Book by Arthur Bryant | 1940
"Unfinished Victory" attempt to retell the story of the events that, after 1918, set the course of mankind towards a second Armageddon. Its genesis lies in a larger, now laid-aside work, being written before the outbreak of World War II, it has escaped the consolidated post-World War II tropes and narratives.
The urgency in which this account is written stems from the conviction that a sane public opinion must be formed before the next moment of decision regarding Europe's future arrives, as happened in 1815 or 1919. The failure to win peace after the 1918 victory, and the subsequent return of mankind to the shambles of war, underscores the necessity of learning from past mistakes.
The sacrifice of millions of comrades in World War I seemed in vain as a younger generation was forced to bear the brunt of a new battle against the same defeated enemy for the same ends. The aim is to frame a better and more enduring peace, worthy of this new sacrifice.
Everything that occurs in the world is a consequence of prior events, with evil born of human frailty and folly, and violence stemming from fear and suffering. Understanding the roots of the German character and its Machtpolitik (power politics) is crucial to freeing Europe from periodic violence and aggression.
The Scourge of Famine and the Pursuit of a Punitive Peace
The book begins with the harrowing reality of famine over Europe, particularly in Central Europe, during the Great War. The British blockade imposed extreme hardship, leading to widespread misery and millions of civilian deaths, especially in Germany and Austria-Hungary. This "human wastage" was accompanied by degradation, with many resorting to "Ersatz" (substitute) products for food, clothing, and other necessities.
Despite frequent reports in newspapers, the English, being "triple-guarded" from the reality of starvation, largely failed to comprehend the true suffering of their enemies. War propaganda had dehumanised Germans, allowing for a lack of compunction at their plight. British rationing, by contrast, was a mere inconvenience.
However, Anglo-Saxon pioneers in Central Europe bore witness to the grim reality of "hollow-eyed, despairing women and tragic children with vast pulpy heads, tubercular bones and shrivelled bodies".
Calls to lift the blockade by figures like Lord Henry Bentinck and Mr. Winston Churchill initially made slow impression on a British Parliament composed of "hard-faced men" determined to "squeeze the lemon till the pips squeaked". It was the direct intervention of British soldiers on the Rhine, witnessing the suffering firsthand, that first prompted a mitigation of the blockade. Yet, the continued blockade after the Armistice, seen as "hell" by an English diplomat, cemented a deep and permanent indignation among the German people, who saw their "prolonged and useless martyrdom" as an "un-English action".
This experience, leaving a lasting impress of "nervous instability of hysteria and to a mad despair," is crucial to understanding German psychology. The blockade, though a legitimate exercise of war, was a "Nemesis" for Germany, which had used the same weapon devastatingly against Paris in 1870-71.
The Treaty of Versailles: A Pound of Flesh
The Armistice, signed on November 11, 1918, commemorated Germany's defeat and the destruction of German militarism. For France, it was a miracle, a long-awaited "revanche" after centuries of invasion, seeking vengeance and security from a broken and starving Germany.
President Wilson's Fourteen Points, laid down in January 1918, offered a non-vindictive peace based on principles like restoration of invaded territory, impartial adjustment of colonial claims, and self-determination.
Germany surrendered on the understanding that these conditions would be upheld. However, despite Mr. Lloyd George's initial intent to avoid a vindictive peace, the Allied statesmen failed to honour their promise, taking advantage of Germany's complete military collapse.
The "Khaki Election" of 1918 in Britain, fought on a newly expanded suffrage, saw a populace, scarred by immense sacrifices and fuelled by popular press propaganda, vote for a harsh peace.
Slogans like "Make the Huns Pay!" and "squeeze the lemon until the pips squeaked" reflected the public's desire for vengeance, overriding the promised conditions of the Armistice. This marked a profound reaction, as the common people, suddenly handed absolute power, blundered.
This was not the fault of the soldiers, who often felt no hatred for their German counterparts, but rather a failure of leadership from those who controlled the system of unrestricted democracy. Other victorious democracies, like France and Italy, were equally driven by desires for revenge and territorial gains, while America focused on war debt repayment and isolationism.
The Paris Peace Conference, dominated by Georges Clemenceau, aimed not for peace but for French security through crippling Germany. President Wilson's vision of a League of Nations was seen as the means to a just and eternal covenant, but it was fatally flawed by Article 10 and 19, which effectively made any forcible change to the status quo an act of aggression, thereby perpetuating injustice. Despite Lloyd George's memorandum urging conciliation, his earlier promises to his electorate made him impotent, and Wilson's Fourteen Points were sacrificed, masked by "legal and moral casuistry".
