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Did Hitler plan for war?
The A.J.P.Taylor debate is central to our consideration of Hitler's motives
when he set in motion the chain of events that became World War II - and this essay is my
take on his controversial work The Origins of the Second World War.
‘Perhaps never in
history did a ruler write down before he came to power what he was to do afterwards as
precisely as did Adolf Hitler. Hitler set himself two goals: a war of conquest and the
elimination of the Jews’.
Eberhard Jäckel,
Hitler in History
Although written at a later date, this statement shows well the
basis of the historical orthodoxy of the late 1940s and 1950s. By maintaining that Hitler,
no longer able to answer for his crimes, was solely responsible for the Second World War,
historians were provided with a scapegoat, and the conscience of the German people was
salved. There is much to be said for this orthodoxy, as we shall see. However, in 1961,
many of the accepted ‘historical truths’ of the origins of the Second World War
were challenged at their very heart by the publication of The Origins of the
Second World War by Alan Taylor. This book, which created a storm of controversy
whose effects are still felt now, has ever since been at the centre of any debate about
whether or not Hitler planned for the Second World War and the Nazi expansion to take the
course it did. Taylor believes that Hitler was simply a talented opportunist, skilled at
playing the waiting game, whose plans were much less definite than some have made out, and
for whom involvement in war with Great Britain and France was an unexpected by-product of
plans for expansion in the East. When considering this argument, one must take into
account: the state of re-armament in the Third Reich, and the related development of
economic affairs; international politics and diplomacy between Germany and the other Great
Powers of Europe, especially that which occurred between the Anschluss of March
1938 and the outbreak of WWII in September 1939; and the pronouncements of Hitler to his
Nazi cronies and to his High Command (including the historically contentious Hoßbach
Memorandum).
The creation of the latest incarnation of Poland in 1919 was a
constant source of dissatisfaction to the German people: the Polish corridor, created to
allow the Poles access to the Baltic, contained the free city of Danzig, with a largely
German population, and separated the main German state from East Prussia. The redrawing of
the Versailles settlement was one of the prime foreign policy aims of both Weimar and Nazi
politicians alike, as was the redrawing of other former Habsburg possessions, notably
Czechoslovakia (Anschluss with Austria, it should be noted, was never something
that the German public considered important, despite the impression given by the
Versailles clause specifically prohibiting it - Hitler’s preoccupation with it
stemmed from his Austrian origins). The short-term intentions of Hitler with regard to
Eastern Europe were three-pronged : firstly, Anschluss; secondly, the merging of
the Czech Sudetenland, industrially developed and rich in iron ore, with a large German
population, into the Reich; thirdly, the return of Danzig and the repossession of the
Polish corridor and if circumstances permitted, the rest of Poland. The Anschluss,
while successful, did not turn out exactly as Hitler had planned - he had envisaged a
gradual, almost imperceptible shift towards a united government, and the sudden political
union and military intervention was forced upon him by an Austrian government desperately
attempting to retain its independence, but failing in a last ditch political
manoeuvre.
The acquisition of the Sudetenland, and ultimately the breaking up of the rest of the
Czechoslovakian state, was accomplished more by Britain and France than by Hitler. Having
made his intentions known, the Fuhrer allowed the Great Powers’ fear of him to
galvanise them into handing over his demands without significant political effort on his
part. This was the policy of appeasement which led Neville Chamberlain to declare to
cheering crowds outside 10, Downing Street that ‘I believe that it is peace for our
time’. After Munich, where the most powerful nations in Europe wrangled over the fate
of the country excluded from those same negotiations, Britain and France believed that
Hitler had made his last demand. However, Hitler’s belief in the weakness of
democracy led him to ignore Allied guarantees of Poland - the opportunity was great, the
Polish army was exceedingly weak, its air force obsolete, and Hitler believed that the
British and French were still too weak to intervene. More importantly, the chief military
threat to the possibility of invading Poland had been disarmed in the shape of the
Nazi-Soviet Pact of early 1939. This was the decisive factor which made Hitler’s mind
up to act against Poland. He used his characteristic tactics of attempting to make his
opponent seem unreasonable, and justified his claim further through staging a Polish
attack on a German radio station using SS men. On 31 August 1939 German troops rolled
across the border into Poland, and what was to become known as the Second World War began.
The question is, fundamentally speaking, did Hitler intend for it to be that way, or was
he staging a limited war with limited objectives.
