Source: K. Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich (London, 1973), pp.51-90.
Seen from this point of view, for all its sentimental overtones, Chamberlain's exclamation of "peace in our time" gains a very realistic dimension. The day after the Munich Conference Chamberlain was able to persuade Hitler into making the declaration according to which all future problems would be settled by consultation 72 . To Chamberlain, this declaration seemed to offer a guarantee that from now on international developments would proceed along his lines. But for Hitler, the signature beneath the Anglo-German declaration of 30 September was nothing more than a cumbersome concession. In his future policy, he would pay not the least regard to this "scrap of paper". For of course, the agreement was not as Hitler had originally pictured it in the 1920s; it was not based on a British alliance. Rather, it sought to bind Hitler and commit him to the present status quo. In view of the increasing emphasis on his long-term aims and the preparations being made towards their fulfillment, it seems questionable whether Hitler was still prepared to renounce unconditionally a policy of colonial demands for the sake of Britain, as he had once (at least for a time) intended. For the wider aims and intentions which had always been latent in his policy were now emerging more and more evidently in the anti-British course he was adopting.
D. The "Advance on Prague": Towards an Analysis of German Foreign Policy
Despite all the foreboding signs threatening Great Britain, Chamberlain continued to believe quite firmly that he would succeed in bringing Hitler to the conference table. Through his Press spokesman, Steward, he therefore requested that the Germans refrain from colonial propaganda immediately upon concluding the Munich Agreement 73 . For the Prime Minister was hardly able to defend himself against the pressure of attacks made on him by the opposition in the Labour Party 74 , from supporters of the Churchill faction in his own party 75 , and from the Dominions 76 . In actual fact the Reich did impose a noticeable slackening-off in colonial propaganda. By means of the lever of colonial policy, both Chamberlain's democracy and the Fuehrer's dictatorship quite clearly did their best to influence one another. Hitler afforded Chamberlain protection on his domestic front, and in so doing repaid the British Prime Minister for the success at Munich. The Fuehrer was by no means enthusiastic about the latter, but it enabled him to avoid a coup against him by the conservative conspirators.
In the meantime, the dictator had been giving fresh insight into his plans when he held a final audience with the departing French Ambassador, Francois-Poncet, at which the Frenchman, on personal initiative, sought to bring about a Franco-German rapprochement with Hitler in order to free French policy from being tied down by the British 77 . For the present-day observer looking back on the matter, the meeting gives an insight into the very heart of Hitler's Program, even if contemporaries gleaned only very little information from it. In answer to the question posed by the French diplomat as to the Reich's colonial intentions, Hitler used the formula adopted again and again by him and von Ribbentrop - that that would only be thought about in five or six years' time 78 . It will be remembered that the Fuehrer was planning to have subjugated the Continent - including the chief target, Russia - by 1943-45 and that he arranged to have the German navy in a state of readiness at the latest by the second half of the 1940s. Taking these factors into account, we may conclude from his statement to Francois-Poncet that Hitler really was contemplating bringing up the colonial issue in the 1940s after he had attained supremacy in Europe.
