Peace at Any Price?
BERLE, ADOLF A.
Peace at Any Price? ORIGINS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR By A. J. P. Taylor Atheneum. 296 pp. $4.00. Reviewed by ADOLF A. BERLE Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State; author, "Tides of...
...It was due chiefly to the blundering and halfpolicies of the West European powers, notably Great Britain...
...It does suggest peace at any price...
...Nor do I think that world conflict today will be on the way to settlement if Berlin is sacrificed...
...Taylor, a brilliant diplomatic historian, could not have avoided knowing that a work of this kind, if influential at all, would suggest a Munich-type settlement for the Berlin problem of today...
...If the European powers had followed the same policy in settling the Danzig question that they had in settling the Czechoslovak question at Munich, Taylor believes, matters would have stabilized, Hitler (one supposes) would have stopped and World War II, as we know it, would not have occurred...
...The Munich accord was then reached and there was "peace for our time...
...such as those which resulted from the massacre of the Jews, and from Hitler's violent language and propaganda...
...There is little doubt now that the Munich concession drained all credibility from Western pledges...
...Hitler said if the Sudeten question were settled, he wanted nothing more...
...In any case, it totally disregards currents of moral indignation which do in time influence governments and foreign offices...
...A spate of American commentators are now taking a historical fine somewhat like that which Professor Taylor retrospectively takes with respect to the 1938-39 situation...
...Whereupon, incredibly, Britain guaranteed Poland and entered into what Taylor, pointing to the map, considers an impossible alliance...
...I doubt if the argument stands up...
...All the evidence points the other way...
...Let's look at the history first...
...Taylor seems to think Hitler, at the time he assumed power in 1933, had no such program...
...the French talked big but asked assurances from Great Britain which the latter did not wish to give, and Germany rearmed...
...But Hitler's Austrian seizure, Taylor says (with even greater naivete, I think), was not launched by Hitler...
...Who are "the British...
...I was an extremely young and obscure member of the American Commission at Versailles, and I thought it was not viable at the time...
...Incredible as the British guarantee of Poland appeared, its violation meant war...
...One weakness, of course, was the Danzig Corridor and the equivocal position of Danzig itself...
...These currents today, like the Nazi-Fascist currents in 1938-39, give meaning and significance to specific solutions...
...The ensuing war was for Danzig only, and if Hitler had had common sense enough not to attack Russia in 1941, a new balance would have been achieved...
...The great difficulty with Versailles was precisely that, having conquered Germany, the Allies could not make up their minds either to conciliate and make a friend of that very strong country, or to destroy it utterly...
...Chamberlain took him seriously...
...As the latter (Marshal Foch's solution) probably could not have been done, conciliation seemed the obvious policy—as well as the moral one...
...In August 1939, Hitler, who had made demands concerning Danzig and the Corridor, moved in...
...Hitler occupied the Rhinelarid...
...But, the American reported, one case of bill-posters had obviously been misplaced...
...The recent Russian note addressed to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer proposing that the Federal Republic drop its alliance with the West and join the USSR powerfully suggests that this surmise may be fact...
...He believes the artificial system of security provided by the League of Nations died when Hitler repudiated the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles...
...Sooner or later most of the world was bound to take these things seriously...
...Taylor's most spectacular point is that the war which began in 1939 was nothing more than a war for Danzig and the Polish Corridor...
...But again, according to Taylor, Hitler had merely been bluffing...
...The death of Versailles, Taylor believes, was welcomed by the British...
...Chance played a part...
...He would argue, therefore, that the HoareLaval plan to settle Abyssinia may have been cynical but it was practical...
...Specifically, I think it is stupid to detach the Berlin crisis of 1962 from the declared intentions of Communist party congresses and the steady drive of imperialist Soviet policy...
...In my case—as in the case of most Americans—the concern is blended with deep apprehension...
...Detaching particular territorial problems from this background does not, I think, make for sound interpretation of history...
...that Germany's military preparation was a bluff...
...In that sense, his book is a very scholarly, highly documented brief in favor of Marcel Deát's famous proposition, "Why die for Danzig...
...Perhaps unintentionally, it is a sort of apology for Adolf Hitler, whose war guilt Taylor considers a historical myth...
...Communications were not delivered on time, and, anyway, the Poles were in the wrong...
...These were in Polish and began: "Poles: We come as friends "The machinery for seizing Poland had already been rigged before the occupation of Prague, if not before Munich...
