2. Infantrie-Division marches into the Rhineland, January 1936. A gamble, but given that the bulk of the Heer
had been massed on or near the borders of France in the preceding year, the government in Paris was loathe to
engage.
The year began with quite a celebration. On New Year’s Day in Germany, the Heer--led by Adolf Hitler--had proceeded to reoccupy the Rhineland. The procession of the 2. Infantrie-Division was met with cheering crowds, with hearty renditions of the Horst-Wessel-Lied and the Deutschlandlied were sung and flowers were placed in the lapels of nearly all the German soldiers crossing the bridges. At a carefully staged speech later that day, the Fuhrer spoke about the need for Germany to rise again as the Phoenix from the ashes of the Versailles Treaty. Globally, the response to this overt act was such that even those nations took almost no note of the events in the Reich. France condemned the move in the League of Nations, using terminology such as “deplorable,” “militaristic,” and “a threat to peace.” Their great General Gamelin had told the French government that at a rate of nearly 30 million francs a day, mobilizing for war over the Rhineland was unrealistic. Great Britain, long of the opinion that the terms of the treaty had been far too harsh to begin with, did not release any negative statement. Indeed, Lord Lothian claimed “it was no different than the Germans walking into their own backyard.” An Irish author, George Bernard Shaw, opined that it was no different than if Britain occupied Portsmouth.
Mussolini, Ciano and von Ribbentrop in a meeting, 1935.
Despite being officially the ambassador to the Court of Saint James,
von Ribbentrop was von Neurath’s “hatchet man” and was almost rarely in London.
Italy had been largely quiet about the Rhineland affair publicly. Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath’s ambassador-at-large, had made significant effort to convince Mussolini’s government that Germany would provide covert support to the Italians in their continued fighting in Abyssinia in exchange for Mussolini’s about face on the Saint-Germain treaty. The war had dragged on despite the overwhelming efforts of the Italian army. German assistance had initially come in the form of high-level representatives from the Heer to help bring the Regio Esercito from a force largely composed of the militia Squadristi, or other unprofessional soldiers, into a fighting force that would be able to gain Mussolini the Empire he dreamed of.
Seated, from left: Hermann Göring (Chief of the Air Staff), Hitler and Franz von Papen (Ambassador to Austria).
Standing from left: Franz Seldte (Minister of Labor), Hans Lammers (Chief of the Reich Chancellery), Dr. Günther
Gerecke, Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (Minister of Finance), Wilhelm Frick (Minister of Interior), Werner von
Blomberg (Minister of Defense) and Alfred Hugenberg (Minister of Economy).
After the conclusion of the public face of the resurgent German machine, Hitler convened a cabinet meeting in which von Neurath encouraged the motion to begin working with the Norwegians, Danes, and the Americans around to the German way of thinking. Even if those nations did not join Germany outright, the hope was that Norway and Denmark would permit Germany to base ships or aircraft in their territory. Raeder had been striving to convince the Fuhrer that it was an ideal course of action to encircle Great Britain by providing bases from which both surface raiders and submarines could operate. Denmark would also be able to close off the Baltic from passage by any unfriendly vessels and by that method cause the Baltic to become a safe training ground for the Kriegsmarine. Indeed, even Sweden and Switzerland began to send out feelers to bring themselves closer to the German cause.
Hitler and Hjalmar Schacht walk in front of workers in an Autobahn project, 1936. The process to fund the rapid expansions of the
Wehrmacht and to improve the Reich required some creative economics, which Schacht was able to manufacture with his MEFO bills.
To fuel German industry, trade deals were signed with Italy (to provide them much needed coal in exchange for various rare materials), the Soviet Union (for metals and other rare materials), and the United States (for steel). Germany found herself in the enviable position of supplying the coal needs for much of Europe. The list included Sweden, Portugal, Romania, Hungary, and Switzerland among others. Italy would find her production of military consumables in high demand; both the United States and the Soviet Union turned to Italy to stock their armies with ammunition and other supplies. This allowed Italy to purchase steel, oil and fuel from abroad in various quantities.
A member of the Danish DNSAP walks in her uniform in the streets of Copenhagen.
When a misguided assassination attempt caused disruption in the capital, sympathies for
the party grew as the depression continued to affect the local economy.
The German desire to bring Denmark into her sphere of influence led some in the country to speak out against such a union. Indeed, the rhetoric became so bellicose that on 15 January 1936 a leader in the Danish equivalent to the NSDAP was the target of an assassination attempt. In response, the government did what it could to calm the populace, though sympathetic ears were more receptive to the shouting from the far right in response. Indeed, a Copenhagen newspaper published accounts of how much foreign nations were sending money into the coffers of the political parties on the 19th of April. The data was not of much importance to anyone in a position of power and largely ignored.
