The Economy & Class Structure of German Fascism: Chapter 15

War in Western Europe

Hitler once openly admitted in a private conversation in the summer of 1934 that he knew his assumption of power would mean a foreign political gamble putting the existence of the Reich at stake. But the gamble was indispensable for the ‘inner salvation of the German people’. He had sought as best he could to secure the then defenceless Reich against the worst dangers from outside by amassing a ‘show-army’ of more than three million SA men and by using it as a deterrent until such time as an armed and trained force could replace it. There is every reason to assume that this was the true meaning and explanation of his ‘purge’ of the SA — never more than a show-army — through the bloodbath of June 30, 1934 and the weeks that followed. More on this later.

The truth, however, was that the ‘existence of the Reich’ could be saved neither by the SA nor by Hitler’s wily tactics. If it had come to the crunch, the monstrosity that was the Hitler Reich would have gone up in smoke no more than two months after its birth. Never until the close of the Second World War had the Third Reich been in such mortal danger as in the third week of March 1933. The events of that time were never made known to the public and are unmentioned in most popular histories — but they present the key to the understanding of the whole subsequent foreign political development of Europe.

In February 1933, the Poles, in accordance with their rights as laid down in the Versailles Treaty, reinforced the troops with which they occupied the Westerplatte in the harbour of Danzig.¹ The external motivation was a point of conflict between Poland and the Danzig Senate over the customs administration of Danzig Free State. It turned into an acute crisis when the Poles threatened, if Danzig did not relent, to occupy the customs house then and there and secure their rights by force. Visible behind this threat, however, was Poland’s clear understanding of what events in Germany signified and her decision to stifle in the bud the danger that lurked there — a danger more acute for her than for any other state in Europe.

The Polish Government had conferred with the French Government and agreed in detail on the procedure to be followed. On Friday, March 17, 1933 at noon, the Poles would advance on Danzig Harbour and occupy the customs house. This step, it was calculated, would be experienced as an insufferable provocation by a Germany steeped in an orgy of nationalism — a provocation impossible for the Hitler Government to ignore if its prestige were to be upheld. At least it would not be able to restrain the uncontrollable SA hordes massed heavily on the border with Posen from invading Danzig territory and rescuing their ‘threatened brothers’ on the ‘bleeding border’. But in that case, the Treaty would have suffered a flagrant infringement and this would constitute one of the justifications for France to step in with immediate military aid. In other words the French-Polish alliance would meet its legitimate consummation. Paris agreed to react by sending an immediate ultimatum to Berlin and if necessary to invade the Ruhr by Monday, March 20. More accurately, this meant that France would use the incident to manoeuvre herself into a measure of direct control over the militaristic policies of the Hitler regime.

The Foreign Office in Berlin heard of this plan on the Wednesday afternoon before the fateful Friday set for the Polish advance; the effect was one of panic. It was soon clear that the allied calculation was correct and that Hitler’s ‘deterrent’ must indeed fall into the trap intended for it. The end of the new splendour seemed at hand and there were no discoverable means of averting it. But the panic lasted no more than 24 hours. On Thursday afternoon I once more saw happy faces in the Wilhelmstrasse. What had happened?

At the same time as in Berlin, London had heard word of the French-Polish plan and if the reaction there was just as prompt, it was incomparably more active. Both the Prime Minister, Ramsay Macdonald,² and his Foreign Minister, Sir John Simon, immediately protested to Paris in the strongest possible terms. Far from fulfilling her obligations as set down in the Locarno Treaty,³ Great Britain would on the contrary leave the French to their own resources, no matter what the consequences of their action. It was not Hitler’s SA, but this British protest which operated as a deterrent to the French.

On the Thursday the French cancelled their plan in Warsaw, Ramsay Macdonald, in order to scare the French out of any autonomy in the future, later flew, to world-wide amazement, to Rome and there together with Mussolini laid the foundations for the ‘Four Power Pact’. So urgent did the matter appear to the British that Macdonald even had to overcome his horror of flying and his brief touch-down in Paris on transit was made without any official exchange of views. Mussolini’s Four Power Project had been sitting on ministerial desks since the middle of February and only attained any real importance on this occasion and then later when it served as a counter to the Franco-Russian Pact. The signing in July 1933 in Rome was no more than a piece of official show-business.

