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THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH: A HISTORY OF NAZI GERMANY |
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Book Three: THE ROAD TO WAR 9: THE FIRST STEPS: 1934-37 To TALK PEACE, to prepare secretly for war and to proceed with enough caution in foreign policy and clandestine rearmament to avoid any preventive military action against Germany by the Versailles powers -- such were Hitler's tactics during the first two years. He stumbled badly with the Nazi murder of the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in Vienna on July 25, 1934. At noon on that day 154 members of the S.S. Standarte 89, dressed in Austrian Army uniforms, broke into the Federal Chancellery and shot Dollfuss in the throat at a range of two feet. A few blocks away other Nazis seized the radio station and broadcast the news that Dollfuss had resigned. Hitler received the tidings while listening to a performance of Das Rheingold at the annual Wagner Festival at Bayreuth. They greatly excited him. Friedelind Wagner, granddaughter of the great composer, who sat in the family box nearby, was a witness. Two adjutants, Schaub and Brueckner, she later told, kept receiving the news from Vienna on a telephone in the anteroom of her box and then whispering it to Hitler.
They would not have been far from right. In the first paragraph of Mein Kampf, it will be remembered, Hitler had written that the reunion of Austria and Germany was a "task to be furthered with every means our lives long." Soon after becoming Chancellor he had appointed a Reichstag deputy, Theodor Habicht, as inspector of the Austrian Nazi Party, and a little later he had set up Alfred Frauenfeld, the self-exiled Austrian party leader, in Munich, whence he broadcast nightly, inciting his comrades in Vienna to murder Dollfuss. For months prior to July 1934 the Austrian Nazis, with weapons and dynamite furnished by Germany, had instituted a reign of terror, blowing up railways, power stations and government buildings and murdering supporters of the Dollfuss clerical-fascist regime. Finally, Hitler had approved the formation of an Austrian Legion, several thousand strong, which camped along the Austrian border in Bavaria, ready to cross over and occupy the country at an opportune moment. Dollfuss died of his wounds at about 6 P.M., but the Nazi putsch, due largely to the bungling of the conspirators who had seized the Chancellery, failed. Government forces, led by Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, quickly regained control, and the rebels, though promised safe-conduct to Germany through the intervention of the German minister, were arrested and thirteen of them later hanged. In the meantime Mussolini, to whom Hitler only a month before at their meeting in Venice had promised to leave Austria alone, caused uneasiness in Berlin by hastily mobilizing four divisions on the Brenner Pass. Hitler quickly backed down. The news story prepared for the press by the official German news agency, D.N.B., rejoicing at the fall of Dollfuss and proclaiming the Greater Germany that must inevitably follow, was hastily withdrawn at midnight and a new version substituted expressing regret at the "cruel murder" and declaring that it was a purely Austrian affair. Habicht was removed, the German minister in Vienna recalled and dismissed and Papen, who had narrowly escaped Dollfuss' fate just a month before during the Roehm purge, was packed off to Vienna posthaste to restore, as Hitler directed him, "normal and friendly relations." Hitler's first joyous excitement had given way to fear. "We are faced with a new Sarajevo!" Papen says he shouted at him when the two conferred about how to overcome the crisis. [2] But the Fuehrer had learned a lesson. The Nazi putsch in Vienna, like the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923, had been premature. Germany was not yet militarily strong enough to back up such a venture by force. It was too isolated diplomatically. Even Fascist Italy had joined Britain and France in insisting on Austria's continued independence. Moreover, the Soviet Union was showing interest for the first time in joining the West in an Eastern Locarno which would discourage any moves of Germany in the East. In the autumn it joined the League of Nations. The prospects for dividing the Great Powers seemed dimmer than ever throughout the crucial year of 1934. All that Hitler could do was to preach peace, get along with his secret rearmament and wait and watch for opportunities. Besides the Reichstag, Hitler had another means of communicating his peace propaganda to the outside world: the foreign press, whose correspondents, editors and publishers were constantly seeking interviews with him. There was Ward Price, the monocled Englishman, and his newspaper, the London Daily Mail, who were always ready at the drop of a hint to accommodate the German dictator. So in August 1934, in another one of the series of interviews which would continue up to the eve of the war, Hitler told Price -- and his readers -- that "war will not come again," that Germany had "a more profound impression than any other of the evil that war causes," that "Germany's problems cannot be settled by war." [3] In the fall he repeated these glowing sentiments to Jean Goy, a French war veterans' leader and a member of the Chamber of Deputies, who passed them on in an article in the Pans daily Le Matin. [4] THE BREACHING OF VERSAILLES In the meantime Hitler pursued with unflagging energy his program of building up the armed services and procuring arms for them. The Army was ordered to treble its numerical strength -- from 100,000 to 300,000 by October 1, 1934 -- and in April of that year General Ludwig Beck, Chief of the General Staff, was given to understand that by April 1 of the following year the Fuehrer would openly decree conscription and publicly repudiate the military restrictions of the Versailles Treaty. [5] Until then the utmost secrecy must be observed. Goebbels was admonished never to allow the words "General Staff" to appear in the press, since Versailles forbade the very existence of this organization. The annual official rank list of the German Army ceased to be published after 1932 so that its swollen lists of officers would not give the game away to foreign intelligence. General Keitel, chairman of the Working Committee of the Reich Defense Council, admonished his aides as early as May 22, 1933, "No document must be lost, since otherwise enemy propaganda will make use of it. Matters communicated orally cannot be proven; they can be denied." [6] The Navy too was warned to keep its mouth shut. In June 1934 Raeder had a long conversation with Hitler and noted down:
For the Navy had commenced the construction of two battle cruisers of 26,000 tons (16,000 tons above the Versailles limit) which would eventually be known as the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. Submarines, the building of which Versailles had prohibited, had been secretly constructed in Finland, Holland and Spain during the German Republic, and recently Raeder had stored the frames and parts of a dozen of them at Kiel. When he saw Hitler in November 1934 he asked permission to assemble six of them by "the time of the critical situation in the first quarter of 1935" (obviously he too knew what Hitler planned to do at that time) but the Fuehrer merely replied that "he would tell me when the situation demanded that the assembly should commence." [8] At this meeting Raeder also pointed out that the new shipbuilding program (not to mention the tripling of naval personnel) would take more money than he had available, but Hitler told him not to worry. "In case of need, he will get Dr. Ley to put 120-150 million from the Labor Front at the disposal of the Navy, as the money would still benefit the workers." [9] Thus the dues of the German workers were to finance the naval program. Goering too was busy those first two years, establishing the Air Force. As Minister of Aviation -- supposedly civil aviation -- he put the manufacturers to work designing warplanes. Training of military pilots began immediately under the convenient camouflage of the League for Air Sports. A visitor to the Ruhr and Rhineland industrial areas in those days might have been struck by the intense activity of the armament works, especially those of Krupp, chief German gun-makers for three quarters of a century, and I. G. Farben, the great chemical trust. Although Krupp had been forbidden by the Allies to continue in the armament business after 1919, the company had really not been idle. As Krupp would boast in 1942, when the German armies occupied most of Europe, "the basic principle of armament and turret design for tanks had already been worked out in 1926 ... Of the guns being used in 1939-41, the most important ones were already fully complete in 1933." Farben scientists had saved Germany from early disaster in the First World War by the invention of a process to make synthetic nitrates from air after the country's normal supply of nitrates from Chile was cut off by the British blockade. Now under Hitler the trust set out to make Germany self-sufficient