Hitler
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Berlin had been nominated to host the Games in 1931, but violations of human rights and racist measures in the Third Reich had quickly given rise to objections to their being held in Germany. Thus in the summer of 1933 the new government was forced to pledge to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that it would uphold the rules enshrining the Olympic Ideal and not discriminate against any participants on the grounds of race or religion and respect the independence of the German organizing committee. The committee chair, Theodor Lewald, was not seen as close to the regime and, according to the Nuremberg Laws introduced later, he was also classed as a ‘half Jew’.59 In spite of these assurances, calls for a boycott of the Games persisted. In December 1935, advocates of a boycott only just lost a vote taken by the American Amateur Athletic Union.60
During that summer, anti-Semitism, normally ubiquitous in German public life, was banished. ‘Jews not welcome’ signs were temporarily removed and news reports about trials for ‘racial disgrace’ were suspended during the Games, although, significantly, they were resumed immediately after the close.61 Shortly before the opening ceremony any Sinti and Roma living in Berlin were confined to a camp on the outskirts of the city so that there would be no chance of anyone even seeing upsetting signs of discrimination against another social group.62
One of the regime’s diversionary tactics was to allow just a few normally ‘unwelcome’ people to be part of the German team as proof of the regime’s ‘tolerant attitude’. Helene Mayer, subsequently a silver medallist in fencing and according to racial laws a ‘half Jew’, was allowed into the German team, but this was the only concession made to the principle of equal treatment for all German sportspeople that the regime had officially accepted. The high jumper Gretel Bergmann, a Jew, was not chosen, in spite of having an excellent chance of a medal.63 On the other hand, Werner Seelenbinder, several times German champion in wrestling and a former member of the KPD, was allowed to take part as a concession from a regime trying to cover its tracks.64
As mentioned above, from the outset Hitler had seen to it that the Games as a whole had a more prestigious character and were on a much larger scale than had been envisaged by the last Weimar governments. The forty-nine nations and almost 4,000 sportsmen and sportswomen who participated, coming to Berlin in spite of the demonstrations mounted by an international boycott movement, established a new record.
From the first moment onwards Hitler was the centre of attention for the public and the media. On the day of the opening ceremony he began by receiving the members of the IOC in the Reich Chancellery, where he made the grand gesture of announcing that German archaeological excavations at Olympia would be resumed. Then with his entourage and the members of the IOC he drove in a motorcade through the streets of the capital, lined with hundreds of thousands of people and decorated with Olympic and swastika flags, to the new Reich stadium in the west of the city, where, amidst great pomp, the opening ceremony took place. Richard Strauss conducted a 3,000-strong choir that sang the national anthem, the Horst Wessel Song, and an Olympic anthem composed by Strauss. The spectators cheered the teams as they marched in, particularly those, for example the French, who when passing the podium gave the ‘Olympic salute’, an outstretched right arm. The sporting participants accepted that it was similar to the Nazi ‘German salute’, while most of the spectators were unable to tell the difference. As head of state Hitler had the privilege of officially declaring the Games open. In the days following he attended a variety of events, among them the yacht races that took place in Kiel on 10 August. During this time Hitler presented himself as being fascinated by and enthusiastic about the Games, a generous host, and benevolent national figurehead, everywhere cheered by the masses.65
In addition, Hitler used the Games to hold numerous receptions and meetings in the Reich Chancellery. He met, among others, the Tsar of Bulgaria, Boris III; the Crown Prince of Italy; the Italian Propaganda minister Dino Alfieri; the Polish State Secretary Jan Count Szembek, and various Hungarian and Yugoslav ministers. Although Sir Robert Vansittart, the longstanding Permanent Under Secretary in the British Foreign Office, had come for an ‘unofficial’ visit, it was significant that none of the western countries was represented by a cabinet minister.66 The Reich capital, where Nazi flags were flying for the duration of the Games, offered all kinds of fringe events such as theatre and music performances, exhibitions, additional sporting events, numerous conferences and congresses, as well as dazzling receptions and lavish parties, thus presenting itself to international visitors as the centre of a confident, peaceful, and sophisticated National Socialist state.67
As far as the sporting events themselves were concerned, things turned out well for Germany. With thirty-three golds it was top of the medals table. The most successful athlete of the Games with four gold medals was, however, Jesse Owens from the United States. The fact that Owens was black was naturally problematic from the point of view of Nazi racial policy. German spectators and German newspapers had some difficulty in accepting these achievements without betraying racist attitudes that would damage the impression the regime wanted to give of the Games being ‘open to the world’.68
As far as their treatment by the media was concerned, the Berlin Summer Olympics represented a milestone in the development of the Olympic idea. In the run-up to the Games there had been an international campaign to raise public interest. In Berlin the reporters found excellent facilities and the most up-to-date technical equipment69 and for the first time the events were broadcast live on the radio to the whole world.70 Leni Riefenstahl’s lavish film, which was promoted by Hitler personally and showcased by being premiered on his 49th birthday in 1938, set new aesthetic standards for a film about sport.71 Another first was the showing of the Games on television, even if only on a small local network.
