Germany’s War for Hegemony of Europe and the World, 1933-1938

by Oscar G. Darlington

Published in 1948

Germany’s plot to seize control of Europe and the world is the largest single fact since the beginning of the twentieth century, tragically attested by two world wars and by tons of official documents.

It is safe to say that no movement in history has provided such complete, contemporary, documented evidence as the Nazi revolution, although most of the vast material in the captured German archives is still in the process of being catalogued. Fortunately, the United States Government Printing Office, in 1946-1947, published seven full volumes of primary evidence, assembled by the American and British prosecuting staffs for presentation before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

The evidence shows with overwhelming conclusiveness that from the moment of Hitler’s rise to power, Germany under the Nazis launched an unscrupulous and almost successful effort to gain the hegemony of Europe and the world. Other nations and other men have fallen prey to the same illusive dream of world dominion, only to be flung down like the Nazis by the concerted resistance of their neighbors. But Napoleon Bonaparte of France and Philip of Spain, for example, ruthless and opportunistic as they were, were men of honor compared to twentieth century would-be conquerors. Hitler has no parallel in European history and must be likened, as he himself preferred, to the meteoric leaders of Asia such as Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.

Hitler exercised his deep, prophetic insight of which he was so proud, when, with unconscious irony, he named his regime “The Third Reich.” For in common with the First and Second Reichs, it desired the hegemony of Europe and terminated in disaster. The First Reich, founded in 962 by Otto I, was so completely smashed in 1250 that Germany lay helpless without even a central government for twenty-two years, suffering a setback which required centuries to remedy. The Second Reich, built so carefully by Bismarck upon the foundations of Prussia that European hegemony was almost within its grasp, collapsed in 1918. The Third Reich, gathering up the broken threads of this dream of German supremacy, wove them into the same old pattern.

In his speech at the annual party rally in Nuremberg, 12 September 1938, the Führer foretold the rebirth of the Holy Roman Empire, a return to the tenth century ideal of the imperial Ottos. He expressed the same sentiment on various occasions but in his speech he was particularly definite: “The German Reich has slumbered a long time and the German people have now awakened and taken their thousand-year-old crown to themselves. For the rest of the world, it should be equally a lesson, that the new Italian Empire and the German Empire are in truth very old creations. People do not need to love them, but no power in the world can any more remove them.” This mirage of the Third Reich led Germany to the total defeat of 1945 that turned into irony for that country the lesson of the history Hitler loved to invoke for “the rest of the world,” a lesson that should, it seems, ultimately begin to become apparent to the Germans themselves.

The Nazi Program

Bold, open statements of foreign policy characterized the Nazi regime. Again and again, top Nazis stated their basic aims which, therefore, assumed the nature of an open conspiracy for hegemony of which all nations had ample warning. Hitler’s writings and speeches repeated over and over sentiments, purposes, and methods similar to those quoted by Hermann Rauschning in his book, The Voice of Destruction. There he relates how Hitler in 1934 gave him the essential outline of his plan of domination. “In the center,” mused the Führer, “I shall place the steely core of a Greater Germany welded into an indissoluble unity. Then Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and Western Poland. A block of one hundred million, indestructible, without a flaw, without an alien element, the firm foundation of our power.”

This brief statement explains Germany’s expansion until 1938: the Anschluss with Austria, Hitler’s insistence upon acquiring the Germans in Czechoslovakia (Bo­hemia and Mora­via), the Sudetenland, and the attack upon Western Poland, all with the view of forming a solid block of Germanic peoples. “Alien elements,” Jews and Poles, were to be exterminated.

 “Then,” continued Hitler, “then an eastern alliance: Poland, the Baltic States, the Ukraine, the Volga Basin, Georgia. An alliance but not of equal partners; it will be an alliance of vassal states with no army, no separate policy, no separate economy. I have no intention of making concessions on sentimental grounds, such as re-establishing Hungary, for example. I make no distinction between friends and enemies.” The statement takes on unusual significance when it is recalled that in 1940-44, Germany’s armies overran precisely these eastern countries and those parts of Russia singled out ten years earlier by Hitler for inclusion within his “Eastern Alliance.”

Referring then to the West, Hitler declared: “The day of small states is past in the West as well. I shall have a western union too, of Holland, Flanders, Northern France (Hitler stopped at first with Northern France), and a Northern Union of Denmark, Sweden and Norway.” On another occasion Hitler commented: “These things will not all take place at the same time. I shall proceed step by step but with iron determination.”

As for his hegemony of the world, a statement from Hitler demonstrates his Germanic thoroughness in attacking this problem. “I have drawn up a questionnaire,” he says, “concerning details of the persons I am interested in. I am having a comprehensive card index compiled of every influential person in the world. The cards contain every detail of importance. Will he take money? Can he be bought in any other way? Is he vain? Has he anything in his past to conceal? What is his business? His hobby, his favorite sport, his likes and dislikes. And so on. It is on the strength of these reports that I choose my men. That really is politics. I get hold of men who will work for me. I create a force of my own in every country.”

The first step in this colossal program was the seizure of power in Germany, and the forging of its people “to the hardness of steel” by utterly unscrupulous and thorough methods. His easy triumph in Germany led Hitler to the mistaken belief that the rest of the world would succumb to the same tactics. In an overconfident mood, he once boasted to Rauschning, “We shall triumph by the same inexorable logic of fact in our foreign policy as in our home policy.”

Germany’s Withdrawal from the League of Nations

Obviously, this program of Hitler could not be realized within the framework of the League of Nations; and the whole Nazi philosophy was incompatible with League membership. For one thing, the Reich was faced with a possible investigation of the Nazi anti-Semitic campaign. In a conference of foreign ministers on 12 September 1933, von Neurath, the Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced that Jewish communities in Germany had filed complaints with the League of Nations and he warned that “it would be stressed in the League of Nations Conference (opening 22 September) that there existed in Germany a Jewish minority without rights which needed protection.” The ministers were at a loss how to meet this accusation except to say that “any altercation with Jews in Germany was the Reich’s own affair,” manifestly a weak defense in view of the fact that Germany was planning to tell Austrians, Czechs, and Poles that German minorities within the borders of those sovereign states were the concern of the Reich. Thus the Reich ministers began discussing the advisability of withdrawing from the League.

In addition to this motive, Hitler’s monstrous schemes required armaments unparalleled in history, for clearly they could be successful in no other way than by armed might. Yet the Treaty of Versailles strictly limited the military power of Germany to little more than a police force and to equipment of a defensive nature only. Thus, almost the first practical task facing Hitler upon his assumption of German leadership in 1933 was to free Germany from the ban upon armaments, and at the same time not frighten Germany’s future victims into arming themselves so as to nullify whatever striking power Germany might acquire.

