After his speech, Hitler ordered Neurath to instruct the Geneva delegation that the British draft, the so-called ‘MacDonald Plan’, according to which, after a transitional period of five years, the military strength of Germany, France, Italy, and Poland would all be the same, could be regarded as a ‘possible basis for the proposed convention’;23 and, on 8 June, the conference did indeed agree to accept the British plan as the basis for the convention.24
In clearly indicating his readiness for an understanding with France, Hitler was at odds with his Foreign Minister, Neurath, who, as he had told the cabinet on 2 April, considered that an understanding with France was impossible, and indeed not even desirable.25 Contrary to this view, Hitler had told the French ambassador, André François-Poncet, at their first meeting only a day later, that he had ‘no aims’ in the West, whereas ‘the alteration of the impossible eastern border’ was and would remain ‘a major issue for German foreign policy’.26 This attempt to win the confidence of the ambassador by revealing his aims in the East was also a significant departure from the Foreign Ministry’s policy that the revision of the eastern border should not be raised with the French until it was the right moment to do so.27 Significantly, there was no representative of the Foreign Ministry at Hitler’s meeting with the ambassador. During the following weeks, Hitler put out a number of feelers for an understanding. In a speech at the Niederwald Memorial on 27 August he made a similar comment about the renunciation of French territory,28 and, on 15 September, he informed François-Poncet that ‘for us the Alsace-Lorraine question simply doesn’t exist’.29 His offers to France revealed a remarkable flexibility in his foreign policy; before 1933 he had always regarded Germany’s western neighbour as ‘the hereditary enemy’, whom he hoped sooner or later to marginalize by provoking a conflict between it and Italy.
In fact, since the spring, the French Prime Minister, Edouard Daladier, had been wondering how he could establish direct contact with Hitler, and had put out feelers to Germany.30 Early in September, Ribbentrop arranged for a French journalist, Fernand de Brinon, to visit Berlin; he was considered to be Daladier’s foreign policy advisor and had many German contacts. In Berlin he had a number of conversations with high-ranking German officials, finally meeting Hitler in Berchtesgaden on 9 September. During the conversation, at which Ribbentrop and Blomberg were also present, the idea of a meeting with Daladier was discussed at which a public statement would be made about a German–French rapprochement.31 These contacts were continued during the following weeks.32
During the spring and early summer of 1933, Hitler also tried to overcome Germany’s isolation with regard to the Versailles Treaty through an approach to Italy via Mussolini. In March 1933, the Duce had put forward the idea of a four-power pact: Germany, France, Great Britain, and Italy should take on the leadership role in Europe, solving the current problems through negotiation with each other. However, in the course of talks lasting several months, Mussolini’s original intentions were completely watered down above all by the French government. His idea that, in the event of a failure of the Geneva negotiations, the four powers should take responsibility for sorting out the revision of the peace treaties and the granting of permission for staged German rearmament was removed from the treaty, so that it became merely a politically toothless agreement of the four parties to consult one another. It was signed on 15 July but never ratified.33
Neurath considered the treaty ‘completely worthless’, indeed actually damaging, as it contained particular formulations that could potentially burden future German policy with undesirable commitments.34 But Hitler wanted to sign it and eventually got his way. For him the prestige that Germany gained by being received into the exclusive group of leading European powers was the decisive factor, even if, in practice, there was little chance of achieving anything within this arrangement. Above all, he hoped that by supporting Mussolini’s project he was taking the first step towards achieving an alliance with Italy.35
Ideology and activism: the Austrian question and the Soviet problem
According to the fundamental ideas on foreign policy that he outlined in March, Neurath had also wanted to postpone the issue of Anschluss with Austria, a stance that threatened to neutralize the activism of the NSDAP, organized as it was on the basis of a ‘Greater Germany’.36
The Austrian Federal Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, had utilized a parliamentary crisis in March 1933 to override the legislature completely, and since then had been effectively ruling as a dictator, supported by his Christian Social Party and the paramilitary Heimwehr [Home Guard]. When the Austrian Nazis demanded new parliamentary elections, he cancelled the impending local government elections and emasculated the Constitutional Court. On 19 June, Dollfuss issued a ban on the Austrian NSDAP. The Austrian Nazis’ response to these measures became increasingly violent: street attacks, assassination attempts, explosions, attacks on political opponents and Jews became commonplace. From mid-March onwards, these disturbances were accompanied by a major propaganda campaign waged by the German government, and broadcast to Austria via radio, and by pamphlets dropped from aeroplanes.37 In addition, an ‘Austrian Legion’, formed in Bavaria and made up of Nazi refugees, caused numerous frontier provocations.
