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Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest
1998
5. The Path to War, 1935–1939
French foreign policy after the Great War fixated on the inevitability of a future attack by a revitalized Germany seeking revenge for its defeat. Attempting to forestall the feared power shift that would reestablish Germany as the dominant power on the Continent, French elites at Versailles cited Germany’s economic and military potentiel de guerre as justification for French claims for relatively greater armaments and for military control of German territory. The French military, for their part, resolutely argued that permanent allied occupation of the Rhineland constituted the only natural barrier to another German invasion against France or its eastern allies. “If we hold the Rhine solidly, France can set its mind at ease,” Marshal Foch declared. “If [France] doesn’t hold the Rhine. . . . anything offered or given in exchange is mere illusion, appearance, and vanity.” 1 But Clemenceau traded the military’s demands for a Rhineland zone permanently under allied control for a stillborn Anglo–American guarantee of French security. The allied military occupation of the zone was to end no later than 1935, and it was understood that it would probably be bartered away long before that time.
Dismayed that the allied occupation would be only temporary, the French general staff argued that French security would require (1) fortifications to compensate for France’s demographic weakness and (2) espaces de manoeuvre in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Belgium, so that French forces would not be pinioned behind the Maginot line. 2 The central imperatives that guided French military planning were that any future war should be fought on foreign soil and that France could not expect to defeat Germany without allied support. Thus, throughout the interwar period, French diplomacy centered on the construction of a massive defensive alliance system as a makeweight against Germany. As the theory predicts, a status–quo LGP confronting a revisionist pole will seek a large alliance (not a minimum winning coalition) to deter or defeat the threatening state.
Yet, France found itself deserted by its former allies at Versailles. The U.S. turned its back on the Old World, refusing to ratify the treaty or to join the League; the Soviet Union, treated as an outcast by the West, drew closer to Germany; Italy and Japan left the conference as dissatisfied powers; and although a superficial semblance of allied solidarity with Britain remained throughout the interwar period, Anglo&-;French disagreement centered on the crux of the matter for France: the need to enforce the peace settlement upon Germany. As Sir Maurice Hankey, Secretary to the Cabinet, observed in 1920: “The fact is that they [the French] wanted a stiffer treaty and we wanted an easier one. Moreover, from the first we always intended to ease up the execution of the treaty if the Germans played the game.” 3
France’s traditional strategy against Germany required an eastern counterweight in a two front war. Prior to the First World War, France relied on Czarist Russia (then a status–quo power) as its main ally in the eastern coalition. After the war, France’s inferior demographic and industrial potential relative to Germany coupled with the loss of Russia to Bolshevism dictated a strictly defensive military posture and the creation of a ragbag set of treaties with Belgium (1920), Poland (1921, 1925), Czechoslovakia (1924, 1925), Romania (1926), and Yugoslavia (1927). 4 Because the population of France was a third less than that of the Third Reich, Germany could not only field far more fighting units than France but was also assured a great advantage in its industrial workforce, on which its army depended for provisions. By necessity, therefore, French strategy was based on the assumption of defensive advantage and the idea of a long war, which would be fought in two stages. In the first stage, France prepared to fight a defensive war, which was predicted to last up to two years. During this period, France would try to secure a draw with Germany while launching its own national mobilization effort to assemble the means for the second stage: the strategic offensive. As Robert Young explains, the success of the first stage would enable France “to await the tie–breaking contributions of her allies before undertaking the great strategic offensive upon which all hopes of victory were pinned. . . . Yet this belief in the victorious potential of a long war was constantly imperilled by the logical if disturbing conclusion that had to be drawn about the dangers of a short war, one likely as not begun by a sudden German attaque brusquée.” 5
To avoid the twin dangers of either a quick German victory or a repetition of the Franco–German bloodletting of 1914–1918, France’s traditional two–front war strategy would have to be recast in a radical new light. In contrast to the pre–1914 military assumption that France would bear the brunt of the German attack, leaving Russia free to open a second front in the east, General Maurice Gamelin, French Commander in Chief, and the French general staff reconstructed the eastern–counterweight strategy on the assumption that the next conflict would begin in the east. France would act as a secondary force against Germany, while its eastern allies did the bulk of the fighting. The historian Nicole Jordan describes Gamelin’s strategy as France’s search for a “cut price war on the peripheries.” 6 In the parlance of international relations theory, Gamelin planned a buckpassing strategy for France.
France’s interwar military and political strategy suffered from three intractable problems, however. First, France’s increasingly defensive war plans contradicted its desire for a coalition effort in the east to contain Germany. Second, all the Great Powers on the Continent were revisionist states that could not be counted on to support the current political order in Europe. Third, as France grew weaker relative to Germany and more dependent on other powers, it began losing faith in its satellite system of small states. Paul–Boncour asked rhetorically in late 1932: “Facing the great powers, can we lean on our small allies?” 7 The problem for France was that it could not forge an alliance with a Great Power on the Continent without simultaneously weakening its satellite system and support for the League. To contain Germany, therefore, France had to decide between, on the one hand, an alliance with one or both of the revisionist Great Powers (Soviet Russia and Italy) or, on the other hand, revitalizing its status quo alliance system by strengthening its commitments to Poland and the Little Entente.
The first clash between France’s satellite system and its desire for a Great–Power entente came in 1933, when Germany left the disarmament conference and withdrew from the League, dooming the Four Power Pact. The moment seemed appropriate for France to decide either to repair the damages done to its eastern alliance system by the Four Power Pact (its breach of the League principle of equality of nations) or “revise [its] policy based on ineffective alliances with weak countries, and base [France’s] security on the entente of the great powers capable of containing Germany.” 8 Remarkably, France did neither because, as Paul–Boncour put it, “no French statesman would ever think of reversing the by now traditional direction of our foreign policy.” 9 Unwilling to renounce its ties to the small powers of East Central Europe, France tried instead to keep but not strengthen its existing obligations to Poland and the Little Entente while working for a Great–Power solution to the German threat. In the end, the two policies proved irreconcilable, leaving France with the worst of both worlds.
