HITLER AND HIS CHOICE in Great Contemporaries, par Winston Churchill, 1937
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It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure
who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler
until his life work as a whole is before us. Although no
subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history
is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by
employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who,
nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been
regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story
of mankind. So may it be with Hitler.
Such a final view is not vouchsafed to us to-day. We can-
not tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again
let loose upon the world another war in which civilization will
irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history
as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the
great Germanic nation and brought it back serene, helpful
and strong, to the forefront of the European family circle. It
is on this mystery of the future that history will pronounce.
It is enough to say that both possibilities are open at the pre-
sent moment. If, because the story is unfinished, because, in-
deed, its most fateful chapters have yet to be written, we are
forced to dwell upon the darker side of his work and creed,
we must never forget nor cease to hope for the bright alterna-
tive.
Adolf Hitler was the child of the rage and grief of a mighty
empire and race which had suffered overwhelming defeat in
war. He it was who exorcized the spirit of despair from the
German mind by substituting the not less baleful but far less
morbid spirit of revenge. When the terrible German armies,
which had held half Europe in their grip, recoiled on every
♦Written in 1935.
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GREAT CONTEMPORARIES
front, and sought armistice from those upon whose lands
even then they still stood as invaders; when the pride and
will-power of the Prussian race broke into surrender and
revolution behind the fighting lines; when that Imperial
Government, which had been for more than fifty fearful
montlis the terror of almost all nations, collapsed ignomini-
ously, leaving its loyal faithful subjects defenceless and dis-
armed before the wrath of the sorely-wounded, victorious
Allies ; tlien it was that one corporal, a former Austrian house-
painter, set out to regain all.
In the fifteen years that have followed this resolve he has
succeeded in restoring Germany to the most powerful posi-
tion in Europe, and not only has he restored the position of
his country, but he has even, to a very large extent, reversed
the results of the Great War. Sir John Simon said at Berlin
that, as Foreign Secretary, he made no distinction between
victors and vanquished. Such distinctions, indeed, still exist,
but the vanquished are in process of becoming the victors,
and the victors the vanquished. When Hitler began, Germany
lay prostrate at the feet of the Allies. He may yet see the day
when what is left of Europe will be prostrate at the feet of
Germany. Whatever else may be thought about these exploits,
they are certainly among the most remarkable in the whole
history of the world.
Hitler’s success, and, indeed, his survival as a political
force, would not have been possible but for the lethargy
and folly of the French and British Governments since the
War, and especially in the last three years. No sincere attempt
was made to come to terms with the various moderate govern-
ments of Germany which existed under a parliamentary
system. For a long time the French pursued the absurd
delusion that they could extract vast indemnities from the
Germans in order to compensate them for the devastation
of the War. Figures of reparation payments were adopted,
not only by the French but by the British, which had no
relation whatever to any process which exists, or could ever
•1932r-35.
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HITLER AND HIS CHOICE
be devised, of transferring wealth from one community to
another. To enforce submission to these senseless demands,
French armies actually reoccupied the Ruhr in 1923. To
recover even a tentli of what was originally demanded, an
inter-allied board, presided over by an able American, super-
vised the internal finances of Germany for several years, thus
renewing and perpetuating the utmost bitterness in the minds
of the defeated nation. In fact, nothing was gained at the
cost of all this friction; for, although the Allies extracted
about one thousand million pounds’ worth of assets from the
Germans, the United States, and to a lesser extent Great
Britain, lent Germany at the same time over two thousand
millions. Yet, while the Allies poured their wealth into Ger-
many to build her up and revive her life and industry, the
only results were an increasing resentment and the loss of
their money. Even while Germany was receiving great bene-
fits by the loans which were made to her, Hitler’s movement
gained each week life and force from irritation at Allied
interference,
I have always laid down the doctrine that the redress of the
grievances of the vanquished should precede the disarmament
of the victors. Little was done to redress the grievances of
the treaties of Versailles and Trianon. Hitler in his campaign
could point continually to a number of minor anomalies and
racial injustices in the territorial arrangements of Europe,
which fed the fires on which he lived. At the same time, the
English pacifists, aided from a safe distance by their American
prototypes, forced the process of disarmament into the utmost
prominence. Year after year, without the slightest regard to
the realities of the world, the Disannament Commission ex-
plored innumerable schemes for reducing the armaments of
the Allies, none of which was pursued with any sincerity by
any country except Great Britain. The United States, while
preaching disarmament, continued to make enormous devel-
opments in her army, navy and air force. France, deprived
of the promised United States guarantee and confronted
with the gradual revival of Germany with its tremendous
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GREAT CONTEMPORARIES
military population, naturally refused to reduce her defences
below the danger-point. Italy, for other reasons, increased
her armaments. Only England cut her defences by land and
sea far below the safety level, and appeared quite uncon-
scious of the new peril which was developing in the air.
