Let us now revert to the assessment of the defence-political situation found at the time of Hitler’s taking on the mantle of government. Lieutenant General Adam states literally in his memorandum:
‘At this moment we are unable to wage a war. We have to do everything to avert it, even at the price of being defeated diplomatically …
‘We have to reinforce our defence force by working with more tenacity, more patience and more care, at the same time preparing the population for the harsh moment.
‘However, even if we do everything to avert war, also depriving the enemy of any pretext to declare it, we cannot avoid war if others decide to do it preventively. It would be folly to make plans for operations and troop concentration just for an eventuality.’58
In this ‘situation of desperation’ – may I be permitted the repetition – everything conduced to Hitler’s intention to restore the Reich’s capacity to defend itself by means of a politico-diplomatic agreement with both the Western Powers.
We shall follow the endeavours of the successive German governments to attain equal status in the armaments question from 1932 on, the opening of the so-called Disarmament Conference. It convened in Geneva, at last, on 2 February 1932 – twelve years after Versailles. Germany demanded ‘a general disarmament to follow after her compliance’. The French government blocked the conference with security demands before any general disarmament could be possible. The conference broke up with nothing resolved.59
In a Note dated August 1932, the Reich’s government under Chancellor von Papen once again called for complete equal military status. The Note was sent back by the French government couched in sharply worded form. The government under Papen finally delivered a ‘Declaration of Dissociation’. This signified that no further participation in the deliberations of the Geneva Conference was wanted until some progress was achieved in direct negotiations.
British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald , in a ‘Five-Powers-Declaration’ in December 1932 between Germany, France, Italy, Britain and the USA, finally granted the Reich equal military status.60 However, its practical implementation was not achieved at the disarmament conference which became locked in something of a ‘vicious circle’ in part due to the French government’s blocking of negotiations. From the juridical point of view the German position was improved, although no de facto equal status had yet been reached.
On 16 March 1933, MacDonald presented a plan that came to be known as the ‘MacDonald Plan’. Although in regard to the status quo it may have meant a certain improvement, it did not touch at all upon the Reich’s right to equal status, not even as to adequate defence capacity, as emerges from the most important points raised in the Plan, summarized as follows:
According to the Plan, Germany would be entitled to 200,000 troops; France to 400,000; Poland 200,000; Czechoslovakia 100,000; Soviet Russia 500,000; Belgium 75,000; Italy 250,000. Britain was not mentioned in the Plan and therefore retained a completely free hand in the adjustment of her armed forces.
No air force whatsoever was to be permitted to the disarmed states, whereas France was authorized 500 aeroplanes; Poland 200; Czechoslovakia 200; Soviet Russia 500; Belgium 150; Italy 500; and the United States 500. Again, no limitation of air forces was foreseen for Britain.
As to artillery weapons, the Plan made the following provisions: Germany was allowed to add guns of 11.5cm calibre only, while states which already possessed arms of greater calibre were allowed to retain them. This signified a considerable inferiority in weaponry for Germany.
Military service was to be limited to eight months and professional armies to be disbanded within a specific time span. This clause too was primarily aimed against Germany. It should have commuted the highly qualified Reichswehr into a short-lived army, without however having the within fifteen years’ born age group reservists at its disposal, as had all its neighbours. These details allow it to be clearly seen that both victorious countries had no intention of granting Germany an adequate defence capacity, let alone complete military equal status. Nevertheless, Germany accepted the ‘MacDonald Plan’ as a valid basis for negotiation. On 17 May, Hitler made a placatory speech in the Reichstag, which was ‘honoured’ on 11 June by the British Minister of War, Lord Douglas Hailsham, in an intransigent speech in the form of an ultimatum.
In September 1933, France and Great Britain seriously ‘spoiled’ their own – that is the MacDonald – plan. The new proposal foresaw two stages: in the first four years standing armies were to be made into militias; only for the second stage were the armed states to commence disarmament according to the British plan. As far as Germany was concerned, the plan was henceforth no longer acceptable as a basis for negotiation. It placed the realization of the Reich’s equal status as well as the restoration of its defence capacity at the discretion of the Conference’s decisions – which was not to reconvene before another four years, and thus at one stroke postponed the final decision for eight years. The proposal was furthermore once again directed unilaterally against the highly qualified professional German army, the Reichswehr, and did not take the lack of reservists’ age groups into consideration, which the armed states had at their disposition for the last fifteen years. It was clearly not feasible to turn them into speedily trained militiamen.
A component of domestic politics may have played a role therein. It should be mentioned here that from the outset of his collaboration with Hitler, my father exerted himself to alter the former’s negative attitude toward France to a positive one. Father used to speak of the War Minister of the day, Blomberg, who always warmly supported him in his ‘French policy’, and Blomberg’s unfortunate dismissal was a blow for Father too. A particular problem often underlay the relation of the management of foreign policy to that of the armed forces. French politician Georges Clemenceau once said: ‘War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men!’ Blücher spoke of ‘pen-pushers’. In this context, Father wrote from Nürnberg: ‘I must mention here that SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm … substantially contributed to Adolf Hitler’s gradually revising his negative conception regarding France.’61
Röhm’s efforts to turn the army into a militia in close connection to the SA are well known. I remember very well that after the events of 30 June 1934 (the purging of Röhm’s SA, known as the Night of the Long Knives), my father said: ‘Röhm is supposed to have admitted to a connection with a foreign power.’ A connection of Röhm with French circles seemed all the more likely since both pursued the same goal of making a militia out of the army. In any case, Röhm met with François-Poncet, the French ambassador in Berlin, whatever they may then have discussed.
The Finance Minister of the day, Schwerin von Krosigk, says: ‘The French President of the Council Barthou had been informed in the spring of 1934 that a change of the system was imminent in Germany. Whence he got this information is not known, nor is its content in detail.’62 In his memoirs, Churchill leaves no doubt that the SA constituted a powerful potential threat to Hitler’s dominance, perhaps even a current one. He says that ‘he [Schleicher] was imprudent enough to drop hints to the French Ambassador in Berlin that the fall of Hitler was not far off. This repeated the action he had taken in the case of Bruening.’63 Schleicher was aware of the rumours going around, and only a few days before he died he denied having spoken with François-Poncet about anything but private matters.64
To deprive Röhm of power may have been necessary for the consolidation of domestic policy relations in the Reich from Hitler’s point of view, and possibly also in the above-mentioned sense. The form and the manner of Hitler’s handling of the row with Röhm and finally putting an end to it had without doubt in its brutality – neither justified by rights nor necessity – disastrous repercussions in the long term. It broke with the traditional concept of what is just. This appearance of arbitrariness, unprecedented by an autocrat in ordering executions by firing squad at his discretion – in some cases of his oldest comrades at arms – without giving the person concerned a fair chance of vindicating himself, was all but suited to conduce the broad domestic policies consensus that the country needed. The unpredictability thus revealed could prove a serious handicap in the field of foreign policy, in the sense of my father’s efforts to win over confidence in the German concept thereof on the part of his interlocutors in other countries.
