South of the Brenner nothing stirred. Mussolini gave the Führer a finger, and he took the whole hand. Hitler had read the Duce correctly. His relief was palpable. ‘’I will never never forget this,’ he assured Mussolini, a message conveyed by Prince Philipp of Hesse over the phone. The great powers did not retaliate either, even though the Anschluss was another direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles; Great Britain and France merely lodged lukewarm protests against German pressure on Austria on 11 March. ‘They said England would be there to stop me,’ Hitler later remarked, ‘but the only English person I saw there [Unity Mitford] was on my side.’26 The Führer had got away with it again. Whatever the input of other Nazi leaders, and Göring seems to have been particularly hawkish, the decision to risk the Anschluss was Hitler’s alone to take.27 Fewer than six weeks after the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis, he had once again gripped a dangerous situation, and turned it to his own advantage. Hitler had not intentionally made, but had seized, exactly the sort of ‘opportunity’ he had envisaged five months earlier in the Imperial Chancellery.
If the west had not reacted to the Anschluss, it had not gone unnoticed. Relations with London and Washington declined sharply. The treatment of the Austrian Jews, in particular, caused renewed horror. The first outrages had already started on 11 March, before the arrival of German troops, and by far surpassed anything the Jews had had to endure in Germany thus far. Roosevelt became active in the cause of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, combining the immigration quotas for Germany and Austria, to help those escaping from the latter.28 He also tried to explore the possibility of getting ‘all the democracies to share the burden’ of distributing Jewish migrants. Four months later, this led to the international refugee conference at Evian. The German ambassador, Dieckhoff, warned that the United States would not remain neutral in the event of a world war, but would come in on Britain’s side.29 Roosevelt’s Naval Expansion Bill of the month following the Anschluss was a clear sign of how the wind was blowing. Hitler made some efforts to reach out to the US. He granted an audience to the former US president Herbert Hoover during his European tour. At around this time, the Führer also met with the founder of the American telecommunications giant ITT, Sosthenes Behn.30 Behn, whose paternal ancestry was German, had served in the US army in France in the war and was thus the epitome of the kind of emigrant Hitler was so sorry to lose.
The Führer refused, however, to meet Fritz Kuhn, the Bundesführer of the Amerika-Deutschen Volksbund, who visited Germany in April 1938.31 This was because he wished to avoid antagonizing the US government and public opinion, which were already strongly suspicious of Nazi machinations in the western hemisphere, the extent of which they greatly exaggerated. The US security services kept a close watch on German-American organizations, especially the Bund, as did Samuel Dickstein and Martin Dies’s committee in the House of Representatives, which had recently been renamed the House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities, or HUAC.32 In fact, Hitler’s main interest in America was not to establish a fifth column on the far side of the Atlantic but quietly to encourage German citizens resident in the United States to return to the Reich.
It was in this context that the regime made a pitch to lure back German emigrants to the Reich. The Four Year Plan and the demands of rearmament revealed a severe shortage of qualified engineers and other skilled workers. Efforts to find these among German nationals in the United States found an echo among those who had failed to find work, who were suffering from increasing levels of anti-German sentiment on the far side of the Atlantic, who still felt the emotional pull of the Fatherland or who sympathized with the Third Reich. The target audience here, in the first instance, was Reich citizens, not German-Americans, but the plan was to extend the scheme to include Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) in due course. The exercise failed to bring back more than a small number of people, largely because most of those who wished to avail themselves of the opportunity could not afford the transatlantic passage, even after a fire-sale of their assets, and the regime lacked the foreign currency (Devisen) to pay for their passages en masse. Inevitably, some emigrants hoping to leave the United States suggested that they exchange their property with German Jews trying to get to America.33
To this effect, the Kameradschaft USA was established in 1938 under the general auspices of the Auslandsorganization; US citizens were supposed to be strictly off-limits, although in practice the rule was not always observed. There were no fewer than eight offices across the country to welcome back the ‘USA returnees’, as they were known. Part of the plan was to use their skills to make up shortfalls in German industry, but there was also the hope that they could be used to colonize new living space beyond the existing borders of the Reich. The scheme was a failure, with fewer than a thousand returning to the Reich before the outbreak of war. Many of them were discontented, and some quickly made their way back across the Atlantic.34 All this merely confirmed Hitler’s view that while the Germans who settled in the east remained German, the young men and women who went west were lost to the Reich for ever.
