Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939 (93 page)

In January 1936, Mussolini made the decisive advance. In conversation with Ulrich von Hassell he suggested “fundamentally improving German–Italian relations and settling the one quarrel, the Austrian issue.” Austria had to remain nominally independent, the Italian leader insisted, but it could become a “virtual satellite of Germany.” Mussolini also declared that the Stresa Front was “dead once and for all,” which meant that Italy would not act in solidarity with France and Britain in case of future German treaty violations and would not take part in any sanctions against Nazi Germany.
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These assurances were a direct encouragement for Hitler to prepare his next foreign-policy coup: the remilitarisation of the left bank of the Rhine River, which was forbidden by the treaties of Versailles and Locarno.

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Hitler had long been toying with the idea of a surprise operation. On 20 January 1936, he informed his entourage over lunch at the Chancellery of his determination “to go after a sudden solution to the question of the [demilitarised] Rhineland zone,” although not at the moment “so as not to give the others the opportunity to get out of the Abyssinian conflict.”
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Only one month later, however, Hitler seems to have made up his mind. He told Hassell, whom he received in his private Munich apartment on 14 February, of his conviction that “the right moment psychologically” had come for remilitarising the Rhineland. Originally he had planned to launch the operation in early 1937, but the propitious circumstances demanded immediate action. The Soviet Union, he said, “was only concerned with maintaining calm on its western border, England was in bad shape militarily and seriously burdened with other problems, and France was domestically divided.” Hitler predicted that “no military action would be forthcoming after such a step by Germany—at the most there would economic sanctions, and these had become unpopular among the vassals of the great powers, who often served as punching bags.”
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Hassell came away with the impression that Hitler was “more than 50 per cent decided.” But as he confided to his diary, the ambassador highly doubted “that it was worth the risk to bring forward an event which would probably happen in one or two years anyway.”
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Hassell shared his doubts not only with Konstantin von Neurath, but several German military leaders. The army command had long regarded the remilitarisation of the Rhineland as necessary, but, as Werner von Fritsch told Hitler on 12 February, it should be done “without running any risk that the issue would lead to war.”
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In a further conference with Hassell, Neurath and Ribbentrop at midday on 19 February in the Chancellery, Hitler emphasised that in the long term “passivity could not be a policy” and that going on the offensive “was here, too, the better strategy.” Ribbentrop hastened to agree, while Hassell and Neurath were apparently very cautious about expressing their doubts. Hitler also explained why he thought he had to hurry. On 11 February, the French government had passed on a mutual defence treaty agreed with the Soviet Union the previous year to the French parliament for ratification. The treaty, which was also controversial in France, offered the perfect pretext for the planned operation. “We should use the pact with the Russians as an excuse,” Hassell summarised Hitler’s argument. In order to deny the other side the chance to “brand our operation as an attack,” he wanted to combine the remilitarisation of the Rhineland with a seemingly broad package of offers, including the establishment of a demilitarised zone on both sides of the Rhine, a guarantee of the territorial integrity of the Netherlands and Belgium, a three-powers aerial warfare treaty and a Franco-German non-aggression pact.
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Hitler’s desire to proceed with the remilitarisation was also motivated by domestic issues. According to Security Service reports, the public mood had been worsening since the autumn of 1935. Parts of the populace were unhappy about Nazi attacks on the Churches and especially with the one-sided prioritisation of the arms build-up at the expense of private consumers. Food imports were cut in favour of raw materials imports, which was leading to shortages. Hitler needed a spectacular foreign-policy success to distract attention from these domestic shortcomings. “He senses a decline in popular approval of the regime,” Neurath speculated in conversation with Hassell, “and is seeking a national cause to fire up the masses again, to stage the usual elections with a popular referendum, or one of the two, and then we get them on side again.”
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But as always when faced with major decisions, Hitler hesitated to take the final plunge. “He’s still brooding,” Goebbels noted on 21 February. “Should he remilitarise the Rhineland? Difficult question…The Führer is about to forge ahead. He thinks and ponders, and then suddenly he acts.”
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On 28 February, the day after the lower chamber of the French parliament ratified the treaty with the Soviet Union, Hitler still appeared “undecided.” During an overnight train journey to Munich on 28–29 February, Goebbels advised him to wait at least until the upper house of the French parliament had approved the deal. “Then we should grab the bull by the horns,” Goebbels wrote. “A difficult and decisive choice faces us.”
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Hitler finally made up his mind for good on 1 March. That noon, he visited Goebbels in his Munich hotel and once again ran through his reasoning. “He’s now completely determined,” Goebbels noted. “His face projected calm and resolve. Once again a critical moment has come that calls for action. The world belongs to the bold! He who dares nothing, gains nothing.”
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Hitler informed the Wehrmacht leadership about his decision the following day. As in March 1935, the operation was scheduled for a weekend. On Saturday 7 March, the Reichstag was to be convened for a meeting at which Hitler would announce the remilitarisation. Then the Reichstag would be dissolved, and fresh elections called for 29 March. Preparations were to be kept top secret to ensure the operation was a surprise. In order not to raise suspicions, Reichstag deputies would be summoned to Berlin for a “social evening.” Troop deployments were to be disguised by marches of the SA and the German Labour Front. “Everything must proceed with lightning speed,” Goebbels wrote.
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On 4 March, as Hitler began dictating his address to the Reichstag, voices of warning issued from the Foreign Ministry—much to Goebbels’s irritation. “From all sides, scaredy-cats are appearing disguised as cautioners,” the propaganda minister noted. “Especially in the Foreign Ministry they exist in large clumps. They are incapable of any sort of bold decision.”