For Gamelin and the General Staff, the key to France’s military and political problems was Italy. 10 Mussolini’s show of force against Hitler in July 1934 in response to the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss by Austrian Nazis changed Gamelin’s prior assumption of Italian hostility. At that point, the French General Staff formulated a buckpassing strategy, in which Italy would shoulder the burden of defending Czechoslovakia and Austria.
Prior to the Ethiopian crisis, Mussolini seemed more than willing to play into Gamelin’s hands. Shortly after Laval’s visit to Rome in January 1935, Mussolini, anxious to secure Italy’s rear for the invasion of Ethiopia, tantalized France by offering Italo–French staff talks for the joint defense of Austrian independence. In terms too good to be true, the Italian general staff pledged to commit Italian forces to fight in Austria or send nine divisions to France in exchange for the dispatch of two French divisions to the central European front, which Gamelin had designated as the main area of fighting in the next war.
Talks of June 1935 between Gamelin and his staff and Marshal Pietro Badoglio and his staff sealed the deal, creating in Laval’s words, “a veritable military alliance” between Italy and France. 11 The French agreed to send an expeditionary force to northeast Italy as a liaison between the Italian and Yugoslav armies in a joint drive upon Vienna. In exchange, Italy pledged to send an army corps to France’s northeastern front in Belfort for operations against Germany. For France, the added bonus of the rapprochement with Italy was the release of ten French divisions from the Alps and seven from North Africa, which were no longer needed to deter Italian aggression. Most of the French alpine units would be transferred to the Belgian theater, with the balance of the units supplying the personnel for the French expeditionary force to Italy. The Italian general staff also agreed to cooperate with France in a large–scale army intelligence program directed against Germany. 12
Mussolini’s offer appeared to be designed to encourage France to ride free on the balancing efforts of Italy and France’s eastern allies. As Nicole Jordan puts it, “the exorbitantly generous terms of the Italian military offer promised a cut price war on the peripheries. Others, Italy and the Balkan states with their reservoirs of peasant soldiery, would do most of the fighting on the central European front.” 13 But Mussolini’s pro–French maneuverings soon proved illusory. The Duce’s ultimate goal of turning the Mediterranean into an Italian lake inevitably set Italy on a collision course with Britain and France. Thus, even before the military pact with France, Mussolini was telling the Germans that he planned a basic reorientation of Italian policy away from the Stresa Front and against the status–quo, western democracies. 14 This meant abandoning Italy’s prior policy of “equidistance,” that is, playing the other powers against each other for Italian advantage. No longer willing to be the honest broker—a role which carried the risk of alienating all the Great Powers, Italy was left to drift into a subordinate relationship with its stronger revisionist partner, Nazi Germany.
When it became clear that Mussolini envisaged military action on a grand scale in Ethiopia, a serious rift developed in the newly created Stresa front. At first it appeared that Italy was on one side and France and Britain were on the other. The most acute divergence appeared to be developing between France and Italy, whose relations had been strained by the German–Italian détente and the Franco–Russian agreement. Recognizing the danger of this situation, France quickly switched over to the Italian side. The French move was facilitated by Britain’s adoption of a very critical attitude toward Italy. This conveniently enabled the French to let Britain raise the objections that were of fundamental interest to Paris as well, while France offered itself to Italy as a reliable and understanding friend. 15
In light of France’s dependence on Italian support, one cannot overestimate the dismay of the French military over the Italo–Ethiopian war, which caught France squarely between Britain and Italy. But it was not simply a matter of choosing Britain or Italy; the League and France’s eastern alliance system were also involved. As Laval observed in July 1935, “France’s entire European policy is based upon the League of Nations. The League of Nations is the basis of the Locarno treaty, which is an essential element of French security, and it is within a League framework that the agreements which bind us to our friends in central Europe are inserted.” 16
For most French elites, an alliance with Italy was unthinkable if it came at the expense of British friendship and if it meant rejection of the League. Even Gamelin, who supported Laval’s policies of weak sanctions and the pursuit of peace negotiations with Italy, “stated that while Italian support was ‘desirable’ that of the British in the long run was ‘essential.’ “ 17 Luckily for Gamelin and the French general staff, Britain had no intention of going to war with Italy over its expansion in Ethiopia. For the British, naval considerations were decisive. Recognizing that the Royal Navy would carry the weight of Anglo–French actions against Italy, the chiefs of staff urged that the fleet be kept intact for use against Japan, which it regarded as the greater threat.
Then came the disastrous Hoare–Laval Plan of December 1935, which further estranged France and Britain. On the French side, Britain’s disavowal of the plan deepened the mistrust created by the Anglo–German Naval Agreement. From Britain’s perspective, the chiefs of staff called the naval contacts with France “profoundly unsatisfying,” which showed France to be an unreliable partner. 18 As France and Britain bickered over the Italo–Ethiopian war, Hitler took the opportunity to reoccupy the Rhineland. The Nazi dictator’s first blow against the territorial status quo threw French diplomacy into total disarray.
