At the beginning of 1938, Hitler’s regime experienced its most serious test since 30 June 1934: the so-called Blomberg–Fritsch affair upset the relationship between the officer corps and Hitler and led to a serious leadership crisis. However, through a dramatic reshuffle, within a few days the dictator had succeeded in resolving the situation in his favour.
The pre-history of the extensive personnel changes carried out in February 1938 goes back to autumn 1937. Reich Economics Minister Schacht had been observing the critical foreign exchange situation produced by the rearmament drive with growing scepticism. As a result, during 1936 he was already being increasingly marginalized by Göring, who was emerging as a quasi-economic dictator, as well as provoking Hitler’s disapproval. In the autumn of 1937, Hitler decided to dismiss Schacht.4 His successor was to be Walter Funk, a state secretary in the Propaganda Ministry.5 However, at the end of November, Hitler temporarily assigned the Economics Ministry to Göring for a few weeks so that Göring could coordinate it with his Four-Year Plan organization.6 However, when Funk finally acquired his new office in February 1938, his appointment was part of a far more comprehensive reorganization of the Third Reich’s leadership. The case of War Minister Blomberg was the trigger for the rush of events that followed.7
In January 1938 Blomberg had married a much younger woman who came from a humble background. Hitler and Göring had acted as witnesses, thereby giving their official approval to a marriage that was considered inappropriate according to the norms of the officer corps. This put them in an extremely embarrassing situation.8 For, shortly afterwards, it emerged that Frau Blomberg had several previous convictions for ‘leading an immoral life’ and, albeit some years before her marriage, had been registered as a prostitute by the police.9 Göring provided Hitler with the incriminating evidence not entirely disinterestedly, since he hoped to succeed Blomberg.10 The affair led, on 27 January, to the latter’s inevitable resignation. Moreover, at the end of January, Hitler recalled an old Gestapo file on the commander-in-chief of the army, Werner von Fritsch, which he had been shown some time before. The file contained material raising the suspicion that Fritsch was a practising homosexual, an accusation that at the time Hitler had not wished to pursue.11
Hitler decided to handle the matter personally, confronting Fritsch with his sole accuser in an extremely embarrassing scene in the Reich Chancellery. The young man, who had numerous previous convictions, identified Fritsch as the person he had blackmailed some years previously for having homosexual relations with an acquaintance. Fritsch vigorously denied these accusations.12 However, as a result of this situation, the relationship of trust between Hitler and the commander-in-chief of the army had been destroyed. Goebbels’s diary entries for these days provide an insight into Hitler’s state of mind. According to Goebbels, Hitler appeared ‘very serious and almost sad’, ‘very pale, grey, and shocked’.13 These observations, which were confirmed by other members of Hitler’s entourage,14 contradict the argument that he welcomed these affairs involving his two highest-ranking generals as enabling him to get rid of them as possible opponents of his next, highly risky, diplomatic moves. On the contrary, given the looming threat of a serious loss of prestige, Hitler’s deep depression appears entirely plausible. Whether Hitler’s depressed mood was assumed or authentic, however, he managed to use the crisis to his own advantage.
