Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  Apart from Goebbels, other leading politicians came for a tête-à-tête with Hitler. Magda also arrived – two days before her husband; she stayed a week longer than him.277 In his conversation with Goebbels on 24 August, Hitler advocated, among other things, the complete abolition of the federal states; all Gauleiters should become Reich Governors. Hitler also returned to the topic of a Party senate, which was intended to guarantee the ‘regime’s stability’.278 The succession to the 85-year-old Hindenburg was another topic for discussion. Only five months earlier, when talking to Goebbels in March, Hitler had been uncertain about it. He had wondered whether the Prussian prince, August-Wilhelm, known as Prince Auwi, might not be a possibility, if only to prevent Göring from becoming Chancellor. So, at that point, he had not thought of combining the two offices.279 But now, in conversation with Goebbels, Hitler showed that he was determined to take over as Reich President straight after Hindenburg’s death; this would then be subsequently legitimized through a plebiscite. His change of mind demonstrates the extent to which his self-confidence had grown during the past months.280

  * Translators’ note: The Nazi term is Gleichschaltung, borrowed from electrical engineering, where it means to switch to the same current. In the Third Reich it meant bringing into line, i.e. enforced conformity. ‘Coordination’ has become the generally accepted translation.

  † Translators’ note: ‘Bündisch’ refers to the youth movement that developed among middle-class Germans in the early twentieth century with a particular form of organization (‘Bund’), stressing its separation from adult society and bourgeois values, and a Romantic mindset.

  13

  First Steps in Foreign Policy

  In the summer of 1933 Hitler declared that the ‘National Socialist revolution’ had come to an end, thereby concluding six months of intensive engagement in domestic policy. He could also look back on a series of foreign policy initiatives through which he had gone a long way towards turning the Foreign Ministry into a tool of his policy.

  At the start of his Chancellorship, Hitler had remained largely passive as far as foreign policy was concerned. That was not simply because the individual stages of the seizure of power required his full attention. It was also because, in appointing the government, Hindenburg had been careful to make sure that the posts of Foreign and Defence Minister were occupied by people of whom he approved.1

  At the beginning of April, Foreign Minister Neurath had outlined to the cabinet the basic principles of a future foreign policy, emphasizing continuity with the policies of previous governments. The main aim, according to Neurath, was the revision of the Treaty of Versailles, a goal that required the ‘application of all our efforts’. In view of the progress that had been achieved hitherto – the ending of reparations and the withdrawal of the French from the Rhineland – now the focus must be on two issues: the achievement of military parity for Germany (in other words, rearmament) and territorial revision. As far as rearmament was concerned, there was no prospect ‘of regaining military parity with other nations . . . for a long time to come’. In the current disarmament negotiations they must ‘for tactical reasons concentrate in the first instance on trying to get the other nations to disarm’. Neurath urged caution. Foreign countries were suspicious of German attempts to rearm; military intervention was not inconceivable. Foreign conflicts should be avoided as they were not up to coping with military engagements. Even frontier revision could be tackled only when Germany was once more ‘militarily, politically, and financially stronger’. The most important task was ‘revision of the eastern border’ and this would require ‘a total solution’, including Danzig. By contrast, there was no point in raising the issue of Alsace and Lorraine. As far as colonies were concerned, they would, ‘for the time being, have to restrict themselves to propaganda’; and Anschluss with Austria was, for the moment, not on the cards because of Italy’s hostility. In the case of bilateral relations, they would need to seek good relations with Britain and also with Italy. An understanding with France, however, was ‘more or less out of the question for the foreseeable future’. An ‘understanding with Poland’, Neurath added with remarkable bluntness, ‘is neither possible nor desirable’. ‘Defence against Poland’ was, however, ‘only possible if Russia’s support has been secured’ and at the moment it was unclear whether they could rely on the indispensable ‘backing of Russia against Poland’. As far as the League of Nations was concerned, although they were dissatisfied with its performance, ‘a German withdrawal [was] out of the question’.2

