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Taken together, therefore, the Nuremberg Laws were both a radicalization and a regularization of Hitler’s racial policy. They were not necessarily conceived as the first step towards an imminent, or even a distant, physical extermination of the Jews through murderous means. Rather, Hitler explicitly stated in his address to an extraordinary meeting of the Reichstag in Nuremberg that the laws were intended to be a final resolution (‘a unique secular solution’) of the racial question.122 This was a gradualist vision, in keeping with the thrust of steps taken since the takeover of power. Towards the end of the year, Hitler explained his position to Justice Minister Gürtner in a meeting to discuss the future of Jews in the professions. When Gürtner offered him a choice between immediately rescinding all licences, doing so piecemeal on a discretionary basis and a ‘solution of the problem through natural means, that is through letting them die out’, the Führer’s response was instructive. When he was informed that the ‘natural’ route would take at most a few decades, he instructed that there should for now be no further measures against Jews working in the free professions.123 Given time, the existing measures would take their course, gradually extruding Jews from national life, while the supposedly positive measures of racial elevation slowly lifted the German people to a higher racial plane.
The new laws not only increased the pressure on Germany’s already hard-pressed Jews, but also created a diplomatic and bureaucratic nightmare as individuals and countries scrambled to establish their racial classification. Egyptians were told that they would be treated ‘not according to their citizenship but according to their race’, and that marriages between non-Jewish Egyptians and Germans would be permitted on the same basis as those between other Europeans and non-Jewish Germans.124 When the Turkish embassy and other interested Turkish parties enquired as to their status, they were reassured that ‘the Turkish people were regarded as a European people in Germany’, and that they would be treated accordingly under the racial laws.125 With respect to Turks, therefore, the Third Reich was somewhat to the left of the German far right today.
More serious was the reaction in Britain and the United States, where the Nuremberg Laws were widely condemned in press and parliament. Hitler’s immediate worry here was that the laws would lead to a boycott of the Olympic Games in Berlin, scheduled for the following year, with the winter games due to start within a few months. Shortly before they were proclaimed, he was told by the visiting former American ambassador Charles H. Sherrill that the anti-Semitism of the regime was seriously damaging its image in the United States. Sherrill obligingly spoke in some detail about the power of American Jews, who numbered some 5 million in total, about half of them in New York, where they made up about a third of the population. Despite being boycotted by many clubs and in society, he continued, their power in the press was considerable. As for politics, Sherrill stressed that there were two Jews in the cabinet: Frances Perkins, minister for labour, and Henry Morgenthau, at the Treasury, and that New York was run by Fiorello La Guardia, described as ‘a Jew’ with a Jewish wife. As a result, Sherrill warned, there was a real danger that Jewish groups would achieve an international boycott of the forthcoming games.126 All this, of course, was grist to Hitler’s mill. It confirmed his longstanding belief of the power of international Jewry in the United States and its malicious intent towards Germany.
