The series of major events and propaganda campaigns that had begun with the Reich Party Rally in September was intended, amongst other things, to impress international public opinion. A divided nation, despairing and impoverished, appeared overnight to have been united by a charismatic ‘Führer’ and to be determined to restore its national honour. That was the picture propaganda was trying to get across, by displaying Hitler in all his various roles.
In autumn 1933, it was the role of statesman that was most in demand, for in October in Geneva the Disarmament Conference, adjourned in June, began a new round of talks. In foreign policy terms this was a critical moment. Foreign Minister Neurath was still trying to cause the conference to fail. On 13 September, he told a cabinet meeting that after a ‘total collapse of the Disarmament Conference and after the final settlement of the Saar question’ it would also be time to leave the League of Nations.1 However, to begin with, they wanted to demonstrate their peaceful intentions; thus, at Neurath’s suggestion, Hitler sent Goebbels to Geneva so that, at the opening session of the League of Nations on 22 September, he could play the part of a sensible politician for a change.2 The appearance of the internationally notorious Nazi fanatic was not in fact particularly successful. On 24 September, Neurath reported to the Foreign Ministry from Geneva that at the forthcoming Disarmament Conference there would be opposition from both the French and the British to the acquisition by the Reichswehr of the ‘defensive weapons’ that had hitherto been banned ‘and that negotiations would presumably break down over this point’.3
However, Hitler, who had already threatened to leave the Conference and the League of Nations in his May speech, was still trying to save the Disarmament Conference. When, on his return from Geneva, Neurath reported to Hitler, the latter stated that, instead of ‘delaying or breaking off negotiations’, it was definitely desirable ‘to secure a disarmament agreement, even if it does not contain all that we want’.4
A few days later he had changed his mind. On 4 October, he and Defence Minister Blomberg concurred that Germany should withdraw from the Disarmament Conference and leave the League of Nations. Bernhard von Bülow, the state secretary in the Foreign Ministry, was only brought into the discussions at a later stage and then merely informed of the decision; Foreign Minister Neurath was evidently not consulted at all. The decision was prompted by news of a new British initiative, the so-called Simon Plan, according to which Germany should be granted equality of treatment in armaments only after a probationary period lasting several years. Hitler feared that the Conference might impose this compromise solution on Germany, which would have the effect of postponing German rearmament for years. The only way of ‘preventing such a development’ would be for Germany to leave the Conference and the League of Nations and to insist that she would negotiate about disarmament only on the basis of equality of treatment for all European nations.5 On 13 October, Hitler informed the cabinet about the new policy: Germany would withdraw from all international bodies that denied her equality, and that applied specifically to the League of Nations. He said he would announce this decision along with a declaration of peace, and have it confirmed by a plebiscite in the form of new Reichstag elections.6 The following day, the ministers accepted the plans.7
The idea of having his policies confirmed by such a ‘plebiscite’ was not new. Hitler had already discussed it with Goebbels in July after the issuing of the new Plebiscite Law. As yet there had been no reason for such a plebiscite,8 but now one was provided on 14 October, when the British Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, put forward his new disarmament proposals. Foreign Minister Neurath informed the President of the Disarmament Conference that the German Reich would take no further part in the negotiations, since it was evident that they were not planning general disarmament but merely a continuation of discrimination against German armaments.9 On the same day, Hitler made a government statement concerning both this decision and Germany’s departure from the League of Nations; he also announced in a radio broadcast that the German people would be given the opportunity in the form of new elections to the Reichstag and a plebiscite not only to approve his government’s policy, but to ‘solemnly commit themselves to it’.10 He gave detailed reasons for these decisions in a further broadcast on the evening of 14 October. The speech contained an olive branch to France: After the Saar territory had returned to the Reich, as far as Germany was concerned, there would be ‘no more territorial differences’ between the two countries and ‘only a madman’ could still ‘believe in the possibility of war between the two states’.11 At a cabinet meeting on 17 October, Hitler noted that the ‘critical moment has probably passed’.12
For Germany, leaving the League of Nations represented a radical change of direction in foreign policy and began a turbulent period in relations between the European states. The idea of maintaining long-term peace in Europe through a system of collective security, was therefore fatally weakened. A new phase was beginning, with Germany embarking on independent initiatives and surprise coups. International stability became precarious: in future ‘security’ was to be maintained through bilateral relationships, rearmament, and military deterrence. Massive German rearmament killed off the idea of general European disarmament and an armaments race began in which Germany was able to get on equal terms with the other states and in part overtake them. Yet, almost inevitably, this would trigger an international competition in armaments and so in a few years’ time Germany would lose its advantage. Thus, the time frame for a successful German policy of aggression was limited.