Did the governments of Britain and France perhaps entertain hopes of a change of government in Germany? Did the view that a ‘diplomatic defeat of the Reich’ (General Adam) constitute a contributory factor – envisaging for instance being outvoted in the Steering Committee of the Disarmament Conference – that might further this change or even bring it about? One can only venture a guess in this case, but it is not entirely to be excluded out of hand. In any case, Hitler was resolved not to let himself be outvoted in Geneva and thereby be shouldered with the blame for the breakdown of the ‘MacDonald Plan’ or the Disarmament Conference. Germany quit the League of Nations and the Conference on 14 October 1933.
Hitler gave two stars of journalism of international fame, the Englishman George Ward Price of the Rothermere Press (Daily Mail) and the Frenchman Fernand de Brinon for the Paris Le Matin,65 each an interview, in which he once more expressed his wish to come to an understanding with both nations as to Germany’s entitlement to equal status. At the time, both interviews attracted a great deal of attention. Both had been arranged by my father and contributed considerably to appease the temporary agitation aroused by Germany’s quitting the League of Nations and the Conference.
After 1933, both journalists visited us in Dahlem on various occasions, de Brinon more often than Ward Price. The latter was a versatile man, with an easy approach to his interlocutor, not the typical Englishman apart from the dark blue pin-stripe suit he usually wore; de Brinon gave an impression of greater intimacy, also with us children, whose knowledge of French he praised. As Father constantly criticized our French – as is well known, he himself spoke it fluently – this did us a lot of good. In one of his books de Brinon mentions me as a ‘Jungvolkjunge’ (Hitler Youth boy scout) and gives a description of me.66
Both journalists were in favour of a major arrangement between their countries and Germany, and the atmosphere of their visits was one of openmindedness, indeed it was genial. The interview Hitler granted de Brinon was particularly noteworthy because in it Hitler expressly showed himself to be disinterested in Alsace-Lorraine. Here Father’s ‘French policy’ requires an explanation and I shall turn to his activities, conducted initially in an unofficial capacity and from 1934 officially, as ‘Special Commissioner for Disarmament Issues’.
In the first discussion of foreign policy, mentioned above, between Hitler as Chancellor and my father at our home in Dahlem in February 1933,67 Father had expressed his conviction that ‘for a German-British rapprochement a compromise between Germany and France … would be a precondition’. At the time, as Father wrote, Hitler was ‘not responsive’.
Father’s argument set out from the premise of the validity of the British principle of ‘Balance of Power’, the European equilibrium so often quoted, characteristic of current British politics. Britain would not allow herself to be separated from her ally France in order to take an isolated stand against Germany or even to accept Germany’s taking steps against France. The Reich was viewed by Britain as the strongest Continental Power – it should actually be formulated as ‘potentially’ the strongest – not that it was yet at the present moment. At the discussion with Father on the occasion of this visit to Dahlem, Hitler had closed with a request that Father should use a business trip to Paris and London to investigate the state of mind reigning in the political circles of the two capitals. Father wrote on the subject:
‘After having sojourned in Paris and London for a fairly long time I reported to him [Hitler] again that according to my estimate only a gesture of reassurance toward France would bring about a relaxation in the international state of affairs that would be favourable to us. Everyone in Paris asked me what Adolf Hitler thought about France. What he wrote in his book Mein Kampf about the ancestral enmity between Germany and France was constantly quoted and put an end to any political discussion.’68
At the time when Hitler was writing his book (1924-25) in the Festung Landsberg prison, the Ruhr had been occupied by the French and the Belgians, where they maintained a rule of terror of a sort.69 The book was of course supposed to prepare his comeback to politics, and in those days he could therefore express only anti-French sentiments. In the book, he had already ‘stuck his neck out’, as we would say today, when he sharply rejected a policy that aimed at repossessing the German regions lost to Versailles.70 It should be remembered when the time comes, to speak of his offer to Poland in the autumn of 1938, that characteristically included the guaranteeing of the Polish borders, consequently also of the Corridor through the Reich.
The head of the delegation of French combatants whom Father had brought to Hitler as one of his ‘confidence-building actions’, Scapini, who had been blinded in war, mentioned to Hitler the anti-French chapters in Mein Kampf and asked the Führer whether he was now going to write another book. Hitler retorted promptly and with emphasis: ‘I shall refute my book by my policies!’ Father told my mother about this in front of me with delight. He could attribute Hitler’s turn-about to a ‘pro-French’ political stance to a personal success of Father’s own, since from the start he had sustained the opinion that ‘the way to London led through Paris’, in the sense, in fact, that it would be impossible to separate France and Great Britain. Meanwhile Hitler had realized that he had to bring France in, were it only for the reason that by their own choice, the policies of the French depended on London, even though he saw London as the heavyweight. Thereby territorial problems on the Reich’s western border were eliminated, the referendum in the Saar region having been established in the Treaty of Versailles. It might at most temporarily have led to tensions.
On 26 January 1934, Hitler concluded a Non-Aggression Pact with Poland. The year before, the aged Marshal Piłsudski had found no support from the Western Powers for his planned attack on Germany; he was ‘an exponent of “one thing or the other”’, as Robert Vansittart, regretting the missed opportunity, wrote in his memoirs.71 He was aware of the state of his country, that in a certain way was comparable to Germany’s. Poland, wedged between two powerful neighbours, was in rather greater danger. Polish policy was based on an alliance with France and in the first instance was directed against her Western neighbour, the German Reich. According to circumstance, combined with the Little Entente, this alliance with France purported to neutralize the Reich. The second cornerstone of Polish policy rested on the assumption – in 1934 in no way unjustified – that the opposition between National-Socialist Germany and Bolshevik Russia was unbridgeable. In this way, in the eyes of the Polish government a state of equilibrium came about in Eastern Europe that signified security for the Poles and which was bolstered by a Polish-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in 1932. A further such pact with the Reich could only reinforce this security and moreover cost nothing, since for years Piłsudski had anyway experienced the political inability to launch an attack against Germany. Hitler, for his part, may have hoped that such an arrangement would make it easier to concede a favourable climate for the French government in the issue of equal status. At this point mention should not be omitted that Conservative circles, the entourage of State Secretary of the Auswärtiges Amt Bülow, were opposed to such an accord with Poland.72 This will have to be borne in mind when judging the later activities of the ‘Conservative’ conspiracy against a pro-Polish policy of the German government in 1938-39.
