Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

Spain. Fighters, bombers, and 6,500 military personnel — the future Legion Condor (a mixed Luftwaffe unit assigned to support for the Spanish nationalists) — were dispatched to take part in what was rapidly developing into a rehearsal for a general showdown between the forces of Fascism and Communism.⁷⁴

The ideological impetus behind Hitler’s readiness to involve Germany in the Spanish maelstrom — his intensified preoccupation with the threat of Bolshevism — was not a cover for the economic considerations that weighed so heavily with Goring.⁷⁵ This is borne out by his private as well as his public utterances. Publicly, as he had told Goebbels the previous day would be the case, in his opening proclamation to the Reich Party Rally in Nuremberg on 9 September, he announced that the ‘greatest world danger’ of which he warned for so long — the ‘revolutionizing of the continent’ through the work of ‘Bolshevik wire-pullers’ run by ‘an international Jewish revolutionary headquarters in Moscow’ — was becoming reality. Germany’s military rebuilding had been undertaken precisely to prevent what was turning Spain into ruins from taking place in Germany.⁷⁶ Out of the public eye, his sentiments were hardly different when he addressed the cabinet for three hours on the foreign-policy situation at the beginning of December. He concentrated on the danger of Bolshevism. Europe was divided into two camps. There was no more going back. He described the tactics of the ‘Reds’. Spain had become the decisive issue. France, ruled by Prime Minister Leon Blum — seen as an ‘agent of the Soviets’, a ‘Zionist and world-destroyer’ — would be the next victim. The victor in Spain would gain great prestige. The consequences for the rest of Europe, and in particular for Germany and for the remnants of Communism in the country, were major ones. This was the reason, he went on, for German aid in armaments to Spain. ‘Germany can only wish that the crisis is deferred until we are ready,’ he declared. ‘When it comes, seize the opportunity (zugreifen) . Get into the paternoster lift at the right time. But also get out again at the right time. Rearm. Money can play no role.’⁷⁷ Only two weeks or so earlier, Goebbels had recorded in his diary: ‘After dinner I talked thoroughly with the Fuhrer alone. He is very content with the situation. Rearmament is proceeding. We’re sticking in fabulous sums. In 1938 we’ll be completely ready. The showdown with Bolshevism is coming. Then we want to be prepared. The army is now completely won over by us. Fuhrer untouchable… Dominance in Europe for us is as good as certain. Just let no chance pass by. Therefore rearm.’⁷⁸

III

The announcement of the Four-Year Plan at the Nuremberg Party Rally in September had by then pushed rearmament policy on to a new plane. Priorities had been established. They meant in practice that balancing consumer and rearmament spending could only be sustained for a limited period of time through a crash programme which maximized autarkic potential to prepare Germany as rapidly as possible for the confrontation which Hitler deemed inevitable and other leading figures in the regime thought probable, if not highly likely, within the following few years. Through the introduction of the Four-Year Plan, Germany was economically pushed in the direction of expansion and war. Economics and ideology were by now thoroughly interwoven. Even so, the decision to move to the Four-Year Plan was ultimately an ideological one. Economic options were still open — even if the policies of the previous three years meant they had already narrowed sharply. Schacht, Goerdeler, and others, backed by important sectors of industry, favoured a retreat from an armaments-led economy to a re-entry into international markets. Against this, the powerful IG-Farben lobby, linked to the Luftwaffe, pushed for maximizing production of synthetic fuels. The stalemate persisted throughout the summer. The economic crisis which had dogged Germany during the previous winter and spring was unresolved. With no end to the dispute in sight, Hitler was pressed in late August to take sides. The preoccupation with Bolshevism, which had weighed heavily with him throughout the summer, was decisive in his own inimitable approach to Germany’s economic problems.

