by Ian Kershaw
9. Höhne, 345.
10. Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin, 1969, 94, where the architect’s name is mistakenly given as Otto March (the father of Werner).
11. Arnd Krüger, Die Olympischen Spiele 1936 und die Weltmeinung, Berlin, 1972, 63; Mandell, 39, 125 (where it is pointed out that the stadium was only a twentieth of the enormous sporting complex, of a size equivalent to that of the city of Berlin itself in the late seventeenth century), 292.
12. Mandell, 141–50.
13. See Leni Riefenstahl, A Memoir, New York, 1993, 190–206. For a description of the film, Olympiade, see David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945, Oxford, 1983, 112–21.
14. Mandell, 227–9; Riefenstahl, 193.
15. Baldur von Schirach, Ich glaubte an Hitler, Hamburg, 1967, 217–18.
16. Chips. The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon, ed. Robert Rhodes James, London, 1967, 110–11. See also Joachim von Ribbentrop, The Ribbentrop Memoirs, London, 1954, 63–4; William E. Dodd and Martha Dodd (eds.), Ambassador Dodd’s Diary, 1933–1938, London, 1941, 346; Schmidt, 337–8; Mandell, 156–8.
17. Mandell, 206–7; Höhne, 352.
18. Höhne, 352. The racial, as well as nationalist, overtones had been obvious in German reactions to the unexpected victory of the heavyweight boxing hero Max Schmeling over the presumed invincible ‘Black Bomber’, Joe Louis, in New York on 18 June 1936. Goebbels, listening to the fight at 3.00a.m., noted in his diary: in the 12th round, Schmeling knocks out the negro. Wonderful. A dramatic, exciting fight. Schmeling has fought and won for Germany. The white man over the black man, and the white man was a German.’ (Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels. Sämtliche Fragmente, Teil I, Aufzeichnungen 1924–1941, 4 Bde., ed. Elke Fröhlich, Munich etc., 1987 (TBJG), vol.2, 630 (20 June 1936); and see Mandell, 117–21.
19. Krüger, 200.
20. Krüger, 201; Mandell, 138–9.
21. Krüger, 196.
22. Höhne, 351–2. The US Ambassador Dodd was not among them. He thought the propaganda had pleased the Germans, but had ‘had a bad influence on foreigners’. (Dodd, 349. Most eyewitnesses appear to have had a far more favourable impression.)
23. William Shirer, Berlin Diary, 1934–1941, Sphere Books edn, London, 1970, 58 (16 August 1936).
24. Viktor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten. Tagebücher 1933–1941, 2 vols., ed. Walter Nowojski and Hadwig Klemperer, Darmstadt, 1998, i.293 (13 August 1936).
25. Melita Maschmann, Fazit. Mein Weg in die Hitler-Jugend, 5th paperback edn, Munich, 1983, 30–31.
26. Dieter Petzina, Autarkiepolitik im Dritten Reich. Der nationalsozialistische Vierjahresplan, Stuttgart, 1968, 35.
27. Petzina, 37.
28. Hjalmar Schacht, Abrechung mit Hitler, Berlin/Frankfurt am Main, 1949, 61–2; and see Höhne, 375.
29. Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, 6 vols, so far published, ed. Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, Stuttgart, 1979 (=DRZW), i.431–3.
30. Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv, Oldenburg, Best.131 Nr.303, Fol.131V.
31. See Höhne, 373.
32. Petzina, 46.
33. Stefan Martens, Herman Goring. ‘Erster Paladin des Führers’ und ‘Zweiter Mann im Reich’, Paderborn, 1985, 68–9; Petzina, 35–40; Höhne, 377–8.
34. Petzina, 39.
35. Der Prozeß gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof. Nürn-berg, 14. November 1945–1 Oktober 1946, 42 vols. (=1MG) ix.319; Arthur Schweitzer, Big Business in the Third Reich, Bloomington, 1964, 544; Petzina, 40; Martens, 69.
