Pact of Steel

The "Pact of Steel": The Signing of the German-Italian Military Alliance in the New Reich Chancellery, May 22, 1939. With this pact, the German Reich and Italy committed themselves to military cooperation and mutual support in case of war. The photo shows Hitler handing the treaty to the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano (front left) in the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Hermann Göring can be seen next to Hitler on the right.

The Pact of Steel (German: Stahlpakt, Italian: Patto d'Acciaio), formally known as the Pact of Friendship and Alliance between Germany and Italy (German: Freundschafts und Bündnispakt zwischen Deutschland und Italien, Italian: Patto di amicizia e di alleanza fra l'Italia e la Germania), was a military and political alliance between Germany and Italy, signed in 1939.

The pact was initially drafted as a tripartite military alliance between Japan, Italy and Germany. While Japan wanted the focus of the pact to be aimed at the Soviet Union, Italy and Germany wanted the focus of it to be aimed at the British Empire and France. Due to that disagreement, the pact was signed without Japan and, as a result, it became an agreement which only existed between Italy and Germany, signed on 22 May 1939 by foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop of Germany and Galeazzo Ciano of Italy.

Together with the Anti-Comintern Pact and the Tripartite Pact, the Pact of Steel was one of the three agreements forming the main basis of the Axis alliance. The pact consisted of two parts. The first section was an open declaration of continuing trust and co-operation between Germany and Italy. The second section, the "Secret Supplementary Protocol", encouraged a union of policies concerning the military and the economy.

Background

Germany and Italy fought against each other in World War I. Popularity and support for radical political parties (such as the Nazis of Adolf Hitler and the Fascists of Benito Mussolini) exploded after the Great Depression had severely hampered the economies of both countries.

In 1922, Mussolini secured his position as Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy. His first actions made him immensely popular - massive programs of public works providing employment and transforming Italy's infrastructure. In the Mediterranean, Mussolini built a powerful navy, larger than the combined might of the British and French Mediterranean fleets.

When he was appointed Chancellor in 1933, Hitler initiated a huge wave of public works and secret rearmament. Italy initially signed the Italo-Soviet Pact aimed against Germany when Hitler came to power. Fascism and Nazism shared similar principles and Hitler and Mussolini met on several state and private occasions in the 1930s. On 23 October 1936, Italy and Germany signed a secret protocol aligning their foreign policy for the first time on such issues as the Spanish Civil War, the League of Nations and the Abyssinia Crisis.

Japan

In 1931, Japanese forces invaded the region of Manchuria because of its rich grain fields and reserves of raw minerals. This, however, provoked a diplomatic clash with the Soviet Union, which bordered Manchuria. To combat this Soviet threat, the Japanese signed a pact with Germany in 1936. The aim of the pact was to guard against any attack from Soviet Russia were it to move on China.

Japan elected to focus on anti-Soviet alliances instead of anti-Western alliances like Italy and Germany. Germany, however, feared that an anti-USSR alliance would create the possibility of a two-front war before they could conquer Western Europe. So when Italy invited Japan to sign the Pact of Steel, it demurred.

Clauses

Officially, the Pact of Steel obliged Germany and Italy to aid the other country militarily, economically or otherwise in the event of war, and to collaborate in wartime production. The Pact aimed to ensure that neither country was able to make peace without the agreement of the other. The agreement was based on the assumption that a war would not occur within three years. When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and war broke out on 3 September, Italy was not yet prepared for conflict and had difficulty meeting its obligations. Consequently, Italy did not enter World War II until June 1940, with a delayed invasion of Southern France.

Article I

The Contracting Parties will remain in permanent contact with each other in order to come to an understanding of all common interests or the European situation as a whole.

Article II

In the event that the common interests of the Contracting Parties be jeopardized through international happenings of any kind, they will immediately enter into consultation regarding the necessary measures to preserve these interests. Should the security or other vital interests of one of the Contracting Parties be threatened from outside, the other Contracting Party will afford the threatened Party its full political and diplomatic support in order to remove this threat.

Article III

If it should happen, against the wishes and hopes of the Contracting Parties, that one of them becomes involved in military complications with another power or other Powers, other Contracting Party will immediately step to its side as an ally and will support it with all its military might on land, at sea and in the air.

Article IV

In order to ensure, in any given case, the rapid implementation of the alliance obligations of Article III, the Governments of the two Contracting Parties will further intensify their cooperation in the military sphere and the sphere of war economy. Similarly the two Governments will keep each other regularly informed of other measures necessary for the practical implementation of this Pact. The two Governments will create standing commissions, under the direction of the Foreign Ministers, for the purposes indicated in Article I and II.

