|
|
|
|
Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest
1998
4. Hitler’s Tripolar Strategy
This chapter offers a structural interpretation of Hitler’s grand strategy based on the discussion of equilateral tripolarity with two revisionist poles presented in chapter 2. Aware of the tripolar structure of the international system, Hitler constructed a grand strategy to destroy the other two poles, Russia and the United States, and thereby establish German global mastery.
Hitler’s program consisted of four stages. First, Germany would rearm and secure alliances with two key LGPs—Britain and Italy. Next, Germany would unleash several lightning wars against its neighbors in order to bolster its military and economic resources and to pacify its Western flank in preparation for the Eastern campaign. Under the shelter of British neutrality or, better still, with British help, the Reich would then strike quickly to eliminate the nearest pole, the Soviet Union, before the more distant pole, the United States, could intervene. The defeat of Soviet Russia would transform the tripolar system into a bipolar one, pitting the stronger German&-;led European continent against the weaker North American continent (Hitler believed that the U.S. would annex Canada). Germany would now be “entirely self–reliant and capable of withstanding any economic blockade which might have been staged by the major maritime powers.” 1
With Europe as the nucleus of the German empire, Hitler would then set in motion the next step of his Program: the defeat of America and the creation of a global German empire. In preparation for this final war, the Reich would expand overseas from its continental base and retool its armed forces—with the Luftwaffe and navy receiving priority over the army. After establishing power bases in Europe, Africa, and the Atlantic, Germany would attack and crush the United States, converting the international system from bipolarity to unipolarity.
The War of Stages
The roots of Hitler’s Program, the Stufenplan as set down in Mein Kampf in 1925, are easily traced to the Bismarckian and Wilhelmine eras. By the late nineteenth century, German geopoliticians had proposed a two–stage plan for Germany to achieve the status of a world power: first, the creation of a continental base, followed by overseas, colonial expansion. To these two stages, Hitler added a third: a final hegemonic war between the European and American continents that would end in German world dominion. 2
In his discussions of the balance of power, Hitler, unlike his nineteenth–century predecessors, spoke of the international system in tripolar, rather than multipolar (5 or more poles), terms. France and Britain, he believed, were decaying powers that had long ago fallen to second–class status. 3 Of the remaining great powers, only Stalinist Russia and the United States were capable of thwarting Germany’s drive for hegemony. Luckily for Germany, however, during the 1930s, Russia and the United States were both preoccupied with internal problems, and so showed little interest in the fate of Europe. Likewise, Europe seemed scarcely to notice the affairs of the two great powers on its flanks. This state of affairs—the unactualized potential power of Germany’s most dangerous rivals and the mutual disinterest among Russia, the U.S., and Europe—offered Germany a window of opportunity to defeat Russia and grab the Continent.
The Two Rival Poles
The tripolar image of a united Europe withering under the shadows cast by American and Russian power surfaces throughout Hitler’s writings. Similarly, Karl Haushofer, Hitler’s leading geopolitician, warned of the force inherent in vast spaces, which made Russia and America the twin threats posing the greatest danger to European civilization. 4 Only a united Europe under German leadership could prevent the tyranny of North America and Bolshevik Asia. Accordingly, Hitler argued that German needed to expand not merely for its own sake but also to ensure the independence of Europe. Hitler’s propaganda of defending European civilization against alien barbarism attracted adherents from all parts of Europe to the Nazi cause. The crusade to create a united Europe “appealed to . . . young men from Holland, Belgium, and Scandinavia, who joined the Waffen SS to save Europe from Asiatic barbarism, by which they meant the Soviet Union.” 5 Of the American threat, Hitler remarked, “Since today Germany’s economic fate vis–à–vis America is in fact also the fate of other nations in Europe, there is again a movement . . . to oppose a European union to the American Union in order thereby to prevent a threatening world hegemony of the North American continent.” 6
Hitler did not believe that he would live to see the German–American war for world supremacy. The fight against the United States was a goal reserved for future generations of racially superior Germans after the Führer’s death. Instead, Hitler’s primary task was to defeat the Soviet Union, the nearest polar power and so Germany’s primary target, and establish hegemony over the Continent. The key for Germany was to avoid a two–front war. This could be accomplished, the Führer believed, by defeating France quickly and then, with Germany’s rear secure and Britain’s blessings, attacking and crushing the Soviet Union. Several decades later, Britain and Germany would be in position to conquer the North American continent. Of the latter task, Hitler said: “I rejoice on behalf of the German people at the idea that one day we will see England and Germany marching together against America.” 7
The American Threat
In his speeches of 1919–20, Hitler displayed grudging respect for American economic and political power and an awareness of the scope of its potential strength. Explaining the Senate’s rejection of Wilson’s League of Nations and Versailles Settlement, Hitler said, “she is mighty enough and does not need the help of others . . . and she feels restricted in her freedom of action.” 8 Several years later, in Mein Kampf , Hitler made several references to the awesome power of the United States. At one point, he touts American power in order to point out the superiority of continental growth as opposed to colonial expansion as a method to acquire power:
| Many European States today are comparable to pyramids standing on their points. Their European territory is ridiculously small as compared with their burden of colonies, foreign trade, etc. One may say, the point is in Europe, the base in the whole world; in comparison with the American Union, which still has its bases in its own continent and touches the remaining part of the world only with its points. From this results, however, the unheard–of strength of this State and the weakness of most of the European colonial powers. 9 |
In his second book (1928), Hitler argued that Europe’s privileged place in the world order was endangered by the North American Continent. “With the American Union, a new power of such dimensions has come into being as threatens to upset the whole former power and orders of rank of the states.” 10 Continuing on this theme, Hitler wrote:
| That this danger threatens all of Europe has, after all, already been perceived by some today. Only few of them wish to understand what it means for Germany. Our people, if it lives with the same thoughtlessness in the future as in the past, will have to renounce its claim to world importance. . . . As a state in the future order of world states, [Germany] will at best be like that which Switzerland and Holland have been in Europe up to now. 11 |
As early as 1937, Hitler and Göring, the head of Germany’s air force, had authorized the development of bombers to strike at New York and other East Coast cities; and, as Gerhard Weinberg puts it, “if nothing much eventually came of these projects, it was not for lack of trying.” 12 Returning from a visit to the United States in 1938, Karl Haushofer declared, “Potentially, the United States is the world’s foremost political and economic power, predestined to dominate the world once it puts its heart into power politics.” 13 By January 1939, Hitler’s statements indicate an obsession with America’s shadow on the European scene. “From that time on,” John Lukacs asserts, “he began to consider Roosevelt as his principal enemy—a conviction that Hitler held to the end.” 14 Of the American danger to Germany, Hitler commented, “Confronted with America, the best we can do is to hold out against her to the end.” 15
It is clear from the way Hitler orchestrated Germany’s relations with the United States up until December 1941, that he feared most the war potential of the United States. According to the Stufenplan , Germany would not be ready to take on the U.S. until the Reich had consolidated its imperial hold over Europe and obtained a vast colonial empire overseas.
The success of the Stufenplan depended on keeping the United States on the sidelines until Germany held the Continent. In Hitler’s view, Germany had already lost one war by carelessly provoking the U.S. into active belligerence—a mistake he was determined not to repeat. Thus, despite constant pressure from his naval chiefs during the period 1939 to 1941, Hitler forbade any attacks on American ships and all passenger steamers, though this seriously diminished the effectiveness of German submarine warfare against France and Britain. Similarly, when Roosevelt, in his famous “shoot at sight” speech on September 11, 1941, ordered American warships escorting British freighters to destroy any German submarines or raiders, Hitler responded by instructing his submarines not to instigate any attacks on American shipping.