  Although this programme was dictated by Realpolitik and caution, Neurath’s statements clearly show that the Foreign Ministry’s long-term goal was the restoration of Germany’s great power status in Europe. His aim of revising the eastern border, Anschluss with Austria, and regaining colonies represented a minimal consensus for the conservative elites at this point. However, examined more closely, their foreign policy aims included other goals that were widely supported: hegemony in the Baltic states and the extension of German influence in ‘Mitteleuropa’, in other words the states that had emerged from the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy.3 This was only partly compatible with Hitler’s long-term foreign policy ideas, focusing above all on the conquest of ‘living space’ in eastern Europe; but such differences did not emerge to begin with, for they were all agreed on the intermediate aim of overturning the post-war order and establishing German hegemony in central Europe. This provided sufficient common ground with which to bridge their fundamental differences regarding long-term goals. However, it soon became apparent that, during the first stage of this agreed revisionist foreign policy, Hitler was setting a very different course from that of his diplomats.

  Within a period of a little over a year Hitler would succeed in more or less turning Neurath’s revisionist programme on its head. He withdrew from international armaments controls and engaged in massive rearmament, without allowing himself to be put off by the negative responses from abroad; he permitted, indeed even specifically welcomed, a freeze in German–Soviet relations. In fact, dispensing with the supposedly necessary ‘backing from the Soviet Union’, he made a non-aggression pact with Poland in January 1934, turning it into Germany’s most important partner, and thereby completely downgrading the revision of the eastern border. He withdrew Germany from the League of Nations in October 1933 and tried to achieve Anschluss with Austria through a violent coup d’état, thereby risking a serious breach in relations with Italy. He pushed through these policies against opposition from the conservative and nationalist diplomats in the Foreign Ministry, in some cases by dispensing with their services.

  However, Hitler’s first spectacular foreign policy move occurred in a very different sphere, one closely linked to the domestic situation in Germany.

  Recognition and demarcation: the Concordat

  Since Hitler’s government statement on 23 March on the occasion of the Enabling Law, extending an olive branch to the Christian confessions, relations between Nazism and the Churches had to some extent relaxed. While actively involved in the unification of the Protestant Churches to form a Reich Church, Hitler also sought a dialogue with Catholicism. As we have seen, after the Catholic Church had withdrawn its previous opposition to Nazism on 28 March, Hitler met with its representatives in April. He was concerned above all to achieve a Concordat with the Vatican, hoping that such an agreement would produce a modus vivendi with the Catholic Church, enabling him to eliminate political Catholicism from Germany once and for all.

  There is evidence that Vice-Chancellor von Papen, the Centre Party dissident, had been pursuing the idea of a Concordat since early April 1933. In the middle of April, during Easter, he began talks with the cardinal secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli. Papen succeeded in securing the chairman of the Centre Party, the priest Ludwig Kaas, as an advisor, and, after Papen’s departure from Rome, Kaas continued the negotiations by correspondence.4 What was at issue above all was whether the Church could tolerate a g
eneral ban on Catholic clergy taking part in politics. Hitler had several times insisted on this demand to Papen and had made it a prerequisite for the conclusion of the agreement.5

  At a second round of talks, which began in Rome on 30 June and in which the German participants were Papen, Kaas, and Archbishop Conrad Gröber, agreement was reached on a text that was approved by the Pope and which Papen forwarded to Hitler on 3 July. He in turn sent it to the Interior Ministry, which requested numerous alterations. A senior Ministry official then flew to Rome in a special aircraft in order to carry on last-minute negotiations, a clear disavowal of the Vice-Chancellor and head of the delegation. Among other things, the Germans managed to tighten further the ban on priests taking part in politics.6

  The Concordat was initialled on 8 July. In the agreement the state guaranteed the freedom of religious expression and continued to grant parishes the status of public corporations. Basically, the Concordat guaranteed the Church’s existence and granted it a number of privileges. Among other things, it was guaranteed the right to continue imposing Church taxes; the seal of the confessional was recognized; the continuation of Catholic university faculties was confirmed; the teaching of religion as a subject within the official school curriculum in state schools was conceded; and the maintenance of Catholic schools was guaranteed, including the establishment of new ones. In return, the bishops, on appointment, were obliged to swear a special oath of loyalty to the German Reich. On Sundays there were to be prayers for the ‘welfare of the German Reich and people’. The withdrawal of the Church from political life, on which Hitler had placed such emphasis, was expressed in particular by the provision that Catholic associations were to be restricted to purely religious, cultural, and charitable activities; anything beyond that was de facto subject to official approval. Moreover, the Vatican agreed not only to ban priests from being members of political parties but also from acting in any way for them.7

