The Making of a Tyrant
Francis Neilson
[Francis Neilson completed a controversial
five-volume history of the
Second World War, The Tragedy of Europe. The following is
Neilson's reflection on the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and Joseph
Stalin, published in the American Journal of Economics and
Sociology, 1958]
DURING A VISIT to England in 1957 I met three British generals and
some well-known historians. In discussing the condition of
international affairs and the portents of another war, I was asked to
name a work on the causes of the last world conflict, which was
written without national bias or party prejudice. I could think of no
one book by an American or English author I had read, which dealt with
the causes in a general survey of the evidence now extant.
However, a score of volumes I had searched contained enough reliable
information from many different sources. But it would be a huge task
for an industrious student to glean thoroughly the thousands of pages,
and present in chronological order the policies and consequences of
the political and diplomatic actions of the powers directly concerned
with Germany's economic and industrial revival under Hitler.
Alan Bullock's Study of Hitler
THE BOOK that seemed to interest my English friends was Professor
Alan Bullock's
Hitler, A Study in Tyranny (London, Odhams Press, 1952). I was
not surprised to learn from one general that it was the best work he
had read and that it had been praised highly. When I gave him my
notion of it, he was a bit shocked and asked me to tell him why I had
a poor opinion of it. Discussion of several points followed, but
whether my adverse criticism was well taken I could not tell.
When I read it some six years ago, I intended to review it for this
JOURNAL (The American Journal of Economics and Sociology), but
I had to put it aside because of the pressure of other work. Now I
take it up again, having glanced here and there at my markings, and I
will set forth the reasons I gave to my friends for "damning it
with faint praise."
The crisis which arose in 1938, after the State of Czechoslovakia
fell to pieces, marks a point in the course of events, which gave
Hitler reason to consider that the war party in Great Britain was bent
upon his destruction. He was better informed about the work of
warmongers, as he called them, than the British public. Hence,
Bullock's chapter "From Vienna to Prague 1938-39" calls for
drastic revision. Indeed, it is only necessary to point out that he
has ignored much of the information in Documents on British
Foreign Policy, 1919-1939, 3rd Series -- Edited by E. L. Woodward
and Rohan Butler, London, H.M.S.O., 1949, Vols. I-IX, esp. Vol. II,
pp. 635-41. -- (which he mentions in his bibliography). At least two
documents of great importance -- Nos. 1228 and 1229 -- are not dealt
with by Bullock, and they contain material that calls for quite
different interpretation.
I suggested to my friends that psychologically it was possible for
Hitler to be speaking to Chamberlain in Munich, while at the same time
envisaging Winston Churchill and his co-conspirators. In dealing with
these grave problems, English historians have let Churchill off
lightly because he has been the only political idol they could
worship. These and other shortcomings in Bullock's work may be set
right when the time comes for him to revise the present volume. For,
indeed, there is no Hitler, the "tyrant," without Churchill,
the "warmonger."
The Problem of Czechoslovakia
IT IS SOMETHING of a relief to find, in section XII of Professor
Bullock s chapter "From Vienna to Prague," that he has
steered clear of the nonsensical propaganda which was current after
Hacha and Chvalkovsky went to Berlin to see Hitler. We learn from
Bullock's description of what occurred that it was a voluntary act on
the part of the new President and his Foreign Minister to go to Berlin
to intercede with Hitler. Hitler did not order them to come. Moreover,
the meeting took place in Berlin, and Hacha was received with full
diplomatic courtesy and lodged in Berlin's best hotel. Hitler did not
storm and rave and browbeat his visitors, as the French Ambassador,
Robert Coulondre, has stated. On the whole, the review of events is
accurate, and information of a later date than 1952 confirms the story
as it is told by Professor Bullock.
Yet, there is very much more to it than we learn in this volume. He
makes no reference to the shocking treatment the minorities suffered
at the hands of the Czechs. Yeats-Brown's story in
European Jungle (Philadelphia, Macrae Smith, 1939, pp. 378-91)
is only one of several told by men on the spot, who witnessed the
outrages perpetrated upon the Sudetens. It is a pity this is lacking
because it casts a different light upon the reason why Hitler occupied
Prague.
