T ERMANY'S new military attache arrived in the United States resolved to act upon the fancied parting request von Hinden-burg had made to him. This self-assigned mandate established one of two principal motifs in von Boetticher's service in America. Within two years, in fact, it led him to cast his mission in almost religious terms. At the outset at least, American isolationist opinion offered an atmosphere in which this view of his influence among some sectors of American life could flourish. The strong suspicion of European quarrels, resulting from the inconclusive settlement of the world war, and a corresponding disbelief in German war guilt fed a wave of revisionist history and popular rhetoric and litera-ture.1 Yet there were also some visible strains in American public attitudes on the new Germany appearing in editorials and in official circles. The comment was critical enough to draw warning cables from the German embassy in Washington to Berlin.2 In an all-too-infrequent occurrence, the ambassador, Friedrich von Prittwitz und Gaffron, appalled at the character of the Nazi movement and the dark promise of a Hitler regime, had already resigned his post.3
A potentially hostile and always capricious New York press thus awaited the new German diplomatic mission. Among the various bits of advice Prittwitz had cabled to his hastily appointed successor, former chancellor and Reichsbank ex-president Hans Luther, was the warning that the latter should have a thoroughly prepared statement for reporters, who were sure to meet the Bremen, Luther aboard, with the quarantine boat outside New York harbor on April 14, 1933.4 In a mismanaged scene, the German consul in New York, 1
Otto Kiep, raced the newsmen to the incoming liner. Kiep first barricaded Luther into his stateroom and, when reporters were finally admitted, began reading a perfunctory statement. A red-faced Luther snatched the sheet from Kiep to read it himself. Gleeful descriptions of this made the next newspapers in the city and even the national weeklies.1 An inauspicious beginning, Luther's mishap dimly presaged the gradual but steady deterioration of German-American relations ahead.
Von Boetticher avoided a potentially worse scene through Kiep's intervention. Traveling alone, he docked in Brooklyn four hours after the new ambassador had made the Manhattan piers. His advance notices were uniformly favorable,6 and he escaped any untoward incident in his own encounter with the local press. Forewarned as Luther had been, he fielded questions on the German Army's loyalty to the new regime, ruling out the idea that the Nazi SA or SS formations would become reinforcements for the Reichswehr.7
More important in von Boetticher's case, the Foreign Office alerted Kiep to limit the size and the plans of another contingent awaiting von Boetticher. The New York branch of the Stahlhelm, a German national veterans' association roughly the equivalent of the American Legion, had resolved to send members to the pier in their old German Army uniforms to greet their erstwhile comrade-in-arms. Again with an eye to the impression this would make, Kiep, with incomplete success, had convinced the German veterans at least to go in civilian clothes, to keep their visibility to a mini-mum.8 Von Boetticher, in civil attire, shook hands with the leaders of the German veterans delegation, who saw fit to display two banners of equal size, one with the swastika and the other the standard American stars and stripes.9 The presence of the swastika itself opened the question of how German representation in America was to proceed under the new political auspices at home.
Von Boetticher's briefings at the Bendlerstrafie and at the Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrafie before his departure from the new Reich gave him little inkling of the broad outlines of the Hitler regime's fundamental foreign policy aims. What exactly these were is still the subject of historical debate over whether Hitler pursued a deliberate "intentional" program with specific steps laid out on a definite timetable or more of a "structural" approach characterized by no real program other than an extreme tactical flexibility amounting to a crass opportunism.10 Still highly fluid as the two German representatives made New York harbor, the direction of Hitler's foreign policy nevertheless had some discernible underlying principles more apparent as he consolidated his hold on the German state apparatus.11 With gathering approval and even relief among the German public by the spring of 1933 at the arrival in power of a decisive hand,12 Hitler gradually advanced over the next six years his own reputation as statesman and strategist.13 He scoffed at the mere continued revision of the Versailles system, begun peacefully under Weimar, as subordinate to a much larger aim of vast expansion to accommodate and guarantee food resources for an increasing and racially superior German population, a drive for Leben-sraum that boded ill for Germany's neighbors and augured the eventual establishment of German hegemony on the Continent and the distant goal of a commanding global position as well. Hitler's intermittent prognostications on the subject were once thought to indicate his desires for an accommodation, if not an alliance, with Great Britain that would free German hands, especially in eastern Europe; despite an agreement on naval affairs in 1935, this understanding continued to elude German policy through mid-1940, when even the remotest possibility of its realization disappeared entirely.