We children spent the summer holidays in Büsum, where Mother visited us. There was an event of particular interest for me while she was there, as she learned that on his way back from London Father would fly into Hamburg. He wanted to be met so as to join us for a few days in Büsum, and my mother took me in the car to meet him at the Atlantic hotel in Hamburg. She briefed me during the drive about the mainly political grounds for Father’s trip to France and England. He was unofficially charged with sounding out what possibilities existed for bringing about an arrangement in the issue of equal status entitlement between Germany on the one hand, and Britain and France on the other.
This was the return trip of the journey about which Father had spoken to Hitler in Dahlem in February 1933. In any case, during the drive from Hamburg to Büsum – which in those days was a matter of a few hours – he spoke with optimism about the talks he had held in both countries insofar as he thought he would be able to achieve putting the equal status issue on the path to a deal with Britain – thereby perhaps also with France. For me, the problem at the core of the German desire for equal status very gradually began to be clear. A genuine reconciliation based on equal status was the political goal. This meant that I – all of 12 years old – had to rethink certain things, for in my books about the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, France and England were naturally always the ‘enemies’.
However, in our life as children the will to reach an understanding with England and France was nothing new. We had a French governess for three years. Her mother was a Sudeten German and she felt herself connected to both peoples; she was basically a pacifist and in favour of understanding between nations. Many foreigners and diplomats frequented our home in the 1920s; both our parents had a distinct affinity with France as well as England. Father spoke the two languages faultlessly, and his English at least was without an accent. He had lived in Switzerland before the First World War, had studied at Grenoble and had been commercially active in the United Kingdom and Canada, with an interval in the United States. The French as well as the British way of life suited both my parents. In Wiesbaden, Mother had had an English governess for many years, of whom she was very fond and who remained faithful to our family through all the ups and downs until her death in the 1950s. In both countries, Father’s business connections, which he had built up after the First World War, belonged to the circles that also determined the politics of their countries. It was inevitable that, being someone who had already always been highly interested in politics, he should have expert knowledge of the political scene in Paris and London. The experience acquired through his close business connections, that he was able to accumulate over ten years, was exactly the right qualification for his assignment to conduct sounding out talks.
I shall insert here a minor personal memory that may illustrate the ever-present political atmosphere of our Dahlem home. It will have been in 1930 that a French friend who was of the same mind as they, made my parents a present of a board game played with dice, to introduce children to an awareness of the economic absurdity of European customs barriers. It was played with a quantity of fake money and the winner was the one who came out of the customs labyrinth to best advantage, that is who at the end still had the most money left over. The customs duties payable each time disappeared into a big jar. We often played this game with our ‘Mademoiselle’, as we called our French governess. It was not until seventy years later that this ‘game’ became reality!
I can say, looking back, that the political atmosphere at home was characterized by the insight into the necessity for a good understanding with both Western European Powers. Intelligence demanded it, sentiments wished it. It was precisely for this understanding to survive that the ‘entitlement to equal status’ was conditional.
Father’s unofficial activity corresponded to the unofficial status of his visitors. Two Englishmen are before my mental eye as vividly as though I had last seen them but yesterday. They were often our guests, one a Mr Tennant and the other Professor Conwell-Evans.
We gazed with awe at Ernest Tennant, the big, heavily built Scotsman, in secret admiration, for he had told Father his story, that he must be one of the few people who had been lying severely injured underneath a lion, and yet had been rescued. Dogs had drawn the predator away and his life had been saved. However, he was far from having escaped death. What is dangerous in wounds from the paws of huge felines – they had torn up his chest – is the ptomaine putrefaction that sets in from the traces of rotting flesh caught in the animal’s claws that are left in the skin of its prey at the final laceration. He escaped this life-threatening danger thanks to crystals or salts that a native medicine man had pressed into the wounds. Tennant being a Scotsman, Father was rather amused by his thriftiness – if in doubt, Tennant let Father pay the bill – which seemed somehow to confirm the commonplace reputation of Scots for stinginess.
Tennant roamed the world, collecting butterflies. He was well off and financially independent. Like many British people with connections abroad, he placed himself at the disposal of the Secret Service – in this case as contact man with my father. My parents explained to me that many British people abroad cooperated with the Secret Service, seeing it as a self-evident duty to their country, an attitude found only rarely in Germany. My parents regretted – although they did not quarrel with it – that German career diplomats did not encourage their compatriots with international connections to provide the ‘Dienst’ (trans., to serve the foreign policy of the home country) with such knowledge, observations and connections. It was Father’s opinion that businessmen, journalists, scientists etc. were often better informed about the country where they were guests, as well as its relations with others, than career diplomats who, moreover, only ever stayed for a limited time in their post in the country they were accredited to. Already then, financial representatives were complaining of the lack of support in their efforts in the sector of exports on the part of the Reich’s diplomatic missions.
The other Briton, Thomas P. Conwell-Evans, called himself ‘Professor’ because he had a visiting lecturer’s chair at Königsberg University in East Prussia. He presented himself as a cheerful, energetic and amiable chap who was fluent in German. As far as I remember, his field of scholarship was English literature. This ‘cover’, as professional camouflage is known in the intelligence services, enabled him to make use of the most diverse contacts all over the world and to be active in the interests of his country. Father rated Conwell-Evans as fairly high-ranking in the Secret Service.73 We children made contact with Conwell-Evans more easily than with the reserved Scot. He was a frequent visitor to our embassy in London.
But we got on best with de Brinon, who was friendly to and spent time with us. After 1940 he was the Vichy government’s ambassador to Germany. This was a good choice on the part of France, for his longstanding close contact with my father meant that de Brinon had the best prerequisites to represent his country’s interests effectively to the German government. His life ended after the liberation in his homeland in front of a firing squad. About him, Father wrote:
‘On the day of Montoire [24 October 1940, when Hitler famously shook hands with Marechal Petain, signifying the beginning of organized French collaboration with Germany], Ambassador de Brinon made a remark to me typical of him: “We have not lost the war. We just did not want to fight!”’