For nearly twenty years the minorities in the new State, put together
by the tinkers in Paris, in 1918, had sent petition after petition to
the League of Nations, asking for redress, but without hope of
response. The promises of Masaryk and Benes about the status of the
minorities in Czechoslovakia were not kept, and it was not until two
years before Hitler went into Poland that we learned what the promises
really were. I am indebted to Yeats-Brown for the following statement:
It is the intention of the Czecho-Slovak Government to
create the organization of the State by accepting as a basis of
national rights the principles applied in the constitution of the
Swiss Republic-that is, to make the Czecho-Slovak Republic a sort of
Switzerland, taking into consideration, of course, the special
conditions in Bohemia.
Schools will be maintained by the State, throughout its territory,
from the public funds, and will be established for the various
nationalities in all the communes where the number of children,
legally ascertained, prove the necessity of establishing such
schools.
All public offices, in which, in principle, the languages will have
equal value, will be open to the various nationalities inhabiting
the Republic.
The Courts will be mixed, and Germans will have the right to plead
before the highest Courts in their own language.
The local administration (of communes and "circles") will
be carried on in the language of the majority of the population.
(0p. cit., p. 381)
No one has suggested that the founder of the State
ever intended the minorities should suffer as they did. But for some
years he was in the position of authority when complaints came to
headquarters at Prague describing their distress and the cause of it.
Yet, he did nothing to mend matters. As for Benes, the minorities
looked upon him as a bitter tyrant. But was he at any time free to
act? Was he not the victim of the secret society, Narodne Jednota,
and did he not have to knuckle down to their notion of how the State
should be run ? If we are to get a glimmering of light upon the awful
plight of the minorities growing worse year by year for nearly two
decades, it is surely necessary for the historian to let us know the
dark side of the business as well. Here is one short paragraph from an
eye witness:
During my visit in March, 1938, I saw with my own eyes
that everywhere the Narodne Jednota had pursued its work of "Czechization"
with ruthless efficiency. Karlsbad and Marienbad, thriving cure
resorts before the Great War, were ghosts of their former selves,
and Teplitz-Schonau, another watering-place, was half-desolate. It
was snowing when I left Teplitz and drove through the bleak
industrial neighborhood of Dux. There I saw factory after factory
deserted, with broken windows, like the eye-sockets of a skull, and
indeed they were the corpses of industries killed in this racial
quarrel. (Ibid.,, p. 384)
The precedents which Hitler might have considered in occupying
another people's territory are so numerous in European history that it
is only necessary to mention the occupation of the Rhineland and other
portions of Germany. How often has this occurred since the armies of
Louis XIV ransacked the Palatinate?
Stalin as a Tyrant
YET, PROFESSOR BULLOCK'S persuasively written book, containing
chapters of information that will be of use to future historians, is
lacking in many other respects. Some of these I shall now place on
record. The use of the term "tyrant" cannot be applied to
the Hitler who set Germany on its feet. He was not a tyrant in his
methods of gaining power nor of maintaining it, until he was forced to
go to war. The early struggles in Munich were fought out in street
riots. There it was a case of killing or being killed. His method of
getting rid of his domestic enemies at that time was no different from
that of other leaders of the past in England and foreign countries.
From the days of the Conquest of Britain to the Reform Act of 1832,
English history is replete with the methods Hitler had to adopt.
Of course the sentimental Liberal, pinning his faith to the
franchise, is disturbed because the electorate of Bavaria was not
given the chance to vote for one party or the other when Hitler first
entered the political arena. When the first uprising took place in
Munich in April and May, 1919, and the Communists were overthrown,6
there was no electoral means of taking a vote. All this has been made
plain by writers of repute in many volumes, but it is almost useless
now to attempt to enlighten the public whose minds have been shaped by
the propaganda of the war.
Upon examination, it will be found that Hitler, as a tyrant, had
several peers of various caliber, who were exercising their tyrannical
policies during the period when he was being denounced in the press of
the Allied countries as a raucous agitator, a slapstick comedian, and
a wretched house painter. What Stalin did in Russia will never be
exceeded by a dozen tyrants. The records of the concentration camps of
Siberia, given to us by Ciliga (Anton Ciliga,
Au Pays du Grand Mensonge, Paris, 1938) and Souvarine (Boris
Souvarine, Stalin, A Critical Survey of Bolshevism, New York,
Longmans Green& Co., 1939) in their books, are extremely
revolting. Another form of tyranny was exercised by Eduard Benes who
had the people of four different nationalities under his heel. There
was also Franco in Spain, who certainly adopted the methods of a
belligerent tyrant to quell the disturbances that raged from Barcelona
to Cadiz and from Corunna to Valencia.
