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

618 DER FUEHRERchange of friendly assurances with Poland and Russia. Although theexistence and the internal methods of the Hitler government had arousedworld resentment, it was the old-style German career diplomacy with itsboastful speeches which really threatened an explosion. To fill themeasure of folly, Papen, who at home and abroad was consideredHindenburg's spokesman, made a speech full of childishbloodthirstiness to his electorate in Munster, May 13. ('To the Germanman, the battlefield is what motherhood is to the woman.') The careerdiplomats apparently believed that this was the new tone which the newmaster expected of them. Hitler convoked the Reichstag for May 17 andintimated that he would inform the whole world in detail of his aims inforeign policy.On the day before Hitler's speech, a message from PresidentRoosevelt suddenly reached the chiefs of state of forty-four nations; in itthe President set down his position on the question of peace anddisarmament. Such a declaration on the part of America had beenexpected since Herriot's conversations in Washington. PresidentRoosevelt had made his opinions known before this: that equal rightsfor Germany must not mean German rearmament, but the disarmamentof the others; he had implied that France must not be expected tosacrifice any part of her security. What optimists in England and Francenow hoped for was a further, more significant step. If a formula fordisarmament should be accepted by a majority in Geneva, it must alsobe enforced; but this seemed possible only if the world banded togetherin a security pact to apply sanctions against any possible infringement.The spirit of 'collective security,' which had been thought dead, nowreappeared; America, under the leadership of Roosevelt, was expectedto find a formula for participation in a security pact. But of this therewas not a word in the President's note.This note declared a solution of the world economic crisis to be theindispensable basis for political pacification; the World EconomicConference must, therefore, convene in all haste; currencies, which hadall been endangered by the fall of the British pound, must be stabilized;international action to restore prices was demanded. The President'sdisarmament proposals moved in two directions: no country must rearmbeyond the limits established by