In light of the relatively mild sanctions Britain and France had imposed against Italy, “Hitler concluded that both England and France were loathe to take any risks and anxious to avoid any danger. . . . The Western governments had, as he commented at the time, proved themselves weak and indecisive.” 19 Seeing his enemies as irresolute, Hitler decided to exploit the conflict among the former members of the Stresa Front by reoccupying the Rhineland on March 7, 1936. This move destroyed with a single stroke France’s entire Central European alliance system by denying the French their main area of offensive operations; it also made it more likely that the next Franco–German war would again be fought on French soil, nullifying the major strategic advantage the Allies had won in the First World War. Years later, Hitler described the remilitarization as his most daring move: “We had no army worth mentioning; at that time it would not even have had the fighting strength to maintain itself against the Poles. If the French had taken any action, we would have been easily defeated; our resistance would have been over in a few days.” 20
The timidity of the Anglo–French response to the Rhineland remilitarization exposed the main weakness of France’s military and diplomatic strategy. The French assumed, like Kenneth Waltz and Stephan Walt, that states automatically balance against greater power and threats. Hitler thought otherwise. Consistent with the logic of my jackal bandwagoning and distancing hypotheses, Hitler was confident that demonstrations of Nazi Germany’s greater strength and dynamism relative to the western democracies would produce two results: (1) revisionist states of all sizes would rapidly jump on the Nazi bandwagon; and (2) less immediately threatened status–quo states would not rush to balance against Germany but instead would try to distance themselves from France and other more proximate targets of German aggression, such as Czechoslovakia. In the words of Nicole Jordan:
| [Gamelin] complacently assumed that the reoccupation, by creating an obvious German menace in the east, would unite the threatened states. But as the Nazis were already demonstrating domestically with resounding success, a blatant threat to a vulnerable segment of a community did not generate solidarity. Gamelin’s strategic preference for a war in the east left Hitler with ample leeway to mark out Czechoslovakia and to pit against it other French allies whom the Reich could treat as less menaced so long as it served German purposes. 21 |
The Ethiopian war, the Spanish Civil War, and the Rhineland crisis cemented the Rome–Berlin Axis. Because revisionist states are searching not for greater security but rather for increased power and prestige, they will not hesitate to take advantage of an opportunity to disrupt the international political order by joining the stronger revisionist side. Thus, as Alan Cassels observes, Italy’s foreign policy was being driven by raw Social Darwinism: “Mussolini’s simplistic division of the powers into ‘rising’ and ‘declining’ states seemed validated by the events of 1935–6. The feebleness of British and French opposition to his Ethiopian venture was at hand to testify to the ‘decadence’ of these nations. In contrast stood Nazi Germany’s ‘virility’ in outfacing the First World War victors—over rearmament and in the Rhineland.” The “jackal bandwagoning” motivation behind Italian foreign policy was no secret to the British Foreign Office. In 1939, for instance, the British Ambassador in Rome, Sir Percy Loraine warned Halifax that “even if we . . . persevere in our attempts to avoid a breach with Italy and keep held out a hand that she may grasp, we cannot blind ourselves to the more ominous factors, e.g., the Duce’s belief that the Italo–German combination alone is able to produce dividends for Italy; the underlining by Gayda of the predatory nature of the next war on the part of the have–nots against the haves; the gradual succumbing of Italy, which seems inevitable, to political vassalage and economic inferiority to Germany.” 22
The Formation of the Axis, 1935–37
The spirit of cooperation between the Western democracies and Italy at the Stresa Conference, which was supposed to inaugurate a complete understanding among the three powers with regard to the European order and Germany, was destined to be short–lived, since their interests diverged significantly and could not be reconciled. France was a hawk demanding strict enforcement of the status quo; Britain was a dove attempting to bind the dissatisfied states, particularly Germany, to a revised European order by engaging their legitimate grievances through peaceful revision; and Italy was a jackal with revisionist aims that threatened the existing postwar order and territorial status quo. As Wolfers suggests, the “decisive obstacle to co–operation between France and Italy lay in the fact that Italy . . . was a dissatisfied country and could not be attracted to France by mere guarantees of the established order. She was out for change, not for the enforcement of the status quo, and many of the changes which she desired could be effected only by far–reaching French concessions.” 23
Since his political takeover in 1922, Mussolini had portrayed Italy as a “have–not” state, whose major objective was to break the prison bars imposed by the established powers. “States,” he claimed, “are more or less independent according to their maritime position.” Italy, in his eyes, was “a prisoner in the Mediterranean, and the more populous and powerful she becomes, the more will she suffer from her imprisonment.” “To break the prison bars,” Italy would have to “March to the Ocean.” For Italy, therefore, the only question was:
| Which Ocean? The Indian Ocean linking across the Sudan and Libya to Abyssinia; or the Atlantic Ocean across French North Africa? In the first, as in the second, hypothesis we find ourselves face to face with Anglo–French opposition. To brave the solution of such a problem without having secured our backs on the Continent would be absurd. The policy of the Rome–Berlin Axis therefore answers the historical necessity of a fundamental order. 24 |
Mussolini clearly understood that Italy’s revisionist ambitions could be satisfied only at the expense of vital French and British interests, which they would never voluntarily concede. For Italy, bandwagoning with Germany meant satellite status, but it was still preferable to joining France and Britain in support of the status quo. On this point, Denis Mack Smith writes, “As one of his Ambassadors said, better be number two with Germany than a bad third after France and Britain; only with Germany could he challenge the dominant powers in the Mediterranean and break out of what he called Italy’s ‘imprisonment’ in the inland sea.” 25
As the only uncommitted great power in the West, Italy held the balance and so enjoyed a strong bargaining position as kingmaker, and both sides recognized it as such: Hitler worried about an Anglo–Franco–Italian combination, while the British and French feared an Italo–German combination. Yet, France could only offer Italy military assistance for the defense of the
status quo on the Brenner and some small colonial concessions in Africa, while Germany promised its full support for Mussolini’s dreams of empire and expansion as compensation for the loss of Austrian independence. An alliance with Germany, the greatest European land power, would secure Italy’s continental position and thereby free Mussolini to pursue his ambitions in the Mediterranean and Africa. Hitler had assured Mussolini that he considered North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean (primarily Greece and Yugoslavia) to be within Italy’s sphere of influence. 26 At the time, Germany was “completely isolated” and “possessed no really reliable friends,” Hitler worried, and so “he could only welcome it if relations of mutual trust between Italy and Germany were restored.” 27
As the reader will recall, Hitler’s Stufenplan called for alliances with both Italy and Britain. The Anglo–Italian rift, however, forced Germany to choose between the two. Frustrated by Britain’s unwillingness to ally itself with Germany, Hitler embraced Italy, though not without anguishing over the decision: “It is a terribly difficult decision. I would by far prefer to join the English. But how often in history the English have proved perfidious. If I go along with them, then all is over between Italy and us. Afterwards the English will drop me, and we will sit between two stools.” 28
