Foreign Policy Between Revision and Expansion (Part A)
Source : K. D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship (London, 1971), pp.287-303.
Tactics and Aims in the Period of Transition
The foreign policy of the Third Reich derived directly from the ideological principles and long-range goals of National Socialism. But its implementation demanded first of all the consolidation of the takeover, as well as the assent of the population and the cooperation of the Foreign Office under its conservative chief, Konstantin von Neurath. With this in mind, the Nazi leadership resorted to a dual approach. It appeased, showed an apparent willingness to negotiate, and sought to win international recognition, while simultaneously initiating the strategy of threats, surprise moves, and faits accomplis . The interplay of these two approaches helped National Socialist foreign policy to master the critical early years. And after 1935, the Nazis, having consolidated their power domestically and in possession of greater military and arms potential, prepared a forcible shift to foreign affairs through treaties and military methods. This approach was responsible for the widespread belief that up to 1938, Hitler had pursued a moderate, understandable course of peaceful revision, the same sort of delusion that had paved the way for his pseudo-legal seizure of power. Hitler's reiteration of his peaceful intentions' fed the illusion that once saddled with the responsibility of government, he would act sensibly and not revert to the dilettantish, intemperate plans and demands of the early years. And in fact the appeasement practiced by the Western powers up to the very moment of war rested on the same disastrous belief in the possibility of a peaceful containment of the National Socialist dynamic as had the mistaken notions of Weimar domestic policy. Hitler, on the other hand, flexibly yet undeviatingly pursued a course, which step by step won him freedom of maneuver, the total revision of Versailles, and ultimately hegemonic expansion.
The pattern was established quite early. The first steps included the smashing of the collective League of Nations system through unilateral acts, the isolation of France through alliances with Fascist Italy and 'Germanic' Britain, and the creation of a Greater Germany, beginning with the annexation of Austria. Hitler never lost sight of the program first spelled out in Mein Kampf : the completion of the national state and the revision of Versailles, however not merely the revival of Bismarck's Reich but the realization of a voelkisch' state 'representing' a sound, viable relationship between the size and the growth of the nation, on the one hand, and the size and quality of the land on the other. 'According to Hitler's racist-geopolitical ideology, a superior people like the Germanic nation needed an adequate Lebensraum for reasons of both food production and military policy. Thus we National Socialists are deliberately drawing a line under the foreign policy of our prewar years. We will resume where we left off six centuries ago. We are putting a stop to the old Germanic movement toward the south and west of Europe and are turning our attention to the land in the east. We are putting an end to the colonial and trade policies of the prewar era and are going over to the soil policies [settling] of the future. But if we today speak of new land, we think above all of Russia and its subject border states.' 1
The racist and geopolitical national imperialism of Mein Kampf spelled out more clearly and in greater detail the unchanging though occasionally camouflaged Lebensraum policy than did the party program itself, which inclined to a Greater German revisionism. The essence of the Lebensraum idea was the fusion of the national and imperial principles and the natural claim of the German race to territorial expansion and rule. This objective also dominated Hitler's second book of 1928, which for tactical reasons had not been published, and he stated it in unmistakable words in his 1933 conversations with a group of intimates (recorded by Hermann Rauschning). In these, he apparently even went so far as to see nationalism only as a facade and an instrument for mobilizing a backward public opinion; backing it up was the more profound, forward-looking principle of race struggle as the world-shaping principle that would determine the political order of the future 2 .
There are those who say that although the ideology of Mein Kampf was quite obviously being perpetuated in Hitler's race and religious policies as well as in his propaganda, there were substantial differences between Mein Kampf and the foreign policy actually carried out 3 . That may be true of specific tactics, and of course Hitler ultimately did not succeed in forging the alliance with Great Britain, and consequently found himself fighting the feared two-front war. This, however, in no way alters the rigidity of the aims. The alliance with Italy and the isolation of France were pursued against all obstacles, and until the tactical shift of 1939 foreign policy was consistently in line with the alliance goals spelled out in Mein Kampf. And finally in the war, we learn from Hitlers Tischgespraeche (Hitler's Table Talks) of 1941 ΓÇô 42, the basic intentions again were clearly and irrevocably spelled out; Hitler clung to them with almost manic obsessiveness, up to the eerie end in the bunker of his Chancellery. He never left any doubt that his totalitarian domestic policy was meant to serve the ends of the new foreign policy. In his famous speech in January, 1932, before the Duesseldorf Industrieclub, as well as in addresses, both before and after 1933, to generals, party functionaries, business leaders, and publicists, Hitler made clear that the function of National Socialist policy was to create the organisational, military, and psychological conditions for foreign moves. In as much as this objective had a direct bearing on the consolidation of his rule, the interlocking of foreign and domestic policy was a significant attribute of National Socialist totalitarianism. The phenomenon of the 'permanent revolution' (as described by the political scientist Sigmund Neumann) played a vital role. Total rule demands keeping the public under the constant pressure of major events and successes, distracting them from domestic coercion by holding out hope for external expansion, compensating for the loss of freedom by the constant acceleration of the sense of revolution and mission.