At the end of January, Hitler was considering possible successors to the two generals. In discussions with Goebbels and Hossbach the names of Ludwig Beck, Walther von Brauchitsch, Gerd von Rundstedt, and Count Friedrich von der Schulenburg were mentioned as successors to Fritsch, while Hitler began to contemplate taking over the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht himself, with subordinate ministries for the individual branches. He rejected the idea of giving Göring the War Ministry because of the concentration of power that would result. Hitler told Goebbels that, in addition, there would have to be a whole series of appointments ‘in order to obscure the whole affair with a smoke screen’.15 However, to begin with nothing happened. The crisis grew from day to day, rumours began to spread through the Reich, and speculation was rife in the foreign press.16 However, during the following days Hitler failed to act; indeed, he appeared paralysed in the face of the threat to his personal and political reputation.17 This year, the celebrations for the anniversary of 30 January took place without the usual special session of the Reichstag.18
However, on 4 February, at the eleventh hour, Hitler finally made up his mind. He announced that Blomberg and Fritsch were now resigning for health reasons. Hitler himself took over command of the Wehrmacht; Wilhelm Keitel became head of a new Wehrmacht command centre [Oberkommando] with the rank of a Reich minister, directly subordinate to Hitler, thereby taking over the responsibilities of the former Reich War Minister. Göring received the title of Reich Marshal. More important, however, was the fact that in a secret Führer decree, Hitler ordered that, in the event of his being prevented from carrying out his official functions, Göring should deputize for him ‘in all my offices’. This replaced the regulation issued at the end of 1934, which had divided authority between Göring (state), Hess (Party), and Blomberg (Wehrmacht).19 Brauchitsch was appointed Fritsch’s successor as commander-in-chief of the army.20 Hitler’s foreign policy advisor, Ribbentrop, became Neurath’s successor as Foreign Minister; Neurath became president of a newly created ‘Secret Cabinet Council’, which was never to meet. In addition, there were substantial personnel changes in the officer corps, the Economics Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry, involving among others, the replacement of the ambassadors in Rome, London, and Vienna.21
Hitler had managed not only to solve the crisis, but to emerge significantly stronger from it. For now, all the key positions important for carrying out the policy of aggressive expansion on which he was bent were in the hands of obedient followers. As in June 1934, in the summer of 1935, and in the period between spring and autumn 1936, after a critical period of delay, Hitler had exploited a serious crisis in the regime by finally intervening on a massive scale to reorder the political agenda in his own interest, thereby overcoming the crisis. It is not surprising that, at the end of January, right in the middle of the crisis, he launched another project, assigning Speer the task of completing the extension to the Reich Chancellery within a year.22
On the evening of 5 February, Hitler gave an account of the whole affair to the cabinet; according to Goebbels, ‘sometimes his voice trembled as if he was on the verge of tears’.23 This theatrical performance was Hitler’s last appearance in front of his ministers; after 5 February, he never again convened the cabinet. In future he was to be spared such embarrassing appearances before his ministers. Putting an end to cabinet meetings enabled Hitler to avoid soon having to confess to a further mistake, which in this case could not be rectified. When, in March, the trial of Fritsch took place in the Reich Military Court under Göring’s chairmanship, the only prosecution witness had to confess that he had confused the general with someone else and the case was dismissed.24 Fritsch’s rehabilitation was kept very low key. After his innocence had been proved, there was simply a brief press release on 1 April stating that ‘the Führer and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht . . . has sent Colonel-General von Fritsch a personal message with his best wishes for the recovery of his health’.25 Later, in August, in a half-hearted gesture to restore Fritsch’s reputation, Hitler gave him command of an artillery regiment.26
Austria
The annexation of Austria was one of Hitler’s main foreign policy objectives. Since the failure of his attempted putsch in 1934, he had intended to bring the country under German control through a combination of internal and external pressure and then, with the crucial assistance of the Austrian Nazis, to coordinate it. The formal constitutional annexation would then be only a matter of time. In view of Italy’s attitude to the Austrian question, Hitler had sometimes been inclined to adopt a cautious approach, but Nazi politicians such as Göring did not allow that to pre
vent them from repeatedly and demonstratively asserting Germany’s claims to its neighbour.27 It was not a question of rival foreign policy conceptions; rather such different approaches were part of Hitler’s political system: strident statements by Nazis (such as Göring) were matched by more moderate voices, such as that of the German ambassador in Vienna, Papen, and it was Hitler’s prerogative to choose between these ‘options’, depending on the situation.
