Mussolini took due notice of the “perfidy of Albion.” Two could play at the game of appeasing Hitler. Moreover, England’s cynical attitude of disregarding the Versailles Treaty encouraged him in the belief that London might not take too seriously the flouting of the Covenant of the League of Nations. On October 3, 1935, in defiance of the Covenant, his armies invaded the ancient mountain kingdom of Abyssinia. The League, led by Great Britain and supported halfheartedly by France, which saw that Germany was the greater danger in the long run, promptly voted sanctions. But they were only partial sanctions, timidly enforced. They did not prevent Mussolini from conquering Ethiopia but they did destroy the friendship of Fascist Italy with Britain and France and bring an end to the Stresa front against Nazi Germany.
Who stood the most to gain from this chain of events but Adolf Hitler? On October 4, the day after the Italian invasion began, I spent the day in the Wilhelmstrasse talking with a number of party and government officials. A diary note that evening summed up how quickly and well the Germans had sized up the situation:
The Wilhelmstrasse is delighted. Either Mussolini will stumble and get himself so heavily involved in Africa that he will be greatly weakened in Europe, whereupon Hitler can seize Austria, hitherto protected by the Duce; or he will win, defying France and Britain, and thereupon be ripe for a tie-up with Hitler against the Western democracies. Either way Hitler wins.14
This would soon be demonstrated.
A COUP IN THE RHINELAND
In his Reichstag “peace” speech of May 21, 1935, which, as we have seen, had so impressed the world and, above all, Great Britain, Hitler had mentioned that “an element of legal insecurity” had been brought into the Locarno Pact as a result of the mutual-assistance pact which had been signed between Russia and France on March 2 in Paris and on March 14 in Moscow, but which up to the end of the year had not been ratified by the French Parliament. The German Foreign Office called this “element” to the attention of Paris in a formal note to the French government.
On November 21, François-Poncet, the French ambassador, had a talk with Hitler in which the Fuehrer launched “into a long tirade” against the Franco-Soviet Pact. François-Poncet reported to Paris he was convinced that Hitler intended to use the pact as an excuse to occupy the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. “Hitler’s sole hesitancy,” he added, “is now concerned with the appropriate moment to act.”15
François-Poncet, probably the best-informed ambassador in Berlin, knew what he was talking about, though he was undoubtedly unaware that as early as the previous spring, on May 2, nineteen days before Hitler’s assurances in the Reichstag that he would respect the Locarno Pact and the territorial clauses of Versailles, General von Blomberg had issued his first directive to the three armed services to prepare plans for the reoccupation of the demilitarized Rhineland. The code name Schulung was given to the operation, it was to be “executed by a surprise blow at lightning speed” and its planning was to be so secret that “only the very smallest number of officers should be informed.” In fact, in the interests of secrecy, Blomberg wrote out the order in handwriting.16
On June 16 further discussion of the move into the Rhineland took place at the tenth meeting of the Working Committee of the Reich Defense Council, during which a Colonel Alfred Jodl, who had just become head of the Home Defense Department, reported on the plans and emphasized the need for the strictest secrecy. Nothing should be committed to writing that was not absolutely necessary, he warned, and he added that “without exception such material must be kept in safes.”17
All through the winter of 1935–36 Hitler bided his time. France and Britain, he could not help but note, were preoccupied with stopping Italy’s aggression in Abyssinia, but Mussolini seemed to be getting by with it. Despite its much-publicized sanctions, the League of Nations was proving itself impotent to halt a determined aggressor. In Paris the French Parliament seemed to be in no hurry to ratify the pact with the Soviet Union; the growing sentiment in the Right was all against it. Apparently Hitler thought there was a good chance of the French Chamber or Senate rejecting the alliance with Moscow. In that case he would have to look for another excuse for Schulung. But the pact came before the Chamber on February 11 and it was approved on the twenty-seventh by a vote of 353 to 164. Two days later, on March 1, Hitler reached his decision, somewhat to the consternation of the generals, most of whom were convinced that the French would make mincemeat of the small German forces which had been gathered for the move into the Rhineland. Nevertheless, on the next day, March 2, 1936, in obedience to his master’s instructions, Blomberg issued formal orders for the occupation of the Rhineland. It was, he told the senior commanders of the armed forces, to be a “surprise move.” Blomberg expected it to be a “peaceful operation.” If it turned out that it was not—that is, that the French would fight—the Commander in Chief reserved the “right to decide on any military countermeasures.”18 Actually, as I learned six days later and as would be confirmed from the testimony of the generals at Nuremberg, Blomberg already had in mind what those countermeasures would be: a hasty retreat back over the Rhine!