None of this could be accomplished outright in the short term but, in another interpretation, would be realized in a series of increments that would return Germany to the status of world power and more, with a resurgent German military as a necessary part of the plan. German military officers greeted this improvement in their career prospects with quiet satisfaction; most were more sanguine about National Socialism than not. Among historians this evident purpose of expansion and the aspiration for a commanding German weight in Europe has provoked additional interpretive discussion over how much continuity was apparent in the Nazi program and how much was radical departure from the past.14 Some elements of Hitler's diplomatic performance mirrored an earlier Bis-marckian blueprint, but the ideologically driven thrust for living space had a destabilizing character unknown in the Iron Chancellor's balanced system of international relations. It also labored under the "curse of dogma,"15 the concurrent Nazi ideological obsession with Jews and Aryan purity as a simultaneous driving force and drag anchor on Third Reich diplomacy. Between 1933 and 1936, Hitler produced a complete reversal in the international affairs of Europe in which he initiated activity to which the guarantors of the post-World War I peace could only react. By early 1938, he became the sole, indisputable author of German policy for the duration of his Reich and dictated the tempo of events on the Continent until the outbreak of war; literal control of events thereafter eluded him. If only for tactical reasons, he could arrive at a modus vivendi with Soviet Russia, that country and its political system remaining the implacable opposite of the new German idea. In this elaborate and shifting firmament, the United States remained a potential but distant enemy, one to be engaged only in later phases of action after the consolidation of a German position in Europe.16 That some aspects of this grand scheme contradicted others, and that the method for achieving these ends soon amounted to diplomatic blackmail, were not yet wholly transparent, though it was already clear that the racial doctrines of the Nazi Party and state were basically not exportable everywhere. Von Boetticher, who had certainly contributed his own apparently fruitless efforts at undermining the Versailles settlement in his years at Geneva, had his own emphasis. For the new German military attache in Washington, a vague Nazi grand strategy did not play much of a direct role in April 1933. His attention was on matters more concretely personal and on the effect he might have on his host army.
Reporting to Luther at the German embassy at 1439 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, on the morrow of his arrival in the American capital, von Boetticher readied himself for the round of protocol receptions ahead. By the first of May, he had rented an impressive stone-fagade house at 3203 R Street, NW, just north of the capital's Georgetown district and neighboring the Dunbarton-Oaks estate. The turreted house, an easy drive from the embassy, was the scene of many social affairs expected of men of his position.17
From the first, von Boetticher rehearsed details of his friendly receptions for audiences at home. He usually addressed reports of his personal contacts and evaluations of American opinion directly to the Reichswehr minister, Generaloberst18 Werner von Blomberg, and to the chief of the Truppenamt, Generaloberst Wilhelm Adam, who left that office to Generaloberst Ludwig Beck on October 1, 1933. The content of these reports is the best indication of the scope and importance von Boetticher applied to his personal representation in the United States. With his rank of Generalmajor, the equivalent of brigadier general in the American army, he almost immediately became dean of attaches in Washington because of this status and his length of service. He therefore moved in circles in which he plied his own deliberate, if loosely defined, program.
Chief among these in the early years of von Boetticher's service was the American Army chief of staff, Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Von Boetticher's position gave him routine official traffic with the U. S. Army's higher command. Introductions began with his formal presentation to the secretary of war, George Dern, and his assistant secretary, Harry Woodring, and MacArthur on April 19. Though these formalities were common for all incoming foreign emissaries and marked their entry into Washington society,19 the new German attache took the niceties of the moment as more than the usual courtesies extended on these occasions, especially when MacArthur repeatedly stressed his admiration for Reich President Hin-denburg. Going beyond the remarks he gave the press in New York, von Boetticher characterized events in Germany for MacArthur as a great "national upswing" (nationale Aufschwung), which evoked a "lively understanding" among his listeners, according to his own account of the meeting.20 Though the personage of Hindenburg as the German victor of Tannenberg in the last war was the starting point of many later private official meetings between the two, MacArthur clearly was only observing amenities before his guest in these remarks. The chief of staff's later promise to visit the German president, whom he described to von Boetticher as "the truly great man of our time,"21 on his scheduled trip to Europe the following summer was also the gloss of diplomatic exchange. MacArthur was hardly sympathetic toward Germany. He had imbibed heavily of French military influence on the American officers corps during the close association of the two armies during the Great War. On an earlier trip to Europe in 1931, he had avoided Germany, catching sight of it only through embrasures of the still-building Maginot Line fortifications while voicing his opinion to French generals that "sooner or later Germany would try again."22 When Blomberg visited Washington in the same year, MacArthur had refused to see him and "politely declined" an invitation to attend the German summer maneuvers in 1933 only a week before he received von
Boetticher for the first time.23 Thus, the new attache fell prey to the apparent warmth of his reception, for the report sent to Berlin after this first meeting also enthusiastically noted that the American army would welcome a visit from the current Reichswehr minister, who was the very same Blomberg.24 This did not prevent some mutual respect from growing between von Boetticher and MacArthur. The chief of staff freely and frankly discussed with the German officer the wide-ranging technical and moral difficulties assailing him and the American army during the course of their two-man conferences that spanned the remainder of MacArthur's tour as head of the army. A basic conservatism, their common profession and the American officer's blind anticommunism found echo in von Boet-ticher's own attitudes, but von Boetticher was never the confidant of MacArthur that he intimated in his reports. He seized on Mac-Arthur's every comment favorable to German interests, especially in the continuing disarmament talks in Geneva, as "renewed proof that leading officers in the [American] Army see relationships cor-rectly."25 It was his plan to use this understanding among American military officers as a basis for spreading a better view of Germany in the country at large.