In fact, even before Hitler, as early as the Disarmament Conference held at Geneva in 1932, the Germans through the then Chancellor Bruening had demanded that their own disarmament should be followed by general disarmament; and they had withdrawn from the conference temporarily, returning only when they had been assured of an “equality of rights in a system which would provide security for all nations.” By May of the following year, under Hitler’s sway, von Papen made bold to declare that “Germany has struck the word ‘pacifism’ from her vocabulary,” and extolled the glories of death in battle, whereas the Führer himself spoke empty words in the Reichstag about German willingness to “assure the peace of the world” by renouncing “all instruments of aggression if other nations renounce theirs.”

Disarmament conferences interested Hitler only in so far as they might result in disarming other nations, bringing them nearer to an equality of impotence with shackled Germany. The Disarmament Conference of 1933 in Geneva did grant the Germans an increase of armament double that allowed by the Treaty of Versailles, but in return Germany would have to submit to a control over her defense system. Such an arrangement would of course prevent Germany from even a clandestine rearmament program. Moreover, the disarming of other nations was to begin only after four years and any rearmament of Germany was similarly postponed for four years.

Thus when Hitler became fully aware that he could not manipulate the League of Nations and its conferences to his own purposes, he summoned his ministers and laid the situation before them. He had built his public career upon hatred to the Versailles diktat (dictated peace) and denounced the League of Nations as an instrument for the oppression of Germany. He reminded his ministers how “at one time we joined the League of Nations and participated in the work of the Disarmament Conference believing that we would be treated as a nation with equal rights (which would have meant scrapping the entire Versailles Treaty). British ministers have declared that equality could not be conceded to the Germany of today. We will therefore have to withdraw from the League of Nations because the prerequisite of being considered a nation on an equal footing is lacking.”

He bolstered the courage of his ministers by remarking “as to the threat of sanctions it is only necessary not to get nervous and stick to one’s principles.” After listening to the Führer, the ministers left the Presence with the exalted conviction that “a service will be rendered to the world if the League of Nations which after all had been intended to be a means of opposing Germany, will slowly be brought to pass away by demonstrating its inability to solve the problems submitted to it.”

On the next day, 14 October 1933, Hitler withdrew Germany from the Disarmament Conference and from the League of Nations, eight and a half months after the Nazis came to power. Letting Germany “get away” with this was indeed a first “Munich.” And before ten years passed, twenty million men paid for it with their lives in the Second World War. A very wise Englishman once wrote: “A little fire is quickly trodden out, which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench.” In 1933 Germany could easily have been kept within bounds when she possessed no offensive army, no air force, no fortifications along her vulnerable Rhine frontier. However, the very boldness of Hitler apparently exerted a charm and the Treaty of Versailles became another “scrap of paper.”

Nazi reasoning was fallacious in concluding that if Germany withdrew, the League of Nations would crumble; and it failed to see the higher, positive, international objectives now surviving in the United Nations Organization. Germany concentrated, however, upon the fixed, egocentric idea that the League was nothing but a punitive measure against Germany. Having renounced the body which represented international law together with existing treaties, Nazi Germany became a law unto itself, a wolf among nations, free to rearm, free to bend all phases of its national life to predatory activities.

German Rearmament

The rearmament of Germany falls under three headings: psychological, economic, and military. Beginning in 1933 and increasingly thereafter, all the forces of the nation were channeled into a war economy. While England slept; while France fumed; while the United States looked on disinterestedly, Germany prepared openly and avowedly for the Second World War.

Psychological

The peoples of the Reich were told that the rest of the world was rearming with hostile intent against Germany, and Germany must rearm in self-defense. Articles appeared in the controlled press, proclaiming the rearmament of Russia for the purpose of forcing world-wide revolution. Vast munitions industries in Czechoslovakia were kept before the public mind. An article in Der SA-Mann of 10 February 1934, entitled “Rearmament for Disarmament” exposed enormous military appropriations in the United States of America for the construction of a fleet and air force. The next week the same magazine depicted United States tanks of various sizes designed to mechanize the American army. Anyone who lived in the United States before the war would laugh at the German propaganda which saw us as an aggressive nation. Germans, without a free press, had no way of knowing the truth.

Through such propaganda the myth of “encirclement” became a reality to many Germans. The only safe course they could devise was to become a strong, military, totalitarian state where military law prevailed with the Führer’s command as unquestioned in civilian life as that of a general on the battlefield. Mothers bent their energies to bringing soldiers into the world for Germany. “Each citizen of the new Reich,” stated Dr. Hellmuth Stellrecht in 1937, “is born to bear arms. In the course of years we want to achieve that a gun feels just as natural in the hands of a German boy as a pen. Liberalism put the following slogan above school doors, ‘Knowledge is power.’ We, on the other hand, have found out that the power of a nation in the last analysis always rests on its arms and on those who know how to handle them.”

The war organization of the Nazis reached deeper and deeper into German childhood. “It is a fine thing when a man of twenty learns to obey unconditionally,” lectured Dr. Stellrecht, “but it is much better when the boy of ten starts to put his own wishes aside, to renounce, to give in and to serve the will of the community.” Soon military units existed for every age, geared to appeal to youth from tiny tots to those who were old enough to enter the regular army. The nation embarked upon a program of physical fitness that minimized intellectual and spiritual development apart from the strict ideological pattern of the National Socialist Party.

Economic

The Nazi conspirators directed the entire German economy toward preparation for aggressive war. They adopted autarchy as a consistent aim to make the nation and its war machine economically independent of the rest of the world. Ersatz materials and foods were developed to forestall a repetition of the misery of World War I when Germany was starved by the Allied naval blockade. First Dr. Schacht, then Göring headed the economic mobilization, whereby vast quantities of materials such as wool, iron, lead, sulfur, copper, and petroleum were stored within the Reich. Scientists worked with traditional German thoroughness to utilize every acre, every tree, every natural potential of the nation. “Cellular materials can be covered by ourselves as long as sufficient wood supplies exist,” predicted Hitler; and in 1939 the writer saw with dismay great stretches of the once-glorious Black Forest felled in swaths by the stupendous sickle of National Socialism and its war economy.

Wood became sugar, cloth, paper. Potatoes and other vegetables were turned into oil, synthetic rubber, chemicals. “No waste” campaigns inspired housewives to save fats and garbage. Scrap drives brought to light every stray piece of old metal. The writer well remembers his first experiences with the strict rationing of gasoline along the Reichsautobahn (national highway), little dreaming they would be repeated in America within a few years. The wartime measures and activities which characterized America in 1943-1945 were all fully developed in Germany five years earlier as she prepared for total war while the world still hoped for peace.