When my father was appointed ‘Special Commissioner for Disarmament Issues’, we had ever more visitors. I have already mentioned the star lead-article writer for the Rothermere Press, Ward Price. Now Lord Rothermere himself appeared. He was a calm and worthy representative of the Empire. Lord Rothermere and Lord Lothian – both of whom I remember well – were on various occasions Father’s interlocutors during the long-drawn-out efforts to place German-English relations on a footing of mutual trust. The Rothermere Press committed itself to this end. Someone who gave a quite different impression, of being lean, tough and energetic, however, was, as I remember him, Lord Lloyd, who at the time was not necessarily seen to be the militant opponent of Germany that he later turned out to be. One might ask oneself what Lord Lothian, as British ambassador in Washington during the war, will have thought when at Churchill’s behest he had himself to get the sell-off of the British Empire underway. What will the feelings have been of the British hardliner Lord Lloyd – who had propagandized for a military conflict with Germany – when during the war he had protested to Churchill about the ruthlessness with which the Roosevelt government was forcing the British to relinquish their investments abroad so as to be able to pay for American supplies?74
Our numerous foreign guests in Dahlem sought to have contact with my father as having newly appeared on the diplomatic scene, news of which had swiftly made the rounds with the adjunct that to a certain extent he had Hitler’s ear. They wanted to find out what he had to offer and how Hitler’s policies were to be assessed. Father was aware of his role and was tireless in proffering the important arrangement he had in mind. The many talks held in Dahlem confirmed the German desire to come to terms with Britain and France in the broadest sense.
The person who made the greatest impression on us children when he came to Dahlem was the Frenchman Georges Scapini, who had been blinded in the war and was President of the French League of Frontline Fighters. The dignity with which this man endured his harsh fate was striking. He genuinely aspired to prevent a repetition of the events that had cost him the sight of an eye. He was charming to us children, and there is the amusing story of how my sister Bettina tried to describe a grouse’s mating call to him. Her knowledge of French was inadequate for the purpose, so she said: ‘C’est un oiseau qui crie toujours je t’aime, je t’aime.’ (‘It’s a bird who is always calling out I love you, I love you’). Scapini was royally entertained because he had of course immediately understood what bird the 13-year-old girl meant. At Father’s instigation, after the 1940 campaign on the Western front, Scapini was appointed with diplomatic status and a staff to take care of the camps of the French prisoners of war. After the victory over France, Father also represented the policy of reconciliation, albeit finding himself exposed to strenuous opposition in its execution, added to by the bickering over competencies in the Third Reich, which went one step further and also had an extremely negative impact within occupied France.
Father’s position as ‘Special Commissioner for Disarmament Issues’ was a structure typical of the Third Reich, or rather of Hitler. As has already been said, my father was not subordinate to the Auswärtige Amt. This signified for him that on the one hand he had greater freedom of movement, although on the other the ministry’s facilities were not at his disposal. He was also obliged to set up an organization of his own – known as the ‘Dienststelle Ribbentrop’. On instruction of the Führer, Father had agreed to draw a budget for the Dienststelle from the Reich’s Ministry of Finance Government. The adventurous account of Reinhard Spitzy75 about the financing of the ‘Dienststelle Ribbentrop’ is as undeserving of belief as his account of political events during the short period of his employment by my father.
With his small organization Father developed an intensive activity of ‘trust-building measures’, as they would be called today. Associations, one German-English and the other German-French, were founded, together with friends from those countries and to which significant personalities from all three belonged, such as Sir Robert Vansittart to the German-English one. With hindsight, one may be justified in doubting whether when Sir Robert joined it his intentions were of the best in the sense of the objectives set by the association; however, as Permanent Undersecretary of the Foreign Office he could not be overlooked. The ‘Dienststelle Ribbentrop’ organized meetings of front-line fighters from the three countries, which was not greatly to the liking of the French ambassador François-Poncet.
The work carried out by the ‘Dienststelle Ribbentrop’ was nevertheless not restricted to ‘creating an atmosphere’; it was a matter of reaching concrete results. The armaments problem, included in the formulation ‘German right to equal status’, had to find a solution in view of the Reich’s endangered situation, whether it was through general disarmament or acceptance of the restoration of its defence capacity. Father’s Paris contacts were to bring about a meeting between Hitler and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier. Father had this to write about it:
‘To take advantage of the favourable atmosphere on both sides [following the famous Hitler-de Brinon interview with the declared relinquishment of Alsace-Lorraine], shortly afterwards I asked Hitler if he were prepared to meet the French Prime Minister Daladier. I had heard from friends in Paris that M. Daladier would not be averse to such a meeting. The Führer gave his agreement to an informal, private and confidential get-together. For the purpose, a hunting lodge in the Odenwald was chosen. I went to Paris in the firm hope of bringing the visit to fulfilment and thereby for a further step to be taken to a better understanding and rapprochement between the two countries – a goal toward which I had worked in the framework of my opportunities from as early as 1919.
‘In Paris I met M. Daladier for breakfast [luncheon] in a friend’s apartment … As soon as we said our greetings, the President of the Council said: “I cannot come. I am situated in a system that does not permit me such freedom of movement as Herr Hitler has.”’76
For Hitler and my father, this negative reply was more than a disappointment; it was one more symptom of the lack of willingness to tackle the problems, proof of the desire for reconciliation on the part of Germany countered by intransigence on the part of the French.
The German government did not let itself be disheartened, and more efforts were exerted to achieve progress in the negotiations. The problem of the Reich’s defence capacity had sooner or later to be solved. A discussion my father had with Stanley Baldwin, then Lord President of the Council, John Simon, Foreign Secretary, and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald triggered a speech by Baldwin in the Commons in which he proposed a middle way compromise between the armed and the disarmed nations. Father wrote that at the time it was more than he could have hoped for, albeit in Paris the speech was received with less satisfaction.77
Those were the days when Paris blocked all progress in the armaments issue, which was of such vital importance for Germany. The advocate for this policy was the French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. It was he who in 1913 had introduced three-year military service in France, in 1921 prepared the French-Polish alliance and finally, in 1923, when he was Minister of Justice in the Poincaré cabinet had voted in favour of invasion of the Ruhr.78 In his talks with my father, Barthou kept to the line adopted so far by his government and diplomatically evaded discussion of armament matters, while basing the discussion wholly on existing French connections to Eastern Europe. On the subject Father said:
‘Shortly after, I saw Barthou again in the fine Chateau d’Orsay of old M. Buneau-Varilla, owner of the Matin, at a dinner party with ladies present – this time my wife too had come with me. Barthou sparkled with wit and good cheer and it was an extremely interesting and delightful evening. Although I already feared that Barthou would again avoid discussing politics – for which reason I was there – he asked me to come into the garden. There we then had a long and this time very serious conversation. The French Foreign Minister was about to set out on his trip to Eastern Europe: he intended to forge a fresh ring of alliances round Germany. In vain I entreated him, instead of Warsaw, Prague, Bucharest and Belgrade to come first to Berlin … The French Foreign Minister was not to be persuaded otherwise. His standard reply every time was that before he could negotiate armaments issues with us he had to put his Eastern alliances in order.’
