GERMANY’S DREAM

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 162, 5 April 1938, Page 11

GERMANY’S DREAM

Working Out The Rosenberg Plan NAZI AIMS IN EUROPE Back in pre-war days Kaiser Wilhelm II had a dream' of an Imperial Germany stretching from Berlin to the Near East. “Berlin-Bagdad” became a slogan of resurgent Prussianism. It was more than a slogan, says an overseas writer. Before the explosion of 1914, German influence was extending steadily across south-eastern Europe. Trade agreements, the Triple Alliance, an unending flow of German propaganda through the Balkans were preparing the way for the realisation of Bismarck’s great pan-Germanic plan. Bismarck’s plan was based on the sound principle of “divide and conquer.” But Wilhelm, in bls psychopathic arrogance, forgot the lessons of bls master. The pilot had been dropped.. Wilhelm thought he could conquer without dividing. The result was the world war, when Germany found herself pitted ’against half the world, and lost. Italy, bribed by promises of loot, had betrayed the Triple Alliance, and England, whom Germany thought would remain aloof from a European quarrel, had annoyingly stepped in. So, later, did America. In 1918, the Kaiser abdicated. And for a while, the Berlin-Bagdad dream passed into history. Dream Revived. 1 But not into oblivion. It was revived, after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, by Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, head of the German Department of Foreign Affairs. Rosenberg, a Baltic German with a perpetual scowl, brought the old Bismarck plan up to date. He visualised a great pan-Germanic empire stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Adriatic.

It would be a central, economically powerful bloc of 100,060,000 people, with adequate supplies of foodstuffs and essential raw materials; It would put Germany in an impregnable position for carrying out her traditional revenge against France.

And after France, England, with its wealthy, sprawling Empire. . . . Germany over all. . . . Rosenberg had read his Bismarck carefully. It was not sufficient to evolve an intoxicating dream of world domination. It was necessary to work out plans for realising it. He did so. What had Bismarck taught Germany when he turned a group of little warring States into a world Power? The basic strategy of isolating your enemies one by one, playing oft their differences, smashing the most vulnerable first. So the Rosenberg plan was born, a posthumous child of the Iron Chancellor. Principal Points. Its principal points were:— (1) Isolation of the most dangerous enemy, Soviet Russia. (2) Isolation of the ultimate enemy, France, by an alliance with Italy, who is to be duped by promises of a united Fascist front, and afterward betrayed by the seizure of the Southern Tyrol. (3) Diplomatic paralysation of England by appealing to her hostility toward Soviet Russia.

(4) Genuine and complete alliance with Japan. (5) Neutralisation of America through her fear of Communism, through the threat of Japan, and. by encouraging Fascism in Latin America. This plan was drawn up long before Hitler came into power.

It is amazing to study the accuracy with which it has been worked out, even to the creation of a Fascist State in Brazil last year.

According to the Rosenberg plan, England is now “paralysed” to the extent of permitting Germany a free hand in the South-east of Europe.

Hence the Austrian coup. It was inevitable as soon as Hitler was assured that he had the sympathy of the English Foreign Office. For English Com servative opinion has always sided with Hitler.

It has taken the view that peace could be assured by granting Germany a free hand in Central and Eastern Europe. Let Germany absorb Austria, and dominate Hungary and Czechoslovakia, it has been argued, and war will be averted—for many years at least. But the difficulty is France. The French people live under a constant shadow of German invasion. They do not forget the passage in Hitler’s autobiography that France must be destroyed before Germany can become a great nation. They remember 1914. And they are afraid, with a certain justification, that German guns, victorious in the East, will soon swing 1 West. Hence the Franco-Soviet mutualassistance pact. Hence similar pacts between France and Czechoslovakia, between Russia and Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia The Key. Czechoslovakia, a unique central European democracy, born out of the idealism of President Wilson, is the key to the present crisis. If Germany were content with an Austro-German union, Europe would have little cause for anxiety. But, in terms of the Rosenberg plan, and in the light of Nazi activities since 1933, Vienna is only a half-way house to Prague. And Prague is the base for a carefully organised drive against Russian Ukraine, against the heart of the Soviet Union. Germany has made great propaganda capital out of these mutual assistance pacts. She has built up legends of Russian airports in Czechoslovakia, within a few minutes’ bombing range of Dresden and Munich, She has called the democratic Czech republic, with its civilised, peace-loving President Benes, a Russian “aeroplane-carrier."

