Hitler
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Hitler then received 400 representatives of the press in the Führer building on Königsplatz, in order to provide them with a certain amount of essential background information about his policies and to initiate a decisive change in the focus of propaganda.43 Hitler explained to the journalists that he had hitherto been forced ‘for years almost solely to speak of peace’. This had been the only way he had been able to achieve his foreign policy successes. This ‘peace propaganda that had been going on for decades’ had, however, given the people the false impression that he wanted ‘peace at all costs’. To remove this mistaken impression, months ago he had begun ‘gradually to make clear [to the people] that there are things . . . which have to be achieved by force’. The propaganda media would have to do more to reflect this point of view.44
Thus, while in this speech Hitler was making clear his discontent with the German population’s lack of readiness for war that had become apparent a few weeks earlier, he was using the unprecedented mobilization of force during the previous thirty-six hours as a platform for the transition to overt war propaganda. This change of course was not, however, intended to happen abruptly, but in stages. Hitler’s next big speeches, beginning with his Reichstag speech of 30 January 1939, were to set the new tone. To start with, anti-Semitism was to be a main propaganda theme; the subsequent justification of the pogrom was intended to mark the shift in the process of getting the population ready for war, a war that was to be directed not merely at the western powers but also against a ‘Jewish world conspiracy’. For, as with the hurried preparations for war at the end of September, in general the German population had not approved of the pogrom. In particular, the violence and destruction of 9 November had prompted widespread disgust and censure, although these sentiments were not as a rule openly expressed. Ultimately, the events had been accepted. However, it was precisely this passive attitude, often rooted in indifference, which was to be overcome by a more aggressive tone in propaganda, now concentrated on mobilization.45
During the following days, Hitler gave his express support to the Propaganda Ministry’s anti-Semitic press campaign,46 which focused above all on the middle class, whose response to the regime’s violent Jewish policy had been distinctly unenthusiastic.47 It continued into January 1939, although it began to face difficulties and lose momentum.48 A campaign of Party meetings to ‘enlighten the whole population about Jewry’ was even intended to go on until March, an indication that the alleged ‘popular anger’ against the Jews needed considerable propaganda to stoke it.49
On 12 November, while the propaganda campaign to justify the pogrom was getting under way, over 100 representatives of the Party, the state, and economic organizations gathered in the Reich Air Ministry to consider, under Göring’s chairmanship, how the further persecution of the Jews was to proceed. It was no accident that it was Göring who now took on the leading role in clearing up the mess left by the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ [Reichskristallnacht], and producing ‘orderly policies’. Right from the start, the expropriation of Jewish property had been one of the basic objectives of the Four-Year Plan, for which, in 1936, Hitler had made Göring responsible. The meeting agreed on a legal ‘solution’, which was precisely in line with Hitler’s requirements. As an ‘atonement fine’ for the death of vom Rath, Jews were to be forced to pay a billion RM (as Hitler had demanded in his Four-Year Plan memorandum of 1936). Also, as Hitler had told Goebbels in the Ostaria Bavaria on 10 November, they were to be excluded from German economic life, their insurance claims for the damage caused were to be confiscated by the state, and they were to be compelled to repair all damage immediately.50 During the coming weeks, a large number of other anti-Semitic regulations were issued.51 Moreover, Göring announced at the meeting that Hitler wanted ‘finally to take a diplomatic initiative, first of all vis-à-vis the powers who were raising the Jewish question’, in order then to move on towards a resolution of the ‘Madagascar question’. He had explained all that to him on 9 November. Hitler wanted to tell the other states: ‘Why are you always talking about the Jews? Take them!’52
Nearly, four weeks later, on 6 December, Göring had another substantial meeting with the Gauleiters, Reich Governors, and provincial presidents, in which he explained to them the most recent guidelines for Jewish policy, which the ‘Führer’ had given him a few days earlier, and whose implementation Hitler wished him to oversee, without his role becoming public. Göring’s reputation should not be compromised too much at home and abroad. Hitler’s concern about the former’s prestige indicates why he himself did not want to be associated with the implementation of the anti-Jewish measures that were to follow. However, it was in fact Hitler who determined the future development of Jewish policy right down to the details. The main emphasis, as Göring explained once again on 6 December, was above all on ‘vigorously pushing emigration’.53
