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

CONQUEST BY PEACE 619treaty — this applied to Germany — and the obligation to limitarmaments must be observed by all; but in expressing his approval ofthe MacDonald plan, the President indirectly approved the principle ofequal rights for Germany. Almost more important, Roosevelt demandedthe abolition of 'offensive weapons' by all nations; that is, abolition ofbombing planes, tanks, and mobile heavy artillery. His explanation ofthis demand seems prophetic:'Modern weapons of offense,' he said, 'are vastly stronger thanmodern weapons of defense. Frontier forts, trenches, wire entanglements,coast defenses — in a word, fixed fortifications — are no longerimpregnable to the attack of war planes, heavy mobile artillery, landbattleships called tanks, and poison gas. If all nations agree wholly toeliminate from their possession and use weapons which make possiblesuccessful attack, defenses automatically will become impregnable andthe frontiers and independence of every nation will be secure.'With this impressive description of the battle of the future, Rooseveltgave the French to understand that they, a people more or lessdependent on pure defense, would do well to agree to the elimination ofall heavy offensive weapons. As long as these heavy offensive weaponsexisted, Germany could not be prevented from having them some day— and then, God help the Maginot Line! This proud achievement of theFrench defensive art was, after three and a half years, virtually on thepoint of completion; and the stronger the Maginot Line grew, theweaker became the inner meaning of the French alliance system, for themore obviously and definitely the French army entrenched itself behindits 'concrete Pyrenees,' the less able and willing it inevitably became tohelp its allies in the east by a thrust into Germany. This incapacity of theFrench army to offer a military guaranty of the French alliances wouldhave become final and irrevocable by acceptance of Roosevelt'sproposal, and eastern Europe would have been drawn into the Germanorbit, and become one more object of conflict between a strengthenedGermany and a strengthened Soviet Russia. But even if Francewithdrew her protection from her allies, and thus lost what protectionthe allies had to offer her, Roosevelt's plan accorded her no betterprotection in exchange; for in the President's message