At a private meeting of twenty-five of the leading industrialists of Germany on 20 February 1933, shortly before the election of 5 March which was to establish the Nazis in power, Hitler announced his aim “to seize totalitarian control over Germany, to destroy the parliamentary system, to crush all opposition by force, and to restore the fame of the Wehrmacht.” Publicly, Hitler promised simply to end unemployment, a promise which was fulfilled when vast industries, began secretly at first, then mushroomed openly after 1935. Within three more years, German economy had reached the point of full employment, and by 1939, all Germany hummed like an angry hive ready to swarm.

Military

The magnitude of the Nazi rearmament program, which in four years built up one of the most spectacular military machines in history, can best be appreciated in the light of the limitations placed upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. Since the Weimar Republic observed these restrictions, they represent the rock-bottom upon which Hitler started. The Treaty limited the German Army to 100,000 men, including a maximum of 4,000 officers. The Great German General Staff was dissolved and was not to be reconstituted in any form. All establishments for the manufacture, preparation, storage, or design of arms, munitions, or any war material were closed down and the personnel dismissed. Importation into Germany of any war material was prohibited. The manufacture of armored cars was forbidden. Universal military service was abolished and only voluntary enlistment allowed. To prevent a rapid turnover of army personnel whereby many more than the allotted 100,000 men might be trained, the period of enlistment was fixed at twelve consecutive years and the number of men discharged before the expiration of their term of enlistment could not exceed five percent. All German fortifications within fifty kilometers east of the Rhine were dismantled and the construction of new ones was forbidden. Thus Germany had no Westwall of any sort along her industrial frontiers joining France and Belgium. No military or naval air force was permitted. The navy was cut to six battleships of the Deutschland type, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers, twelve torpedo boats and no submarines, with a total navy personnel of 15,000, including a maximum of 1,500 officers.

The German military force, thus stripped of all offensive might, became merely an instrument for maintaining internal peace and security in Germany. Certainly a country thus disarmed was no threat to the peace of Europe. However, as soon as Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations, all that was changed.

It has recently been proved that Hitler became Chancellor largely through the skillful maneuvering of “that gray old fox of German diplomacy, Franz von Papen,” acting upon the old army clique and the industrialists. The German High Command of World War I, although outlawed by the Treaty of Versailles, had not been brought to justice and it worked surreptitiously for the re-establishment of the Reichswehr, welcoming Hitler as its mouthpiece. The purge of 30 June 1934, sealed the alliance between Hitler and the army. The big industrialists also came to recognize in Hitler the man who, in building up armaments, would create opportunities for profits; and they supported him, expecting to control him.

By the end of 1934, Germany was well embarked upon a war economy with mobilization proceeding rapidly. The four-year plan under the direction of Göring had for its purpose to co-ordinate and place under Nazi control the whole of German industry in order to build a war machine. In the spring of 1935 Hitler re-instituted compulsory military conscription for all 20-year-old German males. A decree of compulsory labor service for German youth soon followed, showing the equal importance of the soldier and the factory worker in modern warfare.

The Treaty of Versailles was dead. On its grave Hitler planted flowers of assurance that Germany desired peace with all men; over its grave France, Great Britain, and Italy formally protested its murder to the League of Nations and reaffirmed the independence of Austria. The League of Nations unanimously issued words of condemnation of Germany’s violation of the military clauses of the Treaty (Denmark abstaining). By acting, the League could have nipped in the bud German rearmament and dreams of world conquest. By not acting, it encouraged Hitler to become bolder and to move forward to the next step.

Occupation of the Rhineland

This came on 7 March 1936, a “Saturday surprise,” when the Nazis staged a dramatic occupation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr. In the middle of the morning German warplanes whizzed around Cologne Cathedral, motorcycles cannonaded through the old city streets at the head of nineteen battalions of Nazi infantry. Other Rhineland cities were occupied similarly and simultaneously. Hitler had chosen the moment when the attention of Europe was focused upon Mussolini’s attack upon Abyssinia. Europe was presented with a fait accompli. Again Hitler assured the world by radio that Germany had no territorial demands to make in Europe.

Hitler stated that he had thus occupied the Rhineland because of the Franco-Soviet pact ratified by the French Chamber on 27 February, whereby the old alliance of East and West, always dreaded by Germany, became effective. This taking over of the Rhineland restored the wall between France and Germany. To be sure, the construction of sound defensive fortifications such as the later Siegfried Line would take time, yet from now on the French no longer had an open door into the heart of their old enemy. The Nazis felt easier, when contemplating the menace of Russia, to have a Westwall at their back once more.

What did Europe do? Hitler plainly stated that he would fight to stay in the Rhineland, but if not opposed he would “strive for an understanding between European peoples, especially for one with our western neighbor nations,” and he even hinted he was ready to return to the League of Nations.

Poland was not fooled and informed France that Poland would march upon Germany if the French army marched too. Again France had an opportunity to stop the growth of Nazi Germany, although not as good an opening as a year earlier when Hitler had renounced the Treaty and rearmed. Poland and France united could have stopped Germany in 1936 with international law and several treaties on their side, and with Mussolini engrossed in Abyssinia. After a prolonged cabinet meeting and mysterious consultations with the French General Staff, the French Government made up its mind. It decided to protest to the League of Nations. Every schoolchild knew that a year earlier both France and England had protested to the League against a German action, that the League had unanimously condemned Germany, and nothing happened. No one expected anything to happen this time either.

With the occupation of the Rhineland, Hitler had completed the first big step in his progress toward the hegemony of Europe. He had achieved his idea of “equality of rights” among European nations by rearming Germany and had done it in three years. During the next two years, 1936-1938, his slogan was to be “the unification of the Germans” and it was to result in the annexation of Austria, the Sudetenland, and most of Czechoslovakia. This accomplished, the slogan changed after 1938 to Lebensraum and sheer aggression on an ever-widening scale until 1943.

The Anschluss with Austria

Although Austria was Germanic in population and culture, it had never been a part of Germany politically before 11 March 1938. In fact, during the long centuries of the Holy Roman Empire whose center lay in Austria, the German states were under the hegemony of the Court of Vienna. If the unification of Germany had come about in the fifteenth, sixteenth, or seventeenth centuries when other states in Western Europe were being unified into strong national entities, Austria, not Prussia, would certainly have been the nucleus. Though Austria had its opportunity to unify the Germans under the Holy Roman Empire, it never did absorb them into an organic whole. As late as the nineteenth century, Austria still clung to its hereditary leadership of Germany, frail as it was, and opposed the rise of Prussia until Bismarck taught her that Prussia was leader.

However, far from terminating the independence of Austria or in fact that of other German states, the Second Reich or Imperial Germany permitted local states throughout Germany proper to exercise many of their time-honored prerogatives in local affairs and respected the sovereignty of Austria. The Nazis, on the other hand, ended the federal character of the German Reich by abolishing all local political institutions and creating for the first time in history a unified German Government.

