A Sense of the Enemy

by Shore, Zachary

  46. Nachlass Stresemann, December 22, 1925, Reel 3113, Serial 7129, Band 272, doc. 148109–18.

  47. For more on internal Bolshevik power politics, see Robert W. Service, A History of Twentieth-Century Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

  48. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/2, doc. 37, pp. 90–93.

  49. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/2, doc. 44, pp. 105–6.

  50. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/2, doc. 64, p. 143.

  51. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/2, doc. 80, p. 182.

  52. Germany was permitted to maintain armament levels for self-defense, including an army of 100,000 men.

  Chapter 3

  1. “German Royalists Accused of Raising Huge Secret Army,” Washington Post, December 17, 1926.

  2. Truppenamt was the Army’s euphemism for the General Staff.

  3. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 391, doc. 1924, pp. 8577–86.

  4. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 391, doc. 1924, pp. 8577–86.

  5. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 391, doc. 1924, pp. 8577–86.

  6. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 391, doc. 1924, pp. 8577–86.

  7. Perhaps part of Scheidemann’s anger can be traced to his personal grief. Only four months prior to this passionate address, Scheidemann’s wife had died of a stroke.

  8. Verhandlungen des Reichstages, vol. 391, doc. 1924, pp. 8577–86.

  9. “German Royalists Accused of Raising Huge Secret Army,” Washington Post, December 17, 1926.

  10. “Germany’s Cabinet, Defeated, Resigns in Face of Charges,” Washington Post, December 18, 1926.

  11. “Wild Scenes Mark Reichstag Session,” The New York Times, December 17, 1926. See also “Christmas Crisis,” Time, December 27, 1926.

  12. “The Distrust of Herr Gessler,” Manchester Guardian, December 17, 1926, p. 11.

  13. “German Gun-Running,” Manchester Guardian, December 18, 1926, p. 11.

  14. “The Exposure of German Militarists,” Manchester Guardian, December 21, 1926, p. 7.

  15. “German–Soviet Alliance?” Times (London), May 1, 1922, p. 11; “German Ascendancy in Russia,” Times (London), May 8, 1922, p. 9.

  16. “Attack on Marx Cabinet,” Times (London), December 17, 1926.

  17. Post, Civil-Military Fabric, p. 118. See Dirksen notes of meeting with Schubert, Wetzell, and Major Fischer, January 24, 1927. AA 4564/E163483.

  18. “Summary of the Final Report of the Inter-Allied Military Commission of Control into the General Inspection of German Armaments, February 15, 1925,” Documents on British Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers From the Foreign Office, Confidential Print, Part II, Series F, Vol. 36, pp. 61–65. The final sentence states: “All these infractions taken together are, in the opinion of the Commission, sufficiently important to require putting right, and the Commission will not, on its own initiative, be able to declare the military clauses fulfilled until these points are sufficiently advanced as to have attained the degree of disarmament required by the Treaty, which is now far from the case” (p. 63).

  19. “World Statesmen Get Nobel Prizes,” The New York Times, December 11, 1926, p. 5.

  20. “World Statesmen,” p. 5.

  21. “A German Statesman,” The New York Times, July 4, 1927, p. 14.

  22. For a useful biography see David Dutton, Austen Chamberlain: Gentleman in Politics (Bolton, UK: Ross Anderson Publications, 1985).

  23. Minutes of the British Cabinet, CAB 23/53, Cabinet Office Papers, National Archive, London, December 1, 1926.

  24. The total number of IMCC inspections stood at 33,381, at an average of 28 inspections per day. The total cost reached $38,713,976. Michael Salewski, Entwaffnung und Militaerkontrolle in Deutschland, 1919–1927 (Muenchen: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1966), p. 375.

  25. Minutes of the British Cabinet, CAB 23/53, Cabinet Office Papers, National Archive, London, December 15, 1926

  26. Minutes, December 15, 1926.

  27. Minutes, December 15, 1926.

  28. Richard Shuster has referred to Locarno as the “swan song of Allied efforts toward the enforcement of disarmament,” arguing that henceforth Chamberlain accepted German promises over proof of disarmament. See Richard Shuster, German Disarmament after World War I: The Diplomacy of International Arms Inspection, 1920–1931 (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 194. Another thorough work on disarmament is Thomas E. Boyle’s unpublished dissertation, “France, Great Britain, and German Disarmament,” State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1972. Available through University Microfilms of America Inc.

  29. Gustav Hilger and Alfred Meyer, The Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German-Soviet Relations, 1918–1941 (New York: MacMillan, 1953), p. 207.

  30. Sir Ronald Lindsay to Sir Austen Chamberlain, December 18, 1926, British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part II, Series F, vol. 37, Germany, 1926, Doc. 317, “Nationalist Associations,” pp. 313–17.

  31. Hans Gatzke, Stresemann and the Rearmament of Germany (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954), ch. 2, “The End of Military Control.”

