HITLER SWAYED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 94, 18 October 1939, Page 10

HITLER SWAYED

DECISION FOR WAR

INFLUENCE OF EXTREMISTS

CONSTANTLY SINISTER

(Daventry Broadcast.)

LONDON, Tuesday Night.

In a White Paper issued in London, Sir Nevile Henderson, former Ambassador in Berlin, describes the events which led up to the outbreak of war. He amplifies and comments upon events set out in the Blue Book, issued last month, and states that the Polish warning to Germany about acts of aggression in Danzig produced, in Sir Nevile's words, "that final brainstorm in Hitler's mind on which the peace of the world depended."

Since February of last year Herr Hitler had become more and more shut off from external influences, and the extremists —Herr yon Ribbentrop, Dr. Goebbels and Herr Himmler—had a constantly sinister influence. If Herr Hitler appeared to hesitate they fabricated situations calculated to drive him into courses from which, at times, he shrank.

Herr Hitler's great mistake was his complete failure to understand the inherent British sense of morality. When Herr Hitler said he preferred a war when he was 50 and not 55 or 66, Sir Nevile said he got the impression that the corporal of the last war was anxious to prove* what he could do as a conquering generalissimo in the next. When the German proposals over Poland were being gabbled to him, Sir Nevile said, the impression he gathered was that Herr Hitler was deliberately throwing away the last chance of a .peaceful solution. There had never been a case of more deliberate or wilfully-planned aggression. Field-Marshal Goering had told/ him that when any decision was made the Fuhrer alone decided.