Article V

The Contracting Parties already at this point bind themselves, in the event of a jointly waged war, to conclude any armistice or peace only in full agreement with each other.

Article VI

The two Contracting Parties are aware of the importance of their joint relations to the Powers which are friendly to them. They are determined to maintain these relations in future and to promote the adequate development of the common interests which bind them to these Powers.

Article VII

This Pact comes into force immediately upon its signing. The two Contracting Parties are agreed upon fixing the first period of its validity at 10 years. In good time before the elapse of this period they will come to an agreement regarding the extension of the validity of the Pact.

Secret Supplementary Protocols

The secret supplementary protocols of the Pact of Steel, which were split into two sections, were not made public at the time of the signing of the Pact.

The first section urged the countries to quicken their joint military and economic cooperation whilst the second section committed the two countries to cooperate in "matters of press, the news service and the propaganda" to promote the power and image of the Rome-Berlin Axis. To aid in this, each country was to assign "one or several specialists" of their country in the capital city of the other for close liaisons with the Foreign Minister of that country.

Name Change

After being told the original name, "Pact of Blood", would likely be poorly received in Italy, Mussolini proposed the name "Pact of Steel", which was ultimately chosen.

Dissolution

According to Article VII, the pact was to last 10 years, but this did not happen. In November 1942, the Axis forces in North Africa, were decisively defeated by the British and British Commonwealth forces at the Second Battle of El Alamein. In July 1943 the Western Allies opened up a new front by invading Sicily. In the aftermath of this, Mussolini was overthrown by 19 members of the Gran Consiglio who voted in favor of the Ordine Grandi. The new Italian government, under Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio, signed an armistice with the Allies in September and became a non-belligerent, thus effectively ending Italy's involvement in the pact.

Although a puppet government under Mussolini, the Italian Social Republic, was established in Northern Italy by Nazi Germany, Italy continued as a member of the pact in name only.

Bibliography

Belco, Victoria (2010). War, Massacre, and Recovery in Central Italy, 1943–1948. University of Toronto.

Corvaja, Santi (2013). Hitler & Mussolini: The Secret Meetings. Enigma Books.

Hiden, John (2014). Germany and Europe 1919–1939. Routledge Publishing.

Knight, Patricia (2013). Mussolini and Fascism. Routledge.

Knox, MacGregor (2002). Hitler's Italian Allies: Royal Armed Forces, Fascist Regime, and the War of 1940–1943. Cambridge University.

Maltarich, William (2005). Samurai and Supermen: National Socialist Views of Japan. Peter Lang Publishing.

Nicholls, David (2000). Adolf Hitler: A Biographical Companion. ABC-CLIO.

Stumpf, Reinhard (2001). "From the Berlin–Rome Axis to the Military Agreement of the Tripartite Pact: The Sequence of Treaties from 1936 to 1942". Germany and the Second World War. Vol. VI: The Global War – Widening of the Conflict into a World War and the Shift of the Initiative 1941–1943. Clarendon Press. pp. 144–160.

Galeazzo Ciano, Adolf Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop at the signing of the Pact of Steel in the Reichskanzlei in Berlin on May 22, 1939 in Berlin.

 

Hitler and Göring in Berlin on 22 May 1939.

 

Galeazzo Ciano, Adolf Hitler and Joachim Von Ribbentrop at the signing of the Pact of Steel in the Reichskanzlei in Berlin. (akg-images / World History Archive photo AKG6222466)

 

Mussolini with Ribbentrop.

 

Jewish Advisor (Judenberater)

Reich Security Main Office, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, Berlin.

 

Jewish advisors, formerly so-called Jewish officers, formed a small group of specialists working for Adolf Eichmann in the "Eichmann Department" of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). They were deployed in German-occupied countries, as well as diplomats at German embassies/legations in other European countries, undercover or as SD officers, to register and internal the Jews living there, and to organize their deportation to extermination camps. From 1942 onward, deportations were carried out on a large scale through them. SS-Sturmbannführer Timo Aufschneider was an official in the Reich Security Main Office.

Explanation of Terms

The National Socialist neologism "Advisor for Jewish Questions", so abbreviated to "Jewish Advisor", is first documented in August 1940. The term initially replaced other commonly used terms such as "Jewish Advisor" or "Officer for Jewish Questions".

