Hitler by A. N. Wilson

Author:A. N. Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

SEVEN

The Road to War

In January 1936, Hitler summoned all his Gauleiters and Reichsleiters to a meeting. Disputes had arisen among them. There was disgruntlement among the old Brownshirt ranks that National Socialism had caved in to the establishment. As Hitler turned his eyes abroad and began to think about ways of realizing his nationalist dreams, the last thing he wanted was any disunity among the party faithful. His speech that January was full of emotion, ending with the promise that if they did not give him what he wanted, he would commit suicide. The ever-faithful Hess, when Hitler’s extraordinary stream of self-pitying words came to a conclusion, assured the Leader that they would follow him wherever he led.

What Hitler had demanded was that the party leadership should be reorganized into a single entity, with himself as the absolute leader. He would likewise ask the leaders of the armed forces to make him their supreme war leader. The successes of the first three years in power had given him a hunger for absolute power which was inexhaustible.

He cheered up the Gauleiters and Reichsleiters by telling them that his plans for expansion could now begin. On 7 March three German battalions occupied the demilitarized Rhineland zone, that is all territory west of the Rhine and a thirty-mile strip east of the river taking in Cologne, Düsseldorf and Bonn. Far from being met by French tanks, as was feared, they were greeted by cheering crowds. Priests waving thuribles escorted the troops into their citadels.

It had been a bold gamble on Hitler’s part. At this stage, Hitler had spoken a lot about rearmament but he was not yet in a position to fight a war with France. If the French chose to retaliate, Germany would have been forced into the humiliation of admitting that they were not ready for war. The British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, expressed ‘regret’ over the move. The French did not act. Hitler had called their bluff.

In his domestic policy, Hitler had achieved what he claimed to have been a ‘bloodless revolution’. It had certainly been a good deal less bloody than the French or the Russian revolutions, even if the end result was a police state in which Thomas Mann’s novels were publicly burned, neighbours were encouraged to snoop upon one another and report suspected Jews or Communists to the secret police, and more and more absolute power was being handed to the leadership of one mentally unbalanced fanatic.

The stage was now set for a period of European history in which Hitler would attempt to apply the same good luck to foreign policy. Having brought about a Nazi revolution with the loss of only a few hundred lives, he would proceed, as he hoped, to conquer Europe by means of bluff, threat, histrionic speeches and big military displays.

Historians, economists and students of Hitler’s remarkable personality debate a number of issues. One is whether the success of his economic and political revolution at home had, from the very beginning, depended

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