BRITAIN'S TOP WAR CRIMINAL
Barnes, Harry Elmer
Britain's Top War Criminal By HARRY ELMER BARNES OUTSIDE of those special groups who have some particular racial, religious, or party hatred of the Nazis, the most fanatical German-hater now at...
...And, today, many Tories, far more frightened over the spectre of Soviet Russia than they were in 1934, when they started to build up Hitler to hold the Russian Bear at bay and perhaps rub it out, would like to see a strong Germany restored once more...
...There have been two outstanding studies of the frequency of wars in modern times and of the degree of participation of the leading nations therein—Part II of Volume III of Pitirim Sorokin's Social and Cultural Dynamics...
...58 England...
...Certainly, the responsibility of Vansittart for Germany's aggressive policy in the Rhineland and Eastern Europe exceeds that of any other non-German and is greater than that of many a prominent Nazi official...
...Both of these authors are rather intensely anti-German and vehemently interventionist, but gentlemen and scholars withal...
...Even Holland, "the mother of peace," has participated in war far more frequently than Germany...
...2. To maintain the indispensable alliance with France as a protection against possible German aggression, while ruthlessly subordinating the national interests of France to British foreign policy...
...IT is significant that this period of modern history is the very one on which Vansittart bases his savage attack on the Germans...
...56 France...
...Sweden, 9; Italy, 9; Netherlands, 8; Germany (including Prussia), 8; and Denmark, 7." (Page 221) This shows that, in modern times, England has been away out in front in point of relative bellicosity among the nations, while Germany and the Netherlands stand at the very bottom of the list, next to Denmark...
...He contends that the Germans have been responsible for the great majority of the wars and bloodshed of modern history and for the diplomacy of duplicity and aggression which have made these wars necessary...
...Britain's Top War Criminal By HARRY ELMER BARNES OUTSIDE of those special groups who have some particular racial, religious, or party hatred of the Nazis, the most fanatical German-hater now at large is Lord Robert Vansittart, who was Permanent Head of the British Foreign Office under the Tory Governments which did so much to encourage and strengthen Hitler and make him feel that he could count on British support, or at least a benevolent British neutrality, in the series of acts that had brought Europe to the brink of war by the Spring of 1939...
...The percentage of participation by the principal states is as follows: "England, 28...
...we may next examine his prowess as a historian...
...HERE, then, is a real war criminal, of the first water...
...Poland, 11...
...352), the figures show "that Germany has had the smallest and Spain the largest percent of years with war...
...France, 26...
...He does not limit himself to berating the Nazis, but holds that the German people are guilty as a whole...
...Russia, 22...
...This time, the upsetting facts are already available and so clear that any honest and informed man can read them while running...
...In short, it was Vansittart's policy to encourage Germany to seek dominion on the Continent, in order to lessen the demand of the German colonists for the restoration of the German colonial empire and to check the reassertion of German ambitions for expansion overseas—a type of expansion which would directly menace the British Empire...
...36 Germany...
...28 As Sorokin concludes (P...
...This Tory attitude has been well expressed in such articles as those of F. A. Voigt in The Nineteenth Century and After...
...Austria, 19...
...Even this list by Prof...
...44 Italy...
...Says Dell of the general control and over-all direction of British foreign policy during the '30s: "Ever since Vansittart became Permanent Head of the British Foreign Office he has made British foreign policy, whether the marionette of the moment was called Simon, Hoare, or Eden...
...Of all the nations politically and militarily important in modern times, Vansittart's own England stands at the head of the list for warlike activities...
...Just why Alfred Knopf, who courageously published more books exposing the lies told about the first World War and Germany than all other American publishers combined, should find pleasure or pride in dishing out Vansittart's garbage to American readers must be beyond the discernment of his friends and well-wishers...
...Now and then, no doubt, one marionette or another has tried a little dance of his own, but the strings have remained in the hands of Sir Robert Vansittart, and the deviation has not lasted long...
...The clue is to be found in the fact that, for years, Vansittart was the man who guided the Tory foreign policy which has gone by the popular name of "appeasement," but was really one of collaboration with the Nazis in rearming Germany and developing an aggressive policy in Eastern Europe...
...50 Russia...
...Without Vansittart's active support, Hitler could never have been in a position to wage war in 1939...
...He does not criticize them too much for what they did before Frederick the Great...
...Britain has stirred up a good many wars in which she has not participated openly, which proves the superior statecraft of British diplomats and reveals them to stand at the opposite pole from American statesmen and diplomats, since at least 1914...
...67 Poland...
...It was this policy of Vansittart which led England to acquiesce in, and then encourage, German rearmament, to come to a naval agreement with Germany, to consent to German reoccupation of the Rhineland, to refuse to call Mussolini's bluff relative to the invasion of Ethiopia, and to favor German aggression in eastern Europe from 1937 to 1939...
...ACCORDING to Mr...
...He must have a deep personal sense of guilt which he seeks to expiate by his fury against all the Germans...
...Let us see how well they bear out Vansittart's ostensible obsession that Germany is "the mother of war...
...Beginning at least with Frederick the Great the Germans have deserved the abhorrence of civilized mankind, he argues...
...We have now shown that Vansittart is England's outstanding "war criminal...
...His animus and ardor smack of the lady in Hamlet who protested too much...
...It is high time that "the Era of Garbage" should draw to a close in writings about world affairs...
