Yet the dictator was by no means content with what he had achieved, although in the spring of 1937 he forwent the sort of spectacular foreign-policy coups he had engineered in the preceding two years. “April has come and no Hitler surprise this spring yet,” a somewhat astonished William Shirer remarked.3 But behind this seeming restraint, a transition had begun from a policy of dismantling the Treaty of Versailles to one of expanding Germany’s territory. From the very beginning, Hitler had left no doubt in private that the evisceration of the Versailles Treaty was only a preliminary goal. The ultimate aim of all his plans remained the conquest of “living space” in eastern Europe. In early June 1936, after a long conversation with Hitler about foreign policy, Goebbels noted:
The Führer sees conflict in the East coming. Japan will batter Russia. And this colossus will begin to wobble. Then our hour will be at hand. Then we will have to gain enough territory for the next one hundred years. Hopefully, we’ll be ready then, and the Führer will still be alive.4
Of course, such thoughts were kept confidential. While remaining on the lookout for opportunities to advance his aggressive aims, Hitler depicted himself in Germany and abroad as a politician of peace. A characteristic manifestation of this was the agreement reached between the Third Reich and Austria on 11 July 1936. In the public part of the treaty, the German government acknowledged “the full sovereignty of the federal state of Austria and the basic principle of non-intervention in its internal affairs.” In return, Vienna promised to orient its foreign policy around the fact that “Austria saw itself as a German state.” In the secret part of the treaty, Austria agreed to declare a generous political amnesty for imprisoned Austrian Nazis and to give “political responsibility to representatives of the so-called ‘national opposition.’ ”5 Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg believed that these concessions would ensure his country’s independence. Hitler saw the agreement as a lever to help Austrian National Socialists achieve power from within, since as he told a group of Austrian Nazis around this time, his other foreign-policy initiatives were such that he could not bear the “burden of Austria” at the time. “I need two more years to start pursing my policies,” he instructed them. “Within that time, the party in Austria is to maintain its discipline.”6
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Yet only two weeks after the signing of the German–Austrian accord, Hitler made a decision that completely contradicted his rhetoric of peace. In February 1936, Spain’s Frente Popular (Popular Front) had emerged as narrow winners in that country’s national election. On 17 July, military officers in the Spanish protectorate of Morocco, led by General Francisco Franco, revolted against the legitimate democratic government. The putschists lacked the means of transport needed to bring rebel troops to the Spanish mainland, so Franco turned to Hitler and Mussolini for help. Two members of the NSDAP Foreign Organisation in Spanish Morocco, Adolf Langenheim and Johannes Bernhardt, offered their services as go-betweens. On the evening of 24 July they arrived in Berlin, accompanied by a Spanish officer. The Foreign Ministry coolly rejected these emissaries, but Rudolf Hess directed them to Hitler, who as always at this time of year was attending the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth.7
News of the Spanish military revolt had reached Bayreuth on 19 July. “Hopefully they’ll blast the Reds to pieces,” Goebbels commented.8 In the days that followed the Nazi leadership tried to get an overview of the situation. Hitler even asked 16-year-old Wolfgang Wagner to bring him his school atlas so he could look up where Tetúan, the capital of Spanish Morocco, was located.9 The reports gradually drifting in suggested that the military revolt was not doing particularly well and that the republicans controlled the majority of Spain. On 25 July, the German ambassador in Madrid warned that civil war was imminent and laid out the consequences of a republican victory. Domestically, he wrote, a republican triumph “would establish Marxist rule in Spain in the long term, with the danger of a Spanish soviet regime.” In terms of foreign policy, Spain would be “ideologically and materially bound to the Franco-Russian bloc.”10 On the evening of 25 July, after taking in a performance of Siegfried, Hitler received Franco’s emissaries for lengthy discussions, after which he agreed to give them the support they requested. As a first measure, the military rebels received twenty Junkers 52 military transport aircraft, as well as six fighter planes to protect them, and anti-aircraft artillery. This military hardware allowed Franco to fly Spain’s African army of around 13,500 men, which he commanded, from Tetúan to Seville.