But the French, their nation already paralyzed by internal strife and the people sinking into defeatism, did not know this when a small token force of German troops paraded across the Rhine bridges at dawn on March 7 and entered the demilitarized zone.* At 10 A.M. Neurath, the compliant Foreign Minister, called in the ambassadors of France, Britain and Italy, apprised them of the news from the Rhineland and handed them a formal note denouncing the Locarno Treaty, which Hitler had just broken—and proposing new plans for peace! “Hitler struck his adversary in the face,” François-Poncet wryly observed, “and as he did so declared: ‘I bring you proposals for peace!’”20
Indeed, two hours later the Fuehrer was standing at the rostrum of the Reichstag before a delirious audience, expounding on his desire for peace and his latest ideas of how to maintain it. I went over to the Kroll Opera House to see the spectacle, which I shall never forget, for it was both fascinating and gruesome. After a long harangue about the evils of Versailles and the threat of Bolshevism, Hitler calmly announced that France’s pact with Russia had invalidated the Locarno Treaty, which, unlike that of Versailles, Germany had freely signed. The scene that followed I noted down in my diary that evening.
“Germany no longer feels bound by the Locarno Treaty [Hitler said]. In the interest of the primitive rights of its people to the security of their frontier and the safeguarding of their defense, the German government has re-established, as from today, the absolute and unrestricted sovereignty of the Reich in the demilitarized zone!”
Now the six hundred deputies, personal appointees all of Hitler, little men with big bodies and bulging necks and cropped hair and pouched bellies and brown uniforms and heavy boots … leap to their feet like automatons, their right arms upstretched in the Nazi salute, and scream “Heils” … Hitler raises his hand for silence…. He says in a deep, resonant voice, “Men of the German Reichstag!” The silence is utter.
“In this historic hour, when, in the Reich’s western provinces, German troops are at this minute marching into their future peacetime garrisons, we all unite in two sacred vows.”
He can go no further. It is news to this “parliamentary” mob that German soldiers are already on the move into the Rhineland. All the militarism in their German blood surges to their heads. They spring, yelling and crying, to their feet … Their hands are raised in slavish salute, their faces now contorted with hysteria, their mouths wide open, shouting, shouting, their eyes, burning with fanaticism, glued on the new god, the Messiah. The Messiah plays his role superbly. His head lowered, as if in all humbleness, he waits patiently for silence. Then his voice, still low, but choking with emotion, utters the two vows:
“First, we swear to yield to no force whatever in restoration of the honor of our people … Secondly, we pledge that now, more than ever, we shall strive for an understanding between the European peoples, e
specially for one with our Western neighbor nations … We have no territorial demands to make in Europe! … Germany will never break the peace!”
