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

FRANCE IS TO BLAME 697was proposed by the government and stood under debate in a parliamentarycommittee; the opposition parties left the session in protest;at that moment the chairman hastily put the proposal to a vote, and itwas adopted within a few minutes. The deputies of the governmentbloc, for the most part former members of Pilsudski's Legion in theWorld War, jumped from their seats and sang their battle song, the 'FirstBrigade.'But the dream of collective security was not yet dead despite all theseblows. While France insisted on a security plan because she wasthreatened from one side, another country now began to advocate such aplan, because it considered itself encircled from all sides. For fifteenyears the Soviet Union had taken it for granted that Western Europeancapitalism was its mortal enemy, especially as represented by Franceand England; hence her defensive alliance with German militarism.Then her relations with Germany cooled; her eternal fear of a capitalistattack had never seemed so justified as at the time of Papen's accessionto power. The French Left temporarily removed this threat: Herriotrejected an alliance with the German reactionaries. In August, 1932,Russia concluded a non-aggression pact with Poland, although sheregarded the Polish eastern provinces as a region stolen from her. At theend of November, 1932, she signed a similar agreement with France.Then Hitler took power in Germany; and although he sincerely wantedto improve his relations with Russia, his good intentions were doubted.Just as in May, 1933, at the height of the war danger, Nadolny andPapen poured oil onto the fire by their noisy speeches, Hitler wasunmasked in the eyes of the Bolsheviks by that cumbersome anddespised appendage, Hugenberg. Hugenberg used his last weeks ofministerial power to submit, in his capacity of German delegate to theLondon Economic Conference, a memorandum in which he demandedno less than the Russian Ukraine for Germany. Hitler hastened todisavow him, and soon after that, Hugenberg was out of office. But theBolsheviks took Hugenberg's threat almost more seriously than theywould have taken a threat from Hitler himself; in their eyes Hugenbergrepresented the big capitalists whom they believed to rule Germany, andHitler was only their servant.Among the Bolshevist leaders the conflict between the principle