The Barque of Saviors by Russell Drumm

Author:Russell Drumm [Drumm, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War II, Naval, Maritime History & Piracy
ISBN: 9780547799810
Google: NV2qz1dV5cQC
Publisher: HMH
Published: 2001-11-16T01:06:23+00:00

9

The Fall Of Neumann

THE CONSTRUCTION and fitting-out costs of Horst Wessel and her sister ship Albert Leo Schlageter were included in the Kriegsmarine’s overall budget for 1935. In addition to the resources needed for the training of officers to serve in Hitler’s new, secretly growing navy, the budget covered several warships. On May 21 of that year Hitler created the Defense Law, which officially authorized Hjalmar Schacht, minister of economics, to direct preparations for war, which Schacht had actually begun the year before. In fact, beginning in 1934, the sole basis of Germany’s economic recovery was Wiederaufrüstung, rearmament. “The accomplishment of the armament program with speed and in quantity is the problem of German politics; everything else therefore would be subordinate to this purpose,” Hitler told those close to him, while continuing to talk peace in public. His “purpose” was kept under wraps until March 16, 1935, the day universal conscription was imposed to build an army of thirty-six divisions, about half a million men. The order would effectively break the Versailles Treaty. But until that day, Hitler forbade Grand Admiral Erich Raeder from even discussing the construction of U-boats. Prohibited by the treaty, they were being built secretly in Holland, then the parts were shipped to Kiel and kept in storage. Krupp’s plants had already been cranked up, of course. They were turning out the steel that would be fashioned into tanks, guns, and the riveted flanks of Horst Wessel once Hitler was certain the world would fail to meet the challenge he had so carefully timed.

As expected, Hitler’s gauntlet was not taken up, and the Krupp furnaces continued to roar throughout 1936. The huge I. G. Farben chemical concern was perfecting synthetic rubber and gasoline. The company had saved Germany from early disaster in World War I by inventing synthetic nitrates. The traditional supply, delivered to Germany via square-rigged ships from Chile, was cut off by British blockade.

On August 1, seventeen days after Horst Wessel came off the Blohm & Voss ways, the world’s top athletes gathered in Berlin for the Olympic Games. The games had never been better organized and were a glittering showcase meant to demonstrate just how well the Third Reich was reinventing Germany. Hitler foresaw Berlin as the permanent home of the games. As it turned out, German athletes did win most of the gold, with the glaring exception of Jesse Owens’s five gold medals. His feat changed nothing, of course. Long before the games were held, the concept of Aryan superiority had begun to take shape in the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped German Jews of their citizenship. While the games were going on, the signs that banned “dogs and Jews” from shops and other public places were ordered removed.

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