However, Hitler’s decision to risk a breach with the League of Nations and Germany’s departure from the disarmament process in autumn 1933 were not simply the result of his assessment of the international situation. The plan of having this step confirmed by the German people through a plebiscite fitted in perfectly with the policy of an active ‘leadership of the people’, which the regime had embarked upon in September with its series of major events and propaganda campaigns. By taking this dramatic step in October 1933, Hitler demonstrated his clear-sighted awareness of how extremely effective coordinating foreign policy coups with domestic politics could be. By unilaterally abrogating Germany’s armaments restrictions, he could link the plebiscite campaign, which was intended to demonstrate the nation’s support for his regime, to the causes of ‘freedom to rearm for defence’ and ‘restoration of equality for Germany’. Then, with the aid of the subsequent propaganda campaign, he could demonstrate to foreign powers the German Reich’s self-confidence, thereby establishing a strong position for the bilateral negotiations to come.
On 22 October, Hitler began the ‘election campaign’ with two speeches outside the Hall of Liberation in Kelheim; on 24 October, he spoke in the Sportpalast in Berlin, and, during the following days, there were speeches in Hanover, Cologne, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt, in November in Weimar, Essen, Breslau, Elbing, and Kiel.13 The campaign tour was interrupted by the commemoration of the 1923 Munich putsch. On the evening of 8 November, Hitler gave the memorial address in the Bürgerbräukeller, where he felt obliged to defend the unsuccessful coup. He was determined to prevent the impression arising that he had suffered a defeat on that occasion. ‘On that evening, here in this hall, and on the following day, the nation heard the voice of our young movement; we opened the eyes of the whole of the German people, and we nurtured in the movement in its infancy the heroism which it later needed.’ Above all, the putsch enabled him later on to maintain the facade of a ‘legal’ movement. ‘If we hadn’t acted then, I could never have founded a revolutionary movement, built it up and maintained it, and still been able to remain legal. People would have rightly said: You’re just like the others; you talk a lot, but like the others you’re never going to act. But that day, that decision, enabled me to get through nine years against all the odds.’14 By openly admitting the pseudo-legality of his tactics in the ‘time of struggle’, he was signalling to the old Party members that his rejection of a continuation of the revolution four months previously might not have been set in stone. The following day, he took part in a commemoration march from the Bürgerbräukeller to the Feldherrnhalle, made another speech there, and then unveiled a bronze memorial plaque.
A gathering of the ‘old fighters’ in the Bürgerbräukeller, a commemoration march, and a memorial ceremony (in later years switched to the Königsplatz) were from now onwards all included in the annual calendar of Nazi rituals. The martyr cult, which was created around the ‘fallen’ of the putsch, and in which the motif of the ‘resurrection’ of these dead heroes clearly played a part, was intended to demonstrate every year to all that the sacrifices of 1923 had not been in vain. The new ceremony concluded on the evening of 9 November with the recruits of the SS Leibstandarte, Hitler’s bodyguard, taking their oath of loyalty outside the Feldherrnhalle. The square became hallowed ground, where young SS men took the oath to Hitler in person, swearing that they would sacrifice their lives for him as the sixteen Hitler supporters had done in November 1923. In this way the death cult had come full circle. The victims of 1923 had been elevated to the status of being the core element of an indissoluble bond of loyalty between Hitler’s supporters and their ‘Führer’. Hitler played a significant part in determining the form of this ritual and never missed it until it was abandoned in 1944. He had found a way of reinterpreting his complete miscalculation of the political situation in autumn 1923 and his actions at the time, which in reality had been dictated by fear of personal disgrace, and fabricating them into a national mythology.
