ABSTRACT
The forces of public opinion and democratic institutions proved inadequate to the task of stopping Nazism. Granted differences of perception and outlook within the democracies, those who did see the Nazi threat more or less realistically were unable to mobilize the intensity of will, purpose, and, if necessary, sacrifice, to meet the challenge of Adolf Hitler’s aggression. Smaller countries could have provided bases and transit rights to larger ones, and morally and politically could have done a great deal to put Hitler’s Nazi Reich into a very unwelcome isolation tank in Europe. The murders, carried out within a couple of days of 30 June 1934, occurred within 17 months of Hitler’s assumption of the Chancellorship, and were audaciously acknowledged by Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag on 13 July 1934. He invoked “reasons of state” for the massacre — no definite figure of killings was ever publicly ascertained; it may have approached 200.
