Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  At a meeting of forty senior military commanders, which took place on 13 June in Barth near Stralsund, Brauchitsch outlined Hitler’s view that the Czech question could be resolved only by force. Unlike Beck, he did not comment on it but also indicated that this was not his war. During the afternoon, Hitler appeared at the meeting and in an emotional speech informed the generals of his motives in the Fritsch case, stressing his satisfaction that, in the meantime, the commander-in-chief had been found innocent. However, unfortunately, the basis of trust between them had been so damaged that he could not reappoint him to his old post and so, as a kind of symbolic rehabilitation, intended to assign him command of an artillery regiment. Hitler concluded his speech by asking them to continue to put their trust in him. The military commanders were content for the Fritsch case to be closed and to devote their energies to the tasks facing them as a result of the impending war that had just been announced by Brauchitsch.38 During the middle of June, a war game carried out by the General Staff came to the conclusion that Czechoslovakia would be crushed so quickly that substantial military units could be transferred in time to defend the western front.39

  Hitler appointed Fritz Todt to be in charge of the construction of extensive fortifications along Germany’s western frontier, intended to prevent any French intervention or to delay it sufficiently to enable him to carry out a lightning attack on Czechoslovakia. Since 1933, Todt had proved himself in the ‘Führer’s’ eyes as Inspector General of German Roads, in particular through his supervision of autobahn construction. The appointment of Todt, a non-military man and high-ranking Nazi, who was head of the Nazi Engineers Association, represented a complete change in the plans for fortifications on the western front, which had hitherto been in the hands of the army. Instead of the large bunkers envisaged by the army and already partially constructed, now a dense network of mainly small-scale standardized bunkers stretching across a distance of over 600 kilometres was to be built in the shortest possible time, with a deadline of 2 October. To achieve this, and using a special authorization from Hitler, Todt created a new organization, using private firms for which, on the basis of a decree of 22 June 1938, civilian workers could be conscripted. By September, nearly a quarter of a million workers were already engaged on this gigantic building project. Propaganda was constantly coming up with impressive figures and pictures conveying Germany’s military strength, in order to portray the scheme as a practical example of Nazi drive and initiative. In fact, the impact of this propaganda at home and abroad was probably the most important result of this West Wall project. For the fortifications were not nearly ready on 1 October, nor even by the outbreak of war in 1939, and in 1944 they did not provide a significant obstacle to the advancing Allied forces.40

  Hitler took a keen interest in the minutiae of the fortifications for the West Wall. During the night of 30 June/1 July he prepared a detailed memorandum on these questions for the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW) and the high commands of the three branches of the Wehrmacht. This was clearly intended to instruct the military, whom he considered simply incapable of implementing his ideas for the fortifications. The point of fortifications, Hitler pontificated, was ‘not to ensure that the lives of a certain number of troops were preserved at all costs, but to maintain their combat strength’. Firepower was more important than cover. The memorandum then communicated Hitler’s detailed guidelines for the construction of the bunkers. In his view (and this may have reflected his own experience of the trench warfare of 1914–1918) decentralized small scale fortifications were to be preferred to large bunkers.41 During the coming weeks and months, he was heavily involved with fortification issues, keeping himself regularly informed on the progress of the work on the West Wall.42

  At the same time, after the week-end crisis, Hitler initiated a further increase in rearmament. For the armaments boom unleashed by the Four-Year Plan had largely collapsed by 1937 as a result of a shortage of raw materials; the three branches of the Wehrmacht were a long way from completing their armaments plans.43 On 28 May, Hitler fixed even more far-reaching armaments goals. The precondition for these was the provision of larger amounts of steel for armaments. On 17 June, Hitler personally raised the monthly allocation of iron and steel for the Wehrmacht, which, as a result, increased its proportion of total German steel consumption from a sixth to a third. Also, during the same period, the Wehrmacht doubled its quota of non-ferrous metals.44 On 30 May, Göring informed the generals that they need have no worries concerning the financing of rearmament: ‘the completion of this project is the task of the political leadership’.45 Two weeks later, Göring went even further in a speech to Wehrmacht officers: ‘Finance does not play a decisive role in the present situation . . . the collapse of certain sectors of the economy will not make any difference’.46

  This enormous redirection of resources enabled the three branches of the Wehrmacht considerably to extend and accelerate their armaments programmes. During the second half of 1938, army, navy, and air force engaged in massive armaments programmes that were directly focused on an imminent war. Already in late May Hitler was sending a clear message to the army by setting it targets for the production of particular weapons.47 The army leadership obeyed this instruction and, at the end of May, set itself the goal of increasing armaments production for the land forces so that the wartime army of 102 divisions would be fully equipped by 1 April 1939, in other words a year earlier than envisaged in the 1936 plans. In fact, before May 1938, the army leadership had reckoned that, because of delivery bottlenecks, rearmament would not actually be completed until 1943. The construction of the Ju[nkers] 88 as the new standard bomber was at the heart of the Luftwaffe programme. It was intended to be built through division of labour, following the example of American mass production methods, which required a reorganization of the aircraft industry.48 In fact, during 1938, aircraft production fell compared with the previous year as a result of shortages of raw materials and the difficulties involved in the reorganization of production to cope with the technically advanced Ju 88.49 In this situation Göring made a direct appeal to the leading representatives of the aircraft industry, who had been unsettled by the Air Ministry’s continually changing demands. On 8 July, he made a speech painting a gloomy picture of the international situation and, in view of the threat of a world war, demanding that the industry improve its performance, using among other things wild threats of expropriation.50 The navy chiefs were prompted by Hitler’s 28 May speech to focus on Britain as the main opponent and to press on with the programme of ship construction, which had stalled, a subject to which we shall return.51

