German Drums

Last week occurred the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the treaty that was going to insure the peace of Europe forever and ever, Amen. No celebrations marked the date. Instead, all eyes were on the man who had torn that document to shreds, Adolf Hitler. That day he was on a Bavarian mountain top directing a campaign to reclaim for the German Fatherland the Free City of Danzig, neutralized and placed in customs union with renascent Poland by the treaty-makers. As the Fuehrers well-oiled propaganda machine went into high gear, as his high-powered Army stood by prepared, if need be, to enforce the Leader's will, Europe's war drums throbbed louder and faster.

War of Nerves. No longer was there any doubt that Adolf Hitler is determined to have Danzig this summer, preferably without war, but, if necessary, with war. Nor could there be any doubt last week that, as matters now stand, Poland would fight rather than give up the mouth of the Vistula. But the big question was whether Poland's allies, Britain and France, would also go to war. Despite a great Anglo-French outcry of resonant warnings that further aggression would be met "by force", the Nazis believed that when the showdown came Britain and France, as they did last summer over Czecho-Slovakia, would not only back down but would try to restrain Poland from resisting.

As the Nazis followed through their by now familiar routine of the "war of nerves" by massing troops on the Polish border, smuggling SS men and ammunition into Danzig, spreading tales of terror, creating incidents and sounding false alarms, the outline of the coup could be foreseen. Danzig would have an "internal uprising." The eight members of the Danzig Senate--all Nazis--would declare the Free City absorbed into the Reich. At that moment police and soldiers would evict the Polish customs guards on the area's borders and take over. If the Poles decided then to march into Danzig, they, and not the Nazis, would be placed in the position of being the aggressors.

Die. While war fears rose in Britain and France, in Germany the people believed that their Fuehrer was again going to have his way by simply threatening to fight. That was not the situation, however, reflected to the outside world by the German propaganda machine. A purported Hitler speech to a purported "War Council" that the Fuehrer hastily appointed "leaked" through the Reichswehr and somehow got into the hands of French Rightist Deputy Henri de Kerillis, who also happens to be editor of L'Epoque.

"The die is cast," Herr Hitler was quoted as saying. "We cannot retreat now. Our backs are against the wall. It is not a question of knowing if I am right or wrong in posing so brutally the Danzig question. What is done is done, and we must accept the consequences. We must have our way, whatever the cost, in the few weeks which still separate us from the autumn months.

"Some of you will perhaps tell me that if that is my decision a general war will result. If so, so much the worse. I do not believe that we can meet, in the future, circumstances much more favorable than those that exist today. I hold that Germany, Italy and Japan are in a position to conquer today all their enemies combined. The hour, therefore, has sounded to take the supreme risk."

Though many thought this terse style highly unlike the author of Mein Kampj, and very much like the Political Section of the German Intelligence, the story did much to make the French jittery. They frankly expected a Danzig coup last weekend. The week-end passed without one, but early this week so many alarming rumors (and war preparations) had spread over Europe that Adolf Hitler apparently decided that the hour was not quite as propitious as he had thought. An "authorized" (but unidentified) Nazi spokesman delivered an extraordinary announcement, prompted by Neville Chamberlain's statement to the House of Commons that armed Germans had already entered Danzig. Said he: "We have no desire to go against the territorial integrity of Poland. If we had wanted to let the matter come to military action, we could have done so any day. . . . There are no German soldiers going into Danzig with tourist skirts on.

This declaration failed to reassure any one. There are many more weekends to go before Europe can be sure that it is not headed this summer toward another bloody destiny.

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