Hitler
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He does not think it will come to war. If it did, it would be horrible. We have no raw materials. Doing everything to escape this crisis. Stockpiling a great amount of arms. We have no choice but to hold our nerve…The Führer says we must all hope we’re not attacked. Mussolini might do something rash. So take care and do not let anything provoke us.111
By late April, as it became clear that the threats from Stresa were empty, the mood changed. “Everything’s brightening up,” Goebbels noted on 5 May. “The Führer will prevail. The seeds he’s sown will bear fruit in their own good time.”112
Hitler had already decided to hold a second major “peace speech” on German foreign policy, which he worked on intensely until mid-May. He repeatedly went over the details with Goebbels and was convinced that it would be “a great success all around.”113 On the evening of 21 May, Hitler appeared before the Reichstag in top form. His speech was continually interrupted by frenetic applause from the more than 600 Nazi deputies. “A superb speaker,” concluded William Shirer, who listened to it from the gallery with other foreign diplomats and journalists.114 Hitler made a good impression when he declared: “National Socialist Germany wants peace from its deepest ideological convictions.” He assured his listeners that he had no intention of “annexing or incorporating Austria,” that with the status of the Saar region now determined Germany would present France with no more territorial demands, and that he would fulfil the promises made in the Locarno agreements as long “as the other parties to the pact abide by it.” Furthermore, Hitler expressed his fundamental willingness to participate in a “system of collective cooperation to ensure peace in Europe” and to conclude non-aggression treaties with Germany’s neighbours as he had already with Poland. In conclusion, he repeated the suggestion he had made to Simon and Eden of a bilateral agreement limiting Germany’s naval strength: “The German government has the honest intention to do everything it can to create and maintain a relationship with the British people and state that will for ever prevent a repetition of the only conflict in history between our two nations.”115
The historian Klaus Hildebrand has called Hitler’s address of 21 May 1935 “an especially infamous lesson in deception and lying,”116 and indeed no other single speech did more to pull the wool over people’s eyes inside and outside Germany concerning Hitler’s real intentions. Nazi reports about the public mood concluded unanimously that the speech had met with an enthusiastic echo throughout the people.117 Even a committed Hitler adversary like Harry Kessler, who read the transcript of the speech while in Palma de Mallorca, was positively impressed for the first time by the Nazi leader: “You can think what you want of him,” he wrote, “but this speech is a great achievement by a statesman. It is perhaps the greatest and most important speech any German statesman has made since Bismarck.”118
Nor did the speech fail to have the desired effect in London, as the British government declared itself willing to start talks over the naval agreement. On 1 June, Hitler named Joachim von Ribbentrop special ambassador to Britain and put him in charge of negotiations. The reason for the appointment was not just his experience abroad. Ribbentrop behaved with an almost canine subservience to Hitler and was willing to do anything to ingratiate himself to his idol. As the German ambassador to Italy, Ulrich von Hassell, described him: “With a worshipful expression, he hung on Hitler’s lips, constantly saying ‘mein Führer’ and transparently parroting back everything Hitler said, which the latter seemed not to notice.”119 Goebbels, perennially jealous of all rivals for Hitler’s favour, also made no secret of his antipathy for Ribbentrop: “A vain blabbermouth. I cannot understand what Hitler sees in him.”120
Negotiations commenced on 4 June, and immediately Ribbentrop almost caused a diplomatic incident by categorically insisting that the other side accept Germany’s building up its navy to 35 per cent of the British strength. “If the British government does not immediately accept this condition,” he declared, “it makes no sense to continue these negotiations.” The visibly irritated British foreign secretary had to remind his German colleague that issuing such an ultimatum violated all diplomatic conventions and left the room with a “frosty” goodbye. Nonetheless, the British did not break off the talks. After a few days of mulling over the proposition, they accepted Ribbentrop’s condition as the basis for further talks, which took place not in the Foreign Office, but in the historic boardroom of the British Admiralty.121 The Anglo-German Naval Agreement was signed on 18 June. Hitler, who received word from Ribbentrop by telephone, called it the happiest day of his life.122 In his eyes, Ribbentrop had passed his first test, which qualified him for high-level tasks within the foreign service. With the naval agreement, Hitler believed he had achieved one of the goals he had formulated all the way back in the 1920s: an alliance with Britain on the basis of a global political understanding. In Hitler’s mind the agreement meant that the German Reich now had a free hand to pursue its hegemonic ambitions on the Continent, in return for acknowledging British supremacy at sea. “Huge success for the Führer’s policy,” Goebbels commented after the agreement was signed. “The first step towards good relations with England—the end result has to be an alliance. In five years, the time will have come.”123
