THE GERMAN CAULDRON:I
By H. POWYS GREENWOOD T GOT back from Berlin the day after the Jubilee, having. been. obliged to stay over for an interview with General von Reichenau, now for obvious -reasons one of the most important men in Germany. I had spent about ten days there. On the surface little seemed changed, since my last visit over five months ago. There were the same-flags, the same crowds-1,700,000 Berliners Perhaps there were fewer black and brown uniforms ; certainly the grey of the Reichswehr was more in evidence. And yet I suppose few periods of human history have shown a more dizzy tempo of development. I dined with a friend who had. spent the previous evening- at a reunion of his disbanded S.A. " Sturm " where the good old days of the brown revolution were celebrated in beer and corn brandy. As he said, all that seems to belong to a past. generation. Yet June 30th was less than twelve months ago.
Last December I left Berlin an optimist. It looked as though a real opportunity for securing peace in Europe was about to present. itself. The peaceful. completion of the Saar plebiscite, which showed at any rate that some political changes could be made without war, lOokedlike a cheerful portent. But as I came home through Paris my hopes evaporated in a mist of words and paragraphs and Pacts.—Eastern and Danubian Pacts, Russo-French and Franco-Italian Pacts, "'collective security," the " rule of law," Articles X and XVI (never Article XIX) ; every- thing. regarded, by those who explained them to me so carefully, as.means to hem in a rearmed and nationalistic- Germany. No one with any idea of the temper of that Germany could believe in a genuine understanding on such a basis.
International negotiations have now been proceeding. since December. There have been visits and counter- visits, diplomatic notes, Stresai Geneva ; and now the " world " is awaiting Hitler's declaration on Foreign Policy. Opinions- differ about what he is going to say.
After the Geneva vote he is credibly reported to• have stormed for five hours, and his first reaction must un- doubtedly have been to tell Europe in so many words to go to the devil. But the Fuehrer never takes a decision in a hurry. In the-Meantime the influence of the Foreign Office, assisted by the strongest moderating. force in all Germany—the Reichswehr—has been at work.
On the other hand, there is no doubt that the German. Government was exceedingly disappointed at the response evoked. by what was regarded as a very generous con- cession—their declaration of willingness to subscribe to a, multilateral. non-aggression Pact, whether the other.
signatories. make arrangements for automatic mutual assistance or not. As an influential member of the- German.Foreign. Office put it to me; when_ Germany made an offer,—for example the. one in question, or her offer to negotiate the Western Air Pact immediately, —somehow or other nothing more seemed to be heard: of it. This, he suggested, was hardly encouraging for Herr Hitler.
• But the real tragedy of the Situation. does not lie so much in the deadlock: of" the negotiations initiated on February 3rd. It goes very much deeper than that. WhateVer Herr Hitler may say, he will not—indeed perhaps he cannot—alter the fundamentals of the European problem. Even, some arrangement of pacts and armaments limitation would give little more than a. tem- Porary respite, during which the new Germany would get stronger and stronger and no less nationalistic. In &mem- orandum to the War Cabinet in 19I6; Lord Balfour ex.* pressed the hope that after the War no attempt would be made to interfere with German domestic policy, particu- larly in the matter of military sovereignty. The only attempt,- he wrote, to destroy militarism in a defeated country was• that of Napoleon after Jena. No attempt was ever less successful. It forced Prussia. to evolve the short service system, which was the very basis of her military and political strength in the following century. Lord Balfour's words were disregarded, and precisely the same thing has happened again. The attempt to impose unilateral' disarmament upon Germany has impelled her to evolve a new system of militarism, which just as in 1812_ is in a sense the very basis of the national- resurg-,. ewe.