The effect on Poland, however, was fundamental. Left in the lurch by France in a matter of life and death, the Poles could no longer maintain their traditional enmity to Germany. They had to give up their essential position in Europe’s post-war order. After a communique of foreign ministers on May 4 had reestablished diplomatic contact between Warsaw and Berlin, the Polish ambassador appeared in Berlin on May 25 to begin negotiations on a new basis for German-Polish relations. The result was the Neurath-Lipski Declaration of Amity of November 15 followed by the signing of a non-aggression pact on January 26, 1934. Berlin had lost no time in grasping the essential meaning of what had occurred between France and Poland.

In the spring months of 1933 after coming to power, Hitler was personally advised on foreign policy, about which he knew practically nothing, by Terdengen, a privy councillor from the Foreign Office. Terdengen, of catholic Westphalian stock, was at first the target of Nazi suspicion and threats, but then, mainly because of the Danzig crisis, gained an almost unique position of confidence with Hitler. It was he who generalised the lesson of this crisis in his talk with Hitler and advised him to show all France’s military allies in Europe one after the other that France, if it came to the crunch, would not march for them.

In June it was the turn of Prague: the Czechs were provoked by a relatively trivial point of conflict simply so that Paris would turn down their plea for help. The French reaction was the one the Germans expected and wanted. Instead of protesting violently, Czechoslovakia suggested that Czech-German relations be put on a ‘good-neighbourly’ basis. The Czech Minister, Benesch, best-informed of all Europe’s foreign ministers, presumably did not even need to make enquiries in Paris; his request for good relations with Berlin was, however, added to the German files as confirmation of the practicability of dealing summarily with the Czechs as and when desired. The same experiment, with the same successful result, was carried out with Yugoslavia and Romania simultaneously. And thus as early as the end of June 1933, when Germany was still impotent militarily and Röhm, the head of the SA, could still entertain notions of becoming Head of Army Command or Defence Minister of a German brownshirt army of the future, it came about that the French alliances lay in shreds and the guarantee for the European post-war order was not worth the paper it was written on — and all this without the Germans having to raise one military finger.

With things going so well, Hitler for the first time developed a personal initiative in foreign policy. He outbade Terdengen’s notion in characteristic fashion. It was not enough to show France’s allies that she would not fight for them. What really counted was to demonstrate before the eyes of the whole world that France would not even fight for herself. And at once he set about proving it. He was helped by the fact that Terdengen spoke perfect French without the slightest accent; whether he had grown up in France and perhaps been educated in a French Monastery I am not certain.

At the end of July, Terdengen was sent on a journey to France, not to Paris but crisscross through the provinces and the interior. He was to find, in conversation with every social grouping, a convincing answer to one single question: could the French Government, given France’s domestic position at the time, risk ordering a general mobilisation of troops in the case of a German provocation that impinged on France’s prestige, short of threatening her territory?

After eight weeks, at the end of September 1933, Terdengen returned to Berlin and answered Hitler’s question with an unequivocal ‘no’. That was the foundation upon which Germany, on October 14, with carefully engineered provocation, declared her departure from the League of Nations and from the Disarmament Conference.⁴ With this step she won a free hand for her rearmament both in fact and in form. In the very same month the army leadership was commissioned to draw up its arms budget.

France reacted to all these events and developments with protests, letters and appeals that were mere substitutes for her lost alliance system of Little Entente⁵ and Balkan Pact.⁶ By March 1935 Hitler could risk openly revealing the fact of German rearmament and announcing general conscription. No real opposition was forthcoming from her Western neighbours. In the following June, Great Britain concluded a Naval Pact with Hitler agreeing to German maritime rearmament up to 35% of the naval strength of Britain herself. There was indignation in France. The Naval Treaty was a notable success for Hitler whose policy of revision of Versailles thus found England’s unambiguous support.