After the Munich ceremonies Hitler hurried to Berlin for the high point of the election campaign, where on 10 November, with Goebbels acting as his warm-up, he spoke to workers in the Dynamo Hall of the Siemens works.15
Once again, Hitler portrayed himself as a man of the people: ‘In my youth I was a worker just like you and through hard work and studying and – I can say this as well – by going hungry, I managed slowly to work my way up.’ He wanted ‘once again to provide the German people with work and bread’, but could ‘only do it when there was peace and quiet’. He was not ‘crazy enough . . . to want a war’. After all, he had been in the war. ‘But – and I’m certain of this – none of those people who are now attacking Germany and slandering the German people has heard a single bullet whistle past them.’16
On election day, 12 November, those citizens entitled to vote had a single choice on their ballot paper: the NSDAP list, which also included Papen and Hugenberg, although they were not members of the Party. Their inclusion shows how careful Hitler was being not to break with the original idea of a coalition government. The ballot paper also included the following question: ‘Do you, German man, and you, German woman, agree with this policy of your Reich government, and are you prepared to declare that it expresses your own will and solemnly to commit yourself to it?’ Numerous cases of fraud during the voting procedure have been documented: ballot papers were marked or numbered beforehand; in many polling stations there were no polling booths; locally known members of the opposition were barred from voting; ballot papers were subsequently altered; and, throughout the Reich, the Party organization was careful to ensure that even those who were undecided went to the polls; invalid votes, which often contained protests, were not counted.17
The official result of the plebiscite broke all records with 95.1 per cent of the votes in favour. In fact, 89.9 per cent of those entitled to vote had voted ‘yes’. However, the ballot paper had not contained the option of a ‘no’ vote. The vote for the NSDAP Reichstag list was given as 92.1 per cent.18
Hitler had linked withdrawal from the Geneva Disarmament Conference with the decision to establish a 300,000-strong army. This superseded the Reichswehr’s existing plans. In response, during November and December 1933, the Defence Ministry introduced the decisive measures required to accelerate rearmament and restructure the army.19
Basically, since Hitler’s take-over of power, the following measures had been taken in the rearmament field. On 1 April 1933, the Reichswehr had begun implementing the second rearmament plan, which had been agreed in 1932 and envisaged, within five years, increasing the 100,000-man army by 40,000 long-service soldiers, and providing short-term training for 85,000 volunteers annually.20 It was intended that, after their training, these volunteers would be integrated into the SA,21 to enable an army of twenty-one divisions to be formed in the event of war. In addition, it was envisaged that, during spring and summer 1933, the Reichswehr22 would train a total of 90,000 men for frontier defence duties, a task which in practice only the SA could carry out. Moreover, in July 1933, Hitler ordered the SA to train 250,000 of their men so ‘that in the event of war they can be placed at the disposal of the Reichswehr’.23
Now these plans were abandoned and the 100,000-strong army with its seven infantry divisions was to be replaced by a peace-time army with twenty-one divisions and 300,000 men (representing half the size of the French army), which in wartime could be expanded to a total of sixty-three divisions. The majority of troops would initially serve for one year; the intention was to introduce conscription from 1 October. It was to provide the basis for recruitment, replacing the old idea of taking a large number of half-trained men from the SA. At the decisive meeting in the Defence Ministry on 20/21 December 1933, Blomberg announced that Hitler agreed with him that ‘apart from pre-military training, the Wehrmacht [was to be] in charge of everything’. This removal of the SA from the Reichswehr’s rearmament plans was a logical consequence of, on the one hand, a professionalization of the army, which now no longer needed to conceal its training, and, on the other, the determination of the Party leadership, Hitler in particular, to prevent as far as possible the restless Party army from increasing its power in the new state.24
To avoid the impression that Germany was about to embark on a major rearmament programme, a few days after quitting the League of Nations, and in the middle of the election campaign, Hitler put forward a new disarmament proposal. At the end of 1933, Germany would have been relatively helpless in the face of sanctions or pressure from the western powers; thus, it was only logical that Hitler sought limited and controlled German rearmament within the framework of bilateral agreements (or at least to give the impression that that was his intention). To try to achieve this he put out feelers in various directions.
