89. IMG, ix.313–14; TBJG, I/6, 182 (11 November 1938) for the lunchtime meeting in the Osteria. For Hitler’s comments on the envisaged economic measures against Jews in the Four-Year-Plan Memorandum, see Treue, ‘Denkschrift’, VfZ, 3 (1955), 210; see also Barkai, ‘Schicksalsjahr’, in Pehle, 99.
90. Adam, Judenpolitik, 217.
91. Minutes of the meeting: IMG, xxviii.499–540 (Doc. 1816-PS); imposition of the ‘fine’, 537ff. An abbreviated version is printed in Pätzold/Runge, 142–6; summaries are given in Adam, Judenpolitik, 209–11; Read/Fisher, ch.9; Schleunes, 245–50; Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 177–9.
92. Pätzold-Runge, 146–8; see Adam, Judenpolitik, 209–12.
93. TBJG, I/6, 185 (13 November 1938).
94. Adam, Judenpolitik, 205; Reuth, Goebbels, 393–4; Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 176. For the affair, see Helmut Heiber, Joseph Goebbels, Berlin, 1962, 275–80. But Heiber goes too far in his speculation that this was a vital motive in Goebbels’s initiative in unleashing the pogrom.
95. Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 183.
96. Gay, ch.8.
97. Konrad Kwiet and Helmut Eschwege, Selbstbehauptung und Widerstand. Deutsche Juden im Kampf um Existenz und Menschenwürde 1933–1945, Hamburg, 1984, 143.
98. Gay, 140–41.
99. Bob Moore, Refugees from Nazi Germany in the Netherlands, 1933–1940, Dordrecht, 1986, 87–8. See also Dan Michman, ‘Die jüdische Emigration und die niederländische Reaktion zwischen 1933 und 1940’, in Kathinka Dittrich and Hans Würzner (eds.), Die Niederlande und das deutsche Exil 1933–1940, Königstein/Ts., 1982, 73–90, especially 76, 89–90.
100. Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust. The Jewish Tragedy, London, 1986, 75.
101. Friedländer, 303–4.
102. IMG, xxxii.415 (D0C.3575-PS; summary of Göring’s address to the Reich Defence Council, 18 November 1938); in the longer extracts of the minutes, in Mason, Arbeiterklasse, 907–37, here 925—6, Göring says: ‘Gentlemen. The finances look very critical… Now, through the billion that the Jews have to pay, an improvement has taken place…’
103. Adam, Judenpolitik, 213–16.
104. Müller, Heer, 385–7.
105. Nicholas Reynolds, ‘Der Fritsch-Brief vom 11. Dezember 1938’, VfZ, 28 (1980), 358–71, here 362–3, 370.
106. JK, 89 (Doc.61).
107. Adam, Judenpolitik, 228; Wildt, 60.
108. Peter Longerich (ed.), Die Ermordung der europäischen Juden. Eine umfassende Dokumentation des Holocaust 1941–1945, Munich, 1989, 83.
109. Adam, Judenpolitik, 217–19.
110. Below, 136; IfZ, ZS-317, Bd.II, Fol.28 (Wolff); IfZ, ZS-243, Bd.I (for the comment of Hitler’s adjutant Brückner, that Hitler was said to have fallen into a rage when told of the burning of the synagogue in Munich). See also Irving, Goebbels, 277, 613 and David Irving, The War Path. Hitler’s Germany, 1933–9, London, 1978, 164–5, for Hitler’s alleged surprise at, or condemnation of, the events.
111. IMG, xxi.392.
112. Below, 136. Below’s account is very sympathetic to Hitler. Below thought Hitler knew nothing about what was going on. He also mentions Schaub’s remark that Goebbels somehow had his finger in the pie. This was something of an understatement. According to Goebbels’s own account, Schaub had been in his element when the pair of them had gone together after midnight to the Artists’ Club (TBJG, I/6, 181 (10 November 1938); Tb Irving, 410 (10 November 1938)). Below’s chronology is also inaccurate. He gives the impression that Hitler’s entourage heard of the destruction on their return from the midnight swearing-in of the SS recruits. But Hitler had been informed before he had set out for this (IMG, xxi.392; IfZ, ZS-317 (Wolff), Bd.II, Fol.28; Adam, in Pehle, 78).