In line with the plan, Hitler tried to minimize the appearance of German meddling in American politics. To this end, he directed the German press to refrain from printing articles denouncing Roosevelt or supporting his isolationist enemies. The Reich Chancellor feared that outright German support for American isolationists would be the surest way to provoke an American backlash, namely, public support for a more active U.S. foreign policy. 16
Perhaps more than any other German official, Hans Dieckhoff, the German Ambassador to the United States, warned that American isolation could not be assumed indefinitely. From 1938 on, and particularly after Roosevelt’s quarantine address of October 5, 1937, Dieckhoff worried that events were “leading to a war in which Germany would have to face the combined power of Great Britain and the United States.” 17 In a memorandum to the German Foreign Ministry on the subject of American foreign policy, Dieckhoff concluded that Germany
| must not count on American isolationism as an axiom. According to all indications the United States will continue to follow an essentially passive foreign policy as long as Britain is not prepared to become active herself, or as long as the United States is not subjected to intolerable provocation, or values which vitally concern the United States are not at stake. Should any of these occur, the United States, despite all resistance within the country, will abandon its present passivity. In a conflict in which the existence of Great Britain is at stake America will put her full weight into the scales on the side of the British. 18 |
In separate letters to Baron Hans Georg von Mackensen (German Ambassador in Rome and acting head of the German Foreign Office) on November 24, 1937 and to Ernst von Weizsäcker (State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry) on December 20, 1937, Dieckhoff criticized the “increasing activity of Racial Germans abroad, especially by the German–American Bund in the United States” for creating widespread “suspicion [in America] that this activity is promoted by Germany” and “that both Germany and Italy have given up their previous postulate that National Socialism and Fascism were not for export.” 19 In a long memorandum on the subject of the German–American Bund, Dieckhoff implored the Foreign Ministry to sever all official ties with German–Americans:
| In my opinion, any political connection between any authorities in Germany and the German–American element, if any such exists, must be broken off. As I have explained above, no good can come of it, only injury to Germanism in America and to our relations with the United States. . . . Just as, in deference to the Russian Government, Bismarck abstained from any contact with the Germans in the Baltic provinces . . . and just as today we consider it necessary to sacrifice the German element both of Alsace and in the South Tyrol for the sake of our relations with France and Italy, respectively, we must absolutely avoid political contact with the German–Americans if we do not wish to disturb or seriously prejudice our important relations with the United States. Here no compromise is conceivable; we must make a clean sweep of it. 20 |
The German Foreign Ministry responded quickly to Dieckhoff’s concerns. In a reply to Dieckhoff’s letter of November 24, 1937, Mackensen related the actions he and Konstantin von Neurath (German Foreign Minister) had taken to curb “German interference in the American domestic situation":
| Until a few months ago there had been no correspondence between German governmental or Party offices and the German–American Bund. It was found 4 weeks ago, however, that several persons in the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle [author’s note: the central agency for problems concerning ethnic Germans of non–German citizenship] had established relations with this organization. We took immediate steps against that, stopped all correspondence, and instructed the Consulate General in New York to demand of Mr. Kuhn, the leader of the German–American Bund, the surrender or destruction of this correspondence. This was all the more necessary, since the American Embassy here had shown great interest in the matter and brought up at the Foreign Ministry the subject of alleged connections between American citizens and German governmental authorities. 21 |
Just as the press had been restrained from printing anti–Roosevelt stories and the Foreign Office had severed official ties to German–Americans, Hitler tried to impress upon his allies that, unlike in 1914, American neutrality was not a firmly fixed policy. Accordingly, it was in their interest to calculate how their actions might affect American public opinion. More often than not, however, Hitler’s attempts to curb his allies proved unsuccessful. Such was the case in October 1940, when Hitler berated Mussolini for attacking Greece before the American presidential election. 22
The Soviet Threat
In contrast to the threat posed by America’s enormous war potential, the Soviet Union, according to Hitler, endangered “the freedom of the world” through “an inundation by disease bacilli [international Jewry] which at the moment have their breeding ground in Russia.” 23 Hitler argued that the Jews had controlled Russia since the Bolshevik Revolution, and that a global Jewish conspiracy, radiating outward from its Russian base, threatened the continued survival of the Aryan race and its German core. The solution for Germany was to wage a racist war of annihilation. The Program itself had been built on anti–Semitism, anti–Bolshevism, and Lebensraum , all of which served to integrate German society in support of Hitler and the National Socialist party. Thus, while the ideas of Hitler’s grand strategy were partially grounded in rational power politics, the aims of the Program were inextricably linked with, and intensified by, his irrational racist plan to exterminate the Jews. 24
Hitler’s obsession with defeating Russia appeared to be greatly simplified by Stalin’s purges. Of the Soviet Union, Hitler said, “this State ha[s] recently butchered four thousand high–ranking officers. Such a country could not wage war.” 25 Russia’s weakened position afforded Germany a window of opportunity, which Hitler was determined to jump through.
By 1941, however, Hitler had reassessed Soviet military strength. Justifying the timing of the German attack on the Soviet Union, he asserted:
| A few days before our entry into Russia, I told Goering that we were facing the severest test in our existence. . . . What confirmed me in my decision to attack without delay was the information . . . that a single Russian factory was producing by itself more tanks than all our factories . . . if someone had told me that the Russians had ten thousand tanks, I’d have answered: “You’re completely mad!” 26 |
As the German–Soviet war dragged on, Hitler grew more convinced that he had made the right decision to attack Russia when he had:
| The more we see of conditions in Russia, the more thankful we must be that we struck in time. In another ten years there would have sprung up in Russia a mass of industrial centres, inaccessible to attack, which would have produced armaments on an inexhaustible scale, while the rest of Europe would have degenerated into a defenceless plaything of Soviet policy. 27 |
Hitler’s Tripolar Strategy
The first stage in Hitler’s Stufenplan envisaged the establishment of a Greater Germany through the Anschluss with Austria and the absorption of Czechoslovakia and adjacent areas in Poland occupied by German–speaking people. These lightning wars would cement German economic and political hegemony over central Europe and secure the additional strategic resources and personnel (i.e., the 35 Czech divisions) needed for the next military campaign, the swing westward. The Wehrmacht would then smash Belgium, Holland, and France, neutralizing the Western flank and gaining direct control over the raw materials, food supplies, and labor reserves of Western Europe—all of which would serve to keep the German war economy afloat. 28
Having brought Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania firmly into the German economic sphere of influence and having secured through conquest free access to the resources of Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France, Nazi Germany would finally be ready to engage in the titanic struggle against the Soviet Union, the success of which would determine the fate of Hitler’s goal of Lebensraum : living space in the East, particularly the Soviet Ukraine. Under Hitler’s grand design, “What India was for England, the territories of Russia will be for us.” 29
A final war against the United States had occupied Hitler’s thoughts since 1928. In its drive for world supremacy, Germany required hegemony over the Eurasian landmass. After absorbing the resources of the nearest pole, Germany could then unleash the inevitable conflict against the more remote rival pole, the United States. In this battle, Germany could confidently expect victory. Gerhard Weinberg explains:
| [T]he Americans were the real threat to German predominance in the world. Hitler’s deduction from this analysis was simple: only a Eurasian empire under German domination could successfully cope with this menace. A third war was now added to the original two. After the first two wars had enabled it to construct a continental empire from the Atlantic to the Urals, Germany would take on the United States. One of the major tasks to be performed by the National Socialist movement, therefore, must be the preparation of Germany for this conflict. 30 |
Emphasizing demographics, Hitler viewed German Continental hegemony as a prerequisite for the ultimate war with the U.S.: “It is ridiculous to think of a world policy as long as one does not control the Continent. . . . A hundred and thirty million people in the Reich, ninety in the Ukraine. Add to these the other States of the New Europe, and we’ll be four hundred millions, compared with the hundred and thirty million Americans.” 31
In summary, Hitler’s grand strategy consisted of a series of isolated wars of escalating magnitude. First, Germany would win easily obtainable objectives in short and decisive campaigns in the east. Next, Germany would defeat France and coerce the British into an alliance against Russia and America. Finally, Germany would be ready to unleash successive polar wars against the Soviet Union and the United States.
For Hitler, the success of this sequence of events, from the Anschluss to the final war against America, rested on four elements: the blitzkrieg, two strategy innovations, and the advantage of offensive over defensive alliances.
1. Blitzkrieg
The consistency of Hitler’s statements and actions from Mein Kampf to his death suggest that he was faithful to the Stufenplan , which was to culminate in Germany’s unrivalled world supremacy (Weltherrschaft). 32 Within his lifetime, Hitler expected to see the completion of the first stage—eastward expansion (Drang nach Osten) followed by the initiation of a major–power war to gain complete control over Europe. These expansive goals required total war against France and the Soviet Union. Accordingly, economic and military preparations for total war were initiated in 1936 with the second Four Year Plan, and they were expected to be completed between 1943 and 1945.