in two materials without which modern war could not be fought: gasoline and rubber, both of which had had to be imported. The problem of making synthetic gasoline from coal had actually been solved by the company's scientists in the mid-Twenties. After 1933, the Nazi government gave I. G. Farben the go-ahead with orders to raise its synthetic oil production to 300,000 tons a year by 1937. By that time the company had also discovered how to make synthetic rubber from coal and other products of which Germany had a sufficiency, and the first of four plants was set up at Schkopau for large-scale production of buna, as the artificial rubber became known. By the beginning of 1934, plans were approved by the Working Committee of the Reich Defense Council for the mobilization of some 240,000 plants for war orders. By the end of that year rearmament, in all its phases, had become so massive it was obvious that it could no longer be concealed from the suspicious and uneasy powers of Versailles. These powers, led by Great Britain, had been flirting with the idea of recognizing a fait accompli, that is, German rearmament, which was not nearly so secret as Hitler supposed. They would concede Hitler complete arms equality in return for Germany's joining in a general European settlement which would include an Eastern Locarno and thus provide the Eastern countries, especially Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia, with the same security which the Western nations enjoyed under the Locarno Treaty -- and, of course, furnish Germany with the same guarantees of security. In May of 1934 Sir John Simon, the British Foreign Secretary, who was to be a good forerunner of Neville Chamberlain in his inability to comprehend the mind of Adolf Hitler, actually proposed equality of armaments to Germany. The French sharply rejected such an idea. But the proposals for a general settlement, including equality of armaments and an Eastern Locarno, were renewed jointly by the British and French governments early in February 1935. The month before, on January 13, the inhabitants of the Saar had voted overwhelmingly -- 477,000 to 48,000 -- to return their little coal-rich territory to the Reich and Hitler had taken the occasion to publicly proclaim that Germany had no further territorial claims on France, which meant the abandoning of German claims on Alsace and Lorraine. In the atmosphere of optimism and good will which the peaceful return of the Saar and Hitler's remarks engendered, the Anglo-French proposals were formally presented to Hitler at the beginning of February 1935. Hitler's reply of February 14 was somewhat vague -- and, from his viewpoint, understandably so. He welcomed a plan which would leave Germany free to rearm in the open. But he was evasive on Germany's willingness to sign an Eastern Locarno. That would be tying his hands in the main area where, as he had always preached, Germany's Lebensraum lay. Might not Britain be detached in this matter from France, which with its mutual-assistance pacts with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Rumania, was more interested in Eastern security? Hitler must have thought so, for in his cautious reply he suggested that bilateral discussions precede general talks and invited the British to come to Berlin for preliminary discussions. Sir John Simon readily agreed, and a meeting was arranged for March 6 in Berlin. Two days before that date the publication of a British White Paper caused a great deal of simulated anger in the Wilhelmstrasse. Actually the White Paper struck most foreign observers in Berlin as a sober observation on Germany's clandestine rearmament, the acceleration of which had moved Britain to a modest increase of her own. But Hitler was reported furious with it. Neurath informed Simon on the very eve of his departure for Berlin that the Fuehrer had a "cold" and the talks would have to be postponed. Whether he had a cold or not, Hitler certainly had a brain storm. It would be embarrassing to have Simon and Eden around if he transformed it into a bold act. He thought he had found a pretext for dealing the Versailles Diktat a mortal blow. The French government had just introduced a bill extending military service from eighteen months to two years because of the shortage of youth born during the First World War. On March 10, Hitler sent up a trial balloon to test the mettle of the Allies. The accommodating Ward Price was called in and given an interview with Goering, who told him officially what all the world knew, that Germany had a military Air Force. Hitler confidently awaited the reaction in London to this unilateral abrogation of Versailles. It was just what he expected. Sir John Simon told the Commons that he still counted on going to Berlin. A SATURDAY SURPRISE On Saturday, March 16 -- most of Hitler's surprises were reserved for Saturdays -- the Chancellor decreed a law establishing universal military service and providing for a peacetime army of twelve corps and thirty-six divisions -- roughly half a million men. That was the end of the military restrictions of Versailles -- unless France and Britain took action. As Hitler had expected, they protested but they did not act. Indeed, the British government hastened to ask whether Hitler would still receive its Foreign Secretary -- a query which the dictator graciously answered in the affirmative. Sunday, March 17, was a day of rejoicing and celebration in Germany. The shackles of Versailles, symbol of Germany's defeat and humiliation, had been torn off. No matter how much a German might dislike Hitler and his gangster rule, he had to admit that the Fuehrer had accomplished what no republican government had ever dared attempt. To most Germans the nation's honor had been restored. That Sunday was also Heroes' Memorial Day (Heldengedenktag). I went to the ceremony at noon at the State Opera House and there witnessed a scene which Germany had not seen since 1914. The entire lower floor was a sea of military uniforms, the faded gray uniforms and spiked helmets of the old Imperial Army mingling with the attire of the new Army, including the sky-blue uniforms of the Luftwaffe, which few had seen before. At Hitler's side was Field Marshal von Mackensen, the last surviving field marshal of the Kaiser's Army, colorfully attired in the uniform of the Death's-Head Hussars. Strong lights played on the stage, where young officers stood like marble statues holding upright the nation's war flags. Behind them on an enormous curtain hung an immense silver-and-black Iron Cross. Ostensibly this was a ceremony to honor Germany's war dead. It turned out to be a jubilant celebration of the death of Versailles and the rebirth of the conscript German Army. The generals, one could see by their faces, were immensely pleased. Like everyone else they had been taken by surprise, for Hitler, who had spent the previous days at his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden, had not bothered to apprise them of his thoughts. According to General von Manstein's later testimony at Nuremberg, he and his commanding officer, of Wehrkreis III (the Third Military District) in Berlin, General von Witzleben, first heard of Hitler's decision over the radio on March 16. The General Staff would have preferred a smaller army to begin with.
There now took place a series of empty gestures of warning to Hitler by the other powers. The British, the French and the Italians met at Stresa on April 11, condemned Germany's action and reiterated their support of Austria's independence and the Locarno Treaty. The Council of the League of Nations at Geneva also expressed its displeasure at Hitler's precipitate action and duly appointed a committee to suggest steps which might impede him the next time. France, recognizing that Germany would never join an Eastern Locarno, hastily signed a pact of mutual assistance with Russia, and Moscow made a similar treaty with Czechoslovakia. In the headlines this closing of ranks against Germany sounded somewhat ominous and even impressed a number of men in the German Foreign Office and in the Army, but apparently not Hitler. After all, he had gotten away with his gamble. Still, it would not do to rest on his laurels. It was time, he decided, to pull out the stops again on his love of peace and to see whether the new unity of the powers arrayed against him might not be undermined and breached after all. On the evening of May 21 [i] he delivered another "peace" speech to the Reichstag -- perhaps the most eloquent and certainly one of the cleverest and most misleading of his Reichstag orations this writer, who sat through most of them, ever heard him make. Hitler was in a relaxed mood and exuded a spirit not only of confidence but -- to the surprise of his listeners -- of tolerance and conciliation. There was no resentment or defiance toward the nations which had condemned his scrapping of the military clauses of Versailles. Instead there were assurances that all he wanted was peace and understanding based on justice for all. He rejected the very idea of war; it was senseless, it was useless, as well as a horror.
Germany, Hitler proclaimed, had not the slightest thought of conquering other peoples.
