## Ignoring the warnings before the German aggression in 1939 After the National Socialist Part came to power in Germany, its program could not have been more explicit; few people, however, wanted to believe it. A notable exception was the publication, in 1934, of a book written by an English financier, Paul Einzig. In it he put forth his view of what the major events of the following ten years would be. He wrote: > _"The trend of evolution in Europe points inexorably towards another world war in the lifetime of our generation. Before the advent of the National Socialist regime there was every reason to hope that a recurrence of the disaster of 1914 could be avoided. The victory of Hitler, its circumstances and its consequences, have made another war most likely, if not inevitable." _ As for the mechanisms that would lead to the war, they were analyzed with great lucidity. > _"The only means by which Germany can increase her agricultural production is by the annexation of adjacent agricultural territories, such as Denmark, Holland, The Polish Corridor, and so on. The annexation of Austria which is the immediate aim of German imperialism, is a mixed blessing from the point of view of Germany's economic self-sufficiency. One of the objects of the 'Drang nach Osten' tendency of Germany's foreign policy is to establish a direct frontier with Russia, so as to be able to rely upon the vast raw-material resources of that country. In order to attain that end, Poland as well as one or several of Baltic states would have to be defeated first."_ From where did the author draw his conclusions? First, from the official program of the National Socialist party, which he published as an appendix; second, from the orientation of the German economy toward the objective of self-sufficiency even at the expense of economic profitability; and finally from the German rearmament program. Why did this and and similar warnings have so little consequence for British and French public opinion and government? Certainly there were all sorts of circumstantial reasons, but their common denominator was the unconscious desire to ignore the disturbing evidence. An intensive rearmament program would have been expensive and unpopular, especially during the recession of the 1930s; thus it was better to make a pretense of believing that these warnings did not have to be taken seriously. Even rearmament, however, would probably not have prevented the outbreak of the conflict. The example of 1914 shows that despite the intensive English and French rearmament after the Tangier crisis of March 1905, the march to war continued inexorably. *[[Bertrand Roehner]], [[Pattern and Repertoire in History]]* ## Related [[World War I]], [[World War II]], [[Pattern and Repertoire in History]]