HITLER’S AMBITIONS
ABOUT HITLER’S AMBITIONS, historians yet disagree. Some insist his ambitions were global: to conquer Europe, invade Britain, and build a naval and air armada to confront America for mastery of the world. Others argue that Hitler’s plans for conquest were primarily and perhaps only in the east.
To discern his ambitions, there are several sources: Hitler’s words, beginning with Mein Kampf and even before, the shape of the forces he constructed for war, what he did and did not do given his opportunities, and the plans Hitler wrote down but never implemented.
On some issues all agree. Hitler’s first goal was absolute power in Germany. A second was to overturn the Versailles Treaty that denied Germany equality of rights, especially the right to rearm. A third was to restore lands severed by Versailles and bring Germans home to the Reich. A fourth was the Drang nach Osten, the drive to the east to carve out a new German empire. Finally, Hitler intended to cleanse Germany of Jews, smash Bolshevism, and make himself a man of history like Frederick the Great and Bismarck. The anti-Semitism in which Mein Kampf is steeped was his most consistent conviction. As German historian Andreas Hillgruber, among other historians, contends, to Hitler the Jews and Bolsheviks were one and the same enemy:
The conquest of European Russia, the cornerstone of the continental European phase of his program, was thus for Hitler inextricably linked with the extermination of these “bacilli,” the Jews. In his conception they had gained dominance over Russia with the Bolshevik Revolution. Russia thereby became the center from which a global danger radiated, particularly threatening to the Aryan race and its Germanic core.5
Once he attained power, however, Hitler, like Lenin and Stalin, would subordinate ideology to raison d’état, as in the volte-face toward Russia in early 1939 and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that August. And when Hitler did move on Russia in 1941, his motivation was not ideology.
THE LESSONS OF DEFEAT
HAVING FOUGHT FOUR YEARS on the Western Front, Hitler had formed indelible ideas as to why Germany had lost the war. While the Nazis ranted and railed against the “November criminals” of 1918 and the “stab in the back,” Hitler was not such a fool as to swallow whole his own Nazi Party propaganda. The German army had been defeated by the Allies in the west in 1918. And because Germany was defeated in France, all the fruits of her victory over Russia in the east had been taken from her, and the humiliation of Versailles imposed.
The crucial lesson Hitler drew from defeat was that Germany must never again fight a two-front war. By 1917, Germany was at war with Britain, France, and America in the west, Italy to the south, and Russia to the east, with Japan and the British Empire having seized her colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Hitler believed the two-front war had been a historic blunder that must never be repeated. Again, Hillgruber:
Together with his prewar Vienna period and postwar Munich years, the war provided…Hitler with his formative experiences. It made him recognize the impossibility of a German victory in a war where Germany was pitted against both the continental power, Russia, and the British Empire, let alone the two Anglo-Saxon sea powers. His memory was alive with the hopelessness of Germany’s predicament surrounded by enemies in a Central European bastion…in a world war in which the superior economic and armaments potential of the hostile coalition would ultimately tell.6
Second, Hitler knew the longer a war went on, the weaker Germany became relative to her potential enemies. While Germany’s population of seventy million—eighty million after Anschluss and absorption of the Sudeten Germans—was approaching that of Britain and France combined, it was dwarfed by the 458 million in the British Empire, the 197 million of a Soviet Union that stretched across a dozen time zones, and the 140 million Americans, whose productive power exceeded that of Britain, France, and Germany combined.
On the eve of war, Hitler’s domain, even with the Saar, Austria, and the Sudetenland added to it, covered about 260,000 square miles—to the United States’s 3.6 million, the USSR’s 8.5 million, and the British Empire’s 14 million square miles. Should these three powers unite, Hitler knew, their manpower and resources would dwarf what Germany could command in Central Europe. A European power, not yet a world power, Germany lacked the resources and productive capacity to fight a world war. Outside of Europe, in North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Australia, China, and the Pacific, Germany was an inconsequential force. Hitler understood this.
