The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

by William Shirer

  Geopolitical security and protection by a strong sea power and courageous air force.

  But Britain, Hitler reminded his hearers, also had her weaknesses, and he proceeded to enumerate them.

  If in the last war we had had two more battleships and two more cruisers and had begun the Battle of Jutland in the morning, the British fleet would have been defeated and England brought to her knees.* It would have meant the end of the World War. In former times … to conquer England it was necessary to invade her. England could feed herself. Today she no longer can.

  The moment England is cut off from her supplies she is forced to capitulate. Imports of food and fuel oil are dependent on naval protection.

  Luftwaffe attacks on England will not force her to capitulate. But if the fleet is annihilated instant capitulation results. There is no doubt that a surprise attack might lead to a quick decision.

  A surprise attack with what? Surely Admiral Raeder must have thought that Hitler was talking through his hat. Under the so-called Z Plan, promulgated at the end of 1938, German naval strength would only begin to approach that of the British by 1945. At the moment, in the spring of 1939, Germany did not have the heavy ships to sink the British Navy, even by a surprise attack.

  Perhaps Britain could be brought down by other means. Here Hitler came down to earth again and outlined a strategic plan which a year later, in fact, would be carried out with amazing success.

  The aim must be to deal the enemy a smashing or a finally decisive blow right at the start. Considerations of right or wrong, or of treaties, do not enter into the matter. This will be possible only when we do not “slide” into a war with England on account of Poland.

  Preparations must be made for a long war as well as for a surprise attack, and every possible intervention by England on the Continent must be smashed.

  The Army must occupy the positions important for the fleet and the Luftwaffe. If we succeed in occupying and securing Holland and Belgium, as well as defeating France, the basis for a successful war against England has been created.

  The Luftwaffe can then closely blockade England from western France and the fleet undertake the wider blockade with submarines.

  That is precisely what would be done a little more than a year later. Another decisive strategic plan, which the Fuehrer emphasized on May 23, would also be carried out. At the beginning of the last war, had the German Army executed a wheeling movement toward the Channel ports instead of toward Paris, the end, he said, would have been different. Perhaps it would have been. At any rate he would try it in 1940.

  “The aim,” Hitler concluded, apparently forgetting all about Poland for the moment, “will always be to force England to her knees.”

  There was one final consideration.

  Secrecy is the decisive prerequisite for success. Our objectives must be kept secret from both Italy and Japan.

  Even Hitler’s own Army General Staff, whose Chief, General Halder, sat there listening, was not to be trusted entirely. “Our studies,” the Fuehrer laid down, “must not be left to the General Staff. Secrecy would then no longer be assured.” He ordered that a small planning staff in OKW be set up to work out the military plans.

  On May 23, 1939, then, Hitler, as he himself said, burned his boats. There would be war. Germany needed Lebensraum in the East. To get it Poland would be attacked at the first opportunity. Danzig had nothing to do with it. That was merely an excuse. Britain stood in the way; she was the real driving force against Germany. Very well, she would be taken on too, and France. It would be a life-and-death struggle.

  When the Fuehrer had first outlined his plans for aggression to the military chiefs, on November 5, 1937, Field Marshal von Blomberg and General von Fritsch had protested—at least on the grounds that Germany was too weak to fight a European war.* During the following summer General Beck had resigned as Chief of the Army General Staff for the same reason. But on May 23, 1939, not a single general or admiral, so far as the record shows, raised his voice to question the wisdom of Hitler’s course.

  Their job, as they saw it, was not to question but to blindly obey. Already they had been applying their considerable talents to working out plans for military aggression. On May 7, Colonel Guenther Blumentritt of the Army General Staff, who with Generals von Rundstedt and von Manstein formed a small “Working Staff,” submitted an estimate of the situation for Case White. Actually it was a plan for the conquest of Poland. It was an imaginative and daring plan, and it would be followed with very few changes.48

  Admiral Raeder came through with naval plans for Case White in a top-secret directive signed May 16.49 Since Poland had only a few miles of coast on the Baltic west of Danzig and possessed only a small navy, no difficulties were expected. France and Britain were the Admiral’s chief concern. The entrance to the Baltic was to be protected by submarines, and the two pocket battleships and the two battleships, with the “remaining” submarines, were to prepare for “war in the Atlantic.” According to the instructions of the Fuehrer, the Navy had to be prepared to carry out its part of “White” by September 1 but Raeder urged his commanders to hasten plans because “due to the latest political developments” action might come sooner.50

  As May 1939 came to an end German preparations for going to war by the end of the summer were well along. The great armament works were humming, turning out guns, tanks, planes and warships. The able staffs of the Army, Navy and Air Force had reached the final stage of planning. The ranks were being swelled by new men called up for “summer training.” Hitler could be pleased with what he had accomplished.

