Europe Between The Wars [2 ed.] 1138134430, 9781138134430, 058289414X, 9780582894143, 1315835320, 9781315835327, 1317867521, 9781317867524, 1405898704, 9781405898706, 1306344204, 9781306344203, 131786753X, 9781317867531
Martin Kitchen’s compelling account of Europe between the wars sets the twenty-year crisis within the context of the pro
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1138134430, 9781138134430, 058289414X, 9780582894143, 1315835320, 9781315835327, 1317867521, 9781317867524, 1405898704, 9781405898706, 1306344204, 9781306344203, 131786753X, 9781317867531](https://dokumen.pub/img/200x200/europe-between-the-wars-2nbsped-1138134430-9781138134430-058289414x-9780582894143-1315835320-9781315835327-1317867521-9781317867524-1405898704-9781405898706-1306344204-9781306344203-131786753x-9781317867531.jpg)
Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of maps
List of plates
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Publisher’s acknowledgements
1. The temper of the times
2. The peace treaties
3. Inflation and depression
4. European society between the wars
5. Collective security, disarmament and the League
6. The Soviet Union
7. Eastern Europe
Poland
Hungary
Czechoslovakia
8. Italian Fascism
9. The Weimar Republic
10. Britain
11. France
12. The Spanish Civil War
13. Nazi Germany
14. The origins of World War II
Bibliography
Index
Citation preview
EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
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EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS SECOND EDITION MARTIN KITCHEN
'JSTUQVCMJTIFECZ1FBSTPO&EVDBUJPO-JNJUFE Second edition published in Great Britain 2006 1VCMJTIFECZ3PVUMFEHF 1BSL4RVBSF .JMUPO1BSL "CJOHEPO 0YPO093/ 5IJSE"WFOVF /FX:PSL /: 64" 3PVUMFEHFJTBOJNQSJOUPGUIF5BZMPS'SBODJT(SPVQ BOJOGPSNBCVTJOFTT $PQZSJHIUª 5BZMPS'SBODJT The right of Martin Kitchen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act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
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kitchen, Martin. Europe between the wars / Martin Kitchen.—2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-582-89414-3 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 0-582-89414-X (pbk.) 1. Europe–Politics and government–1918–1945. I. Title. D727.K516 2006 940.5′1–dc22 2005044951 Set by 35 in 11/13.5pt Columbus
CONTENTS
List of maps List of plates List of abbreviations Acknowledgements Publisher’s acknowledgements
vi vii ix xiii xiv
1.
The temper of the times
1
2.
The peace treaties
29
3.
Inflation and depression
55
4.
European society between the wars
90
5.
Collective security, disarmament and the League
113
6.
The Soviet Union
141
7.
Eastern Europe
176
8.
Italian Fascism
212
9.
The Weimar Republic
243
10.
Britain
276
11.
France
305
12.
The Spanish Civil War
335
13.
Nazi Germany
366
14.
The origins of World War II
395
Bibliography Index
426 433
LIST OF MAPS
1 2 3 4 5
The peace settlement of 1919 The League of Nations, 1931 Germany after the peace settlement The Spanish Civil War, 1936 The expansion of Germany, 1933–9
46 50 53 345 392
LIST OF PLATES
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12
13
14
The heroic masses: Soviet poster of 1931 – ‘We will produce 8 million tons of pig iron in order to build socialism’ The downtrodden masses: scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis The ‘Big Three’ at Versailles: Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George Inflation: crowds rush to the Reichsbank to withdraw their savings Depression: unemployed queuing in front of the labour office in Berlin Low life: a sandwich man pleads, ‘I’ll take on any type of work’ The beginnings of motor sport: Bouriat’s Bugatti leads Caracciola’s Alfa Romeo in the Aous Race High life: a thé-dansant in the roof garden restaurant in the Eden Hotel, billed as ‘Berlin’s Highest Dance Floor’ Stresemann, Austen Chamberlain and Briand during the Locarno Conference, a diplomatic triumph that sought a period of cooperation based on upholding the peace treaties Stalin with members of the politburo on the occasion of his 50th birthday Propaganda for collectivisation: peasants eagerly signing up to join collective farms Mussolini in full flight during the ‘Labour Festival’ in Rome. On the left, Galeazzo Ciano and the army commander-in-chief Teruzzi The search for legitimacy: an immaculate Mussolini amid the ‘redshirts’ on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Garibaldi’s death Communists beat up ‘social Fascists’ in the SPD
4 5 30 79 88 92 101 110
126 160 163
226
228 249
viii LIST OF PLATES
15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22
23 24 25
Communists and National Socialists make common cause during a rent strike in Berlin Stanley Baldwin Léon Blum addressing a Socialist meeting in the Rouget-de-Lisle Stadium near Paris The ruins of the Basque town of Guernica, 26 April 1937 after the attack by the Condor Legion General Franco takes the victory parade in Madrid. By his side is Baron von Richthofen, commander of the Condor Legion Charisma: adoring crowds welcome Hitler to the ‘victory party rally’ in 1933 The ‘racial community’: the Party Rally for Unity and Strength, 1934 The Munich conference: Mussolini grabs the central position between the British ambassador Neville Henderson, Göring, Chamberlain and an interpreter, Hitler and Daladier Neville Chamberlain returns from Munich with his ‘piece of paper’ designed to bring ‘peace for our time’ Stalin smokes while Molotov puts his signature to the pact with Ribbentrop (left) German soldiers cross the Polish frontier
257 284 312 358
364 372 386
408 409 421 423
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ADGB AO BBWR
Free Trade Unions (Germany) Ausland-Organisation (Nazi Foreign Organisation) Non-party Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (Poland) BVP Bavarian People’s Party CEDA Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (Spain) CGdL General Federation of Labour (Italy) CGT General Confederation of Trades Unions (France) Cheka All Russian Extraordinary Commission for Struggle Against Counter-revolution, Sabotage and Speculation; subsequently (1925) OGPU CNT Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (Spain) DAF German Labour Front DDP German Democratic Party DNVP German National People’s Party DVP German People’s Party FAI Federación Anarquista Ibérica (Spain) GNP gross national product IKKI executive committee of the Communist International (Comintern) IMCC Inter-allied Military Control Commission IRI Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale KdF Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy, leisure organisation, Germany) KPD German Communist Party MVSN Voluntary Militia for National Security (Italy) NATSOPA National Society of Operative Printers, Graphical and Media Personnel (originally Printers and Assistants) NEP the Soviets’ New Economic Policy
x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
NKVD NSBO NSDAP NUR OKH OKW OZON PCF PCI PNF POUM PPI PPS PSF PSI PSOE PSUC RAD RM RRG RSHA SA SDKPiL SFIO SPD SPÖ SS TB TGWU TUC UGT USPD
People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (Soviet Secret Police) National Socialist Work Cells Organisation (Germany) National Socialist German Workers Party National Union of Railwaymen High Command of the Army (Germany) High Command of the Armed Forces (Germany) Camp of National Unity (Poland) French Communist Party Italian Communist Party Partito nazionale Fascista (Italian Fascist Party) Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Spain) Catholic People’s Party Polish Socialist Party French Social Party Socialist Party (Italy) Socialist Party (Spain) Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (Catalonia Socialist Party) Reich Labour Service Reichsmark Reich Radio Company Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Head Office for State Security, Germany) Sturm-Abteilung (the paramilitary force of the Nazi Party) Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania French Section of the Workers’ International German Social Democratic Party Austrian Social Democratic Party Schutzstaffel (Nazi elite corps) tuberculosis Transport and General Workers’ Union Trades Union Congress Unión General de Trabajadores (Spain) Independent Social Democrats (Germany)
For Bettina
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am most grateful to Heather McCallum for suggesting that I write this new edition and for guiding me through the early stages with gracious expertise. Much has changed since the book first appeared in 1988. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the partial opening of the Soviet archives have substantially altered our understanding of Soviet and Eastern European history. Fierce arguments have raged over National Socialism and the questions of guilt and responsibility. These and other debates were conducted within the context of the rise and fall of postmodernism, which left many historians tied up in theoretical knots, bound to Procrustean beds or simply bemused. As a consequence many sections have been completely rewritten and there is a substantial amount of new material, particularly on cultural, social and intellectual history. One factual error (the date of the bombing of Guernica) had been pointed out to me by an attentive schoolgirl many years ago, but the number of typographical errors and examples of experimental orthography in the first edition came as an unpleasant surprise. My task has been rendered easier and more enjoyable thanks to the invaluable assistance of Casey Mein and Christina Wipf Perry. I am also grateful for the helpful criticisms and suggestions of Nicholas Atkin and Martyn Housden. Byron wrote of William Mitford’s history of Greece that his virtues were ‘labour, learning, research, wrath and partiality’. I offer no apology for the last two of Byron’s historical virtues, for the inter-war period was characterised by exceptional ideological frenzy, moral duplicity and an unimaginable level of systematic cruelty. I can vouch for virtue number one, and I alone bear full responsibility for any shortcomings in two and three.
PUBLISHER’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: Plates 1–8 and 10–25: © Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; plate 9: The Mary Evans Picture Library. In some instances we may have been unable to trace the owners of copyright material, and we would appreciate any information that would enable us to do so.
International betrayals, public murder. The devil quoting scripture, the traitor, the coward, the thug Eating dinner in the name of peace and progress, The doped public sucking a dry dug; Official recognition of rape, revival of the ghetto And Free speech gagged and free Energy scrapped and dropped like a surplus herring, Back into the barren sea; Brains and beauty festering in exile, The shadow of bars Fall across each page, each field, each raddled sunset, The alien lawn and the pool of nenuphars; And hordes of homeless poor running the gauntlet In hostile city streets of white and violet lamps Whose flight is without terminus but better Than the repose of concentration camps. Come over, they said, into Macedonia and help us But the chance is gone; Now we must help ourselves, we can leave the vulture To pick the corpses clean in Macedon. From: ‘Autumn Journal’ (1938) by Louis MacNeice
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THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES
1
CHAPTER 1
THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES
I
n the foreword to his masterpiece The Magic Mountain (1924) Thomas Mann wrote that the novel took place in the ‘old days, in the world before the Great War at the beginning of which so much began that has not yet begun to cease to begin’. This was the great catastrophe, which contemporaries viewed with the horrified perplexity of primitive man faced with a volcanic eruption. It was an event as significant as the French Revolution, but it was also a cataclysm that defied explanation. The British/German novelist Ford Madox Ford bemoaned the fact that history once held all the answers, but now was totally incapable of tackling the problem of the war. Walter Benjamin’s angel of history looked back in horror at a brutal past as it was dragged backwards into the future. The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset wrote that ‘history is being turned upside down and a new reality is being created’. The publicist and historian Oswald Spengler announced that ‘optimism is cowardice’. The Austrian writer Egon Friedell proclaimed that history did not exist, although that did not stop him writing numerous works on the subject. Sellar and Yeatman in 1066 and All That light-heartedly suggested that history was simply what one remembered. After 11 November 1918 there was a great deal to be remembered. There was nothing new in this pessimism. It dated back to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to Burckhardt and Houston Stewart Chamberlain to name but a few, and the war seemed a cruel vindication of their gloom. In a world without meaning where, as Siegfried Kracauer argued, reality was a mere construction, the temptation to aestheticise violence was hard to resist. Ernst Jünger, Ernst von Salomon, Emilio Marinetti and Gabriele D’Annunzio saw violence as a transcendental quality that existed well beyond the realms of morality, history or rationality. This attitude was reflected in a militarisation of a society dominated by paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps, Fascists and Nazis, by Bolshevik thugs, nihilists and anarchists. It was a world fascinated by bandits and criminals, by outsiders and gratuitous acts of violence.