This stratagem is only to be inferred from the content of his subsequent reports after he had made official visits to American military commands across the country. In accomplishing his purpose, though, he had the regular support of the American equivalent of his old T-3 section, the Foreign Liaison Office of the Intelligence Section of the War Department General Staff. The office was the center through which all foreign attaches established their official contacts, received formal invitations, submitted requests for information on the American army, and arranged visits to the staff components or military installations anywhere in the country. The head of the small bureau upon von Boetticher's arrival was Col. Charles Burnett, a cavalryman with wide international experience as American military attache in London and Tokyo.26 Although von Boetticher clearly overstated his influence with MacArthur, he found in Burnett his "closest friend in America," in the remembrance of the German attache's son.27 Acting as a matter of course as the American army's chief contact with attaches, Burnett gave von Boetticher introductions to commanders everywhere in the United States, to heads of military research installations, and to private firms producing weapons and military equipment.28
Von Boetticher embarked almost from the start on a personal campaign. The administration of the interwar army centered in nine corps area commands, each headquartered in a major city. In time, von Boetticher found his way to all of these, but in backwater army posts and local gatherings he found the first fertile ground for his message and reinforcement for his viewpoint. He had no difficulty in finding either. In late May, von Boetticher traveled to Fort Douglas, outside Salt Lake City, Utah, for a ceremonial unveiling of a monument to twenty-one Germans who had died in internment there during World War I. Attired in uniform, he spoke in English and German after a thirteen-gun salute in his honor. What impressed him were the "hundreds" of German emigres who swarmed to him, many wearing their military decorations from the last war. These elements, he reported, were especially stirred by recent events in Germany. They inclined especially to the veneration of Hindenburg still common at the time at home.29 In his first introduction to members of the American Legion, present for the unveiling, he made the acquaintance of the state legion commander and governor of Utah, Charles B. Mabey.30 Just over two weeks later, he again perceived a welcome for things German in America when he addressed an assembly of American 3d Infantry Division war veterans in Union City, New Jersey, also attended by six active officers, one a general. There American Legion members told him that it was forbidden within the legion to describe the Germans as enemies. Again he saw evidence that the nationale Aufschwung gave new and older German-Americans self-confidence in their efforts to protect Germandom (Deutschtum) and to preserve and strengthen the German language among those who might have lost it—all within a complete loyalty to the American state, he added. His old friend Dennis Nolan, in whose corps area the meeting took place, later encouraged von Boetticher to speak to others in the same way. Bolstered by these receptions in widely scattered locations, he announced to his superiors his intentions of touring the American eastern seaboard and the middle west, delaying only to remain in Washington for the annual congressional debate on the defense budget for 1934:
I believe that on the way, the officer corps, who have friends in leading positions, can contribute much to the growth of understanding for Germany and for the collapse of the hate propaganda.... It is important that American personalities are at hand who can bring out their ideas in the German sense and with understanding for Germany.31
By late August, von Boetticher had covered the intended ground on junkets lasting up to ten days. In July, he toured the Aberdeen Proving Grounds and met the III Corps area commander, Maj. Gen. Paul B. Malone. In New York, General Nolan and the 3d Division veterans greeted him again before he left for the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, which he had first seen in 1922, and a meeting with I Corps commander Maj. Gen. Fox Conner,32 one of the most influential American officers of the post-World War I scene. At Fort Ontario on Lake Erie, the 24th Coast Artillery Regiment, a National Guard element from New York City, enchanted von Boetticher with a parade in his honor and a firing exhibition, something he was wont to participate in directly with troops. Even more heartwarming was the large number of German Army veterans he found in American reserve ranks, again with their German military awards on display. In an area where an anti-German press campaign was in full swing, he reported that if the press could witness this, it would be more friendly.33 By summer's end he had seen six of the nine Army Corps area headquarters, a number of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps, recently established, and had even been the special guest of Charles Dawes at a breakfast following a formal cavalry parade at the Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago, of which Dawes was then president.34
Thus, by the end of the summer of 1933, von Boetticher had established himself as an indefatigable traveler in the German cause. Until international tension in late 1938 limited his absences from the embassy, he usually spent six weeks every summer on the road, visiting regular army commands and National Guard training encampments. His constant travel, in fact, raised the objections of his superiors at home, and he spent considerable time justifying his far-flung contacts and repeating his sanguine evaluations of his own influence in the United States.35 In the process of gaining these often colored views on American life and public opinion, von Boet-ticher exhibited other lasting concerns connected with his mission, chief among them a counterbalancing of what he saw as an insidious French influence on the American army and on civil life.
