64. See Abendroth, 476–9.
65. Suggested by Martens, 66.
66. Preston, 159.
67. Abendroth, 475, citing a communication to him from Bernhardt. Kube, 165 claims that Hitler’s decision was in support of Goring’s ‘economic concept’. Wolfgang Schieder, ‘Spanischer Burgerkrieg und Vierjahresplan’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Nationalsozialistische Au?enpolitik, Darmstadt, 1978, 325–59, also emphasizes Goring’s role and the centrality of economic motives. Martens, 66, on the other hand, argues convincingly — along Abendroth’s lines — that Hitler took the decision alone, and that Goring was at first hesitant, indeed shocked at hearing of the decision. Serious economic involvement in Spain only dated from October 1936, when the first substantial military supplies also began. Goring claimed at Nuremberg that he had pressed Hitler, who was still thinking it over, to provide the support, both to combat the spread of Communism and to give him the opportunity to try out the Luftwaffe (IMG, ix.317; and see Kube, 165 n.12). But by the time Goring pressed for action, Hitler was no longer thinking it over; his mind was already made up. Goring’s intentional or unintentional misrepresentation at Nuremberg was presumably aimed, as elswhere in his testimony, at bolstering his self-importance. Alternatively, as Preston suggests (814 n.64), Goring may have conflated two separate meetings with Hitler. Even so, Goring’s claim that he was influential in shaping Hitler’s original decision to intervene stands in contradiction to other evidence on the taking of the decision.
68. Abendroth, 475.
69. Ribbentrop, 59–60.
70. Ribbentrop, 60.
71. Abendroth, 476; Preston, 159–61; see also Schieder, ‘Spanischer Biirgerkrieg’, 342.II.; and the careful analysis (concluding that economic considerations were secondary to ideological in the initial decision by Hitler to involve Germany in support for Franco) by Christian Leitz, ‘Nazi Germany’s Intervention in the Spanish Civil War and the Foundation of HISMA/ROWAK’, in Paul Preston and Ann L. Mackenzie (eds.), The Republic Besieged: Civil War in Spain, 1936–1939, Edinburgh, 1996, 53–85.
72. TBJG, I/2, 648 (27 July 1936), dealing as always with the events of the previous day.
73. Martens, 66.
74. TBJG, I/2, 671 (23 September 1936); Hohne, 363. The Republican side in the Civil War also attracted external support, particularly from the Soviet Union and from the International Brigades volunteer forces organized by the Comintern and individual Communist parties, in which some 60,000 men fought the nationalist insurgents. British and French statesmen were concerned at Soviet involvement in Spain, fearing, as Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary put it in September 1937, that as a consequence ‘Communism would get its clutches into Western Europe’. Cit. Denis Smyth, ‘“We Are With You”: Solidarity and Self-interest in Soviet Policy towards Republican Spain, 1936–1939’, in Preston and Mackenzie, 87–105, here 105.
75. This is implied by Kube, 164–5, though the argument, so far as Hitler’s motivation is concerned, seems overstretched.
76. Domarus, 638; TBJG, I/2, 675 (9 September 1936).
77. TBJG, I/2, 743 (2 December 1936).
78. TBJG, I/2, 726 (15 November 1936).
79. Kube, 153–4. Goring informed Hitler verbally of the finalized raw-material plans on 15 August (Petzina, 49).
80. Petzina, 47–8; Richard J. Overy, Goering: the Iron Man, London, 1984, 45–6; Gerhard Ritter, Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung, Stuttgart, 1956, 80–82. For a sketch of Goerdeler, see Hermann Wei? (ed.), Biographisches Lexikon zum Dritten Reich, Frankfurt am Main, 1998, 153–5.
81. In his official biography of Goring, Erich Gritzbach, Hermann Goring. Werk und Mensch, Munich, 1938, 160, remarked that ‘after days of quiet work at the Berghof, on 2 September the Fuhrer gives the Minister President [Goring] detailed directives about the reconstruction of the National Socialist economy which will determine the life of Germany for the present and the future’. Hitler’s memorandum was read out to government ministers at a meeting on 4 September (IMG, xxxvi-489ff., Doc.EC- 416).
82. Wilhelm Treue, ‘Hitlers Denkschrift zum Vierjahresplan 1936’, VfZ, 3 (1955), 184–210, here 184; DGFP, C, V, 853 n.1, N0.490.
83. Petzina, 48, 52. According to Hans Kehrl, Krisenmanager im Dritten Reich, Dusseldorf, 1973, 86, Goring was forbidden to pass on the document or even to read it out to his closest staff. Overy, Goering, 46, has a third copy given to Fritz Todt, engaged in building the Autobahnen. The evidence for this is unclear. Speer’s note attached to his copy of the memorandum (Treue, 184) remarked that there were only three copies, one of which he had received in 1944. If Todt had received a copy, it might have been expected to have remained in the files of his ministry, which Speer took over in 1942.
84. Treue, ‘Denkschrift’, 204–5; Engl. transi. in DGFP, C, V, 853–6, Doc. 490; and Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham (eds.), Nazism, 1919–1945. A Documentary Reader, vol.2, Exeter, 1984, 281–9.
85. Petzina, 51; Hayes, 155–65, especially 164.
86. Kube, 154–5 and n.22.
87. Treue, 206–7, 209–10; Engl. transl. in DGFP, C, V, 856–8, 860–61, Doc.490.
88. Kube, 156.
89. Kube, 156–7.
90. Kube, 156.
91. TBJG, I/2, 727 (15 November 1936).
92. Kube, 157.
93. Kube, 158, citing post-war testimony of Lammers and Friedrich Gramsch, State Secretary to Goring in the office of the Four-Year Plan.
94. Reden des Fuhrers am Parteitag der Ehre 1936, Munich, 1936, 48–52; Domarus, 637–8; Kube, 155 and n.24.
95. Kube, 156–7.
96. A warning against equating the Four-Year Plan with the Stalinist Five-Year Plans is, however, appropriate, as noted by Hans Mommsen, ‘Reflections on the Position of Hitler and Goring in the Third Reich’, in Thomas Childers and Jane Caplan (eds.), Reevaluating the Third Reich, New York/London, 1993, 86–97, here 92.
97. Kube, 157–8.
98. See Griffiths, 206–7, 218–19, 268–9. Among the prominent British visitors who met Hitler during 1936 were Lord Londonderry (former Air Minister), David Lloyd George (highly respected former Prime Minister), and Thomas Jones (former senior civil servant and Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, and a close associate of the current Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin).
99. Wolfgang Michalka, Ribbentrop und die deutsche Weltpolitik, 1933–1940. Au?enpolitische Konzeptionen und Entscheidungsprozesse im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1980, 155, for the mandate. Hitler told Ribbentrop towards the end of July that he wanted him to become the next ambassador in London (See TBJG, I/2, 646 (22 July 1936)). Disappointed not to have been made State Secretary in the Foreign Office, Ribbentrop delayed making the appointment public until 11 August (Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop, London, 1994, 97–9). Ribbentrop’s own misleading version in his post-war testimony at Nuremberg was that he had personally asked Hitler to withdraw an earlier appointment as State Secretary in the Foreign Office, and to send him as Ambassador to London (IMG, x.267; and Ribbentrop, 60–61).
100. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, ed. Malcolm Muggeridge, London, 1948 (= CP), 44. Mussolini was sure that Ribbentrop would achieve nothing (CP, 46).
