Hitler (94 page)

The unanimity of the foreign reaction to the assassination of Dollfuss had taught Hitler that he would have to proceed more carefully. The attempted coup in Vienna had been hastily organized and poorly co-ordinated. Beyond that, Hitler recognized that his position was not yet strong enough for major challenges; he would do better to wait for provocatory pretexts or imperceptibly to work his opponents into the position known in chess as a “forced move”—when a player has only one legal move open to him. Then his own carefully premeditated actions would be disguised as countermoves.

Circumstances arranged matters favorably. Soon afterward, Hitler obtained his hoped-for increase in prestige by winning the plebiscite held in the Saar on January 13, 1935. The region, which had been separated from the Reich under the Treaty of Versailles, voted by an overwhelming majority for reunion with Germany: there were only about 2,000 votes for union with France as against 445,000 for reunion with Germany and approximately 46,000 for continuance of the status quo, administration by the League of Nations. Although the result had never been in doubt, Hitler presented the vote as a personal triumph. One of the injustices of Versailles had at last been righted, he declared three days later in an interview at Obersalzberg with the American journalist Pierre Huss. Only a few weeks later the Western powers handed him the opportunity for one of those counterstrokes that from now on became his favorite device.

The tactical weakness of the leading European powers vis-à-vis Hitler stemmed from their desire for negotiations. They were forever coming forward with proposals that were supposed to fetter the unruly fellow, or at least put him in an uncomfortable position. Early in 1935 he had received offers from England and France, among others, to extend the Locarno Pact by an agreement limiting the threat of air attacks. There were likewise offers for similar pacts from eastern and central European countries. Far from considering these proposals seriously, Hitler merely used them as a springboard for his tactical maneuvers. They permitted him to spread uncertainty, to achieve easy effects by sham declarations, and to cover up the aims he was unerringly pursuing.

During 1934 he had already taken steps to reach an accord with England on air armaments. His purpose was to induce London, merely by entering into negotiations, to treat the armaments restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles as nonexistent. At the same time, Hitler proceeded on the assumption that the talks in themselves, and the aura of intimacy they would inevitably create, would be excellent means of sowing distrust between England and France. For this reason he was quite ready to encourage the English side to undertake extensive rearmament. After the talks had been broken off in the aftermath of Dollfuss's assassination, Hitler approached the British government with a new offer at the end of 1934. Characteristically, he increased his demands, as he would always do after a defeat. Hitherto he had asked only that Germany be permitted half the British strength in the air. Now he mentioned, in a casual remark, that parity was “a matter of course”; it had ceased to be an object of negotiation, as far as he was concerned. Rather, the key offer was now for a naval agreement with England.

This proposal by Hitler has been called, with some exaggeration, his “crowning idea.”
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The negotiations on the air agreement had broken down only partly because of the Vienna events; the chief reason for their failure was that the British, though interested, were not ready for a bilateral pact. The offer for a naval agreement, on the other hand, struck them at a vulnerable spot.

Hitler's special envoy, Joachim von Ribbentrop, launched a trial balloon in the middle of November, 1934, when he met with the then Keeper of the Privy Seal Anthony Eden and Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon. Early in 1935 the contacts were continued. On January 25 Hitler “unofficially” received Lord Allen of Hurtwood, and four days later—again “unofficially”—the liberal politician Lord Lothian. The German Chancellor complained about the limping progress of the disarmament negotiations, stressed that both sides had parallel interests, then referred to Great Britain's uncontested dominion of the sea before he made his first specific proposal: he would be ready to conclude an agreement regulating naval strength between Germany and England in the ratio of 35 to 100. In return, Germany, in keeping with her national tradition, would be allowed the stronger land army. Such was the outline of the grand design. In his conversation with Lord Lothian Hitler gave the matter another original twist. If he might speak not as Chancellor of the Reich, he said, but as a “student of history,” he would regard as the surest guarantee of peace a joint Anglo-German statement to the effect that henceforth any disturber of the peace would be called to account and punished jointly by these two countries.