Nazi Aims Avowed

George A. Messersmith, Consul General of the United States in Berlin from 1930-1934 and then in Vienna from 1934-1937, had an almost unrivaled position from which to observe the Nazi net ensnare Austria. His testimony introduced into the Nuremberg war criminal trials throws light upon many phases of the subject. According to his report, high Nazis told him in 1933 about general Nazi policy. With utmost frankness, they declared that the incorporation of Austria into Germany was a political and economic necessity and that this incorporation was going to be accomplished “by whatever means were necessary.” He writes, “The only doubt which ever existed in conversations and statements to me was ‘how’ and ‘when’.”

During 1933-1934, the Nazis employed the same methods in Austria that had helped them seize control of Germany. Outrages and civil disturbances instigated by Austrian and German Nazis kept public attention focused upon National Socialism and Germany. Their primary aim was to obtain a foothold in the Austrian Cabinet, preferably in the Ministry of the Interior which controlled the police, and then quickly eliminate the opposition elements. Chancellor Dollfuss and his successor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, both told Messersmith that the “German Government kept up constant and increasing pressure upon the Austrian Government to induce them to agree to the inclusion of a number of ministers with Nazi orientation.”

The Nazis in Germany assisted in the formation of the so-called “Austrian Legion,” a quasi-military force, numbering into the thousands, recruited from Austrian Nazis who had fled to Germany after committing crimes in their own country and containing also Austrians in Germany who were attracted by the idle life and pay given by German authorities. This legion hovered like a hawk along the German side of the Austrian border, a constant threat of violence to Austria.

Putsch of 25 July 1934

The Nazi plot to seize Austria came to a head in the early summer of 1934. The plan was to eliminate Dollfuss and set up a Nazi Government in Vienna under the leadership of Dr. Rintelen. The Vienna police was honeycombed with Nazis. Loyal officers feared reprisals if they performed their duty in opposing what might be a successful putsch, for the “Austrian Legion” was played up as poised on the German frontier, ready to march in.

About midday of 25 July, several truckloads of Nazis dressed in the uniforms of the Austrian police and of the Austrian Army drove up to the chancellery, overpowered the guard, rushed into the Chancellor’s room, and a Nazi, Otto Planetta, shot Dollfuss. The Chancellor was merely wounded, but the Nazis refused to let a doctor or a priest attend him, and inhumanly allowed him to lie in agony for three hours while he bled to death. Other Nazis seized the Vienna radio station and broadcast Dollfuss’ resignation and the succession of Dr. Rintelen to his post.

The Nazis had miscalculated two factors: the internal strength of the Austrian Government and the international support that was quickly given to it. Neustaedter-Stuermer, the Minister of Public Welfare, went with personal boldness to the chancellery and from the steps of the building conducted a dramatic conversation through the barred doors with the murderous Nazis within, promising them safe conduct to the German border provided no blood had been shed. But blood had been shed and the Nazis soon realized that they were trapped in the very building they had coveted and that the blood of Dollfuss was the Rubicon they could not re-cross. When their brutality to Dollfuss became known, they were taken into formal custody, martial law was proclaimed, and Nazi activity in Austria was outlawed. Dr. Rintelen, doomed to life imprisonment, tried unsuccessfully to cheat the sentence by suicide. Otto Planetta was tried for the shooting of Dollfuss, was condemned to die, and went to the scaffold shouting “Heil Hitler”—to become in Nazi eyes a martyr to the Nazi cause of German world conquest.

On that eventful night, 25 July, Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg succeeded Dollfuss as Chancellor of Austria to match wits and strength against the ruthless, stronger German Reich until the dissolution of Austria in 1938; later in 1945 to rise from a German concentration camp like an avenging spirit offering most damaging and powerful evidence at Nuremberg against top Nazis and thus contributing to their conviction and execution as aggressors.

International opposition was surprisingly strong. Mussolini telegraphed, “The independence of Austria, for which the Chancellor died, is a principle which Italy also will strenuously defend,” and showed he meant it by mobilizing 200,000 men at the Brenner Pass, a force many times larger than the “Austrian Legion” on another frontier of Austria. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia appeared ready to follow Mussolini’s lead if he should forcibly resist German penetration of the Danubian lands. Since an Anschluss was a direct violation of the Versailles Treaty, French and English opposition was pronounced.

Hitler learned the lesson that Germany must be fully rearmed before it could successfully flout world opinion. For at this date he had not yet introduced conscription nor re-militarized the Rhineland, and without these two essentials his attempt at forceful seizure of Austria proved premature. Thus Hitler repudiated the activities of the Austrian Nazi Party, recalled the German Minister to Vienna, Dr. Rieth, who disclaimed all connection with the putsch, appeased Mussolini, smoothed down the British lion’s mane, quieted the jumpy nerves of the French, and reassured the Austrians by issuing a strong declaration guaranteeing the independence of Austria. He imposed a 1,000-mark visa tax on German nationals visiting Austria, a doubtful blessing to Austrian economy since it cut off a tourist trade which had been a vital source of income. Then, to rebuild the torn web of intrigue silently, skillfully, and this time effectively, he sent “Germany’s foxiest diplomat,” Franz von Papen, as the new German Minister to Vienna who told Berger-Waldenegg, the Austrian Foreign Minister, “Yes, you have your French and English friends now and you can have your independence a little longer.”

For nearly two years after the false attempt of 25 July, the Nazis appeared to be relatively quiet in Austria. Germany was rearming and Hitler instructed von Papen to “undertake nothing that would give Germany external political difficulties.” Beneath the surface, however, the veteran von Papen worked like a mole. He informed the American Consul in Austria, Mr. Messersmith, of his objective “in the baldest and most cynical manner. That all of southeastern Europe to the border of Turkey was Germany’s natural hinterland, and that he had been charged with the mission of facilitating German economic and political control over all this region for Germany. Getting control of Austria was the first step. He (von Papen) was in Austria to undermine and weaken the Austrian Government and from Vienna to work toward the weakening of the governments in the other states to the south and southeast.”

His methods have been recently revealed. He approached almost every member of the Austrian Cabinet, telling them that Germany was bound to prevail in the long run and that they should join the winning side if they wished to enjoy positions of power and influence under German control. Outwardly, he gave solemn assurances that Germany would respect Austrian independence and that all she wished to do was to get rid of elements in the Austrian Government like Chancellor Schuschnigg, Prince Starhemberg, head of the Heimwehr, and others, and replace them by a few nationally-minded Austrians, which of course meant Nazis. If only Nazis could be wormed into the cabinet, the rest would be easy.

