Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (88 page)

Only a handful of foreign observers realised that Hitler would never be content with a mere revision of the Treaty of Versailles. One man who did was the U.S. consul general in Berlin, George S. Messersmith. As early as May 1933, he warned that while the Hitler regime would probably desire peace in the next few years in order to consolidate its position, ultimately the “new Germany” would “strive in every way to impose its will on the rest of the world.”
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One reason foreign politicians widely underestimated Hitler was the initial lack of personnel changes at the German Foreign Ministry after 30 January 1933. Baron Konstantin von Neurath stayed on as foreign minister at Hindenburg’s express wish, as did Neurath’s deputy, Bernhard von Bülow. Germany’s ambassadors to the world’s leading nations also retained their posts. The only one to leave the diplomatic service in the spring of 1933 was Germany’s ambassador to the United States, Friedrich von Prittwitz und Gaffron.
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The appearance was thus maintained that German foreign policy was still being determined by the Foreign Ministry, and that seemed to the rest of the world to be a guarantee of not just personnel but policy continuity. In early February, when Germany’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, Herbert von Dirksen, reported the Moscow government’s unease about the new Hitler government, Bülow told him:

I think people there overestimate the effect of the change of government on German foreign policy. In government, the National Socialists are of course different people and pursue different policies than the ones they have previously supported. That is always the way it is, and all parties are the same…They, too, put their pants on one leg at a time.
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Just as, domestically, hopes that the responsibility of government would make Hitler and the Nazis more “moderate” quickly proved illusory, similar ideas also emerged as dangerously misjudged in the arena of foreign policy, even if it took longer for the mistake to become clear. In the first months of his regime, Hitler’s emphasis was on consolidating and expanding his power domestically. Abroad he was content to take a back seat and let the career diplomats at the Foreign Ministry go about their business. That changed once Hitler had established his dictatorship. Increasingly he took the reins in dealing with other countries. “[Hitler is] entirely occupied with foreign policy,” wrote Goebbels as early as March 1934.
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Henceforth Hitler would determine the direction of all important decisions, and as he had in destroying the political Left and subjugating his conservative coalition partners, he displayed a sure sense for his adversaries’ weaknesses, boldly and unscrupulously exploiting them on what was for him new terrain. As a result he needed only three years to engineer a succession of remarkable coups that eviscerated the system put in place by the Treaty of Versailles.

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A series of factors helped Hitler along, one of which was that the Versailles system was already beginning to fall apart when he took office. At the Lausanne Conference of June 1932, Papen had succeeded in freeing Germany from the pressures of reparations payments, reaping the fruit Brüning had sown before him. The Schleicher government, too, had achieved a spectacular foreign-policy triumph with the Five-Power Declarations of 11 December 1932, which acknowledged as a basic principle that the German Reich would be allowed to arm itself like any other nation. While the declaration stipulated that the details would be decided at a League of Nations arms conference in Geneva, it was nonetheless apparent that German foreign policy had gained far more leeway during the phase of presidentially appointed governments than it had enjoyed in the Stresemann era.
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This trend was encouraged by the effects of the Great Depression, which caused Britain and France massive economic and social problems and limited their ability to take action abroad.
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Moreover, in the two leading democratic nations of Europe, the trauma of the First World War had given rise to powerful pacifist movements that rejected any thought of another European war and restricted their respective governments’ ability to maintain their military strengths. Particularly in Britain, many people thought that the Versailles system was unjust and that Germany was owed something.
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Hitler also profited from the fear of communism rampant among western Europe’s bourgeois political elites. By casting himself as a radical vanguard opponent of Bolshevik Russia, the Führer was able to overcome numerous doubts about himself personally and his government.

Additionally, what has often been called the “crisis of democracy” in inter-war Europe put the wind in Hitler’s sails. To a degree, Mussolini had kicked off this trend with his “March on Rome” in October 1922 and his establishment of a Fascist regime in Italy. Only two of the new nations formed after 1918–19, Finland and Czechoslovakia, had remained democratic through the post-war years of crisis. All the others—the Austrian Republic, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia (as of 1929 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), Poland and the Baltic states—had sooner or later all become authoritarian regimes. Even states that had existed prior to 1918, including Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Portugal and Spain were subjugated to “authoritarian transformation.”
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Hitler and National Socialism benefited from this general development. The regime they created, so it seemed at least, was part of the mainstream of the epoch.

Foreign Minister von Neurath articulated his ministry’s future foreign policy for the first time at a cabinet meeting on 7 April 1933. The presentation was based on a lengthy memorandum which Bülow had produced in March. The primary goal was the complete eradication of the Treaty of Versailles, and the plan was to proceed in stages. First, Germany had to focus on rearming itself and regaining its economic strength, all the while taking care not to provoke a pre-emptive strike by France or Poland. The second phase aimed at “territorial revisions of borders,” with the main aim being the redrawing of Germany’s eastern border so as to regain the territory ceded to Poland in 1919. Further goals were pushing back the northern border in Schleswig and regaining the German-speaking parts of Belgium. Later aims included retaking Alsace-Lorraine, regaining Germany’s former colonies or acquiring new ones, and merging with Austria. An understanding between Germany and France, Neurath said, was “as good as impossible,” while an understanding with Poland was “neither feasible nor desirable,” which meant that for the time being Germany had to stay on good terms with Russia. Moreover, Germany should pursue friendly relations with Britain and “the closest possible cooperation” with Italy and “wherever there are mutual interests.” Neurath concluded that foreign conflicts had to be avoided “until we have completely regained our strength.”
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This long-term strategy developed by the top diplomats at the Foreign Ministry continued in the tradition of German imperialism—although, as soon became clear, it only partly conformed to Hitler’s own ideas.