36. IMG, ix.319; Petzina, 35–40; Martens, 69; Alfred Kube, Pour le mérite und Hakenkreuz. Hermann Goring im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1986, 140–41.
37. Carl Vincent Krogmann, Es ging um Deutschlands Zukunft 1932–1939, Leoni am Starnberger See, 1976, 272.
38. TBJG, I/2, 607 (3 May 1936).
39. See TBJG, I/2, 701 (20 October 1936): ‘Die Energie bringt er mit, ob auch die wirtschaftl. Kenntnis und Erfahrung? Wer weiß! Immerhin wind er viel Wind machen.’ After the war, Goring himself acknowledged that it had been his task, in confronting the raw-materials difficulties, to deploy his energy ‘not as an expert, but as a driving-force {Treiber)’ (IMG, ix.319).
40. Höhne, 379; Petzina, 44–5; Peter Hayes, Industry and Ideology. IG Farben in the Nazi Era, Cambridge, 1987, 150ff.; DRZW, i.278ff.
41. Höhne, 380; Berenice Carroll, Design for Total War. Arms and Economics in the Third Reich, The Hague/Paris, 1968, ch.7.
42. Cit. Kube, 152.
43. Kube, 152–3; Höhne, 380.
44. See Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Ökonomie und Klassenstruktur des deutschen Faschismus, Frankfurt am Main, 1973, 139–41, for Göring’s reminders to Hitler in autumn 1935 about his coming war against the Soviet Union.
45. Marquess of Londonderry (Charles S. H. Vane-Tempest-Stewart), Ourselves and Germany, London, 1938, 94–103. Lord Londonderry’s personal papers in the Public Record Office, Belfast, contain a description of his visit to Germany (D3099/2/19/8, 9A-9B), but deal only in the briefest terms with his interview with Hitler. The account which formed the basis for his printed comments appears to be missing from the file. In the audience he granted Londonderry, Hitler was, of course, trying to impress upon his guest the need for Britain to develop close links with Germany. (As the Londonderry papers show, the German leadership greatly overestimated his influence at the time within Britain.) But this does not meant that Hitler’s feelings about Bolshevism were not genuine. In fact, Londonderry was little moved by them, pointing out that the Bolshevik danger was seen as far less important in Britain. He was more interested in the colonial question. On the Londonderry visit, see also Schmidt, 338–42.
46. TBJG, I/2.622 (9 June 1936).
47. TBJG, I/2.644 (17 July 1936).
48. Nicholas Mosley, Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley, 19 33–1980, London, 1983, 72. On the Mitford sisters, see Robert Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley, London, 1981, 340–41; and Richard Griffiths, Fellow Travellers of the Right. British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933–9, London, 1980, 171ff.
49. TBJG, I/2, 646 (22 July 1936). Goebbels found the Mitfords ‘boring as ever’ (I/2, 646 (21 July 1936)).
50. See Paul Preston, Franco. A Biography, London, 1993, 159; Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, National-sozialistische Außenpolitik 1933–1938, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin, 1968, 422–4.
51. Höhne, 356–7.
52. Preston, I28ff.
53. Preston, 140–58.
54. Kube, 163–6. And see Weinberg I, 289–90.
55. Kube, 164.
56. Hans-Henning Abendroth, ‘Deutschlands Rolle im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg’, in Manfred Funke (ed.), Hitler, Deutschland und die Mächte. Materialien zur Außenpolitik des Dritten Reiches, Dusseldorf, 1978, 471–88, here 472–3; Preston, 158–9.
57. Abendroth, 474.
58. DGFP, D, III, 10–11, No.10, Memorandum of the Director of the Political Department of the Foreign Office, Dr Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff, 25 July 1936. According to Kube, 164, Bohle and Heß tried to take up the matter with the Foreign Office, and almost certainly, too, with Göring.
