Читать книгу A History of Germany 1918 - 2020 - Mary Fulbrook - Страница 27

Hitler had two main aims, expressed in Mein Kampf and the later Second Book: to create a ‘pure’ racial community in Germany; and to expand Germany’s living space, dominating central Europe and, eventually, seeking world mastery. Hitler’s anti-Semitism, while finding resonance in the widespread prejudices against Jews, clearly went way beyond existing concepts of discrimination in its eventual practical implications. Hitler’s grandiose visions of the future of his Thousand Year Reich, while having much in common with conservative–nationalist desires for revision of the Treaty of Versailles, also went some considerable way beyond them in terms of global aspirations. While Hitler lost little time in jettisoning the political framework of the Weimar Republic, it took rather longer to transform the relationship of the Nazis to the old elites, whose miscalculated support had brought Hitler to power and who were essential for the effective use of that power. Moreover, Hitler had simultaneously to play to a number of galleries: to public opinion, dependent as his charisma was on repeated popular acclaim; to the Nazi Party activists, who were often frustrated at the apparent stalling of momentum and the incompleteness of the ‘national revolution’; and to the established economic and military elites whose cooperation was vital to the realization of Hitler’s ends. Added to these sometimes conflicting pressures was Hitler’s distinctive style of leadership, which allowed the duplication, indeed proliferation, of state and party offices and functions, and blurred the lines of leadership and responsibility. But on issues that mattered to Hitler he pursued his aims with ruthlessness and appropriate brutality. While Hitler’s intentions alone are not sufficient to explain the pattern of developments in the Third Reich – after all, Hitler had to attempt to realize his intentions under given circumstances and not always welcome conditions – the chronology of Nazi Germany reveals a progressive radicalization of the regime in line with Hitler’s pursuit of his overriding aims.

Anti-Semitic violence in peacetime was powered to a considerable degree by Nazi Party radicals, and Hitler sought to distance himself somewhat – at least as far as his public image was concerned – from the consequences of the more extreme or less successful of their actions, while at the same time continually pressing forwards with apparently more ‘legal’ forms of discrimination and persecution. The attempted boycott of Jewish shops on 1 April 1933 was rapidly called off, but systematic discrimination against Jews rapidly continued in a series of measures to remove Jews from professional and cultural life. In 1935 the so-called Nuremberg Laws – discussed well in advance, but announced in a last-minute way at the Nuremberg Party rally – sought to give legal validity to racial discrimination. Under the Reich Citizenship Law two categories of citizenship were introduced, with Jews given second-class citizenship, in that they could not become Reichsbürger with full political rights. Under the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, Jews were no longer permitted to marry those of ‘Aryan’ German or related extraction, nor – a deliberate affront in its moral implications – to employ ‘Aryan’ German women under the age of forty-five in their households. Consideration was given to the vexatious question of Mischlinge – those of mixed extraction who, in Nazi eyes, might be deemed to ‘pollute’ German blood. The milder view of excluding ‘half-’ and ‘quarter-Jews’ from the Nuremberg Laws was finally adopted (although with qualifications regarding half-Jews who professed the Jewish faith or were married to a Jew, and who were categorized as Geltungsjuden, or ‘counted as Jews’), while ‘three-quarter Jews’ were included as Jews. For many Germans, the Nuremberg Laws were welcomed as an apparent legalization of the rather ad hoc measures of discrimination against Jews. Yet what is particularly striking is the way in which Germans rapidly ‘learned’ to consider their fellow citizens in terms of the new racial categories: friendships were cut off, and German Jews not only lost status and livelihood but were also increasingly cut off from their former social circles and wider support networks. The ‘racialization’ of German society was extremely rapid, laying the groundwork for later, more radical measures.

Far from being the culmination of Nazi anti-Semitic measures, the Nuremberg Laws marked but a stage in the systematic exclusion of Jews from ‘normal’ life. With a brief, partial respite in deference to international opinion when Berlin hosted the Olympic Games in 1936, a series of supplementary decrees and regulations in the following years systematically continued to exclude Jews from their professions, from education, and from public and cultural life. From 1938 discrimination became more severe, with the ‘Aryanization’ or confiscation of Jewish property, and the effective removal of the means of material existence in a variety of ways. The effect, as a Nazi article of 24 November 1938 remarked with glee, would be to reduce the Jews to dependence on crime – which would ‘necessitate’ the appropriate measures on the part of a state committed to law and order, ending in the ‘complete extermination’ (restlose Vernichtung) of German Jewry.¹⁶