During the summer of 1937, Germany had succeeded in improving the July 1936 agreement in a number of ways in its favour and, through a press agreement, in disseminating Nazi propaganda throughout the country.28 During Mussolini’s state visit to Germany in September 1937, Hitler left it to Goring to discuss the Austrian question with their guest. He gave the relevant instructions to Göring in Berlin in the presence of Neurath. He did not approve of the ‘too tough line’ Göring had adopted ‘hitherto’; he, Hitler, was by no means intending that ‘Germany should bring the Austrian question to a head in the foreseeable future, but rather that they should continue to pursue an evolutionary solution’.29 While Hitler avoided the topic in discussions with his Italian guest, when Mussolini visited him in Carinhall on 28 September, Göring spoke to him, as he put it, ‘in no uncertain terms about the merger issue’ (but not about an Anschluss).30 Mussolini responded by making it clear that he wanted to see Austria maintained as an independent state, but only in a ‘formal sense’, which was the equivalent of giving his approval to the coordination of Austria, roughly along the lines of Danzig, for example,31 whereupon, Göring continued his campaign of threats against Austria.32
With Italy joining the Anti-Comintern pact at the beginning of November, the risk of a negative Italian response to a German intervention in Austria was further reduced.33 On 5 November 1937, according to Hossbach’s memorandum, Hitler had made clear to the heads of the armed forces his intentions vis-à-vis Austria. Austria was to be ‘crushed’ as part of an assault on Czechoslovakia. Thus, in addition to the idea of a ‘coordination’ or a ‘merger’, which had been pursued for some time by Nazis on both sides of the border, he had introduced a military option as a solution to the Austrian question.34
At the end of 1937, German propaganda began a campaign against the Austrian government, while the Austrian Nazis tried to destabilize the country through an increasing number of activities.35 During a visit to Berlin in mid-December, Papen proposed to Hitler a plan for getting rid of Schuschnigg,36 an objective which he had already suggested to him in September.37 They were still thinking in terms of getting a new government in place that would be more sympathetic to the German regime. However, as Papen subsequently informed Ernst von Weizsäcker, the head of the political department in the Foreign Ministry, in a letter, they had agreed that a ‘solution by force’, by which was meant military intervention, should be avoided for the time being, but only ‘so long as this is undesirable for European reasons’.38 On 25 January, German policy objectives were exposed through a police search of the illegal Vienna Gau headquarters of the NSDAP: the extremely compromising material revealed that Austria was to be coordinated with the Reich through a combination of external and internal pressure.39
Since Germany’s policy towards Austria had entered a decisive phase in November 1937, Göring had kept bluntly demanding a ‘merger’ of the two countries. The Third Reich’s economic dictator was thinking of binding Austria into a customs and currency union with Germany, an idea he held on to until well into February 1938 and for which, in the meantime, he had gained Hitler’s approval.40 The fact that Austria was annexed three weeks later was a development that Göring had not foreseen, let alone had played a leading part in initiating. The final Anschluss was, rather, largely Hitler’s initiative.
As part of the personnel changes in the wake of the Blomberg–Fritsch affair, at the beginning of February, Papen was recalled from Vienna. Nevertheless, before he left, Papen managed to agree a date for a long-planned invitation from Hitler to Schuschnigg.41 Hitler was aware of Schuschnigg’s willingness to make considerable concessions to Germany as the latter had previously discussed details of his negotiating position with Arthur Seyss-Inquart, one of his associates in Austria’s German nationalist camp, who had then passed these details on to Berlin.42 Hitler received the Austrian Chancellor on 12 February at the Berghof and put him under massive pressure. He threatened him with a German military invasion – the presence of a number of generals of a particularly martial appearance was intended to lend credence to this threat – thereby forcing him to sign an agreement in which, among other things, he agreed to allow the Austrian Nazis to act freely within the framework of the Schuschnigg regime’s single party, the ‘Fatherland Front’, conceded an amnesty for convicted Nazis, and the appointment of Seyss-Inquart as Minister of the Interior.43 Only a few days after his ‘sorting out’ of the Blomberg–Fritsch crisis, Hitler was now concerned to achieve success in what for years had been one of his main objectives. The ‘coordination’ of Austria, which he had now set in motion, was intended to prove the effectiveness of the recent changes in diplomatic and military personnel and consign the recent crisis to the past.