Britain was unwilling to deal Germany a free hand in Europe in exchange for protection for the British Empire: “The process of German–English understanding would at best bring Germany this or that colonial strip, which it would not be able to defend in an emergency, and where based on direct German–English agreement would not be large enough to bring Germany significant economic advantages, but would be large enough to drive Belgium, Portugal and France properly into a united anti–German front.” 29
Closer ties with London, Hitler reckoned, promised only a renewal of the old Franco–Italian alliance against Germany. His logic was that an Italy denuded of German assistance would be forced to capitulate to Britain in the Mediterranean. Italy would then seek compensation in Southeastern Europe at the expense of German expansion. To prevent this, Hitler withdrew the olive branch he had earlier extended to Britain and strengthened the fragile entente with Italy by signing the so–called Gentleman’s Agreement with Austria in July 1936, by which Germany recognized the sovereignty of Austria and agreed not to interfere in its domestic affairs. In exchange, the Austrian Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg pledged to pursue a foreign policy based on the principle that “Austria acknowledges herself to be a German State” and to share some political responsibility with the “national opposition.” 30 One week later, civil war broke out in Spain, where Italian troops were to be heavily committed in yet another attempt to revive the Roman Empire. In Spain, as in Ethiopia, Germany was the only great power to offer Italy support, which included the dispatch of German troops. In October 1936, the Italian foreign minister, Count Ciano, signed a secret treaty with Germany recognizing the common political and economic interests of the two countries. Mussolini referred to the relationship as the Rome–Berlin Axis. 31
Hitler’s strategic considerations now began to focus on Japan. Uppermost in his mind was the threat presented by the Soviet Union, which, by its treaties with Czechoslovakia and France, had proven itself to be, as Hitler had argued all along, Germany’s mortal enemy. An alliance with Japan would divert from Europe the military power of the Soviet Union. With Japan on its side, Germany would have “an ally that ranked as a world power, whereas he was not convinced that Italy was in the same class.” 32 The two countries shared fundamental interests—their desire for revision and fear of Soviet military power and the subversive activities of the Comintern—that had been drawing them together since 1933. In 1935, a German–Japanese alliance became the subject of negotiations between Colonel Oshima and Ribbentrop that resulted in the Anti–Comintern pact, signed on November 25, 1936. 33
Initially, Hitler remained hopeful that Britain, given its traditional Russophobia, might someday join the Anti–Comintern pact. One year later, however, Stalin’s purges had caused the German High Command’s estimate of Soviet military power to decline dramatically. 34 This coupled with Britain’s refusal to come to terms with the Reich compelled Hitler to rethink certain aspects of his Grand Strategy. The thrust of the Anti–Comintern pact, Hitler decided, would be redirected against Britain, which, of course, better served3 Mussolini’s interests as well. Hitler now accepted the reality that Britain might have to be regarded as an enemy. This did not mean that Germany would have to defeat Britain, for he was confident that London, in view of its recent performance, could be bullied into neutrality.
Curiously, as Japan further antagonized the West by attacking China, Tokyo found itself in negotiations with Italy for the conclusion of a bilateral Anti–Comintern agreement ostensibly against Russia. But consistent with Hitler’s new anti–British policy, Mussolini’s interest in an alliance with Japan was primarily directed against the West. On September 8, 1937, the German Ambassador to Japan, Dirksen, noted that “Italy is very anxious to make far–reaching concessions to the wishes of Japan . . . with the ulterior aim of obtaining a freer hand in the Mediterranean by committing Japan against England.” 35
On November 6, 1937, Italy joined the Anti–Comintern Pact, described by Ribbentrop as “a military alliance between Italy, Germany and Japan in anticipation of the inevitable conflict with the Western Powers.” 36 The Italian Foreign Minister Ciano noted that he had “seldom seen [Mussolini] so happy. The situation of 1935 has been transformed. Italy has broken out of her isolation: she is the center of the most formidable political and military combination which has ever existed.” 37 Since the pact threatened the British Empire on three fronts (the North Sea, the Mediterranean, and the Far East), it was, in Ciano’s words, “anti–Communist in theory but unmistakenly anti–British.” 38 Creating “the strongest coalition in the world,” the pact would force “England to seek an understanding with the Axis.’ “ 39
Figure 5.1
Figure 5.2
While clearly developing into something more than an ideological manifesto, the Anti–Comintern Pact was not yet a military alliance and Japan insisted that its participation was limited to the pact’s nominal target, the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, by 1938, three of the four revisionist great powers, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and Nazi Germany (the USSR being the exception) had formed an alliance. Added to this, Germany now began to support Japan with concrete actions, e.g., by refusing to participate in the Brussels conference held in November 1937, in response to China’s plea and by recognizing the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in exchange for which Germany received a preferential trade position. 40 To Hitler, cooperation among the “have not” states was only natural. As he explained to a Polish delegation in 1935: “There were in the world nations that were satiated and other nations whose needs were not properly satisfied. But he would fail to understand it, if those of the second category should hinder each other in improving their condition, thus making it easier for the sated nations to keep the less fortunate nations in their unfavourable situation.” 41
To The Brink of War, 1938–39
Anschluss and the Czech Crisis
In a secret conference with his principal advisors on November 5, 1937, recorded in the infamous “Hossbach Memorandum,” Hitler introduced his new thinking on the prospects of an alliance with Britain. 42 The Führer’s speech opened with an attempt to persuade his skeptical staff of the dispensability of British friendship. Britain and France, he claimed, had shown themselves to be “two hate–inspired antagonists . . . to whom a German colossus in the center of Europe was a thorn in the flesh.” 43 A future war in the West had become inevitable. In the meantime, Germany would have to settle old scores with Czechoslovakia and Austria. The “annexation” of these two states would provide Germany with “foodstuffs for 5–6 million people” and, “from the politico–military point of view, a substantial advantage because it would mean shorter and better frontiers, the freeing of forces for other purposes, and the possibility of creating new units up to a level of about 12 divisions, that is, 1 new division per million inhabitants.” 44 Most important in economic and strategic terms, the absorption of Prague into the Nazi orbit would go along way toward solving the chronic problem of shortages in German holdings of foreign exchange and raw–material imports necessary for military production. 45
Hitler named the years 1943–45 as the last possible date for Germany to complete the series of preventive wars that would culminate in Nazi hegemony over Europe. After that time, Germany would no longer have a relative power advantage over its probable enemies. The Czech operation, he believed, would go without a hitch because Britain and France had already silently written off the Czechs; the USSR was unlikely to intervene given the Japanese threat to the Soviet Far East. Unforeseen complications would be minimized by carrying out the military campaign with lightning speed; it would be over before any Great Power could intervene.