He kept hammering away at the point. At the end he made thirteen specific proposals for maintaining the peace which seemed so admirable that they created a deep and favorable impression not only in Germany but in all of Europe. He prefaced them with a reminder:
As for Austria:
Hitler's thirteen points were quite comprehensive. Germany could not return to Geneva until the League divested itself of the Versailles Treaty. When that was done and full equality of all nations recognized, he implied, Germany would rejoin the League. Germany, however, would "unconditionally respect" the nonmilitary clauses of the Versailles Treaty, "including the territorial provisions. In particular it will uphold and fulfill all obligations arising out of the Locarno Treaty." Hitler also pledged Germany to abide by the demilitarization of the Rhineland. Though willing "at any time" to participate in a system of collective security, Germany preferred bilateral agreements and was ready to conclude nonaggression pacts with its neighbor states. It was also prepared to agree to British and French proposals for supplementing the Locarno Treaty with an air accord. As for disarmament, Hitler was ready to go the limit:
In this connection Hitler held out a special bait for Great Britain. He was willing to limit the new German Navy to 35 per cent of the British naval forces; that, he added, would still leave the Germans 15 per cent below the French in naval tonnage. To the objections raised abroad that this would be only the beginning of German demands, Hitler answered, "For Germany, this demand is final and abiding." A little after ten in the evening, Hitler came to his peroration:
These were honeyed words of peace, reason and conciliation, and in the Western democracies of Europe, where the people and their governments desperately yearned for the continuance of peace on any reasonable basis, on almost any basis, they were lapped up. The most influential newspaper in the British Isles, the Times of London, welcomed them with almost hysterical joy.
This great journal, one of the chief glories of English journalism, would play, like the Chamberlain government, a dubious role in the disastrous British appeasement of Hitler. But to this writer, at least, it had even less excuse than the government, for in its Berlin correspondent, Norman Ebbutt, it had, until he was expelled on August 16, 1937, a source of information about Hitler's doings and purposes that was much more revealing than that provided by other foreign correspondents or foreign diplomats, including the British. Though much that he wrote for the Times from Berlin in those days was not published, [ii] as he often complained to this writer and as was later confirmed, the Times editors must have read all of his dispatches and have been in the position therefore of knowing what was really going on in Nazi Germany and how hollow Hitler's grandiose promises were. *** The British government, no less than the Times, was ready and anxious to accept Hitler's proposals as "sincere" and "well-considered" -- especially the one by which Germany would agree to a Navy 35 per cent the size of Britain's. Hitler had shrewdly thrown out a hint to Sir John Simon, when the British Foreign Secretary and Eden made their postponed visit to him at the end of March, that a naval agreement might easily be worked out between the two powers which would guarantee English superiority. Now on May 21 he had made a public and specific offer -- a German fleet of only 35 per cent of the tonnage of the British -- and he had added in his speech some especially friendly words for England. "Germany," he had said, "has not the intention or the necessity or the means to participate in any new naval rivalry" -- an allusion, which apparently was not lost on the English, to the days before 1914 when Tirpitz, enthusiastically backed by Wilhelm II, was building up a high-seas fleet to match England's. "The German government," continued Hitler, "recognizes the overpowering vital importance, and therewith the justification, of a dominating protection for the British Empire on the sea ... The German government has the straightforward intention to find and maintain a relationship with the British people and state which will prevent for all time a repetition of the only struggle there has been between the two nations." Hitler had expressed similar sentiments in Mein Kampf, where he had stressed that one of the Kaiser's greatest mistakes had been his enmity toward England and his absurd attempt to rival the British in naval power. With incredible naivete and speed, the British government fell for Hitler's bait. Ribbentrop, who had now become Hitler's messenger boy for foreign errands, was invited to come to London in June for naval talks. Vain and tactless, he told the British that Hitler's offer was not subject to negotiation; they must take it or leave it. The British took it. Without consulting their allies of the Stresa front, France and Italy, which were also naval powers and much concerned over German rearmament and German flouting of the military clauses of Versailles, and without even informing the League of Nations, which was supposed to uphold the 1919 peace treaties, they proceeded, for what they thought was a private advantage, to wipe out the naval restrictions of Versailles. For it was obvious to the most simple mind in Berlin that by agreeing to Germany's building a navy a third as large as the British, the London government was giving Hitler free rein to build up a navy as fast as was physically possible -- one that would tax the capacity of his shipyards and steel mills for at least ten years. It was thus not a limitation on German rearmament but an encouragement to expand it, in the naval arm, as rapidly as Germany could find the means to do so. To add insult to the injury already done France, the British government, in fulfillment of a promise to Hitler, refused to tell her closest ally what kind of ships and how many Great Britain had agreed that Germany should build, except that the German submarine tonnage -- the building of submarines in Germany was specifically forbidden by Versailles -- would be 60 per cent of Britain's and, if exceptional circumstances arose, might be 100 per cent. [13] Actually the Anglo-German agreement authorized the Germans to build five battleships, whose tonnage and armament would be greater than that of anything the British had afloat, though the official figures were faked to deceive London -- twenty-one cruisers and sixty-four destroyers. Not all of them were built or completed by the outbreak of the war, but enough of them, with the U-boats, were ready to cause Britain disastrous losses in the first years of the second war. Mussolini took due notice of the "perfidy of Albion." Two could play at the game of appeasing Hitler. Moreover, England's cynical attitude of disregarding the Versailles Treaty encouraged him in the belief that London might not take too seriously the flouting of the Covenant of the League of Nations. On October 3, 1935, in defiance of the Covenant, his armies invaded the ancient mountain kingdom of Abyssinia. The League, led by Great Britain and supported halfheartedly by France, which saw that Germany was the greater danger in the long run, promptly voted sanctions. But they were only partial sanctions, timidly enforced. They did not prevent Mussolini from conquering Ethiopia but they did destroy the friendship of Fascist Italy with Britain and France and bring an end to the Stresa front against Nazi Germany. Who stood the most to gain from this chain of events but Adolf Hitler? On October 4, the day after the Italian invasion began, I spent the day in the Wilhelmstrasse talking with a number of party and government officials. A diary note that evening summed up how quickly and well the Germans had sized up the situation:
This would soon be demonstrated. A COUP IN THE RHINELAND In his Reichstag "peace" speech of May 21, 1935, which, as we have seen, had so impressed the world and, above al1, Great Britain, Hitler had mentioned that "an element of legal insecurity" had been brought into the Locarno Pact as a result of the mutual-assistance pact which had been signed between Russia and France on March 2 in Paris and on March 14 in Moscow, but which up to the end of the year had not been ratified by the French Parliament. The German Foreign Office cal1ed this "element" to the attention of Paris in a formal note to the French government. On November 21, Francois-Poncet, the French ambassador, had a talk with Hitler in which the Fuehrer launched "into a long tirade" against the Franco--Soviet Pact. Francois-Poncet reported to Paris he was convinced that Hitler intended to use the pact as an excuse to occupy the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. "Hitler's sole hesitancy," he added, "is now concerned with the appropriate moment to act." [15] Francois-Poncet, probably the best-informed ambassador in Berlin, knew what he was talking about, though he was undoubtedly unaware that as early as the previous spring, on May 2, nineteen days before Hitler's assurances in the Reichstag that he would respect the Locarno Pact and the territorial clauses of Versailles, General von Blomberg had issued his first directive to the three armed services to prepare plans for the reoccupation of the demilitarized Rhineland. The code name Schulung was given to the operation, it was to be "executed by a surprise blow at lightning speed" and its planning was to be so secret that "only the very smallest number of officers should be informed." In fact, in the interests of secrecy, Blomberg wrote out the order in handwriting. [16] On June 16 further discussion of the move into the Rhineland took place at the tenth meeting of the Working Committee of the Reich Defense Council, during which a Colonel Alfred Jodi, who had just become head of the Home Defense Department, reported on the plans and emphasized the need for the strictest secrecy. Nothing should be committed to writing that was not absolutely necessary, he warned, and he added that "without exception such material must be kept in safes." [17] All through the winter of 1935-36 Hitler bided his time. France and Britain, he could not help but note, were preoccupied with stopping Italy's aggression in Abyssinia, but Mussolini seemed to be getting by with it. Despite its much-publicized sanctions, the League of Nations was proving itself impotent to halt a determined aggressor. In Paris the French Parliament seemed to be in no hurry to ratify the pact with the Soviet Union; the growing sentiment in the Right was all against