  Figure 4. The Concordat of July 1933 seemed to have established a mutually satisfactory relationship between the regime and the Catholic Church. Hence at a Catholic youth rally at the Berlin Neukölln stadium on 20 August 1933 Church dignitaries, who included Erich Klausener, seen on the far left, of the Catholic Action organization, duly paid homage to the new state. Less than a year later Klausener was murdered by the regime.

  Source: bpk / Harry Wagner

  The conclusion of the Concordat had been brought about under considerable pressure from the regime. A big gathering of the Catholic Kolping Associations,* scheduled for 8–11 June in Munich, had to be cancelled because of major Nazi disturbances.8 From 25 June onwards, almost 2,000 deputies and councillors of the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP), the Bavarian version of the Centre Party, were arrested, among them 200 priests.9 Elsewhere in the Reich members of the Centre Party lost their jobs in the civil service or were arrested. On 23 June, Papen spoke out against the Centre Party’s continued existence and, on 28 June, Goebbels publicly demanded the party’s dissolution.10 During the last phase of the negotiations, on 1 July, the political police of the federal states closed the offices of a number of Catholic organizations on the grounds that these ‘confessional aides of the Centre Party’ had ‘taken part in activities hostile to the state’.11

  On 4 July the BVP and on 5 July the Centre Party announced their voluntary dissolution, in other words just at the moment when the Concordat negotiations were entering their critical final phase. On 3 July, Papen had already informed Foreign Minister Neurath that, during the final meeting of the negotiators, in other words with Kaas present, it had become clear that ‘it was accepted and approved that, with the conclusion of the Concordat, the Centre Party will dissolve itself’.12 Thus, the renunciation of ‘political Catholicism’ can be seen as part of the overall arrangement between the Catholic Church and the Nazi state. It cleared the way for the guarantee of the existence of the Catholic Church and its network of (unpolitical) organizations and institutions. By promising to ban priests from taking any part in political parties, the Vatican had effectively abandoned the Centre Party. Kaas’s involvement in the negotiations suggests that the regime had been seeking such an overall solution from the very beginning.13 Given the political situation, it would have been impossible to sustain the Centre Party and the BVP, but what was decisive was that, as a result of the Concordat, the dissolution of the Catholic parties was part of an overall arrangement with the new regime. On the same day as the initialling took place, Hitler suspended the bans on the non-political Catholic organizations and the other anti-Catholic measures, in other words he made a show of removing the pressure.14

  At the cabinet meeting of 14 July already referred to, Hitler described the Concordat as a great success, as it had created a ‘sphere of trust’, which, ‘in view of the pressing struggle against international Jewry, would be particularly important’. The willingness of the Catholic Church to get the bishops to swear allegiance to the German state was an ‘unqualified recognition of the present regime’. But, even more important was the fact that the Catholic Church was withdrawing from associational and party political life and closing down the Christian trades unions. The dissolution of the Centre Party would be finally confirmed only when the Vatican instructed its priests to withdraw from party politics.15

  The solemn signing of the Concordat by Pacelli and Papen occurred in Rome on 20 July in the Vatican; it was ratified by the Reich government on 10 September 1933.

  Rearmament and détente: flexibility towards the western powers

  Despite the importance of the Concordat for the regime’s international reputation, there was another issue at the heart of German foreign policy in 1933: securing German rearmament against pressure from the western powers.

