Hitler (84 page)

Given these circumstances, Hitler found it advisable to make placating gestures and to stress continuity with the moderate Weimar policy. Although he despised the personnel of the Foreign Office and occasionally spoke of “those Santa Clauses in the Wilhelmstrasse,” he left both the bureaucracy and the diplomatic corps almost untouched. For at least six years, he told one of his followers, he must maintain a kind of truce with the European powers; all the saber rattling of nationalistic circles was a mistake, he said.
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Typical of his strategy was his grand “peace speech” of May 17, 1933, although he mingled his sincere-sounding offers of reconciliation with some strong words against the persisting distinction between victors and defeated and even threatened to withdraw from the Disarmament Conference and from the League of Nations altogether if the victors continued to deny equal rights to Germany. But in the present situation he could easily assume the role of an advocate of reason and fairness by taking the European powers at their word, invoking their own slogans of “self-determination” and a “just peace.” So great was the general gratification at Hitler's moderation that no one detected the warning contained within his speech. Along with the London
Times
many influential voices throughout the world supported Hitler's demand that Germany be treated on a footing of equality with the other powers. President Roosevelt was actually delighted with Hitler's tone.
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The most visible success of this policy was the Four Power Pact between England, France, Germany, and Italy that was drawn up in the summer of 1933. Although never ratified, it signified a kind of moral acceptance of Germany into the society of great powers. But Germany's first partner in international negotiations was the Soviet Union, which hastened to renew the Berlin Treaty that had expired in 1931. Russia was followed closely by the Vatican, which in July concluded the arrangements for a concordat with the Reich. But even though things were going well, in the autumn Hitler swung the rudder around with an abruptness that seemed to spring from a blind emotion and managed thereby to perceptibly improve his whole position.

His field of operations was the Disarmament Conference in Geneva, which had been meeting since the beginning of 1932. Because of her military weakness, Germany exerted a particularly strong moral sway at this conference. The principle of equality compelled the other powers either to disarm or to accept the rearmament of Germany. In speech after speech, statement after statement, Hitler could stress Germany's readiness to disarm; the more France's anxieties came to the fore, the more simple-heartedly and persuasively Hitler could argue. France was watching events in Germany with deep uneasiness; she found these developments far more telling than Hitler's bland assurances, even though her persistent distrust—which blocked all negotiations—cast her in a bad light internationally. But by pointing to the system of repression inside the Reich, to the increasing militarization, the constant marching, the flags, uniforms and parades, the organizational vocabulary with its “storm troops,” “brigades” and “headquarters guards,” and the battle songs in which the whole human race trembled before a Germany that owned the world, France at last managed to bring the other powers around. The equality conceded to Germany in principle was made dependent on a four-year period of probation, so that the others could observe whether their former enemy was sincerely ready for reconciliation and had abandoned all revanchist notions.

Hitler reacted by flaring up. On October 14, shortly after British Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon had presented the Allies' new views, Hitler announced his intention to quit the Disarmament Conference. Along with this, he proclaimed Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations. His state of mind is indicated by his orders to the army—revealed at the Nuremberg Trials—to resist with armed force if an attempt were made to apply sanctions.
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This first coup, with which Hitler took the regime's foreign policy into his own hands, created stupefaction. It is true that he had not made the decision on his own—as has been widely thought. He was supported strongly by Foreign Minister von Neurath, who had previously advocated a deliberate sharpening of Germany's foreign policy. But the emotional posturing, the tone of grand indignation, unquestionably derived from Hitler himself. And it was also he who posed the alternatives as “withdrawal or dishonor.” In a radio address delivered on the evening of October 14 he applied to foreign affairs the dual tactics which had proved of such value to him in domestic affairs: he masked his belligerence by a torrent of words and show of amicability. He called France “our ancient but glorious opponent” and stated that “anyone who can conceive of a war between our two countries is mad.”

These tactics paralyzed the European powers, who in any case were hardly disposed to take decisive counteraction. None of their spokesmen had any idea what do do. Hitler was contemptuously tossing back in their faces the “honor” for which the Weimar regime had so long and patiently sued. His brashness stunned them. But some hid their surprise and embarrassment by congratulating the others on being rid of an inconvenient partner in negotiations. A few demanded military intervention; in the lobbies at Geneva angry exclamations of
“C'est la guerre!”
could be heard. But this was not meant to be taken seriously. Yet amid the tumult it seemed to dawn on people for the first time that this man was demanding of old Europe an admission of bankruptcy. Moreover, it was becoming apparent that he had delivered a fatal blow to a wounded League of Nations already undermined by fear, mistrust, and selfishness. At the same time, the idea of disarmament was killed off. If it is true, as has been remarked, that Hitler's conquest of power was actually a declaration of war upon the system of peace instituted at Versailles,
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then the declaration was made on that October 14, 1933. But no one acknowledged it. General annoyance with the protracted Geneva palaver, with paradoxes and hypocrisies, was expressed above all in the British press. The conservative
Morning Post
declared that it would shed no tears over the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference; the proper feeling was relief that such “a humbug” had come to an end. When the newsreel in a London theater showed Hitler, the audience applauded.
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Fearing that the easy success of the surprise tactics would go to Hitler's head, Hermann Rauschning, coming from Geneva, called on him at the Berlin chancellery. He found Hitler “in the best of spirits; he was all keyed-up and eager to take action.” With a contemptuous gesture he waved away what Rauschning had to say about the indignation at Geneva and the call for military sanctions. “You say they want war?” he asked. “They have no thought of it.... A sad crew is assembled there. They don't act, they only protest. And they'll always think of things too late.... These people will not stop Germany's rise.”

