Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

432 DER FUEHRERsixth. Thereupon the Japanese landed in Shanghai at the end of January,1932, drove out the Chinese army and destroyed the Chapei Quarter. OnFebruary 18, 1932, an 'independent' empire of Man-chukuo, consistingof three raped Chinese provinces, was proclaimed in Manchuria. Chinaprotested to the League of Nations, of which Japan was still a member;the League sent a commission to Asia, led by an English statesman, theEarl of Lytton.Was it for this that 'the war to end wars' had been fought? TheJapanese assault on China profoundly stirred everyone who hadpreviously believed in the peace of Geneva. At such a time, it attractedlittle attention when Bruning declared in an interview (January 9, 1932)that 'Germany's position makes the continuation of political paymentsimpossible'; and that these payments would inevitably lead the rest ofthe world 'to catastrophe.' In Asia, a great nation had been cut to piecesbecause it was unarmed and torn by internal conflicts. This was exactlythe situation in Germany, said Hitler, and he was not the only one to sayso.And let nobody believe, he went on, that this German weaknesswould be turned into strength by the Disarmament Conference, which,after endless preparations, finally was going to meet at Geneva,Switzerland, in February, 1932. No conference would make Germanystrong again, but only the nation's own firm will. The official Germanline was that the aim of the Disarmament Conference must be to bringabout the disarmament of the great nations, as it was promised in theVersailles Treaty, which explicidy had stated that Germany'sdisarmament should only be a first step toward general disarmament.Hitler asked mockingly if anybody was so naive as to hope that thispromise would be kept; the answer was that to insist on her right wasGermany's biggest asset in international politics.Groener handed the cabinet a memorandum stating that now, afterthirteen years of unilateral disarmament, Germany must finally insist onequality of armaments. The world was spending seventy per cent moreon armaments than in 1914; this at least was the estimate of PresidentHoover in a speech to the International Chamber of Commerce (May 4,1931). Three days after Bruning had declared that he would pay nomore reparations, Soviet Russia