A few weeks after departing from the Disarmament Conference, the Reich’s government recorded their wishes in a Note dated 18 December 1933. Quite rightly, the Note assumed that disarmament in Europe was unthinkable without a framework of worldwide disarmament, which at that present moment would not be very realistic. Hence, the highly armed states should freeze their arms situation. For Germany, the Note demanded ‘equal status’, which included ‘defensive arms’, the ‘equivalent of the normal arms equipment of a modern defence force’.
In the Note the German government accepted an international, periodic and automatically functioning and general control, that could also be extended over the so-called ‘Wehrverbände’ (trans., unarmed paramilitary units); meaning also the Sturmabteilung SA, the Schutzstaffel SS, Labour Service etc. The German government held out the prospect of converting the armed forces of the Weimar Republic, the Reichswehr, into an army with a short military service, whereby an original French postulation was met. The total strength required was of 300,000 troops. Lastly, non-aggression pacts were to underpin the accords.79
Once again, bitingly couched, the French government turned down the German Note, whilst the British government submitted a proposal of mediation which did nonetheless postpone the outset of German air armament by at least two years in that a general air-arm disarmament was not applied. This was, however, but an illusion as, remarkably, at the same time the American President Roosevelt had introduced a draft Bill to Congress that was thought out as the basis for a substantial reinforcement of the American air force. Take good note of the date: it was January 1934.80
Anthony Eden, who arrived in Berlin on 19 February 1934 to confer with Germany about the British proposal, found himself before a Hitler who was open to discussion and who had a counter-proposal only in the question of the air force. He was prepared to fix the strength of the German air arm at 30 per cent of the combined air strike forces of his neighbours, but not to exceed 50 per cent of the French air force. He would entirely renounce bombers. Nevertheless, Germany must be entitled to begin the appropriate preparations immediately, which was plausible in view of the necessary delays for development of airplanes.81 On 17 March 1934, the French government also rejected the British compromise solution. French policy was incomprehensible in its inflexibility, which repeatedly thwarted every reasonable concession to the Reich. It was firmly bound to the dogma of the Treaty of Versailles and missed the opportunity to tie Hitler down to a specific, controllable state of armament. If he had then not adhered to the terms agreed, his contractual partners would accordingly have had the time for and the possibility of an appropriate reaction, since they were far ahead in their armament, which meant that at any time the prerequisites existed to force Germany by ultimatum to conform to the terms agreed. Furthermore, since Hitler had declared he was prepared to admit controls to cover also the SA, SS and Labour Service, no secret armament could be possible. It was not difficult for Hitler to accept such controls, for as a matter of fact up until the war there had been no pre-military training through the organizations that the French referred to as ‘formations militaire’. It may be that Röhm had plans to merge the SA and the Reichswehr into a militia army; but such plans nowhere near reached realization. After Röhm’s execution the SA dwindled to become a group of ‘pub-night regulars’. That the potential of the SA and, to a certain extent, of the Hitler-Jugend was not utilized for the purposes of premilitary training and development was symptomatic of a failure to construct a consistent armament policy. If anything it is Hitler that is to be reproached for this. The same omission may however also be brought in as evidence that he had not counted on a military conflict. It is difficult, in view of the geopolitical situation of the Reich described above, to bypass labelling this readiness for compromise as having been far-reaching. The repeated rejections of these proposals triggered Hitler’s doubts as to the realizability of Germany’s claim to equal status by the means of negotiation of an agreement with Britain and France.
On 16 April 1934, the Reich’s government had orally submitted these proposals to Eden on his visit to Berlin in a Memorandum destined for the British government. It is of sufficient importance for part of it to be quoted here word for word:82
‘The German Government find it impossible to wait two years for appropriate means of aerial defence. They wish to possess a defensive air force of short-range machines, not including bombing planes, from the beginning of the convention, the numerical strength of which would not exceed 30 per cent of the combined air forces of Germany’s neighbours or 50 per cent of the military aircraft possessed by France (in France itself and in the French North African territories), whichever figure was the less …
‘The German Government would be prepared to agree … to ensure the non-military character of the S.A. and S.S., such character to be verified by a system of supervision. These regulations would provide that the S.A. … would
1.possess no arms;
2.receive no instruction in arms;
3.not be concentrated or trained in military camps;
4.not be, directly or indirectly, commanded or instructed by officers of the regular army;
5.not engage in or take part in field exercises.
‘The German Government are also prepared to agree to the postponement of the reductions of armaments of other Powers until the end of the fifth year of the convention, the measure of disarmament laid down in the United Kingdom Memorandum being carried out during the second five years of the convention. All the other proposals made in the United Kingdom Memorandum, which would be unaffected by these modifications, such as for example, a supervision, are accepted by the German Government.’
Lord Lothian called the rejection by France of this basis for negotiation (in free translation from the German) ‘a No of ominous historic consequences’! He was not alone in this assessment. As he says in his memoirs, it was said that on 9 April the French ambassador to Berlin, André François-Poncet, made an approach to his government to tie Hitler down to the latter’s proposals:
‘It was clear as day: if no agreement were to be reached conceding the Reich a limited rearmament also supervised by international controls, Hitler regarded himself acquitted of all obligations toward the Versailles Treaty and free to arm at will with no restrictions and no controls, borne up by the enthusiastic approval of his people.’83
Notable in this ascertainment is that François-Poncet therewith confirmed the obligation on the part of the signatory powers of the Versailles Treaty to disarm. From Barthou he was to find comprehension, but a cutting rejection by André Tardieu, formerly Georges Clemenceau’s adviser, as well as by President of the Council Gaston Doumergue. Besides, the Belgian Foreign Minister, Émile Vandervelde, had already declared at the 1931 League of Nations Conference:
‘The other Powers must either reduce their armies in relation to the Reichswehr or the Peace Treaty will be invalid and Germany arrogates herself the right to claim to have armed forces capable of defending her territory’s invulnerability.’