  Economic consequences and a crisis of morale

  In the light of the hugely increased armaments production, during the summer of 1938 Göring was obliged fundamentally to reorganize the Four-Year Plan, which had now been operating for two years. During the first year of its existence alone, between autumn 1936 and autumn 1937, around 1.3 billion RM had been invested under the plan in the ‘expansion of industry’. This applied above all to the production of petroleum in the hydrogenation plants, and the production of basic chemicals, as well as, amongst other things, synthetic rubber (Buna) and synthetic textiles. However, despite this massive investment, which continued during the following months, by 1938, given the increase in consumption, Germany’s dependence on imports of raw materials from abroad had not been significantly reduced. The attempt to secure economic ‘autarky’ had proved an illusion.52 Now it was above all a question of producing the goods the Wehrmacht needed immediately in order to wage war.53

  The production goals were contained in the ‘Defence Economy’s New Production Plan’ of July 1938. The plan, which was revised a number of times, concentrated on munitions and light metals, oil, and rubber, with a deadline of 1942/43. The implementation of the Four-Year Plan was to be guaranteed by the appointment of general plenipotentiaries and special commissioners with the authority to issue directives to Reich government agencies. This system alrea
dy contained typical elements of a command economy.54 State intervention was also occurring in other spheres to a massive extent. The state-controlled steel firm, Reichswerke Hermann Göring, which Göring had established in the summer 1937, was hugely expanded during 1938.55 The Reichswerke incorporated numerous firms involved in heavy industry, particularly in Austria and the Sudetenland, moved into weapons and machine production, and took over large sections of the German inland shipping industry.56

  The armaments boom led to full employment. A growing shortage of labour required decisive measures to control the allocation of labour – ‘labour deployment’ [Arbeitseinsatz] in Nazi terminology.57 The administrative preconditions had already been created with the introduction in 1935 of the so-called ‘work book’, which ensured a thorough monitoring of individual employees. At the beginning of February 1937, the employment of metal workers was made dependent on the approval of the Labour Office.58 During the early summer of 1938, the regime went a decisive step further. On 22 June 1938 Göring issued the ‘Decree for Securing the Provision of Labour for Tasks of Special Political Importance’, enabling the regime to conscript civilian workers for particular projects. This form of conscription was initially applied to the West Wall project; however, from September 1938 onwards it was increasingly extended to other areas (initially, above all, agriculture, the food industry, and shipping). By the outbreak of war, around 800,000 workers had been conscripted, around half of them for the West Wall.59

  Despite conscription, the supply of labour, particularly in agriculture, remained precarious. In particular, the boom in the armaments industry and the continuing backwardness of living conditions in rural areas had caused around 400,000 agricultural workers to leave for the cities between 1933 and 1938.60 Thus the people remaining on the land had to work harder, while the wages gap between industry and agriculture became ever wider. Together with other factors, the labour shortage led to a reduction in agricultural production and a decline in the profitability of farms. The attempts by the Reich Food Estate to cope with the crisis in agriculture by increasing regulation reduced the freedom of action of the peasantry and led to numerous disputes. Peasants, according to the SD’s annual report for 1938, ‘feel oppressed’; there was a ‘mood partly of resignation, but partly of a real revolt against the agricultural authorities’.61 The labour shortage in agriculture also resulted in a decline in the birth rate in peasant families, a development that was particularly disturbing from the point of view of Nazi ideology.62

  The shortage of labour was also responsible for the ‘Reich Workshy Action’ of June 1938. The criminal police arrested over 100,000 ‘asocials’, placing them in ‘preventive custody’ in concentration camps, a measure that was justified above all by the ‘rigorous implementation of the Four-Year Plan’. At the same time, the SS began to establish production sites in the concentration camps such as brick factories and granite quarries. Although this form of ‘labour deployment’ was inefficient, the main aim was to make it clear to the population that nobody could escape the transformation of the labour market into a compulsory system directed by the state. The system’s terror had reached the world of work.63