The impending visit of the British Foreign Secretary to Berlin would provide the opportunity for discussions of substance. It was set for March 7, 1935. The talks show how closely he had measured the interests and psychology of the other side. For he skillfully implanted in the British those arguments for appeasement that would dominate the politics of the following years. The British came away from the talks with the belief that Hitler urgently desired a treaty in order to legalize his rearmament and at last make Germany eligible for alliances. This need was a trump card that must not go unplayed. Here was a way to end the armaments race, to keep German rearmament within controllable bounds, and to tie Hitler's hands after all. Of course, France would be alarmed by an Anglo-German treaty, but she would have to realize that “England has no permanent friends, but only permanent interests,” as the
Naval Review
wrote. These interests would be served if a great power like Germany voluntarily acknowledged the British claim to dominion on the seas, especially under the moderate conditions that Hitler had set. The Versailles era, which meant so much to France, was in any case over, and, as a Foreign Office memo of March 21, 1934, quipped, if there had to be a funeral it might as well be arranged as long as Hitler was in a mood to pay the services of the gravediggers.
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The real meaning of all these considerations was simply that they spelled the end of the solidarity created during the World War and confirmed in the Treaty of Versailles. Once again Hitler had demonstrated his ability to blast apart the united front of his opponents. Even more astonishing was his faculty for spreading among the victors, as he had already done among the vanquished, the sense that the system of peace they themselves had proclaimed only fifteen years earlier was intolerable. In the election campaigns during the last years of the republic he had shown his ingenuity in taking a problematical situation and producing a stylized version of it as an absurdity and cynical injustice. Now he successfully applied the same trick to foreign affairs. For a moment it seemed as though his antagonists would organize for resistance after all. But instead they produced only an empty defensive gesture, which Hitler saw through immediately. After that they gave him even freer scope.

As if it wished to strengthen the position of its Foreign Secretary the British government on March 4 published a White Paper that condemned Germany's rearmament as an open breach of treaty. Germany's bellicose tone was causing growing insecurity. Therefore the British government thought it proper to increase its air power. Instead of being cowed, Hitler went into a sulk, and canceled the visit from Sir John Simon on the grounds of a sudden “cold.” Simultaneously, he exploited the alleged wrong inflicted upon him to launch a counterattack. On March 9 he made an official announcement that Germany had established an air force. The French government responded by extending the term of military service for the conscript classes from the years of low birth rate. The British Foreign Secretary, however, merely told the House of Commons that he and Mr. Eden still intended to go to Berlin.

Making the most of this disparate reaction, Hitler went a step further on the following weekend. He pointed to the measures taken by Germany's neighbors, in whom Germany had repeatedly and vainly put her trust ever since the days of Woodrow Wilson, until she found herself in the midst of a heavily armed world reduced to “a condition of impotent defenselessness as humiliating as it is ultimately dangerous.” He was, therefore, reinstating universal military service and establishing a new army with a peacetime strength of thirty-six divisions and 550,000 men.

Hitler combined this proclamation with a brilliant military celebration. On March 17, the day of mourning that had now been renamed Heroes' Memorial Day, he organized a grand parade in which units of the new air force already participated. Alongside von Mackensen, the only living marshal of the old imperial army, and followed by the top-ranking generals, Hitler marched along Unter den Linden to the terrace of the Schloss, where he pinned honorary crosses to the flags and emblems of the army. Then, with tens of thousands cheering, he reviewed the parade. But although the reintroduction of universal military service was popular as a sign of defiance to the Versailles Treaty, Hitler did not dare link it with another plebiscite, as he had done with comparable actions in the past.

The crucial factor at the moment was the reaction of the Versailles signatory powers to this open breach of the treaty. But after only a few hours Hitler saw that his gamble had been successful. The British government did issue a protest, but in the very protest note inquired whether Hitler still wished to receive the Foreign Secretary. To the German side that was a “regular sensation,”
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as one of the persons closely involved commented. France and Italy, on the other hand, were prepared to take some strong countermeasures, and in the middle of April arranged for a Conference of the three powers in Stresa on Lake Maggiore. Mussolini took the lead in urging that Germany be stopped in her tracks. But the representatives of Great Britain made it clear from the start that they had no intention of imposing sanctions. The result was that the conference petered out in an exchange of ideas. Mussolini observed that consultations are the last refuge of indecisiveness when confronted with reality.

