Mussolini at first refused to acknowledge receipt of the message. Hitler, however, was delighted at this unexpected challenge. Ever since he had first come forth as a speaker, his oratorical temperament had always responded best in argument. The naive demagoguery of Roosevelt’s appeal, with its listing of countries with which neither Germany nor Italy had common borders or differences of opinion (among them Eire, Spain, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Persia), offered Hitler an easy target. He announced through DNB, the German News Agency, that he would deliver his reply in a speech to the Reichstag.
Hitler’s speech of April 28 was one of the recognizable milestones along the course of the European crisis. It marked the destination as war. Following Hitler’s tried-and-true pattern, it was full of avowals of peace, loud in asseverations of innocence, and silent about all his real intentions. Once again Hitler tried to commend himself as the spokesman for a program of limited and moderate revisions in the East; but attacks upon the Soviet Union as evil incarnate were noticeably absent. Simultaneously he displayed all his sarcasm, all his apparent logic and hypnotic persuasiveness, so that many a listener called the speech “probably the most brilliant oration he ever gave.”119 He combined his attacks upon England with expressions of admiration and friendly feelings for her. He assured Poland that despite all his disappointments with her he was ready to continue negotiations. And he ranted against the “international warmongers,” the “provocateurs,” and “enemies of peace” whose aim was to recruit “mercenaries of the European democracies against Germany.” He denounced the “jugglers of Versailles who, either in their maliciousness or their thoughtlessness, placed 100 powder barrels all over Europe.”
Finally he came to the climax, his answer to the American President, which was greeted by the deputies with tempestuous enthusiasm and roars of laughter. Hitler divided Roosevelt’s letter into twenty-one points, which he answered in sections. The American President, he said, had pointed out to him the general fear of war; but Germany had participated in none of the fourteen wars that had been waged since 1919—“but in which the States of the ‘Western Hemisphere,’ in whose name President Roosevelt speaks, were indeed concerned.” Germany also had nothing to do with the twenty-six “violent interventions and sanctions carried through by means of bloodshed and force” during that period, whereas the United States, for example, had carried out military interventions in six cases. Furthermore, the President had pleaded for the solution of all problems at the conference table, but America herself had given sharpest expression to her mistrust in the effectiveness of conferences by leaving the League of Nations, “the greatest conference of all time”—from which Germany, in violation of Wilson’s pledge, was for a long time excluded. In spite of this “most bitter experience,” Germany had not followed the example of the United States until his, Hitler’s, administration.
The President was also making himself the advocate of disarmament. But Germany had, for all times, learned her lesson, ever since she had appeared unarmed at the conference table in Versailles and been “subjected to even greater degradation than can ever have been inflicted on the chieftains of the Sioux tribes.” Roosevelt was taking so great an interest in Germany’s intentions in Europe that the question necessarily arose what aims American foreign policy was pursuing, for example, toward Central or South American countries. The President would surely regard such a question as tactless and refer to the Monroe Doctrine. And although it was surely tempting for the German government to behave in the same way, it had nevertheless addressed all the countries mentioned by Roosevelt and asked whether they felt threatened by Germany. “The reply was in all cases negative, in some instances strongly so.” However, Hitler continued, “it is true that I could not cause inquiries to be made of certain of the States and nations mentioned because they themselves—as, for example, Syria—are at present not in possession of their freedom, but are occupied and consequently deprived of their rights by the military agents of the democratic States.” Then he continued:
Mr. Roosevelt! I fully understand that the vastness of your nation and the immense wealth of your country allow you to feel responsible for the history of the whole world and for the history of all nations. I, sir, am placed in a much more modest and smaller sphere…. I cannot feel myself responsible for the fate of the world, as this world took no interest in the pitiful state of my own people.
I have regarded myself as called upon by Providence to serve my own people alone and to deliver them from their frightful misery….
I have conquered chaos in Germany, re-established order and enormously increased production in all branches of our national economy by strenuous efforts…. I have succeeded in finding useful work once more for the whole of 7,000,000 unemployed, who so appeal to the hearts of us all…. I [have] united the German people politically, but I have also re-armed them; I have also endeavored to destroy sheet by sheet that Treaty which in its 448 articles contains the vilest oppression which peoples and human beings have ever been expected to put up with.
I have brought back to the Reich provinces stolen from us in 1919; I have led back to their native country millions of Germans who were torn away from us and were in misery; I have re-established the historic unity of German living space and, Mr. Roosevelt, I have endeavored to attain all this without spilling blood and without bringing to my people, and consequently to others, the misery of war.
I, who twenty-one years ago was an unknown worker and soldier of my people, have attained this, Mr. Roosevelt, by my own energy…. You, Mr. Roosevelt, have a much easier task in comparison. You became President of the United States in 1933 when I became Chancellor of the Reich. In other words, from the very outset you stepped to the head of one of the largest and wealthiest States in the world…. Conditions prevailing in your country are on such a large scale that you can find time and leisure to give your attention to universal problems…. My world, Mr. Roosevelt… is unfortunately much smaller… for it is limited to my people.
I believe, however, that this is the way in which I can be of the most service to that for which we are all concerned, namely, the justice, well-being, progress and peace of the whole human community.120
This speech contained more than mere rhetorical effects. Implicit in it was a remarkable political decision. Two days earlier England had introduced conscription; and in reply Hitler now abrogated the Anglo-German Naval Treaty and the Nonaggression Pact with Poland. Dramatic though they seemed, these declarations had no immediate consequences; they were only a gesture. But with that gesture. Hitler liquidated the pledge contained in all such agreements, the pledge to settle disputes peaceably. In fact the speech as a whole might best be compared with the Western powers’ guarantee of Poland, or with Roosevelt’s intervention. It was a moral declaration of war. The adversaries were taking up their positions.
Hitler had delivered his speech on April 28. On April 30 the British ambassador in Paris asked French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet what he thought about Hitler’s somewhat uncanny silence in regard to Russia. , And in fact from this moment on the Soviet Union, hitherto merely a mighty shadow on the periphery, began to move into the center of events. Hitler’s reticence was as much a symptom of the changing situation as the sudden activity of the Western powers toward Russia. A secret race for alliances was beginning, heightened on all sides by distrust, fear, and jealousy. Upon the outcome of that race the question of war or peace would be decided.