For a time, Rauschning's report continues, Hitler paced back and forth in silence. He seemed to be aware that for the first time since January 30 he had entered a risky zone, which he must now cross, and that his forceful act could have the direst consequences for the country. Without looking up, Hitler justified his decision in a kind of monologue. In doing so he offered Rauschning a remarkable insight into the structure of his decision making:

 

I had to do that. A grand liberating act that everyone could understand was essential. I had to pull the German people out of this whole clinging network of dependencies, empty phrases and false ideas. I had to restore our freedom of action. I am not concerned here with the politics of the day. For the moment the difficulties may have mounted. So be it—that will be balanced out by the trust the German people will place in me as a result. It would have made no sense to us to go on debating the subject, as the Weimar parties did for ten long years.... [The people] want to see something being done, not the same fraud being continued. What was needed was not what the brooding intellect thinks is useful, but the dramatic act which demonstrates a resolute will to make a new beginning. Whether it was done wisely or not, the people at any rate understand only such acts, not the futile bargaining that leads to nothing. The people are sick of being led around by the nose.
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Shortly afterward it became apparent that he had reasoned rightly. For Hitler characteristically linked withdrawal from the League of Nations with another step that went considerably beyond the original pretext. He decided to hold a plebiscite on the issue, the first such plebiscite of his regime, and one staged with an enormous display of propaganda. This in turn was combined with new elections. For the Reichstag that had been elected on March 5 was to some extent still anachronistically divided on the pattern that had prevailed under the Weimar Republic.

The outcome of the voting could not be in doubt. Feelings of humiliation harbored for years, deep-seated resentment over the tricks by which Germany had been kept under since Versailles—all such emotions now broke forth, and even critics of the regime, who would soon be going over to active resistance, hailed Hitler's gesture. As the British ambassador reported to London, all Germans were united in the desire to avenge themselves upon the League of Nations for its manifold failures. Since Hitler had intertwined his policies as a whole with the resolution to withdraw from the League by framing his plebiscite question in general terms, there was no way for the voter to express approval of his position on the League of Nations and at the same time condemn his domestic policies. Thus the plebiscite was one of the most effective chess moves in the process of consolidating his power within Germany.

Hitler himself opened the campaign on October 24 with a major speech in the Berlin Sportpalast. He announced that the plebiscite was to take place on November 12, one day after the fifteenth anniversary of the 1918 Armistice. Once more facing an electoral challenge, Hitler worked himself up into a trancelike paroxysm. “For my part I declare,” he cried out to the masses, “that I would sooner die than sign anything that in my most sacred conviction is not tolerable for the German people.” He also asserted that “if ever I should be mistaken in this matter or if the people should ever believe that they can no longer support my actions... I wish them to have me executed. I will quietly await the blow!” As always, when he felt slighted, he ranted demagogically about the injustice that had been done to him. Speaking to the workers of the Siemens-Schuckert Works, dressed in boots, military trousers, and dark civilian jacket, standing on an enormous derrick, he stated:

 

We are gladly willing to co-operate in any international agreement. But we will do so only as equals. I have never, in private life, forced myself upon any distinguished company that did not want to have me or did not regard me as an equal. I don't need such people, and the German nation has just as much character. We are not taking part in anything as shoeshine boys, as inferiors. No, either we have equal rights or the world will no longer see us at any conferences.

 

Once again, as in earlier years, a frantic “poster war” was launched. “We want honor and equality!” In Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt a procession of crippled veterans in wheelchairs was mounted. The veterans held signs: “Germany's Dead Demand Your Vote!” Considerable use was made of quotations from the wartime British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, who asserted that right was on Germany's side and that England would not have put up with such a humiliation for any length of time.
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A wave of gigantic marches, protest festivals, and mass appeals once again rolled over the country. A few days before the election the nation was asked to observe two minutes of total silence in remembrance of its dead heroes. Hitler declared that the military tone of life in Germany was not for the sake of demonstrating against France “but to exemplify the political decisionmaking that is necessary for the conquest of Communism.... When the rest of the world barricades itself in indestructible fortresses, builds vast fleets of airplanes, constructs giant tanks, makes enormous cannon, it can scarcely talk about a menace when German National Socialists march entirely weaponless in columns of four and thus provide a visible expression of the German racial community and effective protection for it.... Germany has a right to security no less than other nations.”

All the resentments of the people were expressed in the results of the plebiscite—but it also showed the effects of an intensification of propaganda. Ninety-five per cent of the voters approved the government's decision to withdraw from the League. And although this result was manipulated and accompanied by terroristic electioneering practices the outcome still more or less corresponded to public mood. In the simultaneous Reichstag election 39 million of the 45 million eligibles gave their vote to the Nazi “unity” candidates. The day was exuberantly hailed as “the miracle of the birth of the German nation.”

 

During his coming to power Hitler had proved the value of a series of surprise actions on the domestic front; now he applied the same tactics to foreign affairs. The dismay at his break with Geneva was not yet over, and there was still indignation at his arrogant attempt to turn the democratic principle of the plebiscite against the democracies themselves, when he again seized the initiative. His purpose now was to arrange a dialogue on a new and more favorable plane with the powers he had just offended. In a memorandum issued in mid-December he rejected the idea of disarmament but declared himself willing to accept a general limitation of armaments to defensive weapons, provided Germany was allowed to raise a conscript army of 300,000 men.

This was the first of those offers, placed with such remarkable feeling for the situation, which for years prefaced each of his foreign-policy coups right up to the outbreak of the war. For the British the terms were just barely acceptable as a basis for negotiations, for the French unacceptable, just as Hitler had calculated in each case. And while the two Allies took council endlessly—the consultations protracted by French distrust—on how far each was willing to go in making concessions, Hitler could exploit their differences, and the fact that no binding agreements had yet been arranged, to push forward his own plans.