2 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
Politics became militarised, whether it was in black-shirted Italy, brown-shirted Germany, the Austria of the Heimwehr, or the ‘Comrade Mauser’ socialism of the Soviet Union. The victorious powers were mercifully immune to this violence, but were left dangerously feeble when threatened by renewed conflict. The vast majority of the millions of French veterans were convinced pacifists. Britain mourned its dead and promised that such a tragedy should never again be allowed to happen. The United States withdrew from a Europe that had torn itself apart. The self-confident certainties of nineteenth-century bourgeois liberalism had begun to crumble long before the end of the century, as a fierce debate raged over the problems of modernity. This was intensified after the horrific experience of a war that traumatised a generation, and proved so hard for memory to digest. The war had within it a certain democratic moment that led to a mobilisation and radicalisation of the masses, a phenomenon that both intrigued and horrified Ortega y Gasset, and which led him to prophesy the Spanish Civil War in The Revolt of the Masses (1929). Scholars debate whether or not World War I was a ‘total’ war, but whatever the answer there can be no doubt that the war touched almost everyone’s life. In Britain and France it was ‘The Great War’ and the ‘Grande Guerre’. In Germany it was a ‘World War’ (Weltkrieg) and as early as 1921 Charles Repington entitled his two-volume history of the war The First World War. The economic, social and political havoc it caused led Marcel Proust to speak of the ‘scum of universal fatuousness which the war left in its wake’, and to decry the ‘platitudinous fatuity’ of the elite in the face of a mounting crisis of which they only seemed to be dimly aware. Was is still possible to believe in progress, or had society become so utterly decadent that it had become immune to the salutary and bracing effects of warfare? Did the war herald the beginning of a mass society in search of a sense of community and in need of strong and untrammelled leadership? Wartime debates over civilisation versus culture, the state and society, rights and obligations were hotly pursued and provided intoxicating material for radical ideologues. As the problems facing society became increasingly complex, the answers provided by the ‘terribles simplificateurs’ seemed irresistibly attractive. Where reason was left perplexed, faith could offer hope. Faith – no matter in what, obedience – no matter to whom, fight – regardless of the justice of one’s cause, became a magic remedy, as Mussolini was one of the first to realise. The politics of the Big Lie and the scapegoat provided simple solutions to immensely complicated problems. The need for a comforting illusion was so strong that some of the greatest minds of the day placed their extraordinary talents at the service of ignorance. As Gabriel Marcel argued,
THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES
3
in a Godless world without any other form of transcendence it was all too easy to fall for the ‘idolatry of class’ or the ‘idolatry of race’. Smug confidence that technological progress could provide solutions to the world’s major problems had been seriously undermined. The loss of the Titanic on its much-publicised maiden voyage in 1912 was a serious blow to British self-confidence, but it also served as a warning against the presumptions of technology. There was a further portent in 1930 when the huge airship R101 crashed, also on its maiden voyage. Above all it was the industrialised slaughter of the war that gave force to Nietzsche’s question whether mankind could make the ‘solidified intelligence’ of technology serve rational ends, or would mankind be destroyed by the power of its own invention. Regardless of such misgivings a technological approach was applied to all aspects of society in the belief that thereby effective answers could be found to all its problems. Henry Ford and Frederick W. Taylor’s vision of a brave new world subject to the logic of technology was enthusiastically emulated not only in the capitalist West, but also in Lenin’s Russia. Society could be rationally planned and ordered, so as to be more efficient and to provide all that was necessary for a better life. Architects and planners set about designing an environment that was responsive to human needs. Eugenicists sought to improve the gene pool, by demanding the sterilisation of all those deemed to be carriers of genetically determined diseases or undesirable behaviour. In short, rational intelligence could provide all the answers, even to a devastated Europe in a state of turmoil. The great depression was the technocrats’ ‘Titanic’ and the reverse side of the modern, in the shape of mass unemployment, alienation and anomie, political crisis and revolt. There had always been a sense of deep uneasiness at the heart of the modernist discourse. Walter Rathenau, the most admirable of the Weimar republicans, expressed his deep unease about the cold and rational technological world, which he as a leading industrialist did so much to shape. Schopenhauer’s pessimism, transmitted via Kierkegaard’s morbid meditations on mass society and Nietzsche’s intoxicating denial of the concept of objective truth, was used as ammunition against the notion of progress. ‘Progress’ was no longer viewed as improvement but rather as a process of self-destruction. Human beings were reduced to anonymous cogs in a vast machine as in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times or in the writings of Ernst Toller and Ernst Niekisch. Spengler claimed that civilisation itself had become a machine that was destroying humanity. W.H. Auden and Gottfried Benn saw modern man as an Icarus doomed to be destroyed by his own ingenuity. Civilisation was reduced to T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land, where ‘I think we are in rats’ alley/Where the dead men lost their bones’,
4 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
The heroic masses: Soviet poster of 1931 – ‘We will produce 8 million tons of pig iron in order to build socialism’
and the question was ‘What shall we do tomorrow?/What shall we ever do?’ Such sentiments are echoed in the pathetic ordinariness of his J. Alfred Prufrock who said ‘I should have been a pair of ragged laws/Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.’ Louis MacNeice succumbed to a bitter scepticism in his
THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES
5
The downtrodden masses: scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis
‘Bagpipe Music’: ‘The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,/ But if you break the bloody glass you won’t hold up the weather.’ D.H. Lawrence sought salvation in the dark and irrational forces of nature. Georges Duhamel’s protagonist Salavin struggled against existential ennui, and bitterly bemoaned his inconsolability as he searched for transcendence in a world without God. He was to provide a model for Sartre and Camus and the postwar existentialists. The city was no longer the stimulating and exciting locus of the modern; it was now an ‘asphalt jungle’ and a ‘moloch’, the brutal environment of Alfred Döblin’s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. For many ‘America’ stood for all that was reprehensible about the modern world. Ferdinand Tönnies had wrestled with these ideas and in 1887 had made the clear distinction between ‘society’ (Gesellschaft ) and ‘community’ (Gemeinschaft ). ‘Society’ was the cold, artificial, bloodless world of the city and the marketplace. ‘Community’ the organic, traditional, emotional and harmonious life of village and countryside. In Tönnies’ pessimistic vision society would eventually swallow up and destroy community and destroy the people (Volk). Ortega y Gasset, the most popular of the critics of mass society, in The Revolt of the Masses (1929) bemoaned the levelling down and standardisation of thought, taste and material culture; of income, education, gender and sex that threatened the foundations of a civilisation which was based on a clear distinction between an elite and the masses. The masses were the intolerant
6 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
and violent advocates of direct action, as in Italian fascism and Spanish anarchosyndicalism. At the root of the problem for Ortega was the blind belief that the staggering achievements of technology and the extraordinary improvements in living standards were somehow natural, preordained and selfevident. The technologists, the engineers and doctors were among the worst offenders. They were the ‘sabio-ignorante’ (learned ignoramuses) who, all too aware of their competence in their own specialised fields, failed to understand that it was technology that was turning people into barbarians. He rejected both the US and the Soviet models, and felt that Europe’s only hope lay in a rejection of the dictators and of the nation state, to be replaced by a united Europe with firmly entrenched and genuinely liberal principals. He had now arrived at a position very close to that of the amiable Austrian pan-Europeanist, Count Richard Coudenhouve-Kalergi, who although a passionate opponent of totalitarianism felt that democracy was little more than a poor substitute for a genuine aristocracy. There was widespread agreement among intellectuals, of whatever political colouring, with Ortega’s contention that civilisation’s progress resulted in a cultural retreat and a loss of cultural vitality. Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Georges Sorel, Sigmund Freud, Paul Valéry and Hermann Hesse joined the choir to sing a complex polyphonic lamentation over the ghastliness of the modern world that was peppered with words such as ‘anomie’, ‘transcendental homelessness’, ‘ambivalence’ and ‘rootlessness’. Max Weber called for the ‘re-enchantment’ of the world, Georg Simmel asked what made society possible and called for the salvation of the totality of human existence from the pitiless reality of the world, salvation from the fragmentary and a restoration of integrality. In his Autumn Journal Louis MacNeice bemoaned the fact that: ‘. . . It is hard to imagine/A world where the many would have their chance without/A fall in the standard of intellectual living/And nothing that the highbrow cared about.’ Meanwhile the prophets of doom echoed Trollope’s Mr Turnbull with their predictions of evil consequences, while at the same time doing their best to bring about the verification of their own prophecies. Karl Jaspers wrestled with these problems in The Intellectual Problems of the Age (Die Geistige Probleme der Zeit, 1931), which, with The Revolt of the Masses, was one of the most widely read and influential books in the inter-war period. For Jaspers this was a period not only of political, economic and social crisis, but first and foremost of a deep-rooted intellectual malaise. Mankind’s knowledge and ability had become so vast and was so ever expanding that there were no longer any generally accepted and binding transcendental values, leaving control in the hands of anonymous experts and bureaucrats. Ration-
THE TEMPER OF THE TIMES
7
ality was applied almost exclusively to practical problems, leaving ample room for the irrational, as in the racial hocus-pocus, the glorification of violence and the restless vitality of National Socialism. The crisis was generally accepted as an unavoidable destiny from which there was no escape, and mankind stood passive and helpless before the antinomies of the individual and the collective, body and soul, being and existence. This situation for Jaspers, far for being grounds for nihilism and pessimism, offered a wide freedom of choice. There were no easy answers, but the individual struggle for elucidation could lead to the solution of immediate problems. He sought thereby to preserve the philosophical tradition of the ancients and JudeoChristian values against the assault of the barbarians. His tragic-heroic stand against the forces of the irrational found considerable resonance, particularly among students, and his short book went through a number of editions. Jaspers was building on arguments presented by Max Weber in a remarkable lecture he gave in 1919 in Munich, amid the ruins of the German Empire and of a curious socialist revolution. He took up the question posed by Tolstoy that science, for all its miracles and triumphs, for all the fundamental changes it had made in our lives, and with its immense destructive powers which had been so brutally manifest in the war, was unable to answer the fundamental questions: How should we live? What should we do? To Weber, far from this being a fundamental and insoluble ambivalence at the heart of modernity, this offered a great chance. Science left us the freedom to make such choices independently from objective scientific laws, and he issued a timely and timeless warning against faiths masquerading as scientific truths. Such notions as scientific socialism and Nazi biologism were for Weber examples of political passions dressed up as historical necessity. Weber pleaded for a ‘rational individuality’ that could find a way between the dangers of an impersonal and purely functional rationality and a passionate romantic irrationalism. Traditional values and certainties were crumbling in a world that was becoming increasingly pluralistic, differentiated and individualistic, which obeyed the dictates of the markeplace and the logic of productive forces. The old liberal belief that there need be no fundamental dichotomy between the pursuit of individual interests and a sense of moral obligation towards the community, and that the world was marching resolutely towards a desirable consummation, became increasingly hard to sustain. Progress, particularly in its socialist guise, seemed to be leading to what Ortega called a ‘rebarbarianisation’. Marxists took delight in all this, for was it not the outward sign of a bourgeois-capitalist society in the throes of its final collapse? Many of those who regarded the fruits of enlightenment and progress with profound pessimism felt that only the will, irrationality and faith offered a
8 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