113. Speer, Erinnerungen, 126.
114. Hans-Günther Seraphim (ed.), Das politische Tagebuch Alfred Rosenbergs 1934/35 und 1939/40, Munich, 1964, 81 (6 February 1939).
115. Müller, Heer, 385–6; Erich Raeder, Mein Leben, Tübingen, 2 vols., 1956–7, ii.133–4.
116. TBJG, I/6, 180 (10 November 1938); Tb Irving, 409 (10 November 1938).
117. IfZ, ZS-243, Bd.I (Heim), Fol.27 (statement by Jüttner); Irving, Goebbels, 274.
118. TBJG, I/6, 189–90 (17 November 1938); Tb Irving, 417 (17 November 1938). See also Irving, Goebbels, 282.
119. See, for a contrasting interpretation, Irving, Goebbels, 276–7. The post-war explanation of Heinrich Heim (a lawyer and civil servant employed in Hess’s office, later an adjutant of Martin Bormann, and commissioned by him to make notes of Hitler’s ‘table-talk’ monologues) was that Goebbels had regarded the casual remark by Hitler ‘that the demonstrators (for the time being only relatively harmless) should not be severely dealt with’ (‘dass man die Demonstranten (vorläufig nur relativ harmlose!) nicht scharf anpacken soll’), as a licence (Freibrief), and believed therefore that he was ‘certainly acting along the lines of what his master wanted’ (‘bestimmt im Sinne seines Herrn zu handeln’) (IfZ, ZS-243, Bd.I (Heim), Fol.29).
120. For Goebbels’s ‘anger’ at the burning of the Munich synagogue and other outrages in publicly berating his Gau Propaganda Leaders at the station in Munich on returning to Berlin, see IfZ, ZS-243, Bd.I (Heim), Fol.28 (post-war statement of Werner Naumann, later State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry); and see Irving, Goebbels, 280.
121. Domarus, 973; Treue, ‘Rede Hitlers vor der deutschen Presse (10. November 1938)’, 175ff. Nor had Hitler given any indication, despite vom Rath’s perilous condition at the time and the menacing antisemitic climate, of any intended action when he had spoken to the ‘old guard’ of the Party at the Bürgerbräukeller on the evening of 8 November. Domarus, 966ff. for the speech. The point is made by Adam, Judenpolitik, 206.
122. Below, 137.
123. MK, 772; MK Watt, 620.
124. IMG, xxviii.538–9.
125. Das Schwarze Korps, 27 October 1938, p.6.
126. Das Schwarze Korps, 3 November 1938, p.2. And see Kochan, 39.
127. Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 185.
128. ADAP, D, IV, Dok.271, 293–5 (quotation, 293); Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 184; Adam, Judenpolitik, 234, n.4. Pirow had raised the possibility of an international loan to finance Jewish emigration and the notion of settling Jews in a former German colony such as Tanganyika – a proposal rejected out of hand by Hitler. See Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 182–3 (and n.4–5) for emigration as a policy, and 184–5 for the hostage notion. For the latter, see also the remarks of Hans Mommsen, ‘Die Realisierung des Utopischen: Die “Endlösung der Judenfrage” im “Dritten Reich”’, GG, 9 (1983), 381–420, here 396.
129. ADAP, D, IV, Dok.158, 170; Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 186; Adam, Judenpolitik, 235. It appears that his association of the Jews with the November Revolution of 1918 had also been reinforced at this time. Hitler referred vaguely to ‘threats from others’ to destroy the Reich in his annual speech to the party faithful on the anniversary of the proclamation of the Party Programme, on 24 February 1939, and immediately followed this by stating: ‘The year 1918 will never repeat itself in German history’ (Domarus, 1086). For Hitler’s ‘November Syndrome’, see Tim Mason, ‘The Legacy of 1918 for National Socialism’, in Anthony Nicholls and Erich Mathias, German Democracy and the Triumph of Hitler, London, 1971, 215–39.