In the small- but highly trained Reichswehr, Germany has the efficient mechanized striking-force which military thinkers like General von Seekt and Captain Liddell: Hart believe to be the army of the future. The rigid control of the dictatorship makes it possible to organize the civilian population for emergencies such as air attacks in the most complete manner conceivable, while all resources of propaganda are being used to impregnate the people with an indestructible morale. Another in- disputable necessity of modern war—complete industrial organization to that end—has been almost fully attained. General Goering probably spoke the truth when he said that his new air force had actually come into being since the last time he declared that he had .none: A few orders sufficed to convert the peaceful town of Dessau into as sort of Ford factory for military aeroplanes, and to comb out the finest precision workers in. Germany from non- essential factories and set them on the job. As for physical training and discipline, they are perhaps. the most essential features of National' Socialism. The Chan- cellor of the Exchequer remarked with great complacency that 'the population of Great Britain had smoked, I forget how many, extra millions of cigarettes and drunk so many extra- cups of tea in the prosperous year of 1934_ Tea and cigarettes do not make soldiers. The _German population lives frugally. They have few cigarettes and less_ tea. Their fare is rough ; they eat rye bread and sausage and drink coffee substitutes.- Schacht's policy of self-sufficiency is accustoming them. to do without foreign' luxuries and even what we should regard- as necessities. Finally, the agricultural development policy of the Nazi regime is rapidly putting Germany in. a position to snap, her fingers at any blockade.
..1 do-not mean for a moment to suggest that Herr Hitler is not sincere when he-says that he wants-peace and under- standing, above all with England. On Jubilee day the German papers were full of pictures of the King and Queen and sentimental articles about them. Several old friends 'spoke to me almost with tears in their eyes on the subject. The same afternoon r went into one of those- little war museums which are so• common in the new Germany. It was. run by a disabled. ex-officer who told me that he would rather lose his other leg than see Europe- plunged' once more into the horrors- of 1914-1918—horrors which. his museum made no attempt to disguise. After all; Herr Hitler is an ex-service man, and. the opinion of. those who • have experienced war is- still a great force in Germany. And even the younger men, however fanatical adherents of National Socialism they may be, seem to.. realize that another war in Europe would. be catastrophic. The heads of the army are certainly no believers in a " fresh and , joyous war.." ; they are of quite a different type, and. they have inculcated quite a different tone. from that generally prevalent in 1914. In a speech the other day General von Blomberg made a significant statement—that Europe was too small for a modern battlefield. He was referring presumably not to technical possibilities but to the obvious insanity of an inter- European struggle when other dangers might be threatening.
The lesson of 1914 is that when the international atmo- sphere is sufficiently highly charged with explosive Material the guns go off by themselves. At the present time the charging is rapidly proceeding from two direc- tions. In the first place there is everywhere in Europe, even in rearming Germany, an atmosphere of fear. The German leaders are still obviously preoccupied by a possibility' of France, Russia and the Little Entente engaging in a preventive war. They know of course that the political leaders of those countries will not just sit down and decide to attack Germany. But they are afraid that some explosion somewhere, some action by fanatics unknown to Berlin—for example another Dollfuss murder—might give the necessary pretext. As for the fear prevailing among Germany's neighbours, there is no need to labour the point. In the second place the immense vital force in the Nazi revolution is bound in the long run to find an outlet somewhere ; even Herr Hitler might not be able to prevent this if Germany feels herself .encircled and isolated. '
On the evening of May 1st I watched a remarkable military torchlight display at which General Goering made a speech. There were the Berlin Watch regiment of the Reichswehr, the magnificent specimens of manhood in Hitler's bodyguard, General Goering's own regiment, and serried ranks of S.S. and • S.A. But I did -not pay as much attention to the display itself as to the tense fanatical expression on the faces of the onlookers. I went away feeling that I had looked into the soul of a nation.
Somehow or other I returned from Berlin feeling that the situation was far more serious than I had ever imagined. Indeed I cannot resist the profound- convic- tion, for what it is worth, that, unless we in this country do something very drastic about it all, an explosion will take place which will wreck the whole tottering fabric of our civilization. What should be done about it is a question which I propose. to try to answer in my next article.
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