Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of MankindKnickerbocker, H. R. (Hubert Renfro)
History
Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of Mankind
Knickerbocker, H. R. (Hubert Renfro)
Europe -- Politics and government -- 1918-1945; World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945 -- United States
A. There are two ways: military occupation or deindustrialization
of the Reich. It is plain that if Germany is allowed the least
opportunity, she would rearm and attack with the same swift ferocity
she has just displayed. There must be physical restraint to keep her
from doing so. Military occupation is the obvious, traditional method,
but it has serious drawbacks. It is expensive and tiring. Nevertheless
if the Nazis are defeated in this war, it will be imperative to
occupy Germany far more thoroughly than after the last war, if only
to preserve order. There are some advocates of deliberately allowing
Germany a period of disorder during which it could be hoped that the
Germans would themselves exterminate a great number of Nazis. This
would only render more formidable the task which already appears
staggeringly difficult, to re-establish a state of law in the Reich,
where since 1933, law as we know it, has been abolished. Whatever
permanent system of controlling Germany is eventually adopted, the
first step will have to be military occupation. Theoretically, military
occupation could be continued indefinitely. Actually it never is
continued long, because the occupying troops and their people at
home grow tired of it. Even the French, who directly after the war
were fanatically determined to secure their frontier by taking the
Rhineland, and who did get in the Treaty of Versailles permission to
occupy the Rhineland for fifteen years, even these prudent and wary
French grew so tired of it that they evacuated the Rhineland three
years ahead of time, in June 1930.
Six years later the Nazis moved in and constructed the Siegfried
line along the very positions which had been occupied by the French
troops. I know there were other reasons for the French to give up the
Rhineland. The British had pressed them to appease the Germans. The
Germans had agreed in the Young Plan to a new system of reparations and
as reward received the Rhineland ahead of schedule. But the moment the
last French troops left Germany the period of fulfillment of the war
treaties came to an end, and Germany began the period of repudiation
and revision which ended in this war and for France in her present
national humiliation. Looking backward one can see that nothing should
have moved the French to leave the Rhineland. That they did so is a
classic example of how people grow so careless, lazy, forgetful and
peace-minded that they become insensible to a threat to their very
lives. That is the state of mind of America today.
Q. _You mentioned a second possibility for physically retraining
Germany and you used the word deindustrialization. What does that mean?_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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