way out. Henri Bergson won many followers, and a Nobel Prize in 1927, for his insistence that philosophy provided the answer to the restraints of the scientific and the everyday, by setting the imagination free and relying on intuitive subjectivity. Some, like the anarcho-syndicalist Georges Sorel and the Italian futurist Marinetti, swallowed a heavy dose of Nietzsche and managed to convince themselves that the war provided a purifying experience, an alternative to the non-committal essence of the modern, and an opportunity to restore order to the world. They turned their backs on the feeble and slavish morality of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and heralded the mystical experience of a tightly knit community of supermen, whether of Ernst Jünger’s frontline soldiers, Sorel’s striking workers, d’Annuzio’s paramilitary troops, the anti-Semitic, blood-and-soil regionalism of Maurice Barrès, or the close circle of precious young men around the poet Stefan George. The call was for ‘action’, ‘revolution’, ‘struggle’ or ‘deeds’. Carl Schmitt, with his characteristic bluntness, announced that this was a state of emergency for which the only solution was the ‘expulsion or destruction of the heterogenous’. This cannot be dismissed as the vaguely ridiculous attitudinising of an unworldly academic. It was symptomatic of a profound malaise that was to have truly frightful consequences. Few thinkers reflected the problems and uncertainties of contemporary life more accurately and profoundly than Martin Heidegger. In spite of its painfully convoluted and hermetic language, his major work of the period Being and Time (1927) bears a remarkable resemblance to the novels of his contemporary, Franz Kafka, although Heidegger sadly lacked the latter’s often overlooked and mordant sense of humour. Heidegger had served on the Western Front in a meteorological unit charged with making calculations for the use of gas during the 1918 offensive in the Champagne. He was profoundly affected by this experience, which for him stripped everything away down to the basic core of the personality. That the individual was now forced to rely entirely on the self, without any of the material and spiritual comforts of civilisation, he regarded as a valuable opportunity. Heidegger set about stripping philosophy down to the basic problem of being, a process that he described as ‘destruction’. He had been obliged to leave the Jesuit order because of health problems in 1909, and ceased to study for the priesthood in 1911. By 1919, after much heart-searching, he reluctantly came to agree with Nietzsche that God was indeed dead. Having ‘destroyed’ theology he set about the destruction of his mentor Husserl’s phenomenology. Finally he set to work on the Western tradition of philosophy and metaphysics, which he felt had trapped thinkers since Plato in a secondhand and shop-worn set of abstractions that had become autonomous, and
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which provided little more than ‘useless’ knowledge of the essence of things. He called for a fundamental rethinking of philosophy starting with the pre-Socratics, above all Heraclitus, the ‘weeping philosopher’ and the ‘dark one’, whose profound pessimism and extreme obscurity he found particularly appealing and worthy of emulation. The German crisis of the spirit, with which thinkers as different as the historian Oswald Spengler or the theologian Karl Barth wrestled, was reflected in an extreme fashion in Heidegger’s work. He agreed with ‘conservative revolutionaries’ such as Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt, Moeller van den Bruck and Ernst Niekisch that Western civilisation had degenerated into an ‘exhausted pseudo-culture’ which was hopelessly depraved, moribund and beyond redemption. Man as an ‘animal rationale’ was condemned to ‘wander through the desert of the earth’s desolation’. Thinking had been reduced to mere intelligence, to Max Weber’s dreary ‘instrumental rationality’. Heidegger insisted that what Weber described as ‘demystification’ was in fact mystification – a blind faith in technology. Europe was helplessly trapped between the Soviet Union and the United States, both of which were godless mass societies that denied the individual all ‘possibilities of being’, which were driven by a blind faith in unbounded technology, recklessly heading towards an ecological disaster, and hostile to the heroic individual who dares to think, create and act. Heidegger’s talk of the need for ‘decisiveness’ and ‘authenticity’ in a world from which the gods had fled, and in which everyone is other and no one is himself, accurately reflected the intellectual atmosphere of the age. Whereas thinkers such as Husserl and Weber insisted that the postSocratic philosophical tradition offered the means of overcoming the present crisis, Heidegger violently disagreed. For Plato truth was something that is waiting for us to discover. Heidegger argued that it is not something which exists outside individual existence, and that everyone must discover truth on their own. But this was far from being a Promethean vision. Heidegger’s individual existence was overshadowed by the certainty of death and by permanent anxiety. The call for courage in the face of nothingness offered precious little consolation. Heidegger’s ‘draft of being’ left him dangerously susceptible to any promise of a new beginning and hence to the lure of National Socialism. Here at last he saw an opportunity to make a critical decision and to play his part as ‘an entire people (Volk) accepts the desolateness of modern man amid the process of being’. If ‘being in the world’ (Dasein) implies ‘openness’ (Erschlossenheit ) this indeed was an opportunity ‘to expose oneself to a new manner and means of acquiring being’. This was the golden opportunity for the individual to be summoned out of ‘lostness’ in the ‘they’. Germany had reached a new beginning and was at a moment of destiny in ‘the encounter
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between global technology and modern man’, a counter movement to the nihilism of the Western ‘will to techne’. German man was no longer condemned to an isolated life as an act of autonomy in a world without gods, but became an active participant in the life of the Volk. Plato’s cave dwellers were now on the march, goose-stepping their way under Zarathustra’s empty skies. This was the astonishingly naive leap of faith of a desk-bound intellectual, but it was one that Heidegger refused ever to regret. He never apologised for his shameful behaviour in Nazi Germany. On the contrary he felt that Hitler had failed to live up to his expectations and owed him an apology. Heidegger’s demolition job on metaphysics was as incomplete as his destruction of theology. Being and Time was flavoured with metaphysical humanism, and the existentially rooted subject still had a privileged access to ontological questions. Man was still ‘the shepherd of being’. It was precisely these vestiges of anthropocentrism that were to be taken up by Sartre, whereas his subsequent denial that man was the shepherd of anything at all was to be applauded by Derrida. In spite of Heidegger’s commitment to National Socialism and his refusal to apologise, even for the Shoah, and although these ideas had led him so woefully astray, they still exercised a baneful influence on a whole generation of later philosophers. His nihilism, anti-rationalism and anti-modernism were a powerful impulse behind postmodernism and his jeremiads against ecological ruin, the obsession with achievement and consumerism also fell on eager ears. His commitment to regeneration, to youth and to the union of intellectual and manual workers in his address as rector of Freiburg University in 1933 are echoed in the radical discourse in the universities in the late 1960s. Heidegger, the prophet and seer, developed his own vocabulary that stretches the German language to the limits of the intelligible, and it is to him that we owe the tiresome habit of breaking up words with hyphens. His philosophy floats in a cerebral world where the rules of proof and refutation are suspended. His was an existential solipsism with the individual as the site of truth in an untrue society. His ‘fundamental ontology’ was profoundly pessimistic to the point that he who had always mourned the death of God reached the final conclusion that salvation could only come if He were to make a return appearance. His thinking is virtually immune to explication, but can only be experienced and lived in a manner analogous to a work of art. It is for this reason that he was fascinated with the works of Hölderlin, who is often seen as the first modern poet. He was also a close friend of René Char and was admired by Paul Celan, both of whom count among the most hermetic of modern poets. He was an intellectual sorcerer driven by a wild visionary passion. Small wonder that Jaspers pleaded with him to place his enormous gifts
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in the service of reason and not of magic. His was a typically modern sensibility that still appeals in a world that has witnessed a thoroughgoing delegitimation of the leading ideologies on the inter-war era: Fascism and Communism. After the crushing of the radical Sturm-Abteilung in the ‘Röhm Putsch’ of 1934, National Socialism appeared to him to be but another version of the Soviet/US technological society, and as such had little left that appealed to intellectuals on the radical right, for whom the Nazis had in any case no patience. Heidegger’s relationship with Hitler was analogous to that between Plato and Dionysus. He returned from his Syracuse a bitter and disappointed man, but he remained a party member and sported a swastika badge in his lapel until the bitter end. Heidegger’s exact contemporary, the Catholic existentialist Gabriel Marcel, pointed out the seductive dangers of a Godless world without any other form of transcendence. Ernst Jünger, whom Heidegger greatly admired, came to a similar conclusion when he wrote that socialism and nationalism were the two millstones by means of which progress pulverises what is left of the old world. Jünger was a highly decorated and frequently wounded soldier whose brutally realistic account of his wartime experiences in Storm of Steel (In Stahlgewittern, 1920), Copse 125 (Das Wäldchen 125, 1925), and Fire and Blood (Feuer und Blut, 1925) provided an unequalled literary representation of war on the Western Front. In his further reflections on the war in The Personal Experience of Combat (Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis, 1922), Total Mobilisation (Die Totale Mobilmachung, 1930) and The Worker (Der Arbeiter, 1932) Jünger turned his back on the liberal bourgeois idealism, which was one of the first casualties of the war. He now espoused a heroic nihilism in the face of the essential meaninglessness of the technological age. Arguing that it was irrelevant what one was fighting for, what mattered was how one fought, he concluded that mankind was physically, mentally and socially determined by the available technology. The soldier at the front and the worker in the factory stand in the same existential relationship to technological means, the soldier to his weapon, the worker to his machine. The modern soldier was thus the precursor of the modern worker. The heroic was no longer manifested in acts of outstanding individual bravery, but rather in the often meaningless and helpless fulfilment of one’s duty as a ‘representative individual’, whether in the trenches or on the factory floor. In this age of the masses and machines, wars become wars of workers, not of knights, kings or citizens, with technology the consumer of mass-produced armies and with the state converted into a gigantic factory. The last war showed that ‘civilisation’ is more profoundly attached to progress than ‘culture’, and the ‘progressive’ nations such as the United States and Britain turned out to be the winners, Italy and Russia the losers.
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Jünger’s nihilism and his vision of a superman were similar to Nietzsche’s, but they came directly from his experience of total warfare, rather than from the death of God. This vision of a new soldier/worker state infused with a Nietzschean will to power was widely admired, particularly in Germany, and many, including Heidegger, imagined that it would be realised under National Socialism, and provide a new sense of heroic community infused with a fearless dynamism. Although Jünger dedicated a copy of Fire and Blood to ‘The National Leader Adolf Hitler’, and although the Nazis made every effort to get him on board, he remained aloof. He was, as Walter Benjamin pointed out, far too much of an aesthete. He was a right-wing anarchist and something of a snob, who also had no sympathy for the Nazis’ philistine aesthetics, crude racist ideas, and knee-jerk anti-Semitism. The constitutional and international lawyer Carl Schmitt was as much an opponent of the Weimar Republic as Jünger, but he became an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazis. His basic assertion was that society and politics were based on natural enmity and conflicts of interest. Liberalism with its belief in compromise and moral universals was thus a denial of this basic reality, and parliamentary democracy with its perpetual discussion amounted to a neutralisation and depoliticisation of politics. Dictatorship, by which he meant the temporary Roman variety, was in his view far more democratic and better reflected the true interests of the people than rule by self-seeking elites and complex parliamentary procedures. He greatly admired Fascist Italy and drew up blueprints for a ‘totalitarian state’, but he still had serious reservations about the Nazis whom, like Jünger, he initially regarded as primitive rowdies. Apart from these theoretical works he played an active part in the destruction of the Weimar Republic. In 1932 he represented the state in Chancellor Papen’s overthrow of the Prussian government. Always an opportunist, he joined the Nazi Party in March 1933 and set to work on a ‘racial renewal’ of the law. He justified the murders during the Röhm Putsch of June 1934, called for a legal campaign against the ‘Jewish spirit’, and proclaimed that the will of the Führer was the highest law. In 1936 he fell foul of the SS and retired to the academic sidelines as a professor in Berlin. Curiously enough this disreputable and discredited man was widely admired in left-wing circles in the late 1960s. They found his assertion that the liberal emphasis on human rights, individualism and the rule of law was based on an illusion, and that politics was all about power, leadership and decision making greatly to their taste. Furthermore, his prediction that there would be an increasing number of civil wars, wars of national liberation and supranational networks of guerrillas and terrorists appealed to their revolutionary romanticism.