In both parts of Hitler's "Dual State" 79 - in the conservative German circles as well as in the SS, where the ideology of the Nazi Utopia of the new man was being propagated - the Fuehrer's plans were being earnestly discussed and prepared for, even though they were hardly recognised as part of a set program. The seriousness of this discussion can perhaps be seen in the attitude expressed by Admiral Carls towards the Draft study of naval war strategy against Britain of September 1938 80 . His opinion may properly be taken as representative of the view held by the Naval High Command who were making plans on the scale of their Wilhelmine predecessors. More and more, their thoughts and intentions fitted in with the anti-British course, falling in line with the second phase of the Stufenplan which was now moving into sight. As Admiral Carls stated: If Germany is to gain a secure position as a world power, as the Fuehrer wishes, then, in addition to sufficient colonial possessions, it will require secure naval routes and communications and guaranteed access to the high seas .' 81
It is not known whether Admiral Carls knew in detail about Hitler's idea of creating a position as world power through the conquest of Europe (including the Soviet Union) and then ranging out overseas. He may well not have known this. But what is important is that his ideas corresponded completely with Hitler's long-term aims embracing the whole globe, and that he recommended that the navy include them in their planning 82 . Similarly, the SS leader in the Reich also spoke of intentions of world power when he addressed his "men" on 8 November 1938 83 - that is, at the same time as Hitler, in his traditional speech at the Munich Buergerbraeukeller, was praising the Wehrmacht as the vehicle for his policy of world power 84 . Himmler announced to his SS leaders that for Germany the future would bring either the Greater German Empire, or ruin. How remarkably this echoes Hitler's declaration in Mein Kampf that Germany would either become a world power or disappear completely. Himmler promised his men that the Fuehrer would create the greatest empire, which had ever been established by man. No doubt in asserting his promise, which was in line with his own racist dogma, Himmler was alluding to the idea of world domination 85 by the racially pure Aryan Reich of the future. In saying this, the head of the SS was talking as the champion of ideology of the "new," biologically superior human being, an ideology which was ultimately to become a hindrance to the policy of rational political calculation 86 . It remains uncertain as to whether or not Himmler knew Hitler's Stufenplan , which was largely orientated along traditional lines of power politics. In practice, the plan hardly bore any of the traits of a "new," revolutionary racism, even if in theory with the very last stage - the racially determined domination of the world - the plan was supposed to enter a new and extra-historical dimension. Yet this stage too quite clearly bore the character of conservative power politics in the vision it projected of the conflict between the German world power and the United States.
Nevertheless, besides the schemes and designs of the more conservative navy, of the business community and the German Foreign Office, another characteristic Nazi driving force behind foreign policy between 1933 and 1945 is evident in the ideas of Himmler and the SS on foreign policy 87 . Until 1941 these views of Himmler's hardly upset or interfered with Hitler's policy and war strategy; indeed they seemed, rather, to integrate well into his plans. Hitler's Programme, in short, appeared as the culmination of all the political aims, economic demands and ideological views existing in Germany since 1866-71 88 . For the politics of Buelow, Tirpitz and Miquel, nationalism alone had still sufficed as the means of mobilising the (petit-) bourgeois class - in their dependent relation as employees - behind the Crown and the landowners and heavy industrialists who stood in alliance behind it 89 . But now, one generation later, far stronger binding forces were needed to integrate the community. For Germany had undergone extensive historical changes, particularly after the experiences of the First World War and the inflation and world economic crisis. In view of this and the world-wide challenge presented by Communist Russia, new tools of integration were necessary to tie down and commit "the people" to the expansionist policy of its political rulers and the preservation of the social status quo connected to this policy. This latter role, the socio-political function of the Hitler dictatorship, is all too easily overlooked in the light of the development towards "full fascism" initiated after 1937 90 . The "new" slogans for integration, however, contained above all others a catchword of long-standing familiarity in Prussian-Germany history 91 - that of anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, in asserting this fact it should not be forgotten that the anti-Semitic element in Hitler's ideas had a central and thoroughly significant importance in its own "right", and did not merely serve to "ideologise" the existing social relations and class structure. On the contrary, it was precisely the realisation of this racist element which was finally to undermine the stabilisation of the existing social order which was being brought about for a time against the Dictator's will.
Hitler moved closer to this (final) racial goal of his Program in the plan he envisaged of conquering Russia as a move of shrewd political calculation. But it was from the racist point of view that Hitler, in connection with this conquest of Russia, was then to order the
extermination of "worthless" lives 92 .
From the point of view of the whole social complex, however, it should not be overlooked that Hitler's dogma also served a function of a temporary nature. Rather than announcing social reforms, the biological revolution was proclaimed and so the misery of the day was not recognised for what it was - a fault in society - but instead the "discovery" was made of a racially identifiable "enemy", the Jew, who could thus be attacked. The defects in the existing social order were attacked in that they were abolished according to the ideology. Instead the system propagated the idea of a "new" type of human being 93 . The "new Aryan" did not actually reflect upon society and its proper organisation as such, but rather, in apparent independence of it, set about solving all problems on the basis of racial superiority, by making the world subject to his victorious and conquering sword. Here lay the connection between the Weltanschauung of the Germanic conqueror - serving the socially-motivated function in domestic politics of preserving the status quo - and Hitler's aggressive expansionist program. The three components - the policy of the Fuehrer, the social structure of the Third Reich and the ideology maintained particularly by the SS - still stood as a trio, each playing a harmonious variation on the theme of expansion. For however Carls and Himmler might have understood their notions of world power - regarding it from the conservative viewpoint of traditional power politics or the racist aspect of Nazi plans for world conquest - both advocated that the political goals of the Reich ought to be sought beyond its own frontiers - just as Hitler's Program did. As a result, the alternative course of non-aggressive imperialism through economic expansion increasingly lost ground as a further option for foreign policy.
