Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, 1931, Volume I

033.1140 Stimson, H. L./125½

Memorandum by the Secretary of State of a Conversation With the German Chancellor (Bruening), London, July 23, 1931

London, July 23, 1931

At 8:30 Mr. Mellon⁶⁷ and I dined with Chancellor Bruening and Dr. Julius Curtius, German Minister for Foreign Affairs, and their staff at the Carlton Hotel.⁶⁸ I sat next to Bruening and had a most interesting talk with him at the table and afterwards. We did not talk about the financial questions which we had been engaged on in the conference, but began with our experiences in the war. We got over to the general situation in Europe and our respective attitudes towards militarism and disarmament. I found he had been a machine gunner in one of those German divisions which happened to be at Cambrai in December 1917 when the 51st and 64th British Divisions broke through with that surprise counter attack. Bruening himself had been stationed in the fighting at Bourlon Woods. When I told him that I had been stationed with the 51st British Division at that same place right after the attack and had for some time spent my days in the battle area along the Bourlon–Cambrai road, he was much interested. We agreed it was a very unhealthy road. The Germans held one end of it and the English the other. To travel along it, it was not free from incident. He said he knew it well.

We agreed we must find some other better way of solving international questions in the future. He told me that I would find President von Hindenburg held the same views he did and was equally interested in finding some way to avoid war. When I expressed my surprise he said that was really the attitude of the old Prussian officers. He expressed it by saying, “You know where you are at the beginning of a war, but you don’t know where you will be at the end of a war.”

I told him of my long-matured views about the fatal influence on a nation that allowed its civil authorities to become subservient to the military illustrating it by contrasting between the attitude of the Prussian people towards Bismarck in 1864 and the English people towards Charles I in 1640. I told him that I was watching closely to see whether there was any danger of France or Germany now drifting into the area [error] which Germany had drifted into before the war. While he did not assent to all I said with regard to Germany he assented to a good deal and he evidently was much impressed by my views. He differentiated sharply between the older Moltke, whom he thought was not a provocative militarist and some of the younger German staff officers like von Falkenhayn and, I think, the younger Moltke, who had come up since. He told me of his present Chief of Staff,⁶⁹ whom he thought was sound and pacific in these matters and how he was trying to make an appointment for him to meet Weygand⁷⁰ of the French Army, but had been blocked thus far by France’s refusal. He thought it was all most important to have them meet in order to disarm mutual suspicion.

We talked about the coming General Disarmament Conference. He said that the impartial moral influence of America was absolutely essential to that conference. I told him that we thought that conference was the most important of the coming year and I told him of my efforts since last December to get the different nations involved to make the necessary preliminary preparation pointing out that practically all of these intervening problems were European and that we could not take a hand in them except to use moral pressure. I told him we would be at the conference and would do our best to help.

I told Bruening that in view of the statement of the Allies and the United States to Germany in 1919 in respect to signing the Versailles Treaty as a step towards general disarmament,⁷¹ Germany had an absolutely unimpeachable case before the moral opinion of the world unless she destroyed it by some folly in the building of pocket battleships, which would lead the force of world public opinion off on a red herring trail; that her defenselessness was the best protection in my opinion and would sooner or later force the countries to reason.

Before I went to the dinner someone brought me a fool story from the Associated Press to the effect that Bruening was going to put up to me after dinner the proposition for a loan. Of course nothing like that took place.

67. Andrew W. Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury.
68. Bruening and Curtius were in London attending the Seven-Power Conference of Ministers, held July 20–23; Pierre Laval, President of the Council of Ministers of France, was also in London attending the Conference.
69. General von Hammerstein.
70. General Maxime Weygand, Inspector-General of the French Army.
71. See Foreign Relations, 1919, Paris Peace Conference, vol. vi, pp. 926, 954–955; see also Versailles Treaty, introductory statement of part V, Treaties, Conventions, etc., 1910–1923, vol. iii, pp. 3329, 3398.