It was a long time before the cheering stopped … A few generals made their way out. Behind their smiles, however, you could not help detecting a nervousness … I ran into General von Blomberg … His face was white, his cheeks twitching.21
And with reason. The Minister of Defense, who five days before had issued in his own handwriting the order to march, was losing his nerve. The next day I learned that he had given orders for his troops to withdraw across the Rhine should the French move to oppose them. But the French never made the slightest move. François-Poncet says that after his warning of the previous November, the French High Command had asked the government what it would do in case the ambassador proved right. The answer was, he says, that the government would take the matter up with the League of Nations.22 Actually, when the blow occurred,* it was the French government which wanted to act and the French General Staff which held back. “General Gamelin,” François-Poncet declares, “advised that a war operation, however limited, entailed unpredictable risks and could not be undertaken without decreeing a general mobilization.”23 The most General Gamelin, the Chief of the General Staff, would do—and did—was concentrate thirteen divisions near the German frontier, but merely to reinforce the Maginot Line. Even this was enough to throw a scare into the German High Command. Blomberg, backed by Jodl and most of the officers at the top, wanted to pull back the three battalions that had crossed the Rhine. As Jodl testified at Nuremberg, “Considering the situation we were in, the French covering army could have blown us to pieces.”24
It could have—and had it, that almost certainly would have been the end of Hitler, after which history might have taken quite a different and brighter turn than it did, for the dictator could never have survived such a fiasco. Hitler himself admitted as much. “A retreat on our part,” he conceded later, “would have spelled collapse.”25 It was Hitler’s iron nerves alone, which now, as during many crises that lay ahead, saved the situation and, confounding the reluctant generals, brought success. But it was no easy moment for him.
“The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland,” Paul Schmidt, his interpreter, heard him later say, “were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance.”26
Confident that the French would not march, he bluntly turned down all suggestions for pulling back by the wavering High Command. General Beck, Chief of the General Staff, wanted the Fuehrer to at least soften the blow by proclaiming that he would not fortify the area west of the Rhine—a suggestion, Jodl later testified, “which the Fuehrer turned down very bluntly”—for obvious reasons, as we shall see.27 Blomberg’s proposal to withdraw, Hitler later told General von Rundstedt, was nothing less than an act of cowardice.28
“What would have happened,” Hitler exclaimed in a bull session with his cronies at headquarters on the evening of March 27, 1942, in recalling the Rhineland coup, “if anybody other than myself had been at the head of the Reich! Anyone you care to mention would have lost his nerve. I was obliged to lie, and what saved us was my unshakable obstinacy and my amazing aplomb.”29
It was true, but it must also be recorded that he was aided not only by the hesitations of the French but by the supineness of their British allies. The French Foreign Minister, Pierre Etienne Flandin, flew to London on March 11 and begged the British government to back France in a military counteraction in the Rhineland. His pleas were unavailing. Britain would not risk war even though Allied superiority over the Germans was overwhelming. As Lord Lothian remarked, “The Germans, after all, are only going into their own back garden.” Even before the French arrived in London, Anthony Eden, who had become Foreign Secretary in the previous December, had told the House of Commons, on March 9, “Occupation of the Rhineland by the Reichswehr deals a heavy blow to the principle of the sanctity of treaties. Fortunately,” he added, “we have no reason to suppose that Germany’s present action threatens hostilities.”30
And yet France was entitled, under the terms of the Locarno Treaty, to take military action against the presence of German troops in the demilitarized zone, and Britain was obligated by that treaty to back her with her own armed forces. The abortive London conversations were a confirmation to Hitler that he had gotten away with his latest gamble.
The British not only shied away from the risk of war but once again they took seriously the latest installment of Hitler’s “peace” proposals. In the notes handed to the three ambassadors on March 7 and in his speech to the Reichstag, Hitler had offered to sign a twenty-five-year nonaggression pact with Belgium and France, to be guaranteed by Britain and Italy; to conclude similar nonaggression pacts with Germany’s neighbors on the east; to agree to the demilitarization of both sides of the Franco–German frontier; and, finally, to return to the League of Nations. Hitler’s sincerity might have been judged by his proposal to demilitarize both sides of the Franco–German border, since it would have forced France to scrap her Maginot Line, her last protection against a surprise German attack.
In London, the esteemed Times, while deploring Hitler’s precipitate action in invading the Rhineland, headed its leading editorial “A Chance to Rebuild.”
