THE TRUTH ABOUT HITLER

1935

(renamed HITLER AND HIS CHOICE in 1937)

By Winston Spencer Churchill

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 or remove the guilt of blood, history is replete with examples
of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, wicked, 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 cannot 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 them back serene, helpful and
strong, to the European family circle.

It is on this mystery of the future that history will pronounce Hitler either a
monster or a hero. It is this which will determine whether he will rank in
Valhalla with Pericles, with Augustus, and with Washington, or welter in the
inferno of human scorn with Attila and Tamerlane. It is enough to say that
both possibilities arc open at the present moment. If, because the story is
unfinished, because, indeed, its most fateful chapters have yet to be
written, we are forced to dwell upon the dark side of his work and creed,
we must never forget nor cease to hope for the bright alternative.

Adolf Hitler was the child of the rage and grief of a mighty empire and
race who had suffered overwhelming defeat in war. He it was who
exorcized the spirit of despair from the German I 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
front and sought armistice from those upon whose lands even then they
still stood as invaders; when the pride and willpower of the Prussian race
broke into surrender and revolution behind the fighting lines; when that
 Churchill: The truth about Hitler

Imperial Government, which had been for more than fifty fearful months
the terror of almost all nations, collapsed ignominiously, leaving its loyal
faithful subjects defenceless and disarmed before the wrath of the sorely-
wounded victorious Allies ; then it was that one Austrian corporal, a
former 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 position 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, as Foreign
Secretary, said at Berlin that 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.

STRAND MAGAZINE Nov 1935 Churchill: The Truth about Hitler, page
12-13
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
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sincere attempt was made to come to terms with the various moderate
governments of Germany, which existed upon 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 be devised, of transferring wealth from one community to a
other. To enforce submission to these senseless demands, French armies
actually reoccupied the Ruhr in 1923. To recover even a tenth of what was
originally demanded, an inter-allied board, presided over by an able
American, supervised 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
more than she had paid. Yet, while the Allies poured their wealth into
Germany 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 benefits 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 Disarmament Commission explored in numerable 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 developments in her

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army, navy, and air force. France, deprived of the promised United States
guarantee and confronted with the gradual revival of Germany with its
tremendous 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 unconscious of the new peril which was developing in
the air.

Strand Magazine Nov 1935, Churchill: The Truth about Hitler, pages 14-15
Meanwhile, the Germans, principally under the Brüning Government,
began their great plans to regain their armed power. These were pressed
forward by every channel. The 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 enormous 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. The former course would have been quite safe and easy, at any
rate, until the end of 1931, but at that time Mr. MacDonald and his
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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 majorities throughout our island, liven as late as
1932 the greatest pressure was put 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, but nobody paid the slightest attention. Eventually, all that
came out of the Disarmament conferences was the Rearmament of Ger-
many.

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 single- mindedness, and the personal force which enabled him
to challenge, defy, overcome, or conciliate 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.

Here is no place to tell that tale. Its main episodes arc well known. The
riotous meetings, the bloody fusillade at Munich, Hitler’s imprisonment,
his various arrests and trials, his conflict with Hindenburg, his electoral
campaign, von Papen’s tergiversation, Hitler’s conquest of Hindenburg,
Hindenburg’s desertion of Brüning—all these were the milestones upon
that indomitable march which carried the Austrian corporal to the life-
dictatorship of the entire German nation of nearly seventy million souls,
constituting the most industrious, capable, fierce, militaristic and resentful
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.

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Strand Magazine Nov 1935, Churchill: The Truth about Hitler, pages 16-17
At this very moment he found that the secret organization of German
industry and aviation; which the German general staff and latterly the
Brüning 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 surrounded by men as ruthless as
he. It is probable that, when he overthrew the existing constitutional
Government of Germany, 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. He even drove the patriotic
Brüning, under threat of murder, from German soil.

The fact remains that all he and Goering had to do was to give the signal
for the most gigantic process of secret rearmament that has ever taken
place. He had long proclaimed that, 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.

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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 military 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 modem 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 munitions factories roaring night and
day, his aeroplane squadrons forming in ceaseless succession, his submarine
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.

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Strand Magazine Nov 1935, Churchill: The truth about Hitler, pages 18-19
Hatred of the French is the first of these currents, and we have only to read
Herr 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 influence, 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.
Therefore , 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 doctrines, but their being enforced with
brutal vigour by the government and by the populace. No past services, no
proved patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure immunity
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 to the wretched little

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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
irresistible power of the Totalitarian State.

The hatred of the Jews led by a logical transition to an attack upon the
historic basis of Christianity. Thus the conflict broadened swiftly, 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 worldly success, at the head of the
great nation he has raised from the dust, still feel wracked 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 burning 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 functionary 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.

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Strand Magazine Nov 1935, Churchill: The Truth about Hitler, pages 20-21
Meanwhile, he makes speeches to the nations which are characterized by
candour and moderation. Recently he has offered many words of re-
assurance, 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 shells, 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.

In the annals of the new triumphant Germany there is a lurid anniversary. It

is the 30th of June. On that night last year many hundreds of men and some
women were put to death in Germany without law, without accusation,
without trial. These persons represented many varieties of life and thought of
Germany. There were Nazis and anti-Nazis. There were Generals and Com-
munists; there were Jews, Protestants, and Catholics. Some were rich and
some were poor; some were young and some were old; some were famous and
some were humble. But all had one thing in common, namely, that they were
deemed to be obnoxious or obstructive to the Hitler regime. Therefore, they
were blotted out.
Armed police caught them in the streets, shot them in their beds, shot the wife
who threw herself before her husband, dragged all manner of people to the
different goals—killed some on the way— sent others to face the firing parties
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on the outskirts of Berlin. The sinister volleys succeeded each other through
along morning, afternoon, and night. The relations who ventured to inquire for
the missing father, brother or son received, after a considerable interval, a
small urn containing cremated ashes.
The history of the world is full of gruesome, squalid episodes of this kind, from
the butcheries of ancient Rome and the numberless massacres which have
stained the history of Asiadown to the smellings out of the Zulu and Hottentot
witch-doctors. But in all its ups and downs mankind has always recoiled in
horror from such events; and every record which has pretended to be that of a
civilized race has proclaimed its detestation of them.

Adolf Hitler took upon himself the full responsibility. It is true that he
explained that many more people were murdered—for I call the slaughter of a
human being in peace without trial murder—who were not on his list. Zealous
lieutenants we are assured filled in the gaps, sometimes with public, and
sometimes with their own private enemies; and some of them were executed
themselves for having overstepped the mark. What a mark!

But the astounding thing is that the great German people, educated, scientific,
philosophical, romantic, the people of Christmas tree, the people of Goethe
and Schiller, of Bach and Beethoven, Heine, Leibnitz, Kant and a hundred
other great names, have not only not resented this horrible blood-bath, but
have endorsed it and acclaimed its author with the honours not only of a
sovereign but almost of a God. Here is the frightful fact before which what is
left of European civilization must bow its head in shame, and what is to more
practical purpose, in fear.

Can we really believe that a hierarchy and society built upon such deeds can
be entrusted with the possession of the most prodigious military machinery yet
planned among men? Can we believe that by such powers the world may
regain “the joy, the peace and glory of mankind”? The answer, if answer there
be, other than the most appalling negative, is contained in that mystery called
HITLER.

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