The German re-armament which allowed Hitler to move against Poland does not necessarily imply German designs on extensive foreign conquest. The 100,000 strong
Reichswehr allowed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles was barely adequate for border control
and the maintenance of civil control, and was by armament and function more of a police
force than a true army. The prohibition of a military air force, or a significant navy, or
the military units needed for a proper army (signal corps, field engineers, etc.), or most
significantly, a general staff, was an affront to German pride, and every government from
the conception of the Weimar Republic promised to rectify this situation. The secret
clauses of the Treaty of Rapallo with the USSR were the first infringement of the military
clauses of the treaty, and would not be the last. Hitler’s re-armament policy may
have been more blatant than that of his predecessors, but should not be taken in itself to
indicate any intention to pursue an aggressive foreign policy, for it was a goal shared by
the whole of the political class and the army, as well as by the majority of the German
people, and would undoubtedly have been pursued by Hitler even if he had no intentions of
using the armed forces in the field.
From a military point of view, there is a temptation to view the
early conquests of the Wehrmacht and conclude that Germany had an army equipped supremely
well for a war of European conquest. This leads us easily in its turn to the conclusion
that this was what Hitler had planned all along. By June of 1940, Germany had overrun half
of Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg, and occupied the whole of
Northern France, pushing the French First Army and the British Expeditionary Force out of
the country at Dunkirk (where it would not have been
beyond its military capabilities to destroy them before they could
be evacuated - only the caution of Hitler prevented this). Nine months after the outbreak
of hostilities, almost the whole of Western and Central Europe was either in the hands of
the Nazis, or the hands of their allies (Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria) - only a few
countries remained unconquered, either neutrals or those later to be conquests (Yugoslavia
for example). German armed forces were not to suffer their first substantial defeat until
the Battle of Britain in summer 1940, and naval incidents such as the Battle of the River
Plate. The apparently overwhelming German numerical superiority on land was partly an
illusion. The Blitzkrieg was more than just the tactical and strategic doctrine
which allowed for speedy victories - it also incorporated the concept of ‘re-armament
in breadth’, as preached and practised by Hitler. In practical terms this involved
concentrating all forces together for a lightning fast invasion, and it worked. It
precluded, however, the desire of the German General Staff for ‘re-armament in
depth’. This would have created a force capable of fighting a more sustained war,
with reserves rather than total commitment, and was very much a response to the lessons of
the First World War (which the Germans believed they had not lost - the armistice came too
soon to really show the effects of defeat to the people or the General Staff). The
‘re-armed in breadth’ Wehrmacht only had to concede one defeat and the scope for
military failure was vastly increased - without any reserves, the military position would
have been untenable, the line open to a counter-thrust. This matter raises two questions
about German re-armament: firstly, did this style of armament originally preclude the use
of the army from taking part in a prolonged war of European conquest? To most generals and
politicians in the rest of Europe it would have done. Secondly, when the first part of the
question is considered, was Hitler, portrayed by Taylor as the ultimate high-stakes
gambler, aware of the military risks he was running, or was he simply subverting his plans
and changing his focus from east to west in order to take advantage of French weakness and
neutralise a huge potential threat?
Hitler’s style of operations over the Anschluss and the
Sudetenland rather suggests that he kept his mind open to options other than military ones
- the military component of the Anschluss is little more than a footnote to the
episode, and one which serves to highlight German military inadequacy, for 70% of the
German vehicles en route from the Austro-German border to Vienna broke down. In the
Czechoslovakian affair, the threat of German divisions on the border was never a serious
one - Hitler knew, as did the Czech government, that the Czech army, one of the best
equipped in Eastern Europe, could pose a serious short-term threat to any invasion by
still ill-equipped German forces. Thus, he never seriously countenanced invasion, but used
it as a bluff to the British and French governments, who were willing to believe (and made
no effort to disprove) Hitler’s distorted claims of military might. Thus, the
Sudetenland and ultimately the dismemberment of the Czech state was handed over to Hitler
by the British and French. The army was, however, used in Poland, ostensibly to reclaim
the German city of Danzig but in reality to annexe half the country. This was a task for
which it was more than adequate, but this was partly by virtue of the weakness of the
Polish armed forces. Although it turned out to be, while in its prime at least, also
superior to the armies of western Europe, that does not necessarily mean that Hitler ever
intended it for that purpose at that time. Although he might have been planning wars of
conquest, evidence exists to suggest that it was intended to be much later than 1939.
