Hitler
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This becomes especially clear given that on the afternoon immediately before the speech the cabinet had passed a defence law that, amongst other things, entitled Hitler to prescribe the duration of active military service in peacetime. The same day he used a Führer decree to introduce a period of service of one year.31 At the same meeting the cabinet signed off specific laws (not meant for publication) that provided for far-reaching measures in the event of a war. They concerned the transfer of executive power to the Chancellor if war was imminent, the arrangements for mobilization, the appointment of a plenipotentiary for the war economy, also the creation of a Reich defence council in the event of war, the introduction of civilian conscription, as well as an obligation on the part of citizens to contribute materially and financially to the war effort.32 The contrast with Hitler’s assurances about peace could not have been more stark.
Nor did Hitler’s offer to Britain to limit the size of the German navy to 35 per cent of that of the British navy indicate any actual self-restraint. As the background to this proposal makes clear, it was in fact only a staging post on the journey to planned naval expansion and in no way ruled out a later maritime arms race.
Towards the end of the Weimar Republic the German navy had already begun a programme of rearmament calculated to exceed the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The plan was to restore Germany as a future sea power, on exactly the same lines as the naval policies of the pre-war period.33 After writing Mein Kampf Hitler had in fact opposed any large-scale expansion of the German navy and held to this view up to 1933.34 After coming to power, however, he supported naval rearmament for he had been persuaded by the naval chiefs’ argument that an effective navy was a precondition for Germany being able to prove to the British that it was ‘fit to be an ally’.35
After the signing of the non-aggression treaty with Poland in January 1934, naval chiefs began to concentrate more on issues relating to war in the North Sea rather than in the Baltic. Early in 1934 the navy commissioned a series of warships that blatantly exceeded the tonnage stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles, and in March a schedule for construction was set up that raised the number of warships far above the limit the Treaty imposed and was heading for parity with the French fleet. The project was couched in terms of the future German navy being strengthened to the point of being a third the strength of the British navy, the most powerful naval fighting force in the world. The ratio of 3 to 1 (strictly speaking of 100 to 35) governing the strength of the British navy in relation to the French or Italian navy was the key agreement reached by the sea powers at the naval conference in Washington in 1922. The naval chiefs, and under their influence Hitler, had been aiming since the spring of 1934 to reach this magic 35 per cent too. The general expectation was that the next international naval conference, scheduled for 1935, would finally make the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles obsolete.36 At the same time, Hitler agreed in June 1934 with Neurath and the military chiefs that they should keep a low profile at this conference and establish the desired quota by means of a bilateral agreement with Britain, their strategy being that such an agreement on the part of the most important naval power in the world would in effect sanction this open flouting of a further set of provisions in the Treaty of Versailles.37
On 27 June, a short time after this meeting, Admiral Raeder persuaded Hitler that the tonnage of two cruisers under construction should be greatly increased and that they should be more heavily armed.38 The outcome of this discussion makes it clear that at this point both men envisaged a fleet that within a few years would be more than one-third the size of the British fleet. Among naval chiefs there was already talk of a ratio of 1 to 2, parity with France once again being used as a justification. According to his own notes on the meeting, Raeder also expressed the view that at some future time the fleet would have to be deployed against Britain. Thus the notion of being ‘fit to be an ally’ could be understood in a variety of ways.
Officially, however, the 3 to 1 ratio was still being observed. Hitler’s meeting on 27 November 1934 with Sir Eric Phipps, the British ambassador, marks the point at which talks began with Britain.39 During the visit of Simon and Eden in late March 1935, the issue of a ratio of 100 to 35 was then discussed in detail,40 and, after the British had taken cognizance of Hitler’s proposal of 21 May, Ribbentrop, who had been appointed by Hitler to be a ‘special representative and ambassador at large’,41 commenced negotiations in London on 4 June. They led relatively quickly, in fact by 18 June, to a naval treaty based on the ratio of 100 to 35.42
Whereas Hitler had assumed since the 1920s that he could achieve an alliance with Britain without a sizeable navy, from 1933 onwards, influenced by the naval chiefs, he gradually changed his view. Now a fleet, albeit still restricted, of large warships was to make the Reich ‘fit to be an ally’. In the final analysis, however, the continued German naval rearmament was designed to challenge the dominance of the British fleet. Now the alliance Germany was aiming for was to be gained precisely through the pressure of naval strength. Thus Germany’s naval policy culminated in open rivalry with the world’s greatest sea power, bringing with it an increasing risk of a maritime war, although without anyone on the German side having a clear idea of how such a war might be waged.
For this arms race demonstrated that the thinking behind German policy, both with regard to material resources and to the opportunities of deploying the new weaponry in a war situation, was largely illusory. The gathering momentum of rearmament dragged German naval policy along with it. Hitler meanwhile did all he could to quicken the pace, on the one hand through his megalomaniacal plans, based on rapidly changing and hypothetical networks of alliances, to give Germany the status of a great power, and on the other hand by his absorption in the minutiae of naval technology and grandiose fantasies of warships.