Hitler had also concluded that the Kaiser’s decision to build a High Seas Fleet to challenge the Royal Navy had been an act of monumental folly. The appearance of German battleships in the North Sea drove Britain into the 1904 entente with France, which brought her into war against Germany in 1914. Had Admiral Tirpitz and the Kaiser not challenged the Royal Navy, sword and shield of the empire, Britain would have had far less reason to fear Germany and to align with her old enemies France and Russia.
And what good had the High Seas Fleet done for Germany? It had not stopped the British Expeditionary Force from crossing the Channel to defeat the Schlieffen Plan. It had proved incapable of defending Germany’s colonies. It had failed to break the blockade that had starved Germany into submission. It had ventured out for battle once, at Jutland in 1916, retired to port, and, in 1919, was escorted to Scapa Flow by the Royal Navy, where it committed suicide.
This led to a third lesson Hitler took from the war. Germany could not defend overseas colonies against the Anglo-Saxon sea powers. Her colonies would always be hostages to the British and U.S. fleets. If Germany went to war again with the Anglo-Saxon powers, she must expect to lose any overseas possessions and endure another starvation blockade. Thus, before any new war was undertaken, Germany must achieve economic self-sufficiency in Europe.
Autarky is a word that recurs often in Hitler’s talk. By autarky, Hitler meant Germany must find within defensible borders all the resources needed to sustain her at war. Never again could Germany rely on imports. British and U.S. warships would intercept them and starve her out, as they had in the Great War. Hitler, writes Hillgruber, “believed he would succeed in creating an autarkic, blockade-proof and defensible sphere that would grant Germany real autonomy…for all time. In short, he would create a German world power to stand beside the other world powers.”7
Hitler’s conclusions: Since an overseas empire was indefensible, the new German empire must be created not in Africa or Asia but in Central and Eastern Europe, where Royal Navy warships and American fleets could not reach. In the second volume of Mein Kampf, published in 1926, Hitler lays out his agenda with great clarity.
Germany either will be a world power or there will be no Germany. And for world power she needs that magnitude which will give her the position she needs in the present period, and life to her citizens.
And so we National Socialists consciously draw a line beneath the foreign policy tendency of the pre-War period. We take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west of Europe, and turn our gaze to the land in the east. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-War period, and shift to the soil policy of the future.
If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.8
Here is the polestar of Hitler’s ambition. Biographer Ian Kershaw writes that Hitler reached this conclusion even before Mein Kampf:
By early 1922…Hitler had abandoned any idea of collaboration with Russia. He saw no prospect of Russia looking only eastwards. Extension of Bolshevism to Germany would prove an irresistible urge…. Only through the destruction of Bolshevism could Germany be saved. And at the same time this—through expansion into Russia—would bring the territory which Germany needed. During the course of 1922—perhaps reinforced towards the end of the year by contact with the arch-expansionist Ludendorff—the changed approach to future policy towards Russia was consolidated.9
HITLER’S DR
EAM ALLIANCE
ADOLF HITLER WAS AS dedicated to Nazism as Lenin and Stalin were to Bolshevism. Yet all three would sacrifice ideology for reasons of state.
Lenin signed on to the Brest-Litovsk treaty of 1918 that tore his empire to pieces. He reined in Trotsky’s permanent revolution lest it imperil the state. He introduced a New Economic Policy in 1921, introducing market forces, when rebellion threatened the regime. Stalin colluded with Nazi Germany in return for the Baltic states and half of Poland. Hitler would abandon South Tyrol to Italy for an alliance with Rome and cede all claims to Alsace and Lorraine rather than risk another war in the West over the lost provinces.