  32. ADAP, Series B, vol. II/2, doc. 173, pp. 439–40.

  33. Nachlass Stresemann. Aufzeichnung, January 5, 1927. Reel 3167, Series 7337, Band 48, doc. 163495–6.

  34. ADAP, Series B, vol. IV, doc. 169, pp. 365–66.

  35. ADAP, Series B, vol. IV, doc. 174, pp. 378–79.

  36. ADAP, Series B, vol. VI, doc. 108, pp. 229–30.

  37. See for example Hans Gatzke, Stresemann and the Rearmament of Germany (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1954).

  38. See for example Jonathan Wright, Gustav Stresemann: Weimar’s Greatest Statesman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), and Patrick Cohrs, The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain, and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

  39. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Touchstone, 1995), p. 284.

  40. Hans Gatzke’s bibliographical note summarizes the early literature on the Foreign Minister. Among others, he cites the following as especially sympathetic to their subject: Walter Görlitz, Gustav Stresemann (Heidelberg: Ähren-Verlag, 1947); Prinz zu Löwenstein, Stresemann: das deutsche Schicksal im Spiegel seines Lebens (Frankfurt am Main: H. Scheffler, 1952).

  41. Hans Gatzke, Stresemann and the Rearmament of Germany (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954). See also Henry L. Bretton, Stresemann and the Revision of Versailles (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1953), p. 38. Bretton cited Edgar Stern-Rubarth, one of Stresemann’s aides, as follows: “Stresemann’s ultimate hope, as he once confessed to me, was: To free the Rhineland, to recover Eupen-Malmedy, and the Saar, to perfect Austria’s Anschluss, and to have, under mandate or otherwise an African colony where essential tropical raw materials could be secured and an outlet created for the surplus energy of the younger generation.” Peter Krüger addressed the Stresemann problem by arguing that the Foreign Minister’s aims were less important than his style of seizing opportunities as they arose. See Peter Krüger, Die Aussenpolitik der Republik von Weimar (Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985). Other useful works on Weimar era foreign and military policy include John Wheeler-Bennett, The Nemesis of Power: The German Army in Politics, 1918–1945 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1954); F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics, 1918–1933 (New York: Clarendon Press, 1966); Gaines Post, The Civil-Military Fabric of Weimar Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973).

  42. Jonathan Wright, Gustav Stresemann: Weimar’s Greatest Statesman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

  43. Cohrs, Unfinished Peace.

  44. Stephen A. Schuker, “Review of Patrick Cohrs, The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain, and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932,” Journal of American History, vol. 94 (2007), p. 319.

  45. In a much earlier work, Schuker observed that Stresemann had no intention of going to war whi
le Germany was still weak. Stephen Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1976), p. 267.

  46. Cohrs, Unfinished Peace, p. 229.

  47. Wright, Stresemann, p. 508. Wright does note that because Stresemann also believed firmly in restoring Germany’s equal rights among the states of Europe, the revision of Versailles would ultimately leave Germany as the strongest power on the continent, save for Russia. These two aims had an inherent contradiction, but Wright concludes that Stresemann remained increasingly wedded to achieving strength through peace.

  48. Wright, Stresemann, p. 386.

  49. One could argue that Stresemann’s refusal to agree to fixed borders in the east represented a break in the pattern of cooperation commensurate with the Spirit of Locarno. However, this would only indicate his intention to revise those borders; it would not have been evidence of an intention to redraw those borders by military means.

  50. MID, “Stresemann’s Speech Before the Reichstag,” U.S. Military Intelligence Reports, Germany, 1919–1941, NA RG 165, microfilm, University Publications of America, February 24, 1928, 2.418. The full sentence read: “We are disarmed, we have concluded the Locarno treaties, we have subjected ourselves to the jurisdiction of the Hague World Court by signing the optional clause for all international conflicts of a legal nature and we have created an almost complete system of arbitration and adjustment treaties.”

  51. Schuker, End of French Predominance, p. 267.

  52. Robert Kurzban, Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite: Evolution and the Modular Mind (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 170. For a separate discussion of cognitive psychology and the modular view, see Timothy Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.)

  53. In this book I observe two common heuristics among foreign policy analysts: one helpful to the decision-maker—the pattern-break heuristic—and one harmful to the decision-maker—the continuity heuristic. Unlike a psychologist, I make no claims regarding how most people think. Instead, I assess how particular historical figures thought and how their thinking influenced historical events. I do, however, relate some of the findings from fields beyond history in order to provide alternative ways of conceptualizing historical problems. Whenever I relate such findings, I do so with considerable caution. For example, some psychologists dispute the validity of much of the scholarship on heuristics and biases. They correctly observe that scholars have identified countless biases and their opposites, making it impossible to conclude how people typically think. Other critics, Gerd Gigerenzer primary among them, note that heuristics need not always be seen as flaws in rational decision-making. Instead, they suggest that heuristics can also make us smart by simplifying our decision-making processes with helpful rules of thumb. In the Afterword I say more about the risks of being seduced by science. For one thoughtful challenge to mainstream notions in social psychology see Joachim I. Krueger and David C. Funder, “Towards a balanced social psychology: Causes, consequences, and cures for the problem-seeking approach to social behavior and cognition,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 27, no. 3 (2004), pp. 313–27.

