If Hitler Comes

by Christopher Serpell

  “Another threat of war,” the headlines screamed at me. “Germany masses her armies.” … “Menacing speech by Führer.”

  The news, when one got down to it, proved to be vague, but none the less alarming. There had been German troop movements towards the north-east, and a Dutch source gave their number as twenty divisions. One knew and mistrusted Dutch sources, but there must be something in it. Hitler had spoken at a gathering of Party leaders at Breslau, reverting abruptly to the intransigent style of his early war speeches. It might be intended only for home consumption, but there were some ugly passages. “The colonial question must be settled here and now. Those who speak of conferences do not realize the temper of the German people. The German people will not plead before a conference table for their rights. They will demand them with a voice of thunder, and no international Jewish combine shall dare to oppose that voice.…” Another passage, referring to the armed might of the Reich, “perfected by its recent trial”, contained the sentence: “The German Air Force is the strongest weapon that any nation has ever possessed. Others have boasted of their defences, but I say now that if I were to give the word the war-planes of the Reich could take off in their thousands and lay any hostile capital in ruins.”

  The Times gave the news in more qualified fashion, but did not conceal its gravity. To say that the German troop movements might be only a prelude to the long-promised German demobilization did not exclude the possibility of another less pleasant alternative. Hitler’s speech was given in full, and a brief diplomatic commentary deplored its tone, pointing out that a settlement of the questions left outstanding by the war was one of the first objects of the British Government.

  “I’m afraid I shall have to run up to Town to look into all this,” I said, with a feeble attempt at light-heartedness. “It may prove to be a mare’s nest, and in that case I can catch the four-thirty down in time for dinner.” Elizabeth looked at me anxiously, and I could feel the concern of our hosts, who, however, took the matter with their customary matter-of-fact calm. It was arranged that my wife should stay on, and that I should telephone as soon as I knew how things were going.

  “By the yellow Tiber there was tumult and affright”—in fact all the symptoms of a crisis as pre-war London had displayed them. There was remarkably little news from the Continent, the usual “well-informed sources” having closed down with unanimous rapidity. Officials at the Wilhelmstrasse had declined to comment on the current rumours, merely remarking that, as the Führer’s speech had shown, the situation was one of gravity. The Foreign Office in London was equally uninformative: reports from various European centres had been “grossly exaggerated”; the Government were not inclined to view the situation as a crisis: it was true that in view of certain unexpected developments a Cabinet meeting had been called for that afternoon, but this was no more than a normal precaution due to the desire of the Foreign Secretary to acquaint his colleagues with the facts; any tendency to panic was strongly deplored.

  If such remarks were intended to have a reassuring effect it was unfortunate that the Home Office should have announced simultaneously that the London A.R.P. organization was to be revived. There was a frenzied remobilization of wardens and ambulances going on all day, and those firms which had discarded their wartime defences of sand-bags and boarded windows looked askance at those which had retained them.

  I soon realized that there was to be no return to the country for me that week-end, and rang up Ashdene Cottage. “Is there going to be another war?” Gerald asked, and all I could do was to say that it was best to prepare for the worst.

  By six o’clock the Cabinet had risen, but there was no statement forthcoming in spite of the crowds waiting in Downing Street and Whitehall. Privately I learnt that the Government were in continuous touch with Berlin, but no-one was bold enough even to guess at the nature of the negotiations. Fresh reports of troop movements had come in from the Low Countries, and were published in the evening papers, and there was also a story of unidentified aircraft seen flying along the East Coast. Personally I had come to the conclusion that we were to be treated to a display of Blitzkrieg at its worst, and had hinted as much in my dispatches to Wellington.

  There was an extraordinary atmosphere of helplessness everywhere. If this had not been foreseen by the Government, what could the private man do? Even the attempts to revive A.R.P. were, I was told, half-hearted. I was thankful that Elizabeth and the child were in the country.