A few days after this meeting Hitler informed Goebbels of a number of details of his conversation with Schuschnigg: the latter ‘now had the choice. He can resolve the issue. If he does the Führer will keep him, along with Miklas [the Austrian Federal President P.L.]’. Hitler wanted ‘to deal [with Prague] in a similar way if a favourable opportunity arises’.44 While Goebbels arranged for the German newspapers to focus on a ‘press feud with Austria’,45 Hitler gave the Wehrmacht instructions to increase the pressure on Austria by carrying out manoeuvres for a few days in order to deceive the Austrians into thinking that Germany was preparing for military intervention.46 On 16 February the Austrian cabinet reshuffle was announced: Seyss-Inquart became Federal Minister of the Interior and Security and Edmund Glaise-Horstenau, Schuschnigg’s link man to the Nazis, Minister without Portfolio.47 In addition, the Austrian government announced an amnesty for all political offences committed before 15 February 1938. On 17 February Seyss-Inquart arrived in Berlin to receive further instructions.48
Thus, the main demands of the ‘agreement’ of 12 February had been fulfilled. Nevertheless, during the following weeks Hitler increased the pressure in relation to the Austrian question, starting with his speech to the Reichstag on 20 February. It began with an endless list of statistics demonstrating the successful performance of the German economy. Hitler then dealt briefly with the Blomberg–Fritsch affair, emphasizing that the Wehrmacht and the Nazi movement were in full agreement. He then embarked on a lengthy disquisition on foreign policy full of polemics, pointing out that there were ‘over 10 million Germans’ living in ‘two states that share our borders’ and forming a historic community ‘with the German nation as a whole’. The fact that they were living in separate states from the Reich could ‘not be allowed to lead to a denial of their ethnic political rights’. Such a situation, he threatened, was ‘intolerable for a self-confident world power’. However, Hitler also made a conciliatory gesture, expressing satisfaction with the agreement that he had forced on Schuschnigg, and his ‘sincere thanks’ to the Austrian Federal Chancellor.49
On 21 February, the day after his Reichstag speech, Hitler replaced the leader of the Austrian Nazi party, Josef Leopold, with Hubert Klausner. He combined this move with sharp criticism of the previous leadership of the Party in Austria, which had been too overtly conspiratorial, insisting that it ‘must [move] from the illegal to the legal field of activity’. The Party should model itself on Bürckel’s ‘Deutsche Front’, which in 1935 had organized the pro-German propaganda during the Saar plebiscite.50 At the meeting Göring once again brought up his plan for a currency union without encountering any opposition.
On 24 February, Schuschnigg responded to Hitler’s Reichstag speech in a statement to the Austrian Federal Assembly, in which he announced his commitment to Austrian sovereignty with the rallying cry ‘Red-Wh
ite-Red to the death’. He banned Nazi demonstrations and deployed the army to crush an attempted uprising in Graz.51 However, despite this challenge, on 26 February, Hitler told leaders of the Austrian NSDAP that he ‘wanted them to choose the evolutionary path, even if it was not yet possible to see whether or not it would work. The agreement signed by Schuschnigg was so far-reaching that if fully implemented the Austrian question would be automatically solved. At the moment, he did not want a solution through force if it could be somehow avoided . . .’ While Goebbels continued to restrain the German press from criticizing Schuschnigg,52 Hitler instructed Wilhelm Keppler, his agent for Austria, to visit Vienna regularly to ensure that the Berchtesgaden agreement was being fulfilled,53 without, however, infringing Austria’s formal sovereignty.54 In the meantime, Hitler had moved away from Göring’s plan for a currency union, now preferring a fixed rate of exchange between the Schilling and the Reich Mark.
A few days later, on 3 March, Hitler told the British ambassador that the Austrians must be asked their opinion about the political future of their country and the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia must be given autonomy. If these demands were not met, then ‘the moment would come when they would have to fight’. However, this threat of force was evidently not a matter of urgency as far as Hitler was concerned, for he responded to a query by the ambassador as to whether he wanted a plebiscite in Austria by saying that he wanted a process of peaceful ‘evolution’. Apart from that, Hitler made it clear that he was not in the least bit interested in pressing Germany’s demand for colonies, to deal with which Sir Nevile Henderson had brought a whole set of proposals.55
Hitler understood the ‘peaceful evolution’, to which he had referred in his meeting with Henderson, in terms of the process of coordination, which had now reached a decisive stage. On the same day, Keppler travelled to Vienna, in order to be on the spot to check ‘the complete implementation’ of the Berchtesgaden agreement and to coordinate the activities of the Austrian Nazis. He was to become the hub for further ‘coordination from within’.56 He now made more demands of Schuschnigg, such as the lifting of the ban on the Völkischer Beobachter and the legalization of the NSDAP, which, under the Berchtesgaden agreement, was permitted to operate only under the umbrella of the Fatherland Front.57 In view of these unreasonable demands, Schuschnigg decided to take the bull by the horns. During the night of 8/9 March, he secured a cabinet decision to ask the Austrians in a referendum to come out ‘in favour of a free and German, independent and social, Christian and united Austria’. The newly appointed Nazi Interior Minister, Seyss-Inquart, had not been present when this decision was made.58 It was only now that, during the course of a few days, Hitler reached the decision to seek a rapid and radical solution to the Austrian question going beyond the coordination policy that he had pursued hitherto.
Hitler Page 72