The beginnings of National Socialist foreign policy were marked by the difficult transition from the moderate Weimar revisionism to big-power politics. At a meeting with military commanders on February 3, 1933, Hitler pointed out the dangers inherent in this transition to a policy of conquest of new Lebensraum in the East and its ruthless Germanisation.' If France has statesmen, he said, then it will not give us time but attack us (presumably with eastern satellites).' 4 The camouflage tactics of 1933 ΓÇô 34 succeeded in bridging this dangerous period of preparation and in warding off any possible setbacks by giving the impression that the goal continued to be the revisions sought by Weimar. The Foreign Office was treated most gingerly; Papen's and Schleicher's Foreign Minister, Konstantin von Neurath, stayed on at Hindenburg's request. The diplomatic corps remained largely unchanged; its primary task was to lay foreign misgivings to rest. And it soon turned out that Neurath, above all, immediately and unreservedly supported Hitler's policies, not only within the Cabinet but also in his dealings with the outside world, and even initiated a more intensive pursuit of revision.
This intensification found expression in the first major move of National Socialist foreign policy, the new push on rearmament and the break with the League of Nations in the fall of 1933. But even thus, the alleged continuity of foreign policy, the counterpart to the tactic of legal revolution, served to offset criticism of the new regime at home and abroad. As later in the Polish and Austrian questions, the Third Reich succeeded in breaking through potential opposition despite an initially critical deterioration of the situation and the threat of isolation. This was the result partly of the continuation of some aspects of Weimar foreign policy and partly of the retreats by the forces of appeasement which cleared the way for steadily mounting Nazi demands. The reparations issue had to all effects and purposes been solved at the Lausanne Conference of 1932, and the disarmament and parity talks by the Schleicher Government had progressed satisfactorily. These negotiations continued under Hitler. He answered objections of National Socialist activists with the assurance that first he had to make all of Germany National Socialist, and that would take four years. Only then could he turn his attention to foreign policy.' 5 The assurances of his peaceful intentions contained in his Reichstag addresses of March 23 and May 17, 1933, were rewarded by Mussolini's drive for a four-power treaty between Britain, France, Italy, and Germany. Though never ratified, this pact meant the tacit recognition of the National Socialist regime and its acceptance into the conclave of major powers; moreover, it also meant the discarding of the League of Nations principle in favor of old-fashioned power politics.
The progressive revision of the Versailles system now was in full swing. When the Third Reich began to break away from the League of Nations, its international position had been strengthened by the concordat with the Vatican. The stiffening French position on the secret rearmament of Germany and the critical treatment by the League of Nations of Nazi emigre and Jewish policies furnished the overt reasons. In fact, however, the example of Japan's withdrawal from the League in May, 1933, encouraged Hitler to take the step from the tedious multinational negotiations to the freedom of bilateralism and the room offered by it for the realization of his own goals. The secession from the League of Nations on October 14, 1933, which had been preceded by almost fifteen years of hostile revision propaganda, met with widespread approval in Germany. It was characteristic of the new style ΓÇô close interweaving of domestic and foreign policy ΓÇô that this first display of power in foreign affairs was used to stage the first great unity plebiscite of the regime (November 12, 1938). Acclamation of Hitler's policies was performed with much fanfare and the outspoken support of non-Nazi groups as well, up to the Catholic episcopate.
