Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

south-eastern Europe. The reason he gave was that Italy would, through an Anglo-German alliance which undermined its policy in the Mediterranean, be forced on to the side of France, leading to a block by the two countries on any attempt at a new order in south-eastern Europe. Germany, he concluded, had its interests better served by close ties with Italy.¹⁰⁴

The rapprochement with Italy — slow and tenuous in the first half of 1936 — had by then come to harden into a new alliance of the two fascist-style militaristic dictatorships dominating central and southern Europe. The Abyssinian crisis, as we have noted, had turned Italy towards Germany. The repercussions on Austria were not long in the waiting. Deprived de facto of its Italian protector, Austria was swept inevitably further into the German slipstream.¹⁰⁵ Encouraged by the Italians as well as put under pressure by the Germans, Austria was ready by 11 July 1936 to sign a wide-ranging agreement with Germany, improving relations, ending restrictions placed upon the German press, and upon economic and cultural activities within Austria.¹⁰⁶ Though recognizing Austrian independence, the agreement in reality turned the Reich’s eastern neighbour into an economic and foreign-policy dependency.¹⁰⁷ It was a development which by this time suited both Germany and Italy.¹⁰⁸ And within weeks, the aid provided by the two dictatorships to the nationalist rebels in Spain, and the rapidly deepening commitment to the Spanish Civil War, brought Italy and Germany still closer together. German and Italian pilots in Spain were soon operating in unison.¹⁰⁹ The annihilation of the small Basque market town of Guernica, leaving over 2,500 citizens dead or injured, in a devastating three-hour bombing raid on the afternoon of 26 April 1937 by combined German and Italian forces, immortalized in Picasso’s famous painting, would become an emblem of the horror of the Spanish Civil War, and of innocent civilians defenceless against the new menace of terror from the skies.¹¹⁰

The diplomatic benefits from closer ties with Italy were reinforced in Hitler’s own eyes by the anti-Bolshevik credentials of Mussolini’s regime. In his August memorandum on the economy, Hitler had highlighted Italy as the only European country outside Germany capable of standing firm against Bolshevism.¹¹¹ In September, he made overtures to Mussolini through his envoy Hans Frank, inviting the Duce to visit Berlin the following year — an invitation readily accepted.¹¹² Mussolini’s son-in-law, the vain Count Ciano — the ‘Ducellino’ — arranged matters with Neurath in mid-October. There was agreement on a common struggle against Communism, rapid recognition of a Franco government in Spain, German recognition of the annexation of Abyssinia, and Italian ‘satisfaction’ at the Austro-German agreement.¹¹³

Hitler was in effusive mood when he welcomed Ciano to Berchtesgaden on 24 October. He described Mussolini as ‘the leading statesman in the world, to whom none may even remotely compare himself’.¹¹⁴ In a conversation of two and a quarter hours, Hitler, noted Ciano, ‘talked slowly and in a low voice’, with ‘violent outbursts when he spoke of Russia and Bolshevism. His way of expressing himself was slow and somewhat verbose. Each question was the subject of a long exposition and each concept was repeated by him several times in different words… The principal topics of his conversation were Bolshevism and English encirclement.’¹¹⁵ Ciano had drawn Hitler’s attention to a telegram, which had fallen into Italian hands, to the Foreign Office in London from the British Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Eric Phipps, stating that the Reich government was in the hands of dangerous adventurers. Hitler’s furious response was that ‘England, too, was led by adventurers when she built the Empire. Today it is governed merely by incompetents.’ Germany and Italy should ‘go over to the attack’, using the tactic of anti-Bolshevism to win support from countries suspicious of an Italo- German alliance. There was no clash of interests between Italy and Germany, he declared. The Mediterranean was ‘an Italian sea’. Germany had to have freedom of action towards the East and the Baltic.¹¹⁶ He was convinced, he said, that England would attack Italy, Germany, or both, given the opportunity and likely chances of success. A common anti-Bolshevik front, including powers in the East, the Far East, and South America, would however act as a deterrent, and probably even prompt Britain to seek an agreement. If Britain continued its offensive policy, seeking time to rearm, Germany and Italy had the advantage both in material and psychological rearmament, he enthused. In three years, Germany would be ready, in four years more than ready; five years would be better still.¹¹⁷

In a speech in the cathedral square in Milan a week later, Mussolini spoke of the line between Berlin and Rome as ‘an axis round which all those European States which are animated by a desire for collaboration and peace can revolve’.¹¹⁸ A new term was coined: ‘Axis’ — whether in a positive or negative sense — caught the imagination. In Italian and German propaganda, it evoked the might and strength of two countries with kindred philosophies joining forces against common enemies. For the western democracies, it raised the spectre of the combined threat to European peace by two expansionist powers under the leadership of dangerous dictators.