Hitler’s first task was to bring the Austrian Republic back into the fold of the German Reich. In January 1938, the Austrian police raided Nazi headquarters in Teinfaltstrasse, Vienna, where they uncovered incriminating documentary evidence that the Austrian Nazi Party expected a German invasion later in the year. In February, Hitler called Schuschnigg, the young Chancellor of Austria, to the Berghof and presented him with an ultimatum essentially demanding that he hand over power to the Nazi Party and merge Austria’s economy with the Reich’s. 46 In a desperate move to save his country, Schuschnigg decided on March 8, 1938, to call a plebiscite for the 13th of March. Knowing that the vote would favor Austrian independence, Hitler responded by ordering the invasion of Austria by noon on the 12th. On the 11th, Schuschnigg cancelled the plebescite, but to no avail, as German troops were already on the march.
Of the great powers, Italy stood to lose the most by the Anschluss. Yet Hesse reported from Rome that the Duce “had accepted the whole thing in a very friendly manner.” The Führer “was thrown into transports of joy and said, repeating himself hysterically many times: ‘I will never forget him for this.’ “ 47
After the Austrian Anschluss, Hitler prepared for the next step on the path to Continental hegemony: absorption of Czechoslovakia behind the smokescreen of liberating the Sudeten German minority. For this operation, Hitler preferred a military solution, but Anglo–French appeasement at Munich resulted in Germany’s being offered most of the spoils of victory without a fight. In a conversation with the Hungarian Foreign Minister Csaky, Hitler asked: “Do you think that I myself would have thought it possible half a year ago that Czechoslovakia, so to speak, would be served up to me by her friends?” 48 Nevertheless, Hitler was furious that war had been averted and vowed never to repeat this mistake.
Perhaps the most significant development arising out of Munich was the West’s total disregard for the Soviet Union, which had been deliberately excluded from the conference, even though the Soviets had continually voiced their willingness to aid the Czechs. “It is indeed astonishing,” Churchill later commented, “that this public and unqualified declaration by one of the greatest powers concerned should not have played its part in Mr. Chamberlain’s negotiations, or in the French conduct of the crisis.” With the advantage of hindsight, Churchill concluded: “The Soviet offer was in effect ignored. . . . They were not brought into the scale against Hitler, and were treated with an indifference—not to say disdain—which left a mark in Stalin’s mind. Events took their course as if Soviet Russia did not exist. For this we afterwards payed dearly.” 49
Haushofer’s Vision: Land Powers vs. Sea Powers
From the beginning, Haushofer and Ribbentrop disagreed with Hitler’s pro–British, anti–Russian, anti–colonial policies. 50 Influenced by Mackinder’s theories of the Eurasian pivot and the natural rivalry between land and sea powers, Haushofer championed Russo–German cooperation against the Anglo–Saxon sea powers. In 1913, he wrote, “A community of interests between Japan, Russia, and the Central European Imperial Power would be absolutely unassailable;” and quoting Mackinder in 1939: “It is vitally necessary that Russia and Germany unite their powers.” 51
For Haushofer, cooperation with Russia was the only way to dethrone the despotic hegemonic rule of the Anglo–Saxon sea powers: “Such an alliance does not aim at ‘world domination,’ but to be sure, at the abolition of the capitalistic rule of Western Democracy over the ‘have nots’ and at the establishment of a juster world–order, free from such exploitation.” 52 A Russo–German–Japanese transcontinental bloc would counterbalance the Anglo–Saxon powers; free German forces for the conquest of Western Europe; and, once these resources were in hand, create a Greater Germany capable of crushing the USSR. With sole control over the vital core of the Eurasian landmass (Mackinder’s “Heartland”), Germany could safely build its naval and air forces to defeat the U.S. and establish its world hegemony.
By the spring of 1939, world events had conspired to make Haushofer’s vision of a German alliance with Soviet Russia a reality. After Hitler had made good on his promise to wipe Czechoslovakia off the map of Europe 53 and then four days later (on March 20) to seize the Baltic port of Memel from Lithuania, world attention focused on Romania and Poland—the most likely targets of the next German attack. It is worth pointing out that the seizure of the rest of Czechoslovakia significantly strengthened the Nazi war machine. As Williamson Murray points out, in this case, conquest paid:
| The booty from Czech arms dumps was enormous. In April 1939 an average of twenty–three trains per day, filled with ammunition and weapons, left Czechoslovakia for the Reich. . . . All in all, occupation of Czechoslovakia provided extensive military and economic help to the Reich. It enabled Germany to overcome for the time being serious economic difficulties. It provided the Wehrmacht for the first time since the beginning of rearmament with a substantial arms surplus that could either earn foreign exchange or be devoted to equipping reserve units. Lastly, the seizure of Czechoslovakia and domination of the Slovakian puppet state gave the German an important jumping–off position for attacking Poland. 54 |
Convinced, finally, that the aims of Hitler’s revision were not limited to recovering the German minorities outside the Reich, the British government declared on March 31 that it would protect the existence of Poland by armed intervention if necessary. London strengthened its paper commitment to Poland by introducing conscription (for the first time ever during peace) and opening negotiations with France and the Soviet Union, albeit with great reluctance, to re–create the pre–war, anti–German alliance. Unimpressed by this show of Western resolve, Mussolini ordered Italian troops to invade Albania on April 7, in response to which the British and French extended similar guarantees to Greece and Romania.
While it is true that the guarantees to Poland, Greece, and Romania signaled a greater willingness on the part of the British (and, to a lesser extent, the French) to stand up to the dictators, it did not mean, as is commonly believed, that Britain had abandoned its policy of appeasement and was now ready for war with Nazi Germany. Rather, Chamberlain and other British elites still believed that Hitler could be appeased by economic concessions and some revision of the German–Polish frontier that would leave the Polish state essentially intact. 55
The end of March and most of April were a time of intense diplomatic shuffling among all the European great powers and Poland. Britain was negotiating with the Soviets, the French, and the Poles for an anti–German front. Germany was engaged in trade negotiations with the British and the Soviets; while, at the same time, Hitler and Ribbentrop were presenting the Poles with an ultimatum: either align with Germany against the Soviets or expect total annihilation at the hands of the Wehrmacht. Courted by both the democracies and Germany, the Soviet Union held the balance of power and would use its bargaining strength as kingmaker to extort concessions from both sides.