...There is little prospect that a structure erected wholly on lies in 1945 will endure any better than the one that was based wholly on lies in 1919...
...In three books, Black Record, Lessons of My Life, and his recent Bones of Contention, and various articles Lord Vansittart has carried on his vituperative campaign against the German people...
...But the very man who conceived and directed this pro-German and pro-Hitler British foreign policy was none other than Lord Vansittart himself, who was Permanent Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs while Tory Governments and Foreign Secretaries came and went...
...All of which goes to prove that Lord Vansittart is not only the most culpable of British political figures in the whole British campaign to build up Hitler and the Nazis and to turn them loose on eastern Europe—¦ the policy that led to the second World War—and, hence, is an accessory before the fact to the greatest military crime of human history, but that he is also a plain and unadulterated historical liar, and so obvious a liar that's man of his degree of literacy cannot very well help knowing that he is lying...
...And every aggressive action that Hitler took from 1934 onward was in' harmony with the pattern of public conduct that Vansittart had cut out for Germany...
...We have been accustomed to saddle responsibility for this upon the Baldwin and Chamberlain Governments, upon their foreign ministers, and, outside the Government, upon the so-called Cliveden Set, which met at Lady Astor's estate...
...The only thing that we have to wait for is courage enough to state what is today well known and above serious doubt—in short, to know that an honest historian will not be listed immediately as a defendant in a mass sedition trial, as Lawrence Dennis was...
...This is the man who is now denouncing the Germans as little better than apes and demanding their crushing punishment for following out the very policies that Vansittart encouraged...
...In his effort to estimate the relative bellicosity of the leading countries, Professor Wright deals with the period from 1480 to 1940...
...In the period after 1919, we had to wait for some years to obtain formerly secret documents to upset the lies of the period of war and peacemaking...
...and Chapter IX of Volume I of Quincy Wright's A Study of War...
...5. To detach France from her Eastern European alliances and obligations, so that the German expansion in the East, which Vansittart fostered, would not involve France and Britain in war...
...Not so the British, unless their interests are very vitally involved...
...Dell, Vansittart's ominous foreign policy was based on the following leading objectives : 1. Absolutely to keep England out of war unless the most vital interests of the British Empire are involved...
...Turkey, 15...
...It is too bad somebody could not have whispered a little truth into his ear before he left for Potsdam...
...s Here we have a man, who not only appeared to approve of all Germans, but cooperated, with the Nazis in the policies that led to this criminal and devastating war, now trying to expiate his guilt and clear his conscience by indicting and slandering a whole nation and demanding its indefinite humiliation, oppression, decimation, and quasi-starvation...
...Spain, 23...
...Consistent with this indictment, Vansittart has been the leader of the English group which has demanded the harshest type of peace for defeated Germany—dismemberment, stripping of industries, re-education by foreign "idealists," policing by a foreign Gestapo, and indefinite occupation by foreign armies...
...It would appear reasonable to assume that there must be something personal rather than a class or party prejudice, which lies at the basis of Lord Vansittart's fanaticism, something which runs counter both to history and to Tory perspective...
...4. To obstruct, if possible, a German-Italian alliance...
...46 Holland...
...I am," he says, "content to start our abhorrence of the Germans with Friedrich...
...Hence, the man who has, for several years now, led the British mob in denouncing the Germans for their duplicity and aggressiveness, stands fully revealed as the person who did the most to shape the British policy which brought Hitler and his Germany out of weakness, obscurity, and penury and started Nazi Germany on the road to rearmament, the occupation of the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria, the partition of Czechoslovakia, and the demands on Poland which led to the outbreak of the second World War...
...What about Vansittart's dogma that the Germans have made most of the wars since the time of Arminius and Tacitus...
...In short, it looks like what the psychiatrists would call an acute and aggravated case of "overcompensation...
...AND the probability is that the disillusionment after Potsdam will set in much more rapidly than it did after Versailles...
...He finds that there were some 278 wars involving the European countries during this period...
...3. To be on the best of terms with Hitlerite Germany, to encourage German ambitions in eastern Europe, and to use this German expansion in eastern Europe as a means of keeping Hitler from demanding a return of the German colonies...
...Wright does not reveal the full responsibility of England for wars in modern times, for it has been the wise and shrewd policy of British diplomacy to get other nations to fight Britain's wars, when possible...
...The Nazis have been no more than the natural expression of the German national character in its latest manifestation...
...And this is the period in which Germany has participated in eight percent of the wars in Europe, and Vansittart's Britain in twenty-eight percent...
...We force ourselves into wars that others have stirred up...
...Perhaps the best brief presentation of Vansittart's foreign policies in the critical '80s is that contributed to The Nation back in October, 1937, by the veteran, brilliant, and extremely well-informed foreign correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, Robert Dell...
...All of this will not please boys like Rex Stout, William L. Shirer, Lewis Mumford, Allan Nevins, and Henry Steele Commager, but I am not exactly lying awake nights over their reaction to my statements or those of anybody else...
...If we are to try war criminals, then surely Vansittart should be brought into the dock...
...President Truman has well said that constructive public acts must be based on truth...
...Covering the period from the twelfth century to 1925, Sorokin presents the following list of percentages of the total years studied in which the leading nations have been at war: Percent of Country Years at War Spain...
...SUCH an attitude on the part of a British Tory immediately arouses suspicion, for the Tories helped to make Hitler and to prepare him to act as a great War Lord...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 37