As the regime had intended, the pogrom provoked a wave of Jewish emigration from Germany. Hitler was working on the assumption that this panic-stricken flight would put pressure on potential immigration countries that during the Evian conference were still refusing to admit more Jews. When, on 24 November, the South African defence and transport minister, Oswald Pirow, visited Hitler at the Berghof, in order, among other things, to offer his services as a mediator for an international solution to the German ‘Jewish question’, the ‘Führer’ told him that the ‘Jewish problem’ ‘would soon be solved’; this was his ‘unshakeable will’. It was not only a ‘German’, but also a ‘European problem’. Hitler went so far as to issue an open threat: ‘What do you think would happen in Germany, Herr Pirow, if I were to stop protecting the Jews? The world couldn’t imagine it.’54
At the beginning of December, concrete steps were taken to turn the wave of Jewish emigration into a systematic policy of expulsion. These measures derived from Hitler’s directives, as is clear from Göring’s statements of 12 November and 6 December. At the start of December, building on an idea of the Austrian Economics Minister, Hans Fischböck, Schacht put forward a plan to finance Jewish emigration through an international loan, which would be guaranteed by the property left behind in Germany by Jewish emigrants and paid off by granting relief for German exports.55 Hitler accepted this proposal,56 and, in January, Schacht began negotiations with the chairman of the Intergovernmental Committee for German Refugees, George Rublee.57 However, this truly fanciful plan was not put into effect, as negotiations were pursued only half-heartedly by all those involved.58 During 1939, however, a number of countries, including Britain and the United States, indicated that they would be willing to take larger contingents of Jewish refugees.59
At the end of 1938/39, in order to increase the pressure to emigrate, the regime concentrated on trying to restrict Jewish life as far as possible. At the meeting on 6 December, Göring had, among other things, announced a number of concrete decisions by Hitler relating to Jewish policy. According to Göring, Hitler had set priorities for ‘Aryanization’: Jews were to be expropriated, in particular where they represented an obstacle to the ‘country’s defence’. Hitler also decided that Jews should not be visibly labelled, an issue that had been discussed in the meeting of 12 November, because he feared anti-Jewish excesses.60 There should be no prohibitions on selling to Jews; however, Jews could be banned from entering certain localities. Göring then made clear his determination to continue to hold a certain percentage of Jews hostage: ‘I shall not permit certain Jews, whom I could easily allow to emigrate, to do so, because I need them as a guarantee that the other riff raff* abroad will also pay for the Jews without means.’61
On 28 December, after a meeting with Hitler, Göring announced to senior Party and state officials another binding Führer decision concerning further anti-Jewish measures.62 In accordance with this list, during the coming months a further wave of discriminatory provisions was issued. Thus, in response to Hitler’s wishes, Jews were forbidden to use sleeping and dining cars,63 rental protection for Jews was substantially s
uspended,64 and Jews were largely prohibited from staying in seaside resorts and spas.65 During the first months of 1939, there were a considerable number of additional measures.66 The main focus was on the complete ‘Aryanization’ and expropriation of Jewish property. When it became clear that they could not all be rapidly expelled, there was a move towards the imposition of forced labour and restrictions on their freedom of movement and housing, with a clear trend towards ghettoization. All in all, German Jews were being subjected to a coercive regime, while in the event of war their incarceration in camps was being considered the appropriate ‘intermediate solution’ to the ‘Jewish question’.67
Economic bottlenecks
In November 1938, Hitler and the regime’s leadership began to deal with the impact of the ‘Führer’s’ order, issued after the Munich conference, for an enormous expansion of the rearmament programme.68
At first, it appeared as if, for the first time, Hitler wanted to try to place his rearmament plans on a more realistic basis. On 11 November, at any rate, Keitel informed the Wehrmacht branches that, after hearing from their respective commanders-in-chief, Hitler intended ‘to organize rearmament organically in accordance with uniform principles and priorities, using a timespan of several years, and to bring it into line with the available resources in men, raw materials, and finance’.69 On 18 November, at the first meeting of the Reich Defence Council, created in September 1938 by statute, Göring as chairman gave a lengthy statement supposedly inaugurating this new course.70 This was a committee intended to coordinate the war plans of the various ministries. Göring, working on the basis of a tripling of the rearmament programme, put forward a maximum programme for the civilian sector covering a range of areas.: expansion of the transport system; an increase in agricultural production; more exports to improve the foreign exchange situation; an increase in industrial production, above all through rationalization; an austerity programme to sort out the financial situation, which looked ‘very critical’; cutbacks in the administration; a rigorous wage freeze; and the comprehensive control of all labour resources. This was designed to make such an enormous increase in armaments production feasible.
