THE FOREIGN POLICY OF HITLER
By Joaquin Bochaca
The majority of German voters who gave their votes to Hitler were well aware of the programmatic points of his party. As regards foreign policy, it was to wipe out
the aftermath of the Versailles Treaty, which everyone in Germany – not just the “Nazis” – called the “Diktat.”
Hitler based his position, in fact, on the terms of the Treaty itself, for example, on the clause on “Disarmament,” which had been imposed by the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, and which pertained to all signatories to the Covenant, not just the vanquished Germans.
*** Ah yes, Wilson promised that if America attacked Germany, WWI would become “the war to end all wars.”
***
In the Conference on Disarmament (March – November 1933), the German delegate approved without reservations the MacDonald Plan, presented by the British delegation. Here is the substance of the plan:
.
Germany had the right to double the strength of the Reichswehr, which would thus increase from 100,000 to 200,000 men. France was required to reduce their military forces to the same number: 200,000 soldiers.
But in addition to those 200,000 men to defend their home country, France was allowed to add another 200,000 to defend its Empire.
Italy had the right to an army of 200,000 men plus 50,000 for its colonies.
Poland – whose population was less than Germany’s by 50 percent – also had the right to an army of 200,000 men.
Czechoslovakia was allowed 100,000 and the Soviet Union 500,000.
Adding the forces of France and its allies in Europe, namely Poland, Belgium, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, results in a total of more than a million men, as opposed to the Reichswehr’s 200.000.
This disparity was further accentuated by the fact that Germany continued, for now, without the right to possess ANY combat aircraft, so no air force — no Luftwaffe — at all, while France was allowed 500 aircraft, Poland 200, Belgium 150 and the “Little Entente,” linked by a military pact with France (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania) no less than 550.
This plan was to be realized in stages over a period of five years. England, as the promoter of the Disarmament Plan, of course reserved for itself the lion’s share.
An army of 300,000 men for the “mother country” and 600,000 for the Empire.
Naturally, the imperial armies of the “Dominions,” the white offshoot countries in the empire such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa, were not included in the Plan [but in both world wars, soldiers of the white British colonies fought right alongside Britain].
Nevertheless, the MacDonald Plan received general approval. It was agreed that, once implemented, it would be re-examined after five years in order to carry out a second stage, which was to lead to general disarmament.
In a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler was in agreement with the MacDonald Plan, but gave a warning: “If Germany’s demand for equal treatment with other nations, and specifically in this case, in the level of armaments, is not satisfied, I would prefer to withdraw from the Conference on Disarmament and from the League of Nations.”
In a word: the Fuehrer did accept the English Disarmament Plan as a first step towards military equality between the major countries in Europe.
The MacDonald Plan itself provided for a second stage leading to that equality — after five years.
Hitler’s speech had a fortunate effect: it suggested to Mussolini and the French Ambassador in Rome, Henry de Jouvenel, the signing of a pact of four (Italy, France, England and Germany) which would, by the solidarity of the four powers, “affirm their faith in peace.” The idea was good. The pact was signed by representatives of the four countries in the Palazzo Venezia but, unfortunately, this pact was never ratified, owing to the opposition it encountered in the English and French parliaments.
The war faction in Paris, even more active than that of London on this occasion, succeeded in preventing the pact from being ratified, and, therefore, it never took effect.
It was not only the National Assembly [ = the French Parliament] that boycotted the Pact of Four. The French delegate at the Conference on Disarmament, Paul Boncour, was the greatest champion anywhere against it in order to torpedo the MacDonald Plan to which France had initially agreed. Paul Boncour demanded that before signing the agreement on disarmament there should be a study on the control to be exercised over Germany. Nadolny, the German delegate, said he would only agree if they also studied the control to be exercised over all the co-signatories of the Treaty, and especially over France.
So there was no agreement, and Sir John Simon, head of the British Delegation, informed Nadolny, of the German delegation, of “the impossibility of allowing the rearmament of Germany and the necessity of setting up a framework for monitoring Germany’s compliance for a ‘trial period.’
This “trial period,” moreover, was not specific as to either its commencement or its duration.