59. Abendroth, 474.
60. DGFP, D, III, 6–7, N0.4; Abendroth, 474–5.
61. Implied in the account of Kube, 164–5.
62. Abendroth, 475.
63. Kube, 165, n.11.
64. See Abendroth, 476–9.
65. Suggested by Martens, 66.
66. Preston, 159.
67. Abendroth, 475, citing a communication to him from Bernhardt. Kube, 165 claims that Hitler’s decision was in support of Göring’s ‘economic concept’. Wolfgang Schieder, ‘Spanischer Bürgerkrieg und Vierjahresplan’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Nationalsozialistische Außenpolitik, Darmstadt, 1978, 325–59, also emphasizes Göring’s role and the centrality of economic motives. Martens, 66, on the other hand, argues convincingly – along Abendroth’s lines – that Hitler took the decision alone, and that Göring was at first hesitant, indeed
shocked at hearing of the decision. Serious economic involvement in Spain only dated from October 1936, when the first substantial military supplies also began. Göring claimed at Nuremberg that he had pressed Hitler, who was still thinking it over, to provide the support, both to combat the spread of Communism and to give him the opportunity to try out the Luftwaffe (IMG, ix.317; and see Kube, 165 n.12). But by the time Göring pressed for action, Hitler was no longer thinking it over; his mind was already made up. Göring’s intentional or unintentional misrepresentation at Nuremberg was presumably aimed, as elswhere in his testimony, at bolstering his self-importance. Alternatively, as Preston suggests (814 n.64), Göring may have conflated two separate meetings with Hitler. Even so, Göring’s claim that he was influential in shaping Hitler’s original decision to intervene stands in contradiction to other evidence on the taking of the decision.
68. Abendroth, 475.
69. Ribbentrop, 59–60.
70. Ribbentrop, 60.
71. Abendroth, 476; Preston, 159–61; see also Schieder, ‘Spanischer Biirgerkrieg’, 342.ÍÍ.; and the careful analysis (concluding that economic considerations were secondary to ideological in the initial decision by Hitler to involve Germany in support for Franco) by Christian Leitz, ‘Nazi Germany’s Intervention in the Spanish Civil War and the Foundation of HISMA/ROWAK’, in Paul Preston and Ann L. Mackenzie (eds.), The Republic Besieged: Civil War in Spain, 1936–1939, Edinburgh, 1996, 53–85.
72. TBJG, I/2, 648 (27 July 1936), dealing as always with the events of the previous day.
73. Martens, 66.
74. TBJG, I/2, 671 (23 September 1936); Höhne, 363. The Republican side in the Civil War also attracted external support, particularly from the Soviet Union and from the International Brigades volunteer forces organized by the Comintern and individual Communist parties, in which some 60,000 men fought the nationalist insurgents. British and French statesmen were concerned at Soviet involvement in Spain, fearing, as Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary put it in September 1937, that as a consequence ‘Communism would get its clutches into Western Europe’. Cit. Denis Smyth, ‘“We Are With You”: Solidarity and Self-interest in Soviet Policy towards Republican Spain, 1936–1939’, in Preston and Mackenzie, 87–105, here 105.
75. This is implied by Kube, 164–5, though the argument, so far as Hitler’s motivation is concerned, seems overstretched.
76. Domarus, 638; TBJG, I/2, 675 (9 September 1936).
77. TBJG, I/2, 743 (2 December 1936).
78. TBJG, I/2, 726 (15 November 1936).
79. Kube, 153–4. Goring informed Hitler verbally of the finalized raw-material plans on 15 August (Petzina, 49).
80. Petzina, 47–8; Richard J. Overy, Goering: the Iron Man, London, 1984, 45–6; Gerhard Ritter, Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung, Stuttgart, 1956, 80–82. For a sketch of Goerdeler, see Hermann Weiß (ed.), Biographisches Lexikon zum Dritten Reich, Frankfurt am Main, 1998, 153–5.
81. In his official biography of Göring, Erich Gritzbach, Hermann Göring. Werk und Mensch, Munich, 1938, 160, remarked that ‘after days of quiet work at the Berghof, on 2 September the Führer gives the Minister President [Göring] detailed directives about the reconstruction of the National Socialist economy which will determine the life of Germany for the present and the future’. Hitler’s memorandum was read out to government ministers at a meeting on 4 September (IMG, xxxvi-489ff., Doc.EC-416).