This bargaining advantage was lost, however, when Chamberlain, realizing that he could not have an alliance with both the USSR and Poland, chose the Poles over the Soviets. Foreign Secretary Halifax told the American ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, that the decision had been based on the latest information on the Soviets, which showed “their air force to be very weak and old and of short range, their army very poor and their industrial backing for the army frightful, and the most they could expect from Russia, if Russia wanted to be of help, would be that they might send some ammunition to Poland in the event of trouble."56 Britain’s decision ensured that events would not be shaped in London but rather in Berlin and Moscow.
The Nazi–Soviet Pact
It was clear to Stalin that Poland would be the next victim of German aggression. If Britain failed to honor its pledge and left Poland to its fate, the Soviet Union would probably find itself fighting Germany alone. If, on the other hand, Britain honored its guarantee by declaring war on Germany, the Soviet Union could safely stand aside as the capitalist powers exhausted each other in a war of attrition from which Russia would gain enormously. This was precisely the scenario that the British Foreign Office feared in arguing for an Anglo–Soviet agreement:
| It would seem desirable to conclude some agreement whereby the Soviet Union would come to our assistance if we were attacked in the West, not only in order to ensure that Germany would have to fight a war on two fronts, but also perhaps for the reason, admitted by the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs to General Weygand, that it was essential, if there must be a war, to try to involve the Soviet Union in it, otherwise at the end of the war the Soviet Union, with her army intact and England and Germany in ruins would dominate Europe. (There are indications that the real Soviet policy is—and would be—to get us involved and then to try to keep out herself.) Even though we may not be able to count implicitly on the Soviet Government either honestly wishing to fulfil, or being capable of fulfilling, their treaty obligations, nevertheless, the alternative of a Soviet Union completely untrammeled and exposed continually to the temptation of intriguing with both sides and of playing off one side against the other might present a no less, perhaps more, dangerous situation than that produced by collaborating with a dishonest or an incompetent partner. 57 |
In short, without an Anglo–Soviet agreement, the stronger the British commitment to Poland, the more Stalin could extract from Hitler in exchange for Soviet neutrality. In any case, the Soviet Union stood to profit from an agreement with Germany to destroy what remained of the Old Order in Europe. 58
If this logic were not enough to convince Stalin to accept a neutrality pact with the Reich, his information that Japanese Premier Kiichiro Hiranuma had just opened negotiations with Germany to transform the Anti–Comintern Pact into a more effective military alliance against the Soviet Union pushed him over the edge. These negotiations came on the heels of renewed military action (May 28, 1939) by the Japanese Kwantung Army against the Soviet satellite state of Outer Mongolia. 59
Hitler’s interest in a neutrality pact with the USSR was heightened by the Anglo–Franco–Soviet negotiations. Many British strategists were critical of Chamberlain’s anti–Soviet policy, as Harold Nicolson’s diary entry of September 26, 1938 notes: “Winston says (and we all agree) that the fundamental mistake the P.M. has made is his refusal to take Russia into his confidence. Ribbentrop always said to Hitler, ‘You need never fear England until you find her mentioning Russia as an ally. Then it means that she is really going to war!’ “ 60 Now that Britain was “mentioning Russia as an ally,” Hitler worried that it might succeed in recreating the Triple Entente. To prevent this, the Soviets had to be lured in to the Axis camp.
Another factor favoring a German rapprochement with Russia was Hitler’s failure to secure an unrestricted military alliance with Japan. Such an alliance, Hitler thought, would have a great effect on the Western powers, given their many interests in Asia. Japanese naval authorities, however, felt that Japan was not yet prepared to take on the Anglo–Saxon powers. Thus, as Gerhard Weinberg points out, “by the last half of April 1939, it was becoming apparent that the pact desired by Germany—namely a pact with universal application—would almost certainly not materialize within the time desired by Hitler.” 61
Hitler’s interest in a Nazi–Soviet pact was also driven by economic considerations. The cost of rearmament, warned Hjalmar Schacht and every other director of the Reichsbank, was dragging the Reich to the brink of bankruptcy. 62 “German trade with eastern Europe,” David Kaiser writes, “had reached its limits by 1939, partly because of limited production and transport capacity in eastern Europe, but above all because the European countries needed many industrial goods and raw materials which the Germans could not or would not supply, and therefore were seeking to divert their exports to hard–currency nations whenever possible.” 63 The economic clauses of the Nazi–Soviet pact would solve this problem by ensuring “Germany of long–term supplies of critical raw materials, obtained on extremely generous terms, since the German industrial goods which the Soviets demanded in exchange would be delivered much more slowly.” 64
Unlike Hitler’s failed attempt to court an alliance with Britain by tempting it with relative gains, the Soviet Union, a revisionist state, took the bait. As the theory predicts, revisionist powers bandwagon for profit and safety, often from each other. While Britain could only offer the Soviets, in the words of Ambassador Schnurre, “participation in a European war and the hostility of Germany,” 65 Hitler promised them a handsome reward from the partition of Poland. Thus, Ribbentrop “could not see why Russia should want to associate itself with England as England was in no condition to offer ‘any quid pro quo really worth the trouble.’ “ 66 Always the opportunist, Stalin agreed.