  At half-past eleven that night, when I was contemplating going to bed in my clothes after a day spent mainly in making fruitless inquiries, some enlightenment was vouchsafed. An urgent message was circulated from the Foreign Office requesting the representatives of all the newspapers to be present in the Locarno Room at nine o’clock the following morning, as an important statement was to be made. Inquiries into its nature were useless, and the infuriated editors of Sunday newspapers had to go to press without satisfaction. They could only record the official announcement broadcast with the late News that His Majesty’s Government had been engaged in important and delicate negotiations with the German Government and that it was expected that these would shortly be brought to a successful conclusion. Dubious, but relieved of its immediate fears, the nation went to bed.

  The next morning I took my place in a congregation of my colleagues seated rather incongruously on gilt chairs arranged in rows at one end of that august meeting place. Some of us were yawning and bleary-eyed after our labours overnight. Officials, among whom I recognized Billings of the F.O., were gathered at the far end of the great table. Then the door opened, and in walked none other than Ribbentrop himself, bulky in a great fur-collared overcoat, followed by the Prime Minister and Sir John Naker.

  There was a mutter from, someone behind me—someone possessing the omniscience of the true reporter which I was never able to achieve: “Flew over in a special plane this morning; arrived at seven-thirty.” To me the appearance of the German Foreign Minister was a complete shock, and so it was to many others. I was expecting a temporizing statement, even the announcement of an immediate conference, but the presence of Ribbentrop must mean that everything was settled. There was tense expectation in the air.

  The statesmen had taken their seats at the head of the conference table. They were surrounded by officials, some standing on either side of the central group, others hovering in the background. Dr. Evans and Sir John Naker were conferring in low tones over a piece of paper. Ribbentrop sat staring superciliously down the room, apparently bored with the whole proceedings.

  Then there was a brief stir as the Prime Minister rose to his feet and looked down the room towards us. A shaft of sunlight from the long windows touched his grey curly hair. We leant forward to catch his cultured, diffident voice—perhaps this time a little more diffident than usual.

  “I have invited you here to-day, gentlemen,” he said, “as witnesses of an historic act of peace. I am well aware of the rumours which during the past twenty-four hours have been reaching this country from various unauthorized sources—rumours of yet another war, rumours of menaces directed against this country by a Great Power—a crystallization, in fact, of all the irresponsible talk that has been flying about since this country signed a peace with Germany last autumn.

  “To-day I am privileged to dispel not only these rumours but something of much greater moment—all fear of war in our time. I am about to put my initials to an instrument which will bind Great Britain and the German Reich in a union closer than has ever before been achieved by two Great Powers, a union which will effectively remove …”

  Here the precise words, with their sing-song intonation, were drowned in a growing roar which shook the tall sash windows. We turned involuntarily to look, and glimpsed phalanx after phalanx of broad-winged bombers sweeping low across the narrow segment of sky which was visible from our seats. The noise lasted for an intolerable minute, while Evans stood irresolute, fingering a sheet of blotting paper. Then as the roar swept on in a
diminuendo over London, Sir John Naker leant forward. “I am advised by the German Foreign Minister”, he said in an expressionless voice, “to say that the German Air Force has chosen to celebrate to-day’s proceedings with a goodwill flight over London and the other larger cities of the British Isles.”

  The Prime Minister bowed his acknowledgement and in a rather shaken manner scrambled to his conclusion. “I am, in fact,” he said, “about to initial a Treaty of Friendship and Mutual Assistance with the German Reich, thus confirming the Peace of Nuremberg on a just and reasonable basis put forward by Herr Hitler with the thorough agreement of His Majesty’s Government. I believe it will be in accordance with public feeling in both countries.”

  He stopped, looked towards us almost as if expecting comment, and sat down. A few seconds later he had initialled the document.