As far as Britain was concerned, the naval agreement was not a first step, as Hitler had hoped, towards an alliance. The British government viewed it rather as the first step towards tying Germany for the long term into a collective European security system, for the sake of which it was prepared to give up the idea of an alliance to contain Germany. Although in breaking up the ‘Stresa front’ through the naval agreement, Hitler had achieved an important foreign policy success, what he was aiming for, namely to establish separate spheres of interest for Britain (its colonial empire) and Germany (hegemony in continental Europe) was precisely what Britain would not accept.
In addition to rapprochement with Britain and his hopes of friendly relations with Italy, Hitler focused his ambitions in 1935 on another country, the Polish Republic, with whose help he hoped finally to break out of Germany’s international isolation.
After signing the German–Polish non-aggression pact in January 1934, the German leadership had taken the initial steps towards developing a far-reaching alliance with its new partner, based on their joint expansion at the expense of the Soviet Union. The policy being pursued can be found in a memorandum composed in May 1934 by Rosenberg and endorsed by Hitler. In the event of a clash between the Soviet Union and Japan, Rosenberg wrote, a genuine cooperation between Britain, Poland, and Germany might result and Poland could be guaranteed expansion towards the Black Sea. Rosenberg’s intention was to offer Poland this option as part of a general overhaul of German–Polish relations. In other words his aim was to use Ukrainian territory as compensation for a revision of the German–Polish border.43
These ideas were by no means just castles in the air but practical political considerations. At the end of January 1935 Göring travelled to Poland in response to a hunting invitation, but in reality he was on a serious political mission. He had been instructed by Hitler to indicate to his Polish hosts that a shared policy of German–Polish expansion in eastern Europe was a possibility, with Poland standing to gain territory in the Ukraine and Lithuania and Germany expanding ‘north-eastwards’. The extension of Polish territory was quite obviously intended as compensation for the return of fo
rmer German territory in western Poland. Göring had in fact hinted the same to the Polish ambassador Lipski and the Polish leader, Pilsudski. The Poles had not responded, however.44
When Marshall Pilsudski died on 12 May 1935, the German leadership began to doubt whether Poland would continue to cooperate with Germany.45 Hitler hastened to send President Ignacy Moscicki a long telegram of condolence during the night of 12/13 May.46 On 13 May Goebbels spoke to Hitler about the situation arising from Pilsudski’s death and the following day they continued the discussion and were joined by Göring and Hitler’s foreign policy adviser, Joachim von Ribbentrop. Goebbels’s notes make clear how volatile Hitler and the most senior leaders considered the international situation to be. ‘Poland crucial. 1936 and in particular 1937 dangerous. We’re getting ready for anything. Even for the remotest possibility. Rearm. Rearm!’47
On 18 May Hitler and numerous other prominent Nazis paid their respects to the deceased, who was after all the head of the only state friendly to Germany, at a memorial service at St Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin. Throughout the Reich flags were flown at half-mast. Hitler sent Göring to the funeral in Warsaw. He returned to Berlin with reassuring news: as Goebbels again noted, the Foreign Minister Jozef Beck had confirmed to Göring that Poland was ‘sticking firmly to its treaty with us’.48 Yet during his journey Göring had come to the conclusion that the Polish government was still seeking close relations with France and that further rapprochement between Germany and Poland and any adoption of a common policy such as he had outlined in January were possible only after a settlement to the dispute over Danzig [Gdansk]. This was the message he gave Hitler when he returned and in the months following he took on the role of coordinator of German policies regarding Poland and Danzig.49
On 22 May, after the memorial service, Hitler received Lipski, the Polish ambassador. In his ‘peace speech’ to the Reichstag the previous day he had commented positively and at some length on German–Polish relations. Now in his meeting with Lipski he again brought up the ‘space question’ as the crucial problem for the future. Germany, he said, was searching for territory for its growing population, space that Poland did not possess and was not in a position to offer. By comparison with these problems the issue of the Polish Corridor was of lesser importance. One day in the future, not today but perhaps in about fifteen years, they could consider a special railway line and a motorway link. This idea, which Hitler came out with fairly casually, soon afterwards became central to his thinking about German–Polish relations, not to mention the starting point for a policy of threats and blackmail that intensified as relations with Germany’s eastern neighbour cooled during the following years.50 When at the beginning of July 1935 Beck came on an official visit to Berlin he was at least in accord with Hitler in wanting to deepen relations on the basis of the agreement of January 1934.51
Since January 1935 Hitler’s regime had achieved some important foreign policy successes. The Saar territory had been regained with the support of an overwhelming majority; conscription and an air force had been introduced without any significant negative consequences in foreign policy terms. Above all, it looked as though Germany’s international isolation could be overcome. The Anglo–German naval agreement was one concrete result, while relations with Poland and now with Italy were shaping up well.
