The western powers advertise their weakness against the Fascist dictatorships
Germany and Italy, declined to attend. Italy did so on the cheeky grounds that Franco had not been invited. The conference went ahead with all attendant ceremony and seriousness but nothing could disguise the fact that France and Britain had merely advertised their utter powerlessness and, more invidiously, their unwillingness to go beyond the politics of gesture in restraining the Fascist dictatorships.
The first
Pan-Arab conference to discuss opposition to Zionist gathered in Syria. All of
the Arab states sent delegates except for the Yemen. It was prompted by the
continuing unrest in Palestine and the manifest improbability that Britain, who
ruled the area under the pretext of a League of Nations mandate, would apply
any solution to the problems it had created, least of all and equitable or
lasting one. The Congress had little hope of achieving any practical changes in
policy but by some measures marked the modern era of uneasy relationship
between the West and the Arab nations.
The Nuremberg
Rally of Germany’s Nazi Party was enlivened by a huge parade of members of the
Reich Labour Service. It was an overwhelmingly male turnout but plans were
afoot to expand hugely is nascent female arm. Its contribution to national
agriculture was lauded to the skies and the widely brandished spades were
labelled as tools of peace. This was immediately belied by the soubriquet “soldiers
of the spade” applied to its members and the generally military conduct of the
affair made plain that the service was simply another aspect of the
regimentation of German society on a war footing.
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