When we consider whether or not Hitler planned for war with the
European great powers, we must remember that he was probably not expecting the
declarations of war which eventually followed on from his invasion of Poland. In August
1939 Hitler told Count Ciano that it was ‘out of the question that this struggle can
begin war’, and that ‘the conflict will be localised’, (quoted by R.J.Overy
in ‘Hitler’s War and the German Economy: A Reinterpretation’, Economic
History Review). The British and the French had sold out Czechoslovakia without any
guilt, and nobody had been in any position to prevent the Anschluss either. If the
Western Powers had been content to stand by and watch these two countries disappear from
the map, then there was no reason that they should go to war over Poland - military
promises were seen as being little more valuable than the paper they were written on, both
by the Germans and the British / French alliance (France had military commitments to the
Czechs which it did not even consider honouring). When Hitler mobilised against Poland,
the drastic weakness of the Franco-German frontier bears ample testimony to the fact that
he felt secure from invasion by France, a power that had so far bent over backwards in
following a policy of appeasement. This lack of fear of the west was probably because
Hitler genuinely did not feel that the French would feel that they had anything to fear
from him, on account of the consistent eastward emphasis in his policies.
This eastern emphasis was born out of Hitler’s beliefs on the
subject of Lebensraum, or living space, something which he believed that the German
people and state needed if they were to thrive, despite the fact that they were by no
means the most densely populated European nation.. This attention to the need for living
space is expounded upon in Mein Kampf, Hitler’s combination of Nazi manifesto
and autobiography. Chapter 14, entitled ‘Eastern Orientation or Eastern Policy’
sets out in the opening paragraph the following opinion: ‘Here perhaps we are dealing
with the most decisive concern of all German foreign affairs’. Before the dramatic
turn to the West in 1940, Hitler’s foreign policy operated very much on trying to
enlist the aid of the Western Powers in undoing the effects of the Versailles treaty in
the east. After all, in the west, the First World War had not redrawn the map of Europe as
it had in the east, and there was less to be gained arguing over insignificant pieces of
territory (Alsace-Lorraine for example) than there was by preying on the new states of
Eastern Europe. This emphasis, along with the weakness of the Franco-German frontier on
the German side during the Polish invasion, and the ideas laid out in Mein Kampf,
suggest that Hitler was preoccupied with Russia and the acquisition of land there, an
objective which required a gateway to the Russian border. This was the goal both of
alliances with Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria, and of the invasion of Poland. Ukraine was
the ultimate objective, because it would provide ‘an adequately large space on this
earth’ to assure ‘a nation freedom of existence’, (Mein Kampf), in
keeping with Hitler’s belief on Lebensraum.
It is unlikely that, even had his demands over Poland been
satisfied, that Hitler would not have initiated an armed struggle somewhere else. He
regarded an aggressive and expansionistic foreign policy both as a means to acquire Lebensraum
and as an end in itself. Even Taylor could not argue that Hitler would have been peaceful
for ever, for he too regarded the man as evil, despite allegations of apologism
unfairly levelled at him. Hitler’s hatred for weak democracies and for bolshevism
made Great Britain, France, the United States and the USSR all potential enemies, besides
which Hitler would not have been in a position to dictate when to initiate a war forever.
In the most general terms, then, it seems safe to say that Hitler’s decision to
invade Poland was a symptom of a warlike foreign policy; had the Great Powers conciliated
Germany over the Danzig issue, it is likely, although not inevitable, that this warlike
tendency would have manifested itself against some other country or in some other theatre
of battle. The part of the old orthodoxy which maintains that Hitler set himself the goal
of the initiation of a war of conquest is fundamentally correct. However, this does not
preclude Alan Taylor’s ‘opportunist’ theory also being correct. Just
because Hitler had a definite policy to initiate war did not mean that he was going to
launch a war before he was ready, against an enemy which might have defeated him. He was
going to be cautious, seize his moment - he did not expect the need for war until 1942 at
the earliest, the schedule of which he informed Mussolini; he also told Grand Admiral
Raeder, the head of the Navy, that he had at least until 1943 to prepare the navy to take
on the British fleet. In March 1939, Mussolini complained to Count Ciano, his foreign
minister, that ‘every time Hitler occupies a country he sends me a message’,
(quoted by Taylor in Origins). This could have been due to the fact that Hitler
failed to keep his ally informed, but could also be an indication that Hitler did not know
what he was going to do until he did it. Most likely it is a bit of both. Certainly, when
combining Austria in the Greater German Reich events moved very quickly, circumventing the
‘evolutionary solution’ that Hitler had foreseen and prompting a sudden
political manoeuvre.
The economic indications are also that Hitler was not planning to go
to war in 1939. Both re-armament projects and the development of an autarkic economy were
designed to come to fruition in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Projections for both the
Navy and the Luftwaffe predicted they would not reach adequate strength for a major war
until at least 1942, and road building projects were intended to be complete in 1944.