Meanwhile the Germans, principally under the Briining
Government, began their great plans to regain their armed
power. These were pressed forward by every channel. Air-
sport and commercial aviation became a mere cloak behind
which a tremendous organization for the purposes of air war
was spread over every part of Germany. The German General
Staff, forbidden by the treaty, grew year by year to an en-
ormous size under the guise of the State guidance of industry.
All the factories of Germany were prepared in incredible
detail to be turned to war production. These preparations,
although assiduously concealed, were nevertheless known to
the intelligence departments both of France and Great
Britain. But nowhere in either of these governments was there
the commanding power either to call Germany to a halt or
to endeavour to revise the treaties, or better still both. The
first course would have been quite safe and easy, at any rate
until the end of 1931, but at that time Mr. MacDonald and
his colleagues were still contenting themselves with uttering
high-sounding platitudes upon the blessings of peace and
gaining the applause of well-meaning but ill-informed maj-
orities throughout our island. Even as late as 1932 the greatest
pressure was put by the British Government upon France to
reduce her armed strength, when at the same time the French
knew that immense preparations were going forward in all
parts of Germany. I explained and exposed the follies of this
process repeatedly and in detail in the House of Commons.
Eventually, all that came out of the Disarmament confer-
ences was the Re-armament of Germany.
While all these formidable transformations were occurring
in Europe, Corporal Hitler was fighting his long, wearing
battle for the German heart. The story of that struggle cannot
be read without admiration for the courage, the perseverance,
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HITLER AND‘ HIS CHOICE
and the vital force which enabled him to challenge, defy,
conciliate, or overcome, all the authorities or resistances
which barred his path. He, and the ever-increasing legions
who worked with him, certainly showed at this time, in their
patriotic ardour and love of country, that there was nothing
they would not do or dare, no sacrifice of life, limb or liberty
that they would not make themselves or inflict upon their
opponents. The main episodes of the story are well known.
The riotous meetings, the fusillade at Munich, Hitler’s im-
prisonment, his various arrests and trials, his conflict with
Hindenburg, his electoral campaign, von Papen’s tergiversa-
tion, Hitler’s conquest of Hindenburg, Hindenburg’s desertion
of Briining — all these were the milestones upon that indomit-
able march which carried the Austrian-born corporal to the
life-dictatorship of the entire German nation of nearly seventy
million souls, constituting the most industrious, tractable,
fierce and martial race in the world.
Hitler arrived at supreme power in Germany at the head
of a National Socialist movement which wiped out all the
states and old kingdoms of Germany and fused them into one
whole. At the same time, Nazidom suppressed and obliterated
by force, wherever necessary, all other parties in the State.
At this very moment he found that the secret organization of
German industry and aviation which the German general
staff and latterly the Briining Government had built up, was
in fact absolutely ready to be put into operation. So far, no
one had dared to take this step. Fear that the Allies would
intervene, and nip everything in the bud, had restrained them.
But Hitler had risen by violence and passion; he was sur-
rounded by men as ruthless as he. It is probable that, when he
overthrew the existing constitutional Government of Ger-
many, he did not know how far they had prepared the ground
for his action; certainly he has never done them the justice
to recognize their contribution to his success.