It would, however, be a mistake to assume that these foreign policy successes had any lasting positive impact on the domestic situation in Germany. Although for a few months they obscured the various problems (the Churches, criticism of the Party, economic difficulties, to name but a few) that had caused such trouble at the end of 1934, these and other unsolved problems were soon back on the political agenda.
19
The Road to the Nuremberg Laws
On 7 April elections were held in the Free City of Danzig, a Nazi stronghold. Although the NSDAP achieved 59.3 per cent of the vote, 9.2 per cent more than in 1933, the result still lagged far behind the extremely high level of approval that had become usual in the Reich and seriously disappointed the leadership.1 Not only had the Danzig NSDAP received massive help from the Reich Party, the Nazi government of Danzig had given significant support to the NSDAP and tried to sabotage the electoral campaigns of the opposition parties. When the opposition contested the election result, the Danzig high court established that there had been considerable electoral interference, indeed nothing short of vote rigging. Although no rerun of the election was ordered,2 the NSDAP’s result was reduced by several percentage points. If this vote rigging is taken into account, approval ratings for the Party in 1935 were barely higher than in 1933, in fact they were probably lower. The Danzig result indicates that the Nazis had made little progress in taking support from their political opponents or in engaging the mass of the politically apathetic.
That may well have been true of the Reich itself, for euphoria there about the incorporation of the Saar, the establishment of an air force, and the reintroduction of conscription soon dispersed and international responses such as the Stresa front and the Franco–Soviet alliance aroused instead apprehension and the fear of war. Although gradual economic growth had been discernible since February and seemed to produce a general mood of spring optimism,3 the imbalance between price rises and low wages coupled with very modest standards of living remained unchanged. Among many sections of the population the impression was taking hold that the regime was not prepared to pass on the benefits of the economic upturn to the mass of the people. The gulf between reality and the ‘national community’ that was invoked so frequently by the regime was only too evident. Although elections to the ‘councils of trust’,* declared by the regime to be a demonstration of loyalty to the regime, secured a higher turnout than in the previous year, the official 80 per cent recorded as being positive most probably far exceeded the real result. The spirit of optimism that the regime produced in its initial phase through a constant round of propaganda campaigns, mass rallies, and ceremonial, had long since dissipated.4
Hostility to Jews, the Churches, ‘reactionaries’: unrest among Party members
The positive messages issued during the previous months had, however, succeeded in creating a triumphalist mood, particularly among the radical Party activists. It was therefore no accident that the first months of 1935 saw an increase in attacks on those groups that the rank and file of the Party already had in their sights from the previous year, namely Jews, the Churches, and ‘reactionaries’.
Although the boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933 had been limited officially to one day, Party activists had never ceased disrupting the work of Jewish business people to a greater or lesser extent. Away from the major cities it is fair to say that something like guerrilla warfare was being waged against Jewish businesses, resulting in frequent violent assaults on Jewish citizens.5 During the Christmas period in 1934 these attacks had grown worse. After the Saar referendum and the reintroduction of conscription in March, they were deliberately provoked, with the Party press actively inciting people to violence. In the Party there were increasingly strident demands for Jews to be excluded completely from the economy, as well as for so-called ‘racial disgrace’, in other words sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews, to be stopped. In municipal swimming pools, parks, and on the entry to towns and villages all over the Reich signs with the words ‘Jews not welcome’ sprang up, a phenomenon Hitler expressly sanctioned when asked about it by his adjutant.6 The campaign was matched by a series of anti-Jewish measures introduced by the authorities from the beginning of 1935 onwards.7
The campaign against the Churches began in the middle of January, immediately after the Saar referendum, during which the Party had been glad of support from the Catholic Church in particular.8 Yet when, two weeks after the Saar vote, the next round of negotiations over the Concordat began, the Papal Nuncio was forced to acknowledge that, as far as the future status of Catholic associations was concerned, Hitler was not remotely prepared to relinquish the position that had be
en reached in 1934. At that time the Vatican had deemed what had been negotiated to be unacceptable; Hitler now demanded further concessions from the Church: its, to him, objectionable associations were to disappear completely as independent entities. The activities they had been involved in hitherto, now restricted to narrowly defined religious and pastoral matters, could continue at best in individual parishes.9 In addition, since the beginning of 1935 the regime had been trying to squeeze out Church-sponsored state primary schools, even though they were in fact protected by the Concordat, in favour of community schools,10 and in March it began systematically to investigate Catholic priests on the grounds of alleged or actual infringements of currency regulations arising from international money transactions by Catholic religious orders. These investigations led to a series of trials.11
In February and March the German Faith Movement, composed of adherents of emphatically non-Christian groups espousing a völkisch religion, became active with the regime’s approval. These believers in a völkisch religion took up an aggressively anti-Christian and anti-Church stance at numerous events.12 When in March 1935 the Confessing Church wished to engage critically with this ‘new paganism’ the Interior Ministry forbade any reference to it in churches and had hundreds of clergy arrested.13 In March the Protestant Churches in Prussia also had to accept the state intervening in their internal disputes by creating special finance departments that took over the distribution of money.14