As Hitler showed in the murder of Roehm and the SA leaders who helped bring him to power, he could be a cold-blooded opportunist who, to cement the loyalty of the army, would assent to the execution of his oldest comrades. U.S. historian David Calleo writes: Hitler was “highly pragmatic about means…always prepared to drop ideology when it suited him.”10
A.J.P. Taylor and other historians contend that Hitler’s foreign policy was more traditional and in ways less ambitious than that of the Kaiser, who saw Germany as a great sea power, a colonial power, a global power. Hitler did not rule out a return of lost colonies in Africa, but this was never where his ambitions or interests lay.
“Hitler was more moderate than his predecessors in that he did not aspire to colonies overseas nor to territorial gains in Western Europe, though naturally his modesty diminished when the chance of such gains actually matured,” wrote Taylor.11
To Hitler, Great Britain was Germany’s natural ally and the nation and empire he most admired. He did not covet British colonies. He did not want or seek a fleet to rival the Royal Navy. He did not wish to bring down the British Empire. He was prepared to appease Britain to make her a friend of Germany. Where the Kaiser had grudgingly agreed in 1913 to restrict the High Seas Fleet to 60 percent of the Royal Navy, Hitler in 1935 readily agreed to restrict his navy to 35 percent. What Hitler ever sought was an allied, friendly, or at least neutral Britain.
Conversing in 1922 with a publisher friendly to the Nazi party, Hitler “ruled out the colonial rivalry with Britain that had caused conflict before the First World War.” Said Hitler, “Germany would have to adapt herself to a purely continental policy, avoiding harm to English interests.”12
“By late 1922,” Kershaw writes, “an alliance with Britain, whose world empire he admired, was in [Hitler’s] mind. This idea had sharpened in 1923 when the disagreements of the British and French over the Ruhr occupation became clear.”13
Having fought the “Tommies” on the Western Front, he admired their martial qualities. Nor was Churchill unaware of “Hitler’s notorious Anglomania and his almost servile admiration of British imperialism….”14
Hitler biographer Alan Bullock summarizes his grand strategy:
In Mein Kampf Hitler had written: “For a long time to come there will be only two Powers in Europe with which it may be possible for Germany to conclude an alliance. These Powers are Great Britain and Italy.” The greatest blunder of the Kaiser’s government—prophetic words—had been to quarrel with Britain and Russia at the same time: Germany’s future lay in the east…and her natural ally was Great Britain, whose power was colonial, commercial and naval, with no territorial interests on the continent of Europe. “Only by alliance with England was it possible (before 1914) to safeguard the rear of the German crusade…. No sacrifice should have been considered too great, if it was a necessary means of gaining England’s friendship. Colonial and naval ambitions should have been abandoned.”15
The dream of an Anglo-German alliance would stay with Hitler even when he was at war with Great Britain:
Even during the war Hitler persisted in believing that an alliance with Germany…was in Britain’s own interest, continually expressed his regret that the British had been so stupid as not to see this, and never gave up the hope that he would be able to overcome their obstinacy and persuade them to accept his view.16
Sir Roy Denman came to the same conclusion:
Hitler…had no basic quarrel with Britain. Unlike William II, he had no wish from the outset to rival the British navy, nor covet the British Empire. His territorial aims were in Central and Eastern Europe and further east. He could never understand why the British constantly sought to interfere.17
After the British escape at Dunkirk, because of his own “stop order” to his armored units not to advance into the undefended city, Hitler told Martin Bormann he had purposely spared the British army so as not to create “an irreparable breach between the British and ourselves.”18
“The blood of every single Englishman is too valuable to be shed,” Hitler told his friend Frau Troost. “Our two people belong together racially and traditionally—this is and always has been my aim even if our generals can’t grasp it.”19
On June 25, 1940, after the fall of France, Hitler telephoned Goebbels to lay out the terms of a deal with England. Britain’s empire was to be preserved, but Britain would return to Lord Salisbury’s policy of “splendid isolation” from the power politics of Europe. Here is the entry from Goebbels’s diary:
The Fuhrer…believes that the [British Empire] must be preserved if at all possible. For if it collapses, then we shall not inherit it, but foreign and even hostile powers take it over. But if England will have it no other way, then she must be beaten to her knees. The Fuhrer, however, would be agreeable to peace on the following basis: England out of Europe, colonies and mandates returned. Reparations for what was stolen from us after the World War.20
What Hitler was demanding after his triumph in the west in 1940 was restoration of what had been taken from Germany at Versailles.