He took a first step on 24 October by proposing to the British ambassador a convention with an eight-year term, which envisaged freezing the armaments of France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, while Germany would be permitted to increase its army up to 300,000 men on the basis of one-year conscription, but would dispense with heavy weapons.25
On 16 November, Hitler renewed his contacts with France. This was four days after the plebiscite, and with his position strengthened by the ‘people’s’ apparently enthusiastic support. Accompanied by Ribbentrop and Blomberg, he once again met the French journalist and intimate of Daladier, de Brinon, whom he had already met in September and whose link with Ribbentrop was still intact. They decided to publish Hitler’s statements in the form of a newspaper interview. This first interview that Hitler gave to a French newspaper was published on 22 November in Le Matin and reprinted in the Völkischer Beobachter on 23 November. He reiterated at length his wish for an understanding and for peace. ‘People insult me when they continue to say that I want war’ he declared angrily. Once the Saar issue had been resolved there were no further insoluble problems in the German–French relationship: ‘Alsace–Lorraine is not a matter of dispute.’ The controversial armaments question could be solved through a bilateral agreement with France. But these grandiose statements were too transparent to produce a change in French public opinion.26
By contrast, there was a significant change in Germany’s policy towards eastern Europe. As already mentioned, at the end of September, Hitler had declared in the cabinet that relations with the Soviet Union would in future be marked by a ‘sharp antagonism’. In August 1933, the former head of the delegation to the Disarmament Conference, Nadolny, was appointed German ambassador in Moscow. At the end of 1933, assuming that he was expressing the official view, Nadolny prepared a comprehensive scheme for improving German–Soviet relations; however, by January 1934, he had been forced to toe Hitler’s line.27
In spring 1933, Hitler had already put out friendly feelers to Poland.28 On 15 November, he received the Polish ambassador, Josef Lipski; this was only three days after the Reichstag election, and before the meeting with de Brinon. According to the official statement, in future both states intended to deal with matters affecting the two countries ‘through direct negotiations’, avoiding ‘any use of force’.29 The communiqué made it clear that both states were aiming to negotiate a non-aggression pact. The Foreign Ministry was sceptical, since a formal non-aggression pact could be seen as Germany renouncing a revision of the eastern border.30 Thus, Hitler agreed that the planned pact should take the form of a joint statement31 and the negotiations with the Polish side were conducted on that basis. After a final meeting between Hitler and the Polish ambassador32 the negotiations finally led to the German–Polish statement of 26 January 1934. The agreement was to last ten years and basically involved a joint renunciation of the use of force. Moreover, the text clearly indicated the intention of engaging in closer cooperation in the future.33
Throughout the Weimar period German foreign policy had focused on a revision of the eastern border; Poland had been regarded as hostile and the aim had been to join with the Soviet Union in forcing her into submission. With the so-called German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of 26 January Hitler was pursuing a very different policy. In the short and medium term he intended this move to break through Germany’s diplomatic isolation, provide apparent proof of his peaceful intentions, and significantly undermine France’s anti-German alliance policy. In the longer term he had another objective: Poland could play an important role as a base and junior partner for a policy of acquiring living space in eastern Europe.34
The friendly signals that Hitler sent to the Soviet Union in January and February 1934 (for example his deportation of the Bulgarian communists, Georgi Dimitroff, Wassil Taneff, and Blagoi Popoff, who were still in custody despite having been found not guilty in the Reichstag Fire trial35) were simply intended to disguise his unambiguously anti-Soviet policy. In April, Neurath rejected a proposal by Moscow for a German–Soviet guarantee for the Baltic States.36 When the German ambassador in Moscow visited Berlin at the end of May, Hitler told him bluntly that he did not want to have anything to do with the Soviets.37