The precondition for Germany’s waging total war, however, was achievement of Mitteleuropa, the creation of a central European area dominated economically and politically by Germany. For this initial phase of German imperialism, Hitler devised the strategy of blitzkrieg: localized, lightning wars fought with the minimum of economic effort and social discomfort. 33 Blitzkrieg was a military strategy oriented toward disruption and routing the enemy’s armies, conceived and conducted along classic Clausewitzian lines. Recalling Bismarck’s famous “nightmare of coalitions,” Hitler hoped that the speed of these wars would prevent escalation to major war against the other Great Powers. Short wars and piecemeal expansion were the keys to avoiding, for as long as possible, an overpowering counter–coalition of the kind that had defeated Germany in 1918.
2. “The Friend of My Enemy Is My Friend”
Another, less discussed strategic innovation by Hitler was his reversal of the Arab proverb that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Esmonde Robertson’s explanation of this genuinely original stroke merits quoting at length:
| Hitherto . . . the law of odd and even numbers, was taken as axiomatic: any given power would make common cause with its opponents’ opponent. But Hitler with a singleness of purpose aimed his offers, not at France’s potential enemies, which his immediate predecessors had done, but at her allies. He succeeded because he alone knew where the inherent weakness of the French security system lay. Whereas it was a fixed principle of French policy to resist every increase of German strength, others only feared it in certain directions and in limited quantities. Poland was averse to German expansion in the North–East, but might be kept quiet if Germany confined her claims to Czechoslovakia and Austria. For a short time Italy was prepared to challenge Germany, but only when a specified area was threatened. Britain, too, feared Germany in the air, but within certain limits might be prepared to accept expansion of German strength on land and sea. France had a host of allies, but none was entirely dependable: by implication they had each made some provision which would enable them to withhold support. Wherever France restrained them he could give them a free hand. France could thus be forced to transfer her favours continually until the system which she had been at such pains to establish was rent asunder. 34 |
Spearheading the movement for revision in Europe, Hitler realized that Germany had an advantage over his status–quo opponents: they, unlike the Reich, could not attract other revisionist powers with promises of territorial rewards at the expense of the Old Order. States with irredenta, such as Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, and the Soviet Union, adopted jackal policies, climbing aboard the Nazi bandwagon to satisfy their appetite for expansion as well as to increase their security. Encouraging jackal–type bandwagoning behavior, Hitler lured states into the German orbit by skillfully playing on their territorial aspirations and desire for protection from other revisionist powers. 35
Hitler’s Strategy of Individual Losses, Overall Gains
Neorealism’s core tenet is that states under anarchy fear for their survival as sovereign actors, and so they must guard against relative losses in power. States are security–maximizers or, in Grieco’s phrase, “defensive positionalists,” and not power–maximizers. This is what distinguishes Waltzian structural realism from traditional realism. 36
The “avoid relative losses” assumption of state interest posited by contemporary realists would be universally applicable if the primary goal of all states were security. This is not the case, however. The chief objective of an unlimited revisionist state, like Nazi Germany, is to dramatically improve its relative power position in the international system, even at the temporary expense of its security. Toward that end, it makes sense for such a state to enter into cooperative arrangements by which it gains relatively less than its partners. Let me explain.
Suppose revisionist state A makes separate bilateral deals with states B, C, D, and E, whereby A gains 5 utiles, and its partners each gain 7 utiles. In each individual cooperative arrangement, A gains 2 utiles less than its partner. But overall, A increases its absolute wealth by 20 utiles. If A can prevent the other players from concluding deals with each other and from which A is excluded, it gains a relative advantage of 13 utiles with respect to each partner and 20 utiles vis–à–vis all other states (F, G, H, and so on) outside the cooperative arrangements. This is a classic divide–and–conquer strategy. It is also consistent with Anatol Rapoport’s TIT FOR TAT strategy, which lost every individual contest but nevertheless was the winning entry in Robert Axelrod’s Computer Prisoner’s Dilemma Tournament. 37
By trading gains in individual plays for volume of deals, A enhances both its power and security, except against a hypothetical future coalition of BCDE. 38 As long as A’s resources exceed the combined strength of a BCDE coalition by 8 utiles or more, however, even defensive positionalists should not disapprove of A’s making these uneven deals.
This offensive TIT FOR TAT strategy is precisely the one that Hitler followed so successfully in his dealings with Britain in 1935, Russia in 1939, Italy in 1940, and Japan in 1941. It was also the strategy used in Germany’s economic relations with its East Central European neighbors. Specifically, Germany deliberately fostered a condition of asymmetric interdependence with its neighbors through what Albert Hirschman calls “the influence effect” of trade: country A (Germany), seeking to increase its influence in country B, alters the terms of trade in B’s favor, e.g., by paying above world prices for B’s exports; by changing the structure of B’s economy to make it highly and artificially complementary to A’s economy. 39 Here, country A accepts losses in national income in exchange for gains in national power. In summary, one can argue that Germany, in each case, gave more than it received. Overall, however, Germany got the best of its partners and, in the process, retained the greatest freedom of action.
4. The Superiority of Offensive Alliances
Hitler’s misguided notion that Britain would support Germany’s quest for continental supremacy is partially explained by his firm belief in the advantages of revisionist over status–quo alliances. This idea surfaces in a discussion in Mein Kampf on Germany’s foreign policy failures prior to the First World War. There, Hitler concluded that, for a host of reasons, the alliance with Austria destroyed Germany. For one thing, Austria was strictly interested in a status–quo alliance “for the conservation of eternal peace” to preserve “this mummy of a State.” 40 The defensive orientation of the alliance proved to be its undoing:
| The value of the Triple Alliance was psychologically modest, as the stability of an alliance increases in the measure in which the individual contracting parties hope to attain certain seizable, expansive goals through it. On the other hand, an alliance will be the weaker the more it restricts itself to the preservation of an existing condition as such. Here also, as everywhere, the strength lies not in defense but in attack. 41 |
With Austria, he claimed, “one could really not set out on ‘martial’ conquest, let us say, even in Europe. In this fact lay the inner weakness of this alliance from the first day.” 42
Hitler went on to argue that Austria’s weakness was a double–whammy for Germany. It not only prevented an offensive alliance with Germany but also provided the glue that held the opposition together:
| Never would the world coalition have come together that began to form itself with King Edward’s initiating activity, had not Austria, as Germany’s ally, represented a too tempting legacy. Only thus did it become possible to bring States, which otherwise had such heterogeneous wishes and aims, into one single front. With a general advance against Germany, every one of them could hope to receive enrichment at the expense of Austria. The danger was increased exceedingly by the fact that now Turkey also seemed to be a silent partner of this unfortunate alliance. 43 |
In a brilliantly absurd twist, Hitler saw the Triple Entente, not the Triple Alliance, as the revisionist coalition. Consequently, Germany and its pusillanimous allies did not stand a chance against the opposing force. Convinced that Britain had joined the revisionist, not the status–quo, alliance in 1914, Hitler thought that London would be inclined to do so again, providing that Germany sweetened the pot.
German Rearmament and the Wooing of Britain, 1933–35
Hitler’s principal task upon assuming power in 1933, was to rebuild Germany’s military forces. Rearmament would serve several purposes: it was a precondition for territorial expansion; a proven method to overcome Germany’s lasting economic depression; and a means to consolidate Nazi power on the domestic front. As an internal matter, Hitler’s plan for massive rearmament appealed to a wide range of societal interest groups in Germany, from the conservative army to the moderate Foreign Office to the extremism of Hugenberg’s Pan–German movement. Added to these domestic groups, Germany’s economic community, particularly its mining and steel and iron industries, were strongly in favor of rearming, since they stood to make a sizable profit from the proposed armament boom.
For all its benefits, however, this initial stage in the Stufenplan would be extremely dangerous for the Reich. It would soon become clear whether France, as guardian of the status quo, possessed statesmen willing to hazard the risk of a preventive war against Germany. 44 Prior to rearming, the Reich had no intention of provoking a showdown with France. To this end, Hitler made a series of “peace speeches,” which, he hoped, would create a peaceful international climate as diplomatic cover for the acceleration of Germany’s military buildup. 45
For most of 1933, Hitler and his Cabinet were preoccupied with settling the economic crisis and dealing with the Geneva disarmament conference that had opened on February 3, 1932, prior to Hitler’s appointment. Germany’s position at the conference was one of rough equality of armaments among the Great Powers. Essentially, Germany demanded that the other major powers reduce their armaments while the Wehrmacht rearmed until some specified level had been attained by all parties.