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In any case, once Hitler had made up his mind there was no changing it. On the evening of 6 March, he informed his cabinet about the operation for the first time. The Franco–Soviet mutual defence pact, he told his ministers, represented “an obvious violation of the Treaty of Locarno,” and he had therefore decided “to occupy the demilitarised zone on the Rhine once more with German troops.” Hitler added: “All preparations for this have been made. The German troops are already on the march.”
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“Everyone was initially shocked,” Goebbels noted. “But there’s no turning back.”
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The following morning, German troops moved into the Rhineland to the cheers of residents of the region. At 10 a.m., Neurath sent the diplomatic representatives of France, Britain, Italy and Belgium a memorandum announcing the abrogation of the Treaty of Locarno after the Franco–Soviet mutual defence pact and calling for negotiations to create a demilitarised zone on both sides of Germany’s western border, a twenty-five-year non-aggression pact between Germany and France and Belgium, and a treaty concerning aerial warfare. The German government also signalled its willingness to rejoin the League of Nations. In his memoirs, François-Poncet insightfully characterised Hitler’s
modus operandi
as “hitting his opponent in the face while at the same time saying ‘What I suggest is peace.’ ”
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There was a feverish atmosphere in the Reichstag as Hitler approached the microphone around 12 a.m. William Shirer noticed that Reichswehr Minister von Blomberg looked pale as a ghost and kept nervously drumming his fingers on the armrest of his chair.
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The only order of business on the agenda was the “receipt of a declaration by the Reich government.” Hitler began with a series of digressive tirades about the unfairness of the Treaty of Versailles and its allegedly crass denial of equal status to Germany. Only towards the end of the speech did he raise his actual point. By concluding a mutual defence treaty with the Soviets, France had violated the spirit of the Treaty of Locarno so that Germany no longer felt bound by the agreement. He read out the memorandum that Neurath had sent to the ambassadors of signatory states and declared to frenetic applause: “In the interest of the most basic right of a people to secure its borders and maintain its ability to defend itself, the government of the German Reich has today restored its full and unlimited sovereignty in the demilitarised zone of the Rhineland.”
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More than 20,000 troops had crossed the Rhine, but only 3,000 penetrated further inland. They were under strict orders to retreat if attacked by French troops. But the French general staff was hesitant to launch such an attack, believing that their troops were no match for the Wehrmacht. In reality, a single French division would have sufficed to thwart Hitler’s gambit. The Führer was well aware of the risk he was taking and anxiously awaited the first responses to the operation. According to Schmidt and other sources, Hitler later described the forty-eight hours after German troops reoccupied the Rhineland as the tensest period of his life. “If the French had invaded the Rhineland,” Hitler said, “we would have had to retreat in humiliation and shame since the military forces at our disposal would not at all have been equal to even moderate resistance.”
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From his exile in Küstnacht, Switzerland, Thomas Mann offered “fervent prayers” to heaven that someone “finally teach this monster a lesson that will finally dampen the foreign-policy impertinence of his worshippers.”
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But Hitler was once again successful with his tactic of simultaneously appearing conciliatory and presenting adversaries with faits accomplis. It was already clear by the evening of 7 March that protests would once more be the only response of the Western powers. “France wants to summon the League of Nations council—let it,” Goebbels crowed. “It’s not going to do anything. That’s the main thing. Everything else does not matter…We’re all swimming in glee. What a day!…The Führer is beaming…We’ve regained sovereignty over our own country.”
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The next day, the regime celebrated Heroes’ Memorial Day, as it had the previous year. Shirer noted that the faces of Hitler, Goebbels and Blomberg were “all smiles” as they took their place in the royal box at the State Opera House.
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On 19 March, the council of the League of Nations met in London to condemn the German treaty violation. But this was an empty gesture, particularly as Anthony Eden said in his speech to the council that Germany’s illegal behaviour represented “no threat to peace” and did not call for a counterstrike since French security was not affected.
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Goebbels commented laconically: “In London we were unanimously taken to task. That was expected. Decisive is what comes next.”
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Not much, was the answer, aside from some empty diplomatic talk that changed nothing. Once again Hitler had led the Western powers around by the nose without any repercussions. France and Britain’s refusal to punish a flagrant breach of contract undermined international confidence in their willingness to defend Germany’s smaller neighbours in case of aggression and meant a serious loss of face for the League of Nations.

In Germany the remilitarisation of the Rhineland had initially occasioned fears of a new military escalation. Yet as soon as people realised that the West again would do nothing but issue verbal protests, Germany was swept by a wave of national euphoria. Admiration for Hitler’s daring was mixed with relief that the enterprise had had a happy ending. “Hitler succeeds at everything, people say,” reported Social Democratic observers. “Not entirely buried hopes that the regime might be toppled from outside Germany have once more been deeply disappointed.”
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Wherever the Führer appeared during the “election campaign” in the second half of March, he was venerated by the masses. His most triumphant appearance was at the concluding rally in Cologne on 28 March. The official results of the “election” gave Hitler’s party list 98.8 per cent of the vote. Even if the election was probably manipulated to some degree, this was an astonishing vote of confidence for Hitler and his foreign policy. “Triumph upon triumph,” gloated Goebbels. “We did not dare hope for this in our wildest dreams. We were all stunned. The Führer was very still and said nothing. He only laid his hand on my shoulder. There were tears in his eyes.”
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