My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyscale what modern statesmen do on a petty scale; to belie in office everything said inopposition, double-cross party members and make party programmes look like aconfidence trick, reduce politics to the level of a game played with three cards in a bar.The first answer, of course, is simply that anything of the kind would not have worked;it does not work even on a small scale directly the situation becomes serious, and itcertainly would not have worked on a great scale in the conditions facing Germany in1939.I summarised the task which would at that time have confronted any country aimingat world domination in The Alternative (1947): 'Then it was not a question ofdropping something on the chief cities of a dissenting country which in course ofseconds could wipe their effective civilisation from the face of the earth. Conquestentailed the occupation of countries in considerable force, and the problem of 1939must always be regarded in these terms. So it may be asked, can anyone in his senseshave contemplated the German grenadier perpetually marching in pursuit of eternallydissident underground movements over every great space of the earth from thesteppes of Russia to the prairies of the Americas, across the deserts of the Sahara orthe Gobi until at length his devoted figure was chasing some nonconforming Lama inthe remotest fastnesses of Tibet? For, in the conditions of that day, this must havebeen the exhausting destiny of the German soldier if his leaders had cherished the ideaof world dominion, and had achieved the considerable initial success of overthrowingby force of arms the established government of every great country in the world.German troops must have occupied the entire earth and the whole manhood ofGermany would have spent their lives and vital energies in incessant guerrillafighting.'Yet it will still be said: Hitler was not in his senses, he was already mad, and he wouldhave tried it. In that case, how long would he have lasted with a German General Staffwhich had to prepare this gigantic enterprise, and with a German people which hadaccepted with enthusiasm the opposite idea: that salvation lay in the union of theGermans and the development of their fatherland, and mixing with alien peoplesinvolved disaster? Any attempt by Hitler even to prepare anything of that kind wouldhave been the quickest way to get rid of him. If he had even begun seriously toorganise such an undertaking, which must have been clear in its design from the startto a great many people, let alone to launch it, he would not have lasted five minutes.In reality, everything he did was well calculated to secure the enthusiastic support ofthe German people, and the acquiescence of the General Staff, and it had these results.Otherwise, the German people would never have persisted through unparalleledsacrifices to resist the world in arms for six years to the last ounce of their energy andthe last drop of their blood.In The Alternative, after a detailed examination of this fantasy, I asked: 'Is it then veryextraordinary to believe that the German leadership preferred the entirely rationalconcept of German manhood staying at home to build their own country and livingspace, once sufficient resources were at their disposal to create a civilisation whichwas independent of world anarchy? In fact, their whole doctrine exaggerated thatpossibility according to prevailing British standards. The Nazi Party concentrated onthe idea of bringing all Germans living in Europe together in a homogeneous blocwithin a geographically united living space.'326 of 424