A World at Arms (183 page)

The same thing is true for much of the British withholding of documents. Now that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are both deceased, they are only made to look even sillier and more dangerous than they were by the continued closure of whole files, and individual items from other files, to protect them. The same thing is true for the bulk of intelligence records still closed from the 1930s as well as the war years; surely there is no need to cover events now from scrutiny either by a long-since defeated Axis or a vanished Soviet Union. Against what and whom are the secrets of World War II being protected now?

There has been a steady trend toward more open records in Germany and Italy and toward more closed records in Japan. Just as the one is encouraging, the other is discouraging and can only arouse, and should only arouse, concern. The major issue in the area of archives opening is, however, in the former German Democratic Republic, the states of the former Soviet block, and in the former Soviet Union. The East German archives are now under the control of the German Federal Archive, and although there is undoubtedly going to be a messy period of transition, one can expect that eventually the more liberal and sensible practices of the post-war German archivists will prevail. One of the many reasons why it was fortunate, not unfortunate, that the East German state collapsed as swiftly as it did was that a longer period of transition would undoubtedly have led to a vastly greater “disappearance” of records, of which there appears to have been a good deal anyway. In the former satellite states, some of which had begun to be more liberal in their access policies even before the collapse of the old regime, the major problem is likely to be a lack of resources, not a lack of will. There, as in the former Soviet Union, the problem of deteriorating paper and the need for microfilming is likely to make the need for open access especially acute: if steps are not taken soon, it may be simply too late. The archives of the former satellites and the former Soviet Union contain not only enormous quantities of their own records, records which have
in the past not been made accessible to scholars, but also extensive collections of papers captured during and at the end of World War II. Here too time is of the essence.

The very volume of archives from World War II, both those available and those either still closed or inaccessible until quite recently, guarantees that there will be new perspectives and interpretations. There will be no lack of issues to probe and prior interpretations to review. World War II will justifiably continue to excite the interest of both historians and the public.

^a
For a more extended discussion of this issue, see Gerhard L. Weinberg, “The End of Ranke’s History?”
Syracuse Scholar
9, No. 1 (1988), 51–59.

NOTES

I: FROM ONE WAR TO ANOTHER

1
See Gerhard L. Weinberg, “The Defeat of Germany in 1918 and the European Balance of Power,”
Central European History
2 (1969), 250–51.

2
A convenient summary in Fritz Fischer,
Germany’s Aims in the First World War
(New York: Norton, 1967).

3
For a summary of the relevant treaties, including the role of Japan, see
FRUS, The Paris Peace Conference 1919
, 13 (Washington: GPO, 1947), pp. 237–41; on Japan’s activities in practice, see the examples cited in Gerhard L. Weinberg,
The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe,
1933–36 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1970) (hereafter cited as
Foreign Policy
1933–36), p. 85 n. 138.

4
Denis Mack Smith,
Mussolini’s Roman Empire
(New York: Viking, 1976); MacGregor Knox,
Mussolini Unleashed 1931–1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War
(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), chap. I.

5
Some of the recent literature,
e.g.
Robert J. Young,
In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning 1933–1940
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978), and Jeffery A. Gunsburg,
Divided and Conquered: The French High Command and the Defeat of the West, 1940
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), takes a more charitable view of French leaders. The evidence adduced is interesting, but I am not convinced.

6
See Stephen A. Schuker,
The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis
of 1924
and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1976).

7
Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1933–36, chap. I, provides a brief summary with evidence from the pre-1933 period.

8
Rudolf Hess to Walter Hewel, March 30, 1927, published in Gerhard L. Weinberg (ed.), “National Socialist Organization and Foreign Policy Aims in 1927,”
JMH
36 (1964), 428–33.

9
Werner Jochmann (ed.),
Im Kampf um die Macht: Hitlers Rede vor dem Hamburger
Nationalklub von 1919 (Frankfurt/M: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1960), p. 103.