  The day after the Fuehrer’s lecture to the military chiefs, on May 24, General Georg Thomas, head of the Economic and Armaments Branch of OKW, summed up that accomplishment in a confidential lecture to the staff of the Foreign Office. Whereas it had taken the Imperial Army, Thomas reminded his listeners, sixteen years—from 1898 to 1914—to increase its strength from forty-three to fifty divisions, the Army of the Third Reich had jumped from seven to fifty-one divisions in just four years. Among them were five heavy armored divisions and four light ones, a “modern battle cavalry” such as no other nation possessed. The Navy had built up from practically nothing a fleet of two battleships of 26,000 tons,* two heavy cruisers, seventeen destroyers and forty-seven submarines. It had already launched two battleships of 35,000 tons, one aircraft carrier, four heavy cruisers, five destroyers and seven submarines, and was planning to launch a great many more ships. From absolutely nothing, the Luftwaffe had built up a force of twenty-one squadrons with a personnel of 260,000 men. The armament industry, General Thomas said, was already producing more than it had during the peak of the last war and its output in most fields far exceeded that of any other country. In fact, total German rearmament, the General declared, was “probably unique in the world.”

  Formidable as German military power was becoming at the beginning of the summer of 1939, the prospect of success in the war which Hitler was planning for the early fall depended on what kind of a war it was. Germany was still not strong enough, and probably would never be, to take on France, Britain and Russia in addition to Poland. As the fateful summer commenced, all depended on the Fuehrer’s ability to limit the war—above all, to keep Russia from forming the military alliance with the West which Litvinov, just before his fall, had proposed and which Chamberlain, though he had at first seemed to reject it, was, by May’s end, again mulling over.

  THE INTERVENTION OF RUSSIA: II

  In a debate in the House of Commons on May 19, the British Prime Minister had again taken a cool and even disdainful view, as Churchill thought, of the Russian proposals. Somewhat wearily he had explained to the House that “there is a sort of veil, a sort of wall, between the two Governments which it is extremely difficult to penetrate.” Churchill, on the other hand, backed by Lloyd George, argued that Moscow had made “a fair offer … more simple, more direct, more effective” than Chamberlain’s own proposals. He begged His Majesty’s Government
“to get some brutal truths into their heads. Without an effective Eastern front, there can be no satisfactory defense in the West, and without Russia there can be no effective Eastern front.”

  Bowing to the storm of criticism from all sides, Chamberlain on May 27 finally instructed the British ambassador in Moscow to agree to begin discussions of a pact of mutual assistance, a military convention and guarantees to the countries threatened by Hitler.* Ambassador von Dirksen in London advised the German Foreign Office that the British government had taken the step “with the greatest reluctance.” Furthermore, Dirksen divulged what was perhaps the primary reason for Chamberlain’s move. The British Foreign Office, he reported urgently to Berlin, had got wind of “German feelers in Moscow” and was “afraid that Germany might succeed in keeping Soviet Russia neutral or even inducing her to adopt benevolent neutrality. That would have meant the complete collapse of the encirclement action.”53

  On the last day of May, Molotov made his first public speech as Commissar for Foreign Affairs in an address to the Supreme Council of the U.S.S.R. He castigated the Western democracies for their hesitation and declared that if they were serious in joining Russia to stop aggression they must get down to brass tacks and come to an agreement on three main points:

  Conclude a tripartite mutual-assistance pact of a purely defensive character.

  Guarantee the states of Central and Eastern Europe, including all European states bordering on the Soviet Union.

  Conclude a definite agreement on the form and scope of the immediate and effective aid to be afforded each other and the smaller states threatened by aggression.

  Molotov also declared that the talks with the West did not mean that Russia would forego “business relations on a practical footing” with Germany and Italy. In fact, he said that “it was not out of the question” that commercial negotiations with Germany could be resumed. Ambassador von der Schulenburg, in reporting the speech to Berlin, pointed out that Molotov had indicated that Russia was still prepared to conclude a treaty with Britain and France “on condition that all her demands are accepted,” but that it was now evident from the address that it would take a long time before any real agreement was reached. He pointed out that Molotov had “avoided sallies against Germany and showed readiness to continue the talks begun in Berlin and Moscow.”54

  This readiness was now suddenly shared by Hitler in Berlin.

  During the last ten days of May, Hitler and his advisers blew hot and cold over the thorny question of making advances to Moscow in order to thwart the Anglo–Russian negotiations. It was felt in Berlin that Molotov in his talk with Ambassador von der Schulenburg on May 20* had thrown cold water on Germany’s approaches, and on the following day, May 21, Weizsaecker wired the ambassador that in view of what the Foreign Commissar had said “we must now sit tight and wait to see if the Russians will speak more openly.”55

  But Hitler, having fixed September 1 for his attack on Poland, could not afford to sit tight. On or about May 25, Weizsaecker and Friedrich Gaus, director of the Legal Department of the German Foreign Office, were summoned to Ribbentrop’s country house at Sonnenburg and, according to Gaus’s affidavit submitted at Nuremberg,† informed that the Fuehrer wanted “to establish more tolerable relations between Germany and the Soviet Union.” Draft instructions to Schulenburg were drawn up by Ribbentrop outlining in considerable detail the new line he was to take with Molotov, whom he was asked to see “as soon as possible.” This draft is among the captured German Foreign Office documents.56

  It was shown to Hitler, according to a notation on the document, on May 26. It is a revealing paper. It discloses that by this date the German Foreign Office was convinced that the Anglo–Russian negotiations would be successfully concluded unless Germany intervened decisively. Ribbentrop therefore proposed that Schulenburg tell Molotov the following:

  A real opposition of interests in foreign affairs does not exist between Germany and Soviet Russia … The time has come to consider a pacification and normalization of German–Soviet Russian foreign relations … The Italo–German alliance is not directed against the Soviet Union. It is exclusively directed against the Anglo–French combination …

  If against our wishes it should come to hostilities with Poland, we are firmly convinced that even this need not in any way lead to a clash of interests with Soviet Russia. We can even go so far as to say that when settling the German–Polish question—in whatever way this is done—we would take Russian interests into account as far as possible.

