support accorded by the two totalitarian States to General Franco’s cause in Spain, and was finally registered by the official establishment in September, 1937, of the Rome–Berlin Axis. By this diplomatic revolution Hitler won an important European ally at the expense of the Powers of the Versailles ‘Diktat’, whose prestige, both moral and material, had as a result of these various events suffered a considerable diminution.
Seizure of Austria
Entry into Vienna
In the early weeks of 1938 the storm centre of Europe shifted back to Berlin. Hitler engineered an abrupt crisis in Austro-German relations, which ended on March 11 by the violation of the frontier by the German Army and the forcible incorporation of Austria in the Reich. Mussolini, who in 1934, on the murder of Herr Dollfuss, had massed troops on the Brenner frontier, made no move, and received the effusive thanks of the Führer: ‘Mussolini: Ich soll es Ilnen nie vergessen.’ Hitler’s dramatic entry into Vienna a few days later, after nearly a quarter of a century’s absence, during which he had experienced every vicissitude of hope, despair, and triumph, was watched with curiosity and even sympathy by millions of people outside the Reich, whose Governments had in the past resoundingly refused to the constitutional requests of both Berlin and Vienna the union which the German Dictator had now achieved by force.
The union of the Reich and the Ostmark, as Austria was now called, immediately raised the problem of Czechoslovakia, which contained a minority of some 3,500,000 Germans and was now surrounded by German territory on three sides. The question asked all over Europe was how soon would Bohemia share the fate of Austria. Hitler’s assurance to the Czech Government that it had nothing to fear did not allay suspicion. A series of communal elections throughout Czechoslovakia in May raised to fever-pitch the excitement created in the German minority by the inclusion in the Reich of their Austrian co-racialists. At the annual meeting in September of the National-Socialist Party at Nuremberg Hitler stood as the avowed champion of the Sudeten Germans, and their demands immediately precipitated an acute European crisis involving the imminent risk of general war. Hitler, with the German Army mobilized, his western front approaching a state of impregnability, faced by potential opponents who were mentally bewildered and militarily unprepared, and divided both geographically and ideologically, was in a position to dictate his terms. In conferences at Berchtesgaden and Godesberg with Mr Neville Chamberlain, and then at Munich, where M. Daladier and Mussolini, as well as Mr Chamberlain, were present, he put forward demands that France and Britain were not in a position to refuse. To save the peace of the world and to avoid their own destruction the Czechs were told that they must submit to the arrangements made by the four Great Powers at Munich, whereby all the German districts of Bohemia, together with the immense fortifications of the Erzgebirge, were handed over absolutely to Germany. In eight months Hitler had added 10,000,000 of Germans to the Third Reich, had broken the only formidable bastion to German expansion south-eastwards, and had made himself the most powerful individual in Europe since Napoleon i.
Czechoslovakia a ‘protectorate’
In the course of his conversations with Mr Chamberlain Hitler had assured him that he had no more territorial claims to make in Europe – a phrase he had also used after the seizure of Austria. On March 15, 1939, the world was, however, startled to hear that the German Army was invading and overwhelming Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia, all that remained of the independent Republic. President Hacha, who under German pressure had succeeded Dr Benesh in the autumn, was summoned to Berlin and forced to accept terms which made his country a ‘Protectorate’ of the Reich. Hitler went to Prague to proclaim there another bloodless victory and then while the going was good travelled to Memel, which had been ceded under the Versailles Treaty to Lithuania, and announced its annexation on March 23.
Poland had profited from the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by being allowed to annex the disputed region of Teschen. But she was marked down as the next victim. While German troops were still moving into Slovakia Hitler proposed to the Polish Government that Danzig should be returned to Germany and that Germany should build and own a road connecting East Prussia with the rest of the Reich, in return for which Germany would guarantee the Polish frontiers for 25 years – though a 10-year treaty of non-aggression already existed between the two countries, of which five years had still to run. Poland rejected the proposals and appealed to Great Britain and France for support. These countries at once gave Poland pledges to defend her independence, if necessary by war. The action of the Western Powers came as a shock to Hitler, who was further alarmed by negotiations shortly afterwards set on foot in Moscow by the French and British with the Soviet Government. The spectre of war on two fronts again arose to damp the German ardour for acquisition. Hitler, faced with the prospect of a check and a rebuff, fatal contingencies for an aspiring dictator, made his decision. Rather than give up his cherished, and indeed loudly proclaimed design of seizing Danzig and the Polish Corridor, he was prepared to eat every word he had uttered in condemnation, derision, and defiance of the Bolshevist regime, and to invite the Russians to agree to a non-aggression pact. Stalin on his side, finding the danger of a German attack suddenly exorcized, and distrusting the constancy of the Western Powers, was not unwilling to accept Hitler’s overtures, and the Pact was signed on August 23.