  After a pause, Sir John Naker came down towards us with the genial Rotarian countenance which he reserved for the Press. “Now, boys,” he chuckled, wagging his finger at us like an indulgent schoolmaster, “no questions! no questions! Billings there will let you have a copy of the instrument. Yes, I know it’s been sudden, but you’ll find it’s all for the best. Glad to see you all here so early in the day. Good morning, all.” He turned his broad back on us and made his way, with the others, to the door.

  We stared at our copies, finding it difficult this time to disentangle the diplomatic verbiage. It was, indeed, a military alliance, by which Germany guaranteed Great Britain, India, the Dominions, and the Colonies, and we the Greater Reich with all its attendant “autonomous protectorates”. Each country “recognized as part of its own vital interest the integrity and orderly government of the other”. There were to be staff talks, and an exchange of military and naval information. Naval bases in the Mediterranean and elsewhere were to be shared and jointly administered. An elaborate system of trade preferences was to be set up, foreshadowing, it seemed, a customs union. The Mandated Territories, naturally, were to be handed back; but in any case there was to be an “open door” all round, British capital being as free to develop Galicia as German traders to establish themselves on the Gold Coast. There was a lot about “cultural exchanges”, and—most ominous of all—a Press pact, by which neither Government would permit its newspapers to attack the other country’s political institutions. Lastly, there was something about eternal peace.

  Exclamations expressive of varying degrees of surprise, excitement, and dismay accompanied the departing diplomats, and then we all began to shout and gesticulate at once. I can remember feeling rather helpless, with a dim idea that, since the ineluctable processes of history had produced this inevitable document, one could only wait to see what would happen next.

  But a journalist must get his story. A thousand questions were waiting to be asked; and there was a rush to consult Billings or some other official of the Press Department. But Billings looked as bewildered as the rest of us. He said there was nothing to add. The treaty spoke for itself, and in any case the Prime Minister would be broadcasting during the evening.

  The American who shared my taxi back to Fleet Street was voluble and incoherent. Like me, he must send a message at once, and he was equally at a loss for “a line”. He muttered conflicting clichés, varying from “Hitler’s Paper Triumph” to “The Beginning of the End”.

  “Who can tell what it means?” he asked despairingly. “A people like this cannot be robbed of their birthright by a hole-and-corner rendezvous at nine on a Sunday morning.

  “I am beginning to think it amounts to very little, really,” he went on, as the cab cut the corner of Trafalgar Square. “The return of the colonies is the only concrete clause in it; and that was expected. The rest just flatters Hitler’s vanity—lets him link arms with a respectable old aggressor like your British Empire. You have got to live side by side in your respective spheres, and there is no harm in drawing up a nice, neighbourly contract in black and white.”

  He laughed, probably because he knew he was talking nonsense.

  The bells of the few Wren churches in the City which had survived the second “Great Fire” were keeping up tradition by summoning to prayer the inhabitants of an unslept-in part of London. The few people in the streets were walking westwards, feeling that the rumours of Saturday night might find some visual expression in the neighbourhood of Downing Street. The special editions were not yet on the streets. A London Sunday morning was still nearly its old, blank self.

  Our taximan, however, had heard something of what had happened, and displayed a mild interest in it. When he was being paid he remarked: “So they’ve been signing another treaty down in Whitehall, have they, gentlemen? Well, after that Nuremberg business, I suppose they might as well make a proper job of it.”

  What, I wondered, was Hitler’s notion of a proper job? After I had sent my first startling cablegram I sat back for a moment, and my eye lighted on an old wartime copy of an illustrated paper. On the cover was a portrait of the Führer, his little eyes glowing with an inexhaustible fanaticism; and inside were some rather unpleasant pictures, smuggled out of Prague.

  The tide of excitement soon began to rise, and by dusk the streets and clubs were full. On the whole, to my surprise, it was a pleasurable excitement, and the impression began to gain ground that the Government had cleverly averted another tiresome crisis in cutting the Gordian knot and frankly acknowledging the interdependence of the two greatest Powers in the world. Leader writers were busy describing this “great new experiment in international relations”, and one of them was tactless enough (but positively on this occasion only) to write of “new opportunities for the civilizing influence of Great Britain”.