It will appear strange to the student of the next generation to read
the following in the first paragraph of the Epilogue of Professor
Bullock's book:
In this age of Unenlightened Despotism Hitler has had
more than a few rivals, yet he remains, so far, the most remarkable
of those who have used modern techniques to apply the classic
formulas of tyranny. (Op.Cit., p.735)
It may be asked if Hitler's methods were comparable to those of his
fellow dictators and what were the modern techniques that he used. The
few affairs known as putsches, in which he rid himself of
unreliable persons, occur in every rebel crisis.
It should be easy for the intelligent reader who has given some study
to these affairs to recall many examples of the practice of modern
techniques by Stalin. I have already mentioned works dealing with the
concentration camps of Siberia and Murmansk. They stand as a record of
atrocity unequalled by any tyrant described in political history. The
murder of Polish officers at Katyn was a novel experience in military
methods of wholesale slaughter of captive troops. The trials of
alleged conspirators was another new and unusual method which amazed
serious thinkers of the western world.
These and others like them were enough to shock the governments of
the west. But in the principal States, including America, there were
thousands who were either working for or hoping for a change in their
democracies, with the prospect of establishing a Communist regime such
as Lenin and Trotsky hoped for Russia. Many of these people were ready
to pooh-pooh the facts given in works that exposed the methods used by
Stalin for self aggrandizement. Some of them considered them merely
incidental affairs that would crop up from time to time. They felt
sure the day would come for Russia when these affairs would be
forgotten.
It was not until the figures of depopulation were published that some
of those who were inclined to look for a bright side of Communism gave
grave consideration to Bolshevik rule. A few who pondered this matter
renounced their allegiance to Socialist groups, notably Max Eastman.
Here is what Souvarine has to say about a form of genocide.
. . . The test of population which Stalin keeps
concealed, speaks more eloquently than any other. On the basis of
the 1926 census there were 147 million inhabitants, and assuming a
birth rate of 2.3 per cent per annum, or an annual increase of
roughly three million, a figure which Stalin keeps repeating, the
second Five Year Plan anticipated a population of 180 millions at
the end of 1937. The census taken at the beginning of that year,
after a minute preparation and with an army of over a million
officials, ended in the arrest of the directors of the statistical
bureau and of their close collaborators, the results remaining a
mystery. According to W. Krivitsky, whose excellent confidential
source of information is the G.P.U.: "Instead of the 171
million inhabitants calculated for 1937, only 145 million were
found; thus nearly 30 million people in the U.S.S.R. are missing.''
(Op. cit., p. 669)
The figures for depopulation may startle those who have swallowed
wholesale the figures of Hitler's work in concentration camps. But
they were confirmed later when the kulak uprising was crushed. In
that, over a period of six years, something like three or four million
people died.
It may be inferred from these examples that a study in tyranny-even
of Adolph Hitler-cannot be complete unless comparisons are made of the
techniques of his period. But why should we be shocked at the cruel
enormities of these tyrants? Is it not rather late in the day to feel
shivers up and down our spines at what happened in the two world wars
? Many of the statesmen of England not only paid visits to Berlin, for
fox-shooting and other business; they even went to Berchtesgaden and
Munich to confer with Hitler while, at the same time, there were men
in Parliament (some had been cabinet ministers) who were seeking
favors from Stalin. They seemed not to be afraid of these monsters nor
loath to "shake hands with murder," as Churchill called it.
