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thought to be completely insane: the military reoccupation of the Rhineland in flagrant
defiance of the Versailles Treaty. From every rational point of view, the move had absolutely
no chance of success. The French Army was the strongest in Europe; the Germans even
had orders to withdraw at the slightest sign of French resistance. Considering the situation
we were in, the French covering army could have blown us to pieces,' averred General Jodl.
A retreat on our part would have spelled collapse,' admitted Adolf Hitler. Yet in spite of these
factors, the German occupation was unopposed; the experts were wrong; the Führer was
right. He had exercised the predictive powers taught him by Haushofer: he looked ahead; he
saw nothing; and nothing was done.
In March 1938, Hitler again disregarded the advice of his country's foremost diplomatic and
military experts when he seized Austria, this time with the consent of Mussolini. This was an
even more fundamental breach of the Versailles Treaty, but Hitler's intuition was correct
once more. He looked ahead; he saw nothing; and nothing was done.
By this time, Britain had a new Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who, it was promised,
would take a more active interest in foreign policy than Baldwin. He did, advocating a
fawning subservience to the German dictator's whims in the forlorn hope that peace might
somehow be the result. A man who might have made a good Lord Mayor of Birmingham in
a lean year,' Lloyd George termed him, and he amply justified this remark, uniting in his
character an ignorance of all matters of history and foreign policy, a self-righteous
arrogance, and a determinedly wilful blindness. Destiny had indeed thrown up a suitable
mediocrity to expose the extent of Great Britain's lamentable decline.
Shortly after his Austrian triumph, Hitler embarked upon a fantastic gamble. He demanded
the incorporation of the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland into the Reich on the grounds that
Germans lived there. The odds against him were astronomical. Czechoslovakia, which
resisted his demands, was not only a fierce ally of the Western democracies, but it also
possessed a large, well-trained, and well-equipped Army and magnificent defensive
fortifications on the Czech-German border. The German Generals later admitted that it
would have been an almost impossible task to breach them: moreover, France had
guaranteed Czechoslovakia; and there was absolutely no hope of Germany winning a war
on two fronts even if Britain did nothing. Given these facts, Hitler's demands were imbecilic.
Even so, the Führer once more looked into the future; once more he saw nothing; and once
more, nothing was done.
It was Neville Chamberlain who ensured Hitler's triumph. He restrained the French, and flew
to see Hitler at Berchtesgaden, his aim being to avoid war no matter what the
consequences. Doubtless he meant well, but the consequences in human suffering of his
extraordinary actions rob this excuse of all validity. He knew what was happening to the
Jews in Germany and Austria: he knew too that the Führer, known behind his back as
Carpet Eater', was by English standards evil and insane. Despite this, Hitler's ravings
convinced the British Prime Minister that the Nazi leader was a man of his word. He
persuaded his Cabinet to accept Hitler's demands, whereupon Hitler immediately increased
them at a second meeting in Godesberg. Chamberlain scuttled back to Britain, rather like a
seedy insurance salesman representing a collapsing insurance company, desperate to sell
to Parliament his policy of appeasement. Despite his efforts, war seemed likely, but in
September 1938, there was a final international congress in Munich. The Czechs were not
even represented. Chamberlain gave Hitler everything he wanted. Daladier, the French
Premier, returned to his country broken in spirit. The Czechs learned that the Sudetenland,
including their fortifications, had been given to the Third Reich. Chamberlain returned to
Britain, where he pretended to be a statesman, and proclaimed: Peace in our time.'
The astuteness of Hitler and the foolishness of Chamberlain soon became glaringly
apparent, even to the latter. In March 1939, Hitler seized Bohemia and Moravia:
Czechoslovakia was now raped and finished with. As Hitler intuitively knew in advance,
74
Publisher Love(+)Wisdom(=)Truth
GERALD SUSTER HITLER AND THE AGE OF HORUS
nothing was done. Chamberlain finally realised that he had been tricked, and endeavoured
to make up for it by offering discredited British guarantees to any nation which desired them:
one-of these was Poland. The obvious course was a defensive alliance between France,
Britain and Russia, a course of action which had aroused the enthusiasm of Stalin. But
Chamberlain's pursuit of such an agreement was so completely half-hearted that the
Russian dictator sought other methods of safeguarding his country from German aggression.
Hitler seized his opportunity, and his Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop, brought about a pact
between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia in spite of their incompatible ideologies.
British ineptitude had plumbed new depths.
In contrast, Hitler's triumphs had been sensational. Both the League of Nations and the
Versailles Settlement were now fit subject-matter for jokes. Almost all Germans were now
within the boundaries of the Third Reich. The democracies were discredited. Eastern Europe
was falling under German economic domination. And, as he set down plainly in Mein Kampf,
German expansion to the East would continue. His next target was Poland, and he no longer
had to worry about the USSR. When the Poles resisted Hitler's demands, he found an
excuse for declaring war, and on 1 September 1939, German troops poured into Poland.
Once again Hitler had looked ahead; he had seen nothing; and, in a certain sense, nothing
was done.
This is perhaps a surprising statement. After all, in September 1939, Britain and France
finally declared war on Germany. Hitler was utterly astonished. If we lose this war, then God
help us,' commented Goering. And yet, although the Führer had blundered, his prophetic
foresight had not entirely misled him, for although they declared war, the Allies did do
nothing. Poland was crushed in a lightning campaign while Allied soldiers sat behind the
French Maginot Line singing songs and broadcasting futile propaganda. It would have been
extremely easy to have smashed through the small German force which opposed them, and
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