Hitler Starts War
With the disappearance of any likelihood of Russian assistance being given to the western allies Hitler saw no further obstacle in the way of an immediate attack on Poland, and on August 31, 1939, he ordered the German Armies to cross the frontier. The Second World War had begun. With typical falsity Hitler and Ribbentrop – now his intimate and most pernicious adviser – had offered the Polish Ambassador terms of settlement, and broadcast them to the world, a few hours before the soldiers began the invasion, without, however, allowing the Ambassador time or means to convey them to his Government.
The attack on Poland gave the world its first taste of the horrors of a German Blitzkrieg. Hitler went East to superintend the slaughter in person. It was a swift and terrible war which he waged in bitter hatred and, when the issue was clear, with crude boastings and gross lies at the expense of a broken nation. In a speech at Danzig on September 19 he had the effrontery to declare that: ‘Poland has worked for this war’ and ‘peace was prevented by a handful of (British) warmongers’. On the same occasion he took up what he called the British ‘challenge’ to a three years’ conflict and announced that Germany possessed a new weapon. The grim business was over in a few weeks. Warsaw surrendered on September 24 and on October 5 Hitler visited it and swaggered among the ruins which were garlanded for the occasion.
The next day, speaking in the Reichstag, he made what he called his last offer to the allies. It was a remarkable rhetorical performance, though, obviously nervous, he hurried through the phrases in which he described his new friendship with the Russians. As a plea for peace it could, if only one of its premises had been sound and one of its promises could have been believed, scarcely have been bettered; but he had by that time to pay the price of his habitual contempt for truth. In early November he made a speech at Munich, on the anniversary of the Putsch of 1923, in which he said that he had given Göring orders to prepare for a five years’ war. He ended earlier than had been expected and left the Burgerbräu beer cellar in which he made it for Berlin. Shortly afterwards there was an explosion in which six people were killed and over 60 injured. The official German News Agency claimed that the attempt had been inspired by foreign agents and offered a reward of half a million marks for the discovery of the instigators. One George Elsen was arrested. Official Germans were infuriated with The Times for suggesting that the explosion was no surprise to the Führer and that he had left early to avoid it.
France Crushed
On New Year’s Day, 1940, Hitler declared that he was fighting for ‘a new Europe’. On March 18 he met Mussolini on the Brenner, a presage, as it was later recognized to be, of great events. In April came the invasions of Norway and Denmark, and in early May he was congratulating his troops on their success and authorizing decorations for them. On May 10 his armies invaded Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg, and on the same day he went to the Western Front. On the morrow he proclaimed that the hour for the decisive battle for the future of the German nation had come. In less than a month the bells were rung in Germany to celebrate the victorious conclusion of what he called ‘the greatest battle of all time’. A few days later he congratulated Mussolini on the entry of Italy into the war. On June 22 the Armistice with France was signed. At that moment Hitler stood at the zenith of his success and power. Western Europe was his and there remained no one there to crush except Great Britain, weakened by her losses on the Continent and without an effective ally. As usual Goebbels was turned on to prepare the way.
Battle of Britain
Victory Promised for 1941
On July 19, speaking in the Reichstag, Hitler ‘as a victor’ made his final appeal to ‘common sense’ before proceeding with his campaign against her. He spoke with an unusual sobriety, but there was no mistaking his threats. He had his answer from a united and determined Empire. On September 4 he reiterated his menaces. Then he unleashed the Luftwaffe and the Battle of Britain began in earnest. On October 4 after a month of it he was back at the Brenner to talk things over with Mussolini. In a few days his troops entered Rumania. A little later he went to the Spanish frontier for a discussion with General Franco with a view, it was thought, to tightening the blockade of Great Britain. Before the end of the month he was back with Mussolini in Florence. He seemed about this time to understand that Great Britain could not be conquered from the air and to think increasingly in terms of U-boats. He described himself as the ‘hardest man the German people have had for decades and, perhaps, for centuries’.
In his New Year’s proclamation to the army Hitler promised victory over Great Britain in 1941 and added that every Power which ate of democracy should die of it. He continued, for he always seemed uneasy on this score, to place the blame for unrestricted air warfare on Mr Churchill, and he kept on expressing his confidence in the U-boat. All that spring, indeed, he seemed particularly eager to encourage his followers. In April he invaded Yugoslavia and Greece and went to join his advancing armies. And all the time he kept hammering at Great Britain from the air and striking under water at her supply lines.