A French appeal in American life and military practice was still evident in 1933 but was not nearly as trenchant as von Boetticher made out. American higher-staff organization borrowed much outright and absorbed some of its postwar style during its close association with the French military during the world war. The "G" system of nomenclature for military staff elements was a direct copy of the French system. American artillery throughout the interwar period retained the standard French-inspired 75-mm piece, though it was heavily modified to later American standards of mobility. More important was the American army's practice of sending young officers for training at the French Ecole de Guerre. Gen. John J. Pershing, at the close of World War I, ordered his junior field officers into as many French military schools as remained open and, as a result, diluted the former German-oriented methods and curricula in American military training. One of the more outspoken proponents of the French system avowed that it was far more compatible with the American character and need.36 Pershing even in retirement retained an uncommon influence over American military policy, frequently deciding promotions to key American commands right through World War II. While von Boetticher was in the United States, Pershing still cultivated an especially close relationship with the French hero of World War I, Phillipe Petain.37
Despite these visible indications of French effect on American military thinking, German doctrine and the strategic thought of Clausewitz enjoyed a far greater resurgence in the United States in the 1920s,38 but this could not assuage von Boetticher's sensitivities on the subject. He developed sometimes elaborate arguments for his readers at home on the necessity of combating the French presence. The British attache in Washington did not travel much and adopted a reserve toward Americans typical of his embassy in Washington,39 but the Frenchman was more active. Von Boetticher spoke continually of the "always increasing" influence of the American army on American society through the reserve components and, more recently, through the labor organizations of the CCC. The French also recognized this, he argued, and sought to influence the higher levels of the Army with their own propaganda. Abandoning their cruder forms of rhetoric dating from the war, they were pursuing a sophisticated program based on the French contributions to the American revolutionary cause. They were heralding especially the memory of the Marquis de Lafayette in the same way that they propagated the Napoleon legend long after the death of the emperor. In the process, he fretted, they diminish the figure of Baron von Steuben. Von Boet-ticher pointed out that the German hero enjoyed a great image in the American army, not only because of his service as George Washington's drillmaster and inspector general, but also because he did not turn his back on America after the Revolutionary War, as did Lafayette and other figures who are considered adventurers, but lived out his life in the new country. Von Boetticher particularly resented the theme of what transpired at "Lafayette-Marne Day" on September 6, 1934, at the U. S. Military Academy. It was for him a highly transparent attempt to sway the corps of cadets with a spurious juxtaposition of Lafayette's birthday with the anniversary of the battle that turned aside the German right wing attacking through France in September 1914. Worse, Maj. Gen. Fox Conner had returned the remarks of the occasion in kind, and the whole affair struck the German attache as an attack on German tradition, since, he maintained, West Point is the true guarantor of the thought of von Steuben and of the spirit of Frederick the Great in American military life.40 The incident alone was serious enough, but its longterm consequences were dire:
We stand in the middle of a struggle for the soul of the American army, which the French pursue with an undeniable finesse, clear in the recognition of the underestimated influence of the Army on the whole nation, and which is often promoted outside the realm of the press and the public. It is not a struggle in which the foremost line is carried with clumsy means of press propaganda. It is above all a spiritual battle, in which personal influence is decisive.41
Despite his disappointment in General Conner's performance, von Boetticher was able to catalog a number of his own successes. His connection with the commandant of the Command and General Staff School, Brig. Gen. Stuart Heintzelman, who had presented him with the school's published translation of von Schlief-fen's Cannae and a printed collection of Civil War documentation, fell on the German side of the scale. Maj. Gen. Leon B. Kromer, the chief of cavalry, had accompanied him on a tour of the Antietam battlefield, where von Boetticher's impromptu lecture on Robert E. Lee, with analogies drawn to the command problems of Frederick the Great, won Kromer's respect and a continued social association. In this way, and not by attempting to counter the French with criticism of Lafayette, the German cause would advance. Von Boet-ticher was cautiously optimistic:
It lies in the nature of things that disappointments cannot be ruled out. You must, however, judge them as minimal as you must avoid overevaluating daily events and must know what is merely the courtesy of the Americans and what is real. But many very happy experiences lead me to believe that the spiritual struggle now in train here is to be conducted successfully for Germany.42
With each of Hitler's strokes on the international stage, von Boet-ticher reported in this vein. Much of the material from the spring of 1936 through the last quarter of 1939 is not available for analysis, but his reporting on disarmament as it affected Germany culminated in a buoyant chronicle of American military opinion on the subject. In the wake of the renewal of German military conscription in March 1935, he followed through predictably. The really important officers in the War Department had told him privately that Germany had cut through all the cyclic negotiations on arms since 1926. Germany was seeking a policy of balance, they had said, and the reestablishment of German conscription emplaced a central fact around which they hoped for a clarification of the relationships of Europe. There was no danger of war by Hitler's action, but, on the contrary, a real contribution to the stabilization of power had occurred. French chagrin at this was evident from Gen. Maxime Weygand's remarks directed at the United States a week after the German announcement to the effect that American understanding for France had declined. Von Boetticher judged from reports reaching him that the State Department had greeted the German step with alarm, but that the War Department was advertising the correctness of the German viewpoint and it "may be assumed that the President and the leading political officials will be appropriately and basically advised."43 He even allowed himself some complacency in combating the French on the conscription issue since the "attitude of leading officials of the national defense is coming around to us."44