In spite of the huge efforts to use the 1936 Olympic Games for propaganda purposes, the response abroad was mixed, something the regime was forced to recognize through its monitoring of foreign media. The spacious buildings, the perfect organization, the lavish accompanying programme, the German sporting successes, and even the people’s cheers for their ‘Führer’ were generously acknowledged and to some extent admired, but foreign media often suggested that everything had turned out to be too perfect and well-organized in a way that was oppressive. Foreign reporters became aware that the Berlin population’s friendliness and hospitality towards international visitors was the result of being positively drilled by the regime. The ‘Nazi Olympiad’ looked to many journalists like a dictator’s military parade, or a Potemkin village, serving as a façade behind which the regime continued its brutality and preparations for war. Special attention was paid to chauvinist tendencies on the part of the German crowds and the disdain for black sportspeople. Thus, in spite of the due respect paid to the Games, international criticism of the political system of the Third Reich was not softened but rather became more pronounced.72 It is hardly surprising that many foreign visitors took home predominantly positive impressions of their stay in Germany but this was not primarily due to a successful propaganda campaign. As a rule, anyone who travelled to the ‘Nazi Olympiad’ felt some sympathy with the system there or was indifferent to the political situation in Germany.
The impression created at home by propaganda from the German media was that the Games had positively transformed international opinion. This extravagant exaggeration had a long-lasting effect; the myth of the ‘Festival of Nations’ lived on in Germany for decades.
Hitler’s Four-Year Plan
As two weeks of ‘the endless toing and froing of the Olympiad’ had made Hitler ‘somewhat stressed’, as Goebbels noted,73 he left immediately after the Games closed for rest and recuperation in Berchtesgaden. In July the extensive building alterations to his refuge there had been completed. Wachenfeld, a country villa, had been transformed into the Berghof, a grand house.74 Hitler used his time there, which lasted until the start of the Party Congress on 8 September, to ponder on the di
rections he had set in the preceding months in foreign and rearmament policy, to assess their initial consequences, and to link together their various strands. His deliberations resulted in essence in the creation of the Four-Year Plan and the introduction of two years’ conscription, which was directly connected with that Plan. Both were preconditions for further accelerating the pace of rearmament.