Lord Londonderry, after a visit to Germany, returned to England
without a scratch. Lloyd George enjoyed his sojourn at Hitler's villa
in Bavaria and, when he was safely back in England, said, "The
Germans are the happiest people I have met." As for Lord Halifax,
his religious, sectarian views of honor and prestige in no way
deterred him from having a long interview with Hitler after Goring's
fox-shooting party came to an end in 1937. (Halifax, Fulness of
Days, London, Collins, 1957, p.184)
The encomiums showered upon Hitler by British statesmen may be put
aside by the unintelligent as mere "platform oratory," or
the exaggerated notions of garrulous politicians and servile
biographers. So little did Churchill fear the Hitler of the first four
years of his leadership that he wrote in Step by Step:
. . . One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his
patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated I hope we should
find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us
back to our place among the nations. (Op. cit., New York,
Putnam, 1939, pp.143-44)
Surely this indicates that Churchill was not at all afraid of the
German tyrant. For who would be so unkind as to believe he would be
guilty of inflicting upon England a leader who resembled Hitler, the
tyrant? Perhaps the climax in associating with tyrants was reached
when, at a banquet in Moscow, Churchill, in a toast, took the Russian
dictator to his heart:
It is no exaggeration or compliment of a florid kind when
I say that we regard Marshal Stalin's life as most precious to the
hopes and hearts of all of us.... I walk through this world with
greater courage and hope when I find myself in a relation of
friendship and intimacy with this great man, whose fame has gone out
not only over all Russia, but the world. (Churchill, The Second
World War: Triumph and Tragedy, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1953,
p. 361)
Hitler's Achievements in Pre-War Germany
ONE MIGHT ASK, what are we to make of all this contradictory attitude
of mind and action on the part of British politicians and historians
who present pictures of tyrants? Is there another side to all this
that is not revealed by Professor Bullock? His bibliography is one of
the longest I have seen in a work on the war or, indeed, upon the
persons that participated in it. But when a student starts to work, he
will wonder why such an essential volume as
Hitler Germany by Cesare Santoro (Berlin, Internationaler
Verlag, 1939), which presents the Germany and Hitler that Churchill
admired, is missing. The author was an Italian correspondent at
Berlin. I do not know whether there was an American or a British
edition of this extraordinary tome. The one I have was printed in
Germany and published in 1939. I am assured by those who know that it
is an excellent translation and that the author was a reputable
journalist. It is a huge volume containing many pages of
illustrations. The student cannot afford to overlook the information
it contains.
Long as Professor Bullock's bibliography is (running to some twelve
pages), it has the titles of many works not dealt with by the author
in his chapters. I could mention a score of books that he does not
include, which were published in America and England before Hitler
attacked Poland. There were Arthur Bryant's Unfinished Victory,15
Wyndham Lewis' Left Wings Over Europe (London, Jonathan Cape,
1936), and two works on Central Europe published by Butterworth and
Company. (The Czechs and Their Minorities, by "Diplomaticus,"
1938 and Czechoslovakia Within, by Bertram de Colonna, 1938)
But the book that was of unique importance in understanding the
condition of Europe before Hitler became Chancellor is Colonel E.
Alexander Powell's Thunder Over Europe. (New York, Ives
Washburn, 1932) No other work I have seen describes the dangers within
Germany and also in the States round about her, especially those of
the Little Entente (made especially to hem Germany in, or as the
phrase goes "to encircle her" ) as this one does. The
author, a well-known explorer and traveler, writes as an eye witness
of the events he sets before us. He was the first man to realize what
Hitler was doing and what his achievements meant to the western
powers.
Powell came to the conclusion that Europe needed a thorough
housecleaning, and that she should get rid of her politicians and
diplomatists. He says in his introduction:
The most discouraging feature of the whole business is
the moral cowardice and lack of vision of the European statesmen,
who, with a few notable exceptions, are only politicians, and of
mediocre intellectual caliber at that. They are cowards because they
are afraid of public Opinion... (Op. cit., p. xi.)
It would take up far too much space to deal with a dozen of the books
I possess (published before 1939), which have been overlooked by
Professor Bullock. One reason why many of them are unknown is that,
owing to straightforward statements about the opponents of Hitler,
many of them became, on publication, taboo -- not salable -- the words
used by one of the foremost booksellers of the United States. Several
works published in London before 1940 met with a storm of disapproval
which in some cases meant they had to be removed from booksellers'
counters.
It is all different now. The period of hectic acrimony is passing
away, and the students who were children when it took place will,
without antipathy, search for the sources that will enable them to
interpret the trend of events aright and produce a work without
prejudice.
There is a book of historical value mentioned by Bullock in the
bibliography. It is The House that Hitler Built, written by
Professor Stephen H. Roberts (London, Methuen, 1937), of the
University of Sydney, Australia, who spent sixteen months in Berlin
when Hitler was Reichsführer. It contains much authentic
matter that should have caused Bullock to reflect before he took some
of his hasty decisions. Roberts says that nineteen petitions were sent
to the League of Nations by the minorities suppressed in
Czechoslovakia. There was no response from the peace-loving democrats
at Geneva. He also tells us when the making of the Nazi army began.
Furthermore, he gives an enlightening description of Hitler, the man.
The portrait presented by Professor Roberts is so widely different
from the one we find in many biographies and histories of Nazi Germany
that we wonder how it is possible for anyone to think of Adolf Hitler
as a tyrant; at any rate, up to the time when Neville Chamberlain gave
the pledge to support Poland in case she was attacked.
