Nobody who has not lived in Germany during the frivolous
but tragic interlude between 1918-1939 can appreciate the effect on German opinion of the " war-guilt clause " embodied in Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles. That clause, which forms the prelude to the Reparation chapter, was in fact inserted, not ac an indictment of Germany policy, but as a device whereby the payment of reparation might be made to appear as com- pensation for deliberate damage rather than as an indemnity imposed upon a beaten enemy. It was subsequently exploited in order to convince the German people that the Treaty was not merely a Carthaginian Peace forced upon a victim who had just been stabbed in the back by Jews and Freemasons, but also a moral judgement im- posed by the victors upon the history of the past. No other item in the Treaty ate so deeply into the German conscience, and it was in fact an error on the part of the Paris Conference to have included, in what should have been a firm settlement of peace, opinions on ethics and politics which they were not com- petent, or even asked, to express. It is not surprising, therefore, that Herr Hitler, who was well aware of the pangs of doubt Caused to the German people by the war-guilt clause of 1918, thould have determined that his own dire responsibility for the liar of 1939 should be obscured by every possible means. He is searching with increasing ingenuity for an alibi. It is not enough for him to assure his people day in and day out that the Second German War was forced upon a gentle and pacific Germany by the imperialist emotions of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark and the rest. It is essential for him to manufacture external as well as internal evidence, and to prove that the whole situation of 0939 was created by the warmongering of Great Britain, who had tricked and bullied her associates into leaping upon Germany in the dark. It was Hitler, therefore, who insisted that Daladier, Reynaud and the rest should be publicly tried and publicly condemned for having dragged France into the war owing to their subservience to that arch-warmonger, Mr. Chamberlain.
* * * *
Previous page