Yet, Hitler had heartfelt reservations about the Nazi–Soviet pact. Prior to its signing, he decried the West’s failure to grasp the true meaning of the Russian menace and to come to terms with Germany. Accurately predicting the flow of the coming war, Hitler raged: “Everything that I undertake is directed against Russia; if the West is too stupid and too blind to understand this, then I will be forced to reach an understanding with the Russians, smash the West, and then turn all my concentrated strength against the Soviet Union.” 67 For Hitler, then, the agreement with Russia was clearly intended as a short–term strategy; it did not signal a change in his long–run policy with regard to the Soviet Union. Ultimately, Germany would have to defeat Russia in order to gain control of the Continent. In a diary entry on August 29, 1939, the German Ambassador Ulrich von Hassell accurately described Hitler’s true motives for the Soviet pact: “About the Russian pact Hitler said that he was in no wise altering his fundamental anti–bolshevist policies; one had to use Beelzebub to drive away the devil; all means were justified in dealing with the Soviets, even such a pact as this. This is a typical example of his conception of ‘Realpolitik.’ “ 68
Endnotes
Note 1: Marshal Foch, as quoted in Stephen A. Schuker, “France and the Remilitarization of the Rhineland, 1936,” French Historical Studies, vol. 14, no. 3 (Spring 1986), 302. For the strategic significance of the Rhineland, see Jere Clemens King, Foch versus Clemenceau: France and German Dismemberment, 1918–1919 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960). Back.
Note 2: Nicole Jordan, “The Cut Price War on the Peripheries: The French General Staff, the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia,” in Boyce and Robertson, Paths to War, pp. 132–133. Back.
Note 3: Quoted in Anthony Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War, 1936–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), p. 22. Back.
Note 4: Aside from the treaty with Poland, the pacts, circumscribed by the principles and procedures of the League, were not military alliances in the full sense of the term. Moreover, France was not linked by a pact of mutual assistance to the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Yugoslavia); and the Entente was directed not against Germany but Hungary, the most revisionist of the small powers in East Central Europe. The best study of France’s eastern alliance system is Wandycz, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926–1936. For France’s defensive military posture, see Judith M. Hughes, To the Maginot Line: The Politics of French Military Preparation in the 1920’s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971); and Richard D. Challener, The French Theory of the Nation in Arms, 1866–1939 (New York: Russell and Russell, 1955), chap. Back.
Note 5: Robert Young “La guerre de longue durée: Some Reflections on French Strategy and Diplomacy in the 1930s,” in Adrian Preston, ed., General Staffs and Diplomacy Before the Second World War (London: Croom Helm, 1978), pp. 43, 46. Back.
Note 6: Jordan, “The Cut Price War on the Peripheries,” pp. 128–166. Note that Jordan’s explanation of French strategy contradicts Young’s discussion of the French idea of a long war, in which, he argues, France fully expected that it would bear the brunt of the initial German attack and would fight virtually without allies for the first two years of the war. See Young, “La guerre de longué durée.” Gamelin’s so–called “Plan D bis” mobilization strategy, which assumed that Germany would reoccupy the Rhineland and then attack in the east, supports Jordan’s argument, which I find more compelling than Young’s. To my knowledge, however, no one has yet raised the contradiction inherent in the two explanations of French strategy Back.
Note 7: Joseph Paul–Boncour, as quoted in Wandycz, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, p. 245. Back.
Note 8: Jean–Baptiste Duroselle, as quoted in Ibid., p. 299. Back.
Note 10: Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War , pp. 31–32; Geoffrey Warner, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France (New York: Macmillan, 1968), chaps. 2 and 3; Jordan, “The Cut Price War on the Peripheries.” Back.
Note 11: Laval, as quoted in Warner, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France , p. 94. Back.
Note 12: Esmonde M. Robertson, Mussolini as Empire–Builder: Europe and Africa, 1932–36 (London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 149–150; Smith, Mussolini, p. 194; Warner, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France , p. 94. Back.
Note 13: Jordan, “The Cut–Price War,” p. 140; also see Warner, Laval and the Eclipse of France, pp. 94–95. Back.
Note 14: DGFP, Series C, vol 4, pp. 113–114, 209, 337–339, 417–419. Back.
Note 15: The German Ambassador to Italy stated: “[T]he French sought systematically to outbid Germany’s neutrality in the Abyssinian question by showing marked sympathy for Italy’s action. This development received tremendous impetus from the Anglo–German Naval Agreement which caused acute dissatisfaction with Britain and redoubled fears of Germany in Paris, and thus automatically reinforced the efforts being made there to draw closer to Italy.” Ulrich von Hassell, July 5, 1935, DGFP, Series C, vol 4, p. 418. Back.
Note 16: Telegram from Laval to the French ambassador in Rome, Josée de Chambrun, July 19, 1935, as quoted in Warner, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France , p. 96. Back.
Note 17: Robertson, Mussolini as Empire–Builder, p. 150. Back.
Note 18: Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World War , p. 36. Back.
Note 19: Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Macmillan, 1970), p. 72. Back.
Note 21: Jordan, “Cut Price War on the Peripheries,” p. 145. Back.
Note 22: DBFP, 3rd Ser., vol 5, Doc. 598, “Sir P. Loraine (Rome) to Viscount Halifax, May 23, 1939,” p. 655. Back.
Note 23: Wolfers, Britain and France Between the Two Wars, p. 143. Back.
Note 24: Mussolini at a meeting of the Grand Council on February 4, 1939, as quoted in F. W. Deakin, The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini, Hitler and the Fall of Italian Fascism (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 5–6. Back.
Note 25: Denis Mack Smith, “Appeasement as a Factor in Mussolini’s Foreign Policy,” in Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Lothar Kettenacker, The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983), p. 260. Back.
Note 26: In October of 1935, however, von Hassell told Mussolini that, in Hitler’s judgment, “the time for the struggle between the static and the dynamic nations was by a long way premature.” Hassell quoted in Robertson, Hitler’s Pre–War Policy, p. 63. Back.
Note 27: DGFP, Series C, vol 3, pp. 1043–1044. Back.
Note 28: Hitler quoted in Robertson, Hitler’s Pre–War Policy, p. 71. Back.
Note 29: Confidential briefing by Dertinger of the Propaganda Ministry to the German press regarding Hitler’s views, December 2, 1936, quoted in Nazism, Document #500, pp. 674–675. Back.
Note 30: Nazism, p. 699. Back.
Note 31: For a concise summary of the Italian–German relationship during this period, see Donald Cameron Watt, “The Rome–Berlin Axis, 1936–1940: Myth and Reality,” Review of Politics, vol. 22, no. 4 (October 1960), pp. 519–543. Back.
Note 32: Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 121. Back.