Hitler's Use of "Modern Techniques"
HENCE, THE QUESTI0N ARISES: How and when did Hitler begin to use "modern
techniques" to coerce the German people? For twenty-five years I
have studied scores of books by American, British, and European
authors, written about this unique figure in political history. If
there were space I could draw up a list of more than fifty works not
mentioned by Professor Bullock or any other English historian. There
are certain facts extant, which reveal the mind of Hitler from the
time that he became
Reichsführer, and some of them may be found in the
message that he addressed to the powers. On May 17, 1933 he declared:
. . . Germany will be perfectly ready to disband her
entire military establishment and destroy the small amount of arms
remaining to her, if the neighboring countries will do the same
thing with equal thoroughness. (Quoted by Friedrich Stieve, What
the World Rejected, Washington, D.C., 1940, p.2)
There was no response; indeed it may be said it was rejected with
contempt by the peace-loving nations. When he broke away from the
League of Nations in October 1933, he again addressed the powers in a
most extraordinary document. Even as late as March 1936, he desired to
enter into agreements with European governments for the limitation of
armaments, and asked for a commission to be organized, in which
Germany, Belgium and France would each be entitled to send a
representative to discuss outstanding matters concerning frontiers and
armaments. He made no progress at all with his proposals.
Nearly all matters concerning warfare were to be discussed by this
commission. It may surprise those in the countries that suffered from
the dropping of bombs to learn that Hitler was ready to join with
other nations in prohibiting the use of incendiary bombs of all kinds.
All these sane overtures received not the attention of a single
minister in one of the democracies, and their well-beloved subjects
never knew anything about them. Were these offers part of the "modern
technique" of a tyrant?
The strangest thing about all this is the gathering of millions and
millions of the youth of Germany to support Hitler's rule. What an
exceedingly unusual demonstration of trust to be given to a tyrant!
Alfred Fabre-Luce's book, Histoire de la Révolution Européene
(Paris, Editions Domat), was published in 1954. From his account of
Hitler's intentions in regard to Poland, we learn that on March 25,
1939, Hitler told General von Brauchitsch that he had no intention of
employing force for the settlement of the Polish question. But on
April 3 he settled upon a day. The passages of historical value are as
follows:
La volte-face britannique a réveillé
l'amour-propre du führer. Comme, en mai 1938, la lecture
d'articles de la presse étrangère assurant qu'il
venait d'abandonner un projet d'attaque contre l'Tchécoslovaquie
l'avait déterminé à envahir ce pays, le bruit
fait autour de la garantie anglaise le décide à
attaquer la Pologne. L'année précédente, il
avait fixé une date limite: le 1er octobre. Il en fixé
une à nouveau: le 1er septembre. Sa résolution, comme
la précédente, va dans le sens de revendications
allemandes préexistantes, mais elle a le même caractère
d'improvisation. Le 25 mars encore, Hitler disait a Brauschitch
qu'il n'avait pas l'intention d'employer la force pour la règlement
de la question polonaise. Le 3 avril, il a déja choisi son
jour.*
* (The British about-face offended
the führer's pride. Just as when, in May 1938, a reading of
foreign newspaper articles assuring that he had abandoned his
project of attacking Czechoslovakia made him make a decision to
attack that country, the fuss made about the English guarantee
persuaded him to attack Poland. The year before he had set a final
date--Oct. 1. I Again he set a date: Sept. I. This decision, like
the previous one, goes along in the direction of old German demands,
but it has the same character of improvisation. As late as the 25th
of March, Hitler was telling Brauchitsch that he did not have the
intention of using force to settle the Polish question. On the 3rd
of April, he had already picked his day.) Fabre-Luce, op. cit., pp.
210-11.
This statement is confirmed in several works, notably by Professor
Bullock. After the fall of Poland, when Hitler saw the ruins of
Warsaw, it is recorded that he cried, "Look what they made me do!"
The reader will ask, "Who are 'they'?" And we shall now
attempt to find out how certain members of Parliament and secretaries
at the Foreign Office at Downing Street conspired to make a tyrant of
the German führer.