it. Apparently Hitler thought there was a good chance of the French Chamber or Senate rejecting the alliance with Moscow. In that case he would have to look for another excuse for Schulung. But the pact came before the Chamber on February 11 and it was approved on the twenty-seventh by a vote of 353 to 164. Two days later, on March 1, Hitler reached his decision, somewhat to the consternation of the generals, most of whom were convinced that the French would make mincemeat of the small German forces which had been gathered for the move into the Rhineland. Nevertheless, on the next day, March 2, 1936, in obedience to his master's instructions, Blomberg issued formal orders for the occupation of the Rhineland. It was, he told the senior commanders of the armed forces, to be a "surprise move." Blomberg expected it to be a "peaceful operation." If it turned out that it was not -- that is, that the French would fight -- the Commander in Chief reserved the "right to decide on any military countermeasures." [18] Actually, as I learned six days later and as would be confirmed from the testimony of the generals at Nuremberg, Blomberg already had in mind what those countermeasures would be: a hasty retreat back over the Rhine! But the French, their nation already paralyzed by internal strife and the people sinking into defeatism, did not know this when a small token force of German troops paraded across the Rhine bridges at dawn on March 7 and entered the demilitarized zone. [iii] At 10 A.M. Neurath, the compliant Foreign Minister, called in the ambassadors of France, Britain and Italy, apprised them of the news from the Rhineland and handed them a formal note denouncing the Locarno Treaty, which Hitler had just broken-and proposing new plans for peace! "Hitler struck his adversary in the face," Francois-Poncet wryly observed, "and as he did so declared: 'I bring you proposals for peace!'" [20] Indeed, two hours later the Fuehrer was standing at the rostrum of the Reichstag before a delirious audience, expounding on his desire for peace and his latest ideas of how to maintain it. I went over to the Kroll Opera House to see the spectacle, which I shall never forget, for it was both fascinating and gruesome. After a long harangue about the evils of Versailles and the threat of Bolshevism, Hitler calmly announced that France's pact with Russia had invalidated the Locarno Treaty, which, unlike that of Versailles, Germany had freely signed. The scene that followed 1 noted down in my diary that evening.
And with reason. The Minister of Defense, who five days before had issued in his own handwriting the order to march, was losing his nerve. The next day I learned that he had given orders for his troops to withdraw across the Rhine should the French move to oppose them. But the French never made the slightest move. Francois-Poncet says that after his warning of the previous November, the French High Command had asked the government what it would do in case the ambassador proved right. The answer was, he says, that the government would take the matter up with the League of Nations. [22] Actually, when the blow occurred, [iv] it was the French government which wanted to act and the French General Staff which held back. "General Gamelin," Francois-Poncet declares, "advised that a war operation, however limited, entailed unpredictable risks and could not be undertaken without decreeing a general mobilization." [23] The most General Gamelin, the Chief of the General Staff, would do -- and did -- was concentrate thirteen divisions near the German frontier, but merely to reinforce the Maginot Line. Even this was enough to throw a scare into the German High Command. Blomberg, backed by JodI and most of the officers at the top, wanted to pull back the three battalions that had crossed the Rhine. As Jodl testified at Nuremberg, "Considering the situation we were in, the French covering army could have blown us to pieces." [24] It could have -- and had it, that almost certainly would have been the end of Hitler, after which history might have taken quite a different and brighter turn than it did, for the dictator could never have survived such a fiasco. Hitler himself admitted as much. "A retreat on our part," he conceded later, "would have spelled collapse." [25] It was Hitler's iron nerves alone, which now, as during many crises that lay ahead, saved the situation and, confounding the reluctant generals, brought success. But it was no easy moment for him. "The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland," Paul Schmidt, his interpreter, heard him later say, "were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance. " [26] Confident that the French would not march, he bluntly turned down all suggestions for pulling back by the wavering High Command. General Beck, Chief of the General Staff, wanted the Fuehrer to at least soften the blow by proclaiming that he would not fortify the area west of the Rhine -- a suggestion, Jodl later testified, "which the Fuehrer turned down very bluntly" -- for obvious reasons, as we shall see. [27] Blomberg's proposal to withdraw, Hitler later told General von Rundstedt, was nothing less than an act of cowardice. [28] "What would have happened," Hitler exclaimed in a bull session with his cronies at headquarters on the evening of March 27, 1942, in recalling the Rhineland coup, "if anybody other than myself had been at the head of the Reich! Anyone you care to mention would have lost his nerve. I was obliged to lie, and what saved us was my unshakable obstinacy and my amazing aplomb." [29] It was true, but it must also be recorded that he was aided not only by the hesitations of the French but by the supineness of their British allies. The French Foreign Minister, Pierre Etienne Flandin, flew to London on March 11 and begged the British government to back France in a military counteraction in the Rhineland. His pleas were unavailing. Britain would not risk war even though Allied superiority over the Germans was overwhelming. As Lord Lothian remarked, "The Germans, after all, are only going into their own back garden." Even before the French arrived in London, Anthony Eden, who had become Foreign Secretary in the previous December, had told the House of Commons, on March 9, "Occupation of the Rhineland by the Reichswehr deals a heavy blow to the principle of the sanctity of treaties. Fortunately," he added, "we have no reason to suppose that Germany's present action threatens hostilities." [30] And yet France was entitled, under the terms of the Locarno Treaty, to take military action against the presence of German troops in the demilitarized zone, and Britain was obligated by that treaty to back her with her own armed forces. The abortive London conversations were a confirmation to Hitler that he had gotten away with his latest gamble. The British not only shied away from the risk of war but once again they took seriously the latest installment of Hitler's "peace" proposals. In the notes handed to the three ambassadors on March 7 and in his speech to the Reichstag, Hitler had offered to sign a twenty-five-year nonaggression pact with Belgium and France, to be guaranteed by Britain and Italy; to conclude similar nonaggression pacts with Germany's neighbors on the east; to agree to the demilitarization of both sides of the Franco- German frontier; and, finally, to return to the League of Nations. Hitler's sincerity might have been judged by his proposal to demilitarize both sides of the Franco-German border, since it would have forced France to scrap her Maginot Line, her last protection against a surprise German attack. In London, the esteemed Times, while deploring Hitler's precipitate action in invading the Rhineland, headed its leading editorial "A Chance to Rebuild." In retrospect, it is easy to see that Hitler's successful gamble in the Rhineland brought him a victory more staggering and more fatal in its immense consequences than could be comprehended at the time. At home it fortified his popularity [v] and his power, raising them to heights which no German ruler of the past had ever enjoyed. It assured his ascendancy over his generals, who had hesitated and weakened at a moment of crisis when he had held firm. It taught them that in foreign politics and even in military affairs his judgment was superior to theirs. They had feared that the French would fight; he knew better. And finally, and above all, the Rhineland occupation, small as it was as a military operation, opened the way, as only Hitler (and Churchill, alone, in England) seemed to realize, to vast new opportunities in a Europe which was not only shaken but whose strategic situation was irrevocably changed by the parading of three German battalions across the Rhine bridges. Conversely, it is equally easy to see, in retrospect, that France's failure to repel the Wehrmacht battalions and Britain's failure to back her in what would have been nothing more than a police action was a disaster for the West from which sprang all the later ones of even greater magnitude. In March 1936 the two Western democracies were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and, in fact -- as we have seen Hitler admitting -- bring the Nazi dictator and his regime tumbling down. They let the chance slip by. For France, it was the beginning of the end. Her allies in the East, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia, suddenly were faced with the fact that France would not fight against German aggression to preserve the security system which the French government itself had taken the lead in so laboriously building up. But more than that. These Eastern allies began to realize that even if France were not so supine, she would soon not be able to lend them much assistance because of Germany's feverish construction of a West Wall behind the Franco-German border. The erection of this fortress line, they saw, would quickly change the strategic map of Europe, to their detriment. They could scarcely expect a France which did not dare, with her one hundred divisions, to repel three German battalions, to bleed her young manhood against impregnable German fortifications while the Wehrmacht attacked in the East. But even if the unexpected took place, it would be futile. Henceforth the French could tie down in the West only a small part of the growing German Army. The rest would be free for operations against Germany's Eastern neighbors. The value of the Rhineland fortifications to Hitler's strategy was conveyed to William C. Bullitt, the American ambassador to France, when he called on the German Foreign Minister in Berlin on May 18, 1936.
