The international response was swift and daunting. In April, French foreign minister Pierre Laval and British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald joined Mussolini in the Italian city of Stresa to discuss Germany’s threat to peace and stability in Europe. Their immediate aim was to reaffirm the independence of Austria, and the closing Stresa communiqué censured Germany and declared the signatories’ determination to forcefully oppose any unilateral alteration of the Versailles Treaty and the 1926 Locarno Pact according to which Germany recognized its postwar western borders.
The Stresa Front was a sobering reminder to Hitler of his virtually complete diplomatic isolation and prompted a new fusillade of reassuring rhetoric meant to defuse a potentially dangerous situation. “The government of today’s German Reich will continue to do what [is] in its power to promote the cause of peace,” he told an American journalist. Striking a note of great solemnity, he declared that the German government pledges “never to step beyond the bounds of preserving German honor and the freedom of the Reich and in particular shall never make of the German national arms an instrument of warlike aggression, but an instrument confined exclusively to defense and thereby to the preservation of peace.”
While Hitler’s dramatic announcement was unsettling to Germany’s neighbors, the reaction at home was enthusiastic. “All Munich was on its feet,” the Social Democratic underground reported, when Hitler arrived in the city on March 17. The jubilation that greeted Hitler’s appearance in Munich that day surpassed even the wild frenzy that accompanied the call for general mobilization in August 1914. “I experienced the days of 1914,” one agent reported, “and can only say that the declaration of war didn’t have the impact that Hitler’s reception [made] on March 17. . . . You can force a people to sing but you can’t force them to sing with such enthusiasm.”
That mood of patriotic exhilaration, however, soon gave way to a more sober assessment of the situation. Many, especially older Germans whose memories of the slaughter and privations of 1914–18 were still vivid, were convinced that the British and French would never permit such defiance and that war was now an inevitability. Fears were already widespread that Hitler’s determination to rearm would plunge Europe into an arms race that would create the same volatile situation as on the eve of the Great War. An arms buildup was already under way in England and France, and Russia had “strengthened its army by 30 percent.” In spite of such worries, the underground concluded that “the mass of the people doubtless views the reintroduction of universal military service as a desirable good, since the victors, aside from England, were determined to hold that right for themselves while denying it to Germany.” Younger Germans in particular remained convinced that despite the dangers, the Führer had restored Germany’s honor and had scored a great diplomatic victory. Hitler’s popularity soared. As the SPD underground organization Sopade glumly reported, “he is loved by many.”
Within six weeks, the Stresa Front, so imposing on paper, was already beginning to fray. The first sign of trouble came in May and from an unexpected source. Hitler had appointed Joachim von Ribbentrop as a special ambassador to London, bypassing Neurath’s Foreign Office, a move symptomatic of Hitler’s predilection for ad hoc or parallel appointments. Ribbentrop would report not to the Foreign Office but directly to Hitler. The ambitious Ribbentrop was convinced that some sort of arrangement with Britain could be reached on armaments questions—especially naval strength. The Foreign Office thought this highly unlikely, and was privately hoping that Ribbentrop would fall flat on his face. An international conference on naval matters was scheduled for London in June, but before it convened, Hitler made a proposal to Britain on naval armaments, and London responded immediately. Formal Anglo-German talks began in Berlin on June 4, with Ribbentrop presiding.
Hitler offered a bilateral pact under which Britain would agree to expanded German naval construction, and the Reich in turn would limit its tonnage to 35 percent of Britain’s. It also allowed for German submarine construction to amount to 45 percent of the navies of the British Commonwealth. The negotiations were left in Ribbentrop’s hands. The Foreign Office was not involved. Ribbentrop, whose arrogance was matched only by his blundering tactlessness, surprised the British by bluntly informing them that this was Germany’s final offer and was not open to negotiation. After hesitating for a day, the British agreed to sign. To London it was clear that Hitler was intent on building not only an air force and army but also a high-seas battle fleet. Determined to hold German rearmament within limits and to avoid a debilitating arms race, Britain shocked its French ally on June 18 by concluding a separate naval treaty with the Third Reich—and on Hitler’s terms.
The rationale guiding Britain’s policy was to meet what it considered legitimate German demands, demands that were consistent with international law and based on the Reich’s just desire for arms equality. Many in the British policy elite had come to the conclusion that the Versailles Treaty, especially the armaments clauses and certain territorial arrangements, were, indeed, unfair and had inflicted considerable damage on postwar efforts at international cooperation in Europe. Britain would, therefore, endeavor to meet Germany’s legitimate demands, hoping to entangle the Germans in a thicket of treaties and international commitments that would limit German rearmament and severely restrict Hitler’s freedom of action. London was convinced that military intervention to prevent German rearmament was out of the question, that it was best to agree to Germany’s reasonable terms. To the British, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935 was strategically sensible and politically pragmatic. To the French it was betrayal.
