Hitler also remained anxious about Germany’s strategic position. He was rattled by Stanley Baldwin’s parliamentary speech supporting increased RAF expenditure in the late summer and his remark that Britain’s frontier was ‘on the Rhine’. Hitler told the Reichsstatthalter in early November 1934 that this might not be ‘as critical’ as in May 1933, with the threatened Polish preventive strike, or in the summer of 1934, during the Röhm crisis, but it was still ‘not completely without risk’. It would take about another two years or so to exit the danger zone. ‘From 1936 onwards,’ he opined, ‘it is unlikely that any state will risk an attack on Germany on its own.’ Even then, Germany should concentrate on its domestic transformation. ‘The Reich government has no interest in any kind of armed conflict,’ Hitler stated, because if he were granted ‘another 10–12 years of peace’ then the construction of National Socialism could be completed. A month later, he claimed with satisfaction that ‘the French had now finally missed the opportunity to wage a preventive war’.85 There was, however, still no cause for complacency.
For this reason, Hitler continued to engage with the world outside. In November 1934, Hitler told two visiting French parliamentarians, Robert Monnier and Jean Goy, that Mein Kampf was now obsolete, that he had no territorial claims against France itself, and certainly not to Alsace-Lorraine. On his return, Goy reassured the French press that Hitler gave ‘the impression of being a balanced person’, both ‘intellectually’ and ‘morally’; he pleaded for understanding of the new Germany and the avoidance of a ‘ring of steel’ around it which would perpetuate traditional blocs.86 In December 1934, Hitler agreed to see Lord Allen of Hurtwood, a close associate of the Labour prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald, and Henri Pichot, the head of the French war veterans association.87 The latter–to whom Hitler appeared like a ‘volcano’ and a ‘hurricane’–was promised that the return of the Saar from League of Nations administration already expected for 1935 would end all territorial disputes with Germany.88 Early the following year, Hitler met with the French automobile producer Louis Renault and promised him too that all territorial disputes had now been laid aside.89 All of these moves were designed to improve the Third Reich’s global image until she was ready to take the fight to the world outside.
In the meantime, Hitler pressed ahead with revising the Versailles settlement bit by bit. His next target was the Saar region. This low-hanging fruit was due to be returned to the Reich in any case, subject to a plebiscite, fifteen years after it was removed in 1920. In early June 1934, the Council of the League of Nations announced that the vote would be held in mid January of the following year. The Saar’s importance was primarily symbolic, but its industrial capacity was also important for rearmament. Hitler saw the vote as a referendum on his regime, not least because German exiles exhorted the electorate of the Saarland to give him a bloody nose with the slogan ‘Beat Hitler on the Saar’. He appointed the local Gauleiter, Josef Bürckel, as ‘general plenipotentiary of the Reich Government for the Saar’. He also reined in the pro-Nazi Protestant Deutsche Christen, whose antics were likely to damage ‘opinion abroad and especially the German chances in the plebiscite on the Saar’.90 In January 1935, the Saar, under the eyes of an international peace force, voted overwhelmingly to return to Germany, an outcome which Nazi propaganda hailed as a thumping endorsement of Hitler and his regime.