The SFIO meeting hall. The alliance of the left-wing parties in France and their subsequent inability
to deal with either the economy or the international developments would lead to a swing to
the right in the populace of France.
France experienced their own brush with civil unrest to the worst of 1934 on 22 January with an anarchist attempting to assassinate an SFIO leader. The party calmed the populace, but not before a rogue member of the PSF began to speak in the Chamber of Deputies calling for closer ties to Germany. The ruling party largely ignored the politician; the populace, however, did not. Combined with revelations--leaked from Geheimdienst operatives in France--on 18 May of that year led to the calling of new elections on 03 June, which brought the Popular Front to power.
King George V’s sons mount the guard, 1936. The ascension to the throne of King Edward VIII
was welcomed in Germany’s Foreign Ministry, as his sympathies lay more with Germany than with France.
Wallis Simpson and Edward meet the Fuhrer, 1935. This friendly relationship was part of the concern in the
British government, and thus they found any stick with which to bring down his reign.
In the United Kingdom, the untimely passing of King George V on 5 June led his sons to mount the Guard in Westminster Abbey and, after the appropriate delay, to the Coronation of King Edward VIII. Edward was a great friend to Germany, and those in the Foreign Office of the Reich were hopeful that his influence would prove beneficial to the continuation of developing ties between Great Britain and Germany. Unbeknownst to the members of the German Embassy was the growing discomfort towards Edward’s relationship with Wallis Simpson, a divorcee with two living ex-husbands. This was disquieting to the political leadership of Parliament and the Church of England which operated under the edicts that members of their church were not to remarry divorced individuals if their former spouses were still living. The constitutional crisis led by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and leading members of the Parliament caused Edward to abdicate in favor of his younger brother, Albert, on 18 August 1936. Upon ascension to the throne, Albert became King George VI.
The Ethiopian Army was largely composed of gangs of men with rifles, with none of the training that any self-
respecting European power might give their own troops (above). Thus, even an army such as Italy’s whose
training had not far surpassed that of the Great War was an overmatch for their opponents (below).
The Second Italo-Abyssinian War had begun in October 1935, almost a year after an Italian-precipitated engagement in December 1934. The “Wal-Wal Incident,” caused by Italian encroachment into Abyssinia, escalated until Mussolini ordered his generals to secure the glory for the future of the Italian Empire. The conduct of the war was so ineffectual as to make the effort laughable, and will not be covered in any detail in this volume. The war ended on 21 April 1936 when Italian troops entered Addis Ababa, and after much fanfare in Rome, Italy demobilized. The Italian experience was such that despite the victory, significant numbers of troops were killed in a war that largely should have been rapidly concluded. Initially, the Abyssinians were given some German support because of Italian opposition to Hitler’s insistence on the Anschluss with Austria, this was limited to 10,000 old Mauser rifles and 10 million rounds of ammunition. With French and British reticence to engage against Germany over Austria and the League of Nations voting for economic sanctions (however ineffective) led Mussolini to change his tune and seek out ever closer ties to the Reich and with an eye towards modernizing the Italian armed forces.
A picture of some students from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, purported to be of those responsible
for the White Rose publications. Though the Interior Ministry under Goebbels never fully stamped out dissent,
positive outcomes meant that few in the Reich took such things seriously.
Domestically, the German government worked hard to ensure that their policies would encourage their populace to aspire for greatness. The propaganda press was as even-handed as it could be expected to be: they could chastise generally while not excoriating any individual member and trumpeted any German advance to the detriment of their neighbors. Many liberal-leaning groups saw this as a betrayal of the Volk. A student society called “the White Rose,” centered on the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, had begun distributing pamphlets around their campus and in the Hofbrauhaus on 05 June. These printings, while full of misleading information that had been suitably altered to encourage dissent in the people, were not taken seriously by the population at large. The Interior Ministry still increased their efforts to track down those responsible. This led to a temporary surge in government spending such that national monetary reserves were drawn down.
These printings and the spending upon tracking the individuals responsible led directly to a parliamentary scandal which broke in the Berliner Tageblatt on 08 July. Pushed by several members of the SPD, the parliament challenged significant portions of the government expenditures for the Foreign, War and Intelligence ministries. The actions of this government spat caused the leaders in the Reichstag to prohibit the establishment of any new political parties and seriously curtailed the operations of others on 10 July. These actions, so calamitous to the population led to a government-sponsored general holiday for two days in order to calm the dissent.
Armed Groups pouring out into the streets of Madrid, 1936. Because of the
inefficiencies of the military’s reaction across the country, they were unable to
rapidly assume control of the nation and avoid a civil war.
