Armed with instructions from Hitler, Hassell returned to Rome and a few days later he was able to relay Mussolini’s answer to Berlin. Mussolini had assured him that, although he did not see the French–Soviet pact as a reason to leave the Locarno Pact, he would not join Britain and France in imposing sanctions if the Germans occupied the Rhineland.29 In spite of this highly satisfactory response, it seems that at the end of February Hitler was not yet prepared to make a move. He discussed the matter once again with Goebbels and Göring and reached the conclusion that it was in fact ‘somewhat too soon’.30 The following day Goebbels recorded a further discussion in which Hitler was ‘wrestling’ with a decision, after the French parliament ratified the agreement with the Soviet Union.31
Out of the blue Hitler then asked Goebbels to go with him to Munich that same evening; he wanted Goebbels with him on account of his ‘difficult decision concerning the Rhineland’, as Goebbels, who was flattered, records.32 During the train journey, on which they were joined by Magda, and the next day in Munich Hitler returned repeatedly to this topic, although without coming to a decision. Yet the following day, 1 March, on a visit to Goebbels in his Munich hotel Hitler declared he intended to act the next week and not wait for the impending final ratification of the ‘Russian pact’ by the French Senate on 12 March,33 as Goebbels and also Neurath had advised him to do.34
Back in Berlin, on 2 March Hitler summoned Goebbels, Göring, Blomberg, Fritsch, Raeder, and Ribbentrop to the Reich Chancellery to tell them that on the following Saturday he would proclaim the remilitarization of the Rhineland in the Reichstag, combining this with a wide-ranging offer to the western powers of an understanding. He was convinced that neither France nor Britain was likely to put up serious resistance and he did not need to take account of Italy. In addition, Hitler announced that he intended to dissolve the Reichstag and hold fresh elections ‘with foreign policy slogans’. To keep things secret, the deputies should be summoned to Berlin on the Friday evening on the pretext of a beer evening.35 Hitler did not officially notify all the members of his cabinet until the morning of that same day, 6 March.36
On 7 March Hitler announced to the Reichstag that Germany was no longer bound by the Locarno Pact. The treaty, signed in 1926, was, he said, incompatible with the Franco–Soviet military pact. In the future France might come under communist rule and in the event of a crisis the centre of decision-making would therefore ‘no longer be Paris but Moscow’. The climax of the speech came when a memorandum to the signatories to the Locarno Pact was read out: the German government declared that it had ‘as from this day re-established full and unrestricted Reich sovereignty in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland’. Simultaneously German troops, though a relatively small number, were marching into the territory on the left bank of the Rhine.37 As in Hitler’s ‘peace speech’ of 21 May 1935, there followed a comprehensive list of proposals to ‘set up a system ensuring peace in Europe’: demilitarized zones on both sides of the borders to France and Belgium; non-aggression pacts with neighbouring countries in the east and west; an aviation pact to prevent surprise air attacks. Finally, he declared his willingness to rejoin the League of Nations, although he linked this step to ‘colonial equality’, for in the preceding months he had begun to lay more emphasis on the restoration of German colonies than he had during his first three years in power, in order to boost further Germany’s increased international importance.38 At the end of the speech Hitler announced he had decided to dissolve the Reichstag and called on the German nation to support him during the coming elections ‘in his struggle for genuine peace’.