"As I stood at the grave of my predecessor [the murdered Dollfuss]," Dr. Schuschnigg related in his memoirs, "I knew that in order to save Austrian independence I had to embark on a course of appeasement ... Everything had to be avoided which could give Germany a pretext for intervention and everything had to be done to secure in some way Hitler's toleration of the status quo." [32] The new and youthful Austrian Chancellor had been encouraged by Hitler's public declaration to the Reichstag on May 21, 1935, that "Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria or to conclude an Anschluss"; and he had been reassured by the reiteration at Stresa by Italy, France and Britain of their determination to help safeguard Austria's independence. Then Mussolini, Austria's principal protector since 1933, had become bogged down in Abyssinia and had broken with France and Britain. When the Germans marched into the Rhineland and began to fortify it, Dr. Schuschnigg realized that some appeasement of Hitler was due. He began negotiating a new treaty with the wily German minister in Vienna, Papen, who, though the Nazis had come within an ace of murdering him during the June purge, had nevertheless gone to work on his arrival in Austria in the late summer of 1934, after the Nazi assassination of Dollfuss, to undermine Austria's independence and capture Hitler's native land for the Leader. "National Socialism must and will overpower the new Austrian ideology," he had written Hitler on July 27, 1935, in giving an account of his first year of service in Vienna. [33] In its published text the Austro-German agreement signed on July 11, 1936, seemed to show an unusual amount of generosity and tolerance on the part of Hitler. Germany reaffirmed its recognition of Austria's sovereignty and the promise not to interfere in the internal affairs of its neighbor. In return, Austria pledged that in its foreign policy it would always act on the principle that it acknowledged itself to be "a German state." But there were secret clauses in the treaty, [34] and in them Schuschnigg made concessions which would lead him -- and his little country -- to their doom. He agreed secretly to amnesty Nazi political prisoners in Austria and to appoint representatives of the "so-called 'National Opposition'" -- a euphemism for Nazis or Nazi sympathizers -- to positions of "political responsibility." This was equivalent to allowing Hitler to set up a Trojan horse in Austria. Into it would crawl shortly Seyss-Inquart, a Viennese lawyer, who will cut a certain figure in the subsequent narrative. Although Papen had obtained Hitler's approval of the text of the treaty, making a personal visit to Berlin for the purpose early in July, the Fuehrer was furious with his envoy when the latter telephoned him on July 16 to notify him that the agreement had been signed.
As it turned out, it was a trap for Schuschnigg, not for Hitler. The signing of the Austro-German treaty was a sign that Mussolini had lost his grip on Austria. It might have been expected that this would worsen the relations between the two fascist dictators. But just the opposite occurred -- due to events which now, in 1936, played into Hitler's hands. *** On May 2, 1936, Italian forces entered the Abyssinian capital, Addis Ababa, and on July 4 the League of Nations formally capitulated and called off its sanctions against Italy. Two weeks later, on July 16, Franco staged a military revolt in Spain and civil war broke out. Hitler, as was his custom at that time of year, was taking in the opera at the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth. On the night of July 22, after he had returned from the theater, a German businessman from Morocco, accompanied by the local Nazi leader, arrived in Bayreuth with an urgent letter from Franco. The rebel leader needed planes and other assistance. Hitler immediately summoned Goering and General von Blomberg, who happened to be in Bayreuth, and that very evening the decision was taken to give support to the Spanish rebellion. [36] Though German aid to Franco never equaled that given by Italy, which dispatched between sixty and seventy thousand troops as well as vast supplies of arms and planes, it was considerable. The Germans estimated later that they spent half a billion marks on the venture [37] besides furnishing planes, tanks, technicians and the Condor Legion, an Air Force unit which distinguished itself by the obliteration of the Spanish town of Guernica and its civilian inhabitants. Relative to Germany's own massive rearmament it was not much, but it paid handsome dividends to Hitler. It gave France a third unfriendly fascist power on its borders. It exacerbated the internal strife in France between Right and Left and thus weakened Germany's principal rival in the West. Above all it rendered impossible a rapprochement of Britain and France with Italy, which the Paris and London governments had hoped for after the termination of the Abyssinian War, and thus drove Mussolini into the arms of Hitler. From the very beginning the Fuehrer's Spanish policy was shrewd, calculated and far-seeing. A perusal of the captured German documents makes plain that one of Hitler's purposes was to prolong the Spanish Civil War in order to keep the Western democracies and Italy at loggerheads and draw Mussolini toward him. [vi] As early as December 1936, Ulrich von Hassell, the German ambassador in Rome, who had not yet achieved that recognition of Nazi aims and practices which- he later obtained and which would cost him his life, was reporting to the Wilhelmstrasse:
It was these circumstances which gave birth to the Rome-Berlin Axis. On October 24, after conferences with Neurath in Berlin, Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini's son-in-law and Foreign Minister, made the first of his many pilgrimages to Berchtesgaden. He found the German dictator in a friendly and expansive mood. Mussolini, Hitler declared, was "the leading statesman in the world, to whom none may even remotely compare himself." Together, Italy and Germany could conquer not only "Bolshevism" but the West. Including England! The British, Hitler thought, might eventually seek an accommodation with a united Italy and Germany. If not, the two powers, acting together, could easily dispose of her. "German and Italian rearmament," Hitler reminded Ciano, "is proceeding much more rapidly than rearmament can in England ... In three years Germany will be ready ..." [40] The date is interesting. Three years hence would be the fall of 1939. In Berlin on October 21, Ciano and Neurath had signed a secret protocol which outlined a common policy for Germany and Italy in foreign affairs. In a speech at Milan a few days later (November 1) Mussolini publicly referred to it without divulging the contents, as an agreement which constituted an "Axis" -- around which the other European powers "may work together." It would become a famous -- and, for the Duce, a fatal -- word. *** With Mussolini in the bag, Hitler turned his attentions elsewhere. In August 1936 he had appointed Ribbentrop as German ambassador in London in an effort to explore the possibility of a settlement with England -- on his own terms. Incompetent and lazy, vain as a peacock, arrogant and without humor, Ribbentrop was the worst possible choice for such a post, as Goering realized. "When I criticized Ribbentrop's qualifications to handle British problems," he later declared, "the Fuehrer pointed out to me that Ribbentrop knew 'Lord So and So' and 'Minister So and So.' To which I replied: 'Yes, but the difficulty is that they know Ribbentrop.'" [41] It is true that Ribbentrop, unattractive a figure though he was, was not without influential friends in London. Mrs. Simpson, the friend of the King, was believed in Berlin to be one of these. But Ribbentrop's initial efforts in his new post were discouraging and in November he flew back to Berlin to conclude some non-British business he had been dabbling in. On November 25 he signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan, in which, he told the correspondents (of whom this writer was one) without batting an eye, Germany and Japan had joined together to defend Western civilization. On the surface this pact seemed to be nothing more than a propaganda trick by which Germany and Japan could win world support by exploiting the universal dislike for Communism and the general distrust of the Comintern. But in this treaty too there was a secret protocol, specifically directed against Russia. In case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against Germany or Japan, the two nations agreed to consult on what measures to take "to safeguard their common interests" and also to "take no measures which would tend to ease the situation of the Soviet Union." It was also agreed that neither nation would make any political