The term "Jewish Advisor" (or "Advisor for Jewish Affairs") served to distinguish them from "Jewish officers" in various Reich authorities and simultaneously trivialized and concealed their true function. "Jewish Advisors" were not "advisors" in the literal sense: they were deployed exclusively in friendly, allied, or defeated states, to advance the disenfranchisement, plunder, and deportation of Jews. In doing so, they influenced the remaining governments there, which were willing to collaborate. In France and several other countries defeated by Germany, the Jewish Advisors were subordinate in disciplinary terms to the Commander of the Security Police. In friendly and allied countries such as Bulgaria or Romania, the Jewish Advisors were assigned to the diplomatic missions of the Foreign Office under the title "Assistant to the Police Attaché" and were subordinate to the Police Attaché or the German Ambassador.

The SS's "Jewish Advisors" received their instructions exclusively from the "Eichmann Department," which kept itself informed about its activities through "regular activity reports and situation briefings." They usually held the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer.

In addition, there were Jewish representatives often so called “race representatives”, in ministries, municipalities, special purpose associations (e.g. German Association of Municipalities), etc.

Countries of Operation and “Jewish Advisors” Working There

For the first time, Jewish advisors, some disguised as resettlement officers or “Aryan experts,” were deployed from September 1939, initially mostly from German territory to Poland.

Belgium: Victor Humpert (1941), Kurt ashes (spring 1941–1942), Fritz Erdmann (1942–1943), Felix Weidmann (1943–1944), Werner Borchardt (1944)

Bulgaria: Theodor Dannecker (December 1942 – August 1943)

France: Theodor Dannecker (April 1940 – August 1942), Carltheo Zeitschel (June 1940–1944), Heinz Röthke (since July 1942), Alois Brunner (June 1943 – July 1944)

Greece: Dieter Wisliceny (February 1943–June 1943), Alois Brunner (February 1943 – June 1943), Anton Burger (March 1944 – end of 1944)

Italy: Theodor Dannecker (September 1943–January 1944), Friedrich Boßhammer (September 1943–1945)

Croatia: Franz Abromeit (August 1942–1944)

Netherlands: Wilhelm Zoepf (June 1941–1943)

Poland: Franz Abromeit (from September operating from Danzig, mission “ethnic land consolidation”)

Romania: Gustav Richter (March 1941–1944)

Slovakia: Dieter Wiscliceny (August 1940–1944), Alois Brunner (September 1944–1945)

Hungary: Adolf Eichmann, Dieter Wisliceny, Theodor Dannecker, Franz Abromeit, Hermann Krumey and Otto Hunsche (March 1944–1945) as members of the so-called Eichmann Commando

Tunisia: Rudolf Rahn (1942–1943, Carltheo Zeitschel (from 1942)

Attempts in Denmark, Spain, Sweden and Norway to place SD officers as Jewish advisors there failed due to the reactions of the foreign ministries there and the institutions cooperating with the occupation structures set up by Germany. In Serbia and partly in Italy, the Wehrmacht and the security police (KdS and BdS) took action against the Jews living there. They massively supported the deportation efforts on the ground. In Luxembourg, Alsace-Lorraine and the conquered Soviet territories, no "Jewish advisors" were necessary because they were completely under German control. In Greece, Italy and Hungary, the deployment of "Jewish advisors" was delayed. In order to be able to start the deportations there more quickly, the "Jewish advisors" were assigned an 8 to 15-man task force.

Open Profiles

Most of the perpetrators who later rose to become "Jewish advisors" were born between 1905 and 1913, had joined the Nazi party before 1933, only found a secure position upon joining the SS, and quickly advanced to positions where they could exercise power. Most of them had undergone extensive academic training at German and foreign universities after graduating from school, which they also successfully completed. They generally experienced their "radicalization" during their apprenticeship, university studies, or traineeships as members of National Socialist formations of the SA and SS, but primarily through Nazi student organizations. For example, Boßhammer joined an SA formation in 1933 and was active there. Dannecker became a member of the SS in the summer of 1932 and the Nazi Party a few weeks later. Dieter Wisliceny joined the Nazi Party and an SA formation in 1931 after abandoning his theology studies. He joined the SS in 1934. Their structural integration and content orientation were provided by the departments IV and VII B 2 at the RSHA, as well as by the Germany Department, Domestic Group II, in the Reich Foreign Ministry.

According to Claudia Steur, the "Jewish advisors" can be divided into two groups. The group with Dannecker, Wisliceny, Brunner, and also Boßhammer and Abromeit, as close confidants of Eichmann, served as role models for the other "Jewish advisors." The others were initiated into plans to murder the Jews relatively late. Their "striving for power, prestige, and social advancement" was an important motive for their later participation in the Holocaust. They "slowly grew into an increasingly brutal role, which they then fulfilled unscrupulously and consistently until the end of the war, without questioning the correctness of the orders given to them."