Both the Nazi leadership in the Reich and the Austrian Nazis believed that the ‘coordination’ measures carried out in the Reich that spring could be simply extended to Austria. Hitler wanted to bring down the Dollfuss government through a combination of pressure from within and without, and replace it with a government influenced by, and later dominated by, Nazis. He thought that a second ‘seizure of power’ would enable the Austrian question to be solved through coordination, thereby obviating the need to raise the political and constitutional questions involved in an Anschluss, which was in any case impossible at that time because of Italian opposition. In April, he was already intervening in Austro–German relations in order to weaken Dollfuss’s position. Thus, he decided to break off negotiations over the Austro–German customs treaty, which were in their final stage, because he was unwilling to reach an agreement with Dollfuss.38
He told the cabinet on 26 May that they must not fall into the ‘pre-war trap’ of making an alliance with the ‘official rulers’ of Austria; the fateful role played by the Habsburgs in suppressing the German Austrians was now being taken on by ‘Viennese half-Jews’ and ‘Legitimists’ (i.e. the supporters of the Austrian monarchy). He had remained faithful to the hostility towards the Austrian state he had developed during his stay in Vienna. At the same meeting Hitler announced the introduction of a visa for trips to Austria, costing 1,000 RM, which was introduced a few days later. Hitler thought this significant blow to Austrian tourism would lead to the collapse of the Dollfuss government.39
Dollfuss turned for help above all to Fascist Italy and to France and Britain. At the beginning of August, under strong international pressure, Hitler ordered the Austrian Nazis to cease their activities.40 This showed that Hitler’s attempt to crush Austria through economic pressure and organized disturbances had failed. The NSDAP in Austria had to pull back; the disputes had alienated the western powers (which Hitler had wanted to avoid) as well as damaging the relationship with Italy, in other words the country with which Hitler had hoped to develop a close alliance.
Relations with the Soviet Union were also determined more by the Party’s ideology and its activism than by diplomacy. Following the creation of the new government, Foreign Minister Neurath had initially attempted to stabilize the relationship with the Soviet Union. In February he won over Hitler, who, in his government statement à propos the Enabling Law, committed the government to a ‘positive policy towards the Soviet Union’; the large-scale persecution of the communists was, he said, a purely domestic matter.41 Thus, the secret military collaboration, begun during the Weimar Republic, continued; in February 1933 a credit agreement was reached; and, at the beginning of May, the extension of the 1926 German–Soviet treaty of neutrality (the Berlin Treaty)
was ratified with Hitler’s express approval.42 Only a few days earlier, receiving the Soviet ambassador, Hitler had stressed that nothing should be allowed to alter the ‘friendly relations’ between the two countries.43 Strains continued, however, not so much as a result of the suppression of the Communist Party, but more because of Nazi violence against Soviet citizens and institutions in Germany.44
This openly anti-Soviet atmosphere continued throughout the summer and neither the Party leadership nor the government did anything to prevent it. On the contrary, Hitler gradually responded to the activists’ ideologically motivated hostility. When the Reichstag Fire trial opened in September, Hitler personally ordered that the Soviet press should be barred.45 The Soviets responded to the affront by imposing a temporary freeze on official press relations between the two states. During the summer, military relations ceased altogether and trade went into a sharp decline.46 When, during the cabinet meeting of 26 September, state secretary Wilhelm von Bülow suggested taking initial steps to improve relations with the Soviet Union, Hitler strongly objected, making it clear that ‘restoration of the German-Russian relationship’ was ‘impossible’; future relations between the two countries would be marked by a ‘fierce antagonism’. They must have no illusions about the fact ‘that the Russians have always deceived us and would one day leave us in the lurch’.47
Thus, within a few months of taking over the Chancellorship, Hitler had intervened in the foreign policy of the Reich with far-reaching consequences. He had substantially determined the final form of the Concordat, not least through exercising significant pressure on the Catholic Church in Germany, thereby achieving an important foreign policy success and boosting his prestige. He had tried to put an end to the Dollfuss regime through a combination of pressure from outside and within, causing considerable damage to German foreign policy in the process. He had produced a dramatic alteration in relations with the Soviet Union. In contrast to the Foreign Ministry, he had sought exchanges with French contacts, signalling his willingness to abandon the idea of a revision of the western border. Up until September 1933, he was not actually working to torpedo the Geneva Conference, but kept this option open by threatening in his ‘peace speech’ of 17 May to break off negotiations and leave the League of Nations.
In this way Hitler indicated that he intended to abandon the Foreign Ministry’s cautious, tentative, and long-term revisionist policy. Complete freedom from armament restrictions as the prerequisite for power politics, anti-communism, and the idea of a greater German Reich (which required the alliance with Italy) were the goals that determined his first foreign policy moves rather than rigidly sticking to the idea of restoring the frontiers of 1914. The Concordat and the attempted rapprochement with France, in particular, clearly show that, from the start, Hitler demonstrated a remarkable tactical flexibility, which the Foreign Ministry, with its commitment to continuity, failed to understand. As the months went by, he became more and more confident in striking out on his own, when it came to differences of opinion with the Foreign Ministry until, by the summer of 1933, he had seized the initiative in foreign policy. In this way, he managed to stymie the Reich President’s original intention of retaining control of foreign policy with the help of ‘his’ foreign minister.