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement was a coup for Ribbentrop, whose influence with Hitler and in foreign affairs was on the rise. To Hitler, Ribbentrop’s aggressive approach to international relations more fully reflected National Socialism’s revolutionary dynamism than the overcautious orientation of the professionals. Since 1934 Ribbentrop had operated an independent organization whose activities paralleled those of the Foreign Office. The Büro Ribbentrop remained largely independent of the Foreign Office, competed with it, and exploited every opportunity to usurp its role in the formulation and execution of foreign policy. The result was that the foreign policy of Nazi Germany was increasingly characterized by a system of parallel competing institutions and individuals—an organizational modus operandi symptomatic of the Third Reich.
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement represented the high-water mark of Hitler’s efforts to woo the British into a closer relationship, perhaps even an alliance. He had long believed that Britain and Germany were natural allies. Their interests were compatible and, to Hitler, immanently compelling. Germany would support Britain’s imperial interests around the globe, while Britain would recognize Germany’s preeminence on the European continent. The Royal Navy would ensure that Germany was not vulnerable to blockade, and Britain would recognize the Third Reich as a force for stability on the continent and a bulwark against Bolshevism. It was obvious to Hitler and Ribbentrop that the interests of the two countries were also compatible for a more profound reason—they were “of common racial stock.”
Britain wasn’t the only weak link in the Stresa Front. In June 1935 Italy invaded Abyssinia, a first step in Mussolini’s grandiose ambition to reestablish the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean. Italian troops quickly crushed the outnumbered and poorly equipped forces of Haile Selassie and occupied the country, an act of naked aggression that brought swift censure and sanctions from the League of Nations. Britain and France were especially vocal in their condemnation of Mussolini’s action and voted for sanctions. Hitler, on the other hand, saw in the situation an opportunity to draw closer to the Duce, who remained suspicious of Nazi ambitions in southeastern Europe. While proclaiming a neutral stance, Hitler applauded Mussolini’s defiance of the League and the Western powers, and refused to join in the League’s measures. Instead, he offered Mussolini economic support in the face of sanctions. Most important, he saw in the Abyssinian War
an opportunity to exploit the widening rift between Mussolini and his Stresa partners and to demonstrate his support for Fascist Italy.
His courting of Mussolini bore fruit in the following year, when Germany intervened, along with Italy, to support Francisco Franco in his military rebellion against the Spanish Republic. Hitler dispatched some seven thousand military advisors to Spain and provided Franco’s forces with armaments and air support. The conflict in Spain also offered an opportunity to field-test new German aircraft and other heavy weapons. With two devastating attacks against the Spanish cities of Durango and Guernica, the latter inspiring Pablo Picasso’s savage painting of the same name, the German Luftwaffe tested the efficacy of aerial bombardment. While Britain and France stood by, unwilling to invest significant support in the Republican cause, the Soviets rose to the occasion, sending aid to the faltering Republican forces. But their intervention was too little to save the Republic. Meanwhile Mussolini, though still mistrustful of Hitler’s motives, was grateful for Germany’s display of solidarity. The Stresa Front was dead.
With the Stresa Front in shambles, France cast about for more reliable allies and began negotiations for a mutual aid pact with the Soviet Union. The deal was signed on February 27, 1936, and Hitler immediately denounced the treaty, declaring that France had now introduced the Bolshevik state into the heart of Europe, upsetting the established power arrangements in Western Europe. And besides, Soviet Russia wasn’t like other states; it was “the exponent of a revolutionary political and philosophical system” and “its creed” was “world revolution.” The Franco-Soviet Pact was directly aimed at Germany, he insisted, and by concluding a military alliance with the Soviet Union, France had fatally undermined the Locarno Treaty. Given its pact with Czechoslovakia and now the Soviet Union, France, Hitler contended, was tightening a noose around the neck of the defenseless Reich.
In the face of such “provocations,” Hitler decided to take bold action. He alerted General Werner von Fritsch, commander-in-chief of the army, that he intended to send German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Based on their feeble response to his announcement of rearmament in 1935, Hitler was convinced that neither Britain nor France would take military action to enforce the treaty. Fritsch did not share this sanguine view, and both he and Minister of War Werner von Blomberg strongly opposed such a risky undertaking. German rearmament, they reminded the Führer, was still in its early stages, and military commanders were acutely aware of France’s vast military superiority. If the French sent so much as a single division into the Rhineland, Blomberg believed, they would easily rout the German troops there and force the Wehrmacht into a humiliating retreat. If Hitler could not be convinced to scrap his reckless plan, then they suggested perhaps a largely symbolic action could be undertaken—an incursion into the Demilitarized Zone, a one-day occupation of certain key points on the west bank of the Rhine, and then a withdrawal.
Hitler was not to be moved. In a memorandum to his generals, he insisted that Germany had no choice but to assert “its fundamental right . . . to secure its frontiers and ensure its possibilities of defense.” Then, speaking before a hastily called Reichstag on March 7, 1936, he made a dramatic announcement: at that very moment, he informed the deputies, German troops were marching across the Rhine bridges, streaming into the Rhineland, occupying Cologne, Saarbrücken, Aachen, and other key points. “The German Government has today restored the full sovereignty of Germany in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland.” Wild cheering resounded through the crowded chamber.