At the end of July Hitler had still been willing to allow Göring to announce what he was planning with regard to foreign currency and raw materials in a ‘major speech’ at the September Party Congress. With the slogan ‘The Party’s Great Production Battle’ Göring wanted to set in motion a ‘raw materials propaganda campaign’.75 After the Olympic Games, however, Hitler changed his mind, composing a long memorandum, presumably at the end of August, in which he himself specified how the shortage of raw materials was to be dealt with. In it he emphasized and defined the tasks Göring had taken on in the spring, when he had become Commissioner for Raw Materials and Foreign Exchange. At the same time, the memorandum was designed to keep Schacht, the Economics Minister, in line. For on 20 August Schacht had once again spoken out frankly to the Reich governors about his fears concerning the economic situation, had demanded Goerdeler’s reinstatement as Prices Commissar, and warned against any ‘new decisions on dealing with the Jewish question’. 76 Hitler at any rate only informed Schacht at the end of August, that is, after the event, about the fundamental decisions on economic policy that he had taken.77
Hitler divided the memorandum into two parts. The first was a detailed exposition of familiar pet topics of his regarding ‘world view’ and world history. After a few introductory sentences, Hitler made his first core statement, naming the enemy against whom they all had to struggle: ‘Since the outbreak of the French Revolution the world has been moving ever faster towards a new conflict, of which the most extreme resolution is Bolshevism, and the essence and goal of Bolshevism is the elimination of the hitherto dominant social strata of humanity by world-wide Jewry. . . . Since Marxism, through its victory in Russia, has established one of the greatest empires in the world as a basis for its future operations this issue has become a menacing one.’ In Europe, he wrote, Germany and Italy are ‘at the moment the only two states that can be regarded as standing firm against Bolshevism’. All others are ‘corrupted by their democratic ways, infected by Marxism . . . or ruled by authoritarian governments’ and thus ‘incapable of ever waging a successful war against Soviet Russia’. Outside Europe only Japan could be ‘considered as a power standing firm in the face of this threat to the world’.
To judge by this, an alliance with Britain was not central to Hitler’s considerations, even if he had by no means abandoned the idea. On 12 August, in other words during the Olympic Games, he had sent Ribbentrop as the new ambassador to London with the task of bringing about the desired alliance, and in the coming months he was to return repeatedly to the idea that in the long term it would come about.78 The assumption in the memorandum, however, is that in the short term the anti-communist bloc Hitler was striving to create would have to do without British involvement. And the threat that he evoked so vividly was horrifying. If ‘Bolshevism’ were to triumph this would lead to the inevitable ‘destruction, indeed annihilation of the German nation’. If ‘in a very short time the German army . . . cannot be turned into the foremost army in the world, Germany will be doomed!’
Germany’s economic situation, the second topic of the memorandum, was marked by over-population, too narrow a base in food production, and a shortage of raw materials. The ‘ultimate solution’ to all these problems lay in ‘extending our nation’s living space and its food and raw materials base’. While this problem remained unsolved and Germany continued to be dependent on imports (which could not be increased because of the limited export opportunities) the priorities that had to be set were clear. It was ‘impossible to use foreign exchange earmarked for raw materials to buy food’, if this were to be done ‘at the expense of national rearmament’. In addition, he strongly objected to the notion of ‘bringing about any “enrichment” of raw materials that might benefit Germany in the event of war’ by putting restrictions on national rearmament, in other words on the production of arms and munitions. In the polemic that followed against this, to him misguided, idea – a polemic clearly directed against the Economics Minister, Schacht – Hitler became somewhat bogged down in detail. Then, however, he advanced a concrete ‘programme’ for the next few years:
I Parallel with the military and political rearmament and mobilization of our nation must go its economic rearmament and mobilization and this must be effected in the same tempo, with the same determination, and if necessary with the same ruthlessness as well . . .
IITo this end, foreign exchange must be saved in all those areas where German products can cover our needs, so that we can concentrate it on those requirements that can be met only by imports.
III In line with this, we must now push ahead with German fuel production as fast as possible and fully complete the task within eighteen months . . .
IV It is also clear that the mass production of synthetic rubber must be organized and achieved.
A series of individual instructions followed, peppered with polemical remarks aimed at the, in his view incompetent, bureaucrats dealing with economic matters. ‘German iron production’ had to be ‘stepped up massively’, the ‘distillation of potatoes into alcohol’ had to be ‘banned forthwith’, supplies of industrial fat had to be obtained from domestic coal, and the extraction of domestic non-ferrous ores had to be increased ‘regardless of cost’.