But if we consider the whole range of attitudes on foreign policy from the point of view of the leading statesmen of the day - the foreign aims of Hitler, his Foreign Office, the armed forces and the economic community, the official propaganda as well as the information circulating unofficially - and if we put ourselves in the position of Neville Chamberlain, then we can see that it was precisely this apparent wide range of opinion which must time and again have provided grounds for his believing that it would still be possible to get the Germans to the conference table to discuss the maintenance of world peace after all. And yet at the same time, particularly in Himmler's speech for example, the racist ideas, ideological dressing and camouflaging of social conditions which were cropping up, reveal dimensions which pushed the possibility of a rational solution along the lines of Chamberlain's policy into the far distance. In Germany at this time, political statements and preparations were already centring not only on the first, but also on the second stage of Hitler's Program. Meanwhile, the British Prime Minister was unerringly pursuing his own political conception. This situation therefore seems a good point at which to attempt a diagnosis of German foreign policy during the "Hitler era". For now, in its "attack on Prague", Germany was for the first time exceeding the boundaries of its so-called policy of revision. The liberal-imperialist alternative of peaceful economic expansion had been pushed out to the margins of "high-level politics", where now and again it flared up briefly. Hitler's policy now entered upon a war course hostile to Britain, even if it gambled on British neutrality. But to the foreign observer, it seemed like business as usual; diplomatic and economic activities went on as normal, concealing the actual aim of expansion.
Analogous to the "dual state" model, explaining the domestic politics of the Third Reich, it is this very contradiction between the "madness" on the exterior and the inner "method" and pattern which seems to offer a standpoint from which to analyse the role of the Third Reich within the "dying European diplomatic system". The conservative moderate-right associates of Hitler manning the government offices in the "Third Reich" helped, nolens volens , to conceal the true policy of the Fuehrer. The diplomatic activities of a well-trained, trustworthy and distinguished body of career diplomats went on apparently undisturbed against the background of a planned Utopia of world conquest. Likewise, on the economic level, the IG-Farben Works 94 , paying due regard to the topic of colonies which moved increasingly to the forefront in the latter half of the 1930s, were planning the establishment of a large sales organisation in Africa. In so doing, they sought, in the course of peaceful economic expansionism, to profit from the envisaged colonial policy, for which the relevant government departments made loud propaganda - even though it was not yet an immediate objective for Hitler. And this they did without troubling themselves about the power system of the Third Reich. On the whole, in the field of domestic institutions and representatives traditionally concerned with them continued without hindrance. They seemed to be existing in apparent independence against a background provided by the totalitarian Program 95 . Yet objectively they were in fact dependent on it, basing their activities on its existence, thereby making possible its realisation and continued existence.
To the totalitarian principle of Hitler's foreign policy there was a corresponding normal side of the coin - the dealings, plans and activities of the economy, the diplomatic corps and the armed forces. In return for this camouflaging service done often unconsciously and increasingly unwillingly by the captains of industry, the diplomatic corps and the armed forces, there was perhaps just one favour, which they may have thought the regime had done for them. At least according to the view of a wide circle of the bourgeoisie, it was only thanks to the extreme exertions of the totalitarian Nazis in 1933 that the social order guaranteeing their existence could be maintained through the establishment of a political system and the foreign policy inherent in it, to which the same classes were now themselves subjugated. The Weltanschauung of National Socialism was aligned to a policy of conquest out of economic but above all social necessities. According to Hitler's thinking inherent parts of this ideology were the integrating forces of anti-Semitism, anti-Bolshevism and the conquest of Lebensraum . Together they formed part of that trio of power politics, economics and ideology which was the absolutely decisive model accounting for the nature of foreign policy. These ideological elements were appealed to far more emphatically than had been the case in the Wilhelmine epoch, with its slogans of nationalism and anti-Semitism. Indeed, this was so much so that in the Third Reich it appeared as if the remedies originally prescribed to safeguard its existence would transform German society of the future into a new form - in fact into a different essence, if we remember the final racist aim of breeding a "pure race" of a Germanic elite 96 . The answer the world gave to the German provocation, the coming of war, was the outcome of this policy and the successful countering of the totalitarian menace it represented. In Germany therefore, the traditional form of a policy of world power dominated until 1945, which, born of German society, and raised by Hitler to a program of foreign policy, had for its part helped to stabilise German bourgeois society in principle and maintain it for a long time.