The secession from the League of Nations was similarly fraught with grave consequences. It meant the end of the apparently unbroken continuation of the Stresemann course and the beginning of Hitler's own foreign policy, though still shielded by the unequivocal support accorded this first coup by Neurath and the Foreign Office. The idea of disarmament was dead; the determination to rearm, the mainstay of National Socialist policy from the very beginning, now emerged in the open. At the same time it became obvious that London and Paris were incapable of acting in unison, and Italy's vacillation completely ruled out any possibility of forming a counterfront. In Great Britain, influential forces took Hitler's claim to being a 'bulwark against Communism' seriously, or at least believed that the dynamics of an allegedly inevitable German armament could, in line with the National Socialist program, be diverted toward the East ΓÇô just as Japan's war policy was tying down Russia in the Far East. Although these ideas were never concretised, they probably influenced the course of appeasement and the passing over of Russian interests at the Munich Conference. Subsequently Moscow, inflating them disproportionately, was able to cite them as justification for the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939.
At any rate, resistance to the tactics of threat and surprise moves, which were being substituted for the policy of peaceful revision, was far less than expected. By conceding to Hitler in short order what had been denied Weimar far too long, the policy of appeasement contributed to the consolidation and strengthening of the regime, both domestically and abroad. It was the tragedy of this policy that it hoped to preserve peace by containing National Socialism through the revision of positions that had become untenable; instead, however, it erased existing doubts in Germany about Hitler's self-confident assertions and the 'soundness' of his hazardous decisions, and only encouraged National Socialist policy to renewed aggression. After the break with the League of Nations, which ended the era of constant contact with the outside world, the influence of experienced diplomacy more and more gave way to the erratic, high-handed, instinctive policies of Hitler. In view of his successes, he apparently always was right, unlike the timid traditionalists in the Foreign Office.
In the restructuring of Germany's Ostpolitik (Eastern policy) ΓÇô the second major point of National Socialist foreign policy ΓÇô the change from traditional diplomacy to the strategy of surprise began early. In concluding the treaties of Rapallo (1922) and Berlin (1926) and normalising German-Soviet relations, the Weimar Republic had sought to counterbalance the Versailles front of the Western powers through close economic contacts and military cooperation. Political-ideological reservations took second place; as a matter of fact, conservative and military circles had been among those most interested in the co-operation of the two states isolated by and defeated in war. Added to this was the German fear of Poland and of French-Polish encirclement, the wish to eliminate the Polish Corridor, and, on the part of Russia, the claim to the Polish eastern regions lost in 1920. Some members of the military and proponents of geopolitics, using historical and strategic arguments, also proposed a joint German-Russian dismemberment of Poland and another Polish partition. Not only Alfred Rosenberg but also Seeckt favored such a course; however, it was not adopted until 1939, and then only temporarily. Like Bruening and Schleicher, Hitler favoured a Polish-French two-front war against a (still) unarmed Germany. Although the degree of cooperation between Reichswehr and Red Army diminished in the course of the summer of 1933, both sides at first proceeded with great circumspection. Hitler specifically excepted relations with the Soviet Union from his anti-Communist propaganda. Stalin in turn attached great importance to the preservation of Russo-German economic relations, probably one of the reasons he refrained from giving effective assistance to the persecuted German Communists and from criticising the Nazi regime. The extension in May, 1933, of the Berlin treaty (which had expired in 1931) went off more smoothly and rapidly than in the Weimar era 6 .
The fact that Moscow became the first to conclude a treaty with the Third Reich and the first to grant it international recognition demonstrated as clearly as the Hitler-Stalin Pact the futility of the bulwark thesis and the virtuosity with, which totalitarian states can subordinate even the most violent ideological antagonisms to political self-interest, even if only temporarily. Here, too, the tactical continuation of Weimar policy did not last long. Almost simultaneous with the withdrawal from the League of Nations, Hitler, through a radical shift in German-Polish relations, discarded the revision policy of the past. In March, 1933, fear of intervention had still determined the pro-Russian position of the German Foreign Office; only a few weeks later, however, the authoritarian government of Poland began to revise its League of Nations and French policies, which at any rate seemed endangered by the negotiations over a four-power treaty, in favor of closer ties with Nazi Germany. Apparently Pilsudski was banking on the anti-Bolshevik and antidemocratic principles of the Hitler regime. Despite differences in their methods of government, both men were right-wing dictators. At the same time, Warsaw also se to figure that the top leadership of the Third Reich, predominantly South German and Austrian, would not pursue the true Prussian German-Russian policies at the expense of Poland.
