Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

by Ian Kershaw

  Hitler returned to the theme of ‘living space’ in innumerable speeches in the later 1920s, and in an unpublished tract of 1928, where he expounded upon his ideas of foreign policy at greater length than in Mein Kampf. In this tract, he defined foreign policy as ‘the art of securing for a people the necessary quantity and quality of Lebensraum’.13 For Germany, this meant a single goal, and ‘in the one and only place possible: space in the East’.14 Such ideas were in 1928 still idiosyncratic. Few Germans entertained such notions, and even those who did must have thought them little more than pipe dreams. Hitler headed a fringe party in the political doldrums, with the backing of under 3 per cent of the population at the last Reichstag election, and with no obvious prospect of ever gaining political power. Mainstream politics looked very different from Hitler’s vision. The German Foreign Office under Gustav Stresemann was wedded to Locarno and the collective security of the League of Nations. And, despite antipathy towards Bolshevism, relations with the Soviet Union had been, in fact, good since 1922, when the Treaty of Rapallo established a basis of mutually beneficial economic cooperation which helped the Reichswehr bypass the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty and undertake some clandestine steps towards rearmament.15

  During the Nazi movement’s meteoric rise to power, as the Depression caught hold of Germany, Hitler had relatively little to say about ‘living space’. A struggle, sometime in the dim and distant future, to acquire land for settlement and entailing war against the Soviet Union, was scarcely a vote-catcher. Most people had the failures of their own government and the everyday worries of trying to cope with the economic misery on their minds. These, and the prospect of a new start under National Socialism, offering unity and strength, were the themes that Hitler hammered home ceaselessly. But although he played down the ‘living space’ theme, he did not discard it. Meanwhile, his relentless exploitation of the travails of Weimar democracy gained him the dramatic increase in popularity that culminated in Reich President Paul von Hindenburg appointing him to the Reich Chancellorship on 30 January 1933. From now on, his views on foreign policy were no longer those of a fringe-party hothead, but carried the weight of the most important figure in the government, backed by a huge mass movement.

  In the beginning, however, neither the attainment of ‘living space’ nor, indeed, any defined goal in foreign policy was laid down. What Hitler initially set out to do was to overcome Germany’s weakness in the international arena. Crucial to this was to restore Germany’s armed strength. He wasted no time in establishing the outright priority of rearmament. This was naturally music to the ears of his generals, whom he addressed only four days after taking office. Many of them had long been hoping, and secretly planning, for the day when the shackles would be removed from rearmament; and when, with democracy overthrown, Germany could once more regain strength and power to become, over time, the dominant force in central Europe, even on the European continent. So Hitler’s expressed determination on 3 February 1933 to build up the armed forces was sure of a favourable response. He went on to hint at the direction of future foreign policy. Perhaps more exports could be won, he suggested. But the suggestion was raised only to pour doubt on it. ‘Perhaps–and probably better–conquest of new living space in the east and its ruthless Germanization’ was posed as the alternative.16 It was a cautious reassertion of his dogma of the 1920s. Most who heard it probably took it to mean no more than a vague allusion to expansionism at some future point to win back territories lost at Versailles and establish German supremacy in central and eastern Europe–something that few disapproved of fundamentally–but scarcely saw it as a concrete foreign-policy aim. Nor was it, at this stage. But it implied, nevertheless, a direction to Hitler’s thinking on foreign policy, and one that was unchanged from the views he had developed a decade earlier. That is, Hitler’s actions over the following years, as Germany came increasingly to force the developments that culminated in war, should not simply be seen as opportunism, as he adapted to the vagaries of international politics. Certainly, he exploited the chances that arose. But the opportunism was ideologically driven.

  Hitler’s dominance over the German government was already complete by summer 1933. He now controlled not only a huge party, but had the advanced apparatus of bureaucratic state administration at his disposal as well as, not least, the modern machinery of coercion and repression. A year later he had established total supremacy in the state. The brutal massacre of the stormtroopers’ leaders in June 1934 removed the one remaining threat to his rule. And with the death of the aged Reich President Hindenburg shortly afterward, the only lingering source of potential alternative loyalty was gone. Hitler now became not just head of government, but head of state. The main beneficiary from the ruthless destruction of his own paramilitary organization had been the German army. This cemented its backing for Hitler, already grounded on his support for a massive rearmament programme. Meanwhile, business and industry, drawn by the scope they were given to maximize profit, had also largely fallen in behind the new regime.