130. Birger Dahlerus, Der letzte Versuch. London-Berlin. Sommer 1939, Munich, 1948,126 (recording Hitler’s comment to him on 1 September 1939); Documents concerning German-Polish Relations and the Outbreak of Hostilities between Great Britain and Germany on September 3,1939, London, 1939, 129, no.75 (Hitler to Henderson, 28 August 1939); Domarus, 1238 (Hitler’s speech to his military leaders, 22 August 1939).
131. Das Schwarze Korps, 24 November 1938, p.1; also cit. in Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 187.
132. Hans Mommsen, ‘Hitler’s Reichstag Speech of 30 January 1939’, History and Memory, 9 (1997), 147–61, emphasizes above all (see especially 157–8) the propaganda component of the speech. He places the speech in its context of the talks between G
eorge Rublee, the American Chairman of the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees (charged by President Roosevelt with trying to find a way out of the crisis of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany) and Helmut Wohltat, one of Göring’s close associates on the Four-Year Plan and on Jewish emigration. The negotiations were aimed at financing the emigration of 150,000 Jews within three years through an international loan of one and a half million Reich Marks. In Mommsen’s view (151), Hitler’s speech was ‘a rhetorical gesture designed to put pressure on the international community’ to accept the Reich’s blackmailing demand. He stresses (154) the need felt by Hitler ‘to promise effective measures on the part of the government in order to calm down the extreme antisemitic activities which endangered the emigration scheme that Göring and Schacht had worked out’. It seems doubtful, however, that Hitler was as serious about the Rublee-Wohltat scheme as Mommsen implies, and not altogether convincing to suggest (156) that it is ‘difficult to believe that [Hitler’s] inclination to exaggerate the issues involved was more than mere camouflage’.
133. Domarus, 1058.
134. Eberhard Jäckel, ‘Hitler und der Mord an europäischen Juden’, in Peter Märthesheimer and Ivo Frenzel (eds.), Im Kreuzfeuer: Der Fernsehfilm Holocaust. Eine Nation ist betroffen, Frankfurt am Main, 1979, 151–62, here 160–61.
CHAPTER 4: MISCALCULATION
1. Michael Jabara Carley, 1939: the Alliance that Never Was and the Coming of World War II, Chicago, 1999, 77–9.
2. Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came. The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939, London, (1989), Mandarin paperback edn, 1991, 101–4. Generally, on Oster’s role in the resistance to Hitler (though not mentioning this episode), see Romedio Galeazzo Reichsgraf von Thun-Hohenstein, Der Verschwörer. General Oster und die Militäropposition, Berlin, 1982.
3. Watt, How War Came, 40, 101, and see ch.6 passim.
4. John de Courcy, Searchlight on Europe, London, 1940, 87; Watt, How War Came, 59–64; Weinberg II, 474–8.
5. Courcy, 85–8.
6. Weinberg II, 476–8; Watt, How War Came, 64.
7. See also Weinberg II, 467–8.
8. Weinberg II, 479ff.; Watt, How War Came, 41.
9. Weinberg II, 481–3; Watt, How War Came, 65.
10. Watt, How War Came, 66. The Poles initially took the ideas to be Ribbentrop’s own. But it seems plain that the German Foreign Minister was acting as Hitler’s mouthpiece. See Joachim von Ribbentrop, Zwischen London und Moskau. Erinnerungen und letzte Aufzeichnungen, ed. Annelies von Ribbentrop, Leoni am Starnberger See, 1953, 154–5.
11. Weinberg II, 484, and see 503.
12. DGFP, D, V, 125, no.99, 141, no.110 (12 November 1938, 5 December 1938). The Polish foreign minister Josef Beck was, in fact, somewhat less intransigent at first than others in the Polish government, but there was little prospect from the outset of any flexibility on Danzig and the Corridor. (See Weinberg II, 501.)