treaties with Russia contrary to the spirit of the agreement without mutual consent. [42] It would not be very long before Germany broke the agreement and accused Japan -- unjustifiably -- of not observing it. But the pact did serve a certain propaganda purpose among the world's gullible and it brought together for the first time the three have-not and aggressor nations. Italy signed it the following year. *** On January 30, 1937, Hitler addressed the Reichstag, proclaiming "the withdrawal of the German signature" from the Versailles Treaty -- an empty but typical gesture, since the treaty was by now dead as a doornail -- and reviewing with pride the record of his four years in office. He could be pardoned for his pride, for it was an impressive record in both domestic and foreign affairs. He had, as we have seen, abolished unemployment, created a boom in business, built up a powerful Army, Navy and Air Force, provided them with considerable armaments and the promise of more on a massive scale. He had singlehandedly broken the fetters of Versailles and bluffed his way into occupying the Rhineland. Completely isolated at first, he had found a loyal ally in Mussolini and another in Franco, and he had detached Poland from France. Most important of all, perhaps, he had released the dynamic energy of the German people, reawakening their confidence in the nation and their sense of its mission as a great and expanding world power. Everyone could see the contrast between this thriving, martial, boldly led new Germany and the decadent democracies in the West, whose confusions and vacillations seemed to increase with each new month of the calendar. Though they were alarmed, Britain and France had not lifted a finger to prevent Hitler from violating the peace treaty by rearming Germany and by reoccupying the Rhineland; they had been unable to stop Mussolini in Abyssinia. And now, as the year 1937 began, they were cutting a sorry figure by their futile gestures to prevent Germany and Italy from determining the outcome of the Spanish Civil War. Everyone knew what Italy and Germany were doing in Spain to assure Franco's victory. Yet the governments of London and Paris continued for years to engage in empty diplomatic negotiations with Berlin and Rome to assure "nonintervention" in Spain. It was a sport which seems to have amused the German dictator and which certainly increased his contempt for the stumbling political leaders of France and Britain -- "little worms," he would shortly call them on a historic occasion when he again humbled the two Western democracies with the greatest of ease. Neither Great Britain and France, their governments and their peoples, nor the majority of the German people seemed to realize as 1937 began that almost all that Hitler had done in his first four years was a preparation for war. This writer can testify from personal observation that right up to September 1, 1939, the German people were convinced that Hitler would get what he wanted -- and what they wanted -- without recourse to war. But among the elite who were running Germany, or serving it in the key positions, there could have been no doubt what Hitler's objective was. As the four-year "trial" period of Nazi rule, as Hitler called it, approached an end, Goering, who in September 1936 had been put in charge of the Four- Year Plan, bluntly stated what was coming in a secret speech to industrialists and high officials in Berlin.
Goering's warning was given on December 17, 1936. Within eleven months, as we shall shortly see, Hitler made his fateful and inalterable decision to go to war. 1937: "NO SURPRISES" In his address to the robots of the Reichstag on January 30,1937, Hitler proclaimed, "The time of so-called surprises has been ended." And in truth, there were no weekend surprises during 1937. [vii] The year for Germany was one of consolidation and further preparation for the objectives which in November the Fuehrer would at last lay down to a handful of his highest officers. It was a year devoted to forging armaments, training troops, trying out the new Air Force in Spain, [viii] developing ersatz gasoline and rubber, cementing the Rome-Berlin Axis and watching for further weak spots in Paris, London and Vienna. All through the first months of 1937, Hitler sent important emissaries to Rome to cultivate Mussolini. The Germans were somewhat uneasy over Italy's flirtation with Britain (on January 2 Ciano had signed a "gentleman's agreement" with the British government in which the two countries recognized each other's vital interests in the Mediterranean) and they realized that the question of Austria was still a touchy subject in Rome. When Goering saw the Duce on January 15 and bluntly spoke of the inevitability of the Anschluss with Austria, the excitable Italian dictator, according to the German interpreter, Paul Schmidt, shook his head violently, and Ambassador von Hassell reported to Berlin that Goering's statement on Austria "had met with a cool reception." In June Neurath hastened to assure the Duce that Germany would abide by its July 11 pact with Austria. Only in the case of an attempted restoration of the Hapsburgs would the Germans take stern action. Thus placated on Austria and still smarting from the opposition of France and Britain to almost all of his ambitions -- in Ethiopia, in Spain, in the Mediterranean -- Mussolini accepted an invitation from Hitler to visit Germany, and on September 25, 1937, outfitted in a new uniform created especially for the occasion, he crossed the Alps into the Third Reich. Feted and flattered as a conquering hero by Hitler and his aides, Mussolini could not then know how fateful a journey this was, the first of many to Hitler's side which were to lead to a progressive weakening of his own position and finally to a disastrous end. Hitler's purpose was not to engage in further diplomatic conversations with his guest but to impress him with Germany's strength and thus play on Mussolini's obsession to cast his lot with the winning side. The Duce was rushed from one side of Germany to the other: to parades of the S.S. and the troops, to Army maneuvers in Mecklenburg, to the roaring armament factories in the Ruhr. His visit was climaxed by a celebration in Berlin on September 28 which visibly impressed him. A gigantic crowd of one million persons was gathered on the Maifeld to hear the two fascist dictators speak their pieces. Mussolini, orating in German, was carried away by the deafening applause -- and by Hitler's flattering words. The Duce, said the Fuehrer, was "one of those lonely men of the ages on whom history is not tested, but who themselves are the makers of history." I remember that a severe thunderstorm broke over the field before Mussolini had finished his oration and that in the confusion of the scattering mob the S.S. security arrangements broke down and the proud Duce, drenched to the skin and sorely put, was forced to make his way back to his headquarters alone and as best he could. However, this untoward experience did not dampen Mussolini's enthusiasm to be a partner of this new, powerful Germany, and the next day, after reviewing a military parade of Army, Navy and Air Force detachments, he returned to Rome convinced that his future lay at the side of Hitler. It was not surprising, then, that a month later when Ribbentrop journeyed to Rome to obtain Mussolini's signature for the Anti-Comintern Pact, a ceremony held on November 6, he was told by the Duce of Italy's declining interest in the independence of Austria. "Let events [in Austria] take their natural course," Mussolini said. This was the go-ahead for which Hitler had been waiting. *** Another ruler became impressed by Nazi Germany's growing power. When Hitler broke the Locarno Treaty and, in occupying the Rhineland, placed German troops on the Belgian border, King Leopold withdrew his country from the Locarno Pact and from its alliance with Britain and France and proclaimed that henceforth Belgium would follow a strict course of neutrality. This was a serious blow to the collective defense of the West, but in April 1937 Britain and France accepted it -- an action for which they, as well as Belgium, would soon pay dearly. *** At the end of May the Wilhelmstrasse had watched with interest the retirement of Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister of Great Britain and the accession of Neville Chamberlain to that post. The Germans were pleased to hear that the new British Prime Minister would take a more active part in foreign affairs than had his predecessor and that he was determined to reach, if possible, an understanding with Nazi Germany. What sort of understanding would be acceptable to Hitler was outlined in a secret memorandum of November 10, written by Baron von Weizsaecker, then head of the Political Department of the German Foreign Office.