The new Chancellor, Schu­schnigg, understood the situation perfectly and was not idle. He kept the necessary support of Italy by visiting Mussolini periodically, although he was less inclined than Dollfuss had been to foster Italian political influence in Austria. Schuschnigg looked upon Italy and Germany as the frying pan and the fire. To organize opposition to Nazi Germany and at the same time hold back the influence of Italy, he strove to broaden the Italo Austro-Hungarian Pact of 1934 to include the Little Entente and build a strong economic union among all the Danube states. To counteract Nazi ambitions for union with Germany, he fostered affection in Austria for the old Hapsburg monarchy, removed the ban on the return of the exiled Imperial family, and encouraged the popularity of Archduke Eugen who took up his residence in Vienna in 1935. He also reorganized the army and introduced conscription (April 1936).

The labors of Schuschnigg were to prove of no avail. By the middle of 1936, Italy, Austria’s champion of 1934, was engrossed in the adventure in Abyssinia. The German rearmament program was well developed and the balance in Europe had been upset by the reoccupation and militarization of the German Rhineland. Hitler was now prepared to return to his project of annexing Austria.

The first step, purely Hitlerian, was the Austro-German accord of 11 July 1936. By this agreement Germany recognized the full sovereignty of the Federal States of Austria “in the sense of the statement made by the Führer and Reich Chancellor on 21 May 1935,” a statement which pointed either way. Austria agreed to consider herself as a German state. More important was the unpublished understanding that Austria should appoint to her cabinet persons friendly to Germany, grant an amnesty to Nazis in Austrian prisons, and permit Nazi organizations on Austrian soil for German subjects provided they did not try to influence Austrian subjects by propaganda. Thousands of Nazis were released; Dr. Guido Schmidt, a Nazi, was appointed Assistant Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and Dr. Edmund Glaise-Horstenau was given the Nazi-coveted position of Minister of the Interior. The Austrian Cabinet was now infiltrated and active Nazi operations were resumed in Austria under the leadership of a Captain Leopold in direct touch with Hitler. Thus did Hitler guarantee Austrian independence in July 1936.

Within eighteen days violent Nazi disorders, inspired from Berlin, occurred when the Olympic torch passed through the streets of Vienna, and by January 1937 the Nazis in Austria became so bold as to draw up a memorandum of demands upon the government calling for free political and cultural activity for Nazis, further changes in the cabinet, an alliance with the Reich, common racial stock as an Austrian political aim, the application of anti-Semitic measures, and an early plebiscite on Anschluss.

Schuschnigg was again forced to make concessions. He appointed a “committee of seven” to discuss “nationalistic ambitions” with him, and after Glaise-Horstenau and Leopold visited Hitler in Berlin, he appointed Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart and Dr. Pembauer, two more Nazis, to prominent posts.

Seyss-Inquart now became the evil genius of Austria, the Quisling of the Danube. A prominent Vienna lawyer, he had long been an intimate personal friend of Chancellor Schu­schnigg and continually urged his friend to see that it would be to the best interests of Austria to include Nazis in the cabinet. While Schuschnigg firmly believed that his old friend sincerely desired the independence of Austria, Seyss-Inquart was in communication with Hitler. His most heinous crime is that he used his friendship with Chancellor Schu­schnigg to help destroy the independence of his country, aiming to make a place for himself as Schuschnigg’s successor under the Nazis. It was for this, as well as for his later activities as Nazi administrator of occupied Holland, that he was condemned and executed in 1946 by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

As the climax approached, Hitler played with Austria as a cat with a mouse. At Austria’s urgent appeal, he removed the 1,000-mark visa tax whereby tourists could again enter Austria, but almost immediately he nullified the measure by decreeing that German visitors could not take into Austria more than five Reichsmarks. Moreover, German motorists in Austria were required to display the swastika on their cars.

Göring openly disseminated Anschluss propaganda to Austrian industrialists in Berlin and German guest speakers in Vienna openly abused Austrian hospitality by similar propaganda. Finally, in November 1937, the Austrian police captured documents which revealed the Tavs plan, containing detailed instructions from high Nazi officials, as follows: “The time for action has come in Austria. England is occupied in the Far East and the Spanish conflict which offers a menace to Gibraltar. France is incapable of action due to social conflicts within the country, adverse economic conditions and the situation in Spain. Czechoslovakia [is] in difficult circumstances due to the Henlein Party and the weakened condition of France. Yugoslavia fears the restoration of the Hapsburgs in Austria. Italy has been weakened by Abyssinia and the conflict with Spain to such a degree that she is dependent upon the treaty of friendship with Germany. A strengthened guarantee with regard to the Brenner front will suffice to insure Mussolini’s neutrality.” The “liberation” of Austria was set for 20 January 1938, so that Hitler could announce it in his anniversary oration.

The purge within the Nazi Party caused Hitler to postpone his speech and also delayed final action against Austria. On 4 February, Hitler retired General von Fritsch and thirteen other senior officers of the German Army, assumed the command of the Reichswehr himself and appointed the ambitious and aggressive Joachim von Ribbentrop as his foreign minister, to replace the moderate von Neurath. When Hitler had thus weeded out those who opposed the ruthlessness of Nazi foreign policy toward Austria, he conferred with Franz von Papen concerning final plans for the “kill.”

On 8 February, von Papen suggested that Schuschnigg meet Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Alert and suspicious, Schuschnigg agreed to go on three conditions: that he be invited by Hitler, that prior to the meeting he be informed of the exact matter to be discussed and assured that the agreement of 11 July 1936, be maintained, and that a statement to this effect be published at the end of the meeting.

Von Papen returned with Hitler’s statement that the “whole agreement of 11 July 1936, between Austria and Germany will be maintained and once more underlined.” The sly von Papen then insinuated that here was a genuine opportunity for a satisfactory agreement with Hitler such as would not come again, for Hitler was occupied with ideas in another direction and was therefore desirous of having no more trouble with Austria.

On 12 February, Schuschnigg and Hitler were alone for two hours at Berchtesgaden. Hitler ranted and raved, stating that he had decided to bring the Austrian question to a solution even if he had to use military force. He presented Schuschnigg with a list of demands which further impaired the sovereignty of Austria and gave him three days to accept them. Keitel, head of the German Army, was called in to inform the Austrian Chancellor that the German military machine was ready in case he refused.

The loyal Schuschnigg made desperate attempts to avoid catastrophe. Back in Vienna, he spent the three days trying in vain to contact Mussolini. London and Paris offered no assistance. Therefore he accepted the ultimatum and the Nazi Party became dominant in Austria with Seyss-Inquart, now an open Nazi, admitted to the cabinet as Minister of Public Security.

Schuschnigg had one last resort against further encroachment. He determined to hold a plebiscite throughout Austria on Sunday, 13 March, asking for a vote for the independence and sovereignty of Austria. It was a clever maneuver, for impartial observers believed that such a plebiscite at that time would allow a decided favor for independence and general disgust for Nazism. After such a vote, Hitler would hardly convince the world that his “liberation” of Austria was anything but sheer conquest.

