Hitler

by Brendan Simms

  The atmosphere at the 1937 rally was electric. One eyewitness described a ‘mass hysteria’ and ‘delirium’ with constant shouting and exclamations of ‘Heil’. When Hitler passed through in triumph, even the foreign guests were overwhelmed, with many being moved to tears, or joining in the salutes. The Führer welcomed selected outside dignitaries at the castle over breakfast–it is clear that much of the spectacle was designed to impress them. The Corps Diplomatique attended en gros for the first time, another triumph.128 All seemed well.

  No sooner had the Nuremberg rally ended than Hitler looked forward to the next pageant, which was the return visit by Mussolini to Germany.129 It took the Duce from Munich to Berlin, to military manoeuvres in the Baltic. Every stage of his progress was carefully choreographed, right down to the moment when the Hitler’s train, which had run on parallel tracks with Mussolini’s for the final stretch, pulled ahead, allowing the German dictator to greet his visitor in the imperial capital; perhaps there was also a suggestion that Nazi Germany had overtaken fascist Italy.130 Nothing was left to chance. The acclamation and enthusiasm on display were carefully staged; workers were given the day off to cheer.131 Very little of substance appears to have been discussed during these days, but that was not really the point. The purpose of the whole exercise was primarily performative: an opportunity for Hitler to showcase his achievements, to assert his dominance over the more ‘senior’ dictator and to present a common front to the world through a ‘face-to-face’ diplomacy which challenged the prevailing culture of liberal internationalism in Europe.132 In early November, the Duce joined the Anti-Comintern Pact, but a full-scale military alliance with Rome had to wait another eighteen months.

  If Hitler had hoped to use the visit to push his claims to Austria, he was disappointed. Mussolini’s train stopped symbolically at the Brenner on the Austro-Italian border. At Innsbruck, the Duce alighted to greet the Austrian foreign minister. It was reported that Mussolini had been handed a letter from the widow of Engelbert Dollfuss, Italy’s dead ally, murdered by Nazis during their abortive coup in 1934.133 For Berlin, the symbolism of these moves was clear. Hitler had already promised Mussolini not to undertake any further moves in Austria without consulting him. Now the Führer let it be known to the Foreign Office and Göring, who he felt was pursuing an ‘overly aggressive policy’, that there was no intention on his side to ‘precipitate a crisis’. Instead, Hitler wanted to ‘continue to pursue an evolutionary solution’.134

  Time, it seemed, was still on Hitler’s side. More time was needed for rearmament, and for Austria to fall into his lap. The racial elevation of Germany required even more time. Hitler had not yet completely given up hope of securing his objectives if not with, then at least not against, Britain. He might threaten war, as a bluff, but he did not really want it yet. ‘You know,’ he reassured his party audience in late April 1937, ‘I always go to the limit, but not beyond.’135 The time was not yet ripe to precipitate a confrontation. He did not want the ‘threatened world catastrophe’ to burst upon him ‘too early’. Rather, Hitler stressed, Germany needed peace, a ‘period of tranquillity’, which was ‘necessary in order to let people and state mature politically, psychologically and militarily’. There was, in other words, no rush.

  In the autumn of 1937, unbeknown to the vast majority of Germans, and indeed the world at large, Hitler suddenly increased the tempo.136 He decided not merely to begin, but to effect secular change.137 Hitler would be present at the future. Time speeded up. Exactly when or why this happened cannot be determined with absolute certainty. Part of the explanation lies in Hitler’s increased sense of mortality, a fear on his part that illness or assassination might end his life prematurely.138 Contemporaries noted that he would now frequently use the expression ‘so long as I live’.139 The principal reason, though, seems to have been Hitler’s realization that the conflict with the United States, and perhaps with Anglo-America generally, which he had hoped to avoid, or at least to delay as long as possible, was now much closer than he had previously thought. One way or the other, time was no longer on Hitler’s side. What needed to be done had to be done quickly, with the instruments he had, rather than those he would have liked to have had.