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Most intellectuals in this age of extraordinary ideological fanaticism rejected liberal democracy, which they saw as the source of all that was wrong with the modern world. It had spawned the tyranny of capital, of imperialism, of the Moloch of mass warfare, of bourgeois conformity and manners. In a more philosophical version it was responsible for the subtler and even more terrible tyranny of metaphysics and language. Initially the majority of leading intellectuals stood resolutely on the extreme right and were, as Mussolini said of his compatriots, fascists, fascistophile, or afascist, but with the rise of Hitler the Soviet Union skilfully played the anti-Fascist card, and was thus able to delude a large number of otherwise intelligent people into believing that theirs was an honourable, humane and progressive cause, part of a glorious tradition that went back to the French Revolution. At first sight Communism had much that was attractive. It offered an inspiring vision of a just and equal society in which the outrageous divisions of wealth and class would be abolished. The Soviet Union’s expanding economy during the depression suggested that here indeed was a viable alternative to a market economy that was on the verge of collapse. Even as stern a critic of totalitarianism as Julien Benda concluded that Communism, with its attempt to restructure and improve society, was preferable to Fascism. Communists, although brutishly anti-intellectual in practice, were at least theoretically within a respectable intellectual tradition. They could point to the canonical works of Karl Marx, whereas the extreme right had no one of comparable stature. On closer examination, the Soviet Union had precious little that was worthy of emulation, until it came to be seen as a bastion against Fascism. For all the talk of the impossibility of making omelettes without breaking eggs, most observers could see piles of broken eggs, but as yet no sign of an omelette. The vigorous intellectual tradition of the Marxism of the Second International had been reduced to a dim-witted reductionist dogma, serving to legitimise a brutal dictatorship. Lenin was a second-rate thinker with ludicrous philosophical pretensions, and the primitive mechanistic and pseudoscientific drivel of Stalin’s Fundamentals of Leninism (1924) and On Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1938) must have made poor Marx turn in his grave. Marxist intellectuals were appalled by the vulgar Marxism of ‘MarxismLeninism’, and set about a re-examination of the Marxist legacy in what became known as ‘critical Marxism’. Georg Lukács, who had been People’s Commissar for Education during the somewhat quixotic Communist uprising in Hungary in 1919, was the leading proponent of this approach. In History and Class Consciousness (1923) he set about rescuing Marx from this crude materialism, by emphasising the influence of the Hegelian dialectic on the
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early Marx. Whereas Soviet Marxism was based on the idea that history unfolded according to laws as inflexible as those of physics, Lukács stressed the Hegelian concept of ‘totality’ according to which history was a living process made up of a multiplicity of dialectical relationships between subject and object. Within this totality, human creativity is both operative and at the same time subjected to conditions of its own making. Whereas Soviet Marxism interpreted notions such as ‘reality’ and ‘fact’ in a positivist manner, Lukács argued that ‘only when the individual facts of social life are seen as elements of historical development placed within the context of a totality, can the knowledge of facts become knowledge of reality.’ Lukács argued that the vulgar and mechanical Marxism of the Second International that was based on Engels’ misinterpretation of the Master, and which was to reach its nadir in Stalin’s slim texts, by removing the Hegelian dialectic stripped the theory of its revolutionary import. Engels’ ‘dialectic of nature’ thus overlooked the ‘reciprocal relationship between subject and object and the unity of theory and praxis’. The dialectic demanded that Marxism should always put itself in question, that it should remain a method and not degenerate into a ‘world view’ or turn into a set of empty axioms and formulae. The German Marxist, Karl Korsch, whose Marxism and Philosophy was published in the same year as History and Class Consciousness, was fully committed to an undogmatic Marxism that emphasised spontaneous action and a praxisoriented philosophy. Korsch insisted that the traditional scepticism of socialists towards philosophy, based on Marx’s remark that philosophers seek to explain the world when the point was to change it, was based on a misunderstanding of what philosophy was all about. Korsch ended his book with another quote from Marx: ‘You can’t do away with philosophy without first realising it.’ Whereas Lukács and Korsch were to have a profound influence on later critical thinkers, particularly those in the ‘Frankfurt School’ around Horkheimer and Adorno, they were roundly condemned in Moscow as ‘deviationists’ and ‘idealists’. Lukács emigrated to Moscow and was forced to make a public recantation of his heretical views and render obeisance to Stalin in 1933. Korsch was expelled from the German Communist Party (KPD) in 1926. The brilliant Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci died on 27 April 1937, a few days after having been released from a Fascist prison where he had been since his arrest in 1926. The Minister of Propaganda paid him tribute when he said: ‘We must stop this brain from functioning for twenty years.’ Gramsci adumbrated his ‘philosophy of praxis’ in his Prison Notebooks, an examination of Italian history and the concrete circumstances favouring a popular revolution. His key concept was that of ‘hegemony’, an attempt to save what he could from Marx’s concept of class, which was seriously in need of overhaul were it to continue to have any relevance. For Marxists ‘class domination’
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meant little more than ownership of the means of production and exchange. Gramsci examined the ways in which a group could impose its way of thinking, its value system and its concept of justice on an entire society. He showed how the media, the schools and the church transmitted these hegemonic values, how they were received in different ways in town and country, and how they influenced the process of Italian unification. Gramsci was profoundly influenced by the fiercely individualist and liberal Hegelianism of Benedetto Croce, to the point that some would dispute that he was really a Marxist. Had he not been a useful martyr to Fascism he would certainly have fallen foul of the hegemons in Moscow. His subsequent influence was profound, particularly among historians of Italy. Of all the figures that wrestled with the problems of an age that seemed to be desperately out of joint none is more interesting, perplexing and sympathetic than Walter Benjamin. He was torn between a vision of the sacred, as in that of his close friend the Jewish philosopher Gershom Scholem, and of the profane of Marxism. Benjamin lived in an uneasy space between the two, between a desire to live by the law, whether it was that of Judaism or Communism, or to withdraw into a private world of mysticism and esotericism. At times he hoped that religion could provide a way out of the tormenting desperation of the modern, and offer a means of ordering the totality of experience. His Marxism was an irrational commitment, a leap of faith, an act of decisionism, admittedly assisted by a passionate love affair with a Latvian Communist, Asja Lacis, but he was never able to overcome tension between these two poles and flitted between kabbalistic mysticism and Marxist materialism. He was, as Gershom Scholem perceptively remarked, ‘a theologian marooned in the realm of the profane’. Benjamin was profoundly influenced by Carl Schmitt, particularly by his remark that ‘sovereign is he who decides on the exception’ and was one of the first to see the ‘strange interplay between reactionary theory and revolutionary practice’. After the war Adorno, ever keen to remove embarrassing traces from his own and others’ disreputable pasts, deleted all references to Schmitt in Benjamin’s works that he edited. They have now been restored. Benjamin remained an extremely heterodox Marxist who was never at home in left-wing circles. His last years were spent in poverty in Paris, working on what became known as his ‘Arcades Project’, a massive and unreadable collection of notes, the exegesis of which has become a major academic industry. He was interned as an enemy alien in 1939, escaped in 1940 as the Germans advanced, and died of an overdose of morphine at Port Bou on the Spanish border. Another unorthodox Marxist, Ernst Bloch, pointed out that Communism suppressed the creative, spontaneous and imaginative aspects of human existence, the central importance of which Marx had stressed in his early
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writings on alienation. Fascism, by contrast, had used and manipulated these powerful factors for its own sinister ends. Bloch insisted that mankind could not live without hope, without a vision of utopia, without an eschatological longing for ‘a home (Heimat) where no one had been’, a world without alienation. One of the few leading intellectuals who closed his ears to the siren calls from the extremes of left and right was the young French philosopher Raymond Aron. His dissertation, which he presented in 1938, was strongly influenced by Max Weber and Wilhelm Dilthey, and challenged received truths about justice and progress, arguing that our knowledge of the past is bound to be tentative and incomplete. The examiners suspected that here, for all his obvious brilliance, was a misguided nihilist. This was far from being the case. Aron had spent some time in Nazi Germany and returned to France as an impassioned anti-Fascist. Unlike the vast majority of anti-Fascist intellectuals he had no illusions whatsoever about the Soviet Union, felt that its antiFascist pose was fundamentally fraudulent, and was deeply suspicious of the Popular Front. Nevertheless, he saw Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, to which alone he attached the label ‘totalitarian’, as a far greater menace than the Soviet Union. In his view they were the truly revolutionary states in that they had set about a systematic destruction of the intellectual and political heritage of Western Europe. For that reason he could not fathom why so many conservatives found Fascism in whatever form so appealing. Aron’s answer was to call for a fundamental rethinking and stocktaking of basic democratic principles, and the construction of a firm democraticconservative platform. There was no longer any place for wishy-washy humanitarianism and pacifism, blind faith in progress and morality. Aron thus argued that only conservatives could rescue that which was precious in the democratic tradition from those who were all too eager to sell out to the extremes on the left and on the right. He did not reject the values of 1789, indeed he was determined to uphold them, but he denounced the empty phrase mongering and pseudo-revolutionary pathos of those who made vacuous appeals to the glorious universal values of the French Revolution. They needed to be rethought and applied to the concrete situation, in order to prepare for what promised to be a life and death struggle over issues of fundamental and vital importance. In 1930s France Aron’s was a lone voice, disparaged by both left and right. It was not until after the war that he was to achieve real prominence and influence. The ever-widening dichotomy between the rational and the irrational, the planned and the spontaneous, the intellectual and the emotional was also reflected in the arts. The two major new trends in the arts: New Realism (Neue Sachlichkeit) and surrealism reflected this immiscibility. The first confronted a
