CHAPTER 8 - Prelude to War

Abstract

F. E. Simon's work in Berlin during the twenties had been achieved against a background of acute political crisis. In the thirties in England, he maintained the quantity and quality of his scientific research while at the same time becoming ever more personally embroiled in the rapidly deteriorating international situation. He found the English almost as ready as the Germans to bury their heads in the sand about their own troubles and those of the world around them, not so much from apathy as from an unthinking acceptance that these were incurable. Simon's correspondence, which before the thirties had been predominantly scientific, became increasingly concerned with international affairs. Simon always believed that the Second World War could have been averted if the Allies had opposed Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland; official documents now coming to light appear to endorse this view. The German troops had been ordered to withdraw if the French offered any opposition, and no one was more surprised than the Germans that they did not. England dozed uneasily under politicians whom Hitler found easy to hoodwink. Only two men, so Simon believed, made any effort to arouse the sleeping nation—Churchill and David Low, the cartoonist.