These factors were responsible for the change of course by which Hitler, bringing into play his personal brand of instant diplomacy and out playing the traditionalists in the Foreign Office, enlisted the interest of Poland. It was another demonstration of the flexibility of totalitarian rule. Regardless of the displeasure in diplomatic as well as in military and Prussian-revisionist circles, over the radical shift from an anti-Polish course to German-Polish cooperation, it worked. In Danzig, National Socialists who in the meantime had come to power in the Free City, had to acquiesce, and the propaganda machinery of both sides prepared the ground for the non-aggression pact of January 26, 1934; in Germany, the event was hailed as a blow against the Eastern policy of the Allies. The agreement, initially drawn up for a ten-year period, obligated the signatories to renounce the use of force and to negotiate directly on all mutual problems. Hitler honored this obligation as faithfully as all his other agreements; his basic idea remained unchanged by these tactical moves. On the contrary, this second act in the series of abrupt reorientations of German foreign policy following the secession from the League of Nations introduced the strategy of bilateral agreements, which within a few years was to destroy all efforts for collective security and isolate the enemies of the Third Reich 7 .
The obverse side of this development was the acceleration in the revamping of Soviet policy, beginning with the ratification of a French-Soviet non-aggression and friendship treaty in May, 1933. Now the bottled-up German-Soviet propaganda war flared up. The advice of established German experts like Ambassadors to Moscow Nadolny and von der Schulenburg were passed over. The threat of isolation once more hung over Germany when Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov sought to reorient Moscow toward the West and also forge an alliance against National Socialism, despite Moscow's and Berlin's memory of Rapallo. On the heels of the French-Russian rapprochement, underscored by a visit of Minister President Herriot to Moscow in September, 1933, came the overdue recognition of the Soviet Union by the United States; also, the West finally relented and, at the end of 1934, admitted Russia into the League of Nations in place of Germany.
Still a third National Socialist initiative brought the 'new' Germany to the brink of isolation, namely its deteriorating relations with Austria and with Italy. Germany's Austrian policy of 1938 ΓÇô 84 exemplified the increasing weight of ideological viewpoints and the interlocking of domestic and foreign-policy considerations. Hitler now was ready to shed his initial restraint and embark on the autocratic manipulation of foreign policy. This former Austrian national thought nothing more logical than to follow up the seizure of power in Germany with a National Socialist revolution in Austria and Anschluss to a Greater Germany. Ever since the ban on German-Austrian union in the Paris treaties, Anschluss was not only the goal of revisionists but a demand voiced in almost all political camps. The 'Pan-German' idea was not invented by the National Socialists; after the end of the old Reich, in the movement of 1848, and again after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918, it was common property, from the non monarchist Right to the Social Democratic Left. To be sure, the National Socialist idea of the Reich of all Germans was not the same as the federalist concept of liberal democrats and socialists. Hitler wanted to bring Austria into the German Reich via forced incorporation into the coordinated unitary state, not via constitutional and lawful revision.
The spring of 1933 saw the beginning of massive assistance to the Austrian National Socialists, who despite their primogeniture had never achieved the strength of the German party. This political interference in Austrian domestic affairs was supplemented by economic pressure. Berlin's answer to the countermeasures of Vienna was to close its borders and impose a boycott with inevitably profound economic repercussions. But the immediate consequence was to intensify the isolation of Germany with regard to France and above all Italy. Hitler's policy of threats and blackmail drove the authoritarian government of Engelbert Dollfuss into the arms of Mussolini. Setting up an 'Austrofascist' dictatorship modeled on and supported by Italy, Dollfuss set about to eliminate Nazis, democrats, Communists, and finally also Social Democrats and trade unions. Treaties with Italy and Hungary as well as solemn assurances given by Great Britain, France, and Italy on February 17, 1934, promised to preserve Austria's independence and inviolability.