On the other hand, not another word was said about the MacDonald Plan, nor about the disarmament of the other countries. In other words, despite all co-signers of the Treaty of Versailles having pledged to disarm, the former winners (the Allies) absolutely refused to do so; moreover, they intended for Germany to remain disarmed indefinitely, and wanted to monitor only HER compliance.
This was a clear violation of the terms of the Versailles Treaty and, in practice, totally impossible. No sovereign state in the world would ever agree to remain unarmed while surrounded by a ring of hostile states which, for their part, armed themselves as much as they pleased.
France at that time had a treaty of mutual military assistance with the countries of the Little Entente, and another with Poland. “Irregular” Polish and even Lithuanian troops violated the frontiers of the Reich constantly. Such violations were not symbolic, but extremely pragmatic.
In 1921, for example, the Pole Wojchech Korfanty’s “irregular” troops changed the Germano-Polish border in Upper Silesia, occupying two thousand square kilometers (772 square miles) of German territory, despite the fact that a referendum had clearly shown the will of the majority of the population to continue to belong to their country, Germany, not to a hostile Poland.
Korfanty, with the forces that followed him, managed to put the territory under Polish rule, despite the (not very energetic) protests of the Allied Control Commission, which tolerated the “de facto” lawlessness (15).
The German Government’s response was immediate. Two days after the refusal of Sir John Simon, practically forced by the attitude of the French Delegation, Hitler Germany announced it was pulling out simultaneously from the Conference and the League of Nations. That night, Hitler gave a long speech broadcast on the radio to justify his decision. Here is the section that we consider essential:
“It has been said that the German government and people asked to be allowed to have a bigger and stronger army: this is absolutely false. We asked only for equal rights. If the world decides to destroy its weapons down to last machine gun, we are willing to sign such an agreement. If the world decides that certain weapons should be destroyed, we are ready to renounce them.
But if the world allows each nation the use of certain weapons, we are not willing to be excluded from their employment, as if we were a nation of the second rank.We are willing to take part in all conferences; we are willing to subscribe to all conventions — but only on condition of enjoyment of rights equal to those of other peoples. As a private man, I have never imposed myself on a society that did not desire my presence or that considered me an inferior. I have never forced anyone to receive me, and the German people has no less dignity than I do.
Either we will have rights equal to those of other peoples, or the world will never see us again at any conference. A plebiscite will be organized so that every German citizen can say if I am right or if they disapprove.”
As you see, Hitler does not ask for anything but equal rights from the representatives of “democratic” governments for whom “Equality”, like “Freedom” and “Brotherhood,” is a sacred dogma of their ideological arsenal.
Hitler calls for equal treatment for Germany; and practically speaking, in accepting the MacDonald Plan he recognizes the de facto situation and the obligations facing France as a colonial power and accepts that the latter, in fact, has been accorded the right to possess an army twice as large as the German army, and enjoying, moreover, the support of a combat air force.
The argument asserted – as always, in all cases – is that Hitler was merely lying. This argument is worthless. If they thought Hitler was lying, all the more reason to accept his plan – which, ironically, was not his plan, but the English plan, drawn up by the British labor leader MacDonald.
If it had been carried out, it would obviously have been under the control of the Disarmament Commission, and as a result of such control it would have been ascertained that the resultant “Equality” left Germany with an army of 200,000 men and no combat aircraft, France with 400,000 soldiers plus aviation, members of the Little Entente with 625,000 plus 550 aircraft and Poland with 200,000, plus 125 aircraft….. not to mention the lovely British and Soviet democracies with their 900,000 and 500,000 men under arms, respectively. And this was he idea at the end of five years, after which talks would resume to continue limiting the armies of the co-signers by stages.
If it turned out that Hitler had lied about accepting the British plan for disarmament, and was planning its own major rearmament, it is clear that the Control Commission would have perceived it and then the Allies would have had their hands free to terminate the agreements and even to take what punitive measures they deemed necessary.
History tells us that the Allies, the theoretical champions of democracy – that is to say, Equality – refused to apply their own principles when it came to Germany. This must always be unacceptable to any country, let alone a great country, with the largest population of Europe excluding Russia, and which only called on its “partners” to apply the general disarmament agreements that they themselves wrote into the Treaty of Versailles.
Hitler’s acceptance of the MacDonald Plan is surprising because it sanctioned, for five years at least, a situation of formal “equality” but which in the political situation of that time left Germany with an army five times smaller than those of France and its Little Entente Allies.