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society in crisis with a brutal realism and biting irony, as in the politically committed and morally engaged works of Georg Grosz and Otto Dix. Surrealism, a phrase coined by Guillaume Apollinaire in his play Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1917) looked for its subject matter in the subconscious, dreams, the effects of psychotropic drugs or the spontaneity of écriture automatique, and sought to exclude the rational from its discourse. Its leading exponents such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, André Breton and Paul Élouard sought, in Lautréamont’s phrase, for an aesthetic that could match the beauty of ‘the fortuitous encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table’. The third major new direction in the arts was Dada. Born, no one knows exactly when or by whom, either in Zurich or New York, this was a frontal attack on bourgeois complacency, on the artistic establishment, on deadly wartime patriotism, on all ingrained conventions, traditions and manners. The writer Hugo Ball founded the ‘Cabaret Voltaire’ in Zurich in 1916 where such talented artists as sculptor and poet Hans Arp and the writers Tristan Tzara and Richard Huelsenbeck used to meet. Huelsenbeck took the new gospel to Berlin in 1917 and attracted such figures as Georg Grosz to his circle. The Parisian surrealists around André Breton were greatly attracted to the Zurich Dadaists, and there was a fruitful collaboration between the two schools. Dada with its openness, its desire to shock and épater les bourgeois, and its contempt for all forms of convention, exercised an enormous influence on later generations of artists, usually with painfully meagre results. Pale imitations of these delightfully impertinent and thought-provoking works, served up with a heavy dressing of irony, merely serve to remind us of the many talents of this extraordinary group. Most of the major schools had been firmly established before the war: cubism, expressionism, abstractionism and serial music. They continued to flourish in the inter-war period and sought to grapple with the new reality. Expressionism with its emotionally charged subjectivism tackled the psychological problems of the anonymity and alienation of urban life, but it was losing its dynamic, and gave way to the politically committed and often merely propagandistic Neue Sachlichkeit. Cubism had run its course by the war’s end but had a lasting effect on the abstractionists and constructivists of the inter-war period. They sought to reduce art to its fundamental essence that would make it possible to look at the world through new eyes so as to be able to reach a profound understanding of a world in crisis. This cultural revolution would be the prelude to a social revolution. Thus Piet Mondrian longed for a new and harmonious reality in the world around him, while he struggled to find it on his canvases. This, he believed, was only possible when the intellect finally surmounted
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nature. Russian visionaries such as Chagall, Kandinsky, Majakowski and Malewitsch believed that a new world would emerge from the ruins of the old, in which art and life would be united. They were given considerable encouragement during the early years of the Bolshevik revolution, until the grim orthodoxy of socialist realism drove them either into exile or into making uneasy compromises with the regime. Paul Klee hoped to find the reality that lay behind the visible world – the Kantian noumena behind the phenomena. Hans Arp yearned for a ‘new order of things’. The physician-poet Gottfried Benn said that since science had destroyed the world it was up to the arts to create a new one. This longing for an end to the dualism between intellect and nature, and the creation of a renewed sense of community was also prevalent among architects. They set out not only to create new buildings but also to build a new world. The painter Lionel Feininger called for ‘socialist cathedrals’ while the writer Alfred Döblin hoped that architecture would point the way to a new spirituality. The architect Walter Gropius set out to overcome the disparity between form and function that would lead to what he called an ‘objective harmony’ in which all existing tensions would be resolved. Le Corbusier announced that a house is ‘a machine for living in’, a strictly functionalist view that he fortunately disregarded in all of his works, with the exception of the small shed which served as his studio. Another functionalist architect, Mies van der Rohe, announced that ‘less is more’ and designed a series of rigorously puristic buildings which were to profoundly influence the next generation of architects. Almost all the trends of the times were represented in the Bauhaus that was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919 and which moved to Dessau in 1925. Here socialists and esotericists, radicals and conservatives, abstractionists and realists, functionalists and expressionists worked together in a community that, although fraught with tension, was highly creative, making it the most important art school of the times. It was argued that, as in the medieval cathedrals, the arts and the crafts were of equal value and should be placed at the service of architecture. Particular emphasis was placed on the mass production of goods that met the highest standards of design. Among the staff were such remarkable artists as Lyonel Feininger, Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer, Vassily Kandinsky, Mies van der Rohe, Josef Albers and Marcel Breuer. It is small wonder that this powerhouse of modernity excited the ire of the Nazis. Walter Frank as minister of the interior in Anhalt closed it down in 1932. It moved briefly to Berlin, but the Nazi government closed it finally in July 1933. A number of its leading lights moved to the United States where the Bauhaus aesthetic had a considerable impact.
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Tonality in Western music began to disappear with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and was finally liquidated by the Viennese composers around Arnold Schoenberg before the war. The use of harshly asymmetrical rhythms and the deconstruction of harmony and melody was widespread, resulting in two famous riots in 1913. The first was in Vienna when the public howled down Alban Berg’s Altenberg Lieder ; the second in Paris where Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps caused a major scandal. Post-war composers, many of whom were the pupils of the serialists, reacted against these mandarin theories, and tried to reach out for a wider audience. They were inspired by folk music, popular songs and later by jazz, to produce works of enduring wit, charm and good humour. Darius Mihaud, who had spent the war years in Brazil, used popular Brazilian tunes in his delightful Le boeuf sur le toit (1919) and Saudades do Brazil (1921). He was one of the composers in Les Six, which included Artur Honegger, Francis Poulenc and Georges Auric, with the ubiquitous Jean Cocteau as their mentor. They agreed with Cocteau, who announced that Schoenberg was a ‘blackboard composer’, and set about writing works that were immediately accessible and, with the possible exception of Honegger who was something of a romantic, produced music which may not be of great profundity but has great charm and sparkle. Folk music had an important influence on the music of the Hungarians Kodály and Bartók, the Spaniards Falla and Albeniz, and British composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi and George Butterworth (who died on the Somme in 1916). This latter group was a trifle unfairly labelled the ‘cow-pat school’ but, as were the Europeans, was often able to rise above the quaint and the antiquarian to produce music of considerable depth. Indian music influenced the young Frenchman Olivier Messiaen in Le corps glorieuse of 1933 and his compatriot André Jolivet made use of South American Indian themes in his 5 Incantations for Flute (1936). The younger composers in Germany were mostly politically engaged on the extreme left, and concentrated on what became known as ‘contemporary opera’ (Zeitoper), in other words musicals with a political message. The model was Ernst Krenek’s enormously popular Jonny spielt auf (1926). Laura, the heroine of Paul Hindemith’s Neues vom Tage, sings an aria in praise of the hot water supply while lying naked in the bath, and thereby excited the ire of the National Socialists who condemned the work as degenerate. Hanns Eisler, a committed Communist and Schoenberg pupil, abandoned serialism to his teacher’s utter disgust, and collaborated with Berthold Brecht in Die Massnahme in 1930 that featured the great actor Ernst Busch and Brecht’s sorely tried wife Helene Weigel. The greatest of these works was Kurt Weill’s Threepenny
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Opera, cribbed from John Gay’s eighteenth-century work. Kurt Weill, who like Eisler was born in 1900, wrote a number of catchy tunes to brilliantly incisive texts by Brecht, which included the immortal ‘Mack the Knife’. Weill moved to the United States where he wrote a number of musicals and ‘September Song’ – the greatest popular ballad of them all. Eisler became East Germany’s standard-bearing composer. Hindemith was less politically involved, lived in exile in England, and produced a major corpus of sadly undervalued work. The fiercely individualistic Igor Stravinsky refused to fit into any school. In the inter-war years he confronted the structurally complex romanticism of Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss and the early Schoenberg with its polythematicism, and with his neo-classicism sought to give music a more clearly discernible structure. L’histoire du soldat of 1919 and Oedipus Rex in 1927 contrive to be both unashamedly modern yet firmly anchored in a much older tradition. Technological innovations such as electronic music, which became so important after World War II, played but a minor role in the inter-war years. Hindemith and Ernst Toch also conducted experiments with gramophone records at the Bauhaus, where they were scratched or played in reverse, but the technical means were not yet available to develop these ideas. The US expatriate George Antheil’s music for a film by Man Ray and Fernand Léger, Ballet Méchanique, made use of pianolas, sirens and aeroplane propellers. It was first performed in the Salle Pleyel in Paris in 1924 to an audience that included Aaron Copland, James Joyce, Serge Koussevitsky, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Darius Milhaud, Nadia Boulanger, Marcel Duchamp and Alfred Knopf. This major Dadaist event met with a seriously divided response. Copland declared Antheil to be a genius, but added that he had yet to write a piece of music that showed it. One member of the audience wrote that the work was ‘good but awful’. Others thought it merely awful, and Antheil took to wearing a gun in a specially designed silk holster during his subsequent concerts, for fear that someone might be tempted to shoot the pianist. The Soviet Union’s outstanding composer, Dmitry Shostakovich soon fell foul of the authorities. His operas The Nose (1928) and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1932) were hugely successful until they were banned in 1936 for their ‘abstract-formalism, ‘leftist distortions’ and ‘petit-bourgeois sensationalism’. He and his great compatriot Sergei Prokovief were both formally condemned by Zhdanov in 1948. Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony of 1937 was a confession of guilt, while at the same time, although still immensely popular, is far from being the work of a Philistine Stalinist toady. Shostakovich confided his most private and intense thoughts and emotions in his chamber music, particularly in a series of magnificent string quartets and his second piano trio.
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Meanwhile, Schoenberg, Webern and Berg continued to produce works of great intellectual complexity such as Schoenberg’s essay in 12-tone technique, the Serenade Opus 24 of 1923 and Webern’s Quartet Opus 22 of 1930, but they found it hard to remain within their rigidly intellectual system. Alban Berg quoted a Carinthian Ländler in his violin concerto of 1935, one of the towering masterpieces of twentieth-century music. Schoenberg returned to tonality in his Kol Nidre of 1939. Webern, the most austere of them all, orchestrated Johann Strauss waltzes in order to entertain Viennese workers, who were liable to be mystified by the master’s demanding miniatures. Great art is timeless, but it is also a reflection of the age in which it is created, even though the artist may not be fully aware of this. Vaughan Williams’ Fourth Symphony and William Walton’s First Symphony are harrowing works written on the eve of World War II that seem to presage the tragedy which lay ahead. Both composers hotly denied this. Vaughan Williams laconically remarked: ‘I don’t like it very much, but it was what I meant.’ Walton was less enigmatic: ‘No! It’s all about girls!’ The pacifist Benjamin Britten made his position quite clear in his early masterpiece, the Frank Bridge Variations of 1937. With variations given acerbic titles such as ‘March’, ‘Exercises’ and ‘Commination’ this is clearly all about war. None of the previous strategies that had dominated the modernist discourse seemed adequate to solve the dichotomy between the intellect and the irrational, structure and mentality, technological progress and cultural pessimism. Liberal rationalism had brought no convincing solutions, conservatism seemed quaintly outmoded and sentimental. Bolshevism had resulted in terror, turmoil and an appearance of dreary, anonymous equality. Monarchy was absurdly snobbish, capitalism heartless and sordid, democracy delivered the mindless masses into the hands of the chattering classes. The modern, consisting of the masses, the market, materialism and Marxism was widely rejected, but how could the forces of the irrational be intelligently instrumentalised to serve a new and essentially rational project? André Malraux imagined that he had found the answer in Communism. His novel La Condition Humaine, for which he received the Prix Goncourt, provides an exceptionally disingenuous account of Communist policy in China in 1925, where he served as a commissar. His central argument was the tragic futility of individual action: in this case a suicide bombing. Only in the collective can the individual escape from the meaninglessness of life. Communism for Malraux was a pat answer to an existential problem, but with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939 he became disillusioned with Communism, found a haven in the actionism of the Resistance, and subsequently became a minister under de Gaulle.