The German–Polish rapprochement inevitably led to a further cooling of relations with France. Germany provided more precise details of its disarmament proposals in a memorandum submitted to France on 18 December, but the new conservative government under Prime Minister Gaston Doumergue, with Louis Barthou as Foreign Minister, was unimpressed.38 In March 1934, Hitler sent his foreign policy advisor, Ribbentrop, to France; however, in his conversation with Barthou Ribbentrop encountered open distrust of German policy.39 Further attempts by Ribbentrop to negotiate at Hitler’s behest40 were prevented when France broke off the contacts on 17 April on the grounds that Germany was rearming unilaterally. Negotiations could restart only if Germany rejoined the League of Nations.41
France now began a diplomatic offensive, which soon drove Germany into almost complete isolation. In the first place, Foreign Minister Barthou, together with the Soviet Union, pursued an eastern pact which, by including the Soviet Union, Poland, Finland, the Baltic states, and Germany, was intended to fix the existing borders in eastern Europe in the same way that the Locarno Pact of 1925 had fixed Germany’s western border. This eastern pact, which preoccupied Germany a great deal during summer 1934, ultimately failed, but the Soviet Union moved much closer to France. In September 1934, not least under pressure from the French government, the Soviet Union joined the League of Nations and, in May 1935, Barthou’s successor, Pierre Laval, even made a pact for mutual military assistance with the Soviet Union. In addition, Germany’s Austrian policy was an important factor in bringing France and Italy closer.42
At the end of 1933, Hitler had initially continued his cautious Austrian policy, aiming to limit the damage caused by his attempt at coordination in the spring.43 During a visit to Rome in November 1933, Göring, who was increasingly being used by Hitler for special diplomatic missions, told Mussolini that at the moment Hitler had no intention of threatening Austrian independence. The union of Austria and Germany was absolutely unavoidable, but should only occur in agreement with Italy. Hitler used the visit of Fulvio Suvich, Italian Under Secretary of State, to Berlin in December to demand Dollfuss’s removal from power, but in vain.44 Meanwhile, Dollfuss increasingly sought protection from Italy. To this end, he crushed the Austrian Social Democratic Party in February 1934 and set about establishing an authoritarian regime, an Austrian version of fascism. Inevitably, he then found himself becoming diplomatically dependent on Italy.45 Although Hitler emphasized his change of course with regard to Austria,46 he could not prevent Dollfuss from signing the Roman Protocols with the Hungarian prime minister, Gyula Gömbös, and Mussolini on 17 March. This was a consultative agreement attached to a series of economic arrangements; it underpinned Austrian independence under Italian protection and rebuffed German ambitions in south-east Europe.47
Gömbös, representing a state that, like Germany, was seeking a revision of the post-war international order, had been the first head of government to visit Hitler in Berlin in June 1933. However, the Nazis’ only too obvious ambitions vis-à-vis Austria had damaged German–Hungarian relations. In 1934 Germany’s only success was in managing to sign a series of trade treaties with south-east European states.48
The signing in summer 1933 of the Concordat was Hitler’s first diplomatic success. Yet, although he had managed during the rest of 1933 and the beginning of 1934 to push through his own foreign policy ideas against opposition from the Foreign Ministry, the results were of dubious value. In the first place, unlike his chief diplomat, he had not banked on the collapse of the Geneva Disarmament Conference, but instead had spectacularly seized the initiative and taken the risk of leaving the Conference and the League of Nations. However, after the French government broke off negotiations in spring 1934, his assumption that he would be able to secure future German rearmament through bilateral agreements had, for the time being, been proved wrong. As a result, Germany found itself relatively unprotected in the ‘risk zone’ right at the start of its major rearmament programme. Secondly, Hitler had been successful in seeking a rapprochement with Poland in order to break out of isolation, but in doing so had put at risk the Foreign Ministry’s main priority, namely revision of the eastern frontier. The Non-Aggression Pact with Poland had also had the result of pushing the Soviet Union towards the western powers and damaging Germany’s relations with France. Indeed, both powers were eventually prompted by German policy to make a military pact. Thirdly, it became clear that Hitler’s attempt to pacify Austria had failed to rectify the damage that he had caused by his aggressive coordination policy in spring 1933; instead, he had strengthened the Dollfuss regime and caused it to align itself with Italy. Above all, the Austrian question had caused significant damage to Germany’s relationship with Italy, the key partner he had hoped to win over.