13. Domarus, 1065.
14. Watt, How War Came, 69; DBFP, 3, IV, 80, no.82, Shepherd to Halifax, 6 February 1939. According to Shepherd’s memorandum, Hitler’s meeting with his military leaders had taken place on 21 January 1939.
15. Watt, How War Came, 70.
16. DGFP, D, IV, 529, N0.411.
17. See Dülffer, 471–88 and especially 492ff. for the genesis of the Z-Plan; DRZW, i.465–73; and Charles S. Thomas, The German Navy in the Nazi Era, London, 1990, 179–80. See Weinberg II, 503 for plans to settle with France and Great Britain before turning to the east, and Keitel, 196–7, for the ‘Ostwall’.
18. TBJG, I/6, 158 (24 October 1938).
19. Irving, Göring, 241.
20. Keitel, 196.
21. Keitel, 196–7.
22. In a memorandum of 3 September 1939 ‘on the outbreak of war’, Raeder wrote: ‘Today the war against England-France has broken out, which, according to previous comments of the Führer we did not need to reckon with before around 1944.’ He went on to outline the battle-fleet that would have been ready at the turn of the year 1944–5. He then added: ‘As far as the navy is concerned, it is obviously in autumn 1939 still nowhere near sufficiently ready for the great struggle against England.’ (‘Aw heutigen Tage ist der Krieg gegen England-Frankreich ausgebrochen, mit dem wir nach den bisherigen Ausserungen des Führers nicht vor etwa 1944 zu rechnen brauchten… Was die Kriegsmarine anbetrifft, so ist sie selbstverständlich im Herbst 1939 noch keineswegs für den grossen Kampf mit England hinreichend gerüstet.) (BA/MA, PG/33965; and see Thomas, 187). I am grateful to Prof. Meir Michaelis for providing me with a copy of this memorandum. For remarks on the inadequate state of the army at the outbreak of war, see IfZ, F34/1, ‘Erinnerungen von Nikolaus v. Vormann über die Zeit vom 22.8–27.9.1939 als Verbindungsoffizier des Heeres beim Führer und Obersten Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht’, Fol.56.
23. Martens, Göring, 169–70.
24. Watt, How War Came, ch.4; for divisions over policy towards Poland among Hitler’s entourage, 68. For Göring’s diminishing influence on the direction of foreign policy at this time, to the benefit of his arch-rival Ribbentrop, see Kube, 299ff.; and for Ribbentrop, Bloch, ch.XI.
25. In his comments to his armed forces’ leaders on 23 May 1939, Hitler, though by this time bent on destroying Poland in the near future, again indicated that the armaments programme would only be completed in 1943 or 1944, pointing to the West as the main enemy (DGFP, D, VI, 575–80, Doc.433; and see the retrospective comments of Raeder in his memorandum of 3 September 1939, BA/MA, PG/33965 (quoted above in note 22)).
26. See DRZW, i.349–68; and also Bernd-Jürgen Wendt, ‘Nationalsozialistische Großraumwirtsch-aft zwischen Utopie und Wirklichkeit – Zum Scheitern einer Konzeption 1938/39’, in Knipping and Müller, 223–45, especially 239ff., for the mounting problems in the economy and the collapse of prospects of an alternative economic strategy to the ideologically determined aim of acquiring ‘living space’.
27. R. J. Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich, Oxford, 1994, 108–9, 196–7 (and 93ff. for the Reichswerke Hermann Göring); DRZW, i.323–31.
28. Tim Mason, Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class. Essays by Tim Mason, ed. Jane Caplan, Cambridge, 1995, 109.
29. Göring’s speech (Mason, Arbeiterklasse, 908–33, Dok.152) gave an overview of the major problems facing the German economy in shortages of labour and raw materials, inefficient production, and precarious finances; quotation, 925.