An occasion for finding out what England would pay arose in November when Lord Halifax, with Mr. Chamberlain's enthusiastic approval, made the pilgrimage to Berchtesgaden to see Hitler. On November 19 they held a long conversation, and in the lengthy secret German memorandum on it drawn up by the German Foreign Office46 three points emerge: Chamberlain was most anxious for a settlement with Germany and proposed talks between the two countries on a cabinet level; Britain wanted a general European settlement, in return for which she was prepared to make concessions to Hitler as regards colonies and Eastern Europe; Hitler was not greatly interested at the moment in an Anglo-German accord. In view of the rather negative outcome of the talk, it was surprising to the Germans that the British seemed to be encouraged by it. [ix] It would have been a much greater surprise to the British government had it known of a highly secret meeting which Hitler had held in Berlin with his military chiefs and his Foreign Minister exactly fourteen days before his conversation with Lord Halifax. THE FATEFUL DECISION OF NOVEMBER 5, 1937 An indication of things to come and of the preparations that must be made to meet them had been given the commanders in chief of the three armed forces on June 24, 1937, by Field Marshal von Blomberg in a directive marked "Top Secret," of which only four copies were made. [47] "The general political situation," the Minister of War and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces informed the three service chiefs, "justifies the supposition that Germany need not consider an attack from any side." Neither the Western Powers nor Russia, he said, had any desire for war, nor were they prepared for it. "Nevertheless," the directive continued, "the politically fluid world situation, which does not preclude surprising incidents, demands constant preparedness for war on the part of the German armed forces ... to make possible the military exploitation of politically favorable opportunities should they occur. Preparations of the armed forces for a possible war in the mobilization period 1937-38 must be made with this in mind." What possible war, since Germany need not fear an attack "from any side"? Blomberg was quite specific. There were two eventualities for war (Kriegsfalle) "for which plans are being drafted":
The "assumption" in the first case was that the French might stage a surprise attack on Germany, in which case the Germans would employ their main forces in the West. This operation was given the code name "Red" (Rot). [x] For the second eventuality:
Czechoslovakia, the directive stressed, must be "eliminated from the very beginning" and occupied. There were also three cases where "special preparations" were to be made:
Case Otto is a code name that will appear with some frequency in these pages. "Otto" stood for Otto of Hapsburg, the young pretender to the Austrian throne, then living in Belgium. In Blomberg's June directive Case Otto was summarized as follows:
A note of caution, almost of despair, creeps into this revealing document at the end. There are no illusions about Britain. "England," it warns, "will employ all her available economic and military resources against us." Should she join Poland and Lithuania, the directive acknowledges, "our military position would be worsened to an unbearable, even hopeless, extent. The political leaders will therefore do everything to keep these countries neutral, above all England." Although the directive was signed by Blomberg it is obvious that it came from his master in the Reich Chancellery. To that nerve center of the Third Reich in the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin there came on the afternoon of November 5, 1937, to receive further elucidation from the Fuehrer six individuals: Field Marshal von Blomberg, Minister of War and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces; Colonel General Baron von Fritsch, Commander in Chief of the Army; Admiral Dr. Raeder, Commander in Chief of the Navy; Colonel General Goering, Commander in Chief of the Air Force; Baron von Neurath, Foreign Minister; and Colonel Hossbach, military adjutant to the Fuehrer. Hossbach is not a familiar name in these pages, nor will it become one. But in the darkening hours of that November day the young colonel played an important role. He took notes of what Hitler said and five days later wrote them up in a highly secret memorandum, thus recording for history -- his account showed up at Nuremberg among the captured documents [48] -- the decisive turning point in the life of the Third Reich. The meeting began at 4: 15 P.M. and lasted until 8: 30, with Hitler doing most of the talking. What he had to say, he began, was the fruit of "thorough deliberation and the experiences of four and a half years of power." He explained that he regarded the remarks he was about to make as of such importance that, in the event of his death, they should be regarded as his last will and testament. "The aim of German policy," he said, "was to make secure and to preserve the racial community and to enlarge it. It was therefore a question of space [Lebensraum]." The Germans, he laid it down, had "the right to a greater living space than other peoples ... Germany's future was therefore wholly conditional upon the solving of the need for space." [xi] Where? Not in some far-off African or Asian colonies, but in the heart of Europe "in immediate proximity to the Reich." The question for Germany was, Where could she achieve the greatest gain at the lowest cost?
Two "hate-inspired" countries, Hitler declared, stood in Germany's way: Britain and France. Both countries were opposed "to any further strengthening of Germany's position." The Fuehrer did not believe that the British Empire was "unshakable." In fact, he saw many weaknesses in it, and he proceeded to elaborate them: the troubles with Ireland and India, the rivalry with Japan in the Far East and with Italy in the Mediterranean. France's position, he thought, "was more favorable than that of Britain ... but France was going to be confronted with internal political difficulties." Nonetheless, Britain, France and Russia must be considered as "power factors in our political calculations." Therefore:
But what would France, Britain, Italy and Russia do? Hitler went into the answer to that question in considerable detail. He believed "that almost certainly Britain, and probably France, had already tacitly written off the Czechs. Difficulties connected with the Empire and the prospect of being once more entangled in a protracted European war were decisive considerations for Britain against participation in a war against Germany. Britain's attitude would certainly not be without influence on that of France. An attack by France without British support, and with the prospect of the offensive being brought to a standstill on our western fortifications, was hardly probable. Nor was a French march through Belgium and Holland without British support to be expected ... It would of course be necessary to maintain a strong defense on our western frontier during the prosecution of our attack on the Czechs and Austria." Hitler then outlined some of the advantages of the "annexation of Czechoslovakia and Austria": better strategic frontiers for Germany, the freeing of military forces "for other purposes," acquisition of some twelve million "Germans," additional foodstuffs for five to six million Germans in the Reich, and manpower for twelve new Army divisions. He had forgotten to mention what Italy and Russia might do, and he now returned to them. He doubted whether the Soviet Union would intervene, "in view of Japan's attitude." Italy would not object "to the elimination of the Czechs" but it was still a question as to her attitude if Austria was also taken. It depended "essentially on whether the Duce were still alive." Hitler's supposition for Case III was that France would become embroiled in a war with Italy -- a conflict that he counted upon. That was the reason, he explained, for his policy in trying to prolong the Spanish Civil War; it kept Italy embroiled with France and Britain. He saw a war between them "coming definitely nearer." In fact, he said, he was "resolved to take advantage of it, whenever it happened, even as early as 1938" -- which was just two months away. He was certain that Italy, with a little German help in raw materials, could stand off Britain and France.
