The death of Baron Ernst von Weiszacker, no doubt the
in- direct result of an imprisonment which many people will continue to consider unjust, leaves opinion in this and other countries still divided as to the degree of his complicity in Nazi policy. That he was by temperament and conviction opposed to Hitlerism, and, as State Secretary, utterly hostile to his superior, von Ribbentrop, is not in question. What is charged against him is that, though his intentions were goOd, his courage failed when it came to action. It may be so, and it may be that those who criticise him are certain that in his place they would haVe acted /differently. For myself, I find it hard—the more so since I used to know von Weiszacker—to decide that he was wrong in holding on to his post at the Auswartigesamt in the belief that he could do more there to preserve peace than if he went out into the wilderness, perhaps into a concentration camp. The volume of Dociunents on British Foreign Policy published last week includes a message to the Foreign Secretary (Lord Halifax) from Sir Nevile Henderson, the-British Ambassador in Berlin, which begins : " I called yesterday on State Secretary Weiszacker, in whose sincerity and straightforwardness, as proven during the crisis of last September, I place considerable confidence." Those qualities—sincerity and straightforwardness—may justly be attri- buted to him. He might perhaps have done more than he did to save peace, though'no one has shown clearly how.
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