Hitler made this decision without consulting the Foreign Ministry and over the initial reservations of Göring and Ribbentrop, who both feared that it would lead to international complications. There has been much speculation about Hitler’s motivations, and it seems as though they combined power politics and ideology. With a Popular Front government under the socialist Léon Blum in power in France since June 1936, Hitler saw his fears of a “global Bolshevik threat” confirmed. “If they truly succeed in creating a Communist Spain, it is only a matter of time, given the current situation in France, that that country too will be Bolshevised, and then Germany can ‘pack it in,’ ” he told Ribbentrop, explaining his decision. “Wedged in between the powerful Soviet bloc in the east and a strong Spanish–French Communist bloc in the west, we could hardly do anything if Moscow decided to move against Germany.”11 By contrast, if he succeeded in helping Franco to victory, the chances were good that the Third Reich would gain Spain as an ally and would be able to squeeze France from both sides. An even more important factor seems to have been Hitler’s desire to use a joint operation in Spain to better relations with Fascist Italy. Two further considerations appealed to Göring. Deployment in Spain was the perfect test run for the new Luftwaffe. And as the man responsible for the Four Year Plan, Göring had a profound interest in gaining access to militarily important raw materials in Spain like iron ore and pyrite.12
To reduce the risk of foreign-policy complications, Hitler sought to maintain the pretence of non-interference throughout the entire conflict. Initially the German regime seems to have assumed that it could limit its engagement in terms of both time and resources. The day after Hitler’s decision, Goebbels noted: “We’re going to involve ourselves a little in Spain. Aeroplanes, etc…Invisibly. Who knows what it’s good for?”13 But over the following weeks, Nazi Germany expanded its military involvement. The Third Reich did not just provide weapons, munitions and other vital war materiel. In late October 1936, a Luftwaffe combat unit that would become the Condor Legion, consisting of 6,500 men under the command of Major General Hugo Sperrle, was deployed to Spain. They were responsible, among other things, for the air raids on the small Basque city of Guernica on 26 April 1937, which killed more than 1,600 people and wounded 900 others. The regime in Berlin denied any involvement, but the evidence left no doubt about German responsibility for the attack. Guernica became a symbol for the horrors of modern aerial warfare and the subject of Pablo Picasso’s famous painting, which was exhibited for the first time in the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 Paris World Fair.14
Only a few weeks after the Guernica massacre, there was a further major incident. On 29 May 1937, Spanish republican aircraft attacked the German warship MS Deutschland, which was lying at anchor in Ibiza. Twenty-three seamen were killed and seventy wounded. The following evening Hitler summoned Werner von Blomberg, Konstantin von Neurath, Erich Raeder, Göring and Goebbels to the Chancellery. “With the Führer until 3 a.m.,” noted Goebbels. “He paced up and down with long strides, gnashing his teeth in anger.”15 In the heat of the moment, Hitler wanted to bomb Valencia, but he changed his mind and ordered the warship MS Admiral Scheer, which was also deployed in the Mediterranean, to bombard the port of Almería. Twenty-one people died and many others were injured in the attack; numerous buildings were also destroyed. “The Führer is quite pleased with the result,” Goebbels wrote on 1 June. Two days later, he noted: “The Führer is still suffused by Almería…The first demonstration of power in the new Reich. A
warning signal for all enemies of the Reich.”16 The Hitler regime used the attack on the MS Deutschland to suspend Germany’s participation in the military non-intervention negotiations taking place in London at the time, which had only been for show to begin with. On 17 June, the bodies of the casualties from the MS Deutschland were brought back to Wilhelmshaven and buried at a pompous ceremony with Hitler in attendance.17
The Spanish Civil War lasted longer than the Nazi leadership had anticipated. By the end of 1936, Spanish nationalist troops had conquered almost half of the country, but republican forces, bolstered by volunteers from throughout Europe, the International Brigades, put up fierce resistance and were repeatedly able to halt their enemies’ advances. “In Spain, things aren’t really moving forward,” Goebbels noted in July 1937. “The Führer no longer believes in a fascist Spain. Franco is a general without any movement behind him.”18 But although Hitler also complained about Franco’s military acumen, the protracted fighting in Spain was hardly unwelcome since it diverted the attention of the world’s great powers towards the European periphery and expanded Germany’s room to manoeuvre in the middle of the Continent.
