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

FRANCE IS TO BLAME 685haps the sanguine German ambassador had heard too much. On thefourteenth, the bureau of the conference met in Geneva and Sir JohnSimon, as spokesman of the British delegation, declared that he stilladhered to the plan for an eight-year transitional period. Germany'sprotests were rejected.In his great peace speech of May 17, Hitler had declared that if theother powers meant to 'do violence' to Germany by outvoting her, theirsole purpose could be 'to remove us from the conferences.' But: 'TheGerman nation has character enough not to force its collaboration onother nations in such a case; though with a heavy heart, it will draw thenecessary consequences. As a people constandy defamed, it would behard for us to continue membership in the League of Nations.'Now Germany had been 'outvoted.' Here was a splendid opportunityto teach the world once and for all that the Leader's words must be takenseriously and to carry the fight over European foreign policy to thepeoples themselves with an issue which, in England and in France aswell, might stir up one political party against another; and with whichhe hoped to unleash within his own people a surge of popularenthusiasm even greater than in the spring. And it was a uniqueopportunity to show that the apparent unity of the world againstGermany would not withstand a test.On the night of October 14, Germany announced her withdrawal fromthe Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations.It was one of those political blows in which Hitler has always been amaster; a combination blitz which he hurled in three or four directions atonce, almost always choosing the right moment, as a rule uncannily sureof success. In the same hour he dissolved the Reichstag; new electionswere to be held November 12; only one list of deputies, the NationalSocialist list, with a few 'Hos-pitants,' as for example Hugenberg, was tobe put before the voters; they only could say 'Yes' or 'No' — and themost were convinced that practically they could not say No. At the sametime they had, by way of plebiscite, to state whether or not theyapproved Hitler's foreign policy — which on the bulletin of vote wasexplained as a policy to save peace. The great plebiscite, the irresistibleinstrument of Napoleonic propaganda technique, the use of which Hitlerhad