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Most of the radical critics of the modern were far from being reactionaries in the sense of wanting to return to some idyllic pre-industrial world of proud artisans such as Hans Sachs in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, or the sturdy yeomen of Merrie Olde England. Fascist ideologues such as Giovanni Gentile or Alfred Rosenberg felt that the problem lay not in modern technology but in a modern man who had become hopelessly degenerate. Ernst Jünger, a fiercely independent right-wing anarchist, agreed, as did the cultural pessimist Oswald Spengler. At the heart of the matter was the question of the masses. Jaspers argued that they were the product of the modern technological world. The masses were quite distinct from the old ‘mob’ or ‘dangerous classes’ who were deprived of civil rights and liberties, and who were confined to a specific space within a rigidly hierarchical society based on estates or classes, and that could, in most instances, be controlled by a whiff of grapeshot. The masses had political rights, which were reinforced by an acceptance of theoretical equality. With universal suffrage they had political power, and through the majority vote they ensured, at least in the eyes of Nietzsche and his epigones, that quantity would triumph over quality, civilisation over culture, and the animal over the noble. The masses could be easily manipulated since the individual had been reduced to an automaton, prey to the instincts of the herd, deprived of all values and living only for the moment. Hatred of the masses was so intense that some entertained apocalyptic visions of mass murder. In 1908 D.H. Lawrence, whose mind Nietzsche had served to unhinge, thought that a gas chamber as big as Crystal Palace would help rid the world of some of this waste material. After the war he offered three cheers for the inventors of poison gas. G.B. Shaw agreed that the majority of Europeans did not deserve to live, but such were his charitable instincts that he felt their deaths should be scientific and humane. An eminent divine, Dean Inge of Saint Paul’s, pronounced the majority of mankind to be on the level with the apes. Vilfrido Pareto maintained that culture was impossible without hierarchy and exploitation. Freud asserted that since the ‘pleasure seeking and blindly destructive rabble’ was unable to control its base instincts and was impervious to culture, it would have to be controlled by the ‘superior class’. W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot enthusiastically agreed, and felt that education should be the preserve of an elite, the remainder of the racial stock improved by systematic sterilisation. The liberal values freedom, progress and reason were now no longer seen as universally applicable, but were the privilege of an elite. But of whom should this elite comprise? Should it be an intellectual elite as Freud and Ortega y Gasset would have it, or a power–political elite as in the writings of Pareto and Robert Michels? Would it be D.H. Lawrence’s natural aristocracy, a group
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that combined intelligence with will-power as Mussolini suggested, or would it be Lenin’s revolutionary vanguard? Whatever it was it would be based on leadership, demand obedience and have totalitarian aspirations. Even democrats were often elitists. In 1926 a group of 64 German professors published a manifesto which claimed that a parliamentary republic was the best way of creating a sense of community and ensuring that ‘living aristocratic values’ were upheld. As the historian Friedrich Meinecke phrased it, an intellectual aristocracy was not incompatible with parliamentary democracy. A democracy that was not ‘ennobled’ by an intellectual elite was little more than the cacocracy of mob rule. By 1932 Meinecke had lost what little faith he had had in a parliamentary democracy that had declined into the capricious and arbitrary rule of the masses, but he denied that the answer lay in National Socialism. The left-wing British socialist, Harold Laski, later chairman of the Labour Party, argued that there was more to democracy than majority rule. Belief in an elite was but a small step away from Nietzsche and Shaw’s ‘superman’, Freud’s ‘super-father’, or whatever variation of hierophant, dictator or charismatic leader. Jaspers, who was certainly no Fascist, and who eventually came to the painful realisation that he had been talking dangerous nonsense, argued that at this ‘turning point in the order of existence’, when Western civilisation was faced with the alternatives of a ‘new order of things or doom and destruction’, there was need for a ‘real leader’ who would steer society away from this ‘theoretical artificiality’. Heidegger was in broad agreement when he stated that modern science had brought society to the furthest possible distance from the philosophy of life (Lebensphilosophie) and managed to persuade himself that National Socialism resolved this ‘encounter between planetary technology and modern man’. Jaspers, Ortega y Gasset, Michels and Mussolini all argued that the masses would blindly obey and follow their leaders and play the only role appropriate to them: to be instruments of history. Gustave Le Bon in his Psychology of the Masses (1895) had already shown how the masses could be manipulated, hypnotised and fall prey to mass suggestion. They were in need of transcendence, of belief whether it be religious, political or social. Sorel and Thomas Mann felt that the masses needed a myth or a mythical surrogate. Pareto called for an ideology, Michels for a ‘fictive ethic’. The aim was to ensure a blind faith and obedience that would legitimise authoritarian rule, while at the same time unleashing and channelling the power that lay within them. By these means the aristocratic spirit of the elite would be transmitted to the inarticulate masses. This elitist world view was by no means confined to the right. Lenin with his utter contempt for the masses was in full agreement. Adorno and
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Horkheimer argued that the ruling class had deliberately endowed the masses with a false consciousness by means of mass culture and the mass media. Truth was a monopoly of an estimable avant-garde, at the forefront of which was the Frankfurt School whose example the masses were to follow. They should eschew Benny Goodman and the great swing bands of the era, and listen attentively to the atonal serialism of Schoenberg, Webern and Theodor W. Adorno. Others, such as Ernst Bloch, understandably felt that such forbidding fare would repel rather than illuminate the masses, and argued that the left should take a leaf from the right’s more popular book, and stress the mythical, the irrational and the utopian, while at the same time ensuring that the elite pursue realistic, rational and realisable goals. In the secure comfort of their studies, these effete intellectuals became apostles of violence, without which their modernist projects could not be realised. They applauded the Bolshevik struggle against ‘enemies of the people’, ‘cosmopolitans’ (another term for Jews), ‘insects’ and ‘cancer’. Bloch managed to convince himself that violence was necessary in order for ‘love’ to prevail. Horkheimer put forward the absurd argument that violence was needed in order to get rid of violence. Lukács insisted that a brave new revolutionary world could not be made without violence. Brecht saw Stalinist terror as a necessary step on the way forward. The Webbs issued the stern admonishment that morality and reason could not be brought to the masses without violence. André Gide agreed, until he visited the Soviet Union, saw the future and realised that it did not work. Romain Rolland remained convinced that the Soviet Union, in spite of the appalling violence, was the only hope for humanity. Such pernicious nonsense continued to be perpetrated even after Stalin’s death in 1953. Simone de Beauvoir spoke for her circle when she claimed in 1954 that the Gulag, through which some 10 million unfortunates passed, was the necessary price paid for progress. The artistic avant-garde at first imagined that they could join hands with the political elite and make a contribution to the construction of a new society. Socialist realism put an end to a few years of exciting experiment in the Soviet Union and the Italian fascists soon parted company from modernist artists. Nazi Germany denounced the avant-garde as ‘degenerate’, ‘Jewish’ and ‘negroid’ and imposed their philistine petit-bourgeois aesthetic on second-rate artists whose sycophantic portraits of inspired leaders, sunsets in the Bavarian Alps or scenes of strapping blonde maidens bringing in the harvest are virtually indistinguishable from the dreary products of their Soviet colleagues. At first most French artists felt that Communism was as reprehensible as capitalism, but soon they began to flirt with Communism while remaining
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highly critical of the Communist Party (PCF) and sceptical about the revolutionary potential of the French proletariat. The party was naturally highly suspicious of these intellectuals. Louis Aragon and André Breton were reluctantly admitted into the party in 1927, but were soon expelled. They joined again in 1930. The majority remained aloof from the party, toyed with Trotskyite ideas, until the Comintern’s new line in 1935 led many to the mistaken belief that the Communist leopard had changed its spots. The Popular Front converted most French intellectuals and artists into party members or fellow travellers, until the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact put them to the test. Under the impact of the depression and particularly of the Spanish Civil War the British intelligentsia were strongly attracted to Communism either in its Stalinist or its Trotskyite form. W.H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender all went to Spain and expressed a superficial attachment to tenets of Marxism-Leninism. The romantic figure of Maurice Cornford, a young poet who died in the conflict, lives on as a martyr to the cause. The sculptor Henry Moore, the poet Dylan Thomas and Virginia Woolf ’s husband Leonard were sympathetic. George Orwell and Graham Greene remained critically independent on the left. A number of German intellectuals travelled to the Soviet Union. Most of them returned disillusioned. Georg Grosz went in 1922 and as a result moved steadily towards the right. The great left-wing theatre director Erwin Piscator lived in the Soviet Union from 1931 to 1936, but escaped just in time, emigrated to the United States and opted after the war for the Federal Republic of Germany. The Swiss architect Hannes Meyer, the former head of the Bauhaus, also spent the years from 1930 to 1936 in the Soviet Union, where he drew plans for a greater Moscow. He too saw the light and emigrated to Mexico. Another Bauhaus architect, Konrad Püschel, followed in his footsteps in 1931. He designed workers’ housing in Magnitogorsk and escaped from inevitable disgrace by leaving the Soviet Union in 1937. Leon Feuchtwanger, whose books had been burnt in 1933, visited Moscow in 1937 and sang Stalin’s praises. Heinrich Mann and Stefan Zweig were also sympathetic, although neither joined the Communist Party. Heinrich’s brother Thomas was also not entirely without a certain partiality for the Land of the Red Dawn. This fatal fascination with the leadership cult was by no means confined to the left. Hitler and particularly Mussolini had a fan club that rivalled that of Lenin and Stalin. Some admired leadership for itself, regardless of its political content. G.B. Shaw held Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler in high regard and felt that Sir Oswald Mosley and his Fascist Party offered the only solution to Britain’s problems. Salvador Dali transferred his affection for Stalin to Franco.
