THE RISE OF HITLERISM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 217, 14 September 1939, Page 6

THE RISE OF HITLERISM.

Hitler was enabled to seize power in Germany because his opponents of Right and Left inside Germany preferred to quarrel among themselves rather than to unite against him —their common enemy. He was enabled to seize Czechoslovakia because a British Conservative Government preferred to continue a policy of appeasement rather than to unit® with a Left Government of Russia to oppose him. If he succeeds in Poland it will be because the Left Government has now adopted the policy of appeasement in preference to one of joint action with Britain and France to oppose him. The moral of this is that our local Rights and Lefts should cease their quarrels and join forces to be ready to resist their common enemy. One of Ki ivitsky's four articles in the Saturday "Evening Post" is entitled "Stalin Appeases Hitler," and the following quotation describes their attitude to each other: "There is enmity on the side of t Hitler. On the side of Stalin there is fear.'' He says also that Stalin by nature respects Hitler's rutlilessness, a'nd distrusts the Western democracies. Our principal concern with all this is in the light it may throw on the probable duration of the Russo-German agreement. It would appear from the Krivitsky articles and from the small amount of news we have, that it 'has about the same significance as the declaration of mutual desire for peace signed by Mr. Chamberlain and Hitler at Munich. There is one more point. It is obvious that an industrial country like Germany and an agricultural country like Russia could best prosper by peaceful interchange of machinery on the one hand for raw materials on the other. The Krivitekr articles suggest that Stalin realises this and that his policy is based on some hope of making Hitler see it. Similarly, Mr. Chamberlain and President Roosevelt have both suggested that Hitler should accept removal of tariff barriers as the remedy for German grievances. Hitler's lvook, "Mein Kampf," provides the answer to this. He wants German dominance and territorial expansion of Germany at the expense of his neighbours. What the fate of these peoples should be when Hitler has distributed their lands among his followers is of 110 more consequence than if they were so many cattle. Another article in the "isolationist" Saturday "Evening Post" describes '"Mein Kampf" as a "blueprint for hell." and Stalin must be aware that it proposes particular hell for Russians.- T.M.