Schuschnigg, however, made one fatal error. Relying upon old friendship, he took Seyss-Inquart into his confidence. The plan was instantly relayed to Hitler who almost blew up with anger to learn that his favorite device was now to be employed so skillfully against him.

On 10 March, Schuschnigg retired for the night, firmly convinced by his own account that the plebiscite would be a landslide for Austrian independence. At 5:30 a.m., on 11 March, he was awakened by the head of the Austrian police with the news that the Austrian-German border was closed, railway traffic between the two countries was stopped, and that panzer troops were moving toward the Austrian border.

An ultimatum soon came over the phone to Seyss-Inquart from Göring at Berlin that the Chancellor must revoke the proposed plebiscite within one hour or the German Army would pass the Austrian frontier. The Chancellor agreed. Seyss-Inquart offered to telephone Göring to that effect and returned to the cabinet meeting with another ultimatum from Berlin: Austria could be saved only if Schuschnigg resigned within two hours and Seyss-Inquart was appointed the new chief of the Austrian Government.

Schuschnigg resigned but Federal President Miklas refused to appoint Seyss-Inquart as Chancellor. Again Seyss-Inquart talked on the telephone with Göring. The transcript of their telephone conversations was captured by the American Army in 1945, so that every word is definitely known. Göring told Seyss-Inquart to take down the following message which he should send back to him at once as a telegram. The exact words were Göring’s:

The provisional Austrian Government considers it its task to establish peace and order in Austria, sends to the German Government the urgent request to support it in its task and to help it to prevent bloodshed. For this purpose it asks the German Government to send German troops as soon as possible.

Then Göring turned right around to telephone von Ribbentrop in London, brazenly informing him that Germany had no intention of sending an army into Austria until Austria begged him for one, and for him to tell the British that the army would be withdrawn as soon as order was restored.

 “God protect Austria” were Schuschnigg’s last words over the radio as the German troops swiftly invaded Austria on the night of 11 March 1938. By the following noon, Himmler, Heydrich, and the Gestapo had occupied Vienna; panzer divisions had exchanged greetings with Italian troops along the Brenner Pass and Hitler had been met at Linz by Seyss-Inquart. After visiting his parents’ graves, Hitler made a triumphal march to Vienna through streets decked with swastikas.

It took a month to cleanse Austria thoroughly of non-German elements in the experienced Nazi fashion. By 10 April, however, Hitler deemed Austria ready for its plebiscite. In answer to the question, “Do you declare yourself for our Führer Adolf Hitler and for the reunion of Austria with the German Reich?” 99.73% of the voters voted “Ja.” The people had spoken. The Anschluss was a success.

Anti-Czech Moves

The next victim on the schedule of expansion was Czechoslovakia. After the occupation of Austria, Germany surrounded Czechoslovakia upon three sides, looking very much on the map as though it were trying literally to swallow the Slavic nation.

The same techniques and pressures that had succeeded in Austria were now applied to the new situation involving Czechoslovakia, who was unfortunate enough to have a large German minority of 3,000,000 persons living next to the German frontier along the northern portion of Sudetenland. From the beginning of its existence, the Government of Czechoslovakia treated these Germans with exceptional favor so as to give them every reason to like their country, but the age-old antipathy between German and Slav caused the Germans to be restless as a minority among such “inferior” people.

In 1932 Nazi organizations appeared in the Sudetenland but were banned after Hitler seized power in Germany. Their place was at once taken by the Sudeten Heimatsfront of Konrad Henlein. In 1935 his party assumed the name of the Sudeten-Deutsche Partei (S.D.P.) and won 44 seats in the Czech Chamber. By 1937 the S.D.P. had come out openly in their true colors and agitated for incorporation into the Reich. On 24 April 1938, six weeks after Austria was absorbed by Germany, Henlein announced an eight-point program, including autonomy for the Sudeten areas, reparations for all injustices inflicted on Sudeten Germans since 1918, the exclusion of all Czech officials in the area, and full liberty for Sudeten Germans to profess German nationality and German political philosophy. It was common knowledge that he was aided and abetted by Berlin.

Czechoslovakia did not intend to be partitioned without a struggle. Her frontier was well fortified both by nature and by a series of forts. No country in Europe had better munitions plants. She was aware that she was the keystone of the French and Russian alliance system. She was also keenly aware, in 1938, that she was in the direct path of Hitler’s drive to the East and into the Balkans. Thus on 21 May, after being sure that Germany had eleven divisions at full war strength, Czechoslovakia began to mobilize. Soon 500,000 Czech soldiers were ready along the Czech frontier.

On 22 May Hitler held a war council with his army chiefs, and decided to back down. The democratic press shouted that little Czechoslovakia had called the bully’s bluff. Hitler had merely decided that the time was not yet ripe to pluck the fruit and pretended to demobilize his army on 28 May. Thus the Czech crisis of 21 May 1938, passed. Czechoslovakia had still four months to live until “Munich.”

Anti-Polish Moves

In 1933 Germany resented the very existence of the Polish state, a creation of Versailles, and was especially determined to settle someday the questions of Danzig, the Corridor, and Polish Upper Silesia. However, Poland, a strong state with a good army under the leadership of Marshal Pilsudski, was favored by France, and provided a welcome buffer state between Germany and the Soviet bogey. Thus Hitler placed Poland upon his list after German rearmament, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. To keep Poland “on ice” until he was ready to attack it, he pretended friendship and surprised the world by signing a German-Polish Non-aggression Pact on 26 January 1934. This was followed on 5 November 1935, by a German-Polish trade treaty suspending the customs war between the two countries. Poland had no respect for Nazi Germany either but preferred quasi-friendship rather than the active hostility of a rapidly rising German Reich. As has been said, when Hitler went into the Rhineland in 1936, Poland proposed to attack Germany while there was yet time if France would do the same; but France refused.

The German minority in Poland, numbering two million in 1919, steadily diminished owing to persistent Polish inducements to Germans to migrate into Germany. The Nazis were opposed to this, preferring to keep them in Poland as “front fighters for Germanism abroad,” as raw material for the manufacture of international “incidents.” Nazi organizations were introduced illegally into Poland. In 1936 ninety-nine persons were convicted at Katowice of membership in a Nazi organization and in July 1937, Polish authorities discovered a large camp near Kesowo in which German youth in Poland were being mobilized to conspire against the Polish state. Robert Ley announced in Danzig that “wherever Germans live there is Germany.” Polish authorities began at once removing Germans from the Corridor and giving land there to Polish ex-soldiers. In all fairness it must be stated that most Germans in Poland were not Nazis and reacted coldly to pressure from Berlin.