Having devised a divide–and–conquer strategy in Europe based on a bilateral relationship with Britain, Hitler sought to disengage the Reich from all multilateral arrangements. Thus, Germany withdrew from the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations in October 1933, shortly after Britain and France had adopted hardline stances against arms equality with the Reich. Then, in an attempt to preempt the hostility of the world community, Hitler initiated a series of bilateral negotiations with various powers, focusing his energies on winning over Britain, the keystone in his Program.
To appreciate the importance of the British alliance as a prerequisite for the Reich’s expansionist aims, we must digress for a moment to examine Hitler’s Lebensraum politik. Rooted in traditional German geopolitics, the concept of Lebensraum centered on the notion that Germany had to acquire economic self–sufficiency in order to achieve true security and control over its destiny. In a Darwinian world, dependence on other nations for war materials meant certain defeat, as was demonstrated by Germany’s collapse in 1918.
In Mein Kampf , Hitler described the international system as an intense Great–Power competition, in which “the right of self–preservation comes into effect; and what has been denied to kindness will have to be taken with the fist.” 46 Years later, in a meeting with his top advisors, Hitler reiterated the theme:
| A balance of power had been established without Germany’s participation. This balance is being disturbed by Germany claiming her vital rights and her reappearance in the circle of the Great Powers. . . . This is not possible without “breaking in” to other countries or attacking other people’s possessions. Living space proportionate to the greatness of the State is fundamental to every Power. One can do without it for a time but sooner or later the problems will have to be solved by hook or by crook. The alternatives are rise or decline. 47 |
Echoing the ideas of many geopoliticians, Hitler argued that Germany’s self–preservation demanded an aggressive foreign policy of continental expansion; only thus could the Reich secure autarky and fulfill its destiny. Favoring a policy of contiguous land expansion, Hitler rejected a policy of German Weltpolitik. As a land power, Hitler reasoned, Germany could not achieve the goal of self–sufficiency by means of colonial exploitation. Even the most determined of policies to make Germany a formidable maritime power would take generations to complete and would require, as a precondition for its success, German control over Europe. In Hitler’s words, because Germany’s “foreign trade was carried on over sea routes dominated by Britain, it was a question . . . of security of transport . . . which revealed in time of war the full weakness of our food situation.” Hence, in Mein Kampf , he argued: “For Germany . . . the only possibility of carrying out a sound territorial policy was to be found in the acquisition of new soil in Europe proper.” 48 He reiterated this view in 1938:
| [T]he space needed to insure [German self–sufficiency in raw materials] can only be sought in Europe, not, as in the liberal–capitalist view, in the exploitation of colonies. It is not a matter of acquiring population but of gaining space for agricultural use. Moreover, areas producing raw materials can be more usefully sought in Europe, in immediate proximity to the Reich, than overseas; . . . The question for Germany ran: where could she achieve the greatest gain at the lowest cost. 49 |
Alliances with Britain, Italy, and Japan
In the winter of 1922–23, Hitler began making statements that committed him for the first time to a foreign policy strategy of alliances with Britain and Italy. Prior to that time, Hitler consistently favored a Russo–German over an Anglo–German alliance. In his 1921 analysis of prewar German policy, Hitler declared that war between Russia and Germany could have been avoided because Russia had adopted an exclusively “Asiatic policy of conquest” that did not conflict with German interests. Hitler described the decision to support Austria–Hungary at the expense of Russian friendship as the “first huge error” made by Wilhelmine diplomats. This foolish pro–Austrian policy, Hitler believed, had resulted in the Franco–Russian alliance of 1893, which ultimately led to the outbreak of war in 1914. 50
From 1923 on, however, Hitler pinned the success of Lebensraum politik on securing a partnership with Britain. “For such a policy,” Hitler wrote, “there is only one single ally in Europe: England. With England alone, one’s back being covered, could one begin the new Germanic invasion.” 51 Hitler now believed that Germany’s irresponsible colonial strategy and naval race with Britain had led to its defeat in the Great War: “To gain England’s favor, no sacrifice should have been too great. Then one would have had to renounce colonies and sea power, but to spare British industry our competition.” 52 In contrast to “a healthy European land policy,” Imperial Germany had adopted Weltpolitik, “a colonial and trade policy” that had promised few gains at high costs, namely, conflict with the Anglo–Saxon sea powers. 53
Britain’s opposition to France on the question of Upper Silesia 54 and the Ruhr crisis of 1923 were turning points in Hitler’s thinking about a Anglo–German alliance. Here was proof, he thought, that Britain was reasserting its traditional balancer role vis–à–vis Europe. Along these lines, Hitler pointed out that “England has an interest in seeing that we do not go under because otherwise France would become the greatest continental power in Europe, whilst England would have to be content with the position of a third–rate power.” 55 Moreover, “England does not want a France whose military might, unchecked by the rest of Europe, can undertake to push a policy which, one way or another, must some day cross English interests.” 56
In addition to its concerns over French power, England would seek German friendship, he believed, to counter America’s growing economic and naval strength. The British government’s treasonous behavior at the Washington Naval Conference, Hitler claimed, had alerted the British people to the “Jewish conspiracy,” the goal of which was to undermine British imperialism in India and Ireland. Regarding the Naval Conference, Hitler agreed with his ideological mentor, Alfred Rosenberg, that “for centuries, England had fought ruthlessly for her naval supremacy . . . and always realized the need to drive the strongest from the field. In Washington, this England gave up her position with a grand gesture and without a struggle and renounced the alliance with Japan and transferred the leadership of world politics to the United States.” 57 Up until his death, Hitler continued to believe that Britain would align with Germany to protect its overseas possessions: “[Roosevelt] wants to run the world and rob us all of a place in the sun. He says he wants to save England but he means he wants to be ruler and heir of the British Empire.” 58 Given his misguided notion of an underlying Anglo–American rivalry, Hitler confidently expected Britain to join a German–led European coalition against the North American Continent. 59
While arguing in the 1920s that friendship with Britain was vital to German expansion, Hitler recognized that this goal could not be achieved in the foreseeable future. An alliance with Italy, however, was within Germany’s grasp, provided that Mussolini came to power. In a 1922 conversation with Kurt Lüdecke, a fellow member of the NSDAP, Hitler articulated his views on alliances with Italy and Britain:
| The natural future alliance of our new Germany, we agreed, should be England and eventually the northern European states, therefore, our logical effort—when we had the power—would be to alienate England from France. As a corollary of our growth, a German–English alliance was imperative. Forces currently dominant in England were, and would indefinitely remain, opposed to Nazi Germany, that we envisioned. With France holding a military trump card, and Germany isolated politically and economically, we were in no position to bargain with England. If we had any hope of understanding amongst the major powers, we should find it in Italy—if Mussolini came to power. 60 |
He was confident that Italy would ally with Germany because they were birds of a feather, destined to flock together: both countries shared a fundamental interest in overturning the Versailles settlement, which meant opposing French hegemony in Europe. For Italy, “every added continental reinforcement of France means . . . a future restriction on Italy.” 61 The main impediment to a future alliance with Italy—one that would have to await a Nazi takeover of Germany—was the planned Anschluss with Austria. To surmount this problem, Germany would have to renounce all claims on South Tyrol:
| Germany must collaborate with Italy, which is experiencing her national rebirth and has a great future. For that, a clear and binding renunciation by Germany of the Germans in South Tyrol is necessary. The idle talk over South Tyrol, the empty protests against the Fascists, only harm us since they alienate Italy from us. In politics there is no sentiment, only coldbloodedness. 62 |
On the German side of the ledger, Hitler saw many benefits accruing from a union with Italy and Britain:
| The most important is first the fact that an approach to England and Italy would in itself in no way evoke danger of war. . . . The alliance . . . would give Germany a chance to make quite calmly those preparations which, one way or another, must be undertaken within the bounds of such a coalition for a reckoning with France. . . . A further consequence would be that Germany would be freed from its adverse strategic situation at one blow. The most powerful protection of the flank on one side, the complete guaranty of our supply of the necessities of life and raw materials on the other side, would be the blessed effect of the new order of States. |
But almost more important would be the fact that the new union of States comprises a capacity for technical performance which, in many respects, is almost mutually complementary. For the first time Germany would have allies who do not suck like leeches on our own economy, but which both could and would contribute their share to the richest completion of our technical armament. 63
"In Europe,” he declared, “there can be for Germany in the predictable future only two allies: England and Italy.” 64 Outside Europe, however, Hitler predicted an alliance with Japan. The rivalry between Japan and the Soviet Union over “spheres of influence” in China indicated to Hitler that ‘international Jewry’ was bent on undermining the healthy structure of the Japanese state. In Mein Kampf , Hitler argued:
| Today [the Jew] can ape Germans and English, Americans and French, but he has no bridges to the yellow Asiatics. Therefore, he strives to break the Japanese national State by the power of existing similar structures, to finish off the dangerous opponent before the last State power is transformed in his hands into a despotism over defenseless beings. |
He dreads a Japanese national State in his millennial Jew empire, and therefore wishes its destruction in advance of the founding of his own dictatorship.