Commitment to law and order was scarcely evident in the actions against Jews on the Reichskristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) of 9 November 1938. Ostensibly precipitated by the murder of a member of the German Embassy in Paris by a young Jew, a supposedly ‘spontaneous uprising’ was incited by a speech by Goebbels on the occasion of the annual anniversary celebration of the Beer Hall Putsch. Party radicals burned synagogues, attacked Jewish homes and businesses, and looted Jewish property across Germany. Official party figures reported ninety-one deaths of Jews, and subsequently around thirty thousand Jews were arrested and detained in concentration camps for a period of time; the true number of deaths as a result of Nazi brutality, and individual suicides out of sheer desperation and despair, ran into far higher figures. Jews had to pay compensation for the destruction of property themselves, and hand over any payments from insurance policies to the state. Many non-Jewish Germans in fact joined in the public humiliation of Jews, or took the opportunity to benefit by looting property from Jewish stores. Innumerable others, far from having spontaneously perpetrated attacks – as the Nazi propaganda would have it – were actually appalled at the wanton destruction of property and evident lawlessness of the Reichskristallnacht. But while some offered sympathy, support and assistance at an individual level, they did little to protest openly against the attacks of November 1938; rumours of what happened to those who did raise their voices, and fear of the likely penalties, ensured widespread passivity and silence. Nor did people protest against the continuing series of measures discriminating against the Jews – the removal of their driving licences, the withdrawal of their passports (which were returned stamped with the initial ‘J’), the enforced adoption of the first names Israel or Sara, the ban on visiting museums, theatres, concerts, swimming pools, the forced surrender of gold and silver objects and all precious jewellery with the exception of wedding rings, the systematic reductions in status and livelihood. Most Germans simply acquiesced in the piecemeal process by which Jews were identified, defined, stigmatized, segregated and stripped of the status of fellow citizens and even human beings to become an oppressed minority in their own homeland. These peacetime measures of discrimination were a precondition for the subsequent preference of many Germans to ignore the later, more tragic fate of these people who had already been effectively removed from a normal status in civil society.

On the foreign policy front, desires for the revision of the Treaty of Versailles were, as indicated above, widespread among Germans. Already in the closing years of the Weimar Republic, after the death of Stresemann, less cautious, more strident tones had been evident in German foreign policy. These revisionist tendencies were unleashed with vigour by Hitler. In 1933 he made clear his preference for bilateral rather than collective security arrangements and soon withdrew from the League of Nations. With the approval of the army, by 1934 rearmament was in full swing, with the production of aircraft, ships and explosives. In January 1935, after a plebiscite, the Saarland was returned to German jurisdiction. In March 1935 the rearmament programme, the existence of a German air force and the introduction of one year’s conscription (raised to two years in August 1936), were made public. These clear breaches of the Treaty of Versailles were censured by the so-called Stresa Front of Italy, France and Britain, and by the League of Nations, in April 1935, but to little effect. By June of that year Britain and Germany had concluded a Naval Agreement under which Germany was permitted to increase her Navy to one-third the strength of the British Navy. The ‘Stresa Front’ was in any case less than solid. Hitler on the whole tended to admire Italy’s Fascist leader Mussolini, and, despite tensions between Italy and Germany over Austria after the attempted coup by Austrian Nazis in 1934, Hitler was concerned to foster good relations with his fellow-dictator. Hitler was also a prime opportunist. Taking advantage of British and French preoccupation with the Italian invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935, and under some pressure from domestic discontent over a deteriorating economic situation, Hitler took his first major foreign policy risk in March 1936. German troops marched over the Rhine to reoccupy the demilitarized left bank, in clear defiance of the Versailles Treaty. This served to boost Hitler’s domestic popularity considerably, and occasioned only very limited criticism from abroad.

From then on, foreign policy moved into a new gear. Under the Four Year Plan, presided over by Goering, rather unorthodox economic policies were initiated, which marked a clear break with Hjalmar Schacht’s notions of economic management. Schacht’s resignation as Minister of Economics in November 1937 came partly as a result of conflicts between the Economics Ministry and Goering’s office. There were similar conflicts between Nazis and more traditional conservative nationalists on the diplomatic front. For some time Ribbentrop had been running a diplomatic service in rivalry with the Foreign Ministry. In 1936 Ribbentrop became Ambassador to Britain. The Spanish Civil War, which broke out in July 1936, fostered closer relations between Italy and Germany (with both supporting Franco), and helped to bring about a new alignment. The emergent ‘Rome–Berlin Axis’ was strengthened as, in the course of 1936, it had become clear to Hitler that he would have to abandon his ideas about an alliance with Britain; and, in 1938, under Ribbentrop’s influence, Hitler opted for Japan as the third member of the ‘Axis’. The Tripartite Pact was finally signed in September 1940. Meanwhile, it was becoming increasingly clear that the attempt to combine preparation for war with domestic consumer satisfaction was in the long run economically impracticable and that it was essential for Germany to go to war sooner rather than later. This realization occasioned a new rift between the increasingly radical Nazi regime and the old elites: Hitler’s clash with army leaders in the winter of 1937–8 marked a further step in the gathering momentum of the Nazi regime.

