Word: rhineland
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...cinema theatres up & down the United Kingdom newsreels showing Adolf Hitler's troops rupturing the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by marching into the Rhineland were received with murmurs of approval, applause and even cheers as last week opened. Newsreels of Poilus marching up to defend the French frontier were almost everywhere received by Britons in silence. Inquiring reporters for Baron Beaverbrook stopped 5,000 citizens to ask: "Do you on the whole prefer the French or the Germans?" The answer, blazoned next day in London's Daily Express, was that 21% had no preference...
Stiffening was too strong a word. The British made unanimous a decision by all Locarno Powers present that the guilt of Germany in remilitarizing the Rhineland was "clear and irrefutable." This did not prevent Captain Eden from telling Ambassador von Hoesch that, if Germany would cut down her new Rhineland garrisons to a total of only 10,000 troops, Britain might be able to wangle France into some kind of deal...
...rough Realmleader's natural reaction to the Eden "smoothie" was to order von Hoesch to tell Britain in effect to go to hell. Ran the official Hitler text: "The German Government cannot enter into a discussion with regard to lasting or provisional limitation of German sovereignty in the Rhineland territory...
Then, with the stamping, straight-legged step of geese, came the first of 19 thrilling INFANTRY BATTALIONS and 13 ARTILLERY BATTALIONS who were soon to star the Rhineland with nine GLORIOUS GARRISONS. In Cologne ecstasy was indescribable as soldiers, Soldiers, SOLDIERS with red car nations peeping from their belts came goose-stepping smartly into the Cathedral Square and were reviewed by a real GERMAN GENERAL in full uniform with twinkling medals, Lieut. General Günther von Kluge. As a climax a tiny Rhineland girl toddled up to von Kluge, gave the general his own big bouquet...
...horrid vision of uncounted millions of Bolshevik Frenchmen and Bolshevik Russians leagued suddenly against the German Nazis, Realmleader Hitler with pistol-shot rapidity spat out what he was doing about all this. At that very moment last week German troops on his orders were dashing into the Demilitarized Rhineland. He ignored the illegality of this deed under the Treaty of Versailles and maintained that the Franco-Soviet Treaty had voided the Locarno Pact, hitherto the main bulwark of peace in Western Europe...