Germany’s anti-Polish sentiment is symbolized by a statue placed in the German border town of Schneidemuehl three months after the Nazis came to power. It represents a German woman looking off across the former German provinces, now become Polish territory. At her feet is written, “Never forget, German, what blind hatred robbed you of. Await the hour that will expiate the shame of the bleeding frontier.”

The Communist Bogey

After 1918, Marxian communism and National Socialism were rivals for the control of defeated, starved, embittered, and ruined Germany. Hitler learned to hate and fear communism whose internationalist tenets differed sharply from his own ideas about race and blood. In the early days of National Socialism, its opposition to Marxism encouraged big industrial magnates and the Junkers to support the movement, and when the Nazis got their first taste of power they used fear of the “red peril” to increase their hold upon the government.

Extermination of anti-Nazism throughout Germany began at once with the Communists. Within three days after Hitler became chancellor, Communist meetings were prohibited, their newspapers were suppressed, and their leaders arrested. On 20 February, Göring ordered the police to shoot Communists on sight as if they had horns or some other recognizable distinction. On 27 February occurred the notorious Reichstag fire. Communists were accused by the Nazis, who shrieked for more power in order to “save the German people from communism.”

The direct result was the Nazification of the German Cabinet and the establishment of the Nazi Party as the only legal political party in Germany. In this, the Communists played the role of scapegoats, for the German people were afraid of communism, and Hitler knew how to play like an artist upon the fears and fancies of the Germans. Thus fear of communism was one of Hitler’s stepping-stones to power in those early days.

Hitler used the “red scare” in building up German armaments. His propaganda machine announced that unidentified aircraft had appeared over Berlin, undoubtedly Russian. Top Nazis screamed for a German air force that could defend German women and children of the Reich from the dangers of surprise air attacks.

Hitler continually asserted that he saved Germany from the horrors of communism, and he carried the “communist bogey” into World War II propaganda by trying to convince the Western democracies that Germany was the European bulwark against Soviet Russia, that in fighting against Germany, England, France, and the United States were tearing down the dyke that would result in their own inundation. In this way Germany attempted to justify in part her claim to the hegemony of Europe in the face of a threatening Soviet communist expansion, especially when England and France offered neither strong nor inspired leadership in Western Europe from 1933 to 1938.

Immobilization of England and France

Why did England and France, ostensible winners of World War I, permit Germany to flout its treaty obligations, to re-arm, to expand, to proclaim its coming leadership of Europe and almost achieve it? No short or simple answer can be given. In both nations war-weariness in 1919 leveled off into a peace psychology that was deep-seated. The “war to end war” ended the desire for war at least in England and France. Hope in the League of Nations and faith in pacts and conferences supplanted military preparations.

Hitler’s insistence that Germany’s ruin stemmed from the Versailles Treaty was as false as his other basic assumptions, for England, France, in fact most of the world, victor and vanquished alike, also suffered economic exhaustion, unemployment, and depression, not because of a treaty but, as in Germany, because of the holocaust of war itself. Germany, however, had the sting of defeat as a spur; England and France permitted a false and insecure victory to act as a sedative.

During the 1930s, the governments of England and France floundered weakly, without vision, among domestic problems too vast for the caliber of leadership that emerged. In both countries, especially in France, political instability precluded long-range planning such as was possible to dictators. Nor was there at any time one man in either country who could set his foot down with authority against Hitler. The universal acclaim and profound, joyous relief that greeted Chamberlain on his return from Munich proved that in 1938 England and France were totally unprepared psychologically for any other course but appeasement. The fact that France did not extend the Maginot Line because of the cost, revealed a basic misunderstanding of what constituted national security. Thus it proved easy for Hitler to immobilize Western Europe. With a new Germany massed solidly behind him he could break down the Little Entente, nullify France’s influence in Eastern Europe and drive democracy out of the same area, curtail Allied influence in the Balkans, render the League of Nations impotent and a laughing-stock, and lessen everywhere in Europe the influence and prestige of England and France so that the realistic Mussolini and the crafty Stalin forsook their erstwhile accords with these countries and cemented ominous alliances with Germany.

Formation of the Axis

One of the most logical alignments throughout European history has been the age-old connection between Germany and Italy. From the early days of the Holy Roman Empire, the “Axis” has functioned under varying political, social, and economic conditions. Historically, Italy tends to assume a secondary role to be dominated by the greater weight of German power. Thus under the First Reich of Otto I and the Second Reich of Bismarck, Italy was used for German policies, largely to her own disadvantage. The Third Reich’s relations to Italy ran true to form.

Mussolini was several years ahead of Hitler in his development of fascism so that he tended to patronize the Führer, inviting him to Venice for an outing on 14 June 1934. “In these hours which we spent together,” declared Mussolini, “our spirits were in intimate communion.” The honeymoon aspect of their friendship was rudely shaken by Hitler’s premature putsch in Austria on 25 July 1934, resulting in the shocking death of Dollfuss with whom Mussolini was also on romantic personal terms. From that date, when Mussolini sent troops to prevent Austria’s seizure by Germany until the spring of 1936, Mussolini wooed France and the Slavic countries, consummated alliances with France and Yugoslavia, and toyed with the idea of an Italian-dominated Danubian bloc in opposition to Nazi penetration. The Stresa Front of April 1935, between France, Italy, and Britain, was originally designed to counteract Nazi pressure.

But the rift in the Axis did not last long. Mussolini became absorbed in his Ethiopian venture which angered England. France tried to play friends with both sides and Hitler seized the opportunity to re-militarize the Rhineland. Thus both Hitler and Mussolini flouted the League of Nations and European public opinion on similar ventures—one in Africa, the other in Europe. This brought them together again, like birds of a feather, and they officially approved each other’s actions. In July 1936, their policies coincided in Spain and the same year saw a series of friendly visits between high officials of both governments. In October, Count Ciano visited Berlin and Berchtesgaden “to coordinate the policies of the Italian and German Governments.” It was for Mussolini in a speech at Milan on 1 November 1936, to define the Axis when he said, “This vertical line between Rome and Berlin is not a partition but rather an Axis around which all European states animated by the will to collaboration and peace can also collaborate.”

A test of the Axis came in March 1938, on the occasion of the Austrian Anschluss. Mussolini, who in 1934 had been Austria’s defender now went on a skiing trip so that Schuschnigg, the Austrian Chancellor, could not reach him by any means. Mussolini managed, however, to get a telegram of congratulations to Hitler. Hitler, remembering 1934, was extremely grateful to the Duce and promised him, “I shall never forget this. Thank you. Thank you, Duce.” This sentiment he repeated in a telephone conversation to his agent in Italy, Prince Philip of Hesse, so many times as to be almost absurd, and in most effusive gratitude he promised to go with Mussolini “through thick and thin” Of such material was the Axis built.

Bibliography

Margaret Ball, The Anschluss Movement, 1916-1936 (Stanford University Press, 1938). A careful study of the first phases of the movement.