On the eve of the start of the Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in February 1936, Hitler was shocked to hear of the murder of Wilhelm Gustloff, the head of the Swiss branch of the Foreign Section of the NSDAP. He was gunned down in Davos by the Croatian Jewish student David Frankfurter; the event was very widely reported on and discussed in the world media.127 Gustloff had been a tireless promoter of anti-Semitism and Nazi ideology in Switzerland. Hitler saw his assassination as part of a wider Jewish conspiracy against the Reich. His response was superficially ‘measured’–so as not to overshadow the Olympics–but the message was unmistakable. In his funeral oration at Schwerin, Hitler claimed that world Jewry had now thrown off the mask. He identified the ‘directing hand, which has organized this crime’ and would organize future crimes. ‘This time,’ he continued, ‘the carrier of these deeds has appeared in person for the first time.’ He vowed to pick up the gauntlet. ‘We understand the challenge,’ he said, ‘and we accept it.’128
Things were looking up with regard to Britain. King George V of England died in late January 1936, an event which Hitler registered with interest.129 His successor, Edward VIII, was not only politically engaged but an admirer of Nazi Germany and a fervent anti-Semite. Hitler was well aware of this, and noted with interest reports that the new king disapproved of French attempts to revive the Entente Cordiale against Germany, that he had considerable sympathy for Germany’s situation, and–perhaps most importantly of all–that he disagreed with his father’s view that the monarch should unquestionably accept the decisions of the cabinet.130 Hitler’s hopes of persuading Britain surged once more. In early February 1936, he received the former minister for air, Lord Londonderry.131 ‘How often,’ Hitler remarked to him, ‘did I tell myself as a simple soldier during the world war, when I was deployed opposite the British forces, that it was absolutely insane to fight against these people, who could have been members of our own nation.’ ‘This sort of thing’, he added, ‘must never repeat itself.’132
On mainland Europe, however, the strategic situation of the Reich was deteriorating. Hitler had by now largely accepted that the hoped-for British alliance was beyond his grasp and was coming around to the view that he would have to achieve his aims if not against the British, then without them.133 The Russo-French alliance concluded the previous year was wending its way towards inevitable ratification by the parliament in Paris. Taken together with the Russo-Czech military relationship, this threatened Germany on two sides, causing Hitler to worry, for the first time, about Soviet military power rather than just the generic threat of ‘Bolshevism’. ‘The Führer is seriously wrestling with himself,’ Goebbels noted in his diary, on the very last day of February, because ‘the Russian treaty has been accepted in the chamber [of Deputies] in Paris’ and ‘only’ needed to pass the ‘senate’.134 Hitler wanted to remilitarize the Rhineland in response so as to create a larger buffer against France, and to consolidate his grip on a vital sector of the German rearmament effort.
In the first days of March Hitler steeled himself to act. Once he had taken the decision, Hitler affected resolution. ‘His face radiates calm and determination,’ Goebbels noted, ‘another critical moment has come, but now action must be taken.’ ‘The world belongs to the courageous,’ he continued, ‘those who do not dare anything, do not win anything either’. The following day, Hitler met with Göring, Ribbentrop and the Reichswehr leadership in the Imperial Chancellery. He announced his intention to remilitarize the Rhineland, executing all necessary preparations in complete secrecy. To throw Paris off the scent, Hitler gave a conciliatory interview to the French press. He disregarded all voices counselling caution, especially those from the military.135 On 7 March, the bloodless remilitarization of the Rhineland went ahead, accompanied by a memorandum to the Locarno powers justifying the move as a response to their alleged violations of the pact, a summoning of the Reichstag and the announcement of a general election–in effect a plebiscite–‘which would give the German people an opportunity to approve his policy and measures’.136 This was coupled to an offer to negotiate a mutually demilitarized zone with France and Belgium, a non-aggression pact with those states, and various other meaningless gambits designed to simulate goodwill.137
