(Another in our series of “Analogs and Anticipations” --
parallels from History.)
Both Hitler and Attila have so passed into proverb as no longer to be generally perceived
in their actual variety. The
name of “Hitler” is now just the conversation-stopper -- the argumentum ad Hitler, the Nazi-Keule, signalling that reasoned
discussion is at an end.
Attila figures mostly in unanalytical snarky put-downs of
ultra-conservatives -- “to the right of Attila the Hun”. (I myself stooped to such sport, in a satirical trifle, Attila versus Trump.)
And yet the two figures of actual history, as opposed to the
straw-filled bugbears that are
flourished for rhetorical purposes, do share a trait, quite apart from their
extremism and violence.
Namely, a knack for diplomacy,
and a keen eye for the geopolitical field of force. That might
surprise anyone who was lazily raised as I was in the primary schools of the ‘fifties,
where we were taught that the little man with the funny moustache had been a “house-painter”,
who had jumped-up beyond his proper station, and improbably become a
dictator quite unrelated to any
qualities he might possess. And
yet more surprising in the case of Attila, who, with his Hun-horde, was
typically depicted (to the nodding
pupils) as essentially a plague of locusts, without politics or policy or
personal characteristics of any sort.
Consider, then, this:
Consider, then, this:
The facility with which Attila had
penetrated into the heart of Gaul
may be ascribed to his insidious policy as well as to the terror of his arms. His public declarations were skilfully
mitigated by his private assurances;
he alternately soothed and threatened the Romans and the Goths; and the courts of Ravenna and Toulouse,
muturally suspicious of each other’s intentions, beheld with supine
indifference the approach of their
common enemy.
-- Edward Gibbon, The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788)
For Gaul and the Romans substitute France and the French; for the Goths, the English;
for Ravenna et alia, the Slavic nations, and you pretty much have a picture of European diplomacy in
the 1930s.
~
There are other parallels; these we mention, only because they run counter to the brainless-bulldog
stereotypes of both men. Gibbon,
referring to the forces of Aëtius and Theodoric, writes:
On their approach, the king of the
Huns immediately raised the siege,
and sounded a retreat to recall
the foremost of his troops from
the pillage of a city which they had already entered. The valour of
Attila was always guided by his prudence; and as he foresaw the fatal consequences of a defeat in the
heart of Gaul, he repassed the Seine, and expected the enemy in the plains of
Châlons, where smooth and level surface was adapted to the operations of his
Scythian cavalry.
Though never more than a corporal in the war, Hitler does
seem to have possessed a sound military-political instinct at times, especially
in the early stages of his career, before conquest went to his head. William Shirer’s accounts repeatedly
emphasize how Hitler had secretly been prepared to climb down (e.g. in the
re-occupation of the Ruhr), had the French and the British called his
bluff. They did not; he took their measure; the rest is history.
~
[Auxiliary sub-footnote:
Gibbon
likewise proceeds to adduce a surprising incident involving Attila and the
princess Honoria, which
illustrates the Bluebeard motif in feminine psychology. We alluded to that briefly here. The subject may well be beyond
the depth of our plumb-line; and at any rate deserves, not a note, but a
book. And as that book may well
already have been written -- possibly twelve-times over -- we here fall
silent.]