With this situation in mind, it is understandable that in autumn 1935 the whole question of war should be decided once and for all as ‘war against Russia’. War against the West appeared to be superfluous and further European developments at first seemed to confirm this euphoric impression. However, Foreign Minister von Neurath was not so quick to adopt this point of view and it was thus a decisive fillip for Hitler’s position when Ribbentrop, as Ambassador in London, scattered the last doubt and, afterwards as Foreign Minister, even outbade Hitler’s own course of action. Ribbentrop’s particular hobby-horse was the Anti-Comintern Treaty between Germany and Japan of November 1936 and what he termed the ‘encirclement of Russia’. This was later completed by the so-called Eastern Pact of July 8, 1937 between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

When in January 1939 the General Staff demanded that all the remaining possibilities of conflict in the West should be removed as an imperative condition for the Russian campaign, Ribbentrop and Hitler naturally viewed this exigency as an essentially non-military task which would certainly not lead to all-out war. The task itself was divided into two parts.

In the course of 1939 the non-Russian East was to be eliminated, Poland, the Baltic States and Romania; in 1940 the West, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland were to follow. The pivotal point in the East was to be Danzig. If Poland had willingly conceded this city and the ‘Corridor’, Germany would not have needed to have used violent means to subjugate her. In any case, this war was considered by the Nazi leaders as nothing more than a local affair.

The pivotal point in the West was to be Switzerland. The plan was to divide Switzerland up between Germany, Italy and France. Ribbentrop had worked on this plan when on a visit to Paris on December 12, 1938, to sign the French-German pact which was the parallel to Neville Chamberlain’s Munich Appeasement Pact of September 29, 1938. He had told the French Foreign Minister, Bonnet, that Mussolini was giving them absolutely no peace about his desire to annex the Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland, so that one would have to consider the necessity of splitting up the whole country in order to placate him. What would be France’s attitude to this in his, Bonnet’s, opinion? Would she refrain from military intervention if she were to receive the French part of the Swiss cake? Of course, Bonnet would not answer this in the name of the French government, but he himself could perfectly well imagine a peaceful understanding being reached on this point. One could also conceive of a French government, for example with Laval and Flandin, which would give its consent.

It was on this premise that Berlin constructed all her subsequent plans. It was inconceivable to divide Switzerland from within by Nazi agitation so long as the Swiss relied on French military aid in the event of a German attack. But as soon as this reliance disappeared the prospects would change radically. The methods tested before could then be applied with certain success. Once Switzerland fell, France would be made strategically helpless and politically completely encircled. She could even be left with her own government and administration; in all essentials she would have to do as Berlin ordered. In this way Germany would reach the English channel without firing a shot and then, in incontestable control of the whole continent, would be able to negotiate with Britain on an equal footing. That was the plan.

It may seem beyond belief that Berlin could rely on the passivity of England in the face of such developments. However, one has to allow for the peculiar mentality of Ribbentrop which was typical of the vulgar Marxist views of the class struggle prevalent among fascists. Ribbentrop based his ideas on his analysis of the Spanish Civil War which he viewed as a close parallel situation to the Abyssinian conflict⁷ of a year earlier. His reasoning was as follows: if the English Government had been able to act freely to the advantage of British interests it would have done one of two things. It would either have taken positive action in support of Madrid against Franco and his German and Italian allies so as to secure for itself the decisive influence upon republican Spain, or else it would have thrown its weight against Madrid and made Franco an English vassall instead of a German or Italian one. Neither of these reasonable lines of action could a conservative government in London take, and any other kind of government Ribbentrop thought an impossibility for the foreseeable future. Supporting Madrid would have meant victory for the popular front movement in England which would have swept the conservatives out of office. But to throw their lot in with Franco would have aroused the same upheaval of public opinion in England and France which had enforced the resignation of Sir Samuel Hoare over the Hoare-Laval agreement of December 1935 concerning Abyssinia.

At that time such an analysis was true for many observers of world events. But what is noteworthy is that it was Ribbentrop’s observation too (as I know from reliable sources at the Foreign Office) and that it served as the basis for German foreign policy.