A few days and weeks after the meeting, the first measures were introduced:71 a revision of price controls, aiming to reduce excessive profits from armaments contracts;72 the appointment of Colonel Adolf von Schell as General Plenipotentiary for Motor Transport, whose task it was to introduce standardization throughout the motor industry;73 and, finally, the appointment of Fritz Todt as General Plenipotentiary for the whole of the construction industry.74
In the meantime, however, the armaments’ plans of the individual armed forces had long since begun to go their own way. Since October, the Luftwaffe had been planning a new construction programme that aimed to build over 30,000 aircraft by spring 1942, in order to achieve a total of 21,750 combat-ready aircraft (excluding reserve, training, and test aircraft).75 The deadline was then slightly extended, but the plan was retained: around 30,000 aircraft were to be built by 1 April 1942, which, given the industrial capacity and raw materials available, was completely unrealistic.76
The navy had similar gigantomaniacal plans. Responding to Hitler’s demand, already issued in May 1938, for increased armaments, a naval planning committee convened in August produced a plan at the end of October envisaging a fleet of 10 battleships, 15 pocket battleships, 5 heavy, 24 light and 35 small cruisers, 8 aircraft carriers, and 249 submarines. This represented a considerable increase compared with the old construction plan of December 1937, which, for example, had included only 6 battleships and 4 aircraft carriers.77 Hitler approved the plan on 1 November, but demanded that the construction of the battleships should be accelerated to be ready by 1943. The navy chief, Admiral Raeder, produced a new schedule on this basis, the so-called Z programme, and put it to Hitler at the end of January 1939. Hitler then ordered the construction of six battleships by 1944, giving the navy priority over the other armaments’ programmes as well as exports. Raeder, however, declared that he would not need this fleet before 1946.78 According to a calculation by the economics department of the Naval High Command (OKM), the fuel requirement for the Z fleet when completed would be larger than the total German annual consumption of oil products.79 These plans greatly exceeded the limits laid down in the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. Hitler’s abrogation of the agreement in April 1939, which we return to below, was in response to advice from the naval High Command.80 Raeder assumed that, with the completion of this plan, from 1942 onwards the navy would be in a position to fight a large-scale submarine war and, from the end of 1944, with its large ships would ‘even be a serious opponent for a major naval power such as Great Britain’.81
The new armaments’ programmes resulted in a massive expansion of the Wehrmacht’s budget. In November, a memorandum by the OKW’s liaison officer with the Economics Ministry and the Reich Bank estimated that, since 1934, 38.9 billion RM had been spent on rearmament, in other words already around 4 billion RM more than had been planned in 1934 for the next four years. The budget for 1939 had a deficit of over 8 billion RM.82 There was such an urgent demand for exports in order to acquire foreign exchange that, on 9 November, the Wehrmacht economics staff were compelled to inform the Wehrmacht branches that industry had been instructed to give priority to export contracts, including those for machine tools and armaments, over all domestic orders. This also applied to the Wehrmacht itself.83 During the final months of 1938, in view of a deficit amounting to billions, the Finance Minister found himself confronted with the alternative of either declaring bankruptcy or printing money.84
Thus, at the beginning of December, Hitler was obliged to inform the commanders-in-chief of the three Wehrmacht branches that ‘the Reich’s tense financial situation’ made it necessary to reduce the Wehrmacht’s expenditure until the end of the financial year (31 March 1939). All Wehrmacht branches should give priority to the acquisition of weapons systems over munitions.85 In February, Brauchitsch was forced to inform Hitler in two ‘reports’ that, as a result of the cuts and the ban on issuing new contracts in the steel sector, he would be unable to meet the army’s armaments’ targets.86 However, the naval Z Plan was to be exempted from these cuts in accordance with Hitler’s January order.
