Читать книгу Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II - Len Deighton - Страница 51

In the eyes of many people, Adolf Hitler’s regime was a success. Everything seemed to have improved since the waves of economic depression that rolled over Europe in the 1920s. Germans were thankful for the way Hitler’s coming to power stopped the vicious and extensive street battles which were a regular ending to all Communist and Nazi political rallies. But the Nazi way of restoring law and order was to execute or imprison without trial all opponents. Equally drastic was the way Hitler reduced unemployment by means of massive public works projects and rearmament. In 1935 conscription was introduced. All German youth was called to serve twelve months in the armed forces following a term of manual work in the RAD, the State Labour Service. In September 1936 Hitler was able to announce to a party congress that the jobless had fallen from 6 million to 1 million. A strictly controlled economy caused living standards to rise sharply, so that Germans soon enjoyed the highest living standards in Europe.

The Nazi propaganda machine brought the arts, theatre, cinema, newspapers and radio under the direct control of the artful Joseph Goebbels. Parades with flaming torches, vast uniformed rallies on monumental stages and stadiums, massed flags and columns of searchlights had made Germany into a political theatre watched by the rest of the world.

As part of the rapid expansion of the German army, during training and exercises it employed motor cars fitted with flimsy wooden superstructures to represent tanks, with other mock-ups for artillery and so on. Such improvised vehicles gave rise to colourful rumours that were repeated everywhere abroad and even got into foreign newspapers. They said the German army was no more than a sham force built for parades, and designed solely to intimidate other nations. A more accurate picture of the expanding war machine was available to motor-racing enthusiasts.

During the Thirties the victories of the German motor-racing team shocked and dismayed its competitors. Many, if not most, British racing drivers were competing simply for fun; using the same cars to journey to the circuits, race there and then travel home. The Nazis were quick to see the propaganda benefits of international racing victories. German cars – Mercedes and Auto-Union – were highly specialized designs with engineering that was years ahead of their rivals. The drivers – some of them non-Germans – and fitters were highly trained and dedicated. The team organization was managed with a professional resolution quite unlike anything from other European countries. It could be said that the Germans invented the racing team as we now know it. In every respect those victorious German racing teams of the Thirties provided a glimpse of blitzkrieg to come.

It wasn’t only racing cars that Germany was manufacturing: in the period 1930–38 German car production went from 189,000 to 530,000 vehicles. Industrial production soared and unemployment plunged from its 1932 peak.

FIGURE 14

Mercedes and Auto-Union racing cars

Hitler’s defiant stance, and his violent speeches against the injustices of the peace treaty, gave Germans a new sort of pride. It was the ‘stick and carrot’ technique. Most Germans turned a blind eye to the persecution of the Jews, and all the other legalized crimes of the Nazis, when the stick might be a spell in a labour camp. Those who objected were arrested; many were never seen again. Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution legalized protective custody and enabled all the fundamental rights of a citizen to be withheld. Using this the Nazis sent thousands of opponents to concentration camps without due process of law. The lawyers found legal reasons to classify such prisoners as citizens assisting in upholding the law.

Here and there a brave German spoke up against the regime. The view that Nazi Germany – whatever its faults – had to be supported because of the ‘protection’ it provided against the spread of Russian Communism was echoed by the rich and powerful everywhere. It was certainly a view aired in the British cabinet. In Rome the Pope did nothing to stop the anti-Semitic excesses of the ‘anti-Bolshevik’ state Hitler had created as a bulwark against the Reds.

The German trade unions had been silenced by arrests and threats. The Nazi labour organizations which replaced them gave workers cheap vacations and luxury cruises but deprived them of the right to strike, demonstrate or make any kind of objection to the regime. It succeeded. Working-class Germans – like middle-class ones – offered no serious opposition to the Nazis.

It is difficult to give a balanced picture of the respective strengths of the great powers in that period immediately before the war. But in an attempt to provide some sort of estimate, Table 2 looks at three aspects of each nation. Manpower is a guide to the size of the army that could be put into the field. Annual steel-making capacity estimates the ability to build ships, submarines, tanks and artillery. Annual aircraft production is a guide to the potential production of such items as trucks, cars and infantry weapons, as well as aircraft.

Table 2

Relative strengths of the Great Powers in 1939

British population figures do not take account of men in the Dominions. For steel, the figures given are the best for the 1930s, with German figures including Austrian production. Aircraft numbers take no account of size (tending to underrate UK and USA, which were building more large aircraft than the other nations).²