The Foreign Ministry, the Reichswehr and Hitler also agreed that Germany’s accelerated rearmament had to be disguised and that foreign nations had to be deceived about the true intentions of German policy by demonstrative gestures of peace. That was the goal of Hitler’s first major foreign-policy speech to the Reichstag on 17 May 1933. In it, he emphasised Germany’s demands for equal status but rejected any hint of war or force:

No new European war would be able to replace the unsatisfactory conditions of today with anything better. On the contrary, neither politically nor economically could the use of violence call forth a better situation than the one we have now…It is the profound wish of the national government of the German Reich to work honestly and actively to prevent any non-peaceful developments.

Hitler also declared his respect for the national rights of other people, claiming that the idea of “Germanification” was alien to the National Socialists. This was an out-and-out lie. In his speech of 3 February to the German generals, he himself had called for the “ruthless Germanification” of the territories to be conquered in eastern Europe. Hitler also spoke with a forked tongue when he signalled German willingness to disarm during the very phase when the country was rearming itself to the teeth. Moreover, Hitler’s assurances of his peaceful intentions always contained the calculated, implicit threat that Germany might withdraw from the Geneva Disarmament Conference and quit the League of Nations, should the country continue to be denied equal status.
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Hitler’s “peace speech” hit its mark. In terms of foreign policy Hitler played the role of the moderate, conciliatory politician so convincingly that even the SPD Reichstag faction, decimated though it was by oppression, voted for the government’s declaration. “Even our bitter enemy Adolf Hitler seemed moved for a moment,” recalled SPD deputy Wilhelm Hoegner. “He stood up and applauded us.”
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The nationalist Elisabeth Gebensleben’s admiration for Hitler knew no bounds after the speech. “This man is so excellent he could become the
leader
[Führer]
of the world
,” she wrote to her daughter in Utrecht. “I’m proud again to be German,
boundlessly
proud.” Her daughter wrote back that Dutch newspapers had been full of approval of Hitler’s speech, adding that it “made up for much of the sympathy Germany had lost abroad in recent years.”
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Indeed, the foreign reception of the speech was overwhelmingly positive. In London
The Times
wrote that for the first time the world had seen Hitler the statesman.
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Count Harry Kessler, who himself found the speech “surprisingly moderate,” reported on 18 May from Paris that it had put the French press in a bind. “They have to admit that there is nothing objectionable in it,” he wrote.
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By contrast, Thomas Mann saw through the charade with unusual penetrating vision. “Hitler’s speech in the Reichstag a complete pacific retreat—ridiculous,” he remarked succinctly and correctly.
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At the Geneva disarmament negotiations, which resumed in February 1933, German and French interests collided head-on. The British government tried to mediate but hesitated, in deference to French demands for security, to give Germany full equality in terms of arming itself. By May, Blomberg and Neurath were determined to scupper the conference. Hitler, however, who was fully occupied with pushing forward his campaign to Nazify Germany and had no interest in foreign-policy disputes for the moment, reacted with greater tactical flexibility. He had the diplomat Rudolf Nadolny instruct the German delegation not to reject all offers of mediation on principle. While he was uninterested in a breakthrough in Geneva, Hitler wanted to avoid creating the impression that Germany was trying to sabotage the proceedings. Instead the blame was to fall on the other side. As Hitler’s representative, Goebbels travelled to Geneva in September to take part in the annual meeting of the League of Nations as part of the German delegation. “Depressing” was his verdict. “An assemblage of the dead. Parliamentarianism of nations.”
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That October, when British Foreign Minister John Simon presented a revised disarmament plan that included a four-year trial period for Germany, in which German arms would have been internationally monitored, he gave the German delegation the pretext it wanted to abruptly quit the conference.
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On 13 October, Hitler informed his cabinet about his decision to “break up the conference” and announce Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations the following day. This step was to be supported by a re-election of the Reichstag, which had only been in office since 5 March. This would give the German people, Hitler argued, the chance “to identify itself through a plebiscite with the peace policies of the Reich government.” In turn, the world could no longer “accuse Germany of aggressive politics.” In the face of possible League of Nations sanctions, the main thing was “to keep our nerve and stay true to our principles.”
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As Goebbels noted in his diary, Hitler “struggled long and hard with himself” before reaching this decision, since quitting the League of Nations was not without risk.
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German rearmament was still in its early stages, and the Reich would hardly have been prepared for a military confrontation. Sanctions could also do real harm to the process of German economic recovery. At the very least, Germany faced the danger of diplomatic isolation. “Our departure from the community of nations that had been created with great difficulty over fifteen years is of massive import, the significance of which we cannot anticipate today,” wrote Erich Ebermayer in Leipzig.
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Kessler spoke of the “most portentous European event since the occupation of the Ruhr,” adding that it “could within a short time lead to a blockade of Germany or perhaps even war.”
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On the evening of 14 October, Hitler turned to the world in a radio address in which he used for the first time the double strategy that would be instrumental in a series of foreign-policy coups. On the one hand, he announced irrevocable decisions without regard for diplomatic niceties while, on the other hand, he deflected potential consequences with nebulous rhetoric, conciliatory gestures and seductive offers. “Both victors and vanquished,” Hitler said, “will have to find their way back into the community of mutual understanding and trust.” He particularly appealed to Germany’s “perennial but venerable adversary,” France. “It would be a huge event for all of humanity if these two people were able to ban violence once and for all from their mutual existence,” Hitler intoned.
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Goebbels was particularly enthused about this passage from Hitler’s speech: “A hand extended to France. Really powerful. Well, he can do it like no one else.”
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Goebbels was right. In terms of lying and dissembling, no other European politician was a match for Hitler.