Raoul de Roussy de Sales, editor, Adolf Hitler, My New Order (Sydney, Australia: Angus and Robertson Ltd., 1942). A convenient place to find the best text of Hitler’s speeches from 1918 to June 1941. Well edited.

Documents on the Events Preceding the Outbreak of the War. Compiled and published by the German Foreign Office (New York: German Library of Information, 1940). 482 documents with a summary of their contents intended to justify German foreign policy from 1933 on.

Walter Consuelo Langsam, Documents and Readings in the History of Europe Since 1918 (Lippincott, 1939). Contains basic documents such as the text of the Munich agreement, laws, treaties and authoritative pronouncements.

Francis Trevelyan Miller, History of World War II (Winston, 1945). Chapter 6, “Nazi Plot to Conquer the World,” came out too soon to make full use of new material available after Germany’s collapse but shows how the Nazis built up their striking power in Germany by 1939.

Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1946), eight volumes. A collection of documentary evidence and guide materials prepared by the American and British prosecuting staffs for presentation before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, in the case of the United States, France, Great Britain, and the U.S.S.R. against Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, Ley, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Rosenberg, Frank, Frick, Streicher, Funk, Schacht, Krupp von Bohlen, Speer, von Neurath and Fritzsche. This is the basic work for this chapter since it contains nothing but documents relating to the Nazi plans and wars of aggression to achieve hegemony of Europe and the world, and dates all books upon the subject prior to its release. Volume I contains highly significant and readable documentary summaries of the plotting for aggressive warfare (pages 370-409), preparation for aggression 1933-1936 (pages 410-449), aggression against Austria (pages 450-514), and the plan to invade Czechoslovakia (pages 515-592). Volumes III to VIII, inclusive, print documents from captured German archives of all descriptions but unfortunately without any conceivable arrangement.

Hermann Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction (Putnam, 1940). Written by an early National Socialist leader of Danzig who broke away from the party; considered extreme until recent documents found in Germany substantiate his statements.

Cesare Santoro, Hitler Germany (Leipzig: Au­gust Pries, 1938). Sympathetic to Nazi Germany but contains much source material upon all phases of its activities.

Frederick L. Schuman, Europe on the Eve (Knopf, 1939). A scholarly, clear analysis of Europe’s international problems and policies from 1933 to 1939.

William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 (Knopf, 1942). Contains intimate, human details and on-the-spot impressions of the American who “covered” most German crises prior to 1941.

The Trial of German Major War Criminals. Proceedings of the International Military Tribunal Sitting at Nurnberg Germany (London: H. M. Stationery Office, 1947). Official verbatim transcript of the proceedings of the trial issued in fortnightly parts. Valuable for a connected story of the Nazi war for hegemony, but since only selected portions of documents are introduced into the evidence not as indispensable as the above publication of the American Government, which prints the entire documents for the benefit of scholars.

Yet to be published are the 15,000 typewritten pages of highly valuable and (at present) unavailable information compiled from 950 individual interrogations by the Interrogation Division of the United States Army which will supplement the volumes of Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression and the above Trial Proceedings. Some of the most startling facts gained by these interrogations from such men as Keitel, Jodl, and others are presented by the head of the mission, DeWitt C. Poole, “Light on Nazi Foreign Policy,” in Foreign Affairs (October 1946), pages 130-154, and in an address at The American Historical Association annual meeting in New York, December 1946.

Otto D. Tolischus, They Wanted War (Reynal and Hitchcock, 1940). A first-hand account written in a clear style.

Arnold J. Toynbee, editor, Survey of International Affairs (Oxford University Press), Volumes for 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1938, Part 1. On the whole the most impartial presentation of events, but limited to the evidence immediately available.

Henry C. Wolfe, The German Octopus (Doubleday, Doran, 1938). An objective analysis of Hitler’s bid for world power.

Adolf Hitler at a German National Socialist political rally in Weimar, October 1930.

 

The zeppelin Hindenburg floats past the Empire State Building over Manhattan on August 8, 1936. The German airship was en route to Lakehurst, New Jersey, from Germany. The Hindenburg would later explode in a spectacular fireball above Lakehurst on May 6, 1937.

Solemnly promising the nation his utmost effort to keep the country neutral, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt is shown as he addressed the nation by radio from the White House in Washington, Sept. 3, 1939. In the years leading up to the war, the U.S. Congress passed several Neutrality Acts, pledging to stay (officially) out of the conflict.

Two American Nazis in uniform stand in the doorway of their New York City office, on April 1, 1932, when the headquarters opened. "NSDAP" stands for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or, in English, National Socialist German Workers' Party, normally shortened to just "Nazi Party".

England's biggest demonstration of its readiness to go through a gas attack was staged, March 16, 1938, when 2,000 volunteers in Birmingham donned gas masks and went through an elaborate drill. These three firemen were fully equipped, from rubber boots to masks, for the mock gas "invasion".

Four Nazi troops sing in front of the Berlin branch of the Woolworth Co. store during the movement to boycott Jewish presence in Germany, in March, 1933. The Hitlerites believe the founder of the Woolworth Co. was Jewish.

Windows of shops owned by Jews which were broken during a coordinated anti-Jewish demonstration in Berlin, known as Kristallnacht, on November 10, 1938. Nazi authorities turned a blind eye as SA stormtroopers and civilians destroyed storefronts with hammers, leaving the streets covered in pieces of smashed windows. Ninety-one Jews were killed, and 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps.

The Nazi booth at a radio exhibition which started in Berlin on August 19, 1932. The booth is designed as propaganda of the Nazi gramophone plate industry which produces only records of the national socialist movement.

View of one of the large halls of the Rheinmetall-borsig Armament factories at Duesseldorf, Germany, on August 13, 1939, where gun barrels are the main output. Before the start of the war, German factories were cranking out pieces of military machinery measured in the hundreds per year. Soon it climbed into the tens of thousands. In 1944 alone, over 25,000 fighter planes were built.

Thousands of young men flocked to hang upon the words of their leader, Reichsfuhrer Adolf Hitler, as he addressed the convention of the National Socialist Party in Nuremberg, Germany on Sept. 11,1935.

Italy merged Italian Eritrea, Italian Somalia, and newly captured Ethiopia into Italian East Africa. On May 9, 1936, Mussolini declared the creation of an "Italian Empire"; Italian King Victor Emmanuel III added the Emperor of Ethiopia to his titles. In its first five years as a colony, Ethiopia absorbed 300,000 arrivals from Italy. Above, native Ethiopians salute a portrait of Mussolini in November 1935.

While newly-annexed Austria awaited the arrival of Adolf Hitler, preparations were underway. Streets were decorated and street names were changed. A workman in Vienna City square carries a new name plate for the square, renaming it "Adolf Hitler Place" on March 14, 1938.