Von Boetticher often measured his success by his self-perceived ascendancy over his French military rival, Lt. Col. Emmanuel Lombard, the French attache who rose to colonel in the course of two tours in Washington, was fluent in English,45 and represented for von Boetticher the embodiment of anti-German propaganda. Their paths crossed repeatedly and unavoidably at maneuvers and at social functions, but in one area, at least, von Boetticher justly regarded himself as having come out ahead. Since 1921, the 35th Division of the National Guard had held veterans' reunions in various cities in Kansas and Missouri. In 1933, the division invited a number of foreign attaches, the French and the German among them, to the affair, scheduled in Wichita, Kansas. Von Boetticher noted with satisfaction the speech of the mayor of Topeka, Kansas, and that of Kansas Congressman Randolph Carpenter acknowledging his presence. But long after the Frenchman had left the proceedings, people were still flocking to von Boetticher to shake his hand, bringing their children to meet him. By his report, Gold Star mothers who led the procession to the local cemetery were especially solicitous.
Von Boetticher's head start on the French influence with the 35th Division was real and lasting. It was one of his most successful efforts to maintain close ties with a military organization through which he could transmit his interpretations on German affairs. Unlike other invited attaches, he attended the reunions faithfully until at least 1940, according to the testimony of veterans and associates of the division, and visited Kansas City three or four times a year. He always dropped in on Ralph E. Truman, the division's chief of staff after 1932 and cousin to Harry S Truman, then a county judge in Jackson County, Missouri. By Ralph Truman's own account, he had had "a drink or two" before being introduced to the German attache at the 1933 reunion in Wichita. Pumping von Boetticher's hand, Truman sang out, "We licked the hell out of you once, and we can do it again." Von Boetticher, who, for all his seriousness in currying favor for Germany, had a sense of humor, alluded to the 35th Division's battlefield debacle in the war.46 There was an instant mutual attachment between the two.47 Von Boetticher hardly overemphasized his reception here. In 1934, with no mention of his usual competitor Lombard at the 35th Division's celebration of that year in Joplin, Missouri, von Boetticher came away from the two-day affair an honorary vice president of the divisional veterans' association. After the usual round of speeches, a small deputation of officers took their guest to the local radio station, where he broadcast his thanks for the fact that "they saw in me, as a German officer, a true friend today." He later summed up his impressions for the staff at home, saying that "forces which are standing very close to me and which have helped me in many ways already without much display [ohne grofie Worte] have been again beneficial to the German cause in a way surprising to me."48
His press notices for the 1935 reunion were equally glowing; his photograph appeared in the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette, covering the festivities, and he stood on the reviewing stand in full uniform for the final parade.49
These favorable press coverages mirrored another of his concerns in the struggle for souls. The enforced caution of his arrival in New York in April 1933 left von Boetticher with a suspicion of the American press, especially of the "liberal" New York Times, that rivaled his animus toward France and the French attache. In the summer of 1934, after a particularly rewarding series of swings through the West and Midwest,50 he charted the area in which that newspaper's editorial color was visible. Only in the far and middle west was there a resistance to eastern thought. On the West Coast, he discovered a pronounced antipathy toward New York, but the "poison of agitation against Germany"51 had spread even there. In attempting to combat this influence, von Boetticher and the embassy staff relied generally on a system of press releases of their own that attempted to counter coverage critical of German developments. Much of this was coordinated at home and cabled abroad for use by foreign emissaries. The inadequacies of this lay in the length of time it obviously took to allow Foreign Office or War Ministry officials at home to absorb the nature of allegations made and prepare a response. Even where the truth of a matter backed the German position, the timeliness of information from Germany was poor, because it could not keep up with a daily press. Von Boetticher also implied in his reports that the press attacks had a common control, because the "forces of capital" stood behind them. In laying out his earliest analysis of the problem, he revealed his own tactical philosophy on overcoming it:
Certainly the material you send me is employed in the press and in the general work of enlightenment (Aufkldrungsarbeit) of the embassy. But I also believe it to be a very important assignment in close cooperation with the Embassy to put right incorrect conceptions and especially to convince the leading officers—also the commanding generals in the country—through personal conversations of the rightness of the German standpoint and the ridiculousness of the propaganda against Germany.52
Aside from the admission of a formal German military and diplomatic effort to sway American opinion even at this early date, von Boetticher argued here for the validity of his own solution to the problem of reaching Americans. It was impossible to achieve results either through normal social channels in the American capital, successful though they might be in themselves with men like the chief of staff, or through a program of press releases. He was convinced that he would have to carry the campaign personally, a technique he felt was already proven in his case.