And if you count Poland, Germany would have been surrounded by forces six times larger than hers, and had no air force to oppose the 1,200 planes of the Francophile political front.
Hitler accepted it anyway — because it certainly meant a step forward; and with an armed force, small but well-trained, events such as the military occupation of the left bank of the Rhine, conducted by the French ten years before, could not be repeated, while the “irregular” Polish troops would also have had to cease their uncontrolled activities.
Hitler knew that Nature abhors a vacuum. He knew that a defenseless territory excites the greed of its armed neighbor. A territory without defenses will only be secure if its neighbor is disarmed as well. We apologize for writing this truism, but we are forced to do so by the general neglect of a truth so basic.
The plebiscite about leaving the hypocritical Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations announced by Hitler took place on December 12, 1933.
By 40,601,577 votes, or 95.2% of registered voters, Germany lined up behind the leader that she herself had chosen democratically.
It is said that this result was obtained under coercion. We refuse to believe that the citizens could have been brought to vote by force; the only coercion possible was moral, ie the hammering of propaganda through the press and radio, but this influencing of public opinion is done every single day of the year in officially democratic countries, and nobody calls it coercion.
General de Gaulle held plebiscites on several occasions; and in general elections the American and British public are invited to decide, in practice, between two candidates or two parties: in short, between two alternatives.
In the referendum of December 12, 1933, Germans also had two choices: to vote “yes” or vote “no.” 95.2% of the electorate – and not just of those voting, as has been claimed – voted “yes.”
The anti-Nazi reporter and writer William Shirer wrote:
In the Dachau concentration camp, 2,154 of 2,242 political prisoners voted for the government that had imprisoned them.” Those detainees, according to Shirer, were trade unionists, Social Democrats and Communists. They were “hardcore,” i.e., the popular opposition whose Social-Democratic representatives, on May 17, unanimously approved Hitler’s speech without any pressure having been exerted on them by the government (16).
This plebiscite was the real popular and symbolic enthronement of Hitler in power. In the elections that brought him to power Hitler had won 52% of the vote, which was already a lot. This time, 11 months later, he had behind him the near unanimity of the German people. And no one could say that he imposed his will on an entire people through terrorist methods; on the contrary, he was carried on a wave of enthusiasm by an entire nation that could not accept being treated unequally. So this was the ultimate result of the policy of the Allies about disarming Germany, and not themselvves: Hitler was consolidated in power by the very measures intended to put him in difficulties.
* * *
Arguably, the leitmotiv of Hitler’s foreign policy was the general application – rather than unilateral and against Germany, as has been happening since 1919 – of the Versailles Treaty.
The German Government requested that it apply to all: disarmament, yes, whether progressive, immediate, partial, total or as preferred, but always on the basis of the sacrosanct democratic “Equality” for all.
The NS Germans also sought to apply Article 19 of the Treaty, which allowed for the peaceful revision of certain economic and territorial clauses thereof. The only request Germany made to her former conquerors and co-signers of Versailles was concerning the colonies. Agenda Item III of the National Socialist Party program calls for “Colonies for growing food for our people and the resettlement of our surplus population.”
Note that they are not asking for “our former German colonies,” taken from the Reich by the victors under the Treaty of Versailles, but only for “colonies” without specification.
Later, in a note sent by the Wilhelmstrasse [the address of the German Foreign Ministry], it was suggested to the British Foreign Office and to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that indigenous peoples of former colonial territories of Germany be asked if they wished to continue being administered by the English and French or once again be placed under German sovereignty.
The German proposal was presented without much conviction, and only after London and Paris had responded to German colonial demands with silence. But what is peculiar is that London apparently found Germany’s request very reasonable, since, according to the testimony of no less than Lloyd George, former Prime Minister, war would break out sooner or later if the German proposals on the subject of the colonies were not met. However, in the influential political circles of London it was believed that the country which should give up its colonies – namely Cameroon and Togo – was France. This caused a predictable brouhaha in Paris, and finally, at a meeting between the Frenchman Bonnet and the Englishman Simon, the two Ministers of Foreign Affairs agreed, in a note to the Wihelmstrasse, that they would consider ceding to Germany some Portuguese, Dutch and Belgian colonial territories!