On June 3, 1941, there was another meeting of the dictators on the Brenner Pass, and it was suggested that there would be an immediate start in the organization of a Continental peace; but on June 22 he cast aside his mask and struck at Russia. Once again the Soviet Government became the ‘Jewish-Bolshevist clique’, and once again he was free to indulge his inherent hatred of the Slav. There were the usual lengthy and disingenuous explanations; but they were not calculated to deceive close readers of Mein Kampf. For at least five years, indeed, he had contemplated this particular volte face, for in 1934 he had taken Dr Rauschning into his confidence in regard to his intention if necessary to employ a Russian alliance as a trump card. In August he and Mussolini visited the Eastern Front. As a gage of affection he presented his brother-in-arms with a great astronomical observatory. After a long silence he spoke on October 4 at the opening meeting of the Winter Help Campaign and announced a ‘gigantic operation’ which would help to defeat Russia. A few days later he was boasting that he had smashed her.
The Supreme Command
Brauchitsch Dismissed
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour of December 7 most of the world was in the conflict. In announcing his declaration of war on the United States to the Reichstag Hitler abused President Roosevelt and said that America had planned to attack Germany in 1943. Just before Christmas he dismissed Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, his Commander-in-Chief, and took supreme command himself. A promise which he had made two months before to capture Moscow had not been fulfilled, and his own troops were retiring before the Red Army. He felt, perhaps, that he had to find a culprit for the failure and also to put heart into his own troops. He spent Christmas at his headquarters in Eastern Europe, not as previously, among his front line troops.
Hitler’s New Year message for 1942 was far less confident than that of 1941. ‘Let us all,’ he said, ‘pray to God that the year 1942 will bring a decision.’ There were rumours of disagreement with his generals and of pressure from the radicals within the Nazi ranks. In March he appointed Bormann to keep the party and the State authorities in close cooperation. He was making strenuous efforts to build up the home front, to increase the number of foreign workers in Germany, and to procure the forces for a spring offensive.
In April he received from the obedient Reichstag the title of ‘Supreme War Lord’ and measured the duration of the Reich by the mystical number of a thousand years. The tremendous eastward thrust of the summer of 1942 was delivered, reached the Volga, and went deep into the Caucasus. In September he claimed that Germany had vastly extended the living space of the people of Europe and called on his own to do their duty in the fourth winter of the war. On October 1, at the Sportspalast, he taunted, boasted, and promised the capture of Stalingrad. His effort to make good his word in the end cost Germany a tremendous loss of lives and material. He seemed, however, at this period to be more inclined to talk about the inability of the allies to defeat him than to prophesy a German victory. In November, after the allied landings in North Africa, his troops overran unoccupied France and seized Toulon.
A Chastened Man
In the New Year order of the day for 1943 he prophesied that the year would perhaps be difficult but not harder than the one before. He was certainly a much chastened Führer. The industrial effort of Germany was being seriously disrupted by air attack, and Russia was pressing perilously hard. On the tenth anniversary of his accession to power he did not speak, but entrusted Goebbels with a proclamation to read for him. His silence gave rise to rumours, some to the effect that he was giving up his command of the army, others that he was dead. On February 25, instead of speaking, he issued another proclamation to celebrate the birthday of the party. It added fresh fuel to the rumours.
On March 21 Hitler at last broke silence. The manner of his speech was lifeless and almost perfunctory. The matter, even for one as prone as he to endless reiteration, was all too familiar. His only news was that he had started to rearm not in 1936 but in 1933.
Mussolini’s Fall
The Italian Capitulation
Hitler, in his appeal on the anniversary of the Winter Help scheme on May 20, told the German people that the army had faced a crisis during the winter in Russia – a crisis, he said, which would have broken any other army in the world. Soon another crisis faced the Germans. On July 25 Mussolini fell from power, four days after it had been announced that Hitler and Mussolini had met in northern Italy where it was believed Mussolini had demanded more help from Germany in the defence of Italy. But Italy was not to be kept at Germany’s side, and on September 8 Marshal Badoglio, who had succeeded Mussolini, announced in a broadcast that his Government had requested an armistice from the allies. Hitler reacted in characteristic manner. He told the Germans that the collapse of Italy had been foreseen for a long time, not because Italy had not the necessary means of defending herself effectively, or because the necessary German support was not forthcoming but rather as a result of the failure or the absence of will of those elements in Italy who, to crown their systematic sabotage, had now brought about the capitulation. Though Hitler was able to claim this foreknowledge of events in Italy, it was clear from his speech, which was direct and effective, that he did not underestimate the seriousness of his new problem.