The driving-force behind the creation of what came to be known as the Four-Year Plan was not, however, Hitler but Goring. Following their discussions in Berchtesgaden and Bayreuth in July, Hitler had requested reports from Goring on the economic situation, and how the problems were to be overcome. At the beginning of August Goring had in turn demanded memoranda from different branches of the economy to be sent to him as rapidly as possible. The timing was determined by propaganda considerations, not economic criteria: the proximity of the Reich Party Rally in early September was what counted. The complex reports could not be put together as swiftly as Goring had wanted. By the time he travelled to Berchtesgaden at the beginning of the last week in August, he only had a survey from his Raw Materials and Currency staff about the possibilities of synthetic raw-material production within Germany to hand.⁷⁹ He had meanwhile been encountering powerful opposition to his economic plans from Schacht, who was voicing feelings in some important sectors of business and industry, such as those of one of the most important Ruhr industrialists, Albert Vogler, head of the biggest steel concern in Europe, the Vereinigte Stahlwerke, who had strongly backed a Hitler Chancellorship in the final phase of the Weimar Republic. Carl Goerdeler, too, Lord Mayor of Leipzig, who had served Hitler as Reich Price Commissioner and would eventually become a leading opponent of the regime, joined in the criticism towards the end of the month.⁸⁰ It was in these circumstances that Hitler was persuaded during the last week of August to dictate a lengthy memorandum on the future direction of the economy — one of the extremely rare occasions in the Third Reich (leaving aside formal laws, decrees, and directives) that he put forward his views in writing.

Most likely, the memorandum, containing neither title nor signature and possibly completed only on 2 September, two days before it was presented to government ministers, was compiled at Goring’s suggestion.⁸¹ The Luftwaffe chief stood to gain most directly from it in the power-struggle with Schacht for dominance over the economy. ‘The lack of understanding of the Reich Economics Ministry and the resistance of German business to all large-scale (gro?zugigen) plans prompted him to compose this memorandum on the Obersalzberg,’ Hitler told his Armaments Minister Albert Speer, when handing him a copy eight years later.⁸² The only two copies of the memorandum originally distributed went to Goring himself, and to his ally against Schacht, War Minister Blomberg. The Economics Minister himself was not shown a copy of the memorandum, and in fact only heard as late as 2 September of Hitler’s intention to proclaim a new economic policy at the Reich Party Rally.⁸³

The memorandum fell into two parts. The first, on ‘the political situation’, was pure Hitler. It was couched exclusively in ideological terms. The ‘reasoning’ was, as it had been in Mein Kampf and the Second Book, social-Darwinist and racially determinist. ‘Politics are the conduct and course of the historical struggle for life of peoples,’ he began. ‘The aim of these struggles is the assertion of existence.’ The world was moving towards a new conflict, centred upon Bolshevism, ‘whose essence and aim… is solely the elimination of those strata of mankind which have hitherto provided the leadership and their replacement by world-wide Jewry’. Germany would be the focus of the inevitable showdown with Bolshevism. ‘It is not the aim of this memorandum to prophesy the time when the untenable situation in Europe will become an open crisis. I only want, in these lines, to set down my conviction that this crisis cannot and will not fail to arrive,’ he asserted. A victory of Bolshevism over Germany would lead not to a Versailles Treaty but to the final destruction, indeed to the annihilation, of the German people… In face of the necessity of defence against this danger, all other considerations must recede into the background as being completely irrelevant.’ The defensive capacity of the German people had been greatly strengthened under National Socialism. The level of ideological solidarity was unprecedented. But making the German Army ‘into the first army in the world, in training, in the raising of units, in armaments, and, above all, in spiritual education (in der geistigen Erziehung)’ was vital. If this did not happen, then ‘Germany will be lost,’ he declared.⁸⁴

The second part of the memorandum, dealing with ‘Germany’s economic situation’, and offering a ‘programme for a final solution of our vital need’, bore unmistakable signs of Goring’s influence, resting in turn on the raw material programmes drawn up by his planning staff, with significant input by IG Farben.⁸⁵ The resemblance to statements on the economy put forward by Goring earlier in the summer suggests that Hitler either had such statements before him when compiling his memorandum, or that his Raw Materials Commissar worked alongside him in preparing the memorandum.⁸⁶ The tone was nonetheless classically Hitlerian — down to the threat of a law ‘making the whole of Jewry liable for all damage inflicted by individual specimens of this community of criminals upon the German economy’, a threat put into practice some two years later.

A temporary solution to the economic problems was to be found in partial autarky. Maximizing domestic production wherever possible would allow for the necessary food imports, which could not be at the cost of