Remilitarisation of the Rhineland
The remilitarisation of the Rhineland (German: Rheinlandbesetzung) began on 7 March 1936, when military forces of the German Reich entered the Rhineland, which directly contravened the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties. Neither France nor Britain was prepared for a military response, so they did not act. After 1939, commentators often said that a strong military move in 1936 might have ruined the expansionist plans of Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Germany. However, recent historiography agrees that both public and elite opinion in Britain and France strongly opposed a military intervention, and neither had an army prepared to move in.[1]
After the end of World War I, the Rhineland came under Allied occupation. Under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the German military was forbidden from all territories west of the Rhine or within 50 km east of it. The 1925 Locarno Treaties reaffirmed the then-permanently-demilitarised status of the Rhineland. In 1929, German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann negotiated the withdrawal of the Allied forces. The last soldiers left the Rhineland in June 1930.
After the Nazi regime took power in January 1933, Germany began working towards rearmament and the remilitarisation of the Rhineland. On 7 March 1936, using the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance as a pretext, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to march 20,000 German troops into the Rhineland, which caused joyous celebrations across Germany. The French and the British governments, unwilling to risk war, decided against enforcing the treaties.
The remilitarisation and the German rearmament changed the balance of power in Europe from France and its allies towards Germany by allowing Germany to pursue a policy of aggression in Western Europe that had been blocked by the demilitarised status of the Rhineland.
The fact that Britain and France did not intervene made Hitler believe that neither country would get in the way of Nazi foreign policy. That made him decide to quicken the pace of German preparations for war and the domination of Europe.[2] On 14 March 1936, during a speech in Munich, Hitler stated, “Neither threats nor warnings will prevent me from going my way. I follow the path assigned to me by Providence with the instinctive sureness of a sleepwalker".[2]
European situation (1933–1936)[edit]
Diplomacy[edit]
In March 1933, German Defence Minister General Werner von Blomberg had plans drawn up for remilitarisation.[30] In the fall of 1933, he began to provide a number of the paramilitary Landspolizei units in the Rhineland with secret military training and military weapons to prepare for remilitarisation.[31] General Ludwig Beck's memo of March 1935 on the need for Germany to secure Lebensraum (living space) in Eastern Europe had accepted that remilitarisation should take place once it was diplomatically possible.[30] It was generally believed by German military, diplomatic and political elites that remilitarisation would be impossible before 1937.[32]
The change of regime in Germany in January 1933 caused alarm in London, but there was considerable uncertainty about Hitler's long-term intentions, which underscored much of British policy towards Germany until 1939. The British could never quite decide if Hitler wanted merely to reverse Versailles or if he had the goal of seeking to dominate Europe. British policy toward Germany was a dual-track policy of seeking a "general settlement" in which "legitimate" German complaints about the Versailles Treaty would be addressed, but the British would rearm to negotiate with Germany from a position of strength, to deter Hitler from choosing war as an option and to ensure that Britain was prepared in the worst case that Hitler was truly intent on conquering Europe. In February 1934, a secret report by the Defence Requirements Committee identified Germany as the "ultimate potential enemy" against which British rearmament was to be directed.[33] Although the possibility of German bombing attacks against British cities increased the importance of having a friendly power on the other side of the English Channel, many British decision-makers were cool, if not downright hostile, toward the idea of the "continental commitment".[34] When British rearmament began in 1934, the army received the lowest priority in terms of funding, after the air force and the navy, which was partly to rule out the option of "continental commitment".[35] Increasingly, the British came to favor the idea of "limited liability" under which if the "continental commitment" were to be made, Britain should send only the smallest-possible expeditionary force to Europe but reserve its main efforts towards the war in the air and on the sea.[36] Britain's refusal to make the continental commitment on the same scale as World War I caused tensions with the French, who believed that it would be impossible to defeat Germany without another large-scale ground force and deeply disliked the idea that they should do the bulk of the fighting on their land.
In 1934, French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou decided to end to any potential German aggression by building a network of alliances that was intended to encircle Germany. He made overtures to the Soviet Union and Italy. Until 1933, the Soviet Union had supported German efforts to challenge the Versailles system, but the strident anticommunism of the German regime and its claim for Lebensraum led the Soviets to change their position toward maintaining the Versailles system. In September 1933, the Soviet Union ended its secret support for German rearmament, which had started in 1921. Under the guise of collective security, Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov started to praise the Versailles system, which the Soviet leaders had denounced as a capitalist plot to "enslave" Germany.