* Translators’ note: Catholic workers’ (‘journeymen’s’) associations named after their founder, the Catholic priest, Adolf Kolping (1813–65).
14
‘Führer’ and ‘People’
In mid-July Hitler had reduced the tempo of the Nazi conquest of power and introduced a kind of summer break in domestic policy. But, from the beginning of September, he once again became actively and visibly engaged in politics. However, during the following months, coordination measures reinforced by violence were replaced by propaganda campaigns and major events, underlining his central role as ‘Führer’. The image of a nation united behind Hitler was designed not least to underpin his next foreign policy moves: in October the Geneva disarmament negotiations were restarted.
On 1 September, the NSDAP held a Party Rally for the first time since 1929. Whereas in the 1920s controversial issues were at least debated, now it was all about demonstrating the strength of the Nazi movement and the complete unanimity between members and ‘Führer’. To this end Hitler spent five days as the focus of parades, marches, and displays of adulation attended by tens of thousands of his devoted followers. His various appearances created a standard set of ceremonies that was hardly altered during the five Party Rallies that followed until 1938. It began with his speech at the reception in Nuremberg town hall on the evening before the Rally, followed by his proclamation opening the event, which was always read by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner. At the Party’s cultural session he projected himself as a connoisseur of art and an expert in cultural policy, and to the various Party sections (political leaders, women’s organization, Hitler Youth, SA, SS, and Labour Service) as the supreme leader of every Party unit. The introduction in 1933 of the dedication of flags ceremony at the SA and SS parade was a particular high point. This involved his touching the new SA and SS flags and standards with the ‘blood flag’, which had been carried at the march to the Feldherrnhalle in November 1923. From 1934 onwards, these Party parades were supplemented by military demonstrations by the Wehrmacht, giving Hitler the opportunity to pose as commander-in-chief. In his speech to the diplomatic corps he presented himself as a statesman, while his speech at the final congress brought the Rally to a conclusion. The Party Rally provided the opportunity to display the variety of roles Hitler attached to the office of ‘Führer’.
On 13 September, only a week after the end of the Party Rally, Hitler presented himself in the role of the caring ‘Führer’, who was close to his people. At the opening of the Winterhilfswerk [Winter Aid Programme, WHW] he celebrated the new institution as an expression of ‘solidarity, which [is] eternally in our blood’ and as embodying a ‘national community’, which represented ‘something really vital’.1 The Winter Aid Programme was designed to supplement the state welfare system through a whole series of measures that the individual citizen could hardly escape (street collections, lotteries, donations from wages, and various services). In the winter of 1933, more than 358 million RM was collected. From now onwards, the regime portrayed the annual increases in the sums collected for the WHW as important evidence of the growing support for the regime. In fact, these figures merely indicated the regime’s growing skill at extracting larger and larger contributions through various forms of pressure.2 The Winter Aid Programme was carried out by the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt [NS-Welfare Organization, NSV], which had been founded in Gau Berlin in 1931 mainly to provide welfare services for Party members. After 1933, the NSV radically changed its role. Following an order from Hitler dated 3 May 1933, it developed into the main Party organization responsible ‘for all matters concerning the people’s welfare’. Under its new leader, Erich Hilgenfeldt, it spread throughout the Reich, becoming the second largest mass organization after the German Labour Front (DAF ).3 It acquired a complex structure modelled on the Party organization, reaching down to local branch level with separate sections for welfare, youth care, health, propaganda, and indoctrination. By the end of 1933, it had acquired a membership of 112,000, which increased to more than 3.7 million by the end of 1934.4
The main aim of the NSV was the ‘improvement of the people’s welfare’. The focus was not on supporting individuals through welfare and charitable activities, but entirely on strengthening the ‘national community’, in other words essentially on supporting ‘hereditarily healthy’ and socially efficient families. To this end, the NSV provided a primarily ideologically determined framework for care and support, in addition to the state welfare benefits; it did not regard caring for ‘inferiors’ and ‘the weak’ as part of its responsibilities. Far from being an organization designed to support the needy, the NSV was a political and ideologically charged mass movement concerned with fundamentally improving the fitnes
s of the ‘national body’.5 Following its official recognition in summer 1933 as the leading organization within the charitable welfare sector, the NSV gradually took control of all the other organizations operating in the welfare field; it increasingly claimed the state subsidies, on which the whole charitable welfare system depended, for itself. This affected above all the extensive Church welfare organizations, which continued to exist until 1945. The other charitable welfare associations were dissolved, coordinated or lost their privileged status.6
Hitler Page 46