  In mid-December 1932, after a short break of three months, the German delegation had returned to the Disarmament Conference in Geneva along with delegates from sixty-four other countries. The other participants had in principle accepted Germany’s demand for equal treatment, while simultaneously recognizing French security concerns. With the clear aim of torpedoing the conference, Foreign Minister Neurath and Defence Minister Blomberg bluntly rejected proposals for armaments controls put forward by the British and French delegations. They wished to put the blame for the failure on the western powers, thereby enabling Germany to escape from the Versailles armaments restrictions and launch a general programme of rearmament.16 Hitler, on the other hand, saw the danger that, given her actual armaments position, if Germany absented herself from international attempts to control armaments, she would become hopelessly isolated and be exposed to the risk of a possible preventive war. For the time being, therefore, he advocated limited German rearmament within the framework of international security – initially without success, however.17 Neurath circumvented Hitler’s intention of giving way to British pressure and of sending a member of the cabinet to the next round of negotiations in Geneva,18 and also the attempt in March by the head of the German delegation at Geneva, Rudolf Nadolny, to seek Hitler’s backing for the continuation of the conference.

  During the following weeks, Hitler became convinced that Neurath’s attempt to put the blame for the failure of the conference on the French was too risky. But his own plan of initially moderate rearmament secured by international agreement could also not easily be realized. For, at the end of April, the German delegation at Geneva was to a large extent isolated, since its very assertive demands for immediate German equality were only too obviously designed to wreck the conference.19 On 12 May, there was a further setback when an expert committee at the conference decided that the paramilitary units, in other words the SA, SS, and Stahlhelm, should be counted towards the size of Germany’s army.20 Hitler responded by going onto the offensive. He told the cabinet the same day that he had come to the conclusion ‘that the sole purpose of the Disarmament Conference was either to destroy the German armed forces or to put the blame on Germany for its failure’. Thus, the time had come to make a government statement pointing out the
‘dire consequences of a failure of the Disarmament Conference’, in effect to threaten Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations.21

  He did this in a ‘peace speech’ to the Reichstag on 17 May. The ‘employment of force of any kind in Europe’ would inevitably ‘increase the threat to the balance of power . . . [resulting in] new wars, new insecurity, more economic distress,’ he told the deputies. He warned of ‘a Europe sinking into communist chaos’ that would ‘produce a crisis of unforeseeable dimensions and incalculable length’. It was ‘the most earnest wish of Germany’s national government to prevent such strife through honest and active participation’, and to achieve this they were willing to make concessions, namely to Poland and France. For they no longer believed, as was the case in the previous century, in the idea of ‘Germanizing’ people, of ‘being able to turn Poles and Frenchmen into Germans’. The key point in his statement on the disarmament question was the German claim for equal treatment. Having fulfilled the disarmament terms of the Versailles Treaty, they had ‘an entirely justified moral claim on the other powers to fulfil their commitments that derive from the Versailles Treaty’, in other words they should themselves disarm. He rejected the demand that the SA should be included in Germany’s army figures with the comment that it had only ‘domestic political functions’. Germany ‘would be totally prepared to abolish its entire military establishment and destroy the few remaining weapons left to it, provided its neighbours would do the same in an equally radical fashion’. However, so long as this was not the case, Germany must demand that ‘a transformation of our present defensive arrangements (i.e. the Reichswehr P.L.), which we did not choose but were imposed upon us from abroad, must coincide step by step with the actual disarmament carried out by other countries’. Hitler then proposed a ‘transitional period’ of five years, during which Germany should be allowed ‘to establish its own national security in the expectation that, after this period, it will then actually have achieved equality with the other states’. This meant that he was departing from the demand for immediate equality that the German delegation in Geneva had been putting forward hitherto. Germany was even ‘prepared to dispense with offensive weapons altogether, provided that, within a certain time frame, the nations who had rearmed were prepared to destroy their offensive weapons, and that their further use was banned by an international convention’ – always provided that there was agreement on the principle of equality of treatment for Germany. Any other attempt to ‘rape Germany by simply using a coercive majority, contrary to the clear meaning of the treaties’, could ‘only be intended to remove us from the conference’. Germany would then, albeit with a heavy heart, draw the only possible conclusions: ‘as a nation that is being constantly defamed, we would find it difficult to continue to belong to the League of Nations’.22