Therefore, he is now inciting the nations against Japan, as against Germany . . . 65
In Germany during the 1920s, Karl Haushofer, of whom Hitler was a close student, was also expounding on the theoretical advantages of an German–Japanese–Italian alliance. Japan had space for expansion in the Pacific and so there was no reason to fear a collision with German Lebensraum . 66
For many reasons, Germany and Japan were “natural” allies. Both countries shared a long tradition of authoritarian rule characterized by similar political institutions; and they opposed democratic ideals and violently denounced Communism and the spread of “Bolshevist influence.” In terms of culture and ideology, the seeds of German thinking had been planted in Japan at the time of the Meiji Restoration. Indeed, in 1883, Ito, a passionate admirer of Moltke and Bismarck, adopted the Prussian Constitution for Japan. 67 Many years later, Matsuoka, the Foreign Minister responsible for the Tripartite Pact, declared that Germany had had the greatest influence of all Western civilizations in the building of post–Restoration Japan. 68
The Germans, for their part, similarly admired the Japanese character and spirit. When Hitler assumed power, German propaganda referred to the Japanese as the “Prussians of the East” and the Bureau of Race investigation excluded the Japanese from the prohibition of marriage between Germans and non–Aryans, since “the blood of Dai Nippon contains within itself virtues closely akin to the pure Nordic strain.” 69
Germany and Japan also claimed a common denominator in their economic interests. Both Japan and Germany viewed themselves as “have not” countries, to whom markets and resources were denied. Both countries had been disinherited at Versailles by the established Western democracies, who had all along been cheating them out of their fair share of raw materials and colonies.
Hitler’s desire to secure alliances with Britain, Japan, and Italy is consistent with the hypothesis that revisionist powers seek minimum winning coalitions. A combination of these four powers would afford Germany the greatest gains at the least cost. With British consent, Germany would be in a position to gain control over the European continent and become the strongest land power in the world. Moreover, Germany could accomplish this task solely by means of its own military efforts; all that was required of Britain, Italy, and Japan was that they did not fight on the other side.
Hitler confidently expected Italy and Japan, as revisionist states, to side with Germany and its vision of a New Order. Joined by a common destiny, all three states would find their own Lebensraum , provided that each member limited its territorial reach to its preassigned sphere of interest. The idea of a global partition meant that Germany would not have to share the spoils of its victories with superfluous allies. To profit by the alliance, Italy and Japan would have to win their own victories. As for Britain, Hitler would gladly offer to guarantee its overseas empire in exchange for a free hand on the Continent.
The Failed Attempt to Gain British Friendship
In November 1933, Joachim von Ribbentrop visited London with a proposal for a naval agreement that would serve as a basis for an Anglo–German nonaggression pact. This meeting was followed up on December 5, when Hitler himself met with the British Ambassador, Sir Eric Phipps, to discuss the armaments question. Complaining of the “intolerable situation for Germany” created by its frontier being “completely undefended” to the point where “the French could walk into the country whenever they liked,” Hitler pointed out that an increase in German strength would also benefit England by counterbalancing French and Italian power: “[Germany] must . . . be in a position to throw her weight into the scales at some future time, and, in this connexion, might not Great Britain herself be glad of other alternatives to her present friendships?” 70
Aiming to drive a wedge between Britain and France, Hitler proposed an agreement that would limit France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia to their present level of armaments but would not apply to Germany and Britain. Phipps records Hitler saying:
| As far as Britain was concerned, not only should she not be included in any such standstill agreement, but he would even welcome considerable additions to the British fleet and air force. . . . He then repeated what General von Blomberg had told me . . . that Germany would never dream of competing against England at sea . . . 71 |
Figure 4.1 illustrates Hitler’s plan in 1934. As the figure shows, assuming that America retained its isolationist policy, the alliance Hitler sought to create with Japan, Italy, and Britain was a minimum winning coalition (power ratio = 6.7) against an opposing Franco–Soviet alliance (power ratio = 5.66), the two powers expected to oppose German expansion. Hitler’s alliance scheme is consistent with the hypothesis that revisionist states form minimum winning coalitions.
The Führer went to great lengths to convince the British that he desired only freedom of action on the Continent and would not threaten Britain’s naval supremacy or colonial possessions. In directives to his negotiators, Hitler exclaimed: “An understanding must be reached between the two great Germanic peoples through the permanent elimination of naval rivalry. One will control the sea, the other will be the strongest power on land. A defensive and offensive alliance between the two will inaugurate a new era.” 72
F. H. Hinsley writes:
| According to [Admiral] Raeder, Hitler, immediately after assuming power in 1933, laid down, as “the basis for future German naval policy, his strong determination to live in peace with Italy, Japan, and England. In particular, he had no intention of contesting England’s claim to a naval position corresponding with her world interests, which view he intended to establish in a special treaty concerning the comparative strength of the German and English Fleets. . . . His plan was to win England permanently over to a policy of peace through a proportional naval strength of 35:100.” . . . Germany took the initiative in the negotiations; she did so in the spirit of making a gesture in Great Britain’s interest; the German proposals themselves were clearly aimed at reassuring this country on the question of German naval rivalry. 73 |
Figure 4.1
While the British were relieved to hear that Hitler would not reintroduce Wilhelmine naval and colonial policies, they were not persuaded to disown the French or to give Germany a free hand in the East. Hitler’s courtship of Britain was doomed from the start, for it was based on the prospective gains Britain and Germany could make relative to the other great powers. As a satisfied, status–quo power, Britain could scarcely consider a deal that called for the total unraveling of the established order in exchange for a slight increase in its relative power—one that would have afforded Britain, at best, a precarious position as Germany’s junior partner. 74 Instead, London desired better relations with Germany solely for the purpose of bringing the Reich back into the European fold, with the ultimate objective being Germany’s loyal participation in various European multilateral security arrangements.
In light of the generous terms the Reich had offered for British friendship, Hitler could not understand how the deal had misfired. How could they fail to see that only Germany would fully support Britain’s world ambitions? Only Germany could save them from the threats posed by the United States, France, and the Bolshevik menace. And who could deny that the Franco–Soviet alliance negotiations (started in November 1933) threatened Germany’s
security, or that Russia was “now the greatest power factor in the whole of Europe"? 75 Surely, this made an Anglo–German combination the most natural of alliances. 76
German Rearmament and Isolation
Anxious over Germany’s departure from the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference in November 1933, Poland sought a guarantee of Germany’s peaceful intentions. On January 26, 1934, Germany concluded a ten–year nonaggression pact with Poland. Hitler was, of course, delighted to remove another peg from France’s crumbling alliance system. But he was not surprised, as Taylor points out:
| He recognised that Poland, like Italy, was a “revisionist” Power, even though she owed her independence to the Allied victory of 1918; hence he believed that Poland, like Italy and Hungary, would be won to his side. For such a gain, Danzig and the corridor were a price worth paying. . . . As his later policy showed, he had no objection to preserving other countries so long as they acted as Germany’s jackals. 77 |
In June 1934, Hitler visited Venice to calm the Duce’s uneasiness over German intentions in Austria and thereby pave the way for the alliance with Italy. Mussolini was unmoved. Their meeting, the first between the two fascist leaders, only reinforced the Duce’s initial assessment of the new German leader as a buffoon. The German foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, recalled that “their minds didn’t meet; they didn’t understand each other.” 78
Shortly after returning to Berlin, the Führer’s policy of courting Italian friendship suffered yet another severe setback when Austrian Nazis launched a coup d’état against the Dollfuss Government in Vienna. The coup failed but Dollfuss, a close friend of the Duce, had been assassinated. In retaliation, Mussolini ordered troops to the Austrian border at the Brenner Pass, and relations between Rome and Berlin grew more tense.
