The festivities began on the afternoon of 19 April with a series of receptions and tributes, after which Hitler inaugurated the East–West Axis in Berlin. Designed by Speer, it was the first prestige avenue in Hitler’s scheme to redevelop Berlin. Two million people lined the brightly lit, seven kilometre road, choreographed according to a plan that had been carefully refined over several years,15 and witnessed a Wehrmacht tattoo and a ‘torchlight procession of the [Party’s] old guard from all over the Reich’. Around midnight, Hitler’s closest colleagues offered him their congratulations in the Reich Chancellery.
The following day, which, at short notice, had been declared a public holiday,16 the main festivities began with a march past of the SS Leibstandarte in front of the Reich Chancellery, followed by more people offering their congratulations. At 11 a.m., a parade of the Wehrmacht, lasting almost five hours, began along the East–West Axis, the biggest demonstration of military power in the regime’s history. It was aimed at the European powers, but was also a signal to the German people, who were showing a lack of enthusiasm for war. After further congratulations, the festivities concluded with a ceremonial oath-taking by newly appointed political functionaries of the Party. The celebrations were given unprecedented media coverage.17 Hitler was glorified as an almost superhuman figure. Göring wrote in the Völkischer Beobachter that he was the ‘greatest German of all time’ and Rosenberg celebrated him in the same newspaper as the ‘founder of the greatest continental European empire’.18 The journalist Willy Beer wrote in the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung that ‘a mysterious aura emanates from the Führer and stirs something akin to it in our innermost being’.19
During all these celebrations, Hitler himself remained remarkably silent. Presumably he avoided making any statement on his birthday because he would then have been forced to comment on the critical international situation, and that would hardly have been compatible with the elevated atmosphere of the occasion. There is no record of his own feelings on this day on which he entered his sixth decade; it was not in his character to comment on such personal matters. One can assume, however, that on this day he was particularly conscious of his none too optimistic assessment of how long he had to live. Time was threatening to run out and this fear may well have reinforced his decision to attack Poland by the end of the year and his willingness to fight the western powers, at the latest in a few years’ time.
The celebration of Hitler’s birthday on 20 April was in marked contrast to the depressed mood of the population in spring 1939. SD reports blamed a general ‘overstraining of the available . . . supply of labour, means of production, and raw materials’. In particular, there were complaints from the artisanal sector about discrimination in the awarding of public contracts, a growing flight from the land, causing a further reduction in agricultural production, as well as in the profitability of farms; this was leading to ‘a degree of indifference and sullenness’ on the part of the rural population. Moreover, there was growing concern about new tax laws and about the difficult foreign exchange and foreign trade situation; there was discontent over rail transport problems and the serious housing shortage, which persisted, as popular criticism pointed out, while prestige Party and state buildings were constantly being constructed.20
The reports gathered by the SPD in exile fully confirmed this criticism. But they also made it clear that although this widespread discontent was caused above all by the accelerated rearmament programme, it was also accompanied by a real fear of war.21 This was an aspect of ‘popular opinion’ that was avoided in the official reports, as the previous November Hitler had, after all, made it clear that he wanted a propaganda campaign to strengthen the nation’s ‘willingness to fight’. In January the Social Democrats noted that, after a year of unexpected foreign policy successes, the population’s attitude to the dictatorship had become more critical . . . than the year before’. The decline in morale had also affected the middle classes, for whom the ‘nationalist’ successes had been overshadowed not only by dissatisfaction with their material situation, but also by their negative response to Jewish persecution.22 These reports on Hitler’s real personal popularity, compiled by the SPD in exile at the time of his birthday celebrations, present a mixed picture.23 Above all, however, they noted: ‘In spite of all the flags and festive noise, the fear of war weighed heavily’ on the population.24