  Decision-making in the Nazi regime, once the dust had settled on the upheavals of 1933–4, bore little resemblance to the way democratic states operated. Indeed, it was bizarre even in comparison with other forms of authoritarian rule. Hitler disliked the potential check to his authority posed by any collective body. Hence, the Cabinet, the highest organ of collective government, started to atrophy as soon as Hindenburg was dead. Its meetings became more infrequent as legislation was devised in the main through circulation of drafts among relevant government ministers. After February 1938 Cabinet meetings ceased altogether. Remarkably, therefore, there was now no collective body of government. Meanwhile, the dualism of party and state was left without clear demarcation lines, resulting in a good deal of governmental confusion. This was intensified by Hitler’s readiness to create plenipotentiary bodies, backed by his personal support and often party–state hybrids, to overcome blockages or obstacles in government, while at the same time leaving the original government ministry intact. The basic Nazi social Darwinist philosophy of support for the strong and powerful encouraged unbridled competition and use of ‘elbow power’. So positions on paper often meant little or nothing in reality as power resided with those individuals who could fight their way to the top and had immediate access to Hitler. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, in control from 1936 onwards of the huge police and security apparatus, though nominally subordinate to the weakly placed Reich Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, and Hermann Göring, head of the Four-Year Plan after 1936, which largely supplanted the still existing Reich Ministry of Economics, were among the most important examples.

  In these myriad competing agencies and this administrative anarchy, Hitler’s position was supreme. He remained largely aloof from internal policy. To speak of his decision-making would for the most part be inaccurate. ‘Decisions’ could be no more than an informal utterance picked up by a minister or party functionary at Hitler’s regular lunchtime gatherings and then going its way as an ‘order of the Führer’. As long as developments were taking shape along the lines he wanted, he seldom intervened in the prewar years (later it was different) unless he was called in to arbitrate, which he was in practice often reluctant to do. But at key junctures, where a crisis point or a fork in the road requiring a new direction was reached, his intervention was needed and was crucial. The crisis in provision of raw materials for rearmament in 1936, which prompted the introduction of the Four-Year Plan to intensify industrial production and make the German economy ready for war, led to perhaps the most crucial such intervention in the early period of the regime.

  If he did little more before the war than lay down ‘directions for action’17 in domestic affairs, there can be no doubt that the big decisions of foreign policy from 1933 onwards, down to and including the decision to risk European war by attacking Poland in 1939, were his.18 Here too, however, he shunned the collective decision-making of a Cabinet. As central government fragmented, he con
sulted, for the most part on an individual basis, those whose views he needed to sound out, before taking the decision himself. At a crucial meeting with his armed forces’ leaders and his Foreign Minister in November 1937, at which he expounded upon the need for expansion and war, he began by stating that the matter under discussion was far too important to be brought before the Reich Cabinet.19 In part this reflected a characteristic preoccupation with secrecy, not in itself unreasonable in restricting knowledge of risky steps in foreign policy (or, later, vital military operations). In January 1940 he would have hung in the room of every military office his ‘Basic Order’ stipulating that: ‘No one: no office, no officer may learn of something to be kept secret if they don’t absolutely have to have knowledge of it for official reasons.’ Even then, only limited necessary information, and no earlier than was needed, should be given.20 But it went beyond concern for secrecy. Hitler’s understanding of his position as Führer meant a sense of absolute power and responsibility that brooked no interference; he alone could take the crucial decisions; and, while he might choose to listen to the opinion of a military commander or relevant government minister, he had to be free and unconstrained by the views of others to decide as he chose. The decision was then simply announced to those who needed to know. Opposition was, accordingly, extremely difficult, if not impossible, to articulate publicly, while reservations privately expressed to Hitler had to contend with the possibility of a high-decibel tirade in response. Moreover, Hitler could always reckon on high levels of support within the ruling elites, most importantly in the leadership of the armed forces. When in the summer of 1938 General Ludwig Beck, the chief of the General Staff, fundamentally opposed Hitler’s decision to attack Czechoslovakia that autumn (later postponed because of the western powers’ intervention at the Munich Conference), he found himself completely isolated within the army leadership and his resignation from office in despair had no effect whatsoever on policy.

  As had been the case before 1933 in dealing with his political opponents, Hitler had highly developed antennae when it came to recognizing weakness in others. His successes in foreign policy down to 1938 derived in the main from this bully’s intuition, coupled with his instinctive gambler’s willingness to take risks for high stakes. Hitler’s first major step in determining Germany’s new, assertive course in foreign policy, the withdrawal from the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in October 1933, was fully in accordance with the wishes of the Foreign Ministry and army leadership. The timing was his, but the move was one which would probably have followed under any nationalist government at the time. Hitler took a more independent line in driving forward a deterioration in relations with the Soviet Union and pushing through a non-aggression treaty with Poland in January 1934, in both cases despite Foreign Ministry preferences. He gradually became more confident, and, with that, bolder. In March 1935 he correctly divined that the western democracies would do nothing if he faced them with a major breach of the Versailles Treaty and announced the existence of a German air force and the introduction of conscription to a mass army. He consulted neither military leaders nor ministers in arriving at his decision.21 In early 1936 he again correctly presumed that the weakness of the western democracies, laid bare by the Abyssinian crisis, offered an excellent opportunity to remilitarize the Rhineland–another step that would have been on the agenda of any nationalist government. A surprisingly wide circle in the Foreign Ministry and the military leadership were aware of what was pending, as Hitler hesitated over a period of about a month, deliberating the issue with a number of advisers, some of whom opposed action as too risky. Hitler listened. But he took the decision alone, ignoring advice to the contrary. His triumph prompted the statement, made for propaganda effect though reflecting his now boundless self-confidence: ‘I go with the certainty of a sleepwalker along the path laid out for me by Providence.’22