Further complicating matters for Hitler, German rearmament had, by early 1935, progressed to the point where it could no longer be disguised. In response to Germany’s military production, the British defense White Paper of March 4, 1935, proposed an accelerated arms program. Seven days later, Hitler confirmed the existence of a German air force. Four days later, the French government introduced legislation to extend the period of military service to two years. The following day, Germany announced that it would return to compulsory, universal conscription and amass a peacetime army of thirty–six divisions.
Europe’s great powers not only condemned Hitler’s renunciation of the military restrictions of Versailles, but also began to harmonize their efforts to counter the growing German threat. On January 7, 1935, Mussolini and then French Foreign Minister Pierre–Etienne Laval signed a complicated series of agreements, referred to as the “Rome agreements.” Then, in early April, the heads of state of Italy, Britain, and France, respectively Mussolini, James Ramsay MacDonald, and Laval, met at Stresa and issued a joint declaration to protect Austria’s independence against German aggression. According to Prime Minister Pierre–Etienne Flandin, France and Italy exchanged definite promises of military assistance: Italy promised to defend the Rhineland demilitarized zone as the price paid for France’s pledge to defend Austria’s integrity. 79 In this spirit of cooperation, France and Russia concluded a formal alliance pledging mutual assistance against unprovoked aggression. The same revolutionary state that had consistently denounced the “slave treaty” of Versailles now joined the League of Nations and even preached respect for international law.
The alliance situation in 1935 (shown in figure 4.2) represents the high–water mark of major–power cooperation in Europe to isolate Germany. The size of the alliance supports the hypothesis that status–quo states form overlarge coalitions to deter or defeat revisionist powers.
Britain: Entrapment Fears of a Dove
Britain, according to the scheme laid out in chapter 3, was a dove, that is, a lesser great power that supports the status quo but accepts limited revision to satisfy the legitimate claims of dissatisfied states. Doves seek to be honest brokers, and so their foreign policy must maintain the appearance of equidistance between all contending parties. Above all, doves resist tight defensive alliances, which, they fear, will embolden their would–be allies and provoke and unite their potential enemies.
Figure 4.2
In game–theoretical terms, the dove’s policy is one of cooperation with regard to its adversary (a “C” strategy, e.g., an engagement policy), and defection with regard to its allies (a “D” strategy, e.g., the avoidance of tight defensive alliances.) The dynamics of this type of policy, as Glenn Snyder explains, are as follows:
| A “C” strategy of conciliating the adversary will have the desirable effect of restraining the ally, thus reducing the risk of entrapment. The ally, observing one’s improving relations with the opponent, will have less confidence that one will stand four–square behind him in a crisis; consequently, he will be more cautious in his own dealings with the opponent. . . . The most undesirable side effect of conciliating the adversary is that it entails the risk of abandonment by the ally. 80 |
Throughout the interwar period, Britain’s troubled relationship with France was infused by entrapment/abandonment fears. France was the more dependent partner on the alliance because its need for assistance in a war with its potential adversary (Germany) and its degree of conflict and tension with that adversary were both greater than that of Britain. In consequence, France perceived the costs and risks of British abandonment as outweighing the costs and risks of British entrapment. Britain, as an insular power with greater war potential than France and with no irreconcilable differences with Germany, was less dependent on the alliance with France; and so, for it, the costs and risks of French entrapment outweighed those associated with French abandonment. 81
After the Paris Peace Conference, the primary problem facing British foreign policy was to resolve or, at a minimum, manage the Franco–German cold war. Lloyd George, the British prime minister, disdainful of the Foreign Office’s “old diplomacy” of balance of power, brought foreign policy under Downing Street’s control and proceeded to subordinate Britain’s narrow interests to the League and collective security. With the fall of Lloyd George from power in 1922, however, the Foreign Office recaptured control of British diplomacy and held it until 1937, when Neville Chamberlain became prime minister. During those years, the Foreign Office steered British policy along its traditional strategic lines: the maintenance of the global balance of power. 82 With regard to Europe, the most vital theater for British security, this meant attempting to play its traditional role as balancer and become, in Austen Chamberlain’s words, “the honest broker” in continental affairs. 83
The first task of British diplomacy was therefore “to arrange a postwar European balance between the French, now the strongest power on the continent, and Germany, whose defeat had whetted its neighbours’ appetite for territory and revenge.” 84 The Franco–German problem came to a head in 1923, when France invaded the Ruhr. Determined to end the continuing crisis, Austen Chamberlain, the British foreign secretary, and Sir Eyre Crowe, the Foreign Office permanent undersecretary, commenced policy planning that would culminate in the Locarno Pact of 1925.
While the French desperately sought to include Britain in its security system against Germany, British foreign policy toward its former ally remained ambiguous, alternating between two conflicting impulses. On the one hand, France remained Britain’s most reliable continental ally and its security was seen by many in the Foreign Office as essential to Britain’s own. On the other hand, many British policy elites were suspicious of France’s true motivations for keeping Germany in a weakened position. Far stronger than Germany in the 1920s, France, in its attitude toward its defeated neighbor, appeared as a bully seeking not security but the reestablishment of its hegemony over Europe—a policy at odds with Britain’s desire for a restored balance of power on the continent.
To many British observers, it appeared that France exaggerated the danger of German revanchism. But the reality of French fear could not be denied. As Sir William Tyrrell, assistant undersecretary at the Foreign Office, lamented in 1925: “We have failed to remove the feeling of fear from our chief ally, France, who came out of the war a victor mainly in a technical sense. Her victory did not enable her to provide for her own security.” 85 In this view, the solution to the Franco–German cold war was a British security pact with France to eliminate the fear of abandonment in Paris, which had been the driving force behind France’s repeated attempts to throw Europe out of balance, e.g., by instigating separatist movements in the Rhineland, occupying the Ruhr, and refusing to evacuate Cologne. Added to this, Austen Chamberlain worried that, if Britain did not offer France reassurance in the form of a firm Anglo–French axis within Locarno, “we shall lose all influence over French policy. . . . We shall be dragged along, unwilling, impotent, protesting, in the war of France towards the new Armageddon. For we cannot afford to see France crushed.” 86
Those who perceived France as a bully counseled against an Anglo–French security pact, which, they claimed, would only embolden Paris with respect to Germany and entrap Britain in a new war initiated by its would–be ally. In addition, a more confident, less frightened France would be essentially immune to British influence. Thus, Nicolson observed: “The French dread of Germany is hereditary and inevitable, nor would we wish to see it entirely removed. Within limits, it serves as a corrective to the enterprising vanity of the French character which, if unchecked, would undoubtedly bring our two countries into conflict.” 87 Similarly concerned about the prospect of British entrapment by an emboldened France, Sterndale Bennett, a member of the Central Department, warned as the first steps of the Locarno settlement were being taken: “The French are putting the onus upon us, i.e. they are refusing to make any concessions to Germany unless we pay the price by guaranteeing French security.” 88 Churchill, then the chancellor of the exchequer, agreed: “It is by standing aloof,” he told Chamberlain, “and not by offering ourselves that we shall ascertain the degree of importance which France really attaches to our troth.” 89
In the end, Stanley Baldwin, the British prime minister at the time, sided with the Foreign Office and Austen Chamberlain—who threatened to resign if Britain chose to remain isolated from continental politics—and agreed to proceed with the Locarno Pact. But Britain’s commitment to the continent and France’s security remained tenuous at best.
After the Hoare–Laval debacle and with the advent of Anthony Eden as foreign secretary, criticism of the Foreign Office and its pro–French, balance–of–power policy increased. The Anglo–French plan (December 9, 1935) had been designed to settle the Italo–Ethiopian war. It aimed to maintain friendship with Italy at the expense of Ethopia and the principles of the League of Nations. The pro–League British public repudiated the plan. Once Neville Chamberlain became prime minister in 1937, the fear of British entrapment by France, which by now appeared considerably weaker than its revitalized neighbor, assumed far greater importance than France’s fear of abandonment by Britain. As Brian McKercher observes: “Anxious to avoid war—and believing that international conferences solved nothing, Chamberlain and his supporters believed that bilateral settlements with British adversaries could better preserve international peace.” 90 Driven by entrapment fears, Britain embarked on an appeasement policy toward its enemies and a distancing policy toward its allies that lasted until March 1939.