The Germans were denied any opportunity to argue their case; the terms were unilaterally imposed as an ultimatum. The German delegates, treated like prisoners at Versailles, could only deliver written observations. Their counter-proposals, offering disarmament and League admission in return for fairer terms, were dismissed as "impudence". The German government resigned rather than sign, but ultimately, the National Assembly, fearing renewed war and disruption, reluctantly agreed.
The Treaty resulted in significant territorial changes, including the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France and the re-creation of Poland, which involved ceding German territory and isolating East Prussia.
Germany lost 7 million nationals and 28,000 square miles of territory. Her entire colonial empire was also confiscated without reparations credit, seen by Germans as a "hypocritical mask for robbery".
The economic policies imposed were suicidal, aiming to cripple Germany indefinitely through reparations. Fantastic sums were demanded, far beyond Germany's capacity to pay, leading to a death sentence of millions of German men, women and children.
The occupation of the Rhineland for 15 years was imposed to secure these payments. Additionally, Germany was forced to sign a war-guilt clause and her former leaders were branded war criminals.
The principles of President Wilson's Fourteen Points were largely forgotten or distorted in the final treaty, denying self-determination to millions of Germans and replacing "open covenants" with secret procedures. It was the German people, not merely militarism, who suffered under these terms.
Critics, including Maynard Keynes and Norman Angell, condemned the Treaty as a capitalist, militarist and imperialist imposition that would lead to other and more calamitous wars.
The peace process, with its numerous commissions and experts, ultimately relied on "the Big People in a hurry" who created new states and redrew Europe's map indolently, irresponsibly without regard for local populations, leading to widespread ruin and desolation.
In Time of the Breaking of Nations: German Post-War Chaos
Following defeat, Germany plunged into revolution, with the fleet mutinying, the Kaiser fleeing, and competing governments emerging. From the Soviet East, Bolshevism poured in, extolling terror and promising a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat".
Despite mob violence and street fighting, an orderly German people, rejecting anarchy, suppressed Spartacist revolts with the help of front-line soldiers (the Reichswehr). This self-salvation from Bolshevism nonetheless left a lasting dread among Germans.
With Britain and America withdrawing, France assumed continental hegemony, leading to a prolonged occupation of the Rhineland (12 years).
This period was marked by French chauvinism, suppression of German identity, and instances of violence by occupying troops, including Black as well as native French troops, which deeply offended German sensibilities and fuelled resentment.
France's splinter program aimed to establish a Rhenish buffer state, and in 1923, she invaded the Ruhr ostensibly for reparations, but truly to maintain German weakness.
This illegal occupation was met with German passive resistance, resulting in arrests, violence against civilians, and a unification of all classes in "inexorable hatred of France". French-backed Separatist movements in the Rhineland were met with "sullen patriotism" and brutal vengeance by Germans.
The economic and psychological toll was immense. The German Inflation of 1923, exacerbated by war costs, reparations, and the Ruhr invasion, wiped out the middle class, transferring wealth to strangers, many of whom were Jewish, leading to a "monstrous injustice" and growing fatigue and anger of Jews.
Jewish influence in German media, arts, and finance, coupled with an explosion of Degeneracy and "Kultur-Bolschevismus," fuelled resentment among those who had lost everything.
In 1931, of 29 theatres in Berlin 23 had Jewish directors, and the largest newspaper combine was a "[[Jewish]] monopoly". The Press Departments of the Prussian administration were virtually a Jewish monopoly, where "a telephone conversation between three Jews in Ministerial Offices could effect the suspension of any newspaper in the State".
In film, 119 out of 144 film scripts in 1931 were written by Jews, and 77 produced by them. In medicine and law, Jews held high percentages of positions in Berlin. The author notes how it became "harder for a Gentile to gain or keep a foothold in any privileged occupation".
Montz Goldstein, a Jewish essayist, is quoted as saying "German cultural life was to be completely transformed into Jewish hands". Bryant acknowledges a contrast between the wealth enjoyed, and lavishly displayed, by aliens of cosmopolitan tastes and the poverty and misery of millions of native Germans that has made anti-Jewish feeling swell.
The book details how most of the brothels, bars, etc. were owned and managed by Jews, and that "Jewish caterers" exploited perversion. It is also noted that the Jewish poets and authors frequently insulted Christ.
These new developments were known as "Kultur-Bolschevismus" in conservative circles and that churches allied against them, and for normal respectable Germans of the older generation, this "intellectual mockery" and "self-indulgence" seemed bestial and vile.