This was a way to 1) say no to the Reich and, incidentally, 2) to place these small countries in the anti-German orbit. In view of the low – or zero – success of the petition, in Berlin the point was not insisted upon.
* *
We believe that Hitler brought to the fore the question of the colonies while counting on the Allies’ negative response, which would then put him in better position in further discussions with the Western democracies. Hitler, it is true, demanded “living space” (Lebensraum) for his people, but he was not enthusiastic about the colonies, at least in the form in which the internal structure and the functioning of the latter were understood at that time.
Colonialism, as Hitler himself exposed in Mein Kampf, makes the union of Blood and Soil – the basis of the racial policies of the Third Reich – impossible. “The colonies serve only to suck out the best blood of the nation,” he said.
If there is anything clear and transparent in the international politics of the Thirties and early Forties, it is the wish of Hitler for Germany to grow territorially at the expense
of Soviet Communism.
The bursting demography of Germany should extend itself across lands in the Eastern Baltic and Western Russia, once they had been wrested from the Soviets, who would then disappear as a potential threat to Germany in particular and to the entire West in general. In order to develop this policy, he needed the friendship – if possible – or at least the benevolent neutrality of England and France. This explains the lack of insistence of Wilhelmstrasse with regard to the issue of the Colonies.
It also explains the Anglo-German Naval Agreement concluded on June 18, 1935, by which the Third Reich promised that the tonnage of its military fleet would not exceed 35 percent of that of the British fleet. It was a one-sided agreement, for England did not pledge or obligate herself to anything at all.
Simply put, Germany imposed an obligation on herself, solemnly pledging, by international treaty, that its fleet would be, at the most, roughly equivalent in tonnage to a third of the English.
This agreement was an insurance offered, free of charge, to England, so that the latter would not feel threatened. Its insularity, protected behind a “Home Fleet” that, at that time, was the first naval force in the world, was a guarantee against any invasion. Without a navy that was superior, or at least equal, to the English, such an invasion of England would be impossible.
Hitler in numerous speeches had said that he asked nothing of the Western democracies. He now coupled his verbal statements with a highly significant kind of action: the Naval Treaty shows that he had no aggressive intentions against England. Moreover, Hitler went even farther in practice: his “Kriegsmarine” represented, in fact, not 35 percent of the tonnage of the “Home Fleet”, but a mere 10 percent. The “intelligence services”, always well informed, could not ignore the fact that, apart from the battleship “Bismarck” [photo], Germany limited itself to building four light battleships, called “pocket battleships.”
.
When war broke out in 1939, the French war fleet was almost five times higher in tonnage than the German. Hitler, moreover, always said that the British Empire was a bulwark against
chaos in the world and that the interests of England and Germany were not contrary to each other, but complementary.
As for France, with the definitive renunciation by Germany of German-speaking Alsace and Lorraine, any territorial source of friction between the two nations disappeared.
All that remained was the issue of the Saarland. Under the terms of one of the clauses of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, in January 1935 a referendum was to be held in the territory of the Saar, to determine whether the population of that territory wanted to become a department of France or preferred to return to the sovereignty of the Reich. They were also offered the possibility of retaining the “status quo”, that is, they might choose an intermediate position, remaining an independent state, or even partially dependent on France and Germany at the same time.
However, two months before the announcement of elections in that territory, France concentrated four infantry divisions along the border, using the pretext of possible pre-election riots. The German government strongly protested the belated show of force, which was certainly a constraint to the voters. After an exchange of notes of protest between Wilhelmstrasse and the Quai d’Orsay, the League of Nations sent an international police force to permit and ensure the normal holding of the plebiscite. This took place under international supervision on January 13, 1935.
The inhabitants of the Saar territories were asked if, after their fifteen years of experience as part of the French Republic, they freely wanted to join it. They also had the option of rejoining the Reich — ruled by then for three years by Hitler — or continuing the status quo, ie being independent.
Despite fifteen years of Francophile propaganda, and despite offering the Saarlanders a number of tax and customs advantages if they decided to become part of France, only 0.4 percent of voters voted for it. 8.85 percent preferred the independence of the Saarland, and 90.75 percent wanted re-unification with the Reich.