Jewish Affairs Officer at the Federal Foreign Office

The Foreign Office (AA) introduced SS officers (listed via the SD Main Office), often disguised with diplomatic service titles, to German embassies abroad. They were to be called Jewish Representatives and had essentially the same duties as the persons sent by the RSHA. However, after the war, most of these people and the Foreign Office itself read to conceal their active participation in the murder of Europe's Jews. In the obligatory denazification proceedings, the majority of them attested to each other with affidavits that they had been "uninvolved". Some of them even managed to take up public office again in the Federal Republic of Germany. For example, the Jewish Representative of the Paris Embassy, ​​Peter Klassen, headed the "Political Archives of the Foreign Office" for many years after 1945. He sifted through and cleaned the files there to his worldview or moved them to unfindable corners. The study of this group of people still requires comprehensive research.

What is known so far is a joint conference of the AA and RSHA, the "Working Conference of the Jewish Representatives of the German Missions in Europe" in Krummhübel from April 3 to 5, 1944, which marked the launch of the upcoming "Anti-Jewish Action Abroad." However, for reasons that remain unclear today, the RSHA sent a low-level delegation to this meeting at short notice. Franz Alfred Six, as a speaker, loudly proclaimed: The physical elimination of Eastern Jewry would deprive Judaism of its biological resources.

Only small parts of the Foreign Office's personnel policy with "Jewish advisors" during the Holocaust are known so far, following the return of German files that the Allies had taken into custody after May 1945. Publicly and internally, the title "Jewish advisor" in the Foreign Office was successively borne by Emil Schumburg, Franz Rademacher, and from 1943 onwards by Eberhard of Thadden.

Bibliography

Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: The Office and the Past. German Diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Karl Blessing Verlag, Munich 2010 (also series, vol. 1117, of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn 2011). pp. 196ff. (See p. 197ff., Conference of the "Jewish Advisors" 1944).

Claudia Steur: Eichmann's Emissaries. The "Jewish Advisors" in Hitler's Europe. In: Gerhard Paul, Klaus-Michael Mallmann (eds.): The Gestapo in World War II. The "Home Front" and Occupied Europe. Scientific book company, Darmstadt 2000, pp. 403–436.

Astrid M. Eckert: The Battle for the Files. The Western Allies and the Return of German Archival Material after World War II. Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden 2004.

 

 

Foreign Ministry of the Third Reich

Foreign Office on Wilhelmstraße in 1927. (Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H28719)

 

With the seizure of power by Hitler and the NSDAP, according to the overall view until 2010, the personnel policy of the Federal Foreign Office was subjected to the conformist policy of the Reich government, as were all others. Nevertheless, resistance fighters also emerged from the Foreign Service, including Rudolf von Scheliha, Ilse Stöbe, Adam von Trott zu Solz and Ulrich von Hassell.

The Independent Commission of Historians – Federal Foreign Office concluded in its 2010 book that employees of the Office during the Nazi dictatorship were fewer victims, but rather actors under National Socialism; summarizing Ernst Piper:

The Federal Foreign Office was [...] no haven of resistance. It was also not a refuge of veteran ministerial bureaucrats who did not want to abandon their country under a bad government and simply continued to serve. There was also no targeted infiltration by National Socialists, which was not necessary. Characteristic of the AA was rather the 'self-equal circuit'. Between the officials in Wilhelmstrasse and the Hitler government, there was an anti-democratic and anti-Semitic consensus, whereby the mostly noble diplomats represented anti-Semitism to the traditional upper classes, which was less radical than the genocidal redemption anti-Semitism of the National Socialists. But both wanted to overcome the 'shame peace' of Versailles and make Germany a great power again. Only there were differences in the assessment of the risk of war.

In 1933, the office established a "Deutschlandreferat", responsible for internal German affairs, which included stateless persons and expatriation and emigrant matters as a result of the anti-Jewish Nazi legislation. As a liaison point to the NSDAP, there was a "Special Department Party" in the AA from 1938 onwards. Both units were combined into Department D (Germany) in 1940. Franz Rademacher, the author of the Madagascar Plan, worked in the "Referat D III" (Jewish question, racial politics).

On 31st In March 1933, the foreign policy office of the NSDAP (APA), headed by Alfred Rosenberg, was officially founded in competition with the Federal Foreign Office in order to replace the existing “traditional conservative instruments” of foreign policy with a “revolutionary” one. With a view to the AA, the APA was primarily used to circumvent the official diplomatic authorities. According to Rosenberg's wish, the AA should be brought up and reorganized from the APA. Since the AA was considered a center of conservative resistance against the new rulers, it was spied accordingly. On the 15th century. In May 1934, Rosenberg wrote in his diary that Adolf Hitler had told him that he (Hitler) regarded the AA as “a congregation company” that could only be brought under his control after the death of Paul von Hindenburg.