In retrospect, it is easy to see that Hitler’s successful gamble in the Rhineland brought him a victory more staggering and more fatal in its immense consequences than could be comprehended at the time. At home it fortified his popularity* and his power, raising them to heights which no German ruler of the past had ever enjoyed. It assured his ascendancy over his generals, who had hesitated and weakened at a moment of crisis when he had held firm. It taught them that in foreign politics and even in military affairs his judgment was superior to theirs. They had feared that the French would fight; he knew better. And finally, and above all, the Rhineland occupation, small as it was as a military operation, opened the way, as only Hitler (and Churchill, alone, in England) seemed to realize, to vast new opportunities in a Europe which was not only shaken but whose strategic situation was irrevocably changed by the parading of three German battalions across the Rhine bridges.
Conversely, it is equally easy to see, in retrospect, that France’s failure to repel the Wehrmacht battalions and Britain’s failure to back her in what would have been nothing more than a police action was a disaster for the West from which sprang all the later ones of even greater magnitude. In March 1936 the two Western democracies were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and, in fact—as we have seen Hitler admitting—bring the Nazi dictator and his regime tumbling down. They let the chance slip by.
For France, it was the beginning of the end. Her allies in the East, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia, suddenly were faced with the fact that France would not fight against German aggression to preserve the security system which the French government itself had taken the lead in so laboriously building up. But more than that. These Eastern allies began to realize that even if France were not so supine, she would soon not be able to lend them much assistance because of Germany’s feverish construction of a West Wall behind the Franco–German border. The erection of this fortress line, they saw, would quickly change the strategic map of Europe, to their detriment. They could scarcely expect a France which did not dare, with her one hundred divisions, to repel three German battalions, to bleed her young manhood against impregnable German fortifications while the Wehrmacht attacked in the East. But even if the unexpected took place, it would be futile. Henceforth the French could tie down in the West only a small part of the growing German Army. The rest would be free for operations against Germany’s Eastern neighbors.
The value of the Rhineland fortifications t
o Hitler’s strategy was conveyed to William C. Bullitt, the American ambassador to France, when he called on the German Foreign Minister in Berlin on May 18, 1936.
Von Neurath said [Bullitt reported to the State Department] that it was the policy of the German Government to do nothing active in foreign affairs until “the Rhineland had been digested.” He explained that he meant that until the German fortifications had been constructed on the French and Belgian frontiers, the German Government would do everything possible to prevent rather than encourage an outbreak by the Nazis in Austria and would pursue a quiet line with regard to Czechoslovakia. “As soon as our fortifications are constructed and the countries of Central Europe realize that France cannot enter German territory at will, all those countries will begin to feel very differently about their foreign policies and a new constellation will develop,” he said.31
This development now began.
“As I stood at the grave of my predecessor [the murdered Dollfuss],” Dr. Schuschnigg related in his memoirs, “I knew that in order to save Austrian independence I had to embark on a course of appeasement … Everything had to be avoided which could give Germany a pretext for intervention and everything had to be done to secure in some way Hitler’s toleration of the status quo.”32
The new and youthful Austrian Chancellor had been encouraged by Hitler’s public declaration to the Reichstag on May 21, 1935, that “Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria or to conclude an Anschluss”; and he had been reassured by the reiteration at Stresa by Italy, France and Britain of their determination to help safeguard Austria’s independence. Then Mussolini, Austria’s principal protector since 1933, had become bogged down in Abyssinia and had broken with France and Britain. When the Germans marched into the Rhineland and began to fortify it, Dr. Schuschnigg realized that some appeasement of Hitler was due. He began negotiating a new treaty with the wily German minister in Vienna, Papen, who, though the Nazis had come within an ace of murdering him during the June purge, had nevertheless gone to work on his arrival in Austria in the late summer of 1934, after the Nazi assassination of Dollfuss, to undermine Austria’s independence and capture Hitler’s native land for the Leader. “National Socialism must and will overpower the new Austrian ideology,” he had written Hitler on July 27, 1935, in giving an account of his first year of service in Vienna.33
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Page 47