Rise and Fall Ch. 9: The First Steps: 1934-37
As we wrap up week five of our reading group, I discuss the ninth chapter of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" about Hitler's foreign policy after taking power
Chapter 9 begins a new section in the book—and the longest one—entitled The Road to War. After covering the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party and then the triumph and consolidation of power in Germany, William Shirer now turns to Nazi foreign policy. The remaining 900 pages of the book will deal with the lead-up to World War II and then the war itself.
This tri-partite narratival breakdown is common and also seemingly inevitable when it comes to recounting the history of Nazi Germany. In the background of historical events, Hitler rose to power. Bursting onto the domestic political stage, the Nazis took control of Germany. Then, in foreign policy, they began expanding in central Europe, started World War II, and committed the Holocaust. So, naturally, Richard Evans’s trilogy on Nazi Germany, among many others, follows this structure we also see in Shirer’s single volume history.
At times, it does make it feel teleological though. That there were no off-ramps and everything that came would inevitably culminate in the destruction of World War II and the Holocaust.
This chapter is entitled “The First Steps.” The first steps to what?
Shirer explains:
To talk peace, to prepare secretly for war and to proceed with enough caution in foreign policy and clandestine rearmament to avoid any preventive military action against Germany by the Versailles powers
There is a tension in Shirer’s story, which isn’t always obvious. He was wary about Hitler from the beginning, unlike some of his fellow foreign correspondents (especially a few from the United Kingdom). And as events turned out, Shirer’s wariness proved to be warranted.
And what he does in this history is to show how his concerns were not just warranted but perhaps even understated, as shown in the archival record and finds memos and notes documenting the early push towards war. What is key here is that Shirer’s intuitions while covering Nazi Germany were largely correct even if he misunderstood the details and the scope.
What we absolutely must remember as we read about the reactions of other countries, their leaders and their citizens is that they did not have the benefit of hindsight or the archival record as they sized up Hitler in the mid-1930s. And unlike Shirer, those individuals were also not present in Germany. That is not by way of excuse for certain decisions that were made, but it does provide important context.
The first steps in question are those that led to World War II. And that process began with ending the Peace of Versailles, which had so embarrassed Germany: Germany began to rearm. It began developing materials and resources it would need for war: ersatz rubber and gasoline. It began conscription again. It sent troops into the formerly demilitarized zones of the Rhineland. It grew closer to Italy. It supported Franco’s forces in the Spanish Civil War. And in the process it induced appeasement from Austria.
One of the points that Shirer makes about Hitler in this chapter is that Hitler had learned patience. At the time of the Beer Hall Putsch, he wanted to do too much, more than he was able to do. In these years of the mid-1930s, he did not overstep his abilities to create realities on the ground.
Part of this process was continuing to consolidate power at home. The German people, even those opposed to Hitler, reacted positively to Hitler’s leadership, since it contrasted so starkly with what democratic governments of Weimar had done (or not done):
The Shackles of Versailles, symbol of Germany’s defeat and humiliation, had been torn off. No matter how much a German might dislike Hitler and his gangster rule, he had to admit that the Fuehrer had accomplished what no republican government had ever dared attempt.
On the foreign front, he kept the Western democracies guessing. At times, he would blatantly lie, telling them things they wanted desperately to believe. In his second peace speech, for instance, he insisted that there was no reason for Germans to seek to expand or go to war:
Our racial theory regards every war for the subjection and domination of an alien people as a proceeding which sooner or later changes and weakens the victor internally, and eventually brings about his defeat.
Ironically, in the end, Hitler’s reasoning here turned out to be correct.
And then at other times Hitler would overstep bounds and test France and Britain’s resolve. Marching troops into the Rhineland in violation of Locarno was one of those moments. Many in Germany, including in Hitler’s inner circle, believed that France and Britain would respond. They did not.
Shirer judges them harshly for this failure to enforce the Locarno treaty:
It is equally easy to see, in retrospect, that France’s failure to repel the Wehrmacht battalions and Britain’s failure to back her in what would have been nothing more than a police action was a disaster for the West from which sprang all the later ones of even grater magnitude. In March 1936 the two Western democracies were given their last chance to halt, without the risk of a serious war, the rise of a militarized, aggressive, totalitarian Germany and, in fact—as we have seen Hitler admitting—bring the Nazi dictator and his regime tumbling down. They let the chance slip by.
The last section of this chapter deals with Hitler’s meeting with his generals on November 5, 1937. In a meeting that lasted over four hours, Hitler told them to prepare for a two-front war, with some variations. In a direct contradiction of his second peace speech, Hitler told the generals that the goals was Lebensraum—space for the superior German race to live and thrive. They would subjugate and dominate their neighbors. And Germany would not go abroad to Africa and Asia in search of colonies for their people, but rather in the heart of Europe.
Although Shirer does not dwell on this point, it is worth pointing out that this dynamic is a key division in current debates about history and foreign policy. What Hitler sought to do in the heart of Europe against Europeans had been done for a long time in the Americas, in Asia, and in Africa. But of course, those peoples were not white Christians.
There is a pretty clear division in current debate between those who see the connections between what Hitler did in Europe and what European colonialism did in the rest of the world, and then there are those who make a stark distinction between the two. This is a topic I think worth exploring at a later date.
In the meantime, please leave a comment if you have any thoughts or questions. I’d love to hear from you.
Chapter Recaps
Topical Posts
Podcast ep. 1: The Man, The Myth: Hitler in American Culture
The Problems with the German Character Explanation of the Nazis
Podcast ep. 2: Why are Dictators (and Techno-monarchs) Appealing?
Podcast ep. 3: Interview with a 20th Century War Correspondent: Jon Randal
If You’ve Fallen Behind on the Reading, This Post is For You