The world held its breath and waited to see how the great powers would react to a flagrant breach not only of the Versailles Treaty but also of the Locarno agreements. It soon became clear that Hitler had once again read the position correctly. The Americans were largely unconcerned; the French and British did not move. The British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, announced that ‘it is the appeasement of Europe as a whole that we have co
nstantly before us’ and therefore called for ‘a calmer and quieter atmosphere’ in which to explore new relationships with Germany. King Edward VIII made no secret of his view that no action should be taken against Germany. Winston Churchill was one of the few to lament the loss of a ‘bulwark’ and warned that Hitler was ‘proceeding night and day and is steadily converting nearly seventy millions of the most efficient race in Europe into one gigantic, hungry war-machine’. Without Britain, France could or would do nothing. ‘Dans le domaine du bluff,’ Gamelin later remarked ruefully, Hitler ‘était plus fort que nous.’138
More broadly, Hitler wanted to improve the image of the Third Reich worldwide, and particularly in Anglo-America.139 In the short term, he hoped to do this through the Berlin Olympics. Over the longer term, he wanted to remodel Hamburg, the first glimpse most overseas visitors–the vast majority of whom arrived by ship–would get of the Third Reich. Hitler pushed an ambitious programme of construction designed to turn Hamburg into a port metropolis to rival New York. In June 1936, he announced that the creation of the new ‘Führer City Hamburg’ would involve a shift in the centre of gravity from its existing focus around the Binnenalster to the Elbe waterfront at Altona. It was to be dominated by one of Hitler’s pet projects, the largest suspension bridge in the world, with one level for cars and another for trains, gigantic skyscrapers, including a 250-metre high Gauhochhaus, inspired by the Chrysler Building in New York and the Field Building in Chicago, and a Volkshalle which could accommodate 150,000 people.140
If Hitler was conscious of the need to deploy ‘soft power’, he did not neglect the more traditional coercive instruments available to him. In mid June 1936, he issued a ‘Decree on the Establishment of a Chief of the German Police’, designed to effect the ‘unified concentration of all police tasks in the Reich’.141 This combined all the main German security agencies, the Gestapo, the Sicherheitspolizei, and the Sicherheitsdienst, under the control of Heinrich Himmler, and his deputy, Reinhard Heydrich. Nominally, Himmler was subject to the authority of the minister of the interior, Wilhelm Frick, but in practice he now held the absolute police power in Germany, responsible only to Hitler himself.
In the late summer of 1936, the Führer was all set to put on a show for the German people and the world at large, beginning with the first half of the Bayreuth Festival in late July, followed by two weeks of the Olympic Games in early August, before returning to the second half of the Bayreuth Festival. Hitler agreed to this cumbersome arrangement in order to facilitate the many visitors expected for the Olympics, some of whom he hoped to attract to Bayreuth. This would be followed by the party rally in the first fortnight of September, the first since the remilitarization of the Rhineland. An integrated programme of culture, sport and rhetoric would demonstrate the distance travelled in the four years between the seizure of power in 1933 and the Parteitag der Ehre at which the Führer would celebrate the restoration of German ‘honour both at home and abroad’. It would also provide him with an opportunity to influence visiting foreign dignitaries, especially from Anglo-America.
Hitler’s enjoyment of the Bayreuth Festival was overshadowed, for the second time in two years, by external events. Earlier that summer, the Spanish nationalist General Francisco Franco had risen in revolt against the Republican government in Madrid, plunging Spain into civil war. By the end of July, the nationalists were in severe difficulties, with much of their force cut off in Morocco by the Republican navy. Increasingly alarmed, members of the NSDAP’s Foreign Section–with the blessing of their chief, Wilhelm Bohle, who probably wanted to raise his profile against the Foreign Office–sought out Hitler in Bayreuth and handed him a personal letter from Franco asking for military aid.142 The Führer, who astonished his interlocutors with his detailed knowledge of Spanish politics and history, as well as the actual state of play on the ground, reacted swiftly, ordering the dispatch of German transport planes to airlift the Spanish Foreign Legion from Morocco to the Iberian Peninsula. Göring was not best pleased by this first mission for the Luftwaffe, and nor were either Ribbentrop, or the Foreign Office, which would have preferred to remain completely on the sidelines,143 but Hitler insisted.