  Next the danger to Russia of an alliance with Great Britain was to be pointed up.

  We are unable to see what could really induce the Soviet Union to play an active part in the game of the British policy of encirclement … This would mean Russia undertaking a one-sided liability without any really valuable British quid pro quo … Britain is by no means in a position to offer Russia a really valuable quid pro quo, no matter how the treaties may be formulated. All assistance in Europe is rendered impossible by the West Wall … We are therefore convinced that Britain will once more remain faithful to her traditional policy of letting other powers pull her chestnuts out of the fire.

  Schulenburg also was to emphasize that Germany had “no aggressive intentions against Russia.” Finally, he was instructed to tell Molotov that Germany was ready to discuss with the Soviet Union not only economic questions but “a return to normal in political relations.”

  Hitler thought the draft went too far and ordered it held up. The Fuehrer, according to Gaus, had been impressed by Chamberlain’s optimistic statement of two days before, May 24, when the Prime Minister had told the House of Commons that as the result of new British proposals he hoped that full agreement with Russia could be reached “at an early date.” What Hitler feared was a rebuff. He did not abandon the idea of a rapprochement with Moscow but decided that for the time being a more cautious approach would be best.

  The backing and filling which took place in the Fuehrer’s mind during the last week of May is documented in the captured German Foreign Office papers. On or about the twenty-fifth—the exact day is not quite certain—he had suddenly come out for pushing talks with the Soviet Union in order to thwart the Anglo–Russian negotiations. Schulenburg was to see Molotov at once for that purpose. But Ribbentrop’s instructions to him, which were shown Hitler on the twenty-sixth, were never sent. The Fuehrer canceled them. That evening Weizsaecker wired Schulenburg advising him to maintain an “attitude of complete reserve—you personally should not make any move until further notice.”57

  This telegram and a letter which the State Secretary wrote the ambassador in Moscow on May 27 but did not mail until May 30, when a significant postscript was added, go far to explaining the hesitations in Berlin.58 Weizsaecker, writing on the twenty-seventh, informed Schulenburg that it was the opinion in Berlin that an Anglo–Russian agreement would “not be easy to prevent” and that Germany hesitated to intervene decisively against it for fear of provoking “a peal of Tartar laughter” in Moscow. Also, the State Secretary revealed, both Japan and Italy had been cool toward Germany’s proposed move in Moscow, and the reserve of her allies had helped to influence the decision in Berlin to sit tight. “Thus,” he concluded, “we now want to wait and see how deeply Moscow and Paris–London mutually engage themselves.”

  For some reason Weizsaecker did not post his letter at once; perhaps he felt that Hitler had not yet tally made up his mind. When he did mail it on May 30, he added a postscript:

  P.S. To my above lines I must add that, with the approval of the Fuehrer, an approach is nonetheless now to be made to the Russians, though a very much modified one, and this by means of a conversation which I am to hold today with the Russian chargé d’affaires.

  This talk with Georgi Astakhov did not get very far, but it represented for the Germans a new start. Weizsaecker’s pretext for calling in the Russian chargé was to discuss the future of the Soviet trade delegation in Prague, which the Russians were anxious
to maintain. Around this subject the two diplomats sparred to find out what was in each other’s mind. Weizsaecker said he agreed with Molotov that political and economic questions could not be entirely separated and expressed interest in the “normalization of relations between Soviet Russia and Germany.” Astakhov asserted that Molotov had no “intention of barring the door against further Russo–German discussions.”

  Cautious as both men were, the Germans were encouraged. At 10:40 o’clock that evening of May 30 Weizsaecker got off a “most urgent” telegram59 to Schulenburg in Moscow:

  Contrary to the tactics hitherto planned we have now, after all, decided to make a certain degree of contact with the Soviet Union.*

  It may have been that a long secret memorandum which Mussolini penned to Hitler on May 30 strengthened the Fuehrer’s resolve to turn to the Soviet Union, however cautiously. As the summer commenced, the Duce’s doubts mounted as to the advisability of an early conflict. He was convinced, he wrote Hitler, that “war between the plutocratic, self-seeking conservative nations” and the Axis was “inevitable.” But—“Italy requires a period of preparation which may extend until the end of 1942 … Only from 1943 onward will an effort by war have the greatest prospects of success.” After enumerating several reasons why “Italy needs a period of peace,” the Duce concluded: “For all these reasons Italy does not wish to hasten a European war, although she is convinced of the inevitability of such a war.”60