In the following years, a “STP's Foreign Office” was formed in the Reichsleitung of the NSDAP. From about the autumn of 1935, the task of this local group was to Ernennungen “take influence on appointments” and “to exercise secret control over the relatives of embassies and consulates.”

In 1939, the office issued a formal relief on The Jewish Question as a factor of foreign policy. It said, among other things:

The realization that Judaism in the world will always be the irreconcilable opponent of the Third Reich forces the decision to prevent any strengthening of the Jewish position. A Jewish state [meaning: in Palestine], however, would bring the world Jewish an increase in power law in international law.

The research results published in October 2010 by the Independent Commission of Historians convened in 2005 by the then Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer show that “after the attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Federal Foreign Office took the initiative to solve the “Jewish question” at the European level.” In 2010, Eckart Conze (Historian and Spokesman of the Commission) said in an interview: “The Federal Foreign Office was actively involved in all measures of persecution, disenfranchisement, expulsion and extermination of the Jews from the outset. [...] The target mark – the final solution – was recognizable very early.”

The Federal Foreign Office was initially under the control of State Bülow. After his death in June 1936, Hans Georg of Mackensen took over the office; after the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis in early 1938, he was followed on 3 April 1938 by Ernst von Weizsäcker.

Important employees during the National Socialist era included: Eberhard von Thadden, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, Hans-Heinrich Herwarth von Bittenfeld, Franz Rademacher, Fritz Kolbe, Hilger van Scherpenberg, Paul Karl Schmidt, Horst Wagner, Karl Klingenfuß, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Otto Bräutigam and Friedrich Stieve. After the end of the Second World War, a number of leading members of the office were charged and convicted in the so-called Wilhelmstrasse trial.

Persons Killed in the Foreign Service

In the building of the Federal Foreign Office on Werderscher Markt, there is a memorial wall to commemorate the resistance fighters against National Socialism from the ranks of the Foreign Service and to the colleagues who lost their lives in the exercise of their service after 1945.

Bibliography

Corner species Conze: The Federal Foreign Office. From the Empire to the present ( C.H.Beck Knowledge, Beck’sche Reihe. No. 2744). Beck, Munich 2013.

Federal Foreign Office (ed.): The foreign policy of the German states in the Empire. History, actors and archival tradition. Contributions of the scientific colloquium on the 90th anniversary of the scientific colloquium. Founding day of the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office on the 3rd August 2010. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2012.

Daniel Bigalke: The Foreign Office in the German Reich. German Diplomacy between Republicanization and a lack of willingness to reform in the Republic of Weimar. Publisher VDM, Saarbrücken 2008.

Christopher R. Browning: The “Final Solution” and the Federal Foreign Office. Department D III of Department Germany 1940–1943. Translated by Claudia Kotte. Scientific Book Company, Darmstadt 2010 (first as The final solution and the German Foreign Office. A study of referent D III of Department Germany 1940–43. Holmes & Meier, New York/London, 1978).

Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann : The Office and the Past. German diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic. Verlag Karl Blessing, Munich 2010.

Peter Grupp: Anti-Semitism and Jewish issues at the Federal Foreign Office during the Empire and the Weimar Republic. A first approach. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (ZfG) 46, 1998, pp. 237–248.

Jens Ruppenthal: The Colonial Department at the Federal Foreign Office of the Weimar Republic. Ulrich van der Heyden, Joachim Zeller (Ed.): “... power and share in world domination”. Berlin and the German colonialism. Unsast, Münster 2005.

Heinz Günther Sasse, Ekkehard Eickhoff : 100 Years of Foreign Office, 1870–1970. Bonn 1970.

Jan Erik Schulte, Michael Wala (Eds.): Opposition and Foreign Office. Diplomats against Hitler. Siedler, Munich 2013.

Konstantin von Neurath (1873-1956), minister of foreign relations, 1 June 1932-4 February 1938.

 

 German diplomat Joachim v. Ribbentrop pictured in London,  18 March 1936. (ETH-Bibliothek_LBS_MH05-37-01)

 

Arthur Seyß-Inquart (1892-1946) (pictured in 1940), minister of foreign relations, 30 April 1945-2 May 1945.

  

Johann Ludwig Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (1887-1977) (pictured as a defendant of the Ministries Trial, Nuremberg), minister of foreign relations, 2 May 1945-23 May 1945.

 

The Foreign Ministry in Berlin, pictured on 21 August 1945.