30. TBJG, I/6, 219 (13 December 1938).
31. See the speech by Schacht of 29 November 1938: IMG, xxxvi.582–96, especially 587–8, D0C.611-EC.
32. IMG, xxxvi.365ff., Doc.EC-369. See Mason, Nazism, 108, for inflationary pressures building up by 1939. It would be important not to exaggerate their actual seriousness by that date. Even so, though stringent controls and repression had held inflation in check until then, the dangers in an increase in Reichsbank notes in circulation from 3.6 billion Reich Marks in 1933 to 5.4 in 1937, rising sharply to 8.2 billion in 1938 and 10.9 billion in 1939 were obvious. (Willi A. Boelcke, Die Kosten von Hitlers Krieg, Paderborn etc., 1985, 32. See also Dietrich Eichholtz, Geschichte der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft 1939–1945, Bd.I, 1939–1941, East Berlin, 1984, 30.)
33. Hjalmar Schacht, My First Seventy-Six Years, London, 1955, 392–4 (quotation, 392).
34. Mason, Nazism, 106–7.
35. See BA, R43II/194, 213b, for numerous complaints of Darré.
36. Mason, Nazism, 111; Timothy W. Mason, Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich. Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft, Opladen, 1977, 226ff.; J. E. Farquharson, The Plough and the Swastika. The NSDAP and Agriculture in Germany, 1928–45, London/Beverly Hills, 1976, 196ff.; Gustavo Corni, Hitler and the Peasants, Agrarian Policy of the Third Reich, 1930–1939, New York/Oxford/Munich, 1990, ch. 10; Gustavo Corni and Horst Giest, Brot-Butter-Kanonen. Die Ernährungswirtschaft in Deutschland unter der Diktatur Hitlers, Berlin, 1997, 280–97; Kershaw, Popular Opinion, 55–61.
37. Mason, Nazism, 111. The investment in new farm machiner
y had indeed risen by 25.8 per cent during the first six years of Nazi rule, with a high point in 1938. But mechanization was progressing slowly in international comparison. Whereas there was a tractor for every 325 hectares of arable in Germany, the ratio was 1:95 in Great Britain and 1:85 in the USA and Canada. Two-thirds of German farmers still sowed their fields by hand; many used oxen and horses for ploughing. (Corni and Giest, 308.)
38. Corni and Giest, 286–7, 294; Corni, 227–9; Farquharson, 199–200.
39. See Kershaw, Popular Opinion, 286. Some 300,000 Polish prisoners-of-war were put to work on the land in Germany by the end of 1939, together with around 40,000 civilian workers (Ulrich Herbert, Fremdarbeiter. Politik und Praxis des ‘Ausländer-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches, Berlin/Bonn, 1985, 68).
40. Mason, Sozialpolitik, 215–26; reports of the Reichstreuhänder der Arbeit for the last quarter of 1938 and first quarter of 1939, emphasizing the difficulties, are printed in Mason, Arbeiterklasse, 847–55, Dok.147, 942–59, Dok.156. Numerous reports from the Defence Districts, pointing out the problems in armaments manufacture, can be seen in BA/MA, RW 19/40, 54, 56.
41. See the analyses by Mason, Sozialpolitik, 241, 245, 295, 313ff. Tim Mason, ‘The Workers’ Opposition in Nazi Germany’, History Workshop Journal, 11 (1981), 120–37; Timothy W. Mason, ‘Die Bändigung der Arbeiterklasse im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland. Eine Einleitung’, in Carola Sachse et al., Angst, Belohnung, Zucht und Ordnung. Herrschaftsmechanismen im Nationalsozialismus, Opladen, 1982, 11—53; and also Michael Voges, ‘Klassenkampf in der “Betriebsgemeinschaft”. Die “Deutschland-Berichte” der Sopade (1934–40) als Quelle zum Widerstand der Industrie-Arbeiter im Dritten Reich’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 21 (1981), 329—84; and also Kershaw, Popular Opinion, 98–110. Even given the usual paranoia, Gestapo reports did not give the regime’s leaders the impression that the widespread discontent among industrial workers was being translated into any serious political threat from the Communist or Socialist underground resistance. See examples of reports in Mason, Arbeiterklasse, 856–7, Dok.148, 960–61, Dok.157; in BA, R58/446, 582, 584, 719; and in IML/ZPA, St3/64, St3/184, PSt3/153.