Hitler

world believed this, as it believed the speeches of leading members of the regime who boasted that the German economy had been geared for war for years. Thus Goring, when appointed commissioner of the Four-Year Plan, averred that Germany was already at war, though not yet a shooting war. The reality, however, was quite different. The country was, it is true, ahead of its enemies in steel production. Its coal supplies were also larger and its industries in many cases capable of greater production than those of the Allies. But in spite of all the efforts at autarchy Germany was still heavily dependent on foreign sources for crucial war materials. For example, she imported 90 per cent of her tin, 70 per cent of her copper, 80 per cent of her rubber, 75 per cent of her oil, and 99 per cent of her bauxite. She had stockpiled sufficient raw materials for approximately a year; but supplies of copper, rubber, and tin had been almost consumed by the spring of 1939. Without the vigorous economic support of the Soviet Union Germany would probably have succumbed to a British economic blockade within a short time. Molotov himself pointed this out in a conversation with Hitler.

The situation with regard to military equipment was not much different. In his Reichstag speech of September 1, 1939, Hitler declared that he had expended 90 billion marks on armaments. But this was one of those highflying fictions he regularly indulged in when he cited figures.¹⁰ In spite of all expenditures in the preceding years Germany was armed only, for the war that Hitler launched on September 1, not for the war of September 3. The army did consist of 102 divisions, but only half of these were active and battle-ready. The state of its training left much to be desired. The navy was distinctly inferior to the British and even to the French fleets; not even the strength permissible under the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935 had been attained. Shortly after the Western declarations of war reached Berlin, Grand Admiral Raeder declared tersely that the German fleet, or rather “the little that is finished or will be finished in time, can only go down fighting honorably.” The air force alone was stronger than the forces of the enemy; it had 3,298 planes at its disposal. On the other hand, the ammunition supply had been half consumed by the end of the Polish campaign, so that the war could not have been actively continued for even three or four weeks. At Nuremberg, General Jodi called the existing reserves at the outbreak of the war “literally ridiculous.” Troop equipment also amounted to considerably less than the four- month stock that the High Command of the army had demanded. Even a small-scale attack from the West in the fall of 1939 would probably have brought about Germany’s defeat and the end of the war, military experts have concluded.¹¹

There is no doubt that Hitler saw these difficulties and risks. In his memorandum of October 9, 1939, “on the waging of the war in the West” he discussed these matters and devoted a special section to analyzing “the dangers of the German situation.” His chief concern was a protracted war, for which he considered Germany not sufficiently armed politically, materially, or psychologically. But he thought such weaknesses were intrinsic to Germany’s general plight, and thus believed that “by no matter what efforts they cannot be essentially improved within a short time.” Essentially, this meant that as things stood Germany was in no position to wage a world war.

Hitler reacted to this dilemma with an enormously significant twist that revealed all his shrewdness and all his cunning—cunning even toward himself. If Germany was incapable of waging a major, protracted war against an enemy coalition, she must bring her power to bear as events demanded, in spaced, short and concentrated blows against selected individual opponents, thus step by step enlarging her economic base until she finally reached the position to wage world war. This was the strategic concept of blitzkrieg.¹²

For a long time the idea of blitzkrieg was understood merely as a tactical or operative method of annihilating the enemy’s military forces by surprise attack. But in fact it was a prescription for total warfare, which took account of the specific weaknesses and strengths of the German situation and ingeniously combined them in a novel method of conquest. By using the interval between successive campaigns for a fresh build-up of armaments, the material burden on the economy and the public could be kept relatively low. Moreover, the preparations could be attuned directly to the next enemy. Each time a triumph was celebrated, the fanfares provided psychological stimulation for the next thrust. In the final analysis, it was an attempt to get around that discouraging saying of the days of the First World War, that Germany won her battles but lost her wars, by breaking up the war into a series of victorious engagements. But though the plan corresponded so well to the nature of the regime and to Hitler’s improvising style, which depended so largely on momentary inspirations, it had a serious flaw. It was bound to fail as soon as a strong enemy coalition came into being, committed to fight a protracted war.

