We and all nations have a sense that we have come to the turning point of an age. Not only we, the former defeated, but the victors also have the inner conviction that something is wrong, that men seem to have taken leave of reason…. Everywhere the nations seem to feel that a new order must come, especially on the Continent where the people are so closely crowded together. The motto for this new order must read: reason and logic, understanding and mutual consideration! Those who think that the word “Versailles” could possibly stand at the entrance to this new order are sadly mistaken. That would not be the cornerstone of the new order, but its gravestone.8
Thus Europe offered Hitler as many gateways for invasion as Germany had. A belated opposition would hammer away at the antitheses between Hitler and Europe; this was a misconception, for there were a large number of shared feelings and interests. With some bitterness Thomas Mann, voicing the attitudes of a minority, spoke of the “painfully slow and reluctant way in which we Germans, those of us who are exiles at home or exiles abroad, who have believed in Europe and thought we had Europe morally behind us, were forced, to realize that in fact we do not have it behind us.”9
The many encouragements he received from English sources tended to support Hitler in his boldest expectations. He clung to the idea he had advanced at the beginning of 1923 of an alliance with England. That remained, in fact, the central concept of his foreign policy, for it was essentially the idea of partitioning the world. England, as the dominant sea power, would command the seas and overseas territories. Germany, as the unchallenged land power, would dominate the vast Eurasian continent. Thus England occupied a key place in Hitler’s schemes in the early years of the regime, and the manner in which his actions were received across the Channel immensely fortified Hitler’s sense that he was on the right path.
To be sure, not all his actions were equally well received. In May, 1933, Rosenberg had visited London and been sharply rebuffed. The spectacular withdrawal from the League of Nations had not exactly raised Hitler’s stock in England. Another blot had been the murder, by Austrian Nazis, of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in July, 1934—even though Hitler, as later became apparent, may not have been told of the planned assassination. But selfish interests proved, as always, stronger than moral outrage—especially since Hitler himself was quick to. repudiate the affair. The assassins had fled to Germany; he turned them over to the Austrian government, abruptly dismissed Theo Habicht, the inspector of the Austrian National Socialist Party, and recalled Dr. Rieth, the German ambassador, who was implicated in the events. Franz von Papen, Catholic, conservative, and once again a reassuring figure to anxious bourgeois, was sent to take his place.
The unanimity of the foreign reaction to the assassination of Dollfuss had taught Hitler that he would have to proceed more carefully. The attempted coup in Vienna had been hastily organized and poorly co-ordinated. Beyond that, Hitler recognized that his position was not yet strong enough for major challenges; he would do better to wait for provocatory pretexts or imperceptibly to work his opponents into the position known in chess as a “forced move”—when a player has only one legal move open to him. Then his own carefully premeditated actions would be disguised as countermoves.
Circumstances arranged matters favorably. Soon afterward, Hitler obtained his hoped-for increase in prestige by winning the plebiscite held in the Saar on January 13, 1935. The region, which had been separated from the Reich under the Treaty of Versailles, voted by an overwhelming majority for reunion with Germany: there were only about 2,000 votes for union with France as against 445,000 for reunion with Germany and approximately 46,000 for continuance of the status quo, administration by the League of Nations. Although the result had never been in doubt, Hitler presented the vote as a personal triumph. One of the injustices of Versailles had at last been righted, he declared three days later in an interview at Obersalzberg with the American journalist Pierre Huss. Only a few weeks later the Western powers handed him the opportunity for one of those counterstrokes that from now on became his favorite device.
The tactical weakness of the leading European powers vis-à-vis Hitler stemmed from their desire for negotiations. They were forever coming forward with proposals that were supposed to fetter the unruly fellow, or at least put him in an uncomfortable position. Early in 1935 he had received offers from England and France, among others, to extend the Locarno Pact by an agreement limiting the threat of air attacks. There were likewise offers for similar pacts from eastern and central European countries. Far from considering these proposals seriously, Hitler merely used them as a springboard for his tactical maneuvers. They permitted him to spread uncertainty, to achieve easy effects by sham declarations, and to cover up the aims he was unerringly pursuing.
During 1934 he had already taken steps to reach an accord with England on air armaments. His purpose was to induce London, merely by entering into negotiations, to treat the armaments restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles as nonexistent. At the same time, Hitler proceeded on the assumption that the talks in themselves, and the aura of intimacy they would inevitably create, would be excellent means of sowing distrust between England and France. For this reason he was quite ready to encourage the English side to undertake extensive rearmament. After the talks had been broken off in the aftermath of Dollfuss’s assassination, Hitler approached the British government with a new offer at the end of 1934. Characteristically, he increased his demands, as he would always do after a defeat. Hitherto he had asked only that Germany be permitted half the British strength in the air. Now he mentioned, in a casual remark, that parity was “a matter of course”; it had ceased to be an object of negotiation, as far as he was concerned. Rather, the key offer was now for a naval agreement with England.
This proposal by Hitler has been called, with some exaggeration, his “crowning idea.”10 The negotiations on the air agreement had broken down only partly because of the Vienna events; the chief reason for their failure was that the British, though interested, were not ready for a bilateral pact. The offer for a naval agreement, on the other hand, struck them at a vulnerable spot.
Hitler’s special envoy, Joachim von Ribbentrop, launched a trial balloon in the middle of November, 1934, when he met with the then Keeper of the Privy Seal Anthony Eden and Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon. Early in 1935 the contacts were continued. On January 25 Hitler “unofficially” received Lord Allen of Hurtwood, and four days later—again “unofficially”—the liberal politician Lord Lothian. The German Chancellor complained about the limping progress of the disarmament negotiations, stressed that both sides had parallel interests, then referred to Great Britain’s uncontested dominion of the sea before he made his first specific proposaclass="underline" he would be ready to conclude an agreement regulating naval strength between Germany and England in the ratio of 35 to 100. In return, Germany, in keeping with her national tradition, would be allowed the stronger land army. Such was the outline of the grand design. In his conversation with Lord Lothian Hitler gave the matter another original twist. If he might speak not as Chancellor of the Reich, he said, but as a “student of history,” he would regard as the surest guarantee of peace a joint Anglo-German statement to the effect that henceforth any disturber of the peace would be called to account and punished jointly by these two countries.