On 15 April, the American President, Roosevelt, sent a message to Hitler asking him for reassurances that, during the following ten or twenty-five years, he did not intend to infringe the territorial integrity of thirty named states. This was in a response to Hitler’s Wilhelmshaven speech, in which he had justified the annexation of Bohemia and Moravia with arguments based on history and living space. In sending his list Roosevelt was pointing out that, by using such arguments, Hitler represented a threat to most European states. Hitler responded to this démarche in a speech to a special session of the Reichstag on 28 April.25
He used this speech, for which Goebbels prepared the way with vicious anti-British attacks in the Völkischer Beobachter,26 for a general reckoning with his foreign opponents. He expressed his disappointment at his failure to achieve an alliance with Britain and abrogated the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement, as British ‘encirclement policy’ had undermined its basis. Moreover, he tore up the non-aggression pact with Poland, spelling out in detail the offer he had made to Poland a few months before.27 Finally, he went on to deal with the American President and his message, laboriously and sarcastically rejecting this ‘peculiar document’ point by point.28
At the beginning of May, following the abrogation of the non-aggression pact, anti-Polish rhetoric in the German media was intensified. Among other things, the press was instructed continually to report border incidents caused by Poland.29 ‘Warsaw’, Hitler told Goebbels on 1 May, ‘will end up in the same place where Prague ended up’.30 However, journalists were informed that the ‘big Poland campaign’ had not yet started.31
At the same time, the rearmament propaganda within Germany was stepped up once again in order ‘to strengthen the self-confidence of the German people’ and confirm their ‘trust in our military power’.32 Against the background of a growing international crisis, this propaganda, which was more and more obviously geared to preparation for war, together with Hitler’s threatening speeches and gestures, meant that, during the final months before the outbreak of the Second World War, fear of war was no longer openly expressed in a public sphere controlled by Nazism. While the rejection of war in 1938 had been in tune with Hitler’s rhetoric of peace, now such anti-war statements were no longer tolerated. Although it proved impossible to generate enthusiasm for war, since spring 1939 the majority of the population appear to have accepted its coming as inevitable.
Between 14 and 19 May, Hitler undertook a tour of the West Wall, a clear demonstration against the western powers. The journey took him from Aachen through the Eifel to the Saar, and then into the Upper Rhine up to the Swiss border. In Saarbrücken he was joined by the Party’s Gauleiters and Reichsleiters. He concluded the six-day tour of inspection with an ‘Order of the Day’ addressed to the ‘soldiers and workers of the western front’.33
At the end of May, after the government had received indications that the British were going to stick by their commitments to Poland, the propaganda machine began to shift the main focus of attack from Poland to Britain.34
Alliances
Meanwhile, the international situation had become even more critical, as the western powers were not prepared to allow Germany and Italy to consolidate their position in the Balkans any further. On 23 March, an economic agreement was signed between Germany and Romania through which Germany secured control of Romanian oil supplies,35 and, on 7 April, Italy attacked Albania. This came as a complete surprise to Hitler, but he too had not hitherto considered it necessary to coordinate his attacks on foreign countries with his ally.
In response to these developments, on 13 April Chamberlai
n unilaterally guaranteed Greek and Romanian independence, offering the same protection to a number of other countries, including Turkey. France followed suit on the same day.36 A British–Turkish mutual assistance pact was signed on 12 May.37
The decision to attack Poland and Britain’s and France’s countermeasures prompted Hitler and Ribbentrop to secure Italy’s support. To do this they had first to overcome the annoyance felt in Rome about Germany’s attack on Prague. For the Munich Agreement, torn up by Hitler, had after all been largely Mussolini’s initiative.38 Thus, to conciliate Italy following the invasion of Prague, Hitler decided to make a gesture over South Tyrol. Since the beginning of the 1920s, he had opposed a revision of the Brenner frontier; however, now he went further, ordering SS chief Himmler and the governor of Tyrol, Franz Hofer, to prepare for the removal of 30,000 ethnic Germans from the South Tyrol. This represented the first step in a comprehensive solution to the South Tyrol problem, which was to be agreed with Italy in October 1939. The South Tyroleans would have to decide between Germany and Italy, in other words either to move to the Reich, or, if they wanted to remain in their homeland, to adopt the Italian language and culture without reservation.39