82. Wilhelm Treue, ‘Hitlers Denkschrift zum Vierjahresplan 1936’, VfZ, 3 (1955), 184–210, here 184; DGFP, C, V, 853 n.1, N0.490.
83. Petzina, 48, 52. According to Hans Kehrl, Krisenmanager im Dritten Reich, Düsseldorf, 1973, 86, Göring was forbidden to pass on the document or even to read it out to his closest staff. Overy, Goering, 46, has a third copy given to Fritz Todt, engaged in building the Autobahnen. The evidence for this is unclear. Speer’s note attached to his copy of the memorandum (Treue, 184) remarked that there were only three copies, one of which he had received in 1944. If Todt had received a copy, it might have been expected to have remained in the files of his ministry, which Speer took over in 1942.
84. Treue, ‘Denkschrift’, 204–5; Engl. transi. in DGFP, C, V, 853–6, Doc. 490; and Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham (eds.), Nazism, 1919–1945. A Documentary Reader, vol.2, Exeter, 1984, 281–9.
85. Petzina, 51; Hayes, 155–65, especially 164.
86. Kube, 154–5 and n.22.
87. Treue, 206–7, 209–10; Engl. transl. in DGFP, C, V, 856–8, 860–61, Doc.490.
88. Kube, 156.
89. Kube, 156–7.
90. Kube, 156.
91. TBJG, I/2, 727 (15 November 1936).
92. Kube, 157.
93. Kube, 158, citing post-war testimony of Lammers and Friedrich Gramsch, State Secretary to Göring in the office of the Four-Year Plan.
94. Reden des Führers am Parteitag der Ehre 1936, Munich, 1936, 48–52; Domarus, 637–8; Kube, 155 and n.24.
95. Kube, 156–7.
96. A warning against equating the Four-Year Plan with the Stalinist Five-Year Plans is, however, appropriate, as noted by Hans Mommsen, ‘Reflections on the Position of Hitler and Goring in the Third Reich’, in Thomas Childers and Jane Caplan (eds.), Reevaluating the Third Reich, New York/London, 1993, 86–97, here 92.
97. Kube, 157–8.
98. See Griffiths, 206–7, 218–19, 268–9. Among the prominent British visitors who met Hitler during 1936 were Lord Londonderry (former Air Minister), David Lloyd George (highly respected former Prime Minister), and Thomas Jones (former senior civil servant and Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, and a close associate of the current Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin).
99. Wolfgang Michalka, Ribbentrop und die deutsche Weltpolitik, 1933–1940. Außenpolitische Konzeptionen und Entscheidungsprozesse im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1980, 155, for the mandate. Hitler told Ribbentrop towards the end of July that he wanted him to become the next ambassador in London (See TBJG, I/2, 646 (22 July 1936)). Disappointed not to have been made State Secretary in the Foreign Office, Ribbentrop delayed making the appointment public until 11 August (Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop, London, 1994, 97–9). Ribbentrop’s own misleading version in his post-war testimony at Nuremberg was that he had personally asked Hitler to withdraw an earlier appointment as State Secretary in the Foreign Office, and to send him as Ambassador to London (IMG, x.267; and Ribbentrop, 60–61).
100. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, ed. Malcolm Muggeridge, London, 1948 (= CP), 44. Mussolini was sure that Ribbentrop would achieve nothing (CP, 46).
101. See the memoirs of Ribbentrop’s secretary during his time in London, Reinhard Spitzy, So haben wir das Reich verspielt. Bekenntnisse eines Illegalen, Munich, 1986, 101–3; Weinberg I, 275; Bloch, 100, 110, 111–34 (and note to 111 attributing the appellation to cartoonist David Low); Michalka, Ribbentrop, 157–8, for Ribbentrop’s lengthy absences.