Much has been made of his going into the Rhineland. But surely if
Germany had won the First World War and occupied the counties of the
Wash, would Englishmen have neglected to take the first opportunity to
reclaim them for the realm? In this case, Hitler was under no
obligation to observe the conditions of the treaties that were signed
under the gun. Erzberger and his fellows were merely a makeshift
government. When a semblance of order was brought about, the German
people repudiated without demonstration the treaties that subjected
them to ignominy and shame. This I learned from Walther Rathenau, that
well-informed economic expert who later became German Minister of
Foreign Affairs.
When, in memory, one harks back to the time when Hitler was striving
for sole power, it is rather disturbing to remember that large,
influential bodies of British politicians and their supporters were
not averse to the dictatorships of Stalin, Benes or Franco. Hitler's
desire to bring the sequestered Germans into the Reich once again was
prosecuted without bloodshed. The so-called rape of Austria was the
culmination of a great movement for an Anschluss. He and his troops
entered Austrian territory without firing a shot and, according to the
reports of unprejudiced ob- servers, were received by the people of
Austria with shouts of joy. When order was restored and a vote taken,
the majority given to Hitler amazed the prophets of disaster in other
countries. Yeats-Brown in his European Jungle is only one of a
half-dozen observers who has given a true account of the "rape of
Austria."
When, then, did Hitler become a tyrant, adopting "modern
techniques" ? He did not assume power in 1933 by such methods,
nor was it necessary for him to act the tyrant in putting Germany upon
her feet. It is rather difficult to pierce the confusion of thought
that has befogged this matter. The vast majority of the people of
Germany did not regard him as a tyrant. He did for them what no
first-class European power had been able to do for its subjects.
On this point the student might consult the files of The Times
(London) for October 11 and 13 and November 13, 1940 for information.
That newspaper quite frankly stated that "one of the fundamental
causes of the war has been the unrelaxing effort of Germany since 1918
to secure wide enough foreign markets to straighten her finance."
In another issue we were informed that nothing was ever heard of the
necessity of increasing taxation; that public savings bank deposits
touched new monthly records again and again; and that money was so
plentiful that the interest rate for the Reich loans could reasonably
be reduced from 41/2 per cent to 4 per cent. Small wonder Churchill
said that Hitler had achieved some of the most remarkable things in
the history of the world.
It is quite unnecessary for anybody at this time to talk about making
excuses for Hitler, that is, the Hitler who existed before Neville
Chamberlain gave the pledge to Poland.
The Behavior of a Tyrant
HITLER IS NOW an historic figure, and as the years pass the student
will learn that in the matter of absorbing interest for people in all
parts of the world he will rival the notoriety of any politician that
has appeared in the Christian era. Professor Bullock might have done
much, in presenting his portrait of him, to clear away the drivel of
the broadcaster and the gross misrepresentations of him fostered by
politicians and editors to make the people of different countries war
minded.
It is hard, however, to tolerate patiently Bullock's grave omissions,
his peculiar bias, and the indiscriminate use to which he puts the
term "tyranny." He gives us no record of the work that was
done by the British war party when Churchill was a private member of
the House. He is lenient in dealing with many of the documents
compiled by the British Foreign Office and (perhaps it is too much to
expect of such a work) he does not check them with the German
documents published before America declared war. I admit that this
calls for a tome in itself, and if the task were completed, no
publisher would think of dealing with it in a commercial way. It has
been done in parts, but who is to spend ten years at least in making a
thorough job of the matter?
Many questions arise from Bullock's use of the term "tyranny,"
and in connection with it, Hitler's use of "modern techniques"
to gain power. Is the reader to imagine that Hitler was a tyrant when
he was elected Chancellor of the Reich in 1933? Is it not stretching a
point much too far to suggest, if not assert, that he wielded
sufficient interest in that election to coerce the voters? The record
of it shows that he was the leader of a party and that he held no
government position. No one who has looked into this matter has
discovered any discreditable action on his part. Certainly Hindenburg
accepted the result and made no protest against the way the election
had been conducted. Why, then, should the term "tyranny" be
used in this case?
Professor Bullock forgets the undemocratic power that Roosevelt
arrogated to himself. And he overlooks the case of the imprisonment of
thousands of people in England who did not see eye to eye with
Churchill. The difference in numbers who suffered under duress is only
a matter of quantity. The principle of freedom of speech is as valid
in war time as it is in peace, but in the former case the politicians
must be shielded from criticism. When the Defence of the Realm Act
reached the House of Lords in August, 1914, the Lord Chancellor,
Halsbury, denounced it in scathing terms. It is evident that Professor
Bullock has forgotten this utterly un-English law.