She has saturated the country in Nazi propaganda, calling on its 3,500,000 Germans to revolt against the tyranny of the Prague Government. President Benes has not been unsympathetic to the more moderate claims of his German citizens. But he has resisted, and is prepared to fight to resist, the Nazi claims for their independence.

The question that concerns Europe, concerns the world, is whether France and Russia are prepared to honour their agreements in the case of a German I’aid on Czechoslovakia. The Czechs depend for their survival on Russian support. And in view of the danger to Russia of a German occupation of Czechoslovakia, they are almost sure to get it. It is difficult to see how France, too, could refrain from honouring her mutual assistance pact. This, and the fact that Czechoslovakia is a strong and. wealthy country, is likely to discourage Hitler from re-

peating his Austrian coup against Prague. _ There is little possibility of a German sudden drive against Czechoslovakia. Nazi strategy is far more likely to follow; the pattern of the Spanish war. . If the 3,500,000 German Czechs—more than a fifth of the entire popula-tion-can be induced to rise in revolt against imaginary persecution, or to save their country from an imaginary “red menace,” Germany, consolidated in Austria, would be able to assist the rebels as energetically as she is assisting Franco in Spain—and without the complications involved by an overt coup, or a declaration of war. Hitler’s march into Vienna is, on paper, a preliminary to the conquest of - Czechoslovakia. . But the move is complicated by the inevitable repercussions in Ita!y. hor the Rome-Berlin axis, despite Mussolini’s speeches in Berlin, Aespß® “hochs” and “vivas” and handshaking and parades, is a very flimsy affair. Mussolini cannot blind himsel! to the fact that Vienna is to not only a jumping-off ground to Prague, but also to the Adriatic. Foreseeing the revival of the old German desire for an Adriatic frontier, Mussolini has played with the idea of a rapprochement with Belgrade. Yugoslavia and the entire Little Ln tente share Italy’s fears of a German Empire stretching to the Adriatic. However much the fact be obscured by the compromises of the moment, the rule of Austria from Berlin must always be contrary to Italian interests. The basic insecurity of the RomeBerlin axis is one of the greatest hopes for European peace. , . The strength of Czechoslovakia and the allied interests of Russia and France are equally reassuring.

Britain’s Attitude. Britain’s attitude toward these vital questions remains irritatingly undefin

eel- • Last December, when, following Lord Halifax’s Berlin visit, M. Chautemps and M. Delbos paid a visit to Downing Street, they returned to Paris reassured. » • • Britain .declared she had no intention of abandoning Central Europe. She was not prepared to settle Germany’s colonial account by persuading France to drop tile Franco-Soviet pactShe could not concede- Germany freedom of action in Czechoslovakia and Austria. , ~ Since then, Mr. Eden has been replaced by Lord Halifax, and Germany has swallowed Austria overnight. But France remains the central consideration of British foreign policy. Britain cannot permit a German hegemony of Europe , with Germany dominating the Channel ports. Itwas to prevent this that she fought in 1914. And she surely could not acquiesce in it to-day. • ... So, when Hitler, through his unwithdrawn autobiography, says, “France is and remains by far the most terrible enemy,” Downing Street, however much it is prepared to compromise with Germany for the sake of peace,, must be aware of what a German conquest of Czechoslovakia, of Russia, would mean. Meanwhile, England strives to avert the clash—and builds up the most formidable armaments in her history.