resistance to Hitler (though not mentioning this episode), see Romedio Galeazzo Reichsgraf von Thun-Hohenstein, Der Verschworer. General Oster und die Militaropposition, 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 Dulffer, 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, Goring, 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 Fuhrer 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 Fuhrers nicht vor etwa 1944 zu rechnen brauchten… Was die Kriegsmarine anbetrifft, so ist sie selbstverstandlich im Herbst 1939 noch keineswegs fur den grossen Kampf mit England hinreichend gerustet.) (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 uber die Zeit vom 22.8–27.9.1939 als Verbindungsoffizier des Heeres beim Fuhrer und Obersten Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht’, Fol.56.
23. Martens, Goring, 169–70.
24. Watt, How War Came, ch.4; for divisions over policy towards Poland among Hitler’s entourage, 68. For Goring’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-Jurgen Wendt, ‘Nationalsozialistische Gro?raumwirtsch-aft zwischen Utopie und Wirklichkeit — Zum Scheitern einer Konzeption 1938/39’, in Knipping and Muller, 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 Goring); DRZW, i.323–31.
28. Tim Mason, Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class. Essays by Tim Mason, ed. Jane Caplan, Cambridge, 1995, 109.
29. Goring’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 Darre.
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 Ernahrungswirtschaft in Deutschland unter der Diktatur Hitlers, Berlin, 1997, 280–97; Kershaw, Popular Opinion, 55–61.
37. Mason, Nazism, 111. The investment in new farm machinery 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 ‘Auslander-Einsatzes’ in der Kriegswirtschaft des Dritten Reiches, Berlin/Bonn, 1985, 68).
40. Mason, Sozialpolitik, 215–26; reports of the Reichstreuhander 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