In his postwar book The Other Side of the Hill, Liddell Hart relates a conversation Hitler had at Charleville, after Dunkirk, with General von Rundstedt and two of his staff, Sodenstern and Blumentritt. The latter told Liddell Hart the conversation had come around to Great Britain:
He [Hitler] then astonished us by speaking with admiration of the British Empire, of the necessity for its existence and of the civilisation that Britain had brought into the world…. He compared the British Empire with the Catholic Church—saying they were both essential elements of stability in the world. He said that all he wanted from Britain was that she should acknowledge Germany’s position on the Continent. The return of Germany’s lost colonies would be desirable but not essential, and he would even offer to support Britain with troops if she should be involved in any difficulties anywhere…. He concluded by saying that his aim was to make peace with Britain, on a basis that she would regard compatible with her honour to accept.21
As the Battle of Britain was under way, on August 14, 1940, Hitler called his newly created field marshals into the Reich Chancellery to impress upon them that victory over Britain must not lead to a collapse of the British Empire:
Germany is not striving to smash Britain because the beneficiaries will not be Germany, but Japan in the east, Russia in India, Italy in the Mediterranean, and America in world trade. This is why peace is possible with Britain—but not so long as Churchill is prime minister. Thus we must see what the Luftwaffe can do, and wait a possible general election.22
Hitler is here telling his military high command that the air war over England, the Battle of Britain, was not designed to prepare for invasion but to bring down Churchill. From his actions in the west, from 1933 through 1939, there is compelling evidence Hitler wanted to see the British Empire endure. And if he did not wish to bring down the British Empire, how can it be argued that Hitler was out to conquer the world?
Though Hitler had exploited popular clamorings in the Sudetenland, Danzig, and Memel for a return to the Reich, he never stoked the fires of revanchism in the lands Germany lost to the west. Northern Schleswig had gone to Denmark, Eupen and Malmédy to Belgium, Alsace and Lorraine to France. Before September 1939, Hitler offered to guarantee the French-German border. He knew that to try to take ba
ck Alsace-Lorraine meant war with France, which meant war with Britain. If the price of a neutral or friendly Britain was giving up German claims to the lands lost to the West at Versailles, Hitler was prepared to pay it.
Well into the war, Hitler held on to his impossible dream of an Anglo-German alliance. To Hitler the British were a superior race and fit partner for the Germans, preferable even to his Asian ally, Japan. Denman retells a story from February of 1942:
Hitler was returning from Berlin to his East Prussian headquarters when Ribbentrop made his way along the swaying train with the news that the British had just surrendered Singapore. He had dictated a gloating announcement. Hitler tore it up. “We have to think of centuries,” he said. “Who knows, in the future the Yellow Peril may be the biggest one for us.”23
THE KRIEGSMARINE
IF HITLER ENVISIONED WAR with Britain, he would have built a navy capable of challenging Britain’s. He never did.
“The Navy—what need have we of that?” Hitler said in 1936. “I cannot conceive of a war in Europe which will hang in the balance because of a few ships.”24 “When Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939,” writes F. H. Hinsley, the history lecturer at Cambridge, in his 1951 book Hitler’s Strategy,
Germany was not ready for a major war at sea. The German surface fleet consisted of no more than 2 old battleships, 2 battle-cruisers, 3 pocket battleships, 8 cruisers and 22 destroyers…. [O]nly 57 German U-boats had been built by 1939; and only 26 of these were suitable to Atlantic operations…. [O]nly 8 or 9 [of these U-boats] could be kept in the Atlantic at a time.25
Liddell Hart, who assisted Hinsley with his book, writes:
Churchill, Hitler, and The Unnecessary War Page 32