  The breach seems to date from the first week of October, when Roosevelt launched a fierce attack on the dictatorships.140 On 5 October 1937, FDR gave a speech at Chicago targeting ‘the epidemic of world lawlessness’, leaving his audience in no doubt that he meant Japan, Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. ‘When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread,’ he continued, ‘the community… joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease.’ If this was not done, Roosevelt warned, ‘let no one imagine that America will escape… that this Western Hemisphere will not be attacked and that it will continue tranquilly and peacefully to carry on the ethics and the arts of civilization’. When pressed by reporters to clarify his remarks, the president admitted that they indicated ‘an attitude’ rather than outlining a programme, but the general drift was clear.141 He had defined the dictatorships as the ‘other’ of the United States, and the language of disease and quarantine, which immediately gave the speech its name, suggested a ‘medicalization’ of American rhetoric against the Third Reich. Roosevelt was systematically preparing American public opinion for war with Germany.142 The Quarantine Speech started a duel between FDR and the Führer which culminated in a full-scale exchange of broadsides eighteen months later, before the Second World War started, and long before the United States itself became a belligerent.

  The Quarantine Speech made a deep impression on Hitler.143 He was particularly upset by the fact that Roosevelt seemed to include the Soviet Union among his democratic friends against the Axis. Hitler attributed the president’s belligerence to his alleged need to disguise economic failures through foreign political adventures, a theme to which he would return repeatedly over the next six years. He did not respond publicly, and indeed instructed that the temperature be lowered by the German press, but the Führer did react behind the scenes. On 6 October 1937, the day after Roosevelt’s speech, he wrote to Baron von Rechenberg, a former diplomat, to ask for further copies of his incendiary pamphlet–entitled Roosevelt–Amerika–eine Gefahr–denouncing Roosevelt as a puppet of the Jews.144 Nine days later, Hitler instructed that Ribbentrop and Goebbels be supplied with copies.145 Rechenberg’s diatribe, which contrasted the ‘real Americans’ of white origin with the malevolent Jewish lobby controlling Roosevelt, matched and substantiated Hitler’s own repeatedly stated views more or less exactly.146 At around the same time, Hitler gave the go-ahead for a massive propaganda campaign against Czechoslovakia. It began on 8 October, three days after the Quarantine Speech.147 The pace now quickened across the board.

  The looming confrontation with the United States did not make it any less of a model for Hitler. On the contrary, in the late summer and autumn of 1937, Speer’s collaborator and confidant Rudolf Wolters was sent to the other side of the Atlantic to study urban layouts there.148 The sketches and photos he sent to Hitler were revealing of the Third Reich’s preoccupation with the New World, and showed the extent to which the plans for Berlin were influenced by the Washington model. Wolters was in charge of the planning for the new ‘North–South axis’ in Hitler’s monumental Germania project. He was unimpressed by American cities–‘wild and lacking in order’–with one exception. This was Washington, especially the area south of the White House, which Wolters deemed remarkable.149 The sketch of the Lincoln Memorial and reflecting pool he sent to the Führer was revealingly entitled ‘East–West Axis’, surely an echo of Hitler’s planned ‘North–South Axis’. Many of the proportions of governmental architecture which he studied in the United States were to be found, several orders of magnitude larger, in the plans for the North–South axis.150 Hitler also read independently about American buildings. When Wiedemann visited the US in late 1937, he brought back architectural books for the Führ
er, whose ambition was to counter the German ‘inferiority complex’. The gigantism of Hitler’s vision for Germany was primarily driven by his preoccupation with the size of the United States and its monuments.151 The new Berlin, in other words, was being designed to equal and surpass not just its European rivals but Washington, D.C.