10
The classic work on the subject remains Karl D. Bracher, Wolfgang Saur and Gerhard Schulz,
Die Nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung
(Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1952). Recent scholarship is summarized in the lectures sponsored by the Berlin Historical Commission, Wolfgang Treue and Jürgen Schmädeke (eds.),
Deutschland 1933:
Machtzerfall der Demokratie und Nationalsozialistische “Machtergreifung”; (Berlin: Colloquium, 1984).

11
This author’s argument in
Foreign Policy 1933–36
that the coup in Austria in July 1934 was authorized from Berlin is now conclusively supported by evidence on Hitler’s prior
knowledge of the date and plans of the conspirators; see the excerpts from the memoirs of General Wilhelm Adam published in Wolfgang Benz (ed.),
Miscellanea: Festschrift für
of General Wilhelm Adam published in Wolfgang Benz (ed.),
Miscellanea: Festschrift für Helmut Krausnick
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), pp. 47–48.

12
The best treatment of the subject is Christopher Thorne,
The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931–1933
(New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973).

13
See John McVickar Haight, Jr.,
American Aid to France, 1938–1940
(New York: Atheneum, 1970).

14
Gerhard L. Weinberg,
The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Starting World War II, 1937–1939
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980) (hereafter cited as
Foreign Policy 1937–39
), p. 578 n 178, and p. 608.

15
See document No. 333 of June 19, 1939, in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R.,
Soviet Peace Efforts on the Eve of World War II (September
1938
-August
1939):
Documents and Records,
2 vols. (Moscow: Novosti, 1973): cf. Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–39, pp. 604–5.

16
Sidney Aster, 1939:
The Making of the Second World War
(London: Deutsch, 1973), p. 317; see also Jacob B. Hoptner,
Yugoslavia in Crisis,
1934–1941 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1962), p. 125 n 41; Gordon Brook-Shepherd,
The Storm Petrels: The Flight of the First Soviet Defectors
(New York: Ballantine, 1982), pp. 155–61.

17
On earlier efforts by Stalin to arrange an agreement with Germany, see Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1933–36, pp. 82, 220–23, 310–12;
Foreign Policy
1937–39, pp. 214–15.

18
Cripps to Halifax, 16 July 1940, PRO, FO 371/24846, f. 10, N 6526/30/38. Internally the Soviet government expressed itself more directly. An instruction of the Soviet Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to the Ambassador in Tokyo of July 1, 1940, contains the sentence: “The conclusion of our agreement with Germany was dictated by the need for a war in Europe.” Full text in James W. Morley (ed.),
The Fateful Choice: Japan’s Advance into Southeast Asia
(New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1980), pp. 311–12.

19
The text of the secret protocol has been published repeatedly; see
ADAP,
D, 7, No. 229. After years of pretence to the contrary, the accuracy of this text has now been acknowledged by the Soviet government.

20
Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–39, p. 456.

21
Ibid., chaps. 3 and 4: the evidence is summarized in Gerhard L. Weinberg, “Hitler and England, 1933–1945: Pretence and Reality,”
German Studies Review
8 (1985), 299–309.

22
The evidence is cited in Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–39, pp. 462–63.

23
Ibid., chap. 12.

24
The evidence on Hitler’s speech of November 10, 1938, to several hundred German journalists on this subject is summarized in ibid., pp. 515–16.

25
The early history of the JU-88 can best be followed in Edward L. Homze,
Arming the Luftwaffe: The Reich Air Ministry and the German Aircraft Industry,
1919–39 (Lincoln, Neb.: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1976). It is now clear that German air force intelligence was much too optimistic in its May 1939 assessment of German and British air strengths and that the famous demonstration of new models for Hitler at Rechlin in July 1939 was deliberately misleading and designed by the German air force to try to reduce the priority accorded to the navy. See Horst Boog,
Die deutsche Luftwaffenführung 1935–1945: Führungsprobleme–Spitzengliederung–Generalstabsausbildung
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1982), pp. 91–92.

26
Some of the extensive evidence is cited in Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–39, p. 432 n 231; p. 663 n 10.

