1936-01-27
Today I had a meeting with Göring about expanding the Luftwaffe. At the moment we have eight bomber wings but only three fighter Jastas. He agreed with me that this was totally insufficient for a country with the area like Germany. I gave him permission to expand the fighter forces of the Luftwaffe to four squadrons with four wings each over the next four years, which should be enough to cover our entire airspace.
1936-02-13
After starting expansion programs for the army and the air force I decided it was time to rebuild our navy. Today I asked the high command of the Kriegsmarine to draft up plans for their rearmament.
1936-03-24
I had a meeting with the admirals of our navy today where they presented me two different plans for our future navy:
Admiral Dönitz, head of our submarine forces, argued that our navy could not be expanded in a reasonable time frame to rival the navies of our hypothetical enemies France and Britain. For that reason we should concentrate on building stealthy submarines which could be used to sink enemy convoys and cripple their war industry instead of sinking their fleet.
Grand Admiral Raeder on the other hand proposed a plan to build a grand surface navy that could rival that of Britain over the course of the next ten years, which he called "Plan Z".
I'm convinced that we will not enter a new war with Britain and France until at least 1946 and while a navy using submarines can only sink convoys and not the enemies battleships a strong surface navy can do both, which is why I decided to go with Plan Z which includes the following:
- 10 Battleships
- 12 Battle Cuisers
- 8 Aircraft Carriers
- 6 Heavy Cruisers
- 24 Light Cruisers
- 70 Destroyers
A plan like this this would surely cause trouble with the British, however at the time we don't have the industrial capacity nor the technological know how to build a fleet like that. The past years after the great war we haven't build any new ships and aircraft carriers are completely new to us, which is why I tasked the engineers of to our shipyards to create new designs that will be able to take on any enemy ship currently in existence.
At the end of the day the only order we placed with the "Germaniawerft" in Kiel was for six new transport ships which should allow us to ship troops to East Prussia more easily.
1936-04-03
Since I took over the party in 1923 my personal bodyguard, the "Leibstandarte SS A.H." or LSSAH has steadily grown from only two men who shared a gun to the strength of currently 5000 men. While they might look impressive their equipment certainly does not which is why I've decided that they should be equipped with the best weapons an material the Reichswehr has to offer.
1936-08-02
The head of our tank formations, General Guderian, came to see me today. He told me about his new theories of rapid moving forces which could break through enemy lines and quickly spread out into the undefended hinterland. The corner stone of such attacks would be tank formations which would quickly sweep aside any conventional defense. I was quite interested in this new concept but he complained that our current tanks were too few in numbers and laked the required firepower to implement his ideas. We agreed to let Krupp develop two new tank models, a medium tank to break up resistance and a light tank to exploit breaches in the enemy lines. The plan is to expand our tank forces until the end of 1939 with enough tanks to fill ten light tank divisions and one medium division.
1936-09-18
Today I visited the newly reequipped LSSAH in their training camp near Potsdam. Now they look more like an elite army brigade than a personal bodyguard...
1936-09-23
After he saw the success we had with transforming the LSSAH into a real fighting force the head of the SS, Himmler, came by my office today. He wanted permission to create his own elite SS Divisions that would basically form a forth branch of our armed forces. While I was open for the idea of creating specially trained divisions of elite soldiers I was reminded of the debacle with the SA in 1934. My former friend Ernst Röhm had tried to create his own army as well which almost
resulted in an uprising from the regular army. Himmler was disappointed but I promised him that he could create one SS infantry corps. While he would have control over recruiting and training the army high command would be in control afterwards.
1937-01-01
Late last night, just as I wanted to leave the new year's party I got some interesting news from Moscow: Stalin had signed a decree ordering the death of almost all of his senior military officers. An unthinkable act of barbarism for sure that could only occur in the Soviet Union but maybe it will be to our advantage in the future...