Father had once said in my presence that he considered François-Poncet the most intelligent French politician – albeit no friend of Germany’s – whom Hitler liked nonetheless; the two of them occasionally indulged in friendly word-play. I heard after the Western campaign from Mother, that Hitler had had his eye on François-Poncet as the Vichy government’s ambassador to Berlin but that Father had his reservations in view of François-Poncet’s fundamental attitude to Germany. Who knows, maybe François-Poncet was thereby spared difficulties after the war. Mother had also told me then that my father had suggested to Hitler that a son of François-Poncet’s who was in a German prisoner of war camp should be freed.
On 7 March 1934, Charles de Broqueville, Belgium’s Head of Government, made a noteworthy speech in the Belgian Senate, saying that (translated from German):
‘I feel so very much, as you all do, the bitterness of the situation. It is the result of the great illusion harboured by those people who in the Versailles Treaty overlooked historical teaching and truth and believed it is possible to keep a great nation in a condition of disarmament for an indefinite length of time. We have to say goodbye to this illusion. It is the immutable Law of History that the defeated will sooner or later rise again.’
There had been by now, since the formal pledge for German entitlement to equal military status by Britain, France, Italy and the USA on 11 December 1932, almost one-and-a-half years of unavailing negotiations. No concrete outcome was in view; on the contrary the stance of the French government in refusing any concession to the Reich had hardened even more. Beyond that, a policy of alliance on the part of France loomed ahead whose goal was the integration of the Soviet Union in her system of pacts, thus even constituting a considerably greater threat to the Reich. The inevitable conclusion was gradually reached that both Western Powers were not in the least concerned with really granting the Reich a true right to equal status.
The Reich’s government took a noteworthy step in this state of affairs. The Reich’s 1934/35 Budget was published, wherein substantially higher amounts for the army, navy and air force than in foregoing years were scheduled. A query from the British government was answered by the German Foreign Minister, von Neurath, with the explanation that the disbursements for the army were necessary in order to prepare for the changeover of the professional army to a force with a shortened time of service, those for the navy were determined by the need for replacements of antiquated ships, while the Air Ministry’s budget had to be increased due to the extension of winter- and night-flights, and that this was in consequence not part of a defence budget.84
It is perfectly clear that the Reich’s government wished to push forward the negotiations over a disarmament agreement. If it had wished to proceed to arm secretly, such a public announcement would be incomprehensible. There should be no doubt that it had no way of concealing rearming had that been what it wished. This publication of the clauses of the Budget is a further indication that Hitler wanted the talks with the two Western European Powers to continue so as to solve the armament issue in concert with them. On 16 April 1934,85 the Reich’s government again officially declared its readiness to conclude an Armaments Convention. It was based on the British Plan of 29 January and repeated Hitler’s proposals to Eden in February with regard to the air force.86
It cannot be clarified too often: on Germany’s part it was categorically desired to come to an agreement with both Western Powers as to arms equalization. It was seen as the prerequisite for an arrangement in principle with Britain, to which France would probably then adhere. In order to bring this ‘West-Arrangement’ about, Hitler was prepared to make concessions in advance. It cannot be said that his propositions for agreement as to an air force were exorbitant, for he conceded a considerable inferiority of his air force, so as to achieve the desired accord. Over the agreement concerning the Navy, a year later he was similarly low-key, submitting German forces at sea to be limited to 35 per cent of the British, thereby also rendering its maximum strength dependent on a decision from London.
On 17 April 1934, the French government rejected negotiations over the British Plan of 29 January. It seems absurd: Hitler was attempting time and again to come to an arrangement that would restrict his armaments and submit them to international control, whilst the French government regularly thwarted every such attempt. There are and have been the most diverse explanatory interpretations of this incomprehensible policy on the part of the French government. Stresemann is said to have declared in the 1920s that: ‘The fear of seeing Germany back on her feet paralyses the will of the French politicians and prevents them from thinking objectively.’ No proof need be given that for a country of the size and importance of Germany a certain minimum military power was conditional to her acquiring partners in an alliance. This was equally valid for the Federal Republic of Germany, and it was not for nothing that Adenauer strove for Germany’s rearmament. A neutralized Federal Republic, even reunited, would hardly have found partners to form an alliance with.
To revert to negotiations on disarmament in respect of arms equalization among the European states, more than two years had passed since the Geneva Five-Powers-Declaration in regard to the right to equal military status of the German Reich, without the slightest material progress having been made. The French government was on the contrary preparing a Bill according to which military service in France was to be prolonged to two years. This would lead de facto to a substantial increase in the armed forces. In no way is a prolongation of military service an indication that successive governments seriously concerned themselves with considerations of disarmament.
At the beginning of 1935, common French and British proposals were addressed to Germany, on the basis of the so-called ‘London Communiqué’ elaborated by the French and British ministers, dated 3 January 1935. Yet again the Reich’s right to rearm was contested, although it was declared that negotiation of the issue was desired. ‘Collective security’ was now brought back into the game through the proposition of an ‘Eastern Pact’, which would have meant recognition of Germany’s eastern borders (including the Corridor). Even Stresemann himself had unequivocally rejected this recognition (of the Corridor), correctly assessing that ‘any German government that was prepared to accept this would be ousted’.87 We shall have to bear this in mind when we come to 1938, when Hitler offered Poland a guarantee of her borders, including the Corridor, thus effecting a settling of German-Polish relations once and for all.
A convention was suggested in the Anglo-French proposals to be negotiated among Italy, Belgium and Germany, according to which ‘the undersigned pledge themselves to accord the support of their air force to each among them who would be the victim of an unprovoked air attack by one of the parties hereby contractually bound’.
It is today presented in such a manner as to imply that it was Hitler himself who wrote the German Note of reply. It was in fact a draft written by my father. I remember very clearly how Father recounted that while the German reply Note was being prepared, Hitler took Father’s draft ‘out of his pocket’ and presented it for discussion, but without revealing that the original author was my father. In his draft, Father had audaciously formulated that the Reich’s government was ‘basically prepared to utilize its air force to act as a deterrent against disturbances of the peace’. My mother, with a somewhat malicious smile, had pointed out the passage in the text to me.
On 4 March 1935, the British government had introduced a White Paper to the Commons whose content concerned a substantial reinforcement of the Royal Air Force. On 10 March, as said above, the French government presented the Bill extending the French armed forces’ service to two years. The conclusion arrived at from the military plans of the British and French governments can be only that they had no intention of sorting out the armament issue by reducing their armed forces to the level of the disarmed nations. In consequence, all the disarmed states had left to do was to rearm. For Britain and France the order of the day would henceforth be to bring the increase of the Reich’s armed forces to a contractual framework. Father’s activities, unofficial until 1934 and thereafter official, were primarily directed toward an agreement with the Western Powers along those lines.