A brief, deceptive prosperity built on foreign loans (1924-1931) temporarily made Germany a "financier's colony" but failed to alleviate widespread unemployment and poverty. The Dawes Plan (1924) reduced reparations but still left a heavy burden. While Locarno (1925) and Germany's admission to the League (1926) offered some hope, they failed to restore German self-respect, leaving eastern frontiers unrevised and foreign armies in the Rhineland until 1930.
Dr. Stresemann's death in 1929 symbolised the demise of hope for a Europe without bitterness and for German democracy. The subsequent blocking of a German-Austrian Customs Union by France and the League plunged Germany into a new financial crisis.
German leaders, perceived as helpless puppets who constantly acquiesced to foreign demands, lacked courage and dignity, leading to the discrediting of the parliamentary System. Germans, unready for democracy, craved a strong, unified rule that would restore national pride and strength.
The Rise of the Men of Iron: Adolf Hitler and National Socialism
In this atmosphere of chaos and despair, Adolf Hitler emerged as a "dreamer" and revolutionary leader. Unlike Britain, which escaped political shipwreck due to its established institutions, much of Europe, including Germany, succumbed to dictatorial regimes based on popular acclamation.
Hitler, an Austrian of peasant stock, rose to prominence from humble beginnings. His political awakening was rooted in a profound hatred of Marxism and the perceived moral decay of the post-war era, believing that the poverty of cities produced bad citizens. He saw Marxism as a destructive force that concentrated power, denied realities, and was manipulated by international Jewry.
He viewed Jews as undermining German morality, controlling the press, and orchestrating the enslavement of nations. He viewed parliamentary democracy as a "sham government" incapable of leadership, easily manipulated, and designed to "swindle" the people with incompatible promises.
Hitler's core philosophy centered on the importance of racial purity and the physical improvement of the human breed.
He believed the State's primary task was to make race the centre of the life of the community, insisting that only the healthy beget children and that parents with hereditary defects commit an "unforgivable crime" by bringing children into the world.
This "People's State" would restore the sanctity of marriage as a means of producing superior progeny, in God's image.
He joined the German Workers' Party (later the National Socialist German Workers' Party or Nazi Party) in 1919 through Anton Drexler, transforming it from a mere debating club into a powerful crusade.
Hitler rapidly gained fame as an orator of genius, mastering Propaganda by focusing on simple, repeated slogans and appealing directly to the masses. He employed "counter-terror" against Communist opponents, using his Storm Troopers to establish the Nazis' "monopoly of violence" in Munich.
Hitler's vision for Germany's rebirth included redressing the inequalities of Versailles by force, liberating Germans living outside the Reich, and pursuing "Lebensraum" (living space) in the East to support a growing German population without dependence on foreigners.
This expansion was not for African colonies but for the plains of Poland and Ukraine. He called for a revival of Prussian discipline, self-sacrifice, and unquestioning obedience to make Germany strong and secure, believing that "He who would live must fight".
He also aimed to win over the working class by restoring "Labour's charter" and ending capitalist domination, promising to put "Usurers, profiteers and traitors" to death.
The Twenty-Five Points of the Nazi Party Programme, expounded in 1920, articulated these goals, combining nationalist and socialist ideals, including a totalitarian state with censored press and arts.
National Socialism, in its revolutionary nature, was puritanical, aiming to stop the Degeneracy and instil will-power and self-sacrifice. Hitler's profound capacity for hatred, especially for those he deemed "poltroons" or "hypocrites," drove him to forge his Party into a sword of unity, discipline, and ruthlessness.
The Party's growth was rapid, fuelled by Hitler's charismatic speeches, extensive organisation, and colourful pageantry including banners, uniforms, and martial music, which offered "colour and glamour" to the "drab bleakness of post-war commercial and republican Germany".
Written during his imprisonment after the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, Mein Kampf became the "Koran of the Nazi Revolution," articulating ideas that, though often seen as "ravings of an evil lunatic," were taken seriously in Germany due to the prevailing suffering. Hitler, learning from his failure, resolved to pursue power through "strictly legal methods".
With the help of Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels, Hitler rebuilt the Party, creating a vast organization offering mutual aid, schools, and social events, drawing in the "dispossessed millions" who had lost everything in the Inflation. This "intoxicating message" of fighting for one's rights provided hope, status, and companionship, creating a fervent, disciplined army of "good companions".