Tensions in the Iberian peninsula had been simmering for years between the urban, left-leaning Republicans and the largely falangist aristocratic Nationalists. On 24 May, the Republicans led a massive 10000-person peace demonstration in Madrid and several smaller marches throughout the rest of Spain to raise awareness of their plight. After the elections were held, however, moves by the government convinced the Nationalists that their nation was slipping away from them. By mid-July, tensions were so bad that territory was being claimed by the extremes on either side. On 20 July, a
pronunciamiento of a group of senior generals under the leadership of General Jose Sanjurjo, was promulgated, and clashes started that day. Within a week, however, General Sanjurjo died when his plane was attacked by what little air forces remained to the Republicans while he was enroute back to Spain from Portugal. A few days later, General Francisco Franco assumed the leadership of the Nationalists.
General Sanjuro (right) with a Colonel Franco in 1921. The conflict between
these two leaders probably resulted in the former’s death,
though no accurate information remains.
There is some debate in the historical record if the intelligence of Sanjurjo’s travel was through the involvement of the German Geheimdienst. Several members who were deployed in the Embassy at the time indicate that they felt Franco would be the easier of the two to come to some accommodation with in the future and would provide the Nationalists a useful martyr for their cause, though no official records remain of that period.
With the outbreak of the civil war, several nations immediately declared support or opposition to the warring sides. The Soviet Union supported intervention on the side of the Republicans on the same day that the Italians declared in support of the Nationalists. In Germany, the Foreign Ministry was embroiled in a debate on intervention. Konstantin von Neurath believed, as did many of those in his Ministry, that any intervention abroad would bring undue attention back on Germany. They believed that there would be a reckoning, either economically or diplomatically during the period when the Reich was trying to find allies amongst the other nations of Europe or abroad. He also strenuously objected to minimization of effort when so many resources were being poured into Austria. On the other side were several generals of the Heer as well as the Abwehr saw the war as an excellent proving ground for their future military plans. In the end, those on the side of intervention won out, and Germany declared her intervention on 27 July.
Seyss-Inquart with Hitler, 1936. The rapid deterioration of the political situation in Austria caused Hitler to
recognize that he had an opportunity to grab territory with little opposition; indeed, the situation had deteriorated
so rapidly that Germany presented the world with a fait accompli which they were more than happy to
accommodate to avoid war.
The Foreign Minister’s concerns were short-lived, however. Throughout the first half of the 1930s, German NSDAP officials worked in close contact with those in their Austrian branch. After the July 1934 putsch, the Geheimdienst had operated with near-impunity in Austria, mostly due to public distrust in the Austro-fascist government of Kurt Schuschnigg, who had risen to the Chancellorship after the assassination of Dr. Dollfuss. His rule was so unpopular, however, that Hitler demanded that Schuschnigg resign in favor of Arthur Seyss-Inquart, that all imprisoned Austrian NSDAP party members be released from prison and that several prominent cabinet positions be given to NSDAP persons. When the demand was refused, popular discontent was such that in order to avoid civil war, Seyss-Inquart requested an Anschluss with Germany. Hitler, overjoyed, immediately accepted the offer and 31 July saw the union of Germany and Austria concluded.
Stanley Baldwin at No. 10 Downing. His speech before Parliament
guided much of Europe’s response to the Austrian Crisis.
International response was muted. In the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin said that nothing could have prevented the union between Germany and Austria because of the rapidity with which the entire sequence of events had occurred. He did go on to say that a defense review would be initiated, but failed to respond in any other manner. The United States’ State Department issued a statement to the effect of stating that they were glad that the unrest in Europe had been minimized, but expressed concern over the lack of self-determination from the change. Italy, once so supportive of the Locarno treaty, saw the western powers’ reaction and wondered openly about whom they might support in the dance of European politics.
Poster of the XI Olympiad. The recent Anschluss was rapidly forgotten when Jesse Owens embarrassed the
German athletes in much of the track events. The announcements of the reintroduction of mandatory service in
the Reich were quietly disposed of during this time.
With the Anschluss successfully secured, Hitler directed that there be a war mobilization of the economy. On 04 August, the industrial magnates that were encouraging the government to spend more on the military promised to increase their output and employment--to fully mobilize the economy of the Reich. A few days later, the Reichstag increased the period required of military service from that of an all-volunteer army to a three-year draft. The same day, Italy also increased their draft period from two to three years. All of these announcements were overlooked, however, by the foreign press, consumed as it was by the games of the XI Olympiad and the constitutional crisis in the United Kingdom.
The year ended on a positive note for Germany. With production up, Sweden approached the ambassador, Victor zu Wied, with a request to purchase military consumables from the Reich. This was approved in early September, and by the middle of the month, Sweden’s economy experienced a boost in its growth outlook for the year. For Denmark, however, a parliamentary scandal broken on 23 October caused a wave of indignation from the population with regards to the more centrist parties in the government.
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Author's Note: I apologize that this is a bit tardy, but teaching has joys that none can truly be ready for! I hope you enjoy this addition!