  A similar dynamic was at play in the Führer’s plans to transform Hamburg, which he believed already had ‘something American’ about it.152 If Washington was the model for Berlin, New York was the inspiration for Hamburg. Earlier that year, Hitler had met the representatives of the city in the Imperial Chancellery, where models of the planned bridge across the Elbe and the new shoreline development as well as detailed plans were on display in the hall. ‘From the bridge over the Elbe upwards,’ he said, ‘the World City of Hamburg begins.’ What Hitler wanted was something of ‘monumental character’, which when lit at night would create ‘an overwhelming sight’.153 His main audience here was Anglo-America, as visitors from overseas usually entered Germany via Hamburg. Hitler later told the visiting Austrian chancellor, Schuschnigg, that he wanted to impress Americans on arrival with the building prowess of the Third Reich.154 The plans were announced publicly in the summer, and in the autumn of 1937 Konstanty Gutschow, the architect tasked with designing the party headquarters skyscraper, went to the United States to study structures such as the Empire State Building in New York.155

  Hitler’s ambivalence about the United States was epitomized by his uncertainty over whether Germany should be represented at the next International Exhibition, which was slated for New York in 1939. It made sense to follow up the Reich’s success at Paris with a barnstorming performance on the other side of the Atlantic. Wiedemann, Speer and many others were very keen, but Hitler hesitated.156 The problem was that the fair made little economic sense, as German trade with the United States had slumped since the trade treaty between the two states had expired two years earlier. Moreover, in the Nazi imaginary New York was the belly of the capitalist and Jewish beast. The Propaganda Ministry and the Foreign Office both argued against participation on the grounds that it would simply allow local critics like Mayor La Guardia to grandstand against the regime. Towards the end of the year, Hitler finally decided to veto the German participation.157 He would not take his message to the New World, but engage with it on his own terms on the near side of the Atlantic. Hitler’s world was beginning to contract.

  Returning to Berlin at the end of October 1937, Hitler held two hugely important meetings. The first, on 29 October, was with the NSDAP Propagandaleiter. He told them that he did ‘not have long to live by human calculation’. He explained this not with reference to any illness, which might have alarmed his audience, but with reference to the fact that members of his family tended not to live very long. Both his parents, he added, had died early. For this reason, Hitler continued, it was ‘necessary to solve the problems which needed to be solved as soon as possible’, that is, ‘within his lifetime’. ‘Only’ he, the Führer stressed, was in the position to ensure this.158 Hitler was putting his audience on notice that time was about to speed up. A watershed had been reached.

  The second meeting was held in the Imperial Chancellery on 5 November and resulted in the famous ‘Hossbach Memorandum’.159 It should not be understood as inaugurating a new phase in Hitler’s policy, but as reflecting a recent shift. The immediate purpose of the meeting, which took place at Blomberg’s request, was to discuss the allocation of raw materials to the Wehrmacht, a key question which could only be resolved on the basis of the Führer’s overall strategy. This Hitler set out in considerable detail, making clear that his remarks were intended as a guide to ‘long-term German policy’ and as his ‘legacy for the event of his death’. The tension between Hitler’s long-time horizon and the possibility of his death was evident. Nothing in the following grand strategic vision was new, indeed it had been rehearsed by Hitler ad nauseam since the 1920s. The main aim of German policy, he said, was ‘securing and increasing’ the numbers of the Volk, which was a ‘question of space’. The German people, Hitler argued, were crammed together in central Europe and needed more space. The alternative of autarchy or international trade was rejected, as it was very difficult to achieve with regard to raw materials and simply impossible in terms of food security. Hitler’s conclusion was that ‘The future of Germany could only be determined by the solution of the question of space,’ which must be sought for ‘a period of one to three generations’.

  The main powers to be taken into account ‘today’, Hitler continued, were England, France, Russia [sic] and the smaller neighbouring states. What was striking about this assessment was not so much the much greater attention given to Britain than any other power, as the fact that the United States does not appear to feature in his calculations. There could be many reasons for this, but the most obvious is that the crucial word was ‘today’. As we shall see, Hitler remained preoccupied with the sheer size of the United States at this time, but it was not the point at issue in the meeting, which was concerned with the near future, and the immediate neighbourhood. Hitler would deal with Europe ‘today’ and with the world–that is, the United States–tomorrow. The meeting was not called to unveil Hitler’s well-known long-term ambition, which was to confront or at least balance the United States, but to set out the short-term steps required to make the medium-term conquest of Lebensraum in Russia possible. Hitler had moved from contemplating a more distant global future, to the immediate solution of a pressing problem on the continent. This could only be done through ‘force’ and that path, he warned, was ‘never without risk’. Frederick the Great and Bismarck, Hitler explained, had also acted in ‘an unbelievably risky manner’. That being so, he claimed, the only questions that remained to be addressed were the ‘when’ and the ‘how’.