The day after this military move the regime held its Heroes’ Remembrance Day,39 after which the propaganda for the ‘election’ got into full swing.40 The mobilization of the masses was finally to put an end to discussions about food shortages and social injustices, to relieve the fear of war that the occupation of the Rhineland had reawakened, and to demonstrate the nation’s solidarity, in order to stiffen the government’s resolve to face the diplomatic battles ahead.41 The regime could assume that the Rhineland remilitarization, which had passed off without incident, would in fact be welcomed by the majority of the population as an important step towards a complete dismantling of the restrictions arising from the Treaty of Versailles. During the ‘campaign’ Hitler made speeches between 12 and 28 March in a total of eleven towns and cities. He emphasized his claim to be working for peace, but his appeal to a reawakened national self-confidence set the tone for the campaign.42
The campaign reached its climax on the two days preceding the vote, when Hitler spoke at particularly large-scale events.43 On the afternoon of 27 March he visited the Krupp works at Essen and made a speech that was broadcast on all German radio stations. Goebbels introduced the event, giving the order for the flags to be hoisted, whereupon, as the Völkischer Beobachter reported, ‘the whole of Germany . . . was like a hurricane of swastika banners’. After Gauleiter Terboven welcomed Hitler, the traffic in Germany stopped for a minute and employees of firms stopped work so that they could listen to the speech.44 In his Essen speech Hitler once again declared his determination to ensure peace, appealing to the nation’s unity and finally calling on the people to judge ‘whether you [using the singular familiar form ‘du’] believe I have worked hard, that I have done my best for you during these years, and that I have made proper use of my time when serving this nation’. After this there were further events throughout Germany featuring prominent Party comrades.45 The next day, which the regime had declared the ‘German National Day for Honour, Freedom, and Peace’, Hitler made a speech in the major Rhineland city of Cologne that was once again broadcast by every radio station.
The Völkischer Beobachter gave a detailed schedule for the whole evening: ‘On Saturday at 18.30 millions of people in the Reich capital will pour onto the streets and, like people all over Germany, will head for the assembly points, from which huge processions will set off. From 19.45 onwards the columns of people will stand silent, waiting solemnly for the signal to move off. At 19.50 the whole of Germany will be filled with the sonorous tones of the bells of Cologne Cathedral, and then Adolf Hitler will speak from the Cologne Fair exhibition halls.’
Ever since it was finally completed in the nineteenth century, Cologne Cathedral had been a popular national symbol of a strong Germany, united against France. Hitler used the ringing of the cathedral bells to present the election as the culmination of a project of national unity blessed by God. He appealed to the ‘Almighty’ to ‘give us the strength to win the fight for freedom and our future and for the honour and peace of our nation, so help us God!’46 After these closing words, his listeners and the millions who had gathered across Germany sang the old Dutch hymn ‘We gather together’ (the Völkischer Beobachter referred to a ‘gigantic choir of 67 million Germans’), while the sound of the bells of Cologne Cathedral carried over the airwaves during the singing was, according to the newspaper, ‘an exhortation to the German nation to give the Führer wholehearted thanks on Sunday’.47
Thus primed, the Germans went to vote that Sunday. The Völkischer Beobachter carried the banner headline ‘German nation, now do your duty!’48 The results of this election too were rigged as far as possible, for rather than reflecting the people’s assent to the regime’s policies they are evidence of how, in a ‘public sphere’ created artificially by the regime and carefully monitored by it, assent was manufactured and reproduced in stage-managed elections. ‘Terror, electoral tampering, and electoral fraud’ had on this occasion, ‘grown to unprecedented proportions’, as the Social Democrat underground reporter put it.49 The official announcement was that 99 per cent of voters had supported the list. The number of ‘No’ votes was not, however, given as a separate figure but rather rolled up with the invalid ballot papers. Ballot papers handed in unmarked were counted as ‘Yes’ votes. In spite of strong pressure more than 400,000 people had refused to take part in the election.50
Nevertheless, th
e election result strengthened Hitler’s position vis-à-vis the western powers, who in any case had been unable to muster the will to produce a serious response. Although on 19 March the council of the League of Nations had passed a resolution identifying the occupation of the Rhineland as a clear breach of the Treaty of Versailles and making specific demands of Germany, such as forbidding it to build fortifications in the occupied zone,51 Germany rejected a proposal on these lines from the Locarno Pact members on 24 March.52 The Italian government was a party to these resolutions, but as no sanctions resulted Mussolini was not reneging on the declaration of support he had made to Hassell in February.53