Throughout the interwar period, the British desired to reestablish themselves as the balancer/honest broker in Europe. This strategy failed because Britain was no longer a Great Power of the first rank, and so it was too weak to assume its traditional role, much less play it effectively. Of the great powers, Britain alone worried about Germany’s complete isolation. This was the case in 1935, after the Stresa Conference. Fearing that Hitler might lash out in “mad–dog” fashion, London continued its bilateral negotiations with Berlin in the hope that it could moderate Hitler’s conduct and still keep on fair terms with France. Though these talks resulted in nothing more than a meaningless Anglo–German naval agreement, they effectively destroyed the Stresa Front. By sabotaging Western solidarity and condoning a flagrant violation of treaties, the naval agreement has rightly been called an “epochal event whose symptomatic importance was greater than its actual content.” 91 Britain’s mistake was in not discussing the matter with either Italy or France prior to signing the Naval Treaty on June 18, 1935. Across the Atlantic, the American reaction was also one of horror. In a letter to President Roosevelt, the American Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, observed that it was the first time “in modern history that England has sided with a threatening imperialist European power, rather than guide a combination of weaker powers against a threatening one.” 92
For his part, Hitler was “convinced that the British regarded the agreement with [Germany] in this sphere as only a preliminary to much wider cooperation”; it fed his hope for a grand alliance to partition the world. “An Anglo–German combination,” he insisted, “would be stronger than all the other powers.” 93 Events were to prove him wrong on both counts.
Endnotes
Note 1: Milan Hauner, “Did Hitler Want a World Dominion?” Journal of Contemporary History , vol. 13, no. 1 (January 1978), p. 24. Back.
Note 2: Klaus Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, translated by Anthony Fothergill (Berkeley and Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1970), p. 21. Back.
Note 3: For Hitler’s view on the balance of power and the demise of Britain and France, see Conversation, Hitler–Teleki, April 29, 1939, Documents on German Foreign Policy (hereafter DGFP), Series D, vol. 6, (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1956), pp. 377–378. Similarly, Joachim von Ribbentrop declared in a conversation with M. Cincar–Markovic, the Yugoslav Foreign Minister, “Let there be no doubt about it, Germany could face calmly any combination of enemies.” Conversation, Ribbentrop–Cincar–Markovik, April 25, 1939, DGFP, Series D, vol 6, p. 326. See also Conversation, Ribbentrop–Teleki and Csaky, April 30, 1939, DGFP, Series D, vol 6, p. 372, wherein Ribbentrop says, “If . . . Britain and France wanted such a trial of strength, they could have it any day.” Back.
Note 4: “The threat to the world is precisely the growth of the space–colossi and the economic giants, like the realm of the Soviets, descendant of white Czarism, and the United States, heir of British colonial tradition; viz., encompassing and transgressing as far as their economic–political claws can reach.” Karl Haushofer, as quoted in Derwent Whittlesey, Charles C. Colby, and Richard Hartshorne, German Strategy of World Conquest (New York and Toronto: Farrar and Rinehart, 1942), p. 162. Haushofer’s ideas on German foreign policy and their influence on Hitler’s expansionist goals are discussed at length in Geoffrey Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion (Leamington Spa, U.K.: Berg, 1986), chap. 5. Back.
Note 5: Ian Buruma, “The Europeans: The risks—and promise—of the newest superpower,” The New Republic (August 5, 1991), p. 22. In interviews with former Waffen SS soldiers recruited in Holland, one of the soldiers, now an Amsterdam bank clerk, says: “We no longer saw Holland, Germany, or France as contradictory forces, but we saw the creation of a New Europe! That’s what we were fighting for! I met some Flemish Belgians in the train to Hamburg. They had the same ideas. And besides, a greater Europe would release them from the Walloons.” Another former recruit exclaims: “I have sincerely believed in a united Europe through National Socialism. That didn’t happen. I still believe we will have a united Europe, but not with this democracy. Democracy cannot bind us together.” Still another opines: “The division of Europe in independent nations had probably come to an end. Units grew larger all the time. Only Germany was able to achieve this in Europe. Only Germany was powerful enough to ensure that Europe played the important leading role in the world.” All responses quoted in Ibid. Back.
Note 6: Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Book, trans. by Salvator Attanasio, intro. by Telford Taylor (New York: Grove Press, [1928] 1961), p. 103. Back.
Note 7: Hitler quoted in Ibid., p. 26. Back.
Note 8: Hitler, speech on December 10, 1919, as quoted in Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion , p. 62. Back.
Note 9: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1941), p. 180. Back.
Note 11: Ibid., p. 103; see also p. 158. Back.
Note 12: Gerhard L. Weinberg, World in the Balance: Behind the Scenes of World War II (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1981), p. xiii. Back.
Note 13: Haushofer, as quoted in Robert Strausz–Hupé, Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power (New York: Putnam, 1942), p. 67. Back.
Note 14: John Lukacs, “The Coming of the Second World War,” Foreign Affairs 68, no. 4 (Fall 1989), p. 172. Back.
Note 15: Hitler quoted in Hugh R. Trevor–Roper, ed., Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944, translated by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953), p. 199. Back.
Note 16: For extensive discussion on Hitler’s orders to the press and the Navy regarding the United States see, Saul Friedlander, Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939–1941, trans. by Aline B. and Alexander Werth (New York: Knopf, 1967), pp. 49–65. For Hitler’s attempt to avoid incidents with the U.S. in the Atlantic, see F. H. Hinsley, Hitler’s Strategy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), pp. 58–59, 169–175; James V. Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States, and the Origins of World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), pp. 161–173. Back.
Note 17: Arnold A. Offner, American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933–1938 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 235. Back.
Note 18: Dieckhoff to Weizsäcker, December 7, 1937, DGFP, Series D, vol. I, pp. 655–656. Back.
Note 19: Dieckhoff to Weizsäcker, December 20, 1937, DGFP, Series D, vol. I, p. 659. Back.
Note 20: Dieckhoff to the German Foreign Ministry, January 7, 1938, “Subject: Relations between the United States and Germany and the German–American element. Are we in a position to exert political influence on the German–Americans? The German–American Bund,” DGFP, Series D, vol 1, pp. 664–677 at pp. 672–673. Back.
Note 21: Mackensen to Dieckhoff, December 22, 1937, DGFP, Series D, vol 1, p. 662. Back.
Note 22: Lukacs, “The Coming of the Second World War,” p. 172, fn. 2. Back.
Note 23: Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Book, p. 104. See also Hillgruber, Germany and the Two World Wars, pp. 50–51. Back.
Note 24: Hillgruber, Germany and the Two World Wars, p. 51. Back.
Note 25: Conversation, Hitler–Teleki, April 29, 1939, DGFP, Series D, vol 6, pp. 377–378. Back.
Note 26: Trevor–Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 182. Back.
Note 27: Hitler in Ibid., pp. 586–587. See also Ibid., p. 182. Back.
Note 28: William Carr, Hitler: A Study in Personality and Politics (London: Edward Arnold, 1978), p. 87. Back.
Note 29: Hitler in Trevor–Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 24. Back.
Note 30: Gerhard L. Weinberg, “Hitler’s Image of the United States,” The American Historical Review, vol. 69, no. 4 (July 1964), p. 1009. Back.
Note 31: Hitler in Trevor–Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 93. Back.
Note 32: For a good survey of the literature on this point, see Hauner, “Did Hitler Want a World Dominion?” pp. 15–32. Back.
Note 33: The concept of blitzkrieg or “lightning war” has generated a mountain of literature and a heated historical debate. See, for instance, the comments by David Kaiser, Tim Mason, and Richard Overy in “Debate: Germany, ‘Domestic Crisis’ and War in 1939,” Past and Present, no. 122 (February 1989), pp. 200–240. Some historians believe that blitzkrieg refers to the waging of short wars and the development of an extremely flexible German war economy—one that efficiently mobilized resources to meet the needs of a specific military campaign without lowering the living standards of the working class. See Alan S. Milward, War, Economy and Society: 1939–1945 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977); and Martin L. Van Creveld, Hitler’s Strategy 1940–1941: The Balkan Clue (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 235, note 170. Critics of this “functionalist” conception of blitzkrieg say that it overemphasizes the degree to which domestic politics and economic circumstances drove Hitler’s military and foreign policy decisions. The German economy, they charge, was never in crisis after 1935; and the German working class, “after six years of repression and party rule and propaganda,” was in no condition to wage a revolution. Richard Overy, “Germany, ‘Domestic Crisis’ and War in 1939,” Past and Present, no. 116 (August 1987), p. 158. Overy argues that “neither Hitler nor Goering lost sight of the perspectives of Mein Kampf ” and that “total war, not Blitzkrieg, was the end product of German preparations.” Richard J. Overy, Goering: “The Iron Man” (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 76. Because Hitler’s grand strategy, I believe, is generally consistent with Mein Kampf , I find the intentionalists’ argument more persuasive than that of the functionalists. Back.