The fact remains that all he and Goering had to do was to
give the signal for the most gigantic process of secret re-arma-
ment that has ever taken place. He had long proclaimed that,
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GREAT CONTEMPORARIES
if he came into power, he would do two things that no one
else could do for Germany but himself. First, he would restore
Germany to the height of her power in Europe, and secondly,
he would cure the cruel unemployment that afflicted the
people. His methods are now apparent. Germany was to
recover her place in Europe by rearming, and the Germans
were to be largely freed from the curse of unemployment by
being set to work on making the armaments and other mili-
tary preparations. Thus from the year 1933 onwards the whole
available energies of Germany were directed to preparations
for war, not only in the factories, in the barracks, and on the
aviation grounds, but in the schools, the colleges, and almost
in the nursery, by every resource of State power and modern
propaganda; and the preparation and education of the whole
people for war-readiness was undertaken.
It was not till 1935 that the full terror of this revelation
broke upon the careless and imprudent world, and Hitler,
casting aside concealment, sprang forward armed to the teeth,
with his munition factories roaring night and day, his aero-
plane squadrons forming in ceaseless succession, his sub-
marine crews exercising in the Baltic, and his armed hosts
tramping the barrack squares from one end of the broad
Reich to the other. That is where we are to-day, and the
achievement by which the tables have been completely turned
upon the complacent, feckless, and purblind victors deserves
to be reckoned a prodigy in the history of the world, and a
prodigy which is inseparable from the personal exertions
and life-thrust of a single man.
It is certainly not strange that everyone should want to
know ‘the truth about Hitler.’ What will he do with the
tremendous powers already in his grasp and perfecting
themselves week by week? If, as I have said, we look only at
the past, which is all we have to judge by, we must indeed
feel anxious. Hitherto, Hitler’s triumphant career has been
borne onwards, not only by a passionate love of Germany,’
but by currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of
those who swim upon them. Hatred of the French is the first
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HITLER AND HIS CHOICE
of these currents, and we have only to read Hitler’s book,
Mein Kampf, to see that the French are not the only foreign
nation against whom the anger of rearmed Germany may be
turned.
But the internal stresses are even more striking. The Jews,
supposed to have contributed, by a disloyal and pacifist in-
fluence, to the collapse of Germany at the end of the Great
War, were also deemed to be the main prop of communism
and the authors of defeatist doctrines in every form. There-
fore, the Jews of Germany, a community numbered by many
hundreds of thousands, were to be stripped of all power,
driven from every position in public and social life, expelled
from the professions, silenced in the Press, and declared a foul
and odious race. The twentieth century has witnessed with
surprise, not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doc-
trines, but their enforcement with brutal vigour by the Gov-
ernment and by the populace. No past services, no proved
patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure im-
munity for persons whose only crime was that their parents
had brought them into the world. Every kind of persecution,
grave or petty, upon the world-famous scientists, writers,
and composers at the top down to the wretched little Jewish
children in the national schools, was practised, was glorified,
and is still being practised and glorified.
A similar proscription fell upon socialists and communists
of every hue. The Trade Unionists and liberal intelligentsia
are equally smitten. The slightest criticism is an offence
against the State. The courts of justice, though allowed to
function in ordinary cases, are superseded for every form of
political offence by so-called people’s courts composed of
ardent Nazis. Side by side with the training grounds of the
new armies and the great aerodromes, the concentration
camps pock-mark the German soil. In these, thousands of
Germans are coerced and cowed into submission to the irre-
sistible power of the Totalitarian State. The hatred of the Jews
led by a logical transition to an attack upon the historical
basis of Christianity. Thus the conflict broadened swiftly,
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and Catholic priests and Protestant pastors fell under the
ban of what is becoming the new religion of the German
peoples, namely, the worship of Germany under the symbols
of the old gods of Nordic paganism. Here also is where we
stand to-day.
What manner of man is this grim figure who has performed
these superb toils and loosed these frightful evils? Does he
still share the passions he has evoked? Does he, in the full
sunlight of worldy triumph, at the head of the great nation
he has raised from the dust, still feel racked by the hatreds
and antagonisms of his desperate struggle; or will they be
discarded like the armour and the cruel weapons of strife
under the mellowing influences of success? Evidently a burn-
ing question for men of all nations! Those who have met
Herr Hitler face to face in public business or on social terms
have found a highly competent, cool, well-informed function-
ary with an agreeable manner, a disarming smile, and few
have been unaffected by a subtle personal magnetism. Nor
is this impression merely the dazzle of power. He exerted it
on his companions at every stage in his struggle, even when
his fortunes were in the lowest depths. Thus the world lives
on hopes that the worst is over, and that we may yet live to
see Hitler a gentler figure in a happier age.