So 15 years of French propaganda to the Saarlanders that was relentlessly germanophobic and francophilic, and 15 years of promises to Saarlanders that they would become “special first class” French citizens, and, on top of all that, three years of anti-Hitler propaganda – all reinforced by military and police presence — gained only 0.4 percent of the vote. This was a massive French policy failure!
The matter could have been solved less favorably for Germany, though perhaps more favorably for the general understanding among European peoples. In November 1934, two months before the Saar plebiscite, Hitler had delivered a diplomatic note to French Ambassador Francois-Poncet, proposing to resolve the conflict in a friendly manner and without recourse to the ballot box: the Saar would return to the bosom of the Reich, but an economic treaty would enable the French industry continue to benefit from its resources as it had from 1919 to 1934. But the French government declined the offer, considering it nothing more than a confession of impotence by Hitler, who only proposed it because he knew the hostility of the Saar people to Germany and the National Socialist regime.
The Saar plebiscite, which was held under the supervision of the League of Nations, i.e. without Germany being able to intervene in either the voting process or the announcement of the results – and without Germany being allowed to propagandize in favor of their thesis until the last two months, while the French had had fifteen years to do the same – resulted in Hitler getting the same percentage of favorable votes as he had in Germany, which was under his control. N
ow it was harder to pretend that the elections and referenda which had brought Hitler to power and consolidated him in it were “rigged.” Only a few months before, 88.9 percent of registered voters – that is, nearly 96 percent of those voting – had approved the decree by which, on the death of Hindenburg, the functions of President of the Reich would merge with those of Chancellor and by which, in consequence, “all the powers and prerogatives of the President would be transferred to the Chancellor, Adolf Hitler.”
The Saar plebiscite clearly indicated that if the Western democracies — England, France and the America of Roosevelt — wanted to prevent other German ethnic minorities, which would probably be of the same mind as the Saarlanders about demanding their annexation to the Reich – as would happen in the Sudetenland, in Posen, in Upper Silesia, in Danzig, Memel and Austria itself – they had no other means available to them but force to stop Germans from reunifying with their mother country.
On May 1, 1935, the police forces of the League of Nations officially handed over the administration of the Saar to Germany, and Hitler declared to the Reichstag:
“Germany renounces solemnly all claims to Alsace-Lorraine; following the return of the Saar, the French-German boundary can be considered definitively established.”
But on the same day, Marshal Phillippe Pétain published an article in a journal, unofficial but very prestigious in military circles, (17) emphasizing the need for the reintroduction of compulsory military service for a period of two years. Five days later, Pierre-Étienne Flandin, Minister of Foreign Affairs, presented a bill to this effect to the Chamber of Deputies. This bill was approved, after a passionate debate, on March 16.
Som, just four hours later, the Führer presented to his Cabinet in Germany a decree that reestablished mandatory military service in Germany as well, stating that the new Reichswehr, to be called the Wehrmacht, would be composed, in peacetime, of twelve army corps and thirty-six divisions.
With this Executive Order, Hitler destroyed what was left of Part V of the Versailles Treaty, and regained his freedom of action. It has been argued, a posteriori, that if France had not reinstated their Selective Service, Hitler would have, sooner or later. This is impossible to clarify.
Nobody knows what Hitler would have done if France had not re-introduced mandatory military service. No one can ever know, and in this area, all is hypothesis. What we do know, for sure, is that chronologically, France was the first European country that reinstated its military service, aside, of course, from the Soviet Union.
And here we wish to make an extremely important observation:
We have said that France re-imposed compulsory military service after the Soviet Union had done so. However, if other European and extra-European nations did not reintroduce it, it is simply because they had never ceased to have it in full force. Hitler’s decision to institute compulsory military service occurred when such a policy was already in place in Italy, Poland, England and her colonies and dominions and – for four hours – in France. Hitler, simply noting the facts on the ground as they were, and in view of the fact that other nations made no move to disarm as promised, and that France even reinstated its mandatory military service, simply did the same in Germany.
Previous incidents such as the invasion of the Ruhr valley by the French in 1923 – with a partial occupation that lasted seven years – or the annexation of Upper Silesia by the “Uncontrollables” of Korfanty for the benefit of Poland could not, henceforth, be repeated with impunity against his people.
Leave a Reply