Note 34: Esmonde M. Robertson, Hitler’s Pre–War Policy and Military Plans, 1933–1939 (London: Longmans, 1963), p. 7. For the law of odd and even numbers, see Lewis B. Namier, Vanquished Supremacies (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1958), p. 170; see also Robert Jervis, “Systems Effects,” draft manuscript, October 1989, p. 25 Back.
Note 35: See Schweller, “Bandwagoning For Profit,” p. 94. Back.
Note 36: Grieco, “Understanding the Problem of International Cooperation,” p. 303. Back.
Note 37: See Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984). I am grateful to Sean M. Lynn–Jones for this insight Back.
Note 38: I am grateful to Jack Snyder for pointing this out Back.
Note 39: Albert O. Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, [1945], 1980), pp. 30–32. Asymmetrical interdependence means that the more dependent state benefits more from the relationship than the less dependent state. Back.
Note 40: Hitler, Mein Kampf , p. 185. Back.
Note 42: Ibid., pp. 190–191. Back.
Note 44: For reasons why democratic states, like interwar France, do not wage preventive wars, see Randall L. Schweller, “Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?” World Politics , vol. 44, no. 2 (January 1992), pp. 235–269. Back.
Note 45: “Speaking deliberately as a German National Socialist, I desire to declare in the name of the National Government, and of the whole movement of national regeneration, that we in this new Germany are filled with deep understanding for the same feelings and opinions and for the rightful claims to life of the other nations. The present generation of this new Germany which so far has only experienced the poverty, misery and distress of its own people, has suffered too deeply from the madness of our time to be able to contemplate treating others in the same way. Our boundless love for and loyalty to our own national traditions makes us respect the national claims of others and makes us desire from the bottom of our hearts to live with them in peace and friendship. We therefore have no use for the idea of Germanization.” Hitler, speech delivered on May 17, 1933, quoted in Nazism, Document #491, p. 658. Back.
Note 46: Hitler, Mein Kampf , p. 180. Back.
Note 47: Adolf Hitler, Minutes of a Conference on May 23, 1939, The Führer’s Study, DGFP, Series D, vol 6, p. 575. Back.
Note 48: Hitler, Mein Kampf , p. 181. Back.
Note 49: The Hossbach memorandom, DGFP, Series D, vol 1, pp. 29–39 at pp. 31–32. Back.
Note 50: Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion , pp. 59–60, 96. Back.
Note 51: Hitler, Mein Kampf , p. 183. Back.
Note 53: Ibid., p. 892. The Kaiser had followed a ruinous anti–British policy because they were “unpleasantly affected by the idea that now one would have to ‘pull the chestnuts out of the fire’ for England; as if an alliance were at all conceivable on a basis other than that of mutual business transactions! Such a business could very well have been done with England.” Ibid., pp. 184–185 Back.
Note 54: France wanted its ally Poland to gain sole possession of this disputed province; Britain favored an equitable solution between the two claimants, Germany and Poland. Back.
Note 55: Hitler, private conversation in December 1922, as quoted in Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion , p. 98. Back.
Note 56: Hitler, Mein Kampf , p. 902. Back.
Note 57: A. Rosenberg (1922), as quoted in Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion , p. 99. Back.
Note 58: Hitler as quoted in John Toland, Adolf Hitler (New York: Doubleday, 1976), p. 693. Back.
Note 59: Hitler, Hitler’s Secret Book, p. 103. For Hitler’s thoughts on an Anglo–American rivalry and an eventual war between the U.S. and an Anglo–German coalition, see Conversation, Hitler–Ciano, October 25, 1941, DGFP, Series D, vol 13, p. 693; Trevor–Roper, Hitler’s Table Talk, pp. 14, 26, 186, 188; Conversation, Hitler–Mussolini, June 3, 1941, DGFP, Series D, vol 12, p. 946. Back.
Note 60: K. Lüdecke, as quoted in Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion , pp. 106–107. Back.
Note 61: Hitler, Mein Kampf , p. 903. Back.
Note 62: Hitler, speech on November 14, 1922, as quoted in Stoakes, Hitler and the Quest for World Dominion ., p. 107. Back.
Note 63: Hitler, Mein Kampf , pp. 964–965. Emphasis in original. Back.
Note 65: Ibid., pp. 930–931. Back.
Note 66: Frank William Iklé, German–Japanese Relations, 1936–1940 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1956), p. 25. Back.
Note 68: Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 112. Back.
Note 69: Iklé, German–Japanese Relations, p. 28. Back.
Note 70: E. L. Woodward, Rohan Butler, and Anne Orde, eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939 (hereafter cited as DBFP) 2nd series, vol. 6 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1946), pp. 152–153 Back.
Note 71: Hitler, Mein Kampf , pp. 930–931. Back.
Note 72: Hitler, as quoted in Nazism, p. 667. Back.
Note 73: Hinsley, Hitler’s Strategy , pp. 6–7. Back.
Note 74: During a meeting with Hitler in Berlin in March 1935, the British Foreign Secretary noted that “the Chancellor had so expressed his thoughts that they seemed to require closer relations between Britain and Germany than between Britain and France. Britain wanted to be on good terms with Germany, but must not allow this to prejudice her friendship with France. They did not wish to substitute one friend for another. They did not wish to have special engagements with anyone; Britain was an entirely uncommitted member of the Society of Nations. It would not be ‘fair’ were he to allow the impression to be created that Britain was being disloyal to one friend while seeking another.” Sir John Simon, in Nazism , Document #495, p. 666. Back.
Note 75: DGFP, Series C, vol 3, pp. 873–876; Robertson, Hitler’s Pre–War Policy, p. 54. Back.
Note 76: David Calleo, The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and the World Order, 1870 to the Present (London: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 95; Toland, Adolf Hitler, pp. 536–537, 614–616, 692–694; Conversation, Göring–Welles, March 4, 1940, DGFP, Series D, vol 8, p. 852; Sir Nevile Henderson, Failure of a Mission: Berlin, 1937–1939 New York: Putnam, 1940), pp. 279–280. Back.
Note 77: Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War , p. 80. Back.
Note 78: Interrogation of von Neurath at the Nuremburg Trials: Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, Suppl. B (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1948), p. 1492. Back.
Note 79: Wolfers, Britain and France Between Two Wars, p. 147. For a more detailed discussion of this complex and still–controversial issue, see Robert J. Young, In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning, 1933–1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), chap. 4. Back.
Note 80: Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” p. 471. Back.
Note 81: According to Glenn Snyder, dependence is a function of “(1) a state’s need for assistance in war as a function of the extent to which its military capability falls short of its potential adversary’s capability; (2) its partner’s capacity to supply the assistance (the greater the partner’s strength, the more one is dependent on him, up to the point where the combined strength provides sufficient security); (3) the state’s degree of conflict and tension with the adversary (the greater the conflict and tension, the more likely one will have to call on the partner for help); and (4) the state’s realignment alternatives (the more numerous the alternatives, and the more satisfactory they are, the less dependence on the present partner).” p. 472. Back.
Note 82: See Brian J. C. McKercher, “Old Diplomacy and New: The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1919–1939,” in Dockrill and McKercher, Diplomacy and World Power , pp. 79–114. Back.
Note 83: Quoted in Ibid., p. 96. Back.
Note 85: Quoted in Goldstein, “The Evolution of British Diplomatic Strategy,” p. 117. Back.
Note 86: Quoted in Ibid., p. 120. Back.
Note 88: Quoted in Ibid., pp. 119–120. Back.
Note 89: Quoted in McKercher, “Old Diplomacy and New,” p. 97. Back.
Note 91: Karl Bracher, quoted in Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, translated by Richard and Clara Winston (San Diego, New York, and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), p. 492. Back.
Note 92: Dodd to Roosevelt, July 29, 1935, in Edgar B. Nixon, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs (hereafter FDRFA) vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 588–590 at p. 589. Back.
Note 93: Hitler, quoted in Nazism , p. 667. Back.
Email this citation