  54. Hitler’s own strategic empathy proved far less sound than Stresemann’s. It was long believed that Hitler possessed an innate knack for divining the weakness of his enemies, but this view has not withstood closer scrutiny. See Zachary Shore, What Hitler Knew: The Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), particularly ch. 3, “Risk in the Rhineland.”

  Chapter 4

  1. David Murphy, What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), p. 87.

  2. Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999).

  3. Murphy, What Stalin Knew.

  4. Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991).

  5. Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939–1953 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008).

  6. David Holloway, “Stalin and Intelligence: Two Cases,” forthcoming. Stanford Professor David Holloway kindly shared his unpublished article with me.

  7. John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 126.

  8. Norman Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 82. Naimark writes: “The vulnerability of the Soviet borders is a matter of historical dispute. But one might suggest that in an environment in which railway accidents, shortfalls in mining production, and grain spoilage were routinely attributed to Trotskyite subversion and Japanese-German spies, resulting in tens of thousands of arrests, torture and forced confessions and thousands of executions, the war scares and spy mania in the borderlands were part of the same process of inventing enemies and destroying people ultimately for no other reason except to maintain the suspicious and vengeful dictator in power.”

  9. One can debate whether “genocide” is the proper term for Stalin’s crimes. At the very least we can consider them as mass murder.

  10. Roberts, Stalin’s Wars, p. 48.

  11. For details on the origins of this pact see Zachary Shore, What Hitler Knew: The Battle for Information in Nazi Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), ch. 1, “Hitler’s Opening Gambit: Intelligence, Fear, and the German–Polish Agreement.”

  12. Robert O’Neill, The German Army and the Nazi Party, 1933–1939 (London: Cassell, 1966), p. 38.

  13. Anastas Mikoyan, Tak bylo (Moscow: AST, 2000), p. 534.

  14. For more on both theory-theory and simulation theory see Jason P. Mitchell, “The False Dichotomy Between Simulation and Theory-Theory,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 9 (August 8, 2005). See also Rebecca Saxe, “Against Simulation: The Argument from Error,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol. 9 (April 4, 2005).

  15. Mikoyan, Tak bylo, p. 534. See also Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (New York: Knopf, 2004), p. 376.

  16. Mikoyan, Tak bylo, p. 376.

  17. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943; Boston: Mariner Books, 1999), p. 654. Citations refer to the Mariner edition.

  18. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 655.

  19. Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 660–661.

  20. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 661.

  21. Montefiore, Stalin, p. 272.

  22. Montefiore, Stalin, p. 298.

  23. Montefiore, Stalin, pp. 309–310.

  24. Some scholars still maintain that the Welles Mission of 1940 represented a genuine effort for peace. See Christopher O’Sullivan, Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning, and the Quest for a New World Order, 1937–1943 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), ch. 3.

  Chapter 5

  1. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, Collection: Grace Tully Archive, Series: Marguerite (“Missy”), LeHand Papers, Box 10; Folder = Correspondence: Roosevelt, Franklin D.: Transcripts of Longhand, 1934. Sunday July 1, 1934.

  2. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1934, Vol. II: Europe, Near East and Africa (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934), pp. 241–43. Letter 1072 from William E. Dodd, the Ambassador in Germany, to Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State, July 24, 1934.

  3. FRUS, Volume II: Europe, Near East and Africa. Memorandum from Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State, July 13, 1934, p. 238–39.

  4. Edgar B. Nixon, Franklin D.Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1969), vol. II, pp. 180–81.

  5. Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, vol. II, pp. 186–87.

  6. Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, September 7, 1934, pp. 207–8.

  7. Dodd was far from the only foreign observer to be distressed by the heightened militarism suffusing German daily lif
e at this time. One young American who was studying at Oxford travelled to Germany in 1934. While there he attended a Hitler Youth camp outing and was startled to see how much it resembled military exercises, complete with drills, calisthenics, and instruction in the dismantling and reassembling of weapons. Later, Dean Rusk would write, “This was no Explorer Scout outing or weekend in the fresh air of the countryside.” Rusk could not then recognize the direction in which Germany was headed. In a speech to the World Affairs Council of Riverside, California, he adopted a wait-and-see attitude about Hitler’s regime. He would look back on his myopia with regret. We can only speculate that this experience was a meaningful episode that shaped his worldview and influenced his decision-making while Secretary of State during the Vietnam War. Dean Rusk, As I Saw It, as told to Richard Rusk, edited by Daniel S. Papp (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 79.