But the idea of allying itself with Nazi Germany was far from the minds of the British government. London’s main priority was to avoid a ruinous naval arms race of the sort it had pursued with the Wilhelmine Empire before 1914. Britain saw the naval agreement not as a preliminary stage to an alliance but as a step towards tying the Third Reich into a system of collective European security. But it came at a huge cost, since the agreement destroyed the already-fragile Stresa Front. Hitler had succeeded in overcoming Germany’s international isolation, and he was determined to exploit this new situation. On 18 August 1935, he summarised his foreign-policy plans to a group of confidants:
An eternal alliance with England. A good relationship with Poland. Colonies within a limited scope. Eastward expansion. The Baltic states belong to us. Dominate the Baltic Sea. Approaching conflicts: Italy–Abyssinia–England and Japan–Russia. Probably in several years. Then our great historic hour will come. We must be ready. Grand prospects.124
Hitler’s summary was prompted by Italy’s looming war against Abyssinia. Mussolini had long been covetously eyeing the northern African empire, ruled by Haile Selassi I, which had joined the League of Nations in 1927. Conquering Abyssinia was a way of revenging Italy’s defeat by the Ethiopians at Adua in 1896. It was also part of a larger imperial project intended to make Italy a major colonial power comparable to Britain and France. Essentially, Mussolini was aiming at a kind of latter-day Roman Empire. In January 1935, Il Duce confronted French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval, demanding Italy be given a free hand in Abyssinia. He received what amounted to a green light for a military occupation. London, by contrast, repeatedly warned Mussolini that war against a League of Nations member would have consequences. But Britain did nothing to hinder the transport of Italian troops across the Mediterranean.125 On 3 October, they attacked Abyssinia without an official declaration of war. The operation quickly turned into one of the most horrifying colonial wars of recent history. The Italian air force attacked the civilian population, using shrapnel, incendiary and poison-gas bombs.126 On 7 October, the League of Nations condemned Italy and imposed economic sanctions but took no military action.
Hitler immediately realised that Mussolini’s war in Africa was a chance to drive a wedge between Italy and the Western powers and dissolve the Stresa Front once and for all. Officially, Germany remained neutral in the conflict, but secretly Berlin played both sides off against each other. That summer, Hitler agreed to Selassi’s request for weapons.127 At the same time, he helped Mussolini get around the League of Nations sanctions by exporting militarily relevant raw materials and products to Italy. The idea was to “let the war in Abyssinia sink its teeth in”128 and to force Mussolini into a corner that might encourage him to change his foreign policy. �
�Europe is in motion again,” Goebbels noted in mid-October. “If we’re clever, we’ll be the winners.”129
In May, Mussolini had already communicated a clear message to Berlin: “The stance of the European powers towards us in the Abyssinian question will determine Italy’s friendship or enmity.”130 Berlin interpreted this as an overture and closely monitored the situation. “Mussolini seems to have entangled himself in Abyssinia,” Goebbels remarked. “He cordially received Hassell. He’s seeking our friendship again.”131 That July, the Italian ambassador, Vittorio Cerruti, a critic of Hitler, was recalled and replaced by the Germanophile Bernardo Attolico.132 The longer the war went on, the more Mussolini distanced himself from the Western powers and the more he protested his fondness of Hitler. “I was his friend even before he came to power,” Mussolini claimed.133 At the same time, Berlin began to take Italy’s side more and more openly. On 5 December 1935, after lunching with Hitler at the Chancellery, Goebbels noted: “Conversation about Abyssinia/Italy. Sympathies increasingly with Mussolini.”134
In January 1936, Mussolini made the decisive advance. In conversation with Ulrich von Hassell he suggested “fundamentally improving German–Italian relations and settling the one quarrel, the Austrian issue.” Austria had to remain nominally independent, the Italian leader insisted, but it could become a “virtual satellite of Germany.” Mussolini also declared that the Stresa Front was “dead once and for all,” which meant that Italy would not act in solidarity with France and Britain in case of future German treaty violations and would not take part in any sanctions against Nazi Germany.135 These assurances were a direct encouragement for Hitler to prepare his next foreign-policy coup: the remilitarisation of the left bank of the Rhine River, which was forbidden by the treaties of Versailles and Locarno.