Hitler summarized thus: ‘In short I consider it necessary that with iron determination 100% self-sufficiency should be achieved in every sphere where it is feasible and that as a result not only should the nation become independent of foreign countries for its supplies of these most essential raw materials, but it should be able to conserve the foreign exchange that it needs in peace time to be able to import our foodstuffs.’ In addition, he demanded that ‘there be an immediate review of the outstanding debts in foreign exchange owed to German business abroad’ for they concealed the ‘malign purpose’ of ‘holding as a safeguard reserves of foreign exchange abroad that were being withheld from the grasp of the domestic economy’. This amounted to ‘deliberate sabotage of the Reich’s capacity to assert or defend itself’. For this reason laws were required: ‘1) a law providing for the death penalty for economic sabotage and 2) a law making the whole of Jewry liable for all damage inflicted by individual specimens of this criminal community on the German economy and thus upon the German people.’ Thus the argument he had advanced at the beginning of the memorandum through his polemic against ‘Jewish’ Soviet Russia had come full circle. His measures, at home and abroad, to prepare for war were in the final analysis directed at the same enemy, namely the Jews. At the end of the memorandum he states succinctly that there are two tasks:
I The German army must be operational within four years.
II The German economy must be ready for war within four years.79
The most important message of the memorandum is certainly Hitler’s absolute determination – a determination rooted in his political programme and ideologically charged to a high degree – to maintain the rapid pace of rearmament and thus to go to war. However, in addition to this he defined and emphasized the tasks linked to the ‘general authority’ in economic matters that Göring had obtained for himself in the spring and early summer. Thus Hitler intervened directly in the development of the policy to create economic ‘autarky’ in Germany and focused Göring’s energies in particular directions. In the months to come these interventions by Hitler were to result in concrete measures. Thus the memorandum is not only important evidence of Hitler’s programme and ideology but above all shows him as an active politician.80
Since the beginning of the summer, in other words even before Hitler’s memorandum, rearmament had been stepped u
p. It was quite clear that the military had understood Hitler’s giving responsibility to Göring in the spring of 1936 for alleviating the raw materials and foreign exchange crisis as an explicit sign that they should do all they could to force the pace of armaments production, and they were only too ready to respond to it. Thus as early as June 1936 state secretary Erhard Milch gave the order to arm the Luftwaffe to maximum capacity by the spring of 1937 rather than by 1938, as originally planned.81 On instructions from the commander-in-chief of the army the General Army Office produced an armaments plan on 1 August 1936 that provided for a peacetime force totalling 43 divisions and a wartime force of 102 divisions to be in place by 1 October 1939.82 In early December 1936 the commander-in-chief declared this plan would form the basis for all further armaments planning.83 There is a clear connection between these projects and the demands of Hitler’s four-year plan. The schedule for mobilization, during which the army was for the first time to reach its new size, began on 1 April 1940. In other words, the German army was to be ready for full deployment in four years,84 and on 1 September 1939 103 divisions were in fact mobilized.85 The introduction from 24 August 1936 of two years’ conscription (Hitler issued the decree without at first giving it much media attention) was an integral part of these war preparations.86
The Party Rally, whose slogan was ‘Rally of Honour’ began on 8 September. It was opened by a proclamation, read out as usual by Gauleiter Wagner, announcing the ‘Four-Year Programme’. ‘In four years’ time’, Hitler told the Party, ‘Germany must be completely self-sufficient in all the materials that we can supply in whatever way possible through our own skills, our chemical and machine industries, and our mining industry!’ The foreign exchange saved in this way, as he particularly stressed in order to reassure his listeners, would be used to guarantee food supplies and to import raw materials that could not be produced in Germany.87 In fact, the value of German agricultural imports rose in 1937 from 1.5 to 2 billion RM, which led to the food sector being markedly less strained.88 In addition, there was an announcement about the extension of conscription from one to two years that Hitler had decreed at the end of August. As in the previous year, he also spoke out against wage increases.89 In his closing speech on 14 September Hitler’s main topic was ‘Communism as a threat to the world’. He gave dramatic descriptions of alleged atrocities committed in Spain by the communists and predicted that if Bolshevism triumphed ‘European culture’ would be ‘replaced by the most brutal barbarity ever known’.90