  Hitler envisaged three scenarios. Under the first, the latest date for action would be 1943–5, because ‘thereafter one could only expect things to develop to [Germany’s] disadvantage’. The Wehrmacht, he claimed, was as ready as it would ever be. Within a few years the qualitative edge in equipment and the quantitative advantage in mobilization would be lost. The Reich would be vulnerable to a ‘food crisis’, because there were insufficient reserves of food and of foreign exchange to buy it. Herein, Hitler admitted, lay a potential ‘moment of weakness for the regime’. He also warned of the ‘prospect of declining living standards and birth rates’. This was a striking admission that his project of racial elevation and multiplication through a higher standard of living had stalled. Moreover, the outside world had woken up to the danger–a reference to western rearmament but also Roosevelt’s rhetoric–and was beginning to prepare itself for the conflict ahead. Developmental time and military time were now running against Germany. For all these reasons, Hitler said that if he were ‘still alive’ then, it would be his ‘final decision to solve the German problem of space by 1943–5 at the latest’.

  There were two other scenarios, in which decisive action either could or would have to be taken earlier. One was a domestic French collapse, or France’s distraction by a war with another state, which would leave Germany free to act. In that event, his first priority would be ‘to crush Czechoslovakia and simultaneously Austria in order to secure the flanks of any move against the west’. The aim here was not the acquisition of Lebensraum. In a prefiguring of his wartime plans, Hitler argued that the capture of the densely settled–his exact words were ‘not thinly’–Czechoslovakia and Austria would only be a net gain if 2 million people could be expelled from the former and a million from the latter. Rather, the move was a shaping operation designed to pre-empt a French- or British-inspired Czech attack on Germany’s southern flank. Hitler was also concerned to deter Poland, which he did not entirely trust, from taking advantage of Germany’s difficulty. There was no sense at all, however, that he was planning an attack on Poland himself, quite the opposite. Hitler’s third and final scenario concerned the possibility of a war arising out of a confront
ation in the Mediterranean.

  To his immense frustration, Hitler was strongly contradicted by the military men and the Foreign Office. It was not that they objected to the Lebensraum conception–with which they had been familiar at the very latest since Hitler’s secret speech to the generals in February 1933. They were highly sceptical, however, that Britain and France would allow Austria or Czechoslovakia to be occupied unopposed. Blomberg and Fritsch both stressed that the Wehrmacht was not yet in a position to fight any resulting war with the western powers.

  After the meeting in the Imperial Chancellery, Hitler began to put his new strategy into effect. That very same day, he met with representatives of the Polish minority within the Reich and with the Polish ambassador Lipski.160 The Polish alliance remained central to his vision. Over the next year or so, Hitler continued to emphasize the mutual respect between Poland and Germany, and to praise the memory of Marshal Piłsudski as a ‘towering personality’ who had recognized the necessity of a rapprochement.161 On the day following the meeting, Mussolini finally joined the Anti-Comintern Pact. Shortly after, Hitler met the Hungarian prime minister as part of his plan to isolate Austria and the Czechs. The Hungarians were told to concentrate their demands on the Czechs and leave the Yugoslavs alone. In late December, the army issued a new instruction for a war in the south-east, entitled Fall Grün. At around the same time, the expansion of the Luftwaffe and the navy was put on hold, and expenditure on the army was increased.162 All of this was consistent with a plan to crush Austria and Czechoslovakia quickly, when the opportunity presented itself, and to launch a land war of conquest against the Soviet Union, within eight years.