After the Anschluss, Hitler moved quickly to consolidate his authority in Austria, and to exploit his triumph in the Reich itself.35 Among the first ‘transport of prominent people’ to Dachau were the two sons of the murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand; both were very badly treated there. The Anschluss, which brought another 6 million or so Catholics into the Reich, made a rapprochement with the church hierarchy more urgent. One of the very first things Hitler did on entering Vienna in triumph was to meet with Cardinal Innitzer, at the latter’s request. In a piece of pure theatre, he approached the cardinal, bowed deeply and offered to kiss his hand. Innitzer raised the cross and chain around his neck and symbolically made the sign of the cross. After the cardinal had left, Hitler expressed his strong satisfaction with the meeting, and expressed his confidence that, by contrast with the Reich, ‘he would be able to get on well with the church in Austria’. There, Hitler explained, Catholicism was ‘a state church and had a very different relationship with the state’. He had no objection to that. ‘Churches should only get involved in politics,’ Hitler elaborated, ‘if they were also ideologically instruments’ of the state authorities. But if anyone tried to make ‘the cross the cloak of opposition’, he continued, then they would be ‘annihilated’. In return for Innitzer’s profession of loyalty (he signed off a letter to the Führer with ‘Heil Hitler’), Hitler promised that Catholics would be allowed to practise their religion freely.36
Control of Austria enabled Hitler to lay exclusive claim to the German imperial tradition, whose ‘imperial regalia and imperial insignia’ had been moved from Nuremberg during the French Revolutionary Wars and stored in Vienna since the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire.37 In mid June 1938, the mayor of Nuremberg, referring to Hitler’s own numerous past statements on the matter, requested their return to ‘the city of the Reich party rallies’. Hitler readily agreed, and when the Reichsstatthalter in Austria, Seyss-Inquart, demanded that they remain in Vienna, the Führer gave him short shrift.38 The return of the insignia to Nuremberg, with its strong party affiliations, symbolized the continuity which Hitler wished to suggest between his Third Reich and the First Reich of Charlemagne. It was also intended, as he explained in mid September, to show ‘the whole world’ that a ‘mighty’ German Reich had existed ‘a half millennium before the discovery of the New World’,39 evidence, if more was needed, of Hitler’s continuing preoccupation with the United States.
Despite this, Hitler remained anxious about the Habsburgist threat. When in the summer of 1938 the members of the ‘German Association of Nobles’ protested against an article in Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer which suggested that the Habsburgs had Jewish blood, Hitler was furious. The Führer was angry with his Gauleiter for precipitating the row, but he was also aghast at the way in which the association had sprung to the defence of the Habsburgs at a time when ‘a decisive and coherent front of the entire German people against the House of H
absburg’ was required. Hitler decreed that there should be no discussion of the incident in the press or in public. He also declared that he wanted the members of the House of Habsburg to be expelled from Austria, and all compensation payments for the sequestration of their property to be stopped. The matter was still being discussed towards the end of the summer, and the question was ultimately left for Hitler to decide.40 Early in the following year, the necessary laws came into force, and all Habsburg property was seized by the Third Reich. The whole episode testified to the importance which Hitler attached to the Habsburg question and control of the German imperial tradition.
