Noble in form and in intent as all these neutral appeals were, there is something unreal and pathetic about them when reread today. It was as if the President of the United States, the Pope and the rulers of the small Northern European democracies lived on a different planet from that of the Third Reich and had no more understanding of what was going on in Berlin than of what might be transpiring on Mars. This ignorance of the mind and character and purposes of Adolf Hitler, and indeed of the Germans, who, with a few exceptions, were ready to follow him blindly no matter where nor how,
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