Meanwhile, he makes speeches to the nations, which are
sometimes characterized by candour and moderation. Re-
cently he has offered many words of reassurance, eagerly
lapped up by those who have been so tragically wrong about
Germany in the past. Only time can show, but, meanwhile,
the great wheels revolve; the rifles, the cannon, the tanks, the
shot and shell, the air-bombs, the poison-gas cylinders, the
aeroplanes, the submarines, and now the beginnings of a fleet
flow in ever-broadening streams from the already largely
war-mobilized arsenals and factories of Germany,
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GEORGE NATHANIEL CURZON
F ew careers in modern British politics are more worthy
of examination than that of George Nathaniel Curzon,
and few records more suggestive than those he has left
behind him. Here was a being gifted far beyond the average
level: equipped and caparisoned with glittering treasures of
mind and fortune; driven forward by will, courage and tireless
industry; not specially crossed by ill luck; not denied a con-
siderable span: and yet who failed to achieve the central pur-
pose of his life. Why did he fail, and how did he fail? \^at
were the causes personal and external which robbed this very
remarkable man, placed throughout in such a strong position,
of the prize which it was his life’s ambition to gain? Surely
in this limited sphere no inquiry could be more rich in instruc-
tion.
George Curzon was born with all the advantages of mod-
erate affluence and noble descent. A stately home, beautiful
surroimdings, ancestral trees, every material ministration
nurtured his youth. But at the same time a strict Miss Para-
man and a stem Mr. Campbell, his governess and private
schoolmaster respectively, applied disciplinary spurs and
corrections in a most bracing and even severe degree. A
rigorous and pious upbringing proceeded in an atmosphere
of old-world dignity and on the basis of adequate funds.
Shot like a long-range projectile from this domestic gun, the
youth arrived in die early seventies at Eton. No less than ten
years were lavished upon his education. He writes of the six he
spent at Eton as the most enjoyable of his life. Certainly they
were years of constant and almost unbroken triumph. He stood
out at once beyond his contemporaries as one endowed with
superabundant powers. He rose rapidly in the school. He rose
eventually to be virtually head of the school. He captured a
record number of prizes of every kind. Latin, French, Italian,
history and, above all, English prose and English verse came
to him with precocious facility. At Eton he was the best and
most industrious scholar of his day. But to all these achieve-
ments he added a strong, rebellious and scornful temper
which made him at once admired and feared by his teachers.
Armed with his terrific powers of work and easy swiftness of
assimilation, he repulsed all favour and loved to excel in
despite. He quitted the classes of the French, Italian and
historical professors in order by private exertions to win the
prizes from their most cherished pupils.
But with all this, his charm, his good looks, his fun and his
natural ascendancy won him without question the acceptance
of the boys and extorted the respect of the scored-off masters.
He was certainly not the model pupil, but far and away the
most proficient. He matured at an uncanny speed. Before he
was seventeen his vocabulary became abundant, his sentences
sonorous, and his taste in words polished. His entries in the
record of events kept by the ‘Captain of the Oppidans are a
school legend for amplitude and magniloquence. His ideas
and stock of knowledge kept pace with his fluency of speech
and writing. He animated and inspired the Eton Debating
Society, and led Mr. Gladstone, at the height of his career,
a docile captive, to address it. Everyone remarked his present
eminence and predicted his future fame.
His four years at Oxford were not less conspicuous. He
focused his main attention directly upon politics. His aca-
demic studies took a second place in his interest and gained
him only a Second Class in the examination. But he swiftly
rose to be the leader of youthful Tory opinion. He sustained
the Chatham and Canning Clubs. He became President of
the Union. He wrote voluminously and spoke continually.
He infused energy into everything he touched. His infant repu-
tation spread beyond the University and throughout the
aristocratic circles which in those days dominated the political
scene. He was at twenty-one notorious as ‘The Coming Man/
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