And in reality Hitler's policy and plans did appear more and more traditional - more Wilhelmine, so to speak. It was not that the Fuehrer adhered to a wide-ranging and indiscriminate Pan-German world policy, nor that he translated into foreign aims all the demands and interests voiced by German society, putting them into a political compromise after the fashion of Bethmann Hollweg in the "September Program" of 1914 97 . Hitler acted far more according to a fixed concept of foreign policy such as Buelow, Tirpitz and Wilhelm II had resolutely followed 98 from 1897 to the collapse of their ambitious plans for the Fleet - though they had admittedly put greater emphasis on the overseas colonial aspect of their policy - and such as the Third Supreme Command under Ludendorff had again sought to carry out in the First World War. For the Supreme Command in the First World War had already drawn up and put into practice a Stufenplan anticipating Hitler's conceptions with its initial continental priorities and subsequent territorial annexations overseas 99 . Looking back, Hitler's Program was only apparently independent of motivations within German society; in fact it emerges as an expression of the sum of demands and wishes of that society, ordered into a political and military strategy by the Dictator. Thus the continental and overseas demands of Hitler's Programme place it completely within a particular tradition of power politics such as is observable in Prussian-German history since the days of Bismarck 100 .
References:
72. ADAP , D, IV, No. 247, pp. 251 ff.
73.See for details K. Hildebrand, Deutschland, die Weltmaechte und das Kolonialproblem , op. cit., p. 23 f.
74.On the attitude of the Labour Party towards Nazi Germany see the study still in preparation by S. Wichert (Belfast), Englands Linke und das Kolonialproblem , op. cit., p. 23 f.
75.On the response of the Churchill circle to Germany cf. the study by D. Aigner, Das Ringen um England. Das deutschΓÇôbritische Verhaeltnis. Die oeffentliche Meinung 1933ΓÇô1939. Tragoedie zweier Voelker , Munich/Esslingen, 1969. esp. pp. 151 ff.
76.See the essay by D. C. Watt, Der Einfluss der Dominions auf die britische Aussenpolitik von Muenchen 1938', in: VfZg 8 (1960), pp. 64 ff., on the influence of the Dominions on British policy; and also idem, South African attempts to Mediate Between Britain and Germany 1935ΓÇô1938', in K. Bourne and D. C. Watts (eds.), Studies in International History, Essays in Honour of Professor W. N. Medlicott , London, 1967, pp. 402 ff., as well as the dissertation in progress by R. Tamchina (Hamburg) on the relations between Great Britain and the Dominions during the era of the policy of appeasement.
77.On this attempt, and the GermanΓÇôFrench agreement of 6 December 1938, cf. E. Scheler, Die politischen Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich zur Zeit der aktiven Aussenpolitik Hitlers, Ende 1937 bis zum Kriegsausbruch , Diss. Frankfurt/M., 1962.
78.See Schmokel, Dream , esp. pp. 121 ff.
79.This concept borrowed from Fraenkel (E. Fraenkel, The Dual State. A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship , London/New York/Toronto, 1941) is used here in the sense defined briefly by Hillgruber: Without doubt a complete triumph for Hitler and a consequently total realisation of his Programme, would have amounted to a "revolution" in the sense of a violent social upheaval. For according to Hitler's racist ideological principles the total re-shaping of Europe, which he intended would also have involved doing away with the old ruling class in Germany. But in fact the development got stuck half-way. So it was that "only" a seemingly chaotic "dual state" came about, in which the old and newly forming ruling groups existed side by side with only partial interfusion.' Hillgruber, Kontinuitaet , p. 24.