The reason why Hitler intervened in Spain was not economic, although the resources of the Iberian Peninsula were important to German rearmament,144 but geo-ideological. He told Ribbentrop ‘that Germany could not tolerate a communist Spain under any circumstances’. Given the internal state of France, he continued, articulating a kind of Nazi ‘domino-theory’, it would only be a matter of time before the conflagration spread to and consumed France. In that event, Hitler feared, Germany would be ‘encircled’ between the French communists and the Soviet Union.145 What was striking about the episode was Hitler’s ability to take important decisions quickly, and to either persuade or override doubters. It also precipitated–or reflected–an increased sense of the Soviet threat in particular and that of communism more generally. For the first time ever, Hitler seems genuinely to have feared a Soviet attack. In mid August, he even asked Rosenberg to make some propagandistic preparations in the event of a Russian surprise attack.146
Hitler did not place much faith in Rosenberg’s schemes. Instead, he advanced on two other fronts. In mid August 1936, Hitler appointed Ribbentrop ambassador to London in the hope that his business connections would help in establishing a rapport there.147 He also stepped up the pace of rearmament. In the summer of 1936, the army presented plans for a massive expansion of the Wehrmacht by 1940 to field a striking force larger than that which had taken the field against France in 1914. A substantial proportion of funds were earmarked for fortifications and for horse-transport rather than motor vehicles. The High Command, and probably Hitler himself, envisaged a long, conventional war, rather than a Blitzkrieg.148 This meant that an even greater proportion of German industry would have to be devoted to military purposes. The problem was that the economy was already struggling with the demands of rearmament, especially the question of how to pay for the necessary raw material imports, and indeed the whole programme. In the late summer and autumn of 1936, both Schacht and the commissioner for price stability, the Leipzig mayor Carl Goerdeler, increased their warnings that the existing fiscal and monetary imbalances were unsustainable.
Hitler responded with a memorandum on the ‘Four Year Plan’ for Germany, setting out both his economic vision and his grand strategy.149 The problem, he argued, was that Germany was ‘overpopulated’ and could not ‘feed itself’. This situation was aggravated by rising ‘living standards’ which were leading to an ‘increased and understandable run on the food market’. Simply reducing that standard, however, was not an option because the resulting ‘malnutrition’ would exclude a substantial and ‘valuable’ portion of the population from the ‘body politic of the nation’; it would reverse his gradual policy of racial elevation. Indeed, Hitler continued, ‘the precondition for normal consumption’ was the ‘integration of all Germans into the economy’. Here Hitler was merely restating his view that the establishment of a consumer society was necessary to the improvement of Germany’s racial stock. The difficulty, he claimed, was that while the supply of consumer goods could be substantially increased, that of foodstuffs and raw materials could not. ‘A lasting solution,’ he argued, and here Hitler was once again merely repeating what he had been saying for a decade, lay in the ‘expansion of the living space’, that is of the ‘raw material and sustenance basis of our people’. ‘It is the task of the political leadership,’ Hitler went on, ‘to solve this question one day.’
In the meantime, Germany would have to find ‘temporary relief within the framework of today’s economy’. ‘Because the sustenance of the German people will be increasingly dependent on imports,’ he argued, and they were also dependent on foreign raw materials, such imports must be encouraged ‘with all means’. The obvious solution, increasing German exports, Hitler rejected as ‘theoretically possible, but unlikely in practical terms’ because ‘Germany does not exp
ort into a political or economic void, but into extremely contested areas’. He also refused to use valuable foreign exchange to pay for food imports, because it was needed to buy raw materials for the armaments programme. He therefore expressed his intention to ride roughshod over ‘the interests of individual gentlemen’, signalling that henceforth the ‘self-preservation’ of the German people trumped that of private enterprise. Strikingly, Hitler made the Jews ‘answerable’ for any damage they might inflict on the German economy, another instance of his determination to treat them as ‘hostages’.150 No doubt invoking the spirit of Stalin’s Five Year Plans, Hitler called for a ‘multi-year plan’ which would ‘make our national economy independent of the outside world’. He concluded with the demand that both the German army and the German economy must be ready for war in ‘four years’ time’.
The casualty of all this, in terms of high politics, was Schacht.151 Hitler only informed him of the Four Year Plan on the eve of its public announcement at the party congress in early September 1936.152 From Hitler’s point of view, Schacht had served his purpose and was now largely redundant. He had provided stability at the start of the regime, settled the foreign debt question, decoupled Germany from the world economy and dependence on the United States, and reoriented German trade towards more pliable partners within Europe, especially the Balkans. Schacht’s departure was now simply a matter of time, his continuance in office a mere sop to world opinion. ‘The Führer is very sceptical about Schacht,’ Goebbels noted later in the year, ‘but he will not release him from responsibility for reasons of foreign policy.’153