Events at the continuing disarmament conference in Geneva after von Boetticher's arrival in America determined much of the content of his reporting and the direction of his mission as well. By spring of the year, the Nazi program of military renewal was fairly set. Its rearmament schemes had not yet shown up in a vast new arms output, but Hitler revived old and developed new plans to further his peculiar aspirations for Germany. The German participation in the Geneva talks was purposefully governed by the resolution to continue negotiations, but to ensure that they would be barren while Hitler managed a measured expansion of the German armed forces.53 His only real goal for the Geneva talks was to produce for Germany a right to rearm. Against this German policy, the French, the British, and the Americans ranged their proposals to no real avail. British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's plan, named after him, was the center of discussion from March through June. Accepted by the American, French, and Italian delegations, it proposed, for the first time, numerical ceilings for all European land forces and limits to the air forces of Europe, the United States,
Japan, China, and Siam.54 German rejection of the plan stemmed primarily from the vote of the Committee on Effectives to include the Nazi Party's SA and SS formations and the Stahlhelm veterans' association in the ceilings for Germany.55
The impasse at the conference in May brought an appeal from Franklin Roosevelt on May 16,56 which in turn prompted a response from Hitler in a famous Reichstag address the following day, a speech full of conciliatory phrases57 that raised hopes for success in Geneva and elsewhere. Norman Davis, the Tennessee lawyer and Roosevelt appointee, thereupon repeated the American president's proposal to eliminate all "offensive" weapons, specifically bombers and larger-caliber artillery.58 Germany rejected thereafter a French proposal for two sequential four-year periods of disarmament: in the first France would stop all arming, and in the second it would disarm to the German level. By September the Germans planned to leave the talks and the League of Nations altogether and concerned themselves only with the timing of the stroke.59 With German policy at this pass, von Boetticher reported on yet another meeting that sustained his belief in the eventual triumph of German policy over French.
Lt. Col. George V. Strong, another old and close acquaintance from the Disarmament Preparatory Commission of 1926, visited von Boetticher with inside news from the conference on September 9. Assigned at that moment as a technical advisor to Norman Davis,60 Strong confidentially told von Boetticher that he could not predict peace in Europe beyond five years unless France changed its policy of obstruction at the meetings in Geneva. The French, moreover, could not trust either their own army or those of their Polish and Czech allies in eastern Europe, Strong declared; in their most recent maneuvers, French units around Strasbourg had mutinied twice. The meetings in Geneva were personally exhausting for him, for the French military delegate had accused him of representing German interests. At one point, affairs reached such a state between Strong and von Boetticher's old nemesis Col. Emmanuel Requin that other conferees had to take steps to "safeguard the dignity" of the American representative.61
Though von Boetticher cautioned, in his report of this conversation, that Strong's sentiments could be qualified by political forces, MacArthur confirmed for him a well-founded belief that American officers, if they thought about it at all, regarded Section V of the Versailles Treaty a gross injustice for Germany. In a tete-a-tete on October 3, the American chief of staff told the attache that Germany was acting as it had a right to. "The difficulty lies with the behavior of France alone," von Boetticher quoted him as saying. He regarded a balance of arms as the best guarantee for peace, but the predominant factor in European politics was French fear of Germany.62
In his assertions on the beliefs of American military officers and their effect on the American populace, von Boetticher vastly overstated his case. American policy was clear enough in its enunciation to German representatives in Washington. Roosevelt told the visiting Hjalmar Schacht on May 6 that he insisted on the German "status quo in armaments and that we would support every possible effort to have the offensive armament of every other nation brought down to the German level." Roosevelt intimated "as strongly as possible" that the United States considered Germany the "only possible obstacle to a disarmament treaty" at Geneva.63
American policy maintained this critical stance in a year of deteriorating relations over an American boycott of German goods; Nazi assaults on German Jews, and even on Americans refusing to salute the swastika emblem; and the German government's finagling with interest payments on outstanding German bonds.64
In October, Hitler exploded a bombshell. The Geneva debate broke apart again at the beginning of the month with German rejoinders against a French two-part scheme for standardizing all European armies as a prelude to general disarmament. British Foreign Minister Sir John Simon nevertheless endorsed the French plan before the assembly on the morning of October 14. At this, Hitler decided nothing more could be gained at the conference and withdrew from the talks and the League, a coup announced to the world after noon the same day.65