On 1 April, three days after the elections, Hitler went on the counter-attack. He had Ribbentrop, his special envoy, deliver a ‘peace plan’ in London. The plan contained a whole range of proposals designed to promote peace without devoting a single word to the demand that there should be no fortifications in the Rhineland.54 The British government responded to this peace plan with a set of detailed questions, the precise formulation of which indicated that it was more than a little sceptical about the Germans’ fulsome protestations about wanting peace.55 Hitler was extremely put out by the fact that the British government simultaneously passed on the set of questions to the press; at a meeting with the British ambassador on 14 May he made it apparent that he was concerned about being thus paraded before an international public. He also stated categorically that Germany would create whatever fortifications it considered necessary in the reoccupied territory.56
Ultimately it had become clear that Hitler’s coup had succeeded. The western powers imposed no sanctions and the threatened consultations by the Locarno Pact’s military leaders in March led to no practical outcome.57 The acceptance of the German occupation was tantamount to the collapse of the security system set up at Locarno. That summer Britain and France were to attempt once again to revive it, but Hitler responded with indifference.58
21
‘Ready for War in Four Years’ Time’
From Hitler’s point of view, the surprise coup of the Rhineland occupation had been successful in every respect. The military position of the so-called Third Reich had been strengthened, the western powers had, as he had expected, proved incapable of acting, and the emerging German–Italian rapprochement had not suffered. Encouraged by this success, during the following months Hitler proceeded with a series of measures to lay the groundwork for his future policies on armaments, the economy, domestic affairs, and foreign relations. These did not all necessarily arise from a single, thought through, and comprehensive plan, and yet taken together they converged in one objective, namely to broaden decisively the basis for Germany’s future policy of expansion.
At the beginning of 1936 Germany was once again going through an acute and serious foreign trade and foreign exchange crisis. The armaments industry required increasing quantities of raw materials at the same time as their price was rising on the world market. The demand for agricultural imports was also rising, as under the aegis of the Reich Food Estate agricultural production was declining, while both the population and consumer spending power were increasing. As Schacht, the Economics Minister and President of the Reichsbank, felt unable to make significant amounts of foreign exchange available to pay for agricultural imports, Hitler gave Göring the task of solving the problem. During the winter he had already committed foreign exchange to secure the supply of food,1 and Hitler took the same line in the spring when, in the face of Schacht’s objections, he allocated to Darré a further 60 million RM from foreign exchange reserves for the import of vegetable oils that were urgently needed to sustain the production of margarine.2 This marked a notable change of direction, for since the autumn of 1935 Hitler and above all Goebbels had followed the slogan of ‘Guns before butter’ and presented criticism of the food situation as tantamount to sabotage of the rearmament effort. By the spring, however, Hitler had finally come to see the sense of giving some support to Göring’s initiatives to make foreign exchange available also for urgently needed food imports. Hitler and the regime had therefore come to the conclusion that it was no longer butter that threatened to slow down rearmament but that dissatisfaction among the population was in danger of growing into a serious crisis of confidence.3
At the same time Hitler and his regime began to change their attitude to ‘national morale’ in a fundamental way. At the beginning of April 1936 Göring, as Prime Minister of Prussia, put a stop to the reports on the public mood produced by the Prussian administration and the Gestapo, alleging that these reports generalized too broadly on the basis of individual negative findings and contributed ‘to a deterioration in morale’ because they were distributed widely within the administration. Now that he was intervening more and more frequently in economic matters, Göring had no more use for these reports, which he had exploited previously to direct criticism at his fellow ministers. Hitler’s attitude was the same; he told his adjutant Wiedemann, who dates the comment to 1936, that he attached no importance to any (negative) reports he received because he could form a better judgement himself of the national mood. To be quite sure that critical voices were completely banished from the Nazi-dominated ‘public sphere’, Hitler, when appointing Heinrich Himmler Chief of the German Police in June, also gave him the task of introducing stronger police measures against those who created or encouraged a ‘negative mood’. Thus the regime implemented a dual strategy in response to the population’s dissatisfaction about food shortages: it was removed from public debate, but at the same time substantial material concessions were made.