Keen to consolidate his hold on the returned province, and anxious to appease Paris, Hitler immediately announced–again–that Germany ‘no longer had any territorial demands against France’, a phrase which referred to French lands such as Alsace-Lorraine. The following day, he repeated the sentiment to an American journalist from the Hearst organization in an interview given on the Obersalzberg. Hitler begged his interlocutor not to be taken in by the contrary assertions of the Jews, to whom he referred using a standard code. ‘I have only one request to make of the American people,’ he said, which was that they should in future ‘not believe a word of the professional international well-poisoners and agitators’ who had emigrated from Germany. The next few weeks and months were thus dominated by the usual eyewash about Hitler’s peaceful intentions. He had already told the Berlin Diplomatic Corps that ‘Germany will always be a guarantor of peace’. ‘If I speak of peace,’ he averred, ‘I am only expressing the deepest wish of the German people.’91
In March 1935, Hitler announced the reintroduction of conscription, in defiance of the provisions of the Versailles Treaty. This was another gamble, because the French and British would have been within their rights to enforce the disarmament clauses. The public reaction was anxious, and many leading Nazis expressed concern behind the scenes. ‘If the French have any élan,’ Rosenberg told Hitler, ‘the bombers should now be zooming off in Paris.’ The Führer replied simply: ‘I think we will get through.’92 Partly, he sought to reduce the risk through bluff: the announcement on conscription was accompanied by the unveiling of the new Luftwaffe, whose actual power lagged far behind the propagandistic presentation. Partly, he relied on the usual spreading of chaff to disorientate the international community. Towards the end of the month, he finally received the British foreign secretary, Sir John Simon, and the lord privy seal, Anthony Eden, with much fanfare. He had delayed their visit until after the reintroduction of conscription had been announced.93 Winifred Wagner was pressed into service to dine with her two countrymen after the negotiations; she spoke so animatedly to Simon that he was unable to eat his meal.94 Hitler also gave conciliatory interviews to the foreign, including the American, press.95 Despite his pledge to brazen things out, Hitler was in fact extremely anxious about the negative reaction to his announcement.96
This time, there was a hefty diplomatic price. Alarmed by Hitler’s latest infringement, Britain, France and Italy combined at Stresa in April 1935 to condemn Nazi Germany. The resulting ‘Stresa Front’ was a major threat to Hitler’s plans. There was also the Franco-Soviet ‘Treaty of Assistance’, which was signed in May 1935, and was entirely directed against Nazi Germany. Hitler welcomed the propagandistic benefits of the antagonism with communism, but the echoes of the pre-1914 Franco-Russian alliance surrounding Germany were worrying. One way or the other, the ring of encirclement which Hitler had so laboriously prised open in 1933–4 was now in danger of closing around Germany again.
All these concerns took a severe toll on Hitler’s private life, especially his relationship with Eva Braun. His interest in her was entirely unpolitical, and, leaving aside her role in the dynamics of Nazi court politics, in which favour and access played an important part, there is no suggestion that she affected his thinking or influenced any particular policy. At first, he saw her regularly in Munich, where she had a flat, and at the Berghof, where she was officially described as Hitler’s private secretary. In the absence of any formal status, Eva was overshadowed by Magda Goebbels, who enjoyed the status of an unofficial ‘First Lady’. To make matters worse, Eva was rejected not only by the Berghof wives, but also by Angela Raubal, Hitler’s housekeeper, and Geli’s mother. As if all this were not bad enough, Eva was upset by the interest Hitler showed in other women, especially unmarried ones like Sigrid von Laffert, a young blonde aristocrat, who was frequently seen at his side in Berlin. To cap it all, the Führer was increasingly absent as he dealt with domestic crises, or sought to find a way out of his international isolation. Eva did not see him at all for the first three months of 1935, as he sought an understanding with Britain. In late April, she lamented to her diary that ‘love does not at the moment seem to be part of his programme’.97 At the end of May 1935, she made another suicide attempt, this time taking an overdose of sleeping tablets.98 Hitler responded by increasing his attentions and banishing Angela Raubal early the next year. Eva was now, at least in her own mind, ‘the lady of the house’ at the Berghof.99
