This exposition evidently stunned and disturbed some of the group, and in his description of the conference Colonel Hossbach notes that the subsequent discussion “at times took a very sharp tone.” Neurath, Blomberg, and Fritsch, in particular, opposed Hitler’s arguments and explicitly warned him against the risks of a war with the Western powers. Possibly Hitler had convoked the conference chiefly to communicate his impatience and, as he had explained to Göring before the beginning of the meeting, “to light a fire” under generals Blomberg and Fritsch “because he was by no means satisfied with the rearmament of the army.” During the heated discussion Hitler suddenly became aware of a difference of opinion that came very close to being a matter of principle. Four days later Fritsch asked him for another meeting, and Foreign Minister Neurath—“shaken to the core,” as he later declared—also tried to see him and dissuade him from his bellicose course. But Hitler had meanwhile decided to leave Berlin and had withdrawn to Berchtesgaden. Obviously ill-humored, he refused to receive the Foreign Minister before his return to Berlin in the middle of January.
It is surely more than accidental that the men who opposed him on November 5 all fell victim to the major shuffle by which Hitler, a short time later, removed the conservatives from their last remaining strongholds, especially in the army and the Foreign Office. The conference seems to have proved to him that his sweeping plans, which required steady nerves, a readiness to take risks, and a kind of brigand’s courage could not be carried out by the inhibited, cautious representatives of the old bourgeois ruling class. Their sobriety and bristly stiffness antagonized him; his old antibourgeois resentments reawakened. He hated their arrogance and their class-conscious pretensions. The ideal Nazi diplomat was, to his mind, not a proper official but a revolutionary and secret agent, an “entertainment director” who would know how “to matchmake and to forge.” A general, to his mind, should be like “a butcher’s dog who has to be held fast by the collar because otherwise he threatens to attack anyone in sight.” Neurath, Fritsch, and Blomberg scarcely fitted this conception. In this regime they were, as one of them commented, one and all “saurians.”72
The November conference of 1937 marked a mutual disillusionment. The conservatives, especially the military leaders who had never learned to think beyond the narrow confines of their own goals and interests, found to their astonishment that Hitler meant what he had said. He was, as it were, actually being Hitler. And Hitler, for his part, found his contemptuous views of his conservative partners confirmed. For some years they had kept silent, obeyed, and served. Now they were manifesting their true pusillanimous nature. They wanted Germany’s greatness, but without taking risks. They wanted rearmament but no war, Nazi order but not Nazi ideology.
From this angle, we can better understand the obstinate conservative efforts during the preceding years to retain a limited independence in diplomatic and military affairs. Hitler had partly outwitted such attempts on the part of the Foreign Office by instituting his system of special envoys. On the other hand he had not been able to pry open the far more coherent social bloc of the officer caste. He now saw that this was the next order of business. And as chance had come to his aid so often before, a number of developments now played into his hands. Three months later, he had ousted his top generals and totally reorganized both the diplomatic and the military structure in accord with his program for the future.
The seemingly innocent starting point was Blomberg’s decision to remarry; his first wife had died years before. It was rather awkward that the bride, Fraulein Erna Gruhn, had “a past,” as Blomberg himself admitted. Consequently, she did not meet the strict status requirements of the officer corps. Seeking advice, Blomberg took Göring into his confidence as a fellow officer. Göring strongly urged him to go ahead with the marriage, and even assisted him in getting rid of a rival by paying the man off and arranging his emigration. On January 12, 1938, the wedding took place, in an atmosphere of some secrecy. Hitler and Göring were the witnesses.
Only a few days later, rumors began circulating that the field marshal’s marriage was a mésalliance of interest to the vice squad of the police. A police file soon provided evidence that Blomberg’s newly wedded wife had spent some time as a prostitute and had once been convicted of serving as a model for lewd photographs. Twelve days after the wedding, when Blomberg returned from a brief honeymoon, Göring informed him that he had become unacceptable. The officer corps, too, saw no reason to come to the defense of the field marshal who for so long had been devoted to Hitler with boyish exuberance. Two days later, on the afternoon of January 26, Hitler received him for a farewell visit. “The embarrassment for me and for you was too great,” he declared. “I could no longer wait it out. We must part.”
In a brief discussion about a possible successor, Hitler rejected the presumptive candidate, Fritsch, and Göring as well. The latter, in his greed for posts, had desperately tried to secure the appointment. Apparently Blomberg, still abjectly loyal, proposed what Hitler in any case intended, that he take over the position himself. “When Germany’s hour strikes,” Hitler said at the end of the interview, “I will see you at my side and the whole past will be regarded as wiped out.”
The decision had evidently been taken while Göring was still intriguing to exclude his rival, Fritsch. For now, instigated by Göring and Himmler jointly, a second police file was brought to light, this time on Fritsch, in which he was charged with homosexuality. In a scene out of a third-rate drama, the unsuspecting commander in chief of the army was confronted with a hired witness in the chancellery. The man’s accusations soon proved untenable, but that did not matter. They had served their purpose: providing Hitler with the pretext for the thoroughgoing shakeup of personnel on February 4, 1938. Fritsch, too, found himself dismissed. Hitler took over the post of commander in chief of the armed forces. The War Ministry was dissolved, replaced by the High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, abbreviated OKW), headed by General Wilhelm Keitel. For a prize specimen of Hitlerian comedy, we may read General Jodi’s diary note on Keitel’s installation: “At 1 P.M. Keitel is ordered to the Führer in civilian dress. The latter pours out his heart on the difficulties which have descended upon him. He is growing more and more lonely…. He says to K: I am relying on you; you must stick it out with me. You are my confidant and only adviser on defense questions. Unified and coherent leadership of the Armed Forces is sacred and inviolable to me.” Hitler then continued without transition and in the same tone of voice: “I shall take command of them myself with your help.” As successor to Fritsch he appointed General von Brauchitsch, who, like Keitel, seemed the natural candidate for the post because of his servility and weakness of character; he had announced that he was “ready for anything” that was asked of him. In particular, he gave assurances that he would lead the army closer to National Socialism. In the course of these measures sixteen older generals were additionally retired, forty-four transferred. In order to alleviate Göring’s disappointment, Hitler named him a field marshal.