27
Ibid., pp. 306–7, 389–90.

28
Ibid., pp. 484–86. According to the memoirs of Juozas Urbsys, the last pre-war Lithuanian Foreign Minister, published in 1988, the Lithuanian and Soviet governments had arrived at a gentlemen’s agreement to inform each other about their respective moves in
international affairs; see Klaus Hildebrand
et al.
(eds.), 1939:
An der Schwelle zum Weltkrieg
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990), p. 337.

29
Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–39, pp. 494–97.

30
Gerhard L. Weinberg (ed.), “Die geheimen Abkommen zum Antikominternpakt,”
VjZ
2 (1954), 193–201.

31
The author has dealt with this issue in “National Style in Diplomacy: Germany,” in Erich Angermann and Marie-Luise Frings (eds.),
Oceans Apart? Comparing Germany and the United States
(Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), p. 150.

32
Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–39, pp. 558–62.

33
A summary of the talk, with citations to the evidence, in ibid., pp. 610–12. The context makes it obvious that the
Schweinehund
Hitler had in mind was Neville Chamberlain. It has recently become known that a report on this talk was apparently being shown around in German army circles; the German general attached to the puppet government of Croatia mentions reading the text in his diary for August 1942. See Peter Broucek (ed.),
Ein General im Zwielicht,
3 vols. (Vienna: Bohlau, 1988), 3: 135.

34
Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–39, pp. 610–12 and 643 n 80.

35
Ibid., chap. 14.

36
Ibid., pp. 428–29, esp. n 219.

37
On this, see Norman H. Gibbs,
Grand Strategy,
(London: HMSO, 1976), I, chap. 13.

38
Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–39, p. 643 n 78. Hitler had not the slightest idea of the critical role Canada could and would play in any new war and paid no attention to this warning.

39
Aster, 1939, pp. 314–19. The American documents reflecting this leak were published in
FRUS,
1939, Vol. 1 (Washington: GPO, 1956). The two sides of the story may be found in the relevant memoirs: Charles E. Bohlen,
Witness to History,
1929–1969 (New York: Norton, 1973), chap. 5; and Hans von Herwarth, Zwischen Hitler und Stalin: Erlebte Zeitgeschichte, 1931–1945 (Frankfurt/M: Propy Hien, 1982), pp. 175ff.

40
See Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–39, p. 638.

41
Franz Halder,
Kriegstagebuch,
ed. by Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1962), August 30, 1939.

42
Weinberg,
Foreign Policy
1937–39, pp. 644–45.

43
The entry in the diary of German State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker concludes for the day with: “So now we again face war. R.[ibbentrop] goes home beaming.” (Damit stehen wir von Neuem vor dem Krieg. R. geht strahlend nach Hause.) Leonidas Hill (ed.),
Die Weizsäcker-Papiere, 1933–1950
(Frankfurt/M: Propyläen, 1974), p. 162.

44
For the text of Hitler’s speech, see Max Domarus (ed.),
Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen,
1932–1945 (Neustadt a.d. Aisch: Verlagsdruckerei Schmidt, 1962), 2: 1311–18.

45
A study of “Hitlers Osterlass vom 1. Februar 1939” by Andrzej Brozak is in Joachim Hutter
et al.
(eds.),
Tradition und Neubeginn: Internationale Forschungen zur Deutschen Geschichte im
20.
Jahrhundert
(Cologne: Heymann, 1975), pp. 367–76.

46
ADAP,
0, 7, No. 433.

47
Sven Hedin,
Ohne Auftrag in Berlin
(Tübingen: Internationaler Universitäts-Verlag, 1950), pp. 51-56. The contemporary German record of this conversation contains the same sentiment phrased “Czechoslovakia could not be discussed.”
ADAP,
0, 8, No. 263.

48
Birger Dahlerus,
Der letzte Versuch
(Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagsgesellschaft, 1948), pp. 125-26. For British Foreign Office comments on the planned and then realized publication of this book, see PRO, C 13562/11874/9, FO 371/39178; C 1640/45/18, FO 371/46784; C 6002/45/18, FO 371/46787.

49
Documents on British Foreign Policy
1919–1939, Series 3, Vol. 7, No. 604.