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Dieu la Rochelle detested Communism, but admired Lenin and Stalin for their sterling leadership qualities. Of all the dictators, Mussolini had the most distinguished list of admirers. Among them were the poets Ezra Pound, Rainer Maria Rilke and Gottfried Benn, politicians such as Winston Churchill and Konrad Adenauer, and an assortment of intellectuals from Sigmund Freud to Carl Schmitt and Oswald Spengler. None of these were able to transfer this admiration to Hitler, and indeed most of them found him utterly repulsive. Others had no such scruples. The psychoanalyst C.G. Jung managed to convince himself that Hitler was divinely inspired. Jean Cocteau described him as an artist of genius with an audacious vision for an exciting new Europe. The Norwegian Nobel Prizewinning novelist Knut Hamsun pronounced that Hitler spoke on behalf of all humanity. Another novelist, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, enthusiastically endorsed Hitler’s anti-Semitism, and came to believe that he had restored faith in Europe’s destiny. Mussolini and Hitler’s appeal was due to their charismatic leadership style combined with a mixture of nationalism and socialism. An irrational and emotionally charged attachment to the leader was reinforced by promises of the creation of a sense of national community that transcended class distinctions and which was reinforced by an extensive programme of social welfare. Mussolini had undergone a metamorphosis from socialist to rabid nationalist and Fascist. Oswald Mosley in Britain, and Josef Pilsudski in Poland, had undergone a similar mutation. ‘Marxism’, in whatever guise, never held the slightest attraction for Hitler, but his half-baked early radicalism was marked by venomous attacks on ‘plutocrats’, ‘interest slavery’ and ‘money-grubbing capitalism’, which had a strong pseudo-socialist flavour. Both Mussolini and Hitler believed that they practised a true form of Rousseauesque democracy. Mussolini’s authoritarian democracy was based on the theoretical submission of a willing people to an elite leadership. Hitler’s ‘Führer democracy’, with its clearly defined chain of command, was deemed to be a true articulation of the people’s will, so that it was a dictatorship based on consent rather than coercion. Stalin adopted much the same stance, particularly during the war, when he gave himself the title of ‘leader’. Similar rubbish was bandied about in Hungary under Gömbös and Horthy, in Pilsudski’s Poland, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal and Metaxas’ Greece. The dictatorships were based on a Bermuda Triangle of charismatic leader, functional elite and the ignorant and irrational masses. One of the most unseemly sights of the age was to witness the obeisance of distinguished intellectuals to the dictators, in the conviction that they devoted their energies to
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the common weal and were the hope of the future. One by one the gods failed, and revealed themselves to be mean-spirited and vicious tyrants who, far from elevating their wretched peoples to a higher moral plane, had let loose their base and brutish instincts and thus caused untold misery. These heavily compromised intellectuals adopted all manner of ingenious strategies to extricate themselves from the burden of their guilt, at the basis of which was their indignation that the dictators had let them down. Heidegger told the German magazine Der Speigel in September 1966 that he would not apologise for his support for National Socialism until Hitler apologised to him. Liberal individualism had suffered a severe setback during the war. The call now was for a united effort in defence of the nation in which the separate and single had to submit to the uniform and joint. Britain’s ‘National Union’, France’s Union Sacrée and Germany’s ‘Truce’ (Burgfrieden) were all expressions of the need of duty, sacrifice and submission for the common good. It was but a small step for this to turn into a sour chauvinism that asserted unique inborn national qualities and a clear delimitation from the other, whether it was ethnic or religious minorities, immigrants or neighbouring nations. Germany, with its penchant for highfalutin abstract concepts, eagerly adopted the notion of ‘Popular Community’ (Volksgemeinschaft ), which was an essential ingredient of popular discourse across a wide political spectrum, from the Social Democrats to the radical right. It soon became a concept central to National Socialism when the word Volk ceased to mean simply people, but took on a sinister racial connotation. The ‘Popular Community’ was transformed into a ‘Racial Community’, and an ideal of an exclusive folk who demanded submission and sacrifice replaced that of a general feeling of solidarity, designed to guarantee the security of the individual as well as that of the group. Fascist movements profited greatly from a widespread disillusionment with democracy. Nietzsche had proclaimed democracy to be a sign of decadence that amounted to rule by the second-rate. Nietzsche’s friend, the great cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt, announced that democracy had destroyed Greek civilisation. Sundry literati such as Oswald Spengler, Othmar Spann or Moeller van den Bruck saw democracy as a temporary phase soon to be replaced by dictatorship. Carl Schmitt, an ardent admirer of Fascist Italy, argued that since questions of value could not be quantified parliamentary democracy was unworkable. Mass society had to be forged anew, the demystification of the world reversed, nihilism extirpated, by violent means if necessary. The hero would replace the humanist, Christian humility give way to Germanic pride, discipline and sacrifice would supersede a wishy-washy
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idealism, and values would be transmogrified. Gottfried Benn and Ernst Jünger drank deep from this poisoned cup, as did a number of their colleagues across the Rhine. The Italian corporate state was designed to guarantee the general good by a judicious admixture of the state and the private sectors. Class differences would be overcome by the realisation that all were working together for the common good. Cooperation would take the place of the class struggle. It was a model that, in its many variations, had widespread support. The Papal encyclical Quadragesimo anno of 1931 was critical of the role of the state within the Italian corporate state and stressed the importance of subsidiarity, but adopted many of the principal ideas behind the Fascist model. The encyclical served as a blueprint for Dollfuss and Schuschnigg’s efforts to create a ‘state based on the estates’ (Ständestaat) in Austria. State control over the economy had grown apace during the war as the nations braced themselves to mobilise their efforts. The result was what the German socialist economist Rudolf Hilferding called ‘organised capitalism’. This model had considerable appeal both to the left and the right in that it encouraged the hope that the vagaries of the market could be controlled, the masses integrated, and the private desire for profit made subordinate to the exigencies of the common good. Here left and right came close together, and the political discourse was peppered with such vague terms as ‘national socialism’, ‘social nationalism’, ‘German socialism’, ‘national syndicalism’ or ‘organic syndicalism’. It thus came as no shock when Drieu de Rochelle spoke of the half-socialism of Hitler, the half-fascism of Stalin. There was general agreement between the extremes of left and right that the political, social and moral crisis could not be overcome without the use of force. But how was this force to be organised? The Austrian experiment under Dollfuss, the ‘millimetre Metternich’, seemed to indicate that a dictator was necessary in order to bring the working class in line and integrate the masses. Then came the question of who that dictator should be. The problem in the Germany of 1932 was narrowed down to whether or not to accept Hitler. Was this ill-educated and unpredictable man a Parsifal or a Siegfried, or was he a dangerous, rabble-rousing Jacobin? That so many distinguished minds were thus boxed into the corner was testament to the dangerous absurdity of a totalitarian project that most were to live to regret. But, alas, by then it was too late.
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CHAPTER 2
THE PEACE TREATIES
T
he peace treaties were hardly signed before they became the object of such vituperative criticism that even the victors began to wonder whether they might perhaps have been a trifle unfair. It soon became clear that they were unlikely to provide the framework for a lasting peace. They gave rise to such recriminations, resentments and misunderstandings that they contributed significantly to the outbreak of a new and more terrible war. The most influential, brilliant, yet biased attack came from J.M. Keynes (who had been in Paris as an economic adviser to the British delegation) in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace. It provided vicious portraits of the principal statesmen. The French Prime Minister, Clemenceau, obliged Keynes to ‘take a different view as to the nature of civilised man, or indulge, at least, in a different hope’. He saw President Wilson as a foolish, misguided and essentially hypocritical Presbyterian minister. In a separate essay he described Lloyd George as ‘this siren, this goat-footed bard, this half-human visitor to our age from the hag-ridden, magic and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity’. According to Keynes, the result of these three extraordinary men being closeted together for six months was a series of treaties that overlooked the really important issues of economic recovery, food, fuel and finance and concentrated on the political and territorial settlement. He also argued that the intolerable burden placed on the defeated Germans, as punishment for their misdeeds, would further exacerbate the situation. The Germans claimed to have been swindled into agreeing to an armistice. They insisted that they had taken Wilson’s Fourteen Points at face value, and believed that they would be treated mildly by the Entente. The German government expected a harsh peace and had absolutely no illusions about Wilson. Keynes was far less realistic. He believed that the idealistic and high-minded Wilson had been forced by the wicked Clemenceau and the disreputable Lloyd George to agree to a Carthaginian peace. The Germans had imposed the punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on the Russians, and had
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The ‘Big Three’ at Versailles: Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George
done so ostensibly on the basis of the Petrograd Soviet’s formula for peace without reparations and without indemnities, claiming that the treaty was in accordance with the principle of the self-determination of peoples. They thus had first-hand experience of negotiating a vindictive peace while claiming to uphold lofty principles. During the discussions of the armistice proposals there was unanimous conviction at the German High Command that the peace would be excessively harsh. Those who wished to use the crisis to discredit totally the majority parties in the Reichstag, and with them the entire system of parliamentary democracy, actually welcomed a harsh peace. They hoped there would then be a powerful reaction against the Republic which had accepted such humiliation, and that this would unite the nation in its determination to undo the disgrace of November 1918. It is hardly surprising that the peace treaties excited such passions, for they ended four years of unprecedented violence. Millions had died, ideologues had fanned national passions to terrible levels of mindless spite, and whole societies had become directly or indirectly involved. This had been a total war that had brought with it profound and disquieting changes. The three major Entente powers were parliamentary democracies, whose inflamed electorates were in no mood for mercy, and who demanded of their leaders that the wicked should be struck down. The British general election in December
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1918 was punctuated by bellowings that the Kaiser should be hanged, that Germany should pay up, and that the lemon should be squeezed until the pips squeaked. President Poincaré and Marshal Foch could count on the support of the Chamber of Deputies when attacking Clemenceau for what they felt to be his excessive leniency towards the Germans. Woodrow Wilson claimed to be unaffected by the opinions of Congress, but the mid-term elections resulted in his party losing control of Congress and ultimately to the rejection of the treaties by the Senate. There had been much talk of a ‘democratic peace’ and of ‘open covenants openly arrived at’, which would make the Paris Conference so different from the aristocratic and repressive Congress of Vienna. Few realised the harmful effects of uninformed and aggressive public opinion that had been aroused by years of war propaganda and whipped up by the popular press. Here the worst offender was Lord Northcliffe, his mind totally unhinged as a result of tertiary syphilis, who used The Times and the dreadful Daily Mail to attack Lloyd George. Wilson’s Fourteen Points, described by Clemenceau as ‘the 14 commandments of the most empty theory’, were vague, impractical and largely unacceptable to his allies; but at least they were seen merely as an outline of his lofty ‘new order of things’, to be guaranteed by the Covenant of the League of Nations, rather than as an agenda for the conference. The president’s vision of a world free from imperialism, restrictive trade practices and the domination and exploitation of ethnic minorities was regarded as a hopeless pipe dream by most European statesmen. They liked to think of themselves as hard-baked practitioners of realpolitik while others, in fits of uncharacteristic moral indignation, denounced the Fourteen Points as a hypocritical cover-up for the mistreatment of American blacks, and as an attempt to render national economies defenceless against the domination of US capital. But most important of all the Fourteen Points, inasmuch as they were intelligible, were completely at odds with the prevailing political climate at the end of the war. Treaties had already been signed that were in clear violation of both the spirit and the letter of the Fourteen Points. The Italians had demanded a high price for entering the war, and in the Treaty of London had secured the promise of South Tyrol, the Dalmatian coast and Albania. The Japanese had gained British and French support for their extensive claims in China. The Sykes-Picot Agreement gave Syria to France, and Palestine, with 560,000 Arabs and 140,000 Jews, was to be an international zone. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, which accepted the Zionist demand for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, was designed in part to bring Palestine into the British sphere of influence. Britain and France had made agreements with Romania and Greece, similar to those with Italy, that were also virtually impossible to reconcile with the Fourteen Points. The
