Appendix 5 - Anthony Eden's speech at the Mansion House, 29 May 1941 (extract)

Summary

… So it is that Nazism seeks to pretend to itself that there might be some permanence in the thraldom it imposes. And so it is that Hitler has found it necessary to give some decent covering to the naked policy of terror and robbery on which he has embarked in Europe. He has for this purpose invented what he calls the ‘New Order’. Hitler pretends that this New Order is to bring prosperity and happiness to those countries which had been robbed by him of their liberty and their means of livelihood.

But what is the reality behind Hitler's high-sounding announcement? It is not easy to find much which is definite in Germany's New Economic Order, except the plan by which the more important industries are to be mainly concentrated within Germany herself.

Meanwhile, the satellite and tributary nations are to be compelled to confine themselves to agriculture and to other kinds of production which suit German convenience. Currency devices will fix the terms of exchange between Germany's industrial products and the output of the other States, so as to maintain a standard of life in Germany much above that of her neighbours. Meanwhile, all foreign commerce would become a German monopoly. As part of the New Order citizens of tributary states will doubtless be forbidden to learn engineering or any other modern industrial arts. The permanent destruction of all local universities and technical schools will inevitably follow. In this way intellectual darkness must aggravate low physical standards, and the national revivals which Hitler fears so much would be indefinitely postponed.