The strain also seems to have affected Hitler’s health. Since the start of 1935, he had been suffering from nightly tinnitus and hoarseness. Hitler, who was inclined to hypochondria, fe
ared the onset of throat cancer. In late May, he was operated on and had a benign vocal chord polyp removed. He slept nearly fourteen hours under anaesthetic, and took a three-month break from public speaking to allow his voice to recover.100
Hitler now sought to break up the Stresa Front. His opening came when Mussolini embarked on a confrontation with Abyssinia, from the neighbouring Italian colony of Eritrea, which finally erupted in full-scale war later in the autumn.101 This pitted Rome against Paris and London. Hitler seized the opportunity not to mend fences with Italy, which was still in bad odour over the Austrian fiasco, but to seek a rapprochement with Britain, his favoured alliance partner and in his mind a kindred power in so many ways. In June 1935, he pulled off a major coup with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. Operating with an exaggerated sense of German ship construction since 1933, London conceded that Germany could build up to 35 per cent of the British tonnage. This move split the Stresa powers, and tore another brick out of the wall which the Versailles Treaty had built around Germany.102 Its real significance, however, lay in Hitler’s belief that the agreement signalled a partition of spheres between the British Empire, whose continued dominance at sea was now officially recognized by the Reich, and Germany, which would be supreme on the continent.103 Hitler was exultant. ‘The Führer is in good form,’ Goebbels noted, and gave ‘an outline of his foreign political plans’ which involved ‘eternal alliance with Britain’, but ‘expansion towards the east’.104
The Führer also hoped that Winifred Wagner and the Mitford family would serve as a conduit to Britain. Unity owed her middle name–
‘Valkyrie’–to her grandfather Bertie Redesdale, who had adored Wagner’s music, and known his son Siegfried. Diana Mitford was later married to the British fascist leader, and Hitler enthusiast, Sir Oswald Mosley. The Führer met with Leo Amery, the future British arch anti-appeaser. ‘We got on well together I think,’ Amery recorded in his diary, ‘owing to the fundamental similarity of many of our ideas.’105 Even if the Briton was referring to the economic sphere, it was a tribute to the Führer’s capacity to win over a sceptical interlocutor. Sometime after, Hitler received the press baron Lord Rothermere on the Obersalzberg as if he were ‘a prince’.106
In the summer of 1935, American protestors against Nazi anti-Semitism boarded a German ship in New York and tore down its flag, much to Hitler’s outrage. In late August, Schacht warned–not for the first time–of the economic costs of Hitler’s anti-Semitism. He demanded that the legal position of Jews be regulated once and for all, in order to avoid disruptive popular anti-Semitic excesses. Hitler reacted by issuing a strict instruction that ‘individual actions’ by party members and organizations against the Jews should cease. Violations should be reported to him instantly; transgressors would be treated as ‘provocateurs, rebels and enemies of the state’.107 This ordinance was, however, only a temporary measure until the systematic legal clarification demanded by Schacht had been put in place. Under pressure, Hitler suddenly decided to announce this at the forthcoming annual party rally. At very short notice, the Interior Ministry and its experts were convened in Nuremberg to thrash out a new discriminatory programme against the Jews.108 Hitler reviewed all proposals himself. Then the Reichstag was hastily convened and presented with the resulting ‘Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour’.
The resulting ‘Nuremberg Laws’, as they became collectively known, represented a substantial radicalization of Jewish policy.109 Marriages between Jews and citizens of ‘German or racially related blood’ were declared illegal. Extramarital sexual relations between the two groups were also banned. Under the Reich Flag Law, Jews were forbidden from raising the imperial and the (black, white and red) national flag and from showing the national colours, and thus effectively extruded from the national community. Infringements were to be punished with heavy prison sentences. The Reich Citizenship Law determined that citizenship was restricted to those ‘of German or racially related blood’ who had ‘shown through their behaviour that they were willing and suited loyally to serve the German people and Reich’. All others were classed as merely ‘belonging to the state’, and thus as second-class citizens. The purpose of these measures, as the preamble laid out, was to restore ‘the purity of blood [as] the precondition for the continued existence of the German people’ and the safeguarding of ‘the German nation for all times’.
