102 BE VIEWS of BOOKS January Moderating and Restraining Her Ally
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102 BE VIEWS OF BOOKS January moderating and restraining her ally. The German intention, however, was that the French should desert their ally, while the Germans remained faithful to theirs (see Kiderlen's minute in Orosse Poliiik, xxvi. no. 9367); and this is what in fact happened. By concentrating on Morocco, the French were not improving their position in Europe; they were in danger of losing it altogether. The Bosnian crisis was to show that France could win German friendship only by abandoning Russia ; and the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/LXVII/CCLXII/102/460932 by guest on 27 September 2021 Agadir crisis that she could win it only by abandoning Great Britain. The volumes under notice have suffered casualties of war, not only in the delay of their publication. Volume ix was evidently prepared before the outbreak of war in 1939, and has no defects. Documents taken from the files for publication in volume x were destroyed in the fire of 25 August 1944 at the Quai d'Oreay ; not all could be replaced from embassy archives. When the Commission came to work on volume xi, they found that entire files had been removed by the Germans. These included the political correspondence with Austria-Hungary, Spain, Italy, the United States, and Turkey ; all files connected with general Balkan affairs and some connected with Morocco. Though the files of telegrams and the registers remained intact, there is evidence of losses which could not be made good. Attention has been drawn above to one such possible gap in October 1908 ; and there are other obvious gaps in Jules Cambon's correspondence from Berlin. The same cause may explain the extraordinary blankness in the preliminary stages of the Bosnian affair. It is curious testimony to the importance attached by the Germans to contemporary history that they should have found time, even during the war, to conduct researches in the French archives and to pillage them. In contrast, the German diplomatic archives from 1867 to the present day have been lying in England ever since the end of the war; and no English scholar has had a chance to see them. A. J. P. TAYLOE. Documents of German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945, Series D (1937-1945), Volume i, From Neurath to Ribbentrop (September 1937-September 1938). (London : H.M.S.O., 1949.) THE rapid advance of American troops in April 1945 led to the capture of some 300 tons of German Foreign Office documents in various storage places in the Harz Mountains, just in time to prevent the destruction of the more important files for the Nazi period; later accessions, we are told, brought the total weight to some 400 tons. The British, United States, and French Governments pledged themselves in 1946-7 to publish the documents ' on the basis of the highest scholarly objectivity '; the weight of material and of responsibility has necessitated such elaborate editorial arrangements that the editorial board of this first volume has twenty-two names and the customary assurance of complete freedom from govern- mental interference is offered by the editors in particularly emphatic terms. This volume consists in the main of the less dramatic background material for the Spanish and Czech crises which are covered by the next two volumes ; it runs, nevertheless, to 1220 pages, with 106 pages of notes and 1952 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 103 preliminary matter, and is edited with a thoroughness which premises well for the series as a whole. All the documents are translated into English. As in all these great series of contemporary documents the reader has only very limited opportunities of testing the ' scholarly objectivity' of the selection and must place his main reliance on the reputation of the editors.1 Translation can, however, be checked in the parallel series, which gives the original German text; and when the whole collection is in due course Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/LXVII/CCLXII/102/460932 by guest on 27 September 2021 handed back to the German authorities (it is to remain in England ' until conditions in Germany become more stable ') it will, no doubt, be checked for evidences of unjustifiable omission, whether of documents critical of the Allied, or favourable to the German, record. During the winter of 1937-8 the German government was content to allow, although not to encourage, the growth of a belief in the possibilities of ' appeasement'; Germany was presented through the personality of Hitler as a proud, self-confident, trigger-happy community, irked by a consciousness of foreign hostility, but ready to respond favourably to reasonable treatment. ' He (the Chancellor) had often asked himself during recent years whether humanity to-day was intelligent