In January 1939, after Schacht had given various warnings of the danger of inflation during autumn 1938,87 the Reich Bank directorate sent a memorandum to Hitler. It stated that the ‘foreign exchange and financial situation’ had ‘reached a danger point, requiring urgent measures to avert the threat of inflation’. ‘The unlimited expansion of government expenditure is ruling out any attempt at achieving a balanced budget, and, despite a huge increase in taxes, is bringing the nation’s finances to the brink of collapse, thereby undermining both the Reich Bank and the currency.’ It was vital, in order to avert the threat of inflation, that new expenditure should be financed solely through taxes or loans (but then only if these did not disturb the long-term capital market). The whole of the financial sector must be put under the strict control of the Reich Finance Minister, the Reich Bank, and the Reich Prices Commissioner.88 Two weeks later, Hitler dismissed Schacht.89 With his departure all restrictions on the increase in the money supply disappeared.90
Visits from foreign statesmen
While the anti-Semitic propaganda campaign continued uninterrupted, in January Hitler received the foreign ministers of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia on the Obersalzberg, in order to prepare his further expansion plans. The uninhibited manner in which he discussed the ‘Jewish question’ during these meetings demonstrates the close connection that in Hitler’s view existed between expansion and the further radicalization of Jewish persecution.91 Before the meetings began, Hassell, the former German ambassador in Rome, had learnt from state secretary Weizsäcker during a visit to Berlin in the middle of December that German foreign policy was moving towards war; it was only a question of whether they should move straight away against Britain and secure Polish neut
rality, or whether they should ‘act first in the East to deal with the German–Polish and Ukrainian questions’. That was precisely the issue that Hitler wanted to clarify with the Poles in January.
During the meeting with the Polish foreign minister, Beck, on 5 January, the main focus was above all the future of Carpatho-Ukraine, where a government had established itself with German support and was pursuing a pronounced ‘greater Ukrainian’ policy, in other words the aim of creating the core of a future Ukrainian state to include the Ukrainians in the Soviet Union as well as those in Poland.92 This alarming prospect was sufficient reason for Beck to advocate the territory being joined to Hungary.
In his reply Hitler began by emphasizing that ‘nothing whatsoever had changed’ in Germany’s relations with Poland since the 1934 Non-Aggression Pact. As far as the Carpatho-Ukraine issue was concerned, he could assure him that, with reference to ‘the intentions ascribed to Germany in the world press’, Poland had nothing at all to fear. With his mention of ‘ascribed intentions’ Hitler was referring to speculations in the British and French press that Germany was planning to use Carpatho-Ukraine as a springboard for further conquests in the east.93 In fact, Hitler stated, the Reich had ‘no interests beyond the Carpathians’. He then raised the question of Danzig and the Corridor. He told his Polish guest that he was thinking in terms of a formula whereby ‘Danzig would belong politically to the German community, but would remain economically with Poland’. Danzig was after all ‘German, would always remain German, and would sooner or later join Germany’. If Poland agreed to Danzig returning to the Reich and if ‘entirely new solutions’ could be applied to settle the problem of the link with East Prussia – Hitler was referring to the project for extraterritorial transport links through the Corridor – then he was prepared to guarantee Poland’s borders through a treaty. Beck took note of Hitler’s wishes with regard to Danzig, but added that this question ‘seemed to him extremely difficult’.