Note 33: For the full text of the Anti–Comintern Pact with the secret additional agreement see DGFP, Series D, vol 1, p. 734, fn. Back.
Note 34: In an address before the German Wehrmacht Academy on November 25, 1937, the German Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Schulenburg, stated: “Although the Soviet Union has at its disposal numerous submarines, a great number of tanks and planes, it ought not to be forgotten that the young Soviet industry is still unprepared for the demands of the greatly increased armed forces and that the Soviet Union has reverted to the old Russian principle of operating on the basis of quantity and not of quality.” Yet, in reference to these difficulties and the “wave of murder and persecution” that “has gravely shaken the organism of the Soviet State,” Schulenburg warned: “It would be unwise to assume that this downward development must be permanent.” DGFP, Series D, vol 1, pp. 899–900. Back.
Note 35: DGFP, Series D, vol 1, p. 757. Back.
Note 36: Hassell quoted in Ciano’s Diary, 1937–1938, October 24, 1937, p. 24. For a similar statement, see Hassell’s October 20, 1937 telegram to the German Foreign Ministry, in DGFP, Series D, vol 1, pp. 16–18. Back.
Note 37: Ciano’s Diary, November 6, 1937, p. 29. In his diary entry of November 5, 1937, Ciano noted: “The English . . . have shown the Japanese that they are very worried at the signing of the pact. They feel that the system is closing against them.” Ibid., p. 28. Back.
Note 38: Ciano’s Diary, November 2, 1937, p. 27. See also, Robertson, Hitler’s Pre–War Policy, p. 102. Back.
Note 39: Recorded by Hassell in his November 10, 1937 Political Report on “The Effects of the Anti–Comintern Agreement” in DGFP, Series D, vol 1, p. 27. Ciano also said: “The alliance of three military empires the size of Italy, Germany, and Japan throws an uprecedented weight of armed strength into the balance of power. England will have to reconsider her position everywhere.” Ciano’s Diary, November 1, 1937, p. 27. Back.
Note 40: Iklé, German–Japanese Relations, p. 61. Back.
Note 41: Unsigned Memorandum, “Note of the Discussion held on July 3, 1935, between the Führer and Chancellor, Foreign Minister Freiherr von Neurath, Minister President Göring and Herr von Ribbentrop, for Germany, and the Polish Foreign Minister, Beck, and the Polish Ambassador in Berlin, Lipski, for Poland” in DGFP, Series C, vol 4, pp. 398–407 at pp. 406–407. Back.
Note 42: Hossbach memorandum, DGFP, Series D, vol 1, pp. 29–39. For a slightly condensed version, see Nazism, Document #503, pp. 680–687. For an insightful discussion on the November 5 conference, see Robertson, Hitler’s Pre–War Policy, chap. 11. Back.
Note 43: DGFP, Series D, vol 1, p. 32. Back.
Note 45: See Williamson Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939: The Path to Ruin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), esp. ch. 1 and pp. 281, 290–294. Back.
Note 46: Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin, and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, 1939–1941 (New York: Norton, 1988), p. 24. Back.
Note 47: DGFP, Series D, vol 1, pp. 573–576; Robertson, Hitler’s Pre–War Policy, pp. 115–16; Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pp. 109–110. Back.
Note 48: DGFP, Series D, vol 5, pp. 361–366; also quoted in Robertson, Hitler’s Pre–War Strategy, p. 149; Speer, Inside the Third Reich, p. 111. Back.
Note 49: From Churchill, The Gathering Storm, as quoted in Read and Fisher, The Deadly Embrace, pp. 29 and 31. Back.
Note 50: For von Ribbentrop’s anti–British, pro–colonial foreign policy, see Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, pp. 48–50. Back.
Note 51: Haushofer, as quoted in Whittlesey et al., German Strategy of World Conquest, p. 86. Back.
Note 52: Haushofer, as quoted in Ibid., p. 166. Back.
Note 53: See Read and Fisher, The Deadly Embrace, p. 27. Back.
Note 54: Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, pp. 292–293. Also see Peter Liberman, Does Conquest Pay?: The Exploitation of Occupied Industrial Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). Back.
Note 55: Hildebrand makes this point in The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, pp. 83–90. Back.
Note 56: Halifax to Kennedy, quoted in Read and Fisher, The Deadly Embrace, p. 68. Back.
Note 57: DBFP, 3rd Ser., vol 5, Doc. 589, “Foreign Office Memorandum on the Anglo–Soviet Negotiations, May 22, 1939,” p. 646. Back.
Note 58: For this interpretation of Soviet thinking, see Gerhard L. Weinberg, Germany and the Soviet Union, 1939–1941 (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1954), p. 15. Back.
Note 59: Trumball Higgins, Hitler and Russia: The Third Reich in a Two–Front War, 1937–1943 (New York: Macmillan, 1966) p. 21; Joseph W. Ballantine, “Mukden to Pearl Harbor: The Foreign Policies of Japan,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 27, no. 4 (July 1949), pp. 651–654. Back.
Note 60: Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930–1964, edited and condensed by Stanley Olson (London: Collins, 1980), September 26, 1938, p. 136. Back.
Note 61: Weinberg, Germany and the Soviet Union, p. 22. Back.
Note 62: Read and Fisher, The Deadly Embrace, p. 46. Back.
Note 63: David Kaiser in Kaiser et al., “Debate,” p. 202. See also David Kaiser, Economic Diplomacy and the Origins of the Second World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 263–273. Back.
Note 64: Kaiser in Kaiser et al, “Debate,” p. 203. Back.
Note 65: Quoted in McSherry, Stalin, Hitler, and Europe, vol 1, p. 202. Back.
Note 66: Weinberg, Germany and the Soviet Union, p. 28. Back.
Note 67: Hitler in a conversation with Carl J. Burckhardt, the High Commissioner of the League of Nations, in Danzig (August 11, 1939), as quoted in Hillgruber, Germany and the Two World Wars, p. 69. Back.
Note 68: Ulrich von Hassell, The Von Hassell Diaries, 1938–1944: The Story of the Forces Against Hitler Inside Germany, as Recorded by Ambassador Ulrich von Hassell, a Leader of the Movement (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1947), p. 67. Back.
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