Faith Without Works

Abstract

Even before the Economic Conference adjourned, post-mortems into the spectacular failure of international co-operation in London had already begun. The European delegations reached the almost uniform conclusion that both the conference and the prospects for future co-operation on economic questions had been scuppered by Roosevelt’s ‘bombshell message’. In public the United States was an easy target, although many of the European powers privately acknowledged that even if temporary stabilisation had been realised in London, it would have been difficult to secure agreement on other contentious issues like protectionism and cartelization. Indeed, as the delighted delegate Carl Vincent Krogmann, Lord Mayor of Hamburg and NSDAP member, told Hitler Germany should now capitalise on the fact that, as a result of London, the United States was ‘apparently looking about for friends’.¹ Given the future direction of German foreign policy, there were obvious advantages to be had from exploiting the bitter divisions which had emerged in London between Britain, the United States and France.