Hitler believed that this arrangement would contribute towards cementing the political alliance with Italy. However, in the spring of 1939, the project of a tripartite pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan, which had been pursued since the summer of 1938, was in crisis. In March, the Japanese were backpedalling, insisting that the alliance should be directed only against the Soviet Union.40 In April, they modified this proviso by accepting that a pledge of general mutual assistance could be defined in the form of a treaty, but, at the same time, they wanted to inform the governments of France, Britain, and the United States that the alliance was not directed against the western democracies.41
The German government responded by starting to explore the alternative of a dual pact,42 carefully concealing its war plans vis-à-vis Poland from the Italians. It hoped that an alliance with Italy would help to minimize the risk of a war with the western powers arising from the attack on Poland, as Britain and France would be compelled to divert forces in order to protect their positions in the Mediterranean. Right from the start, therefore, Hitler and Göring tried to reassure the Italians that there was no immediate threat of a war with the western powers.43
Meeting at the beginning of May in Milan, the two foreign ministers, Ciano and Ribbentrop, finally agreed an alliance between Germany and Italy. Ribbentrop had been forced to promise the Italians that there would be no war during the next three years.44 Ciano signed the so-called Pact of Steel in Berlin on 22 May.45 The pact involved the two parties promising to offer each other assistance in the event of their becoming involved in a war with another power. While the treaty offered the prospect of a future wartime coalition, it was initially intended by Germany as a clear warning to the western powers not to intervene in the event of a war with Poland. Ribbentrop reassured Ciano once more in Berlin that Germany wanted to have a period of at least three years of peace.46 A few days after the treaty had been signed, Mussolini sent Hitler a detailed statement, in which he repeated that Italy would not be ready for war before 1942. Thus Hitler could not assume that he would receive the active support of his Italian ally in his planned war against Poland.47
The joint meetings of the two general staffs, planned at the end of 1938, took place between April and June 1939, coinciding with the final stage of the negotiations over the Pact of Steel. Hitler set out the ground rules: the talks were to be general in nature, focused on tactical and technical questions. Political issues and the strategic and operational questions involved in joint military operations, which the previous November he had envisaged including in the talks, were not to be discussed. Thus, during the first round in Innsbruck at the beginning of April, Keitel advocated in general terms a joint ‘surprise assault’, but ‘following instructions’ he did not name a date for this action, indicating rather that the critical moment would not arrive for some years.
Also, after a lengthy visit by Brauchitsch to Italy and North Africa between 29 April and 10 May, it was agreed: ‘There will be no joint operations for the time being.’ Less than four months before the start of the Second World War, keeping Germany’s war plans a secret was more important to Hitler than close military coordination with his main ally. The way the two allies had treated each other during these past months had not exactly increased trust between them.48
Although Germany had done everything possible to keep its Italian ally in the dark about its plans to attack Poland in the autumn, it could not prevent the Italians from obtaining from various sources a fairly accurate picture of Germany’s preparations for war. What was particularly alarming from the Italian point of view was the, as far as they were concerned, completely unrealistic assumption of their German ally that the war could be localized and would not lead to intervention by the western powers and, as a result, to a bigger European war. Mussolini and Ciano decided on a counter strategy and, at the end of June, suggested to their German ally that a meeting between Mussolini and Hitler should be held at the Brenner on 4 August, at which they should propose a European peace conference. Hitler and Ribbentrop naturally rejected this idea of a second Munich, however, and so the Brenner meeting did not take place.49
During the summer of 1939, in addition to the German–Italian pact, Hitler endeavoured to persuade a number of medium-sized and smaller states to adopt a position of benevolent neutrality towards Germany, or at least tried to prevent them from drifting into the camp of the western powers. In order to demonstrate his desire for peace, Hitler to begin with took a number of steps to confirm his commitment to the territorial integrity of various countries, presumably in response to Roosevelt’s intervention of 15 April. After Germany had already confirmed Belgium’s neutrality in October 1937,50 at the end of May 1939 it made a non-aggression pact with Denmark,51 and on 7 June identical treaties with Estonia and Latvia. Similar offers were made to Norway, Finland, and Sweden,52 who, however, declared that they did not need a specific confirmation of their neutrality.53
