20-Oct-39: Germans to Formally Re-Annex Former Reich Territory on 1-Nov; Lindbergh Lampooned in London; Oxford Psychologist Pronounces Hitler a Parnoid Megalomaniac
Today is 20-Oct-1939, the 50th day of World War II; there are 2,143 days left in the conflict.
According to a directive signed by German Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler, Field Marshall Herman Goering, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Deputy National Socialist Party Leader Rudolf Hess and State Secretary Hans-Heinrich Lammers, Germany will annex 11,500 square miles of territory which it had lost to Poland due to its loss of World War I and the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. The “re-annexation of former Reich territory” will occur on 1-Nov.
The German government in Berlin also announces a warning to neutral merchant ships: if they join Allied convoys, they will be sunk without warning by the Kriegsmarine.
Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies announces in Melbourne “compulsory military training for home service.” It will be instituted beginning in January 1940.
People around the British Empire continue to react to Colonel Charles Lindbergh’s speech the previous week in which he criticized Canada for going to war. A new theater review at the Gate Theatre in London’s West End including a song lampooning prominent individuals and included this verse:
“Then there’s Colonel Lindbergh
“Who made a pretty speech
“He’s somewhere in America
“We’re glad he’s out of reach.”
The Canadian Press report noted that the audience in the theater, many of who were in uniform, “held the show up momentarily with lusty cheering.”
In a letter to the The Times of London, Dr. William Brown, director of the Institute of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University and “a world authority on diseases of the mind,” announces that he has completed years of study of the “character and mentality” of German Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler. His conclusion:
“… the German Chancellor is suffering from a chronic form of insanity, known as paranoia, that will gradually impair his intellect until he destroys himself or becomes a raving maniac. … [British Foreign Minister] Sir Nevile Henderson’s final report on the actions of Herr Hitler confirms my conclusion, reached six months ago, that he has ever symptom of the paranoiac who is suffering from persecutory mania and whose brainstorms and megalomania will increase until his madness is so apparent that he must be isolated.”
Dr. Brown says that Hitler’s mental makeup has the following tendencies:
“First, a hysterical tendency, shown in the emotional appeal to crowds in which his mind seems to undergo temporary dissociation through the very intensity of his concentration upon the matter in hand. With his mind so narrowed down on one point he may be temporarily oblivious of other considerations and thus may appear perfidious. There is also a probably hysterical identification in subconscious fantasy with Frederick the Great and a tendency toward mechanical imitation of the less admirable political maneuvers of him and of Napoleon, which makes him appear, judged by modern standards, as an atavistic monster.
“Second, a paranoid tendency amounting almost to persecutory mania. He is a very aggressive person and projects this aggressiveness upon the world around him, being acutely on guard against aggression from others with the suspicion, and possibly delusions, that such hostile aggressiveness is active against himself and his nation.
“Third, a growing megalomania with Messianic feelings. This is a further development of his paranoid tendency, making his followers paranoid and producing collective paranoia.
“Fourth, a compulsive tendency — in his case a power impulse — toward more and more bloodless victories in which his latest claim to territory or power is called his last — like the alcoholic who calls his latest drink his last.”
At the time dismissed as mere propaganda, Dr. Brown’s analysis and predictions would prove chillingly accurate.