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German intervention in Spain further cemented ties with Italy, which had already become closer because of Hitler’s support for Mussolini’s Abyssinian adventure. “The German–Italian barometer is rising quickly,” Germany’s ambassador in Rome, Ulrich von Hassell, reported in late July 1936. “I feel as lucky as Polycrates.”19 At secret conferences, the two countries coordinated their military assistance for Franco. With a contingent of 80,000 men, Italy was far more heavily involved than Germany. “Cooperation between the two secret allies is very close, although hardly simple given the [need for] secrecy,” Hassell wrote.20 Italian–German diplomatic contact also increased, and Mussolini approved of the German–Austrian agreement. In September 1936, Reich Minister Hans Frank issued an invitation by Hitler to Il Duce and his son-in-law Count Ciano, the new Italian foreign minister, to visit Germany.
On 21 October, Ciano arrived with a huge delegation in Berlin. There, on the second day of his visit, he signed a protocol, prepared by diplomats, in which Germany and Italy promised to cooperate in their fight against communism, to recognise the Franco government and to coordinate their interests along the Danube.21 Three days later, Hitler received Ciano at the Berghof. The Italian foreign minister told him in Mussolini’s name that Il Duce “had always had the warmest sympathies for him,” whereupon the flattered German dictator replied that Mussolini was for him “the first statesman in the world with whom no one could compare in the slightest.” In a two-hour conversation in his first-floor office, Hitler advanced the idea of a German–Italian alliance that would either make Britain change its course or be capable of subduing it. In three, four or at the latest five years, Hitler explained, Germany would be ready for war. No conflicts of interest, he added, existed between his nation and Ciano’s, since Italy’s future rested on the Mediterranean, while Germany demanded a free hand in eastern Europe and around the Baltic Sea.22 After the meeting, Hitler led his Italian visitors to the gigantic window in the Great Hall with its majestic view of the Austrian Alps. “From here,” he said, “I have to view a part of my German homeland, Austria, through a telescope!”23
This was Hitler’s way of telling the Italians that he had by no means given up his ambitions concerning the country of his birth, but that did nothing to dampen Mussolini’s satisfaction with the first Italian state visit to Germany since the Dollfuss murder. On 1 November 1936, Il Duce celebrated the new German–Italian mutual understanding in a speech at the Piazza del Duomo in Milan. “The line connecting Berlin and Rome is not a partition,” he declared. “On the contrary, it is an axis around which all European nations can rotate, if they possess the will for cooperation and peace.”24 That was the birth of the term “Axis” in the world’s political vocabulary. But the will to peace was the last thing that connected the two new allies: they were united by their desire to unhinge the European status quo. As the two opposing blocs, the Western democracies and the dictatorial Axis powers, became more and more established, Mussolini would grow ever more dependent on Germany, which was economically and militarily far more powerful than Italy.
Hitler had posited an alliance with Italy as a desirable goal in both Mein Kampf and his “Second Book” of 1928. His other coveted ally was Britain, but after the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, German–British relations had stalled, although Hitler still made a number of overtures. In early February 1936, he granted former British Aviation Minister Lord Londonderry a two-hour audience in the Chancellery, in which he revealed that he wanted to “live in a relationship of close friendship with England.” Hitler wooed: “How often did I say to myself as a common soldier in the world war, when I faced English troops, that it is insane to fight against these men who could be members of our own people.” That should never be allowed to happen again, Hitler insisted, despite the differences between the two countries, for instance over the return of Germany’s former colonies.25 In a gushing letter thanking Hitler for his hospitality, Lady Londonderry wrote: “To say that I was deeply impressed is not adequate. I am amazed. You and Germany remind me of the book of Genesis in the Bible.”26
Nonetheless, such expressions of Hitler admiration in aristocratic circles hardly reflected official British policy, which continued to pursue a balance of power in Europe and preferred to see the Third Reich bound in a system of collective treaties rather than bilateral Anglo-German agreements. In May 1936, the press attaché at the German embassy in London, Fritz Hesse, wrote that it would be incorrect “if people on the Continent assumed that Great Britain were willing to give up the policies of collective security and the League of Nations.”27 Still, Hitler clung to his preferred foreign-policy constellation. After Joachim von Ribbentrop became German ambassador in August 1936 following the death of Leopold von Hoesch, Hitler told him: “Ribbentrop, bring me an alliance with England!”28 The problem was that there was hardly anyone less suitable to achieving this aim than the vain diplomatic amateur, who was soon nicknamed “von Brickendrop.” In October 1936, having barely arrived in London, Ribbentrop made a most undiplomatic speech in which he laid his cards on the table. “How about…just giving Germany a free hand in the east?” he said. “Bolshevism is a global plague that must be eradicated anyway, and Germany’s eye is trained on Russia. In return for a free hand in the east, Hitler would be prepared to conclude every sort of alliance with England.”29 No British government would have been willing to give Hitler a free hand in eastern Europe, which would have essentially meant German hegemony over the entire Continent.