General von Boetticher took less than a week to absorb the effect of this on his widening American constituency. His report, coming four days after the event, identified anti-German comments as coming from "French and English sources as well as from dark influences dependent on American Jewry in America itself which accuse Germany and poison public opinion." But, he insisted, his discussions with senior army and navy officers assured him that they considered Germany no threat to peace, some navy officers even pointing to a greater danger from Japan. If there was still reason for caution because of the reserve American officers practiced toward political affairs,
I can report that I am convinced that the Armed Services among its leading officers understands the behavior of Germany and the disarmament question and acts in this sense. Already there is making itself felt a clear influence [of the army and the navy] on sections of the
66
Press
A month later, von Boetticher was still reporting on MacArthur's "warmth and concurrence" regarding Hitler's policy.67
Von Boetticher did have some undeniable and clear-cut successes in his mission. His reputation as a scholar gained him entry into circles within and outside the army on the basis of his uncommon familiarity with the American Civil War and with his comment on American heroes who gave evidence of the "divine spark." He was known for his impromptu speeches on historical subjects even in the field on maneuvers, and he opened his home to cultural and social gatherings for officers and selected professional friends as he transferred to American soil his earlier observances of Friedrichsabende— "Frederician evenings" in honor of Frederick the Great.68
Among the closest of the military spirits kindred to his own as a scholar was Maj. (later Lt. Col.) Joseph Marius Scammel.69 Scammel represented a small group of military officers, academics, and public figures dedicated to the study of military history as an end in itself. Incorporated as the American Military History Foundation in 1933, the group had Scammell as secretary-treasurer in its early years, and he managed the small membership's affairs out of his hip pocket, using his office address in the Munitions Building, on the south side of Washington's Constitution Avenue, for business purposes.70 In this capacity, Scammell became the instrument of another of von Boetticher's more notable representations of the German cause. For Scammell, one of the chief orders of business for 1935 was scheduling speakers for a foundation-sponsored session to be held jointly with the American Historical Association (AHA) at the association's 50th annual convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee, late in the year. In May 1935, Scammell wrote the program chairman for the AHA meeting, Prof. J. Fred Rippy of Duke University, proposing a joint session on military history or the interaction of force and policy as "the best means of putting the foundation on its feet and in the way of securing an endowment." He wanted to attach the Foundation's name to the larger association's and secure a "dignified, scholarly, and valuable series of papers by those whose reputations or presentations will command respect and give the society prestige."71 But for all his efforts, Scammell could not secure commitments from either participants, a chairman, or a discussion leader for the presentations until late September, with the convention only three months off. Of the original names he forwarded to Rippy on May 16, 1935, a list that expanded and contracted through increasingly urgent correspondence all summer long, the only one still on the program when it actually transpired was von Boetticher's. Col. Arthur Conger's name appears as the chairman for the session in the program of that December, but Prof. Robert Kerner of the University of California actually presided.72
A copy of von Boetticher's twenty-minute address at the convention on Friday, December 27, 1935, did not survive, but Scam-mell's correspondence indicates that it followed the theme of yet another piece von Boetticher had simultaneously published in the official journal of the Army's Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth. As an original study published in an organ usually given to surveys of current military literature, foreign and domestic, von Boetticher's lead article was a sophisticated statement on the moral factor of leadership in war. He returned to the examples of Frederick the Great's struggle against the coalition formed against the king in 1756 and against the fears and ambitions of his own lieutenants, relatives, and allies before the battle of Leuthen on December 5, 1757, a contest in which the king bested a superior force.73 Von Boetticher pointed up again, as he had in his earlier biography of Frederick, that the steady mastery of fate and a firm hand in the midst of chaos eventually gained victory, an analogy easily applicable to George Washington's leadership in the American Revolution.74
An even more enduring example of where von Boetticher's historical interests got him among the ranks of American scholars was his lasting friendship with the editor of the Richmond (Virginia) News Leader and an undisputed dean of southern historians, Douglas Southall Freeman. The German attache's grasp of the history of the Civil War was renowned among military men and a number of civilians somehow associated with lecture programs at War Department offices. Even the American ambassador in Germany, William E. Dodd, whose fastidious liberal tastes led him to condemn even the military attaches on his own staff, found von Boet-ticher "most interesting in his discussion of American military history. He knows the Civil War as no American attache here knows German war history."75 It was von Boetticher's view of Robert E. Lee as one of the bright lights of American history that brought the German into Freeman's circle six months after the publication of the first two volumes of Freeman's four-volume life of Lee.76 