Hitler had such faith in the blitzkrieg concept that he was in no way prepared for the alternative of large- scale warfare. In the summer of 1939 the armed forces operations staff suggested that it would be wise to draw up contingency plans and undertake war games in view of a full-scale conflict. Hitler ruled against this, emphasizing that the war against Poland would be localized. His memorandum of October 9 was the first concrete attempt to define the situation and the goals of a conflict with the West. He also repeatedly rejected proposals to retool the economy for the needs of a protracted total war; industrial production in 1940 went down slightly from the previous year. And shortly before the winter of 1941–42 production of military goods was actually cut back in anticipation of the impending blitz victory over the Soviet Union. Here, too, the experience of the First World War was influencing Hitler. He wanted to avoid the psychologically wearing effects of a rigorously restricted economy that for years scanted the wants of the people.

The continuity between the First and the Second World War is tangibly present on a variety of planes, and not only as a matter of interpretation. Hitler himself would often say that behind him lay only an armistice, whereas before him was “the victory we threw away in 1918.” In his speech of November 23, 1939, referring to the First World War, he wrote: “Today the second act of this drama is being written.” In the light of this continuity, Hitler appears as the specifically radical representative of a concept of German world hegemony that can be traced back to the late Bismarck period. As early as the turn of the century, it had condensed into specific war aims, and after the failed attempt of 1914–18 a fresh attempt was made to carry it out, with new and greater resolution, in the Second World War. An imperialistic drive nearly a century old culminated in Hitler.¹³

This view can be upheld on many grounds. The general connection between Hitler and the prewar world, his origins in its complexes, ideologies, and defensive reactions, in itself represents a weighty argument. For in spite of all his modernity Hitler was a profoundly anachronistic phenomenon. In his naive imperialism, in his magnitude complex, in his conviction of the inescapable choice between ascent to world power or doom, he was a leftover of the nineteenth century. In principle the biased young man of the Vienna days repeated the typical and fundamental movement of the conservative ruling classes of the period: flight from their fears of the socialist menace into expansionist ideas. Hitler merely extended and radicalized that tendency. Whereas the conservatives expected war and conquest to bring about a “general clean-up” that would bolster the social and political status (“strengthening of the patriarchal order and principles” was the way they phrased it), Hitler always thought in gigantically expanded categories, regarding war and expansion as something that went far beyond class interests, as the nation’s and even the race’s sole chance for survival. In Hitler’s thinking social imperialism of the traditional variety was peculiarly mixed with biologizing elements.

The direction of Hitler’s expansionist plans also corresponded to tradition reaching into the past. It had long been a part of German ideology that the East was the natural Lebensraum for the Reich. The fact that Hitler had come from the Dual Monarchy reinforced his tendency to look in this direction. As far back as 1894 a statement by the strident Pan-German Association had guided the nation’s interest toward the East and Southeast, “in order to assure the Germanic race those living conditions which it needs for the full development of its energies.” At the notorious “council of war” held on December 8, 1912, Chief of Staff von Moltke insisted that “the press should be used to build up sentiment for a war against Russia.” Hence some papers were soon calling for the inevitable decisive struggle with the East. The question, according to the press, was whether the hegemony over Europe would fall to Teutons or Slavs. A few days after the outbreak of the First World War the Foreign Office put forth a plan for the “formation of several buffer states” in the East, all of which were to stand in military dependence on Germany. A memorandum by the president of the Pan-Germans, Heinrich Class, “On the German War Aim,” which was distributed as a leaflet in 1917, went even further. It demanded extensive provinces in the East and suggested a “racial clean-up” by exchange of Russians for Volga Germans, transference of the Jews to Palestine, and a relocation to the East of Germany’s Polish population. Hitler’s design for an Eastern policy surely derived from such grandiose wartime proposals. When we add to this the influence of Russian exile circles in Munich and his own bent for intellectual extremism, we have the full-blown Hitlerian plan.

Similarly, Hitler’s ideas about alliances were by no means without precedent. That Germany must obtain England’s neutrality in order to join with Austria-Hungary in a war of conquest to the East, with possibly a