enough to replace the play of free forces by the method of higher reason' (p. 57). The French and British appeasement policies which were launched at this time held out the prospect of concessions, as in the colonial or economic fields, but only as part of a ' general arrangement', a formula which implied peaceful conduct and counter-concessions on Germany's side. The usual German line was to deny warlike intentions, to evade discussion of any quid pro quo by claiming treaty revision as a right, and to place foreign critics on the defensive by abundant complaints of press attacks, lack of sympathy, tec. Hitler's conversations with Halifax on 19 November 1937 were on these lines. Halifax retorted that ' certain countries had been obliged to note how Germany had acted in violation of treaty obligations on grounds which might appear convincing to Germany but appeared unconvincing to other countries ' (no. 31), and he seems to have held his own very well in the exchanges ; but the ' general arrangement' appeared no nearer. Eden, Halifax, Chamberlain, Nevile Henderson, Blum, and Delbcs were involved in frequent sparring matches of this type during the next few months (nos. 50, 55, 70, 75, 81, 108, &c.). The appeasement discussions accordingly never passed beyond generalities, and one cf the problems of the user of these documents will be to decide with what serious- ness any particular German spokesman pursued the discussions. Many of the German ambassadors and officials were professional diplo- mats who were not entrusted with Hitler's innermest secrets, and who may have assumed that their government had no other aim than to nag or man- oeuvre others into one-sided concessions. Party leaders and organiza- tions outside the Foreign Ministry also had fingers in the pie, and Hitler's great decisions gave direction rather than uniformity to the movement of policy. Hitler's intentions were, however, looking to the future, the decisive factor, and the volume does not throw much light on the maturing of his plans and ideas. The Hcssbach memorandum cf 10 November 1937 1 The editore-in-chlef of this volume are R. J. Son teg and E. M. Carrol] (American), J. W. Wheeler-Bennett, James Joll and Sir James Marshall-Cornwall (British); and Maurice Banmont (French). 104 REVIEWS OF BOOKS January is the most useful for this purpose, but it has been known since the Nuremberg trials (the editors give us, however, a new translation). It was at' first valued for its explicit evidence of Nazi aggression, but it throws light on other important points, and its contents deserve closer study than they have hitherto received. What shocked the military chiefs was not the idea of war, but of war in 1938 instead of 1943, when their own plans for a major war were to be completed. Hitler argued with some Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ehr/article/LXVII/CCLXII/102/460932 by guest on 27 September 2021 point that by then a fully rearmed Germany would be relatively weaker than her fully rearmed opponents, but he had to minimize the dangers of Anglo-French interference with the proposed attack on Czechoslovakia and Austria in 1938 by holding out the prospect of civil war in Prance or an Anglo-French war with Italy in the Mediterranean. If Hitler took the latter prospect seriously he was presumably encouraged by Eden's coolness towards Italy (cf. no. 59). Ribbentrop's memorandum of 2 January 1938 is also important; on the eve of his appointment as foreign minister he justified Hitler's programme of early action by insisting that England was behind in her armaments and therefore playing for time, but that she would fight for her vital interests (which did not include Austria and Czechoslovakia), and would use any time that she could save for extending her alliances at Germany's expense. '(They consider National Socialist Germany capable of anything, just as we consider the British capable of anything). every day that our political calculations are not actuated by the fundamental idea that England is our most dangerous enemy would be a gain for our enemies' (no. 93). Dieckhoff in Washington, in spite of some conciliatory talks with the ' good but timid Hull '.warned his government that in the event of war the United States would come in on the British side when the U.S. administration deemed it advisable (no. 444). Chapter ii (nearly half the volume) covers the story of Austro-German relations from the agreement of 11 July 1936 until the Anschluss in March 1938. The assimilation of Austria, the first forward step in the new programme, showed that Hitler had estimated the chances of success correctly. There is no new light on Schuschnigg's visit to Berchtesgaden ; the most interesting point that emerges is the thoroughness with which the attempt was made in February 1938 to stage the whole affair as a peaceful revolution conducted by the unaggressive Seyss-Inquart.