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Hitler had long been toying with the idea of a surprise operation. On 20 January 1936, he informed his entourage over lunch at the Chancellery of his determination “to go after a sudden solution to the question of the [demilitarised] Rhineland zone,” although not at the moment “so as not to give the others the opportunity to get out of the Abyssinian conflict.”136 Only one month later, however, Hitler seems to have made up his mind. He told Hassell, whom he received in his private Munich apartment on 14 February, of his conviction that “the right moment psychologically” had come for remilitarising the Rhineland. Originally he had planned to launch the operation in early 1937, but the propitious circumstances demanded immediate action. The Soviet Union, he said, “was only concerned with maintaining calm on its western border, England was in bad shape militarily and seriously burdened with other problems, and France was domestically divided.” Hitler predicted that “no military action would be forthcoming after such a step by Germany—at the most there would economic sanctions, and these had become unpopular among the vassals of the great powers, who often served as punching bags.”137 Hassell came away with the impression that Hitler was “more than 50 per cent decided.” But as he confided to his diary, the ambassador highly doubted “that it was worth the risk to bring forward an event which would probably happen in one or two years anyway.”138
Hassell shared his doubts not only with Konstantin von Neurath, but several German military leaders. The army command had long regarded the remilitarisation of the Rhineland as necessary, but, as Werner von Fritsch told Hitler on 12 February, it should be done “without running any risk that the issue would lead to war.”139 In a further conference with Hassell, Neurath and Ribbentrop at midday on 19 February in the Chancellery, Hitler emphasised that in the long term “passivity could not be a policy” and that going on the offensive “was here, too, the better strategy.” Ribbentrop hastened to agree, while Hassell and Neurath were apparently very cautious about expressing their doubts. Hitler also explained why he thought he had to hurry. On 11 February, the French government had passed on a mutual defence treaty agreed with the Soviet Union the previous year to the French parliament for ratification. The treaty, which was also controversial in France, offered the perfect pretext for the planned operation. “We should use the pact with the Russians as an excuse,” Hassell summarised Hitler’s argument. In order to deny the other side the chance to “brand our operation as an attack,” he wanted to combine the remilitarisation of the Rhineland with a seemingly broad package of offers, including the establishment of a demilitarised zone on both sides of the Rhine, a guarantee of the territorial integrity of the Netherlands and Belgium, a three-powers aerial warfare treaty and a Franco-German non-aggression pact.140
Hitler’s desire to proceed with the remilitarisation was also motivated by domestic issues. According to Security Service reports, the public mood had been worsening since the autumn of 1935. Parts of the populace were unhappy about Nazi attacks on the Churches and especially with the one-sided prioritisation of the arms build-up at the expense of private consumers. Food imports were cut in favour of raw materials imports, which was leading to shortages. Hitler needed a spectacular foreign-policy success to distract attention from these domestic shortcomings. “He senses a decline in popular approval of the regime,” Neurath speculated in conversation with Hassell, “and is seeking a national cause to fire up the masses again, to stage the usual elections with a popular referendum, or one of the two, and then we get them on side again.”141
But as always when faced with major decisions, Hitler hesitated to take the final plunge. “He’s still brooding,” Goebbels noted on 21 February. “Should he remilitarise the Rhineland? Difficult question…The Führer is about to forge ahead. He thinks and ponders, and then suddenly he acts.”142 On 28 February, the day after the lower chamber of the French parliament ratified the treaty with the Soviet Union, Hitler still appeared “undecided.” During an overnight train journey to Munich on 28–29 February, Goebbels advised him to wait at least until the upper house of the French parliament had approved the deal. “Then we should grab the bull by the horns,” Goebbels wrote. “A difficult and decisive choice faces us.”143