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

The overthrow of Hitler was first seriously contemplated by members of the elite during 1938–9. Army leaders including Beck and Halder, as well as the head of the Foreign Ministry Ernst von Weizsäcker, considered the possibility of a coup. Their ideas were conveyed to the British government but ignored. Similarly, any prospect of success for Adam von Trott’s visit to Britain in June 1939 was marred by suspicions of his real intentions: while Trott was seeking to buy time for a military coup to be successful, his official reports back to the German Foreign Ministry and his proposals for further concessions to Hitler, as well as his sincere German nationalism, sufficiently opened his aims to misinterpretation and misrepresentation for the Americans as well as the British to choose to take little notice of his mission.¹⁷ But these early attempts at resistance in high places were deflected, first by the apparent success of Hitler’s foreign policy – and the ‘appeasement’ with which he was met – and then, after the final outbreak of war in September 1939, by the combination of rapid early military success and unwillingness to commit an act of treason against the head of state when the fatherland was at war.

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

In the summer of 1938 Hitler turned his attention to Czechoslovakia. The Sudeten German Party under Henlein, with help from the German Nazis, had been cultivating unrest among ethnic Germans in the border areas, the Sudetenland. There was a heightened sense of crisis as misperceptions of German mobilization led to an actual Czech mobilization, and for a week in August 1938 it appeared that war was about to break out. By September the threat of war had been averted, and attempts were made to resolve the Czech crisis by diplomatic means. The British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, braving the novelty of airborne diplomacy, returned from the Munich conference of September 1938 – at which Czechoslovakia, whose fate was to be decided, was not represented – waving the famous piece of paper with Hitler’s signature and proclaiming ‘peace in our time’. The Western powers – apparently overlooking the catastrophic longer-term consequences of failing to protect the interests of smaller central European states – appear to have felt that, by ceding portions of the Czech border territories, they had fulfilled legitimate ethnic demands and averted the threat of a war for which they were not yet ready. Whether or not their policy of appeasement was justifiable, it certainly served to buy further time for rearmament. While most Germans breathed a sigh of relief that the threat of imminent war had been averted, Hitler, for his part, felt cheated out of war by the Munich Agreemnt.

Plate 3 Hitler’s triumphal arrival to popular acclaim in his former home town of Linz during the 1938 Anschluss of Austria (which subsequently represented itself as ‘Hitler’s first victim’).

Czechoslovakia’s loss of the Western border territories also meant loss of key border defences – and the will to defend herself, after the debacle of the summer. When, in March 1939, Hitler’s armies invaded Prague, there was little the Czechs could do to resist German take-over. Bohemia and Moravia became a German protectorate, while Slovakia became a satellite state of the German Reich. As far as Britain was concerned, it was prudent to allow this ‘faraway country’ of which they knew little (as it was put in September 1938) fall without Western military intervention.

Emboldened by the feeble Western response to the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Hitler now turned his attention to Poland and the Baltic states. Lithuania ceded Memel to Germany, but the Poles stood firm on Danzig. At this point, the British took a stronger stand, issuing a guarantee of Polish independence. Hitler chose not to take too much notice of this, given the British record of appeasement. In August 1939, in a surprise move – and putting an end to parallel British negotiations with the Russians – Hitler concluded a pact with his ideological arch-enemy, the communist leader Joseph Stalin. In conjunction with a further agreement in September, Hitler and Stalin mutually carved up the Polish and Baltic states, and achieved certain strategic aims; while Stalin bought time for further rearmament, Hitler sought to avoid the possibility of war on two fronts. Again, the longer-term consequences were to prove catastrophic.

Map 4.2 Territorial annexation,84 1935–1939.

On 1 September 1939 German troops used the pretext of incited border incidents for a well-organized invasion of Poland. By 3 September Britain and France had concluded that this clear act of German aggression now meant that they were, at last, at war with Germany. The precarious attempt at stabilizing European affairs and achieving a new international order after the First World War had collapsed. Germany under Hitler was again unleashing war in Europe. But this time – unlike the mood of August 1914, however exaggerated by nationalist mythology – there was little enthusiasm for war among the German people. The peaceful gains of the preceding years had been greeted with an acclaim tinged by relief at the avoidance of bloodshed; now, in the main, the Germans took up arms in sombre mood, with considerable foreboding, clinging to the hope that Hitler was right in his predictions of an assured and early German victory. But, as it was to turn out, Hitler’s aims for the ‘master race’ were so ambitious as to pave the way for eventual total defeat.