The menacing image became global when, within weeks of the formation of the Axis, Hitler entered a further pact with the one power outside Italy he had singled out in his August memorandum as standing firm against Bolshevism: Japan.¹¹⁹ Hitler had told Ciano in September that Germany had already made considerable progress towards an agreement with Japan within the framework of an anti-Bolshevik front. The anti- British thrust had been explicit.¹²⁰ The driving force behind the pact, from the German side, had from the beginning been Ribbentrop, operating with Hitler’s encouragement.¹²¹ The professionals from the German Foreign Office, far more interested in relations with China, found themselves largely excluded as a new body of ‘amateurs’ from the Dienststelle Ribbentrop (Ribbentrop Bureau) — the agency for foreign affairs founded in 1934, by now with around 160 persons working for it, upon which Hitler was placing increasing reliance — made the running.¹²² Neurath was not alone in disapproving of the overtures to Tokyo (once he had belatedly come to learn of them).¹²³ Schacht, Goring, and Blomberg, along with leading industrialists (including the Ruhr armaments magnate Krupp von Bohlen), were also among those keen not to damage relations with China — a source of extensive deliveries of indispensable raw materials for the armaments industry, notably manganese ore and tungsten.¹²⁴ In ‘Official’ German foreign policy, Japan was still little more than a sideshow. But in the ‘alternative’ foreign policy being conducted by Ribbentrop, keen to establish his credentials as Hitler’s spokesman in international affairs and attuned to Hitler’s ideological interest in a symbolic anti-Bolshevik agreement, Japanese relations had a far higher profile.

Ribbentrop used his intermediary, Dr Friedrich Wilhelm Hack, who had good connections to the Japanese military and important industrial circles, to put out feelers in January 1935. The Japanese military leaders saw in a rapprochement with Berlin the chance to weaken German links with China and to gain a potential ally against the Soviet Union.¹²⁵ The prime initiative during the second half of 1935 appears, in fact, to have been taken by the Japanese military authorities, through Hack, in close collaboration with Ribbentrop.¹²⁶ Proposals for an anti-Soviet neutrality pact were put forward in October by the Japanese Military Attache in Berlin, Hiroshi Oshima. Ribbentrop took the proposals — couched as a pact against the Comintern, not directly against the Soviet Union — to Hitler in late November, and gained his approval. Internal upheaval in Japan in the wake of a military revolt of February 1936, and the rapidly changing international situation, led to almost a year’s delay before the pact finally came to fruition.¹²⁷ On 27 November 1936 Hitler approved what became known as the Anti-Comintern Pact (which Italy joined a year later), under whose main provision — in a secret protocol — neither party would assist the Soviet Union in any way in the event of it attacking either Germany or Japan.¹²⁸ The pact was more important for its symbolism than for its actual provisions: the two most militaristic, expansionist powers in the world had found their way to each other. Though the pact was ostensibly defensive, it had hardly enhanced the prospects for peace on either side of the globe.¹²⁹

In his Reichstag speech on 30 January 1937, celebrating the fourth anniversary of his takeover of power, Hitler announced that ‘the time of the so-called surprises’ was over. Germany wished ‘from now on in loyal fashion’ as an equal partner to work with other nations to overcome the problems besetting Europe.¹³⁰ This pronouncement was soon to prove even more cynical than it had appeared at the time. That further ‘surprises’ were inevitable — and not long postponed — was not solely owing to Hitler’s temperament and psychology. The forces unleashed in four years of Nazi rule — internal and external — were producing their own dynamic. Those in so many different ways who were ‘working towards the Fuhrer’ were ensuring, directly or indirectly, that Hitler’s own ideological obsessions served as the broad guidelines of policy initiatives. The restlessness — and recklessness — ingrained in Hitler’s personality reflected the pressures for action emanating in different ways from the varied components of the regime, loosely held together by aims of national assertiveness and racial purity embodied in the figure of the Leader. Internationally, the fragility and chronic instability of the post-war order had been brutally exposed. Within Germany, the chimeric quest for racial purity, backed by a leadership for which this was a central