Their relationship grew rapidly although they did not meet until, by mutual design, von Boetticher attended a memorial lecture Freeman gave at a Chancellorsville Battle reenactment on May 2, l935.77 Thereafter a warmhearted correspondence and frequent visits cemented a friendship that continued until Freeman's death in 1953. In June, von Boetticher visited Freeman in Richmond with his younger daughter Hildegard, and the two men often sent their daughters for visits to each others' homes afterward. He thus gained entry into a select group of Richmond first families, some of whose names remained among the controlling interests in the Virginia Historical Society through the 1970s. The field excursions, during which Freeman, usually speaking over a wad of tobacco, lectured on the battles as the group covered the ground on foot or in cars, took the collective name of the "Valley Campaign" after Stonewall Jackson's foray in the Shenandoah Valley in 1862. With its own recording secretary, the group proceeded on regular tours that combined history and social gatherings. Von Boetticher frequently made rendezvous with the "Campaign" by driving directly to the appointed battle site from Washington in his black Buick, carrying a full ration of German wines for the entire company.78 By the end of 1935, Freeman's regard for von Boetticher ran far beyond mere southern hospitality. "Nothing that has come to me in this momentous year has been as much pleasure to me as meeting you and binding you to me."79
The uncontrived relationship with Freeman nevertheless appeared as a supportive element in von Boetticher's campaign to divide truth from untruth in America. It was one sign of American recovery from depression, he reported in October 1935, that
Great historians arise whose works are finding large markets. George Washington is as strong with them as Frederick the Great is with us. The American generals, especially Robert E. Lee, move to the foreground as examples. They certainly want to be Americans and are considering whether their participation in the world war did not go against George Washington's lessons and cause errors which were the source of the difficulties of the present.80
Just as his predispositions gave him access to some American opinion makers not open to other attaches, the nature of his representation in America gave von Boetticher definite ideas on his intelligence-gathering function. His chosen method of influencing what opinion he could was entirely inconsistent with the risks of clandestine intelligence and espionage. He assiduously avoided even remote contacts that could have been interpreted as vaguely shady and was as sensitive on this issue as the Foreign Office professionals who had hastily toned down his Stahlhelm reception in April 1933. Inevitably, the German military attache was the recipient of various offers that might have involved him in exchanges that, however respectable, would prejudice his trustworthiness with men like Freeman, who often expressed his faith in von Boet-ticher's integrity.81
Von Boetticher feared the effects that any of these involvements might have on his self-ordained mission. One of these potentially hazardous approaches in l933 brought to von Boetticher a proposal from one Fred Adolph, the owner of a cannery in New York, who claimed to have invented a small adaptor that would convert any infantry rifle into a machine gun. Von Boetticher dutifully wrote the German Army's Ordnance Office for instructions but filled the report on the matter with his own misgivings about Adolph's money motive and his worries about avoiding compromises as the military attache.82
The following year brought another threat of compromise, this one more substantial and serious. In August 1934, Freiherr von Schroetter, the North American representative of the Stahlhelm, received instructions from the German national president of the league advising von Schroetter to place himself and the North American Landesverband (national group) of the Stahlhelm in cooperation with the German military attache in Washington. Von Boetticher, after discouraging the proposal, reported the Stahlhelmfuhref s intentions and asked for Reichswehrminister von Blomberg's guidance. This produced an exchange between von Boetticher and Walther von Re-ichenau, to whom Blomberg delegated the matter as head of the relatively new Wehrmachtamt within his ministry. In a letter of August 24, 1934, von Reichenau labored first under the illusion that the idea for using the Stahlhelm in North America was von Boetticher's own, but the attache hastily corrected this, asking von Reichenau to explain to von Blomberg that "the exact opposite is the case." He repeated the objections he recorded in his original report of August 1 and concluded that "I never had the wish to place the North American Lan-desgruppe of the Stahlhelm at the disposal of the Fuhrer, because I can serve the German cause here in much better and more effective ways."83
General von Boetticher carried with him to American soil a conception of attache operations starkly different from that of his predecessor, Franz von Papen, during World War I. He wished not only to counter French influence in representing Germany, but also to establish German military tradition as the criterion among Americans for interpreting world affairs as well. More than a technician, he was an evangelist who proclaimed an identity between the United States and Germany with himself as the bridge between the two. However, he could not subsist as an attache on these affairs of the spirit alone. Supplementing his hopeful reports on winning American souls, he supplied the Attacheabteilung, the General Staff's attache section at home, with detailed and comprehensive analyses of American armed strength.
World History