Before the powers could respond, Hitler issued the by now predictable appeal to peaceable reason. He proposed the creation of a demilitarized zone on both sides of the Rhine; the conclusion of a twenty-five-year nonaggression pact between Germany, France, and Belgium, with Italy and Britain serving as guarantors of the agreement. He also floated a plan to minimize the danger of air attack, a nonaggression pact with Germany’s eastern neighbors; and, since the Reich’s equality of rights and full sovereignty over its territory had been restored, Germany was prepared to rejoin the League of Nations. Finally, he declared that henceforth Germany had “no territorial claims to put forward in Europe.”
The French lodged a stern protest, as did the League of Nations, but, significantly, Britain did not join them. It was, after all, German territory, and it broke no international law. France vastly overestimated the number of German forces in the operation, fooled by the numerous police units that marched along with the military. The response, in other words, was largely as Hitler anticipated. He had ignored his generals and gambled, and the gamble had paid off. He had correctly read the international situation, had predicted the British and French response, and taken bold action over the objections of the generals.
The remilitarization of the Rhineland had momentous consequences. It fatally weakened the credibility of France’s Eastern European alliance system. As long as the Rhineland was a demilitarized zone, French troops could march swiftly into Germany and occupy the Reich’s industrial heartland. That threat alone would serve to restrain German ambitions in the East. Now that deterrent was gone. The occupation of the Rhineland also dealt another body blow to the League of Nations, one of several it suffered between 1935 and 1939, and the most significant. League sanctions had failed to deter Mussolini in Abyssinia or Spain, and in 1937 Japan simply ignored the League’s censure when it invaded China and withdrew from the organization.
Perhaps as important, the seizure of the Rhineland also further eroded the confidence of Germany’s military commanders in their own professional judgment. It would not be the last time. Could it be that this crude, uneducated former corporal understood the international array of forces better than they? In prevailing over his generals, the remilitarization of the Rhineland boosted Hitler’s already colossal confidence in the superiority of his instinct-driven decisions. Intuition had prevailed over the caution of the professional diplomats and military men. Always aloof, in 1936 Hitler became more unapproachable, more convinced of the infallibility of his views. Brimming with self-confidence, he became virtually immune to differing opinions, whether from the party, the Wehrmacht, or the Foreign Office. From his boyhood days with his friend August Kubizek, Hitler could never abide objections to his ideas, never allowing reference to inconvenient realities to intrude into his hermetically sealed world of illusion. As he told a crowd in Munich, “I go the way that Providence dictates with the assurance of a sleepwalker.”
To these dramatic foreign policy victories came the spectacular success of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and Garmisch. Lavish preparations had been under way in the capital for over a year. Visitors found an enormous 100,000-seat stadium, the largest in the world, monumental statuary, flag-lined boulevards flanked by cheering crowds. Visitors were to have a good time. Bands played American music; dance halls overflowed; beer gardens flourished; and seven thousand prostitutes, who had only recently been swept off the streets, were allowed to return. The regime had ordered the removal of anti-Jewish signs from shop windows, and delivered strict orders to party officials to desist from harassing Jews in public. Many foreign visitors left impressed by the display of Nazi organization and the elaborate orchestration of the games. The Germans they saw seemed so happy, so prosperous, so proud. Where were signs of the brutal street violence, midnight arrests, anti-Semitism, and concentration camps? Many departed wondering if the horror stories they had read about Nazi oppression and brutality, especially directed at the Jews, could really be true.
Adding to the sense of German pride was the outcome of the games. Despite African American Jesse Owens’s awesome achievements in track and field—he took four gold medals—Germany won the Olympic medal count, accumulating more gold, silver, and bronze than the favored United States, an achievement the Nazi propaganda machine never tired of touting. Contrary to popular belief, which tends to focus on Hitler’s putative embarrassment by Jesse Owens’s spectacular victories, the games represented a tremendous public
relations triumph for the Third Reich. The world had come to Berlin, and Germany, under National Socialist leadership, had regained its rightful status as a great international power.
Following the Olympics, the “Jews Not Wanted” signs resurfaced, and the Nazis resumed their campaign against “the world Jewish conspiracy.” At the same time, the regime escalated its anti-Soviet agitation, and the two themes merged into one. At the Nuremberg party rally in September, Goebbels unleashed a fiery diatribe against Bolshevist terror in Spain and Russia. Who was responsible for this peril? It was the Jew, “the inspirer, the author, and the beneficiary of this terrible catastrophe: look, this is the enemy of the world, the destroyer of cultures, the parasite among the nations, the son of chaos, the incarnation of evil, the ferment of decomposition, the visible demon of the decay of humanity.” On the final day of the rally, Hitler underscored the pernicious link between this world Jewish conspiracy and ruinous Bolshevism. The National Socialist state was locked in battle with that dual threat; it was not an ordinary battle but “a struggle for the very essence of human culture and civilization. . . . What others profess not to see because they simply do not want to see it, is something we must unfortunately state as a bitter truth: the world is presently in the midst of an increasing upheaval, whose spiritual and factual preparation and whose leadership undoubtedly proceed from the rulers of Jewish Bolshevism.”
The Third Reich Page 48