The pace of rearmament was to be maintained as a top priority. This was the view taken above all by Schacht. In a memorandum of February 1936 he had pointed out that the shortage of raw materials would most probably lead to significant halts in production in the course of the year, thus jeopardizing rapid rearmament.4 In view of the particularly pressing problems surrounding the supply of petrol, Göring, whose air force was seriously affected, had put himself forward in March as Commissar for Fuel. Schacht, who regarded an alliance with Göring as a means of strengthening his position against opposition from the Party, supported him and the two men were able to gain Hitler’s assent to a more wide-ranging solution. On 4 April 1936 Hitler authorized Göring to use all means necessary to resolve the crisis surrounding raw materials and foreign exchange.5 On 12 May, however, at a meeting of the so-called Ministerial Council, a cabinet committee chaired by Göring, it became apparent that Göring and Schacht had very different ideas. Schacht explained that Hitler had emphasized on numerous occasions that the rapid pace of rearmament had to be maintained up to the spring of 1936, whereupon Göring objected that he had ‘heard nothing about this time limit’. In addition, at the meeting Göring advocated stepping up exports while at the same time increasing ‘the exploitation of domestic sources of raw materials’, which Schacht questioned on the grounds of cost.6
It was precisely this ruthlessness that from Hitler’s point of view made Göring the perfect person to resolve the raw materials and foreign exchange crisis. Schacht, on the other hand, swiftly fell in Hitler’s estimation during the following weeks, the latter refusing his demand for Göring to have this responsibility taken from him. Hitler stated privately at the end of May, ‘in the long run’ Schacht would ‘have to go’.7
To support him in his new task Göring set up a team and from early July began to style himself ‘Reich Commissioner’ for raw materials and foreign exchange. He very quickly used the task Hitler had given him of mediating between the various consumers to claim ‘general economic authority’ and try to seize control of the entire armaments economy.8 Thus in appointing Göring Hitler had started a chain reaction with far-reaching consequences for the armaments industry.
In addition to looking for ways to boost exports, the raw materials and foreign exchange team directed its main attention towards developing Germany’s raw materials resources, in particular with regard to the extraction and production
of petroleum.9 In the short term these initiatives did not alleviate the crisis and in the summer of 1936 it intensified. The projected foreign exchange deficit for the second half-year was half a billion Reich Marks and the German munitions factories could work only to 70 per cent of their capacity because of uncertainties in the supply of raw materials. At the same time, the Ministries of Food and Defence were both demanding significant increases in imports.10 Göring set about scraping together the last foreign exchange reserves.11 In addition, in July he appointed the Chief of the Security Police, Heydrich, as head of a new ‘Foreign Exchange Recovery Office’, as a means of securing the finance administration’s support in plundering Jewish assets.12
During this period Hitler made a decision of principle regarding the economy which, although it appeared to be aiming in a quite different direction, was in fact part of his efforts to prepare for war. In July 1936 he initiated the Volkswagen project. At the opening of the International Automobile Show in March 1934 he had already encouraged the industry to develop a cheap small car that would appeal to ‘millions of new buyers’.13 In response, in May 1934 the Reich Association of German Motor Manufacturers had established a working group to develop a ‘people’s car’ and entrusted this task to the design engineer Ferdinand Porsche.14 Even before this decision was made Hitler had been in favour of appointing Porsche and provided him with detailed ideas about the technical construction of the car.15 In addition, when asked by the Association he had decided in favour of a four-wheel, full-size car and not the tiny three-wheeler favoured by the Ministry of Transport. In 1935 and 1936 Hitler continued to highlight the project at the International Automobile Show, assuring people that the new car would not create unwelcome competition in the industry but would give broad sections of the population their first opportunity to acquire a car of their own and thus produce mass motorization. The ‘luxury for the very few’ must become ‘an everyday product for everyone’.16
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