Did the German government not come to the conclusion that they were held off because the readiness of the armed states to grant Germany an effective equal military status or else to go ahead with a general disarmament did not exist? In the face of these facts the head of the German government proceeded to do what François-Poncet had foreseen as the logical outcome, which was unilaterally to rearm, possibly ‘swept along by the enthusiastic approval of his people’,88 but in any case at least with the consent of the majority thereof.
Another reason for Father’s advocating the step taken on 16 March 1935 (the reintroduction of generalized military service) was that he had information regarding the endeavours of the French government to strike an alliance with the Soviet Union directed against Germany. The initiator was the French minister Edouard Herriot. The goals Herriot had set harboured the risk of bringing about a ‘situation of ultimatum’ which would become ever more acute as the negotiations dragged on without resulting in a material right to equal status. The role of the time factor increased in importance in view of the general tendency of Britain, France and not least the United States to rearm, let alone Soviet Russia. Some four weeks after general military service had been reintroduced in Germany, the representatives of Britain, France and Italy met in Stresa and resolved ‘to resist with all suitable means any unilateral cancellation of contracts’. And there the matter rested.
‘Stresa’ once again strikingly demonstrated one thing: the Reich’s isolation in the politics of foreign affairs. This had been the situation since the end of the First World War. It would not be wrong to assume that at the moment of the Stresa Conference, Mussolini will have already been contemplating expansionist plans for Abyssinia. Who would assist him, or at least not knife him in the back? In the preceding years Britain and France had brought ‘collective security’ to the foreground, guaranteed by the League of Nations that was under their control. At this point in time – that is April 1935 – however, Mussolini was convinced he could neglect ties of friendship with the Reich to such an extent as to align himself with those Powers that thought they could deny Germany the right to equal military status.
As to myself, the days leading to 16 March were filled with great suspense. My mother’s stereotyped use of the figure of speech of my being ‘drawn and quartered’ rather than betray a confidence at this time had an unusually intense and forceful impact, as during the preceding period she had been imparting to me Father’s and Hitler’s thoughts on the reintroduction of general military service if necessary – in case it was not to be attained within an armaments agreement – as an action to be taken unilaterally. Mother justified the step on the grounds of the ‘phase of risk’ which had now been entered into. The German government had registered its wishes for minimum defence armament and was making preparations for actualizing them one day. As an occasion for the reintroduction of general military service, there was a parade on Berlin’s avenue Unter den Linden. For the first time in my life I was to have the experience of a German military parade. (At that time it was still saluted by Hitler in front of the Zeughaus Museum.) Then the famous Prussian-German military march music resounded, matchless in its verve and musicality. To my mind the Strauss waltzes are as unique for dancing as is German military music for marching, in which I count not least the (in)famous Badenweiler March. Because of its thrilling beat, Hitler – the political performer – had ordained it as ‘his’ march and decreed it was to be played only when he was present. The directive, which was not rescinded, after the war occasioned a Bavarian judge, who evidently had a sense of humour, to base his prohibition of playing the march on it. He was probably not aware that the Badenweiler March was composed in 1914 by the conductor, Georg Fürst, of the Bavarian Guard regiment to commemorate the fighting at Badenweiler (Badonviller in France) in which the regiment had distinguished itself. Similarly, few Austrians are probably aware that the derogatory nickname of ‘Piefke’ for Prussians is the name of Johann Gottfried Piefke, whom the Viennese had cheered enthusiastically. In 1865 the Prussian king, accompanied by Bismarck, had paid Austria an official state visit. The story goes that in the course of this visit the military band of a Prussian Guard regiment gave concerts in the squares of Vienna. The conductor’s name was Piefke.
Featured as the leader of the military band was the drum major, whose special accomplishment was to strut with his leg stretched straight out in the air (this made him a sort of ballerina in military uniform). This parade stride of the drum major was the sole unnatural movement in the parade – and extraordinarily strenuous it was too. I still remember an English weekly newsreel from May 1938 showing in close-up a German drum major practising this parade step, which of course gave a strained and somewhat martial impression. It was filmed from an unflattering angle and seemed to symbolize Germanic militarism – no doubt the desired effect. The British propaganda mechanism directed against Germany toured in 1938.
An entire mounted regiment made a thrilling picture – they were all riding chestnuts – as they trotted past to the sound of light parade-marching music. We were no strangers to the world of horses. Father and Grandfather were both passionate riders, and we children had riding lessons from an early age and did horseback acrobatics. Father owned a few racehorses and sometimes took us along, even when we were very little, to the races at Hoppegarten and Karlshorst. Hitler would not have been particularly impressed by this magnificent performance of cavalry. He had no rapport with horses, nor with hunting. A few months earlier, the French Foreign Minister, Barthou, and the king of Yugoslavia had been shot in their car in Marseille, despite mounted police protection. A photograph circulated in the press of the time showing a mounted police officer at the moment when he struck the assassin down with his sabre. At the time Hitler had said to my father that if he ever saw the ‘backside’ of a horse as escort in front of him he would have the police officer responsible punished. The divergent perceptions of Hitler and the army leadership with regard to the importance of motorization may subconsciously have played a part. There is incidentally to be added on the subject a personal memory of mine of something Hitler said at our house in Dahlem on the occasion of my father’s birthday on 30 April 1939, concerning the use of major motorized units. For some reason the conversation turned to the material battles of the First World War. Hitler observed that the advantage had always then been with the defender, since the attackers had a gruelling struggle to get across the expanse of craters that had been created by their own artillery in preparation for the engagement. This in turn gave the defenders the time necessary to block incursions by bringing up reserves, since contrary to the attackers they possessed an intact network of roads and railway.89 (As for the entire duration of the First World War Hitler’s regiment had been deployed only on the Western front, these were his experiences at first hand.) However, major motorized units would swiftly be able to extend an incursion into an operational breakthrough without giving the defenders the time to take countermeasures. Of course the mobility of these motorized units would demand a high standard of training and first-class ability to lead. I knew something about the theories regarding the operational deployment of major motorized units from my reading of military books. It was to be assumed from what Hitler said that they would already be applied in the German army. He went on to say that in Austria the deployment of motorized troop formations had in a way led to utter disorder, but that a lot had been learned. On this splendid day of April 1939, I could not guess that a totally new strategic concept had been quite openly brought about that would enable the sensational military successes of the German Army in the years from 1939 to 1941. A year later, almost to the day, I myself would be a soldier rolling towards the English Channel through Northern France in a similar personnel carrier in the framework of just such a motorized mass muster.