Hitler was already growing frustrated with the British by November 1936. “The Führer complains a lot about England,” Goebbels noted. “It keeps refusing and refusing. Its leadership has no instincts.”30 Hitler’s attitudes were fed by reports from Ribbentrop, who could scarcely conceal his growing aversion to the British establishment. The anti-British faction in the Reich leadership was further strengthened by the crisis in the royal family that saw the Germanophile Edward VIII abdicate the throne in December 1936 in order to be able to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson. Hitler repeatedly stressed that he thought this was a great loss. “I am sure that with him we could have achieved permanent cordial relations with England,” he told Albert Speer. “With him everything would have been different.”31 The hospitality with which Hitler received the Duke of Windsor and his wife on the Obersalzberg in October 1937 expressed his special regard for Edward. But Hitler also clearly did not understand the British political system. He seems to have assumed that the king could have changed the country’s foreign policy by decree.
Although Hitler did not abandon the idea of an alliance with Great Britain, he began looking around for alternatives. Here, Japan came into view. On 25 November 1936 in Berlin, Nazi Germany signed an anti-Communist agreement with the Asian power. Its published section bound the signatories to �
��keep one another informed about the activities of the Communist International, consult about the necessary measures for defence and carry them out in close cooperation.” Third parties were to be invited “to take defensive measures in the spirit of this treaty and sign on to it.” In a secret addendum, Germany and Japan assured one another of neutrality in the case of an unprovoked attack or threat by the Soviet Union. In addition, the two sides pledged not to conclude political agreements with Moscow “in contradiction of the spirit of this pact without the other’s permission.”32 Ribbentrop, in particular, had pushed for the anti-Communist treaty and had deliberately gone over the heads of the Foreign Ministry, which traditionally favoured good relations with China.33 In late October 1936, he secured Hitler’s agreement for the pact. Goebbels, who was spending time on the Obersalzberg, noted: “He just signed a treaty with Japan. Alliance against Bolshevism. When it’s published in three weeks, it will change the entire situation. The seeds we planted are starting to grow.”34 But Goebbels overestimated the impact of the arrangement. Berlin and Tokyo never cooperated closely with one another. The new connection was, in the words of the historian Theo Sommer, “a hesitant alliance—an international peck on the cheek between two very unequal brothers who felt hardly any need to act in solidarity with one another.”35
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There was a deceptive calm over Europe for the whole of 1937. Hitler used the respite to decide upon his next foreign-policy moves. Goebbels’s diaries reveal how, parallel to the intensification of anti-Semitic measures at home, Hitler gradually became more radical in trying to realise his ambitions abroad. In late January 1937, while delivering a broad summary of his foreign policy over lunch in the Chancellery, Hitler expressed his hope that Germany would have “six years yet” before the decisive battle. But he added that he would not fail “to seize an auspicious chance should it happen to arise.”36 One month later, he reiterated that he expected “a major world conflict in five to six years,” but he now spoke more universally of reversing the relations of power that had dominated Europe since the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648. “In fifteen years, he will have destroyed the Peace of Westphalia,” Goebbels noted. “He’s developing fantastic prospects for the future. Germany will either triumph in the coming battle or cease to exist.” Victory or death—that had been the slogan of the Wilhelmine elites in Germany in the First World War, and the former private who had become the most powerful man in Europe still subscribed to this all-or-nothing perspective. For that, Goebbels admired him blindly: “As always, his foresight is enormous and brilliant. He sees history with the prophetic vision of an oracle.”37
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