Hitler drew his conclusions, and when Simon and Eden arrived in Berlin at the end of March, they found him thoroughly self-confident. With patient courtesy he waited to hear their proposals, but he himself made no promises. After going on at great length about the Bolshevist menace he once again referred to the German nation's lack of living space and offered a global alliance, the first stage of which was to be the proposed naval pact. When the British statesmen said a firm no to the establishment of a special Anglo-German relationship, and above all refused to sacrifice Britain's close co-operation with France, Hitler found himself in a difficult negotiating position. For a moment the whole idea of the alliance, his grand design, seemed to have failed. But he remained impassive. When the following day's talks threw a new opportunity his way, he used it for a bold bluff. Sir John Simon responded to the German demand for parity in the air by asking what the present strength of the German air force was. Hitler, after a brief pause of seeming hesitation, answered that Germany had already attained parity with England. This information took the others' breath away. For a while no one said a word; the British negotiators' faces betrayed embarrassed surprise and doubt. Yet this was the turning point. Now it became evident why Hitler had postponed the talks until he could announce the building of the air force and the introduction of conscription. England could not be won by wooing alone; Hitler could lend weight to his proposals only by pressure and threats. Not fondness but weapons brought nations to the conference table. Immediately after this round of negotiations Hitler, together with Göring, Ribbentrop, and several cabinet members, went to the British Embassy for a breakfast. Sir Eric Phipps, the ambassador, had lined up his children in the reception room. They stretched out their little arms toward Hitler in the German greeting, and brought out a bashful
“Heil.”
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The British, at any rate, had been deeply impressed. Another opportunity to isolate Hitler soon arose when the League of Nations, on April 17, condemned Germany's violation of the Versailles Treaty. Shortly afterward, France concluded a treaty of alliance with the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the British abided by the date for signing the naval pact that had been agreed on in Berlin. It seems clear that Hitler saw this as a telling admission of weakness and planned to exploit it. He therefore instructed his special envoy, Ribbentrop, to initiate the talks in the Foreign Office on June 4 by putting the agreement in the form of an ultimatum. England must accept the proportion of naval strength of 35 to 100; that was not a German proposal but an unshakable decision on the Führer's part. Acceptance of it was the precondition for the beginning of negotiations. Flushed with anger, Sir John Simon reproved the head of the German delegation and walked out of the session. But Ribbentrop gruffly stuck to his terms. Arrogant and limited as he was, he obviously lacked any sense of how to handle the matter. For here right at the start of the negotiations he was pushing the other party to accept the very method they had recently condemned in their White Paper, then in their protest note after the reintroduction of universal military service, later in Stresa, and most recently in the Council of the League of Nations. He dismissed all the remonstrances “categorically,” to use one of the favorite words in his subsequent report; he wanted the alliance to be no less than “eternal”; and when the British objected that he was reversing the order of business, he declared it came to the same thing whether difficult matters were discussed at the beginning or the end. The negotiators parted with nothing accomplished.

Two days later, however, the British asked for another meeting; their opening statement declared that the British government had decided to accept the Chancellor's demand as the basis for further naval discussions between the two countries. And, as if the special relationship of trust that Hitler wanted of England had already been established, Sir John Simon remarked, with a discreet gesture of complicity, that they would have to let a few days pass in consideration of the situation in France, where governments were “unfortunately not so stable as in Germany and England.”
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A few days later the text of the treaty had been worked out. With some feeling for symbolism, the day for signing was fixed as June 18, the hundred and twentieth anniversary of the day the British and Prussians had defeated the French at Waterloo. Ribbentrop returned home to be hailed by Hitler as a great statesman, “greater than Bismarck.” Hitler himself called this day “the happiest of [my] life.”
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