In the 1920s, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini had started to subsidise the right-wing Heimwehr ("Home Defense") movement in Austria, and after Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss had seized dictatorial power in March 1933, Austria fell within the Italian sphere of influence.[37] The terrorist campaign mounted by Austrian Nazis, which the Austrian government accused of being supported by Germany, against the reactionary Dollfuss regime had the aim of overthrowing him to achieve the Anschluss, which caused considerable tensions between Rome and Berlin.[37] Mussolini had warned Hitler several times that Austria was within the Italian, not the German, sphere of influence and that the Germans had to cease trying to overthrow Dollfuss, an Italian protégé. On 25 July 1934, the July Putsch in Vienna had seen Dollfuss assassinated by the Austrian SS and an announcement by the Austrian Nazis that the Anschluss was at hand. The Austrian Nazis attempted to seize power all over Austria, and the SS Austrian Legion, based in Bavaria, began to attack frontier posts along the German-Austrian border in what looked like the beginning of an invasion. In response, Mussolini mobilized the Italian Army, concentrated several divisions at the Brenner Pass and warned Hitler that Italy would go to war against Germany if it tried to follow up the Putsch by invading Austria.[37] The Austrian-born Hitler, although deeply offended by Mussolini's blunt assertions that his birthplace was within the sphere of influence of any power other than Germany, realized that he was in no position to do anything except to beat a humiliating retreat. To his disgust, he had to disallow the Putsch that he had ordered and could not follow it up by invading Austria, whose government crushed the Austrian Nazis' coup attempt.[37]
After Barthou was assassinated on 9 October 1934, his work in trying to build anti-German alliances with the Soviet Union and Italy was continued by his successor, Pierre Laval. On 7 January 1935, during a summit in Rome, Laval essentially told Mussolini that Italy had a "free hand" in the Horn of Africa and that France would not oppose an Italian invasion of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia).[37] On 14 April 1935, British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, French Prime Minister Pierre Laval and Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini met in Stresa to form the Stresa Front opposing any further German violations of Versailles after Germany stated in March 1935 that it would no longer abide by Parts V or VI of the Versailles Treaty.[37] In the spring of 1935, joint staff talks had begun between France and Italy with the aim of forming an anti-German military alliance.[37] On 2 May 1935, Laval travelled to Moscow, where he a signed a treaty of alliance with Soviet Union.[38] At once, the German government began a violent press campaign against the Franco-Soviet Pact, which claimed it was a violation of Locarno and an immense danger to Germany by encircling it.[38]
In his "peace speech" of May 21, 1935, Hitler stated, "In particular, they [the Germans] will uphold and fulfill all obligations arising out of the Locarno Treaty, so long as the other parties are on their side ready to stand by that pact".[39] That line in Hitler's speech was written by Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath, who wished to reassure foreign leaders who felt threatened by Germany's denunciation in March 1935 of Part V of Versailles, which had disarmed Germany.[39] Meanwhile, Neurath wanted to provide an opening for the eventual remilitarisation of the Rhineland and so he hedged the promise to obey Locarno by adding that it was only if other powers did the same.[39] Hitler had always taken the line that Germany did not consider itself bound by the Diktat of Versailles but would respect any treaty that it willingly signed, such as Locarno, under which Germany had promised to keep the Rhineland permanently demilitarised. Thus, Hitler always promised during his "peace speeches" to obey Locarno, not Versailles.[40]
German remilitarization[edit]
Neurath and secret intelligence[edit]
British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden believed that by 1940, Germany might rejoin the League of Nations, accept arms restrictions, and give up European territorial claims if they could remilitarise the Rhineland, reclaim former African colonies, and have "economic priority along the Danube".[44] Ralph Wigram of the Foreign Office proposed allowing Germany's Rhineland remilitarisation in exchange for an "air pact" against bombing and Germany's commitment to stable borders, but this idea didn't gain traction.[45] Eden aimed for a "general settlement" that would see a return to 1920s stability and have Hitler act diplomatically, much like the Weimar Republic's Stresemann.[46]
In January 1936, the French Premier Pierre Laval presented the Franco-Soviet Pact for ratification.[47] Later that month, during a London visit, Neurath informed Eden that Germany would reconsider its stance on the Locarno Pact if other signatories made bilateral agreements that conflicted with its spirit. Eden's subsequent reaction gave Neurath the impression that Britain might support Germany against France in the event of Rhineland's remilitarisation.[48] The Locarno treaty contained a clause that called for arbitration if signatories made treaties deemed incompatible with Locarno.[49] Both Neurath and State Secretary Prince Bernhard von Bülow felt the Franco-Soviet Pact violated the Locarno agreement but advised Hitler against seeking arbitration, fearing it would remove their excuse for remilitarisation.[49] Though Neurath hinted at invoking the Locarno's arbitration clause in early 1936, Germany never did.[49]
At the same time, Neurath received an intelligence report on 10 January 1936 from Gottfried Aschmann, the Chief of the Auswärtiges Amt's Press Division, who during a visit to Paris in early January 1936 had talked to a minor French politician named Jean Montiny who was a close friend of Premier Laval, who had frankly mentioned that France's economic problems had retarded French military modernisation and that France would do nothing if Germany remilitarised the Rhineland.[50] Neurath did not pass on Aschmann's report to Hitler, but he placed a high value upon it.[51] Neurath was seeking to improve his position within the Nazi regime; by repeatedly assuring Hitler during the Rhineland crisis that the French would do nothing without telling Hitler the source of his self-assurance, Neurath came across as a diplomat blessed with an uncanny intuition, something that improved his standing with Hitler.[52] Traditionally in Germany the conduct of foreign policy had been the work of the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), but starting in 1933 Neurath had been faced with the threat of Nazi "interlopers in diplomacy" as various NSDAP agencies started to conduct their own foreign policies independent of and often against the Auswärtiges Amt.[53] The most serious of the "interlopers in diplomacy" was the Dienststelle Ribbentrop, a sort of alternative foreign ministry loosely linked to the NSDAP headed by Joachim von Ribbentrop which aggressively sought to undercut the work of the Auswärtiges Amt at every turn.[54] Further exacerbating the rivalry between the Dienststelle Ribbentrop and the Auswärtiges Amt was the fact that Neurath and Ribbentrop utterly hated one another, with Ribbentrop making no secret of his belief that he would be a much better foreign minister than Neurath, whereas Neurath viewed Ribbentrop as a hopelessly inept amateur diplomat meddling in matters that did not concern him.[55]