82.See Duelffer, Weimar, Hitler und Marine , loc. cit. In this connection compare also the communication of Raeder to Keitel of 7 November 1938, on the build-up of the fleet'. Akte M/55/34 of the Bundesarchiv/Militaerarchiv Freiburg. The author's thanks to Dr J. Duelffer for drawing attention to this document.
83.Bundesarchiv Koblenz, NS 19, Himmler-Reden 15, quoted by: H. Booms, Der Ursprung des Zweiten WeltkriegesΓÇôRevision oder Expansion', in: Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 16 (1965), p. 353.
84. VB of 10 November 1938.
85.See also particularly Moltmann, Weltherrschaftsideen Hitlers , loc. cit.
86.See Moltmann, Weltherrschaftsideen Hitlers .
87.See Hillgruber, Kontinuitaet , pp. 24 ff.
88.For a fuller account cf. the concluding remarks of this work. Reference may here be made to the studies by E. Kehr, Der Primat der Innenpolitik , edited by H.-U. Wehler, Berlin, 2nd ed. 1970, and H. Herzfeld, J. v. Miquel, 2 vols., Detmold, 1938.
89.See J. C. G. Roehl, Germany without Bismarck, The Crisis of Government in the Second Reich 1890ΓÇô1900 , London, 1967, esp. pp. 224 ff.
90.Cf. Hildebrand, Der Fall Hitler , p. 381 f. on the continuity between Bismarck and Hitler in foreign policy which also served a domestic function.
91.See primarily H. J. Puhle, Agrarische Interessenpolitik und preussischer Konservatismus im wilhelminischen Reich (1893ΓÇô1914) , Hannover, 1966, esp. pp. 111 ff.
91.See above all the reflections of A. Hillgruber, Die "Endloesung" und das deutsche Ostimperium als Kernstueck des rassenideologischen "Programms" des Nationalsozialismus', in VfZg 1972, pp. 133 ff.
93.As is well known, the breeding' of a new' race of men was prepared for in the SS and Hitler-Youth ideology, the measures' introduced in the war as part of the policy of occupation' (the extermination of Jews and those of inferior race'; the Germanisation' of racial groups' recognised as of high enough worth) should make clear that the vision of the biological revolution' which seemed so utopian' by no means lay in the distant future. (See H. Hoehne, Der Orden mit dem Totenkopf , 1967; A. Dallin, Deutsche Herrschaft in Russland 1941ΓÇô1945. Eine Studie ueber Besatzungspolitik 1939ΓÇô1945 , Stuttgart, 1961, and K. Kwiet, Reichskommissariat Niederlande. Versuch und Scheitern nationalsozialistischer Neuordnung , Stuttgart, 1968.) The man-in-the-street', the lower middle class, was promoted to the rank of superman' through the vehicle of ideology. The intoxication feeling of racial superiority made him forget any thought about rebelling against the class structure. However, in the war, with the race policy moving beyond its function of stabilising the system and now pressing for its own realisation, the common man did contribute to bringing about this goal as a soldier or member of the SS. Now in fact wanting to be promoted to the position of master', he turned into a criminal and was condemned as such after the war.
94.Staatliches Archivlager Goettingen, Nuernberger Prozessmaterial, NIΓÇô6078: Minutes of the 16th session of the trade committee, 11.11.1938.
95.On the sense and nonsense of the concept of totalitarianism see Hildebrand, Stufen der Totalitarismus-Forschung', in: PVS 9 (1968), pp. 397 ff.
96.See in this connection the concluding remarks.
97.On the interpretation of this document, which has given rise to much historical controversy, cf. primarily E. Zechlin, Deutschland zwischen Kabinettskrieg und Wirtschaftskrieg. Politik und Kriegfuehrung in den ersten Monaten des Weltkrieges 1914', in: HZ 199 (1964), pp. 347 ff.
98.See V. R. Berghahn , Der Tirpitz-Plan , loc. cit.
99.See p. 7 of this work.
100.See the important works by Boehme, Deutschlands Weg , loc. cit. and Wehler, Bismarck , loc. cit. on the questions which were already becoming vital under Bismarck, concerning the creation of an area of economic expansion in central Europe and overseas expansion.