Hitler himself told Kietel, head of OKW, that the army should concentrate on training and
internal development until at least 1944 or 1945. The German economy was, when war broke
out, under the control of Goering’s Office of the Four Year Plan, and the full
potential of the economy was not being realised, partly due to the flawed economic
understanding of both Goering and Hitler himself. It has been argued that the failure to
develop a full war economy means one of two things: either that the Germans were not
planning to go to war in 1939, or at all; or alternatively that Hitler’s intention
was to create a Blitzkrieg economy which would meet the demands of the short
limited wars he intended without causing serious domestic deprivation and risking unrest
on the home front. In his article (cited above), R.J.Overy successfully refutes the
concept of the Blitzkrieg economy. He argues that all plans for economic
development pointed to a major war being planned for the late 1940s, and that the economy
was not underdeveloped through choice when war broke out, but because of inefficiency on
the part of Goering. The inference from this supports both the old orthodoxy and Taylor :
a major war of conquest with a vast military machine, backed by a fully autarkic and
distinctly militarised economy, was planned (this of course supports assertions that
Hitler’s goal all along was to start a war), and this view can be supported by
economic evidence; the instructions Hitler gave to his staff officers point to the fact
that the war occurred sooner than expected.
We can be fairly certain that Hitler ‘planned’ to go to
war - that is, he had the intention of initiating an armed struggle. He did not, as Taylor
points out in the second preface to Origins, have any sort of a schedule
for the war in anything other than the broadest terms - the late 1940s or early 1950s.
When people attempt to find evidence of a detailed ‘schedule’ for the war, a
so-called ‘blueprint for aggression’, however, they tend to be disappointed.
Certainly there was nothing which pointed to anything more than the invasion Poland in
1939, either at the political or military level. The Hoßbach Memorandum is described by
Taylor as ‘a hot potato’, and while it may be one of many examples of bluster
between Hitler and his generals, we are dealing with a man who had been preaching
re-armament and conquest against ideologically undesirable countries for many years, as
well as promoting the doctrine of Lebensraum. When one searches for specific
evidence that he planned to initiate the war of conquest in the west that he did, the
results are unsatisfactory. As we have heard, the consistent eastward emphasis on policy
made it the subject of Hitler’s speeches, policy documents and meetings. The orders
to OKW to prepare plans for an invasion of Poland (‘Operation White’) did not
come until 1939, suggesting that Hitler ordered them drawn up in case he got the
opportunity to employ his army. The plan for the invasion of France and the low countries
(‘Operation Yellow’), was not drawn up by the general staff in its final form
until early 1940, again dispelling the notion of long-term premeditated action. Another
point should be made on the issue of ‘blueprints for aggression’, regarding the
existence of invasion plans for different countries during peace-time. It is the function
of the general staff of any army to prepare detailed plans for different scenarios in the
invasion of potential enemies. The existence of these plans, as Taylor rightly points out,
should not be taken in any way to indicate an actual intention to invade the country in
question. The British and French general staffs had plans for various operations on the
European continent, yet historians do not seek to suggest their intent to precipitate the
Second World War.
When considering whether or not Hitler planned for war, we are
presented with a complex balancing act of premeditation and opportunism. Evidence exists
to strongly support both theses, and the most convincing answer is one which comprises
elements of both. R.J.Overy provides a summary of how he sees Hitler’s imperial
ambitions, and it is one which reconciles brilliantly the two historical views:
‘The fact that the Polish question led to general war
prematurely in 1939 obscured the character of the imperialism, which was designed in two
complementary stages. The first was to create a military-economic core for the new German
empire comprising Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and parts of Poland, to be achieved
without a general war. ... The achievement of this first stage was to be guaranteed by
neutralising the threat of intervention by concessions to one or other potential enemy.
The second stage involved using this large economic reason as the base for launching war
against the major powers.’
The concept of complementary stages in Hitler’s expansionistic
policy is the key to the realities of the situation. The picture that then emerges is not
just of a scheming dictator with his plans laid years in advance; nor is it simply of a
man who had no clear long-term foreign policy objectives, and who simply grasped at the
opportunities offered him, with no clear strategies in mind. Rather, it is of a dictator
with long-term objectives whose opportunism gave him a chance to attempt to fulfil those
objectives earlier than expected. Grasping this idea is the key to attaining the middle
ground between the old historical orthodoxy and the newer, more controversial theories of
Alan Taylor. |