  Cabinet Ministers contributed nobly to the atmosphere of anti-crisis. Ribbentrop, wise man, had flown back early to Berlin, upon which they felt capable of assuming an attitude of dignified and assured insouciance. They lit complacent cigarettes on the steps of Number Ten, and the Prime Minister, within earshot of a gossip writer, remarked to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he had decided to make a start with pruning his roses. Sir John Naker threw some crumbs to the pelicans in St. James’s Park, dined informally at a popular restaurant, and then went to see the film version of Merrie England. All interviews were refused; and not even the Dominions High Commissioners were seen. “The policy of His Majesty’s Government,” it was officially explained, “of which the agreement with Germany forms a part, can be elaborated only in Parliament, but the Prime Minister will broadcast a statement to the nation at eight o’clock to-night.”

  The broadcast stands on record as one of history’s most celebrated manifestations of unconscious hypocrisy. Everyone wanted to believe it, so it passed. But as soon as that tired but pathetically hopeful voice died on the ether England began talking again, and went on talking far into the night. All had their hopes—the privileged that they would keep their privileges in a world that had become far too restive, the workers that they would catch up with the cost of living, the unemployed that they would find jobs again. Perhaps in a stable balanced Europe all wishes would be fulfilled.

  The Greyshirts also had their hopes. They marched down the Mile End Road, and beat up quite a number of Jews before order could be restored by the police.

  I was up early next day to read the papers. The Government had a good Press, in the sense that no-one suggested that they might have taken a different course. Each journal in its own way put the best face it could on what had happened. There was nothing anywhere that was constructive, that indicated or commended a policy for the future.

  The news columns were more revealing. Dispatches from Germany showed that the crowds in Berlin, in marked contrast to those in London, had spent a Sunday of triumphant rejoicing, culminating with a speech from the Führer in the Sport Palace. That speech was gone over in London with a toothcomb, but, though it contained many expressions of goodwill towards the British Empire, there was no clear indication of what he hoped to do with it in the future. The best indication was perhap
s provided by the news that, while he was yet speaking (and anticipating somewhat the terms of the treaty), an unspecified number of troops had set sail from Hamburg, under convoy, to take possession of the former German colonies in Africa.

  The interpretative message that I put together that morning was necessarily ill informed, but not more so than anyone else’s, and I felt that in a discreet way I had warned my startled readers to expect the worst. Usual sources of information had now completely broken down, and the busy London scene through which I walked to the cable office had suddenly become as remote as that of a strange city. Yet the red buses and the taxis were the same, like the people hurrying up familiar office stairs. It was as though some firm to which one had devoted one’s working life had quietly gone bankrupt, but was still being carried on as a going concern by a shadowy Official Receiver.

  However, it was not long before I came up against the first signs of inner change. As I was about to hand in my painstaking cablegram the clerk, polite and friendly, said: “Ah, Mr. Fenton, we have a nice little office fixed up for Mr. Johnson already. Smart work, eh? Perhaps you will step along.”

  In a moment I was standing before a nervous young man who, seated at a trestle table, looked as surprised to be there as I was to find him. The clerk announced me, and withdrew.

  “Well, Mr. Fenton,” said this unexpected apparition, “I’m from the Foreign Office. It is a matter of glancing at outgoing cables, under the terms of the Treaty. No abuse of the other country’s institutions, and so on. A pure formality, of course,” he added hastily.

  “What is this—a censorship?” I said, amazed.

  “Well, no, it’s not that,” he replied. “It’s just that the F.O. thinks it would help the Press in this matter if there is someone at hand who can initial messages before they are sent.”

  “But why pick on me?” I asked.

  “Oh, but this applies to everybody, of course,” he said. “I’m here to cover the Eastern Union cablegrams, but there’s someone in every newspaper office in London and at all the agencies.” He held out his hand for my typescript.