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The Third Reich: Foreign Policy
Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic
policy, his sole concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong
to realize his long-term geopolitical goal of creating a German empire
that would dominate western Europe and extend deep into Russia. In a first
step toward this goal, he made a de facto revision to the Treaty of Versailles
by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after becoming
chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the
early 1920s, be stepped up.
Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the
League of Nations to reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In
1935 he announced that Germany had begun rearmament, would greatly increase
the size of its army, and had established an air force. Italy, France,
and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler
soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a
navy one-third the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized
the Rhineland, in violation of various treaties. There was no foreign
opposition.
In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist Italy, a pariah state
because of its invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic
states joined together to assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing
Spain's republican government during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).
In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. That
same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, the
three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union
and international communism.
Nazi Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan sign an Anti-Communist International Pact on April 17,1939
It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that
Germany must be ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan
was established. Developed under the direction of Hermann Goering, it
set forth production quotas and market guidelines. Efforts to regiment
the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite desired
that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated
autarchy, that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe
and securing its raw materials through barter agreements.
German Panzers on a parade. Germany openly started rearmament in 1935.
In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy
was made. Large weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy
running at top speed, and full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did
not increase much for ordinary workers, but job security after years of
economic depression was much appreciated. The rearmament program was not
placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were not increased
to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers.
Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were
largely exhausted by 1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization
of rearmament because it feared the social tensions this might engender.
The production of consumer goods was not curtailed either, again based
on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain high if
Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that
the wars waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short,
he judged great supplies of weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war
began in September 1939 with the invasion of Poland, Germany had a broad
and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way of replacements.
As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for
Germany's expansion.
Anschluss - annexation of Austria, March 1938
Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional
conservatives. However, because many of them were skeptical about his
long-range goals, Hitler replaced a number of high military officers and
diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March 1938, the German army
was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten political
leadership. The annexation (Anschluss) of Austria was welcomed by most
Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden
by the Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister
Neville Chamberlain consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of
the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was
inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In March 1939, Germany occupied
the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, and Slovakia
was made a German puppet state.
Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain
and France finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives
and announced their intention to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because
Hitler had concluded that he could not hope for British neutrality in
the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy--the Pact
of Steel. In August he signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union,
thus apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had
fought in World War I.
- The Third Reich, 1933-1945:
Consolidation of Power
- Foreign Policy
- The Outbreak of World
War II
- Total Mobilization, Resistance,
and the Holocaust
- Defeat
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