The Foreign Office in the Wilhelmstrasse was delighted with the British policy of non-intervention in Spain. The case was seen as so classic that the Germans felt certain that whatever they got up to on the continent, Britain would not intervene. On March 16, 1939, Neville Chamberlain in a declaration made at the Jewellers’ Banquet in Birmingham reinforced their certainties, and after that no words, declarations, or guarantees that the British Government found for pacifying Poland, Romania and Greece could lure a Nazi away from his optimistic analysis.

Hitler’s and Ribbentrop’s political notions about England’s future took a different form. They already saw their rule over continental Europe as a virtual fait accompli [accomplished fact]. They were quite prepared to equip the new European order with their own forces: with German capitalists, directors, factory managers, engineers and with German administrators and German police. But to expand such an order overseas — for this they were not prepared. They wanted to become a partner in the far-flung British Empire using her capital, her merchant navy, her colonial administration and her international connections. What they wanted was to receive ‘co-ownership’ status in the British Empire, with the secret idea, of course, of taking over alone after they had learnt the tricks of the trade and could seize the controls for themselves.

They did not doubt that, after the disarming of France, Britain could be moved to enter into such an agreement. The theory in Berlin was that since the Statute of Westminster of December 1931, when Dominion Status was established, the British Empire could only hold together through the collective need for defence, through the fact that for technical and financial reasons the dominions could not afford their own fleets. However, as soon as Germany stood at the Channel the Motherland would no longer be capable of defending herself, — in fact it would be up to Germany whether the British Empire survived or fell apart.

And so one would find England amenable to almost any conditons, particularly as the Germans intended not only to raise demands but also to offer very important propositions. Amongst them was, in the first place, a German guarantee for the untrammelled survival of the British Empire, secondly the formation of a common front against the United States as well as, of course, against Russia. Which lines the front against the U.S.A. should follow can be gathered from the framework of a treaty which the Federation of British Industries drew up with their German counterpart the ‘Reichsgruppe Industrie’ in Düsseldorf in March 1939, and which was carefully guarded and not finally abandoned as long as Chamberlain remained in office.

Thus ran Ribbentrop’s theory of Tory appeasement which seemed to promise Hitler a free hand on the Continent, without risk of opposition from an England caught in the fetters of her own class contradictions. Yet this theory broke into fragments the very day after Germany’s invasion of Poland. For the Commons rose in revulsion against Chamberlain’s attempts to avoid war. With cries of ‘speak for England’ and rallying calls to take on and fight Hitler’s fascist Germany the first shadow of a question mark over Ribben­trop’s grand strategy was cast.

1. Danzig is now known as Gdansk. — Bluebird

2. Ramsay MacDonald, the first British Prime Minister to come from the Labor Party. despite being one of the leaders of the Labor Party, the MacDonald Government’s response to the Great Depression has been characterized as a precursor to austerity. — Bluebird

3. The Locarno Treaties were a series of treaties negotiated in 1925 which sought to guarantee the inviolability of Germany’s borders with France and Belgium, as well as turn the Rhineland into a demilitarized zone, after the joint French-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr had set off the hyperinflation of the German Mark in 1923. — Bluebird

4. One of the conditions of the Locarno Treaties was that Germany join the League of Nations. Those treaties, however, were negotiated by a wholly different German government under wholly different circumstances than what existed in 1933. Violating the treaties when France was strong enough to reoccupy the Ruhr would have been tantamount to suicide. But now that France, and Europe more generally, had been weakened by the Great Depression, Germany was in position to act more belligerently, though Germany was no better off during the Depression than the rest of Europe. The international order that had been established in the earlier interwar years was beginning to disintegrate as a result of the economic crisis. — Bluebird

5. The Little Entente was an alliance between Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia. For the member countries, it served the purpose of containing potential Hungarian aggression and any potential restoration of the Habsburg Dynasty. For France, which formed alliances with all the member countries, the Little Entente was intended to contain German aggression, hence why France also sought alliance with Poland. — Bluebird

6. The Balkan Pact was a treaty signed between Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania, and Turkiye. It served to contain a perceived Bulgarian threat to the region similar to how the Little Entente sought to contain Germany and Hungary. — Bluebird

7. A conflict between Fascist Italy and the Ethiopian Empire which led to the Italian withdrawal from the League of Nations. — Bluebird