Hitler's speeches, captivating and powerful, continued to rally the masses with shouts of "Germany awake! Perish the Jew! Down with the Foreigner! Down with Democracy! Heil Hitler!".
The emphasis was on Prussian virtues: breeding, order, service to society, iron discipline, unconditional authority, political leadership, a strong army, a solid incorruptible bureaucracy, national prosperity.
By 1932, the grim reality was plain: if the Peace Treaties were intolerable, Germany had to unite and tear them up. German youth, in particular, rejected reparations and inequitable frontiers.
The Nazi leaders became increasingly bellicose, refusing compromise and demanding absolute power, willing to inflict "cruelty, intolerance, even the grossest injustice" for their revolutionary aims. Their "terrible hate" fuelled their "iron resolution".
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was invited by President Hindenburg to form a Government, marking the triumph of the National Socialists and the beginning of the "German Revolution".
Accusations Against Jews in Post-World War I Germany
- Financial Exploitation and Profiteering during Inflation:
- During the "galloping Inflation," Jews, with their "international affiliations and their hereditary flair for finance," were "best able to seize such opportunities".
- They "made hay as fast as they could," resulting in them acquiring "something like a third of the real property in the Reich" during the Inflation, which was considered a "monstrous injustice" to Germans who lost their possessions.
- "Thousands of old-age pensioners, middle-class people, scientists, war widows" were "selling their last gold values for scraps of paper," and the "last national property of the whole people" was "passing lightly into the hands of the Jews who are drawing all things to themselves.".
- "Millions of existences which were supported on the thrift of a generation are being tricked of everything by this swindle.".
- Dominance and Corruption in the German Republic:
- Jews held "supremacy" in artistic and learned professions, and a "monopoly" over the largest newspaper combine in the country, with the "power" to suspend any newspaper in the state.
- They controlled "57 per cent of the metal trade, 22 per cent of the grain and 39 per cent of the textile", and "the banks, including the Reichsbank and the big private banks, were practically controlled by them".
- "The names of Jews were too often associated with" "Sharp dealing, dishonest manipulation of figures under company law, bribery and corruption".
- "Newcomers from the eastern ghettos" were described as "soldiers of fortune attracted by the decomposing stench of German currency" who "felt no scruples at what they did but plundered their new neighbours with a kind of genial insolence".
- Financial scandals, such as those involving the Sklarek brothers and Kutisker, "all Jews," shook national confidence and made the "democratic Republican system a byword for easy financial morality," with punishment for these crimes being "generally light and nearly always...long delayed.".
- Subversion of German Culture and Morality ("Kultur-Bolschevismus"):
- Jews were seen as setting the "spiritual and cultural fashions" for Germany, promoting an "organised orgy of vice," including "160 bars, cabarets, and dance-halls catering to 'sexual perverts,' openly advertised with slogans like 'A Thousand Naked Women!' and 'Houses of Lust!'".
- This was believed to be part of a "planned international campaign to overthrow the existing order by undermining the traditional standards of morality.".
- There was a "stream of subversive books, cubist and jazz pictures and statues, discordant unharmonic music" that shook men’s beliefs in traditional values.
- Christianity became an "object of undisguised scorn among the German intelligentsia," with Jewish writers particularly deriding religious figures.
- The "Jewish intellect will never be constructive but always destructive.".
- Communist Agitation and Racial Corruption:
- "Many of the leaders of the Communist Revolution in both countries were Jews," and "the racial tie strengthened the ideological bonds between them." Karl Marx, the "prophet of the Russian Revolution," was a "German Jew.".
- Jewish leaders of the revolution "openly lauded the Terror and the Blood Bath which had come to pass in Russia," aiming to "inaugurate the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.".
- The "intelligence behind the Movement...is supplied by the Jews," and "in reality its aim is to enslave and ultimately annihilate the non-Jewish races.".
- "Russia furnishes the most terrible example of such a slavery. In that country the Jew killed or starved thirty millions of the people in a fit of savage fanaticism and with the use of inhuman torture.".
- The "Jewish doctrine of Marxism repudiates the aristocratic principle of Nature and substitutes for it the eternal privilege of...numerical mass and its dead weight".
- It was believed that the Jews were "deliberately engaged in polluting the blood of other and superior races," and that the "black-haired Jewish youth lies in wait...satanically glaring at and spying on the unsuspicious girl whom he plans to seduce, adulterating her blood and stealing her from the bosom of her own people."
- "The Jews were responsible for bringing negroes into the Rhineland, with the ultimate idea of bastardising the White race which they hate and thus debasing its cultural and political level so that they might dominate.".