A History of Germany 1918 - 2020. Mary Fulbrook
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Название: A History of Germany 1918 - 2020

Автор: Mary Fulbrook

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Историческая литература

Серия:

isbn: 9781119574248

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ production of aircraft, ships and explosives. In January 1935, after a plebiscite, the Saarland was returned to German jurisdiction. In March 1935 the rearmament programme, the existence of a German air force and the introduction of one year’s conscription (raised to two years in August 1936), were made public. These clear breaches of the Treaty of Versailles were censured by the so-called Stresa Front of Italy, France and Britain, and by the League of Nations, in April 1935, but to little effect. By June of that year Britain and Germany had concluded a Naval Agreement under which Germany was permitted to increase her Navy to one-third the strength of the British Navy. The ‘Stresa Front’ was in any case less than solid. Hitler on the whole tended to admire Italy’s Fascist leader Mussolini, and, despite tensions between Italy and Germany over Austria after the attempted coup by Austrian Nazis in 1934, Hitler was concerned to foster good relations with his fellow-dictator. Hitler was also a prime opportunist. Taking advantage of British and French preoccupation with the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935, and under some pressure from domestic discontent over a deteriorating economic situation, Hitler took his first major foreign policy risk in March 1936. German troops marched over the Rhine to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank, in clear defiance of the Versailles Treaty. This served to boost Hitler’s domestic popularity considerably, and occasioned only very limited criticism from abroad.

      In November 1937, at a meeting with leaders of the army, navy and air force, together with the Foreign Minister and War Minister, Hitler delivered a lengthy harangue on Germany’s need for Lebensraum. Notes of this meeting were taken unofficially by Hitler’s military adjutant Colonel Hossbach, in what has become known as the ‘Hossbach memorandum’. Some of Hitler’s audience were not convinced by his ideas, which were greeted with grave reservations. Notwithstanding criticisms, in the following weeks Nazi military planning became offensive. Rather than responding or listening to criticism, Hitler simply removed the critics from their strategic positions. By February 1938 a significant purge had been effected: Blomberg’s post of War Minister was abolished; the old Wehrmacht office was replaced by the Oberkommando (High Command) of the Wehrmacht (OKW) under General Keitel; Fritsch was replaced as Commander-in-Chief of the army by General von Brauchitsch; fourteen senior generals were retired, and forty-six others had to change their commands; and, in the Foreign Ministry, Ribbentrop officially replaced Neurath as Foreign Minister. Hitler, who was already Supreme Commander of the army by virtue of his position as head of state since the death of Hindenburg, now also became Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The regime was now more specifically Nazi, less conservative–nationalist, in complexion.

      In the course of 1938–9 Hitler achieved certain major foreign policy goals without igniting an international conflict. In March 1938, after considerable exertion of pressure on the Austrian chancellor Schuschnigg – who attempted to organize a plebiscite which would avoid German takeover, but was outmanoeuvred and forcibly replaced by the Nazi sympathizer Seyss-Inquart – the peaceful invasion of Austria by German troops and its annexation into an enlarged German Reich was effected. Later myths of ‘the rape of Austria’ and being ‘Hitler’s first victim’ notwithstanding, the entry of German soldiers was greeted by many Austrians with considerable enthusiasm. While those Austrians of left-wing and liberal opinions viewed the Anschluss with foreboding, others gave a rapturous welcome to the triumphant return of Adolf Hitler to his native land, in which, over a quarter of a century earlier, he had collected his ideas and fomented his rag-bag of prejudices while a drifting failed art student in Vienna. Austrian Jews had good reason to be worried: a virulent anti-Semitism was unleashed, soon making their situation even more demoralizing and unpleasant than that of the Jews in Germany, against whom discriminatory measures had unfolded more gradually and legalistically. As far as international responses were concerned, the reaction was muted. For one thing, since Austria had been a dominant force in ‘German’ affairs for centuries, and had only recently been excluded from Bismarck’s small Germany (and forbidden any union under the Versailles Treaty), it did not seem entirely unnatural that Germans in the two states should be united under the Austrian-born leader of Germany. For another, the major powers were at this time not prepared for military confrontation with Hitler. The United States was adopting an isolationist, neutralist stance with respect to European affairs; the Soviet Union under Stalin was preoccupied with domestic purges of perceived internal opposition; neither France nor England was ready for a military challenge to Hitler, although rearmament had been underway since the mid-1930s.