The tyranny of isolating people in concentration camps was nothing
new in the Second World War. An example had been set by England in
South Africa, and the story of these camps is told in General
Christiaan De Wet's
Three Years' War (New York, Scribner, 1902), a book that was
taboo in England. The author presents the report that Jan Smuts
addressed to President Kruger. The whole of it should be read by those
historians who have presented the public with their views of the
concentration camps in the Second World War. I have space only to give
the reader a few sentences. De Wet says:
. . . Lord Kitchener began to carry out in the two
republics a policy distinguished by unheard-of barbarity and by
disregard of the elemental principles of all martial law.
(italics in original report)
In looking back over the wars since Joseph Chamberlain was Colonial
Secretary, one cannot escape the idea that during the conflicts
dictators, whether democratic or Nazi, and would-be dictators are
tarred with the same brush. To save themselves, the politicians have
to adopt the techniques of the cruelest of tyrants. In 1941 Lord
Davies wrote Foundations of Victory (London, Collins), in
which he tells the story of the concentration camps in England. It is
a revolting one, but the crushing indictment of the stupidity of the
Home Office under Sir John Anderson is one that cannot be overlooked.
Lord Davies says: "Unfortunately, however, Mr. Eden at the War
Office and Sir John Anderson at the Home Office did not appear to be
in the least perturbed; on the contrary, they rather prided themselves
upon their draconian methods." (Op. cit., p.144) In this
book the author points out with telling effect what Hitler thought of
the business.
Because Professor Bullock does not include many works that would have
been of use to him in a study of tyranny, I feel sure that the
research student of the future, who goes to work on the causes of
these wars and the political and military conduct of them, will find
that the omission is deliberate on the part of the author.
Politicians, whether they be democrats or totalitarians, are obliged
to save their reputations during wars. Thus, tyrannical methods cannot
be the monopoly of one particular person. The problem is a war
problem, whether against domestic enemies or foreign ones. It is not
the evil traits of this or that particular character; it is the
circumstances in which he finds himself, when he imagines the hoary
techniques of tyrannous cruelty will save him from opprobrium. The one
object, victory over foes, dominates every impulse of his being.
Defeat is oblivion. In such extremity he is driven to excesses that
are, even in military affairs, inhuman. Surely it is time the
sentimental Liberals should know that there never has been a "humane"
war.
One reason why we have not yet had a clear statement from the
evidence now extant may be that the Hitler of 1939-45 has dominated
the minds of our writers. However, he cannot be understood unless he
is seen as a protagonist in company with those of his enemies. And it
is not only the Hitler who defeated Poland in 1939 that must be
presented; it is necessary to have a clear picture of him, at least
from the time when he wrote Mein Kampf to March 1939, when
Neville Chamberlain's government gave the pledge to Poland to support
her in case of German attack.
It is well-nigh impossible to do justice to him by confusing the
Hitler of the war period with the man who put Germany on its feet. No
one recognized this so keenly as Churchill. But it should be
remembered that the latter's laudatory statements appeared in works
published before 1939. They may be found in Step by Step (Cit.
supra.) and Great Contemporaries (New York, Putnam, 1937,
pp. 225-32). This lack of a work by an American or British author
cannot be appreciated unless we are familiar with many books that have
appeared in France, Belgium and other European countries. We have no
such work as Fabre-Luce's Histoire de la Révolution Européenne
(Cit. supra) or André Maurois' Tragédie en
France (New York, Editions de la Maison Francaise, 1940). In this
regard it is only necessary to mention Luigi Villari's book, Italian
Foreign Policy under Mussolini (New York, Devi-Adair, 1956) to
understand why Churchill praised him and said he would have been with
him from the first had he been an Italian.
Therefore, the subtitle of Professor Bullock's book is somewhat
misleading. His subject is Hitler, but there is no evidence whatever
that he was oppressive or cruel before March 1939. To rid oneself of
opponents who threaten one's life cannot very well be set down to any
form of tyranny. Hitler's life was in danger from the time of the May
Day Putsch in Munich in 1923. He was not even a tyrant in the Greek
sense, for he was freely elected in 1933. He did not gain absolute
power by usurpation. Perhaps the term might be applied to him after he
started his campaign against Russia. Certainly the Hitler who put
Germany upon her feet was no tyrant.
