mocked at the “Esperanto languages of peace, of reconciliation among nations” that weaponless Germany had spoken for years. “It would seem that this language is not so well understood internationally. Our language is being understood again only since we have had a large army.” And, reverting to the old Lohengrin image, the idea of the White Knight with whom he usually identified, he declared: “We move through the world as a peace-loving angel, but one armed in iron and steel.”
At any rate he was now secure enough to show considerable pique. In the course of the spring he did make still another attempt at approaching England by offering a guarantee for Belgium. But at the same time he offended the British government by abruptly canceling an announced visit of his Foreign Minister von Neurath to London. And when Lord Lothian called upon him on May 4, 1937, for a second conversation, he showed himself out of sorts and vehemently criticized British policy. The British were incapable of recognizing the Communist peril, he said, and in general did not understand their own interests. He added that he had always been pro-English, had been so during his time as a “writer.” A second war between the German and the English peoples would be tantamount to the departure of both powers from the stage of history; it would be as useless as it was ruinous. Instead, he was offering collaboration on the basis of defined interests.28 Once more he waited for a reaction from London. He waited half a year. When it did not come, he reshaped his design.
Although an essential premise of Hitler’s ideal scheme had remained unfulfilled, he had nevertheless carried out his projects to an amazing extent. Italy and Japan were won over. England was wavering and had lost considerable prestige. France’s weakness had been exposed. No less important was the fact that he had destroyed the principle of collective security and restored the
Reactions in Germany itself extended to considerably greater depths. The shrinking number of skeptics had the wind knocked out of their sails. Ivone Kirkpatrick, first secretary at the British Embassy in Berlin, recorded the fact that Germans who had been calling for caution found all their warnings refuted. Kirkpatrick observed that Hitler was reinforced in his conviction that he could do anything and that many Germans now enlisted under the Nazi banners, having held off only because they thought Hitler was going to lead the country straight to disaster.31 Instead he was piling up successes, winning prestige, international respect. A nation with pride still badly shaken at last found itself impressively represented, and derived a grim satisfaction from the surprise coups which left yesterday’s powerful victors stupefied. An elemental craving for righting scores was being gratified.
The regime’s achievements at home answered this craving in another way. The recently crushed country, which had seemed to incorporate all the crises and abuses of the age within its apparently hopeless national and social wretchedness, suddenly found itself admired as a model. Goebbels, characteristically self-congratulating, called this unexpected change “the greatest political miracle of the twentieth century.” Delegations from all over the world came visiting to study German measures for economic revival, for the elimination of unemployment. They looked into the widely ramified system of social benefits: the improvement of labor conditions, the factory canteens and workers’ housing, the newly established athletic fields, parks, kindergartens, the plant contests and professional competitions, the Strength-Through-Joy fleet of cruise ships and the people’s vacation resorts. The model of a hotel for the masses, planned to extend for about 2? miles on the island of Rugen, with its own special subway system to shuttle the tens of thousands of vacationers, received the Grand Prix at the Paris World’s Fair of 1937. Even critical outsiders were impressed by the regime’s accomplishments. In a letter to Hitler, Carl J. Burckhardt hailed the “Faustian achievement of the Autobahn and the Labor Service.”32
In his major Reichstag speech on January 30, 1937, Hitler had declared that the “period of surprise actions” was over. His next steps followed with a good deal of logic from the initial position he had assumed with each of his actions. Just as the treaty with Poland had given him the principal key to the advance against Czechoslovakia, the reconciliation with Italy offered the lever for the annexation of Austria. German politicians began paying frequent visits to Poland. Polish politicians were invited to Germany. Hitler issued assurances of friendship and statements that Germany withdrew all claims on Polish territory. By such steps he tried to draw Poland closer, and while he had Goring, on a visit to Warsaw, emphasize again that Germany took no interest in the Polish Corridor, he himself told Josef Lipski, the Polish ambassador in Berlin, that Danzig, so long a point of contention, was really in the sphere of Poland. Simultaneously he reinforced the relatively new ties with Italy. Early in November, 1937, he persuaded Italy, again with Ribbentrop’s aid, to join the Anti-Comintern Pact. Joseph C. Grew, the American ambassador in Tokyo, pointed out in an analysis of this triangle that the participating powers were not only antiCommunist but that their policy and their practices ran counter to those of the so-called democratic powers; they represented a coalition of have-nots who had made “overthrow of the status quo” their goal. Significantly, Mussolini let it be known in the conversations with Ribbentrop that preceded the signing ceremony that he was tired of playing the guardian of Austrian independence. In other words, the Italian dictator was preparing to abandon his old stand for the sake of his new friendship. He did not seem to sense that by so doing he was giving up his last card. “We cannot impose independence on Austria.”
This conversation took place in the Palazzo Venezia on November 5, 1937, the same day Hitler in the Berlin chancellery gave the Polish ambassador a guarantee for the integrity of Danzig; at 4 P.M. on the very same day Hitler met with the leaders of the armed forces. The Foreign Minister, von Neurath, was also present. In a four- hour-long, top-secret speech Hitler revealed to them his “fundamental ideas.” These were the old obsessions of racial menace, existential anxiety, and geographic constriction, for which he saw the “only and perhaps seemingly visionary relief” in the winning of new
View of an Unperson
He stands like a statue, grown beyond the measure of earthly man.
At this point the reader may question, both on moral and literary grounds, the emphasis we have placed on Hitler’s achievements and triumphs, and wonder if the negative aspects of these years have not deliberately been ignored. But this was indeed the period when he developed remarkable control and energy, seemed to know intuitively when to push forward and when to show restraint, threatened, cajoled, and took action so forcefully that all resistance yielded before him. He managed to concentrate upon his person all the attraction, the curiosity, and the fears of the age. This capacity was further strengthened by his extraordinary gift to represent this power with overwhelming effect.
This moment in history is typical for Hitler’s peculiarly patchwork career, a career marked by such sharp breaks that it is often difficult to find the connecting links between the different phases. The fifty-six years of his