Thus as evening darkened Berlin on that autumn day of November 5, 1937 -- the meeting broke up at eight-fifteen -- the die was cast. Hitler had communicated his irrevocable decision to go to war. To the handful of men who would have to direct it there could no longer be any doubt. The dictator had said it all ten years before in Mein Kampf, had said that Germany must have Lebensraum in the East and must be prepared to use force to obtain it; but then he had been only an obscure agitator and his book, as Field Marshal von Blomberg later said, had been regarded by the soldiers -- as by so many others -- as "a piece of propaganda" whose "large circulation was due to forced sales." But now the Wehrmacht chiefs and the Foreign Minister were confronted with specific dates for actual aggression against two neighboring countries -- an action which they were sure would bring on a European war. They must be ready by the following year, 1938, and at the latest by 1943-45. The realization stunned them. Not, so far as the Hossbach records show, because they were struck down by the immorality of their Leader's proposals but for more practical reasons: Germany was not ready for a big war; to provoke one now would risk disaster. On those grounds Blomberg, Fritsch and Neurath dared to speak up and question the Fuehrer's pronouncement. Within three months all of the three were out of office and Hitler, relieved of their opposition, such as it was -- and it was the last he was to suffer in his presence during the Third Reich -- set out on the road of the conqueror to fulfill his destiny. In the beginning, it was an easier road than he -- or anyone else -- had foreseen. _______________ Notes: i. Earlier that day Hitler had promulgated the secret Reich Defense Law, putting Dr. Schacht, as we have seen, in charge of war economy and thoroughly reorganizing the armed forces. The Reichswehr of Weimar days became the Wehrmacht. Hitler, as Fuehrer and Chancellor, was Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) and Blomberg, the Minister of Defense, was designated as Minister of War with the additional title of Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces -- the only general in Germany who ever held that rank. Each of the three services had its own commander in chief and its own general staff. The camouflage name of "Truppenamt" in the Army was dropped for the real thing and its head, General Beck, assumed the title of Chief of the General Staff. But this title did not denote what it did in the Kaiser's time, when the General Staff Chief was actually the Commander in Chief of the German Army under the warlord. ii. "I do my utmost, night after night, to keep out of the paper anything that might hurt their [German] susceptibilities," Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of the Times, wrote on May 23, 1937, to his Geneva correspondent, H. G. Daniels, who had preceded Ebbutt in Berlin. "I can really think of nothing that has been printed now for many months past to which they could possibly take exception as unfair comment." (John Evelyn Wrench, Geoffrey Dawson and Our Times.) iii. According to Jodi's testimony at Nuremberg, only three battalions crossed the Rhine, making for Aachen, Trier and Saarbruecken, and only one division was employed in the occupation of the entire territory. Allied intelligence estimates were considerably larger: 35,000 men, or approximately three divisions. Hitler commented later, "The fact was, I had only four brigades." [19] iv. Despite Francois-Poncet's warning of the previous fall, Germany's action apparently came as a complete surprise to the French and British governments and their general staffs. v. On March 7 Hitler had dissolved the Reichstag and called for a new "election" and a referendum on his move into the Rhineland. According to the official figures of the voting on March 29, some 99 per cent of the 45,453,691 registered voters went to the polls, and 98.8 per cent of them approved Hitler's action. Foreign correspondents who visited the polling places found some irregularities-especially, open instead of secret voting -- and there was no doubt that some Germans feared (with justification, as we have seen) that a Nein vote might be discovered by the Gestapo. Dr. Hugo Eckener told this writer that on his new Zeppelin Hindenburg, which Goebbels had ordered to cruise over German cities as a publicity stunt, the Ja vote, which was announced by the Propaganda Minister as forty-two, outnumbered the total number of persons aboard by two. Nevertheless, this observer, who covered the "election" from one corner of the Reich to the other, has no doubt that the vote of approval for Hitler's coup was overwhelming. And why not? The junking of Versailles and the appearance of German soldiers marching again into what was, after all, German territory were things that almost all Germans naturally approved. The "No" vote was given as 540,211. vi. More than a year later, on November 5, 1937, Hitler would reiterate his Spanish policy in a confidential talk with his generals and his Foreign Minister. "A hundred per cent victory for Franco," he told them, was "not desirable from the German point of view. Rather we are interested in a continuance of the war and in keeping up the tension in the Mediterranean." [38] vii. Wilhelmstrasse officials used to say jokingly that Hitler pulled his surprises on Saturdays because he had been told that British officials took the weekend off in the country. viii. In his testimony at Nuremberg on March 14, 1946, Goering spoke proudly of the opportunities which the Spanish Civil War gave for testing "my young Luftwaffe. With the permission of the Fuehrer I sent a large part of my transport fleet and a number of experimental fighter units, bombers and antiaircraft guns; and in that way I had an opportunity to ascertain, under combat conditions, whether the material was equal to the task. In order that the personnel, too, might gather a certain experience, I saw to it that there was a continuous flow [so] that new people were constantly being sent and others recalled." [44] ix. Chamberlain wrote in his diary: "The German visit [of Halifax] was from my point of view a great success because it achieved its object, that of creating an atmosphere in which it is possible to discuss with Germany the practical questions involved in a European settlement." (Keith Feiling, The Life of Neville Chamberlain, p. 332.) Halifax himself seems to have been taken in by Hitler. In a written report to the Foreign Office he said: "The German Chancellor and others gave the impression that they were not likely to embark on adventures involving force or at least war." To Chamberlain Halifax reported orally, says Charles C. Tansill, that Hitler "was not bent on early adventures, partly because they might be unprofitable, and partly because he was busy building up Germany internally ... Goering had assured him that not one drop of German blood would be shed in Europe unless Germany was absolutely forced to do it. The Germans gave him [Halifax] the impression ... of intending to achieve their aims in orderly fashion." (Tansill, Back Door to War, pp. 365-66.) x. This is the first of many such code names for German military plans which we shall meet in the ensuing narrative. The Germans used the word Fall, literally "Case" (Fall Rot, Fall Gruen -- Case Red, Case Green -- the code names for operations in the West and against Czechoslovakia ,respectively) and in the beginning, according to the arguments of the German generals in Nuremberg, it was merely the designation commonly used by all military commands for plans to cover hypothetical situations. But as will become obvious in the course of these pages, the term, as the Germans used it, soon became a designation for a plan of armed aggression. The word "Operation" would probably be a more accurate rendering of Fall than the word "Case." However, for the sake of convenience, the author will go along with the word "Case." xi. From here on, the reader will note that what obviously is indirect discourse has been put within quotation marks or in quotations in the form of extracts. Almost all the German records of the remarks of Hitler and of others in private talks were written down in the third person as indirect discourse, though frequently they abruptly slipped into direct, first-person discourse without any change of punctuation. This question posed a problem for American English. Because I wanted to preserve the accuracy of the original document and the exact wording used or recorded, I decided it was best to refrain from tampering with these accounts by rendering them into first-person direct discourse or by excluding them from within quotation marks. In the latter case it would have looked as though I were indulging in liberal paraphrasing when I was not. It is largely a matter in the German records of verb tenses being changed by the actual recorders from present to past and of changing the first-person pronoun to third-person. If this is borne in mind there will not be, I believe, any confusion.
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