Back on 16 March 1935, here on Unter den Linden Avenue none of this was as yet conceivable. In any case the whole parade actually demonstrated only the Reich’s military deficiency, although the general enthusiasm was unchecked. In my parents’ conversations, however, the tension and strain caused by running the risk of rearmament were apparent. The German weaponry on display that day of the parade in Berlin’s Lustgarten was not really anything very exciting: small 10.5cm cannon – naturally they were harnessed to horses – no tanks, no heavy-duty weapons, no anti-aircraft or other type of gun, nor were there any airplanes accompanying the parade. But there were of course horses.
Remembering this, Father wrote:
‘Unfortunately, however, during the winter of 1934/35 these efforts had no results and we had to conclude that the way to negotiation of revision of the Versailles armaments stipulations was hard and without end. This whole state of affairs was the reason behind Hitler’s announcement in March 1935 of generalized military service and establishment of the Wehrmacht forces.’90
The opportunity to put Hitler on a leash by means of an armaments agreement, and moreover under a commonly agreed control mechanism, had been lost by the Western Powers.
It is said that in view of this decision to reintroduce generalized military service, the army commander-in-chief, Colonel General Freiherr (Baron) von Fritsch, advised Hitler ‘not to be precipitate in next proceeding to rearmament’. If Fritsch did indeed express himself to Hitler in this sense, he must surely be agreed with, for one must never be precipitate in anything. It should, however, not be forgotten that in this phase what mattered was to attain – or to show – as swiftly as possible, a specific standard of armament so that the Versailles signatory powers should be aware that taking a line of deterrent action against Germany would also signify a risk for them.
What Fritsch is quoted as having said to Hitler, however, also reveals that at that point the ‘black’ – secret – rearmament cannot have been far advanced. This is important, for it cancels any plausible grounds for furthering rearmament, above all on the part of France. The alarmist figures submitted to the French cabinet by Herriot and Pétain as to secret German rearmament were devoid of substance. For the sake of simplification, however, the political organizations – like the SA, SS etc. – had simply been added onto the German troop formations.91
In a memorandum dated 3 April 1935 – that is three weeks after reintroduction of generalized military service – Ribbentrop recommended to Hitler a re-entry into the League of Nations, under condition that article V of the Versailles Treaty, wherein the restrictions of armament for Germany stood, was unconditionally deleted. He ought at the same time to bring an air force pact into play.92 The memorandum says further:
‘The duty to prove to British politicians and British public opinion that National Socialism is not expansionist hence acquires even greater significance. [underlined by hand]
‘I therefore recommend the following:
1) not to release the Parteitag (Nazi Party Rally) film93 abroad at present as it would foster agitation.
2) …
3) Avoidance of every radical solution to the question of the Church and instead containment of the conflict … Avoidance of pointless arrests of pastors, since at the moment they cannot anyway all be arrested, because of the retroactive effect on the Archbishop of Canterbury whose voice counts with the King and in the Cabinet.
4) Our wishes for the military … are now known abroad and consequently, in order to prevent sensationalism in the world Press, avoidance as far as possible of too much public showing off in military matters.’94
Also apparent in this memorandum, irrespective of the problems of foreign policy, is the ideological problem that Father confronted during his entire activity in the politics of foreign affairs, namely the domestic controversy in Germany over the Church. Father took a firm stand on the issue of the Christian religion. If he took up a position against the arrests of pastors, he had to produce arguments that could have an effect on Hitler; in dealings with Hitler it was an instant always to be on the alert for, when reactions contrary to what was desirable were to be avoided. Whoever can place himself mentally in the circumstances of those times must see that it was an unmistakable criticism by the foreign affairs adviser of the arrests of pastors. Hitler’s ideology, which he believed had to be forced upon the German people, burdened German foreign policy like a latent heavy mortgage. Incidentally, our parents had my sister and me christened in 1932. It was their opinion that baptism had more substance if it was consciously experienced. As we were living in Dahlem at the time, the well-known pastor Martin Niemöller, formerly a submarine commander and later a known opponent of the regime, officiated at the christening. Our parents had no qualms whatsoever when in 1936 I said I wished to receive instruction for my Confirmation.
The question might arise why it is that no Weimar government was capable of restoring a particular military potential to the Reich, the inalienable precondition for it to be able to conduct an alliance policy, thus breaking out of isolation. Asking the question requires a reply: in the given conditions of the domestic politics of the Weimar Republic, no parliamentary government had the opportunity of taking anything more than minor steps in the direction of strengthening the defence potential at its disposal. One must think of the hopeless parliamentary fragmentation of the process of formation of political objectives; the considerable and very militant bloc of the Communists; the partly deficient state of readiness of the military; and the pacifist disposition of the parties of the centre; as well, finally, as the totally shattered economy. In the atmosphere in the Weimar Republic of clashes among the classes, it was impossible to ensure the resolve of the people for which, in order to get through the phase of risk, some rearmament was an essential prerequisite. Quite to the contrary, in 1927/28 the construction of a single armoured cruiser of the size authorized by the Versailles Treaty led to a months-long blocking of the Budget by the parties of the left, under the catchy slogan ‘Food Aid for Children instead of Armoured Cruisers’ (in German, ‘Kinderspeisung statt Panzerkreuzer’).
Hitler’s bluster about the achievements of his regime, the constant stressing of ‘defence-willingness’, the emphasizing of the bravery of German soldiery in the First World War, the forms of militancy that the regime demonstrated on numerous occasions, in combination with the impressive and indisputable work done by his government of rebuilding the economy – one need think only of the eradication of unemployment95 – all evoked a strength of the Reich that was materially non-existent. It did, however, enable the survival of the phase of risk. Against a background of Hitler’s rhetoric, his theatrically sinister decisiveness was a sort of ‘frightened barking’ combined with a certain showmanship in a weak and therefore extremely vulnerable position. The huge, constantly repeated demonstrations of the people’s determination under his leadership were to make it quite clear that any action against the Reich would be no stroll in the park.96 Mother had then explained the outlays spent on the Nuremberg Party Rally in this sense. In the ‘Memorandum for the Führer’ mentioned above there is also the statement:
‘It is meanwhile our duty to do everything to avoid the inception of a … crisis and without fail, first and foremost to reach the year 1936.’
The debility of the German position could not be expressed more clearly. The recommendations already mentioned follow on after this, that is, that the early stages of the gradually emerging military strengthening of the Reich ought not to be overly stressed when brought to the foreground.