Many of his well-known supporters and opponents have regarded him as
a most remarkable man. But in what way can it be explained that he
cheerfully welcomed several British statesmen to discuss European
affairs? Surely that is not the method of a tyrant. Even when the
unrest in Europe came to the boiling point, he saw Neville Chamberlain
five times (At Berchtesgaden, Sept. 15, 1938; at Godesberg, Sept. 22
and 23; at Munich, Sept. 29 and 30), a most extraordinary thing to do,
if he were bent upon war. He was under no obligation to see the
British Prime Minister, and yet together they signed a document to
discuss other difficulties that might arise. Hitler made no promise to
forego his intentions of bringing back the German minorities that had
been wrested from the Reich under the treaties of 1919-20. The Danzig
problem could not be dropped by him, and no one knew that better than
Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill.
For the latter had stated that it was one that had to be considered
and solved.
There was a tyrant in the patched-up State of Czechoslovakia, and
some three years before Hitler began to serve his sentence in the
Landsberg Prison (November 1923), a petition was sent to the League of
Nations, which put definite reasons for a consideration of the
formation of the State. It said:
. . . More than five million Germans, Magyars, and people
of other nationalities have not a single representative in this
National Assembly and all claims advanced by them have been waived
aside by the Czechs. All the fundamental laws concerning the
Constitution, and the language to be used in its administration, as
regards social reform, the expropriation of land, etc., have been
determined by this arbitrarily formed National Assembly without a
single German-Bohemian or Magyar having been allowed a voice.... ("Present
Conditions in Czecho-Slovakia, a Dangerous and Deplorable Situation,"
sent from a Correspondent in Prague, Foreign Affairs (London), Vol.
1, Spec. Supp (April 1920), p. 1)
This was the condition under Masaryk and Benes, nearly five years
before the first edition of Mein Kampf was published.
Hitler's Economics
ONE OF THE STRANGEST BLUNDERS Bullock makes concerns Hitler's
knowledge of economics. He says, on page 136, "Hitler neither
understood nor was interested in economics." And then on page
366, he emphasizes this opinion and states: "Hitler's views about
economics, however, were entirely opportunist. The truth is that he
was not at all interested in economics."
These astonishing statements are far from the truth. The fact is
Hitler, many times, dealt with the subject in his speeches and
revealed a knowledge of economics that no other European statesman
ever expressed since Turgot and Cobden. When I think of the men I knew
in Parliament, who were Chancellors of the Exchequer, I cannot
remember one who was even versed in economic fundamentals. Certainly
neither Asquith nor Lloyd George had the remotest idea of the
difference between land and property. As for Churchill, during the
land values campaign in 1908, he made speeches on land reform and
quoted from Cobden; but he had been tutored in this by John Paul, the
well-versed secretary of the United Committee for the Taxation of Land
Values. When the Land Values Bill was presented to the House in 1909,
he never had a word to say in support of the measure that had saved
his party from defeat.
Not only in
Mein Kampf, but in speeches delivered before he became
Chancellor, Hitler expounds his desire for land reform in precise
economic phraseology. The Grund und Boden speech he delivered
in Munich April 27, 1923 is a perfectly clear statement on this
question, the same one that was debated in England from 1906 to 1910,
when, as two Liberal Whips (the Master of Elibank and Percy
Illingworth) declared, "it saved Asquith's government from defeat
in two General Elections." I wish there were space to quote the
whole of these speeches. Some of them are to be found in My New
Order, the collection made by Raoul de Roussy de Sales (New York,
Reynal and Hitchcokc, 1941) (also listed in Bullock's bibliography).
Alas, I have room only to quote two short sentences:
. . . Private property can be only that which a man has
gained for himself, has won through his work. A natural product is
not private property, that is national property. Land is thus no
object for bargaining. (Op. cit., pp. 59-50)
This statement would have satisfied John Stuart Mill.
However, it was not to be. In the four short years in which he set
Germany on her feet again, he had time to deal only with the immediate
problems of rehabilitation in industry, commerce, and finance. In the
spring of 1937 his mind had to be given to the threats from so many
quarters where grave dangers lurked that he was obliged to occupy
himself with preparations that might be needed to defend Germany.
These and the burning question of minorities in Czechoslovakia and
Poland did not, however, hinder the progress Germany was making as an
industrial power.
It was in November 1936, that Churchill and General Robert Wood
lunched together in London, when Churchill said, "Germany is
getting too strong and we must smash her." Perhaps this was the
real reason why Hitler later became a tyrant.
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