This was the situation when the National Socialists began their forward push. On July 25, 1934, shortly after the bloody consolidation of the Hitler regime, Dollfuss was assassinated by Austrian Nazis while his wife and children were visiting Mussolini. But like Hitler's 1923 venture, this putsch failed. Germany denied any role in it, but without any doubt the enterprise was closely connected with Hitler's Austrian policy; the German and Austrian parties were working hand in glove. That Hitler was able to disengage himself from the abortive coup and proceed to long-range plans for 'legal' Anschluss was due in no small measure to Papen's eager mediation. Notwithstanding the murder of his closest associates and his ouster from the Vice Chancellorship, this useful henchman of the Third Reich became the special envoy of the Fuehrer, and, as a conservative Catholic, was instrumental in assuaging Vienna, thus successfully mapping out a less risky road for the absorption of Austria. And so in October, 1935, Papen was in a position to tell Hitler: For the rest, we can leave further developments to the near future. I am convinced that the changing balance of power on the European chessboard will permit us to take up actively the question of our influence on the southeastern area in the not too remote future.' 8
Yet for the moment, not only the Anschluss but also Hitler's old plan of a united front of the two dictatorships through a close alliance with Italy seemed to have been put off indefinitely. The good relations with Rome predating 1933, the result of the French-Italian rivalry in the Mediterranean, were beclouded. Mussolini responded coolly to Hitler's friendly admiration (underscored by visits of Goring and Papen to Rome) at the first official meeting of the two dictators in Venice in June, 1934. Instead of the hoped-for alliance, Hitler was faced with yet another coalition: Italy-Austria-Hungary. Not only had his Austrian policy failed for the time being, but the Third Reich also seemed to be isolated in southern and southeastern Europe. A low point was reached on the day of the Austrian Nazi coup when Italian troops massed at the Brenner Pass and the Carinthian border. And in January, 1935, when France and Italy also concluded a treaty, the ring around the Third Reich seemed closed and its future most uncertain. At this point, National Socialist propaganda was able to chalk up a fresh success: the re-incorporation of the Saar on January 13, 1935. Although the basis for this had in fact been laid by the foreign policy of Weimar, the widespread jubilation over the outcome of the plebiscite was yet additional proof of the power of propaganda in the plebiscitary legitimisation of National Socialist policy. Yet this solution of the Saar problem could neither bring the originally hoped-for improvement of German-French relations nor contribute to a loosening of the almost universal isolation of the Third Reich.
The normalisation of German-Polish relations was the only real success National Socialist foreign policy could claim in the two years of transition from the policy of negotiation to the strategy of surprise. But coming after Russia's reorientation, even this move contributed to the deterioration of the general situation. The revision and minority policies of Weimar ΓÇô however questionable it may have been with regard to Poland ΓÇô were replaced by Machiavellian expediency. Foreign policy was changed without a second thought, and the German minorities manipulated and brought in line according to the dictates of expediency (for example, in the case of Danzig). Here the political coordination and exploitation of German ethnic groups throughout the Baltic area, in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkans ΓÇô and regardless of differences in history, interests, and structure ΓÇô proved its effectiveness.
That the National Socialist policy on Poland was nothing more than a transitional measure was borne out by the propaganda and actions of the regime. The Berlin-Warsaw agreement did not furnish a basis for the smashing of the great-power alliances, and though at times it was combined with an old plan for expansion in the Ukraine, it still conflicted with Hitler's basic idea of a connected Lebensraum in which there would be no place for an independent Poland. And five years later, German Polish policy had indeed served its purpose; its temporary protective function gave way to the true purpose of National Socialist policy. Perhaps this was a success in the National Socialist sense, but measured against the existing possibilities of German foreign policy, as well as the doctrines and goals of the National Socialist policy of alliances and revisionism, the Third Reich of 1934 ΓÇô 35 seemed to have arrived at a dead end. Despite the domestic coordination and consolidation of totalitarian rule, internal repercussions were still within the realm of possibility. But all such calculations soon proved idle. Within a few months, in the spring of 1935, Europe underwent a realignment of forces, beginning with Britain's policy of appeasement and Mussolini's colonial-imperialist venture. This enabled Nazi foreign policy to break through its isolation and opened up the way to the German-Italian preparations for war.
References:
1 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Munich, 1925ΓÇô28), pp. 728, 742.
2 Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations with Adolf Hitler on his Real Aims (London, 1939), pp. 111 ff. The authenticity of this source has been questioned, however.
3 Werner Maser, Hitlers 'Mein Kampf' (Munich, 1966), pp. 159 ff.; 177 ff.
4 Notizen des Generals Liebmann aus den Befehlshaberbesprechungen 1933/35 , Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte (Munich).
5 Rudolf Nadolny, Mein Beitrag (Wiesbaden, 1955), pp. 130 f.
6 Karlheinz Niclauss, Die Sowjetunion und Hitlers Machtergreifung (Bonn, 1966), pp. 85 ff.
7 Hans Roos, Polen und Europa (Tuebingen, 1957), pp. 108 ff.
