[Thousands of photographs and illustrations of
World War II are in my World War II In View Flickr
collection.]
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.