...An American who was in Prague when Hitler's armies moved in saw the Wehrmacht's propaganda squads pasting up declarations: "We come as friends and liberators...
...The volume does not quite come into the class of Bertrand Russell's "Better Red than dead" argument...
...Western Europe could not make up its mind whether to seek firm alliance with the Soviet Union or with the United States, and possibly could not have obtained cooperation from either...
...Edouard Daladier, for France, took refuge behind Britain's desire to compromise...
...Concessions, not devotion to principle, made World War II...
...It proved to be peace for six months...
...Under these circumstances, Hitler took Austria...
...A new order had come into being in Europe, dominated by Germany...
...Naively, Austria believed the "conscience of Europe" would protect it, as some people now believe "world opinion" will protect a weaker state against an aggressor...
...A. L. Rowse, to call the book "perverse,' a "falsification of history" and cynical...
...that the Sudeten extremists were home-grown...
...There is little doubt in my mind, for example, that surrender in Berlin would lead at once to Soviet attempts to push its influence straight to the Rhine, taking over Germany by alliance or subversion or both —just as seizure of Prague was preliminary to seizure of half of Poland...
...There is every reason to believe, in the light of current historical document, that if Hitler's bluff (to use Taylor's word) had been resolutely called at Munich, World War II might have been avoided...
...The 1945 policy ripened into a policy of true conciliation, including firm understanding between France and Germany, and to that we owe what chance for peace we now have...
...Most of these were in Czech...
...It was sprung on him by surprise," and Taylor discounts the planned aggression theory...
...Here let me insert an anecdote...
...There was far less justification for maintaining international hatred in 1919 than there was in 1945...
...Specifically, it drained credibility from Britain's alliance with Poland, and Hitler, having secured non-action from the Soviet Union by the Hitler-Stalin pact, assumed he could move freely...
...For this reviewer, the great question is why the book was published so late...
...Both the historical interpretation propounded and its possible application have induced various reviewers, including Professor Gordon Craig of Princeton and Taylor's colleague at Oxford, Dr...
...Hitler won that, and the war should have ended then...
...Grudgingly, Taylor concedes "Hitler may have projected a great war all along...
...But I did not think then, and do not think now, that peace depended merely on a set of isolated, unsolved problems, as I gather Taylor does...
...Once more, according to Taylor, the wicked Poles forced the Danzig problem even as Hitler himself was seizing other Germanic territories, including Memel, and marching into Prague...
...yet it seems from the record that he became involved in war through launching on 29 August a diplomatic maneuver which he ought to have launched on 28 August...
...Here he makes a wise remark not inapplicable today: "a system cannot be a substitute for action, but can only provide opportunities for it...
...I would offer to bet that the Soviet apparatus for moving in on Western Germany is rigged now...
...I do not believe that World War II in 1939 broke out over Danzig —this was merely the trip cord...
...Then followed two years (1936-38) of a halfarmed peace...
...The real Second World War, according to Taylor, began when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and when, after Pearl Harbor, Hitler kept his agreement with Japan and declared war on the United States...
...As to resistance, he points out— accurately—that the United States had not associated itself with any anti-Hitler front and had encouraged a "peaceful settlement" —in effect, following the Neville Chamberlain line...
...The parallel between the current Berlin crisis, the 1938 crisis over Munich and the one over Danzig in 1939 is as devilish as it is striking...
...He was mistaken...
...Taylor begins with the thesis that the system of peace worked out at Versailles in 1918-19 was not viable...
...Had a Munich settlement been made for Poland, all would have been well...
...By then, the current of world opinion, world emotion and world fear had reached a point where it did influence governments...
...Their Foreign Office...
...In a like manner, Taylor thinks that Czechoslovakia as it emerged from Versailles was untenable anyway...
...One wonders...
...that as late as September 1939, the Sudeten question was dying down...
...rejection merely led to Fascist Italy's seizure of the whole country...
...He discounts Hitler's own statement in Mein Kampf, not to mention a good deal of contemporary opinion...
...Maybe, but I doubt it...
...Yet, having said this, it does not follow that the Versailles system could only be replaced by accepting a renascent Germany as the master of Europe...
...More trenchantly, the volume argues that World War II is not at all what we think...
...author, "Tides of Crisis" A. J. P. Taylor, a Fellow of Magdalen College and an Oxford Don, has produced a book calculated to raise unlimited controversy...
Vol. 45 • May 1962 • No. 10