Hitler finally made up his mind for good on 1 March. That noon, he visited Goebbels in his Munich hotel and once again ran through his reasoning. “He’s now completely determined,” Goebbels noted. “His face projected calm and resolve. Once again a critical moment has come that calls for action. The world belongs to the bold! He who dares nothing, gains nothing.”144
Hitler informed the Wehrmacht leadership about his decision the following day. As in March 1935, the operation was scheduled for a weekend. On Saturday 7 March, the Reichstag was to be convened for a meeting at which Hitler would announce the remilitarisation. Then the Reichstag would be dissolved, and fresh elections called for 29 March. Preparations were to be kept top secret to ensure the operation was a surprise. In order not to raise suspicions, Reichstag deputies would be summoned to Berlin for a “social evening.” Troop deployments were to be disguised by marches of the SA and the German Labour Front. “Everything must proceed with lightning speed,” Goebbels wrote.145
On 4 March, as Hitler began dictating his address to the Reichstag, voices of warning issued from the Foreign Ministry—much to Goebbels’s irritation. “From all sides, scaredy-cats are appearing disguised as cautioners,” the propaganda minister noted. “Especially in the Foreign Ministry they exist in large clumps. They are incapable of any sort of bold decision.”146 In any case, once Hitler had made up his mind there was no changing it. On the evening of 6 March, he informed his cabinet about the operation for the first time. The Franco–Soviet mutual defence pact, he told his ministers, represented “an obvious violation of the Treaty of Locarno,” and he had therefore decided “to occupy the demilitarised zone on the Rhine once more with German troops.” Hitler added: “All preparations for this have been made. The German troops are already on the march.”147 “Everyone was initially shocked,” Goebbels noted. “But there’s no turning back.”148 The following morning, German troops moved into the Rhineland to the cheers of residents of the region. At 10 a.m., Neurath se
nt the diplomatic representatives of France, Britain, Italy and Belgium a memorandum announcing the abrogation of the Treaty of Locarno after the Franco–Soviet mutual defence pact and calling for negotiations to create a demilitarised zone on both sides of Germany’s western border, a twenty-five-year non-aggression pact between Germany and France and Belgium, and a treaty concerning aerial warfare. The German government also signalled its willingness to rejoin the League of Nations. In his memoirs, François-Poncet insightfully characterised Hitler’s modus operandi as “hitting his opponent in the face while at the same time saying ‘What I suggest is peace.’ ”149
There was a feverish atmosphere in the Reichstag as Hitler approached the microphone around 12 a.m. William Shirer noticed that Reichswehr Minister von Blomberg looked pale as a ghost and kept nervously drumming his fingers on the armrest of his chair.150 The only order of business on the agenda was the “receipt of a declaration by the Reich government.” Hitler began with a series of digressive tirades about the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles and its allegedly crass denial of equal status to Germany. Only towards the end of the speech did he raise his actual point. By concluding a mutual defence treaty with the Soviets, France had violated the spirit of the Treaty of Locarno so that Germany no longer felt bound by the agreement. He read out the memorandum that Neurath had sent to the ambassadors of signatory states and declared to frenetic applause: “In the interest of the most basic right of a people to secure its borders and maintain its ability to defend itself, the government of the German Reich has today restored its full and unlimited sovereignty in the demilitarised zone of the Rhineland.”151
More than 20,000 troops had crossed the Rhine, but only 3,000 penetrated further inland. They were under strict orders to retreat if attacked by French troops. But the French general staff was hesitant to launch such an attack, believing that their troops were no match for the Wehrmacht. In reality, a single French division would have sufficed to thwart Hitler’s gambit. The Führer was well aware of the risk he was taking and anxiously awaited the first responses to the operation. According to Schmidt and other sources, Hitler later described the forty-eight hours after German troops reoccupied the Rhineland as the tensest period of his life. “If the French had invaded the Rhineland,” Hitler said, “we would have had to retreat in humiliation and shame since the military forces at our disposal would not at all have been equal to even moderate resistance.”152