Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

612 DER FUEHRERAt the end of April, Edouard Herriot, former French Premier who hadresigned for the sake of American friendship, came to Washington. Hetalked with Franklin D. Roosevelt, the new President, and in Geneva,Norman Davis, the American delegate, expressed himself against theGerman demand for heavy weapons. The French newspaper, Echo deParis, wrote that France had never dealt with so understanding anAmerican chief of state as Roosevelt. Official America did not reallytake sides, only pointed out quite reasonably that disarmament could notbegin with rearmament. But for a time France and England indulged ingreater hopes: that the long period of American isolation would come toan end under the new President, and that America would throw herwhole prestige into the cause of disarmament, pledging her enormousmaterial strength to guarantee the security of a disarmed world; actuallyto guarantee the security of a disarmed France against a (perhaps)secretly rearming Germany. In other fields as well a re-entrance ofAmerica into European affairs was expected, for Ramsay MacDonaldhad invited the whole world to London for an economic conference inJune, and Roosevelt seemed to expect great things of this conferenceand of America's participation in it.New powers had appeared on the European scene. Soviet Russia, withher first five-year plan nearing completion, was beginning to berecognized as a great nation. The Socialist fatherland had long had itsambassadors in Berlin, London, and Paris, distrusted and sometimessnubbed, to be sure; now, in 1933, the United States recognized theSoviet government and exchanged ambassadors. Thus, within a shorttime, the United States, Russia, and Germany became important forcesin European politics, and the whole picture was changed.At the beginning of May, Hjalmar Schacht appeared in America.Hitler's Reichsbank president came primarily in order to prepare, asquietly and amicably as possible, the great blow which he intended soonto deal Germany's private creditors abroad: the curtailment, in a sensethe cessation, of interest and capital payments. The new President of theUnited States had already taken the first New Deal measures; they putan end to the methods in use under