The occupation of Austria was not intended to provide Hitler with a staging ground for further expansion to the south or the south-east. The new name of the province–Ostmark–made clear that he saw it as a ‘bulwark’ on the southern flank of the Reich,41 not a sally-port. Hitler’s view of south-eastern Europe, at least at this point, was largely uncoloured by pan-German sympathies. He continued to tread carefully with regard to the German minorities across Europe. When Hess protested that a circular by Imperial Organization leader Ley, implying ambitions on South Tyrol, Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine and western Poland, might cause diplomatic complications Hitler agreed that it should be withdrawn.42 Relations with Yugoslavia and other Balkan countries were intensified, not so as to render them ripe for annexation but in order to support the economic needs of rearmament. Germany did not run up a large imbalance of payments in the expectation of escaping it through conquest, but rather because there was lower demand for her products than she had hoped.43
Hitler also moved to reassure Mussolini, who had been presented with a fait accompli during the Anschluss. Hitler’s letter of 11 March 1938 had promised to respect the Brenner border, and was instantly published by the Italian press, but there had been an uptick in South Tyrolean agitation after the annexation of Austria just the same.44 Luckily for the Führer, his return visit to Italy was scheduled for early May 1938, giving him the opportunity to settle the issue once and for all. Local Nazis protested vigorously, and the huge German delegation heading south by train was struck by the grimness with which they were received when traversing South Tyrol, which contrasted with the adulation in the Reich and the rest of Italy.45 Hitler remained unmoved. Thanks to the ‘experience of two millennia’, the Führer publicly told the Duce at the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, both parties now wanted to ‘recognize that natural border which providence and history had evidently drawn for our two peoples’. This, he explained, would establish a ‘clear demarcation of the Lebensraum of both nations’.46
Mussolini sought to impress Hitler with a triumphant welcoming display which would exceed that put on by the German dictator for him the previous autumn.47 The Christian heritage of Rome was largely left out of the fascist itinerary for him, while the Vatican demonstratively ignored Hitler’s presence on account of the tensions produced by the papal encyclical a year before. Pius XI condemned the swastika plastered all over the city as ‘a cross inimical to the cross of Christ’. The Vatican museums were shut as a sign of disrespect and the darkness of the papal city contrasted markedly with the fireworks and illuminations put on by the regime.48 Hitler does not seem to have minded. He enthused about the artistic heritage: the Pantheon, the Borghese Museum, the Museo delle Terme and much else. He explored these with the help of an Italian guide, Ranuccio Bandinelli. Hitler was confirmed in his view that the country was a major cultural power, which he hoped to rival with an artistic collection to match that of the Uffizi or the Louvre. This was the genesis of his idea for a Führermuseum at Linz. Even in Italy, though, Hitler was plagued by anxiety about the hostility of the United States. He remarked in the Villa Borghese that he had been asked to support an exhibition of German art in America, but had declined on the grounds that ‘there was a danger that the paintings would be defaced by the Bolsheviks, and in any case why should one be polite to a people [the Americans] which constantly subjected us to vicious attacks’.49
Hitler’s next target was Czechoslovakia, which was in his sights not for demographic or territorial, but for strategic reasons. It was a bone in the throat of the Reich, a potential launchpad for an invasion of Germany by another great power. Neutralizing the Czechs was vital if the Reich was to strike out eastwards to secure Lebensraum. Hitler opposed the simplest solution, which was a ‘strategic assault without any provocation or justification’. Instead, Hitler envisaged either ‘action after a time of diplomatic confrontation which gradually escalates into war’ or ‘lightning action in response to an incident’, for example the ‘murder of the German envoy after an anti-German demonstration’. Here the Führer may have been thinking back to the murder of Wilhelm Gustloff, but it is also possible that he planned to provoke an incident. If the Czechs were not beaten quickly, he warned, ‘then a European crisis would certainly result’. This meant that other powers must be persuaded of the ‘futility’ of military intervention through a fait accompli. Politically, this would involve the acquisition of allies–‘division of the spoils’–and the ‘demoralization’ and ‘intimidation’ of the victim. 50
The playbook was clear, but Hitler did not plan immediate action. ‘The Führer remarked after the incorporation of Austria,’ Jodl recorded, ‘that he is in no hurry to sort out the Czech question. One first wants to digest Austria.’51 ‘It is not my intention,’ Hitler himself explained privately to his generals, ‘to crush Czechoslovakia without provocation in the immediate future’ unless required to do so by a major shift in Czech internal politics or political developments in Europe provided a particularly favourable and perhaps unique opportunity. Instead, Hitler planned to boil Czechoslovakia in the pot, and to achieve a ‘chemical dissolution’ of that country through disinformation and intimidation. To this end, Goebbels unleashed a ferocious propaganda assault on the country. The Führer instrumentalized the concept of ‘self-determination’.52 This, he argued, was being denied to the 3 million or so Sudeten Germans who lived around the periphery of Bohemia and Moravia; this was of course the same principle that he had himself surrendered with regard to the Germans of South Tyrol.