  The path was, however, not a straight one. Since the mid-1920s he had wanted Great Britain as a friend and ally, not an enemy, in the war he envisaged, and desired, against ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’. But hints of an alignment, such as the naval treaty between Britain and Germany concluded in 1935, offered only a false dawn. The alienation grew, and remained even when the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, bent over backwards to ‘appease’ Hitler in 1938. Long before then, Hitler had realized that he had to number Britain among Germany’s foes. He knew, too, that Britain, with a world Empire behind her, was starting, if belatedly, to rearm with urgency. Beyond this, across the Atlantic, lay the vast potential of America, still untapped, to be sure, as the country lay locked in isolationism, but a likely future enemy to be viewed with the utmost seriousness, one whose intervention had sealed Germany’s fate in the First World War. Time, in other words, was not on Germany’s side. She had built up an advantage with her early and speedy rearmament programme. But the advantage would not last. This fed into Hitler’s gambler temperament. The risk, he invariably argued, would be greater by waiting than by acting.

  The imperative for early action was driven by another factor: economics. The entire rearmament drive, once past the initial stages, could only be undertaken at reckless cost to state finances and an ordered running of the economy. Germany simply lacked the resources to produce or import all she needed, for arms manufacture and to sustain a modest standard of living for her growing population.23 Money for arms meant less for food. Guns and butter were possible only for a limited time. By the later 1930s that time was starting to run out. Alarm bells were starting to be heard across the economy. War, when it came, was not the result of economic crisis. Rather, the looming economic crisis was a result of ideological imperatives to restructure the economy for war.24 But it did mean that, by the later 1930s, Hitler was under pressure to act, both because he felt Germany would before many more years be in a far inferior international position, and because an overstretched and overheated economy could not be indefinitely sustained.

  Not that Hitler acted only under the constraints of external pressures. Rather, these pushed him in the direction which he wanted to go anyway. Although anti-Bolshevism had played little overt role in shaping Hitler’s foreign policy during the early years of the regime, this began to change from 1936 onwards. The beginning of the Spanish Civil War in the summer of that year put Bolshevism back in the spotlight from Hitler’s vantage point. Hitler decided alone, and for ideological reasons (to combat the threat of Bolshevism taking over in Spain, then France), to offer German military aid to General Francisco Franco, leader of the nationalist rebellion against the Spanish Republic.25 Later that summer, his memorandum for the Four-Year Plan rested on the premiss that ‘the showdown with Russia is inevitable’.26 By 1937, Hitler was expecting major war within Europe in the next five or six years, thought Stalin was ‘sick in the brain’, and spoke of Bolshevism as ‘the danger that we will have to knock down sometime’.27 Hitler, therefore, never lost sight of the ideological aim he had developed in the 1920s, even if adjustments to the changing constellation of practical foreign policy in the years preceding the war meant that it faded for the time being into the background. In August 1939 Hitler made the ultimate adjustment when he overturned, in a move of breathtaking cynicism (shared by Stalin), the antagonism towards the Soviet Union embedded in Nazi ideology to conclude a non-aggression pact with the arch-enemy.28 Even then, days before this dramatic pact, he allegedly remarked to the Swiss Commissioner to the League of Nations, Carl Burckhardt: ‘Everything that I undertake is directed against Russia. If those in the West are too stupid and too blind to understand this, then I shall be forced to come to an understanding with the Russians to beat the West, and then, after its defeat, turn with all my concerted force against the Soviet Union.’29

  By this time, war in Europe was a certainty. Hitler, more than any other individual, had seen to that. As a combination of determinants–ideological, military-strategic and economic–accelerated the tempo and greatly reduced the timescale for war that he had previously en
tertained, imagining that it would be around 1943, so his room for manoeuvre in avoiding more imminent conflict with the western powers diminished. In 1938 Britain and France had been so anxious to avoid war that they had given in to Hitler’s aggression at Munich, at the cost of Czechoslovakia. Hitler expected them to do the same in Poland, when the stakes, satisfying his claim on Danzig and the Corridor, seemed smaller. This was his miscalculation. His own action in occupying what remained of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, ignoring the deal with the west which he had concluded only six months earlier, had destroyed the backing for appeasement. He thought until the end of August that Britain and France would still, at the last moment, yield, and that he could destroy Poland without their intervention. But two days after his troops had invaded Poland, he finally–if not at the moment of his choosing–had his war with the west. For the time being the war he really wanted, against the Soviet Union, would have to wait.