760C.62/1232: Telegram
The Chargé in Germany (Kirk) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 31—1 p.m.]
970. During the last few days there has been noticeable an increasing tendency to detect a growing discord between the people and the [Page 395] apparent trend of the Nazi Government toward war. The pact with Soviet Russia which at first was welcomed as a triumph on the part of Germany is now being regarded by the people in the light of the former anti-Soviet attitude in Nazi Germany and is causing concern as a stimulus to the increase in communistic sentiment in Germany which the people have hitherto been taught to consider as anathema to the tenets of the regime. Furthermore the introduction of the rationing system with its warning of wartime measures and commodity shortage has come as a shock to the populace which has been taught to believe that the realization of Hitler’s aims for a greater Germany could be effected without an actual war. In short the people have within the last few days been confronted not only with an event which upon analysis they have been unable to digest as a logical development of what they regarded to be the established policy of the Nazi regime but also with a striking indication of the imminence of war which they did not want and which they had come to believe as avoidable. These factors have tended to develop a challenging attitude mounting almost to discontent not only among the people but also in the ranks of the party and even it is said among the hierarchy of the regime.
The foregoing tendencies may indeed be detected but their significance as a deterrent factor immediately operative in the present crisis is practically negligible. In fact any reference thereto especially outside Germany or any emphasis thereon constitutes an added danger at this moment in that it may on the one hand hasten drastic action on the part of the extremists in the regime in an attempt to check the development of these tendencies by means of the precipitation of a larger patriotic issue and on the other hand in that it might encourage those who are working for peace to relax their efforts to prevent war on the false assumption that the deteriorating influences at work have actually succeeded in undermining the discipline of the regime and are threatening it with an imminent collapse. This assumption however is generally regarded as premature and dangerously misleading and any importance which might be ascribed to those undermining influences which may be operating within the country should lie in the probability that a postponement of a war might be conducive to their further development rather than in the possibility that they might prevent the regime from entering into a conflict or might in the event of war insure a speedy termination thereof through internal collapse.