Central to the whole project was the definition of who was ‘a Jew’ and who was ‘a German’, and how to categorize the people who were neither clearly one nor the other. The legislation introduced to purge the civil service of Jews in 1933, the ‘Aryan paragraph’, had defined very restrictively all those as ‘non-Aryan’ who had a Jewish parent or grandparent. The Nuremberg Laws, on the face of it, actually eased the situation, by introducing greater latitude and greater precision. They no longer distinguished between so-called Aryans and non-Aryans, but between Germans and ‘related’ people on the one side and various supposed types of Jews on the other. Those with three or more Jewish grandparents were categorized as Jews, pure and simple. Those with two Jewish grandparents were classed as ‘half caste of the first degree’. They were stamped as ‘identifying’ or ‘counting’ as Jews, and treated as full Jews, only if they were or became religiously observant Jews; were married to or subsequently married a Jew; were the product of a marriage with a full Jew contracted after the laws had been announced; or were the product of an extramarital liaison with a Jew.110
Brutal and comprehensive though the legislation was, it did not represent the most radical options on the table at the time.111 Hitler, in fact, did not always opt for the broadest definition of what constituted a Jew, and by introducing an element of voluntarism incentivized behavioural change in what would otherwise have been a supposedly biologically determined hierarchy. So far as the author is aware, Hitler never knowingly compromised on ‘full’ Jews,112 but he showed flexibility on ‘half castes’ and ‘counted Jews’. Moreover, he subsequently approved many exceptions from the application of the rules, something which he alone could do.113 This represented, to be sure, a further arbitrary element in what was already a very arbitrary system. Hitler’s purpose here, though, was not simply the exercise of the Führer’s will for the sake of it, or to make tactical exceptions for personal reasons, though these also took place, especially where artists, or the relatives of ‘high-ups’, were concerned. Rather, whatever his later dismissive comments about ‘half castes’, it seems he was as genuinely concerned to preserve the ‘valuable’ racial elements as he was to eliminate ‘harmful’ ones.
The Führer also adopted a relatively open position on what constituted a German, explicitly placing peoples of ‘racially related blood’ on an equal basis. These were defined as ‘peoples living in defined areas within Europe’ and ‘those of their descendants in non-European parts of the world which had kept themselves racially pure’.114 The reference to overseas populations probably reflected Hitler’s preoccupation with German emigration to the United States and the British Empire, and his respect for supposed American racial value generally. What is striking, though, is the relatively inclusive definition of ‘racially related’, which mirrored that of the State Hereditary Farm Law. It embraced not only the Dutch, Scandinavians and French, but also Poles, Czechs and Russians; there is no trace, as yet, of any anti-Slavic hauteur. The reasons for this flexibility are not hard to divine, as they reflect Hitler’s longstanding anxiety about the quality of the German people. Given the limited racial material available to him, the Führer could not afford to be too choosy. If one tugged too strongly on the various supposed racial skeins in the German Volk, too quickly, its whole fabric would probably unravel.
Hitler showed very little interest in people of colour, because he did not regard them as autonomous agents in the international conspiracy against Germany. To be sure, the American anti-miscegenation laws provided stimulus to Nazi racists. German bureaucrats specifically drew on the United States, rather than the
ir own colonial experience, when putting forward their proposals to discriminate against Jews and people of colour. The American example proved of limited use, however, because Jews were far better integrated into pre-1933 Germany than blacks were in the United States.115 The rigorous application of the American ‘one drop’ rule would have torn German society apart. An ‘Octoroon’ might be beyond the pale on the far side of the Atlantic, but Hitler was not yet ready to write off everybody with seven-eighths of ‘Aryan’ blood. Besides, Hitler had little interest in blacks in general, and none in African-Americans. His admiration for US racism rested on the restrictive immigration laws, which had primarily been directed against eastern European Jews. While blacks and others were often caught in the crossfire, Hitler’s first racial laws were directed only against Jews.116
In October 1935, therefore, Bormann let it be known that ‘the Führer does not wish’ that black people from the former German colonies living in the Reich, ‘most of whom had fought for Germany’, should be hindered in their attempts ‘to find work and bread’, or indeed ‘harassed in any other way’.117 For all the hardship blacks suffered under National Socialism, the contrast with the treatment of the Jews is striking.118 There was never any systematic internment of blacks in Nazi Germany.119 The antithesis to the ‘Aryan’ or ‘German’ body was not the black body, but the ‘Jewish’ body.120 Everyday racism was not the same as a genocidal world view. Hitler seems to have rated Arabs, Persians and Indians more highly, but he also did not take them very seriously, at least for now. His entourage responded to periodic visits from Middle Eastern nationalists with neither sympathy nor hostility, but hilarity.121 One way or the other, for Hitler the great struggle was between Jew and German, and ultimately between Teuton and Anglo-Saxon.
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