In response to the British and French guarantees for Turkey, Greece, and Romania in April, Germany concentrated above all on trying to draw Yugoslavia and Hungary into its sphere. In summer 1939, it tried to persuade Yugoslavia to withdraw from the League of Nations and so draw it onto the side of the Axis. However, the new government under prime minister DragisČa Cvetkovic´, who had replaced the pro-Axis Stojadinovic´ in February, resisted these attempts and sympathized more with the western powers.54
At the end of June, Hungary made an official approach to the Axis powers, requesting trilateral talks concerning economic matters during wartime. Four weeks later, however, the Hungarian prime minister sent a letter to the Italian and German governments informing them that while, in the event of a general conflict, his country would align itself with the Axis powers, ‘on moral grounds it was not prepared . . . to engage in a military action against Poland’. This Hungarian position was of a piece with its hesitant behaviour during the previous year, when Germany had tried in vain to get it to adopt an aggressive policy towards Czechoslovakia.55 During a meeting in the Berghof at the beginning of August, Hitler bitterly reproached the Hungarian foreign minister, Csáki, for his letter, threatening: ‘If Germany were defeated in a war that would be the end of Hungary’s revisionist dreams’, whereupon the Hungarian government withdrew the statement it had made at the end of July.56
Hitler’s war scenarios
On 23 May, the day after the signing of the Pact of Steel, Hitler made a speech in the Reich Chancellery to his top military leaders, the content of which has been preserved because his Wehrmacht adjutant, Rudolf Schmundt, took notes.57 Hitler stressed once again that the main goal of German policy was the urgent issue of acquiring appropriate ‘living space’. ‘In 15 or 20 years the solution will be forced on us. No German statesman can avoid the issue for longer.’ The first six year
s of National Socialist rule had been ‘put to good use’; the ‘political unification of Germans in the nationalist cause’ had been, with minor exceptions, secured. Now, however, further successes ‘could not be achieved without spilling blood’. Compared with his key statements of November 1937, contained in the Hossbach memorandum, Hitler’s view of Germany’s future policy as a great power had undergone a remarkable change. Whereas eighteen months before, he had considered the final solution of Germany’s problem of living space as a task for future generations, now this period had been reduced to fifteen to twenty years; however, it still lay beyond Hitler’s expectation of how long he himself had to live or his period as an active dictator.
Later in his speech, Hitler turned to the question of Poland. The country was not ‘an additional enemy’, but would always ‘be on the side of our opponents’. ‘It’s not Danzig that’s at stake’; it was about ‘expanding our living space in the East and securing our food supplies as well as solving the problem of the Baltic states’. Colonies could not provide a solution to the problem of food supplies because they were always vulnerable to blockade by sea. In the event of a war with the western powers, it would be ‘a good thing to have a largish area in the East’. Although the population of territories annexed by Germany would not be available for military service, it would provide ‘labour’.
In the following passage Hitler developed the plan for a preventive war against Poland, making it clear that his main enemy was in the West. The problem of ‘Poland’ could not be separated from the conflict with the West. In the event of a war with the western powers there was the danger that Poland would stab Germany in the back. This meant that Poland could not be spared and so he had taken ‘the decision to attack Poland at the first available opportunity’. A two-front war must be prevented at all costs. Thus the following ‘principle’ must be followed: ‘A confrontation with Poland, beginning with an attack on Poland, can be successful only if the West stays out of it’. He had already pointed that out in his directive of 3 April.58 But now he went further. For, if that was not possible then it would be better ‘to attack the West and finish off Poland at the same time’. Thus he had developed a strategy to cope with a two-front war, which he basically wanted to avoid. He had increasingly come to see the war against Poland as essential, irrespective of how the West responded to it. The similarities with his treatment of the case of Czechoslovakia the previous year are only too obvious. Hitler now expanded the possible scenario of an impending war by bringing Japan into play: ‘If Russia goes on scheming against us, we can move closer to Japan. An alliance of France–England–Russia against Germany–Italy–Japan would prompt me to deal England and France some crushing blows.’
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