On 28 March 1938, Hitler held his first meeting with the Sudeten German leader Konrad Henlein. He let it be known that he ‘intended to solve the Czech problem in the not-too-distant future’. The Führer instructed him to raise tensions with Prague, by making ‘demands which were unacceptable for the Czech government’.53 He gave no more detailed indication of his timeline for action. On 2 April, Hitler offered Hungary the return of her former lands (including the Slovak capital Bratislava) in the event of a partition of Czechoslovakia. Three weeks later Henlein set out his stiff and intentionally unacceptable demands to Prague. By early May 1938, the temperature had risen substantially, but there was still no sign that the Führer intended to attack in the near future. In fact, Ribbentrop and Weizäcker told Henlein to avoid escalating the situation too far because ‘we want to make the final decision ourselves’.54
Despite this, the Czech situation did get out of hand in late May and nearly completely escaped Hitler’s control. What exactly happened is still shrouded in mystery, but the rough outlines are known. An anti-appeasement faction in the British Foreign Office and in MI6, aided by the Czechs and German social democrat exiles, probably unwittingly, triggered a crisis in order to torpedo Chamberlain’s policy of conciliation towards Germany, and to mobilize resistance to Hitler. It was claimed–plausibly but falsely–that the Führer had mobilized and was planning an imminent attack on Czechoslovakia. No such German military activity actually took place or was even planned at that moment. Prague, however, did mobilize, and Britain warned Hitler off. Europe appeared on the verge of a major war. For the second time in two months, the Führer was caught unawares, but this time there was no way of taking advantage of the crisis without risking a major conflict for which he was totally unprepared. Hitler was forced to back down in a humiliation not experienced since the failure in Austria four years earlier. Wh
en two Sudeten German dispatch riders were killed in controversial circumstances, and the pressure for intervention grew, Hitler merely sent his military attaché in Prague to place a wreath on their graves.55
London had, in effect, framed a guilty man before he committed his (next) crime. The Führer’s personal adjutant Wiedemann, who observed the crisis first in London and then in Berlin, later remarked that ‘Hitler adopted the pose of a man who has committed many transgressions, but who is always particularly outraged if he is ever unjustly accused of something.’56 Instead of deterring Hitler, however, as it was believed then and since, the British intervention electrified him. The events of May 1938 vindicated Hitler’s narrative that the Czechs were the pawns of the great powers.57 Now his aim was not merely to neutralize but to smash Czechoslovakia. ‘It is my irrevocable will,’ he proclaimed, ‘that Czechoslovakia must disappear from the map.’58
Military and diplomatic opinion was convinced that this would lead to war with the western powers. While most confined themselves to private complaints, or secret plans to depose Hitler, the chief of the general staff, General Ludwig Beck, penned a lengthy memorandum setting out his objections in early June 1938.59 He rejected all of the assumptions underlying Hitler’s strategy, beginning with the alleged weakness of Czech defences, and culminating in a warning against assuming the passivity of Britain and France. Beck, however, over-egged the pudding. Even sceptical officers thought that Czechoslovakia could be beaten easily, and doubted whether the west would in fact intervene. The Führer, in any case, was unmoved. He issued new instructions to crush the Czechs. This was the paradox of the May crisis. It was not Britain’s subsequent abandonment which sealed the fate of the Czechs, but the previous expression of British support.
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