102. Josef Henke, ‘Hitlers England-Konzeption – Formulierung und Realisierungsversuche’, in Funke, 584–603, here 592; Speer, 86; Fritz Wiedemann, Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte, Velbert/Kettwig, 1964, 152, 156 and 153–6 for the Duke of Windsor’s visit to the Berghof on 22 October 1937. According to Wiedemann (p.156) Hitler thought the Duke the most intelligent prince he had met, and that it was no wonder, because he was so pro-German, that he had been forced to abdicate.
103. Bloch, 122–3. Awkwardly for the readiness of Hitler and Ribbentrop to portray Winston Churchill as the arch-warmonger and leading exponent of anti-German sentiment in Britain, Churchill had been a staunch supporter of the King throughout the abdication crisis.
104. Cit. Jonathan Wright and Paul Stafford, ‘Hitler, Britain, and the Hoßbach Memorandum’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, 42 (1987), 94, from BA, ZSlg., 101. Nr. 31 (Dertinger report). The deteriorating relations between Britain and Germany during the second half of 1936 and in 1937 are thoroughly examined by Josef Henke, England in Hitlers politischem Kalkül, 1935–1939, Boppard am Rhein, 1973, 49–107 and – emphas
izing the significance of the colonial question – Klaus Hildebrand, Vom Reich zum Weltreich. Hitler, NSDAP und koloniale Frage 1919–1945, Munich, 1969, 491 – 548. See also Dietrich Aigner, Das Ringen um England, Munich/Esslingen, 1969, 302–20.
105. Weinberg I, 264.
106. DGFP, C, V, 756–60, N0.446.
107. Weinberg I, 268–71. On the background to the Agreement, see Jürgen Geyl, Austria, Germany, and the Anschluss, 1931–1938, London/New York/Toronto, 1963, ch.V.
108. Geyl, 133–4.
109. Höhne, 364. Mussolini’s decision to intervene in Spain was independent of Hitler’s. The initial limited aid followed a similar pattern, though Italian involvement soon escalated to a level far greater than that of Germany. See Paul Preston, ‘Mussolini’s Spanish Adventure: From Limited Risk to War’, in Preston and Mackenzie, 21–51.
110. 110. See Preston, Franco, 243–4. 111. Treue, 205.
111. CP, 44, 47; Höhne, 364; Pierre Milza, Mussolini, Paris, 1999, 695–7.
112. Manfred Funke, ‘Die deutsch-italienischen Beziehungen – Antibolschewismus und außen-politische Interessenkonkurrenz als Strukturprinzip der “Achse”’, in Funke, 823–46, here 834–5; Höhne, 364. Mussolini had expressed his own approval of the agreement between Austria and Germany – one he had suggested to Schuschnigg – at his meeting with Frank on 23 September (CP, 45).
113. CP, 56.
114. CP, 59.
115. CP, 57.
116. CP, 56–60; Jens Petersen, Hitler-Mussolini. Die Entstehung der Achse Berlin-Rom 1933–1936, Tübingen, 1973, 491; Höhne, 364–5.
117. CP, 60; Petersen, 492; Elizabeth Wiskemann, The Rome-Berlin Axis. A History of the Relations between Hitler and Mussolini, New York/London, 1949, 68.
118. Treue, 205.
119. CP, 58.
120. Despite his racial disparagement of the Japanese as merely capable of ‘bearing’, not ‘creating’, culture, Hitler had encouraged Ribbentrop in 1933, according to the latter’s testimony at Nuremberg (IMG, x.271), to explore closer relations with Japan, predominantly on ideological grounds. See John Fox, Germany and the Far Eastern Crisis, 1931–1938. A Study in Diplomacy and Ideology, Oxford, 1982, 175–6; and Theo Sommer, Deutschland und Japan zwischen den Mächten 1935–1940. Vom Antikominternpakt zum Dreimächtepakt, Tübingen, 1962, 21–2; and, for Hitler’s race-views on Japan, MK, 319. The first soundings to Japan were made in January 1935 (Bernd Martin, ‘Die deutsch-japanischen Beziehungen während des Dritten Reiches’, in Funke, 454–70, here 460).