  The decree for the control of wages, which was issued on 25 June, in other words three days after the introduction of labour conscription, gave the Trustees of Labour the possibility of setting binding upper wage limits in the individual sectors of the economy. Hitherto, the Trustees’ role had been largely limited to maintaining wage tariffs at the existing level, while businesses were not prevented from paying more than was laid down in the tariff. However, businesses in the economic sectors that were particularly affected by the labour shortages managed partially to evade this new wage freeze through promotions, special payments, and other additional benefits.64 The possibility of finding another job or threatening to resign provided workers with further opportunities for increasing their individual incomes. From their point of view this was highly desirable, for between 1933 and 1937, according to the Reich Bank’s calculations, the cost of living had increased by around 20 per cent, whereas during the same period, the hourly wages of industrial workers had gone up by only 8 per cent. Workers had been able to keep up with the increase in prices only by extending their hours of work. Average net weekly wages had gone up 18 per cent in the same period, although there were big differences between the individual branches.65 On the outbreak of war, purchasing power had at best reached the level of 1929.66

  The strengthened position of workers as a result of the labour shortages and their attempts to evade the wage freeze by one means or another and to bargain with employers for extra benefits, when combined with the introduction of an increased work rate and tougher measures to discipline workers, produced an extremely tense atmosphere in many plants.67 The widespread assumption that full employment automatically led to an improvement in workers’ living standards and increased their loyalty to the regime completely ignores the social reality of the armaments boom economy of 1937–39.68

  The armaments boom also had a negative impact to some extent on the urban middle class. Commerce suffered significantly from delivery problems, while in small artisan workshops raw materials shortages and the loss of workers to industry could quickly become existential issues.69 The fact that the economy was being overstretched impacted in many different ways on people’s lives. For example, the commitment of much of the construction industry to armaments production and the West Wall prompted Göring to decree, in 1938, that all public building projects that were not for the defence of the Reich or the ‘redevelopment of the cities’ required express approval; private house-building, apart from exceptional projects, was, in principle, to be halted.70 As a result of the inadequate allocation of raw materials, the Reich railways were not in a position to maintain the track and rolling stock in a state to meet increased transport requirements. Freight transport was suffering from a shortage of goods wagons and the inadequate performance of the railways even manifested itself in the timetables, with increased journey times for passenger trains.71

  The permanent overstraining of the economy through the rearmament drive also made itself felt in a decline in the health of the population. In July 1938, the Reich Bank’s economic and statistical department produced a memorandum showing that cases of scarlet fever, diphtheria, polio, dysentery, puerperal fever, and infant mortality had risen continuously since 1933. Although no conclusions were drawn in this report, it is obvious that this deterioration in the health of the population was caused by poor nourishment and declining standards in the health system. Its authors pointed out that the number of doctors and midwives had declined slightly (in proportion to the size of the population) since the crisis year of 1931.72

  According to the annual report of the Security Service, the general economic situation was marked ‘by a growing tension between the German economy’s potential and the demands being placed on it’. Any increase in those demands posed the ‘danger of a reduction in performance’. The exorbitant public investment, namely through rearmament, together with the transfer of workers into heavy industry, had a negative impact on the production of consumer goods, leading to a ‘reduction in living standards’, in particular of the working class.73 Complaints about food shortages were a constant refrain in the Sopade reports, particularly for the years 1937–39.74

  The tense labour situation and the measures taken by the state to relieve it, outlined above, as well as the continuing inadequacies in the provisioning of the population, occurred at a time of growing concern about the international situation, with little enthusiasm for, indeed growing anxiety about war.75 In its annual report for 1938, the SD, looking back, even referred to a ‘war psychosis’, which had lasted from May till the end of September, and in this context castigated ‘defeatism’, ‘deep pessimism’, as well as ‘general depression’.76

  This mood was not alleviated by a propaganda campaign that Hitler planned to launch in May, in order to prepare the population psychologically for
the impending conflict with Czechoslovakia. Goebbels gave a speech along these lines in Dessau on 29 May (the text of which Hitler personally scrutinized)77 and, with Hitler’s agreement, intended to get the press once more ‘agitating and putsching’.78 However, during the following weeks it became clear that the campaign could by no means be continued with the same intensity.79 When Goebbels learnt from Hitler in mid-June that the latter was ‘determined . . . to get to grips with Czechoslovakia at the next good opportunity’,80 he immediately took it on board and, the following day, gave a speech in Königsberg attacking ‘certain foreign circles’ who were trying to ‘spur Prague on, instead of calling it to order’.81 Even so, during the following weeks the Sudeten crisis no longer played a dominant role in the German press.82 On 31 July, Hitler dealt with the topic indirectly when he temporarily broke off his annual stay in Bayreuth for a day, in order to attend the ‘Gymnasts’ Festival’ in Breslau. With 40,000 ethnic Germans taking part, including, at Hitler’s express request, many from the Sudetenland, the event, like the Singers’ festival the year before, was intended to be a ‘great German popular festival’, a demonstration of Greater German unity.83 This time, however, Hitler did not make a speech.

  This relative reserve about the Sudetenland was not simply the result of consideration for the SdP, which at the time was engaged in difficult negotiations with the Czech Interior Minister. In terms of domestic politics, it was not easy to maintain a mood of crisis over a lengthy period, without providing the population with the prospect of a solution to the problem.84 This showed how far the preparations for war, particularly as regards the West Wall and rearmament, had made the population sensitive to and afraid of the risk of war. The Propaganda Minister believed that stoking this atmosphere of crisis in this situation would be counter-productive.