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French government was also determined to gain a secure frontier on the Rhine, either by annexation or by the creation of a buffer state, and was not going to be deterred by the Fourteen Points from achieving this aim. The twenty-eighth president of the United States, like so many of his compatriots past, present and no doubt future, suffered from the strange delusion that his country’s values were universal, its system of government a model for all others. He had an absolute and unshakeable belief that he was never wrong and from this it followed that anyone who disagreed with him was not only totally misguided, but also morally depraved. Clemenceau detested the president’s smug self-righteousness. A British diplomat chose a less sublime analogy. Wilson, with his head full of half-baked ideas fervently held, reminded him of an eager debutante attending her first ball. Few bothered to take his ideas seriously. Those who did were soon flummoxed. What on earth did ‘open covenants openly arrived at’ really mean? What was meant by his notion of ‘peoples’? Did it mean a race, a linguistic group, a community or a geographical area? Were Serbs and Croats one people because of a similar language, or different because of separate religions and alphabets? Were Macedonians Greeks because of their history, or Slavs because of their language? What should be done in areas in which there were several minorities? The 300,000 inhabitants of the disputed Dobrudja, for example, comprised Tartars, Turks, Bulgarian-speaking Moslems, Christian Bulgarians and Romanians. The treaties left 30 million people in states in which they were an ethnic minority. What sort of an institution was the League of Nations supposed to be? Was it to be a clergyman upholding the highest possible moral standards, or a policeman who would come down hard on the transgressors? When it came to practical politics Wilson had no compunction in contradicting his own exalted ideals. He had no sympathy whatsoever for Irish aspirations for nationhood and detested the Germans. He told a British official that the United States and Britain were ‘neither cousins nor brothers’, and felt that AngloSaxon solidarity was pure myth. At least on this latter point the president was remarkably perceptive. Clemenceau saw Lloyd George as the polar opposite to the idealist Wilson. He respected his energy, toughness and political nous, adding tartly that the prime minister was definitely not a gentleman. Lloyd George was in fact as woefully ignorant of Europe as was Wilson. He might be forgiven for his flippant remark on Teschen: ‘I do not mind saying that I have never heard of it’, but it came as a shock to many that he had never heard of Slovakia and thought that the Ukrainian city of Kharkov was a Russian general. At least Clemenceau preferred Lloyd George to Poincaré, of whom he said that there are two utterly useless things in the world, one is the appendix, the other
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Poincaré. When Tardieu asked him why he always gave in to Lloyd George he replied: ‘What do you expect when I’m between two men, one of whom thinks he is Napoleon and the other thinks he is Jesus Christ?’ Clemenceau, even more than Lloyd George, was all too aware of the difficulties they faced, and was given to repeating that it is easier to make war than to make peace. The Bolshevik revolution presented a further complication by raising the twin problem of security against Germany in the East and the containment of revolutionary communism. Lloyd George claimed that the ‘inept, profligate and tyrannical’ old order was responsible for the Bolshevik revolution. It deserved what it got since ‘it had been guilty of exactions and oppressions which were accountable for the ferocity displayed by the revolutionaries.’ Lord Curzon, the last in an unbroken series of aristocrats as foreign secretary since 1827, rather shockingly announced that he was ‘a bit of a Bolshevist’, and expressed his admiration for Trotsky. Wilson was in broad agreement with Lloyd George, and offered the unhelpful analysis that if the causes of Bolshevism were removed it would be deprived of oxygen. Wilson and Lloyd George imagined that it would be possible to invite all the warring factions in Russia to Paris to talk things over. Clemenceau was mainly concerned with recovering French investments in Russia and wanted to take a tough stand. For Lloyd George this simply meant that he was being asked to pull French chestnuts out of the fire. France was determined to build up a strong Poland, which would include large tracts of German territory, so as to guarantee the enmity of the two states. A revived Poland would also separate Germany from Russia, thus making cooperation between these two pariah states exceedingly difficult. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the French had recognised the Czechoslovak National Council as the legitimate government of a future Czechoslovak state, but it was several months before the British and Americans recognised the right of this new state to an independent existence. The Allies also accepted the demands of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to form a unified state with a constitutional monarchy, but this in turn was the cause of endless difficulties with the Italians, who insisted on their claim to the Dalmatian coast. Probably the main reason for the widespread disillusionment with the peace treaties was that President Wilson’s idealistic pronouncements had been a real inspiration to a war-weary Europe. Phrases such as ‘it must be a peace without victory’ and ‘the world must be made safe for democracy’ made it seem, at least for a moment, that this frightful war had some meaning. His attacks on secret diplomacy, the suppression of ethnic minorities and on autocracy were widely applauded. It was devoutly hoped that the League of Nations would guarantee a lasting peace, made possible by the removal of the major
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causes of wars. To underline his commitment to these ideals, Wilson was the first president ever to leave the United States while in office and, to the amazement and disgust of not a few of his countrymen, he stayed in Paris for six months. Unfortunately, very few people studied Wilson’s speeches, or even thought carefully about the implications of the Fourteen Points, and thus completely overlooked his repeated assertions that Germany had to be severely punished, and that the League of Nations would be designed as much to restrain Germany and secure the Entente as it was to provide impartial arbitration and justice. This conflict within Wilson’s mind between his lofty idealism and his deep-seated loathing of Germany was ignored by even such shrewd commentators as Keynes, with the result that their subsequent disillusionment was all the more shattering. The conference officially opened on 18 January 1919, but important discussions had already taken place, particularly since the arrival of President Wilson in the middle of the previous month. President Poincaré welcomed the delegates by pointing out that forty-eight years ago, on the same day, the German Empire had been proclaimed after the defeat of France, and that the task before the conference was to ‘repair the evil that it has done and to prevent a recurrence of it’. In fact the first major topic of discussion was not the fate of Germany, but rather what to do with the Bolsheviks. The French were determined that Bolshevism should be crushed, whereas the British and Americans favoured mediation in the Russian civil war. Similar disagreements arose between Britain and France over support for Poland. The French wanted to strengthen Poland, but the British feared that Poland intended to grab as much territory as possible, and present the conference with a fait accompli. Wilson, who felt that the Poles were merely concerned with protecting themselves against the Bolsheviks, turned a blind eye to the pressing problem of minorities in an irredentist Poland, and did not intervene in the argument. The frontiers of the Eastern European states were to be settled by allowing each country to present its case for adjudication by a committee of experts who were to make the final decisions. Poland presented by far the most difficult problem. While the case was debated in Paris it was in conflict with all its neighbours and was fighting Germans, Lithuanians and Ukrainians. The French and Americans favoured a large and powerful Poland, whereas the British tended to fear that if it were to absorb too many non-Poles the country might well prove to be the source of further conflict. There were also widespread concerns that Polish activities against Germany might nurture the spirit of Prussian militarism, as well as undermine the authority of the Council of the League of Nations. Whereas the United States and France were prepared to accept the Polish proposals for their own frontiers, Lloyd George
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objected vigorously that the inclusion of Danzig and Marienwerder could well lead to another war. Wilson replied that the Fourteen Points had guaranteed Poland access to the sea, and that in areas of mixed population it was impossible not to disappoint those who found themselves in a minority. The British also felt that the Poles’ loudly proclaimed anti-Bolshevism was simply an excuse to annexe territory in Eastern Galicia. Lloyd George was opposed to Polish expansion eastwards, since it still seemed probable that the Whites would win the civil war in Russia. He did not want Poland to be given Upper Silesia, on the grounds that this would seriously weaken the German economy, and make it impossible for them to pay the indemnities. He argued that, with its 2 million Germans, the new Poland would become another AlsaceLorraine and lead to another war. The prime minister’s deep suspicions of the Poles were reinforced by the British representative in Warsaw, who reported that they were intent on establishing ‘a regime of wicked landlords who spend most of their time in riotous living, and establish there a chauvinist government whose object was to acquire territories inhabited by non-Polish populations’. The British also had a dim view of the Polish leaders. Pilsudski, apart from having been a socialist and a terrorist, had fought on the wrong side during the war. Dmowski, by contrast, was considered far too right wing. He proudly proclaimed ‘My religion comes from Jesus Christ, who was murdered by Jews’ and denounced Lloyd George as an ‘agent of the Jews’. This did not sit well with the British, whose brand of anti-Semitism was less brash and outspoken, amounting to an unwritten and unspoken code. The British and Americans agreed that Eastern Galicia should come under the control of the League, but the French argued that it should become an integral part of the new Polish state. Clemenceau reluctantly agreed to a British proposal that Danzig should be a free city under the auspices of the League, and that there should be a plebiscite in Marienwerder (Kwidzyn), which, with its magnificent fourteenth-century brick fortress built by the Teutonic Knights, was especially dear to the Germans. The Galician question was not settled until 1923 when the Poles forcibly annexed the area. The British government still refused to accept French and US arguments that the Poles had a right to the province, and were only prepared to go as far as to concede a twenty-fiveyear mandate. The Treaty of Riga in March 1921, which brought the war between Poland and the Soviet Union to an end, resulted in Poland absorbing an extra 4 million Ukrainians, 2 million Jews and 1 million Byelorussians. A further area of dispute in Poland was the Duchy of Teschen, which was divided by mutual agreement between the Czechs and the Poles. While the Poles were busy fighting the Russians, the Czechs seized the opportunity to drive them out of their portion. They were then awarded East Teschen, which
36 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
included the railway and some valuable coal deposits. The Council then suggested that there should be plebiscites in the Duchy, but they were never held. The Teschen question was to provide Poland with a lasting grievance against Czechoslovakia, which greatly increased the difficulties of building an effective defensive alliance in Central Europe against Germany’s revisionist ambitions. The Czechs appealed directly to the Entente, rather than attempting to forge their own destiny as the Poles did. Their claim to the Sudetenland, where the population was predominantly German, was based largely on economic rather than strategic arguments, although they did point out that the area was necessary for an effective defence against Germany. The Czechs got their way with little difficulty, largely because the statesmen in Paris were impressed by Benes and his colleagues, whom they found pleasantly reasonable and conciliatory in comparison with the Polish delegation. It was felt that the 3 million Sudeten Germans would be pleased that they had nothing further to do with their debt-ridden and truncated Austrian fatherland. No concern was shown for the Polish minority in Teschen, the 700,000 Hungarians in Slovakia or the 550,000 Catholic Ukrainians in the Carpatho-Ukraine. Wilson was particularly concerned about the question of the future of the German colonies. As a professed anti-imperialist he felt that they should be administered as mandates of the League of Nations. Lloyd George supported the Dominions’ claims to their outright annexation, and told the president that he would not sign the treaty if the principle of League mandates was adopted. Wilson was equally adamant and announced that he would not be privy to the division of the world among the great powers. Lloyd George found a compromise solution to this serious breach between the British and the Americans, by proposing that there should be three different forms of mandates and that the German colonies adjacent to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand should be given as mandated territories to these states. This was acceptable to Wilson, since it upheld the mandate system, and to the dominions because they were easily persuaded that there was no real difference between a mandate and outright annexation. There was also considerable dispute about the proposals for a League of Nations. There was understandable resistance to the idea that the Council of the League should consist only of the great powers. Opinions were divided as to how member states should be selected. The problem of mandates also provoked further disagreements between Wilson and his more predatory partners, who were after the spoils of the German colonial empire. But the most important question of all was how the League was to enforce its sanctions. The French insisted that there should be an international force for this
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purpose, but Wilson argued that the United States’ constitution gave Congress the right to declare war and to make peace, and this right could not be alienated. The president sympathised with France’s need to have guarantees against Germany, but felt that this could best be achieved by effective disarmament agreements, and by conventional defence treaties. The proposal that a clause on racial equality should be added to the Charter of the League of Nations, as suggested by the otherwise silent and inscrutable Japanese delegation, was conveniently postponed at Wilson’s insistence. He did not want the League scrutinising the United States’ appalling treatment of its ethnic minorities. The French agreed with the president. They had received a nasty shock when Nguyen Ai Quoc (better known as Ho Chi Minh) arrived in Paris from Moscow, and made an impassioned plea for an amnesty for all political prisoners in Indo-China, equality before the law, freedom of expression and the ‘replacement of rule by decree by rule by law’. The League also sponsored the International Labour Organisation, initially under the effective leadership of Samuel Gompers, the feisty head of the American Federation of Labor. It stayed out of the headlines, worked effectively, included a German delegation and still survives. There was general agreement that Germany should be excluded from the League for the foreseeable future, and a draft covenant was accepted, largely because all controversial issues were excluded. From the outset of the conference it was obvious that one of the most difficult questions to resolve would be that of the future of the Rhine provinces. Marshal Foch suggested in December 1918 that the Rhineland should be separated from Germany and garrisoned with French troops. This proposal was repeated at the conference but there were no takers. The British sympathised with France’s need for security, but feared that too punitive a peace would fuel Germany’s desire for revenge. They argued that a potential threat from Germany could be met by other and less disruptive means. Although Wilson’s amenuensis, Colonel House, had some sympathy with the French point of view, the president insisted that the people of the Rhineland would have to be consulted and that any solution would have to be based on the free exercise of the people’s right to self-determination. The French rejected the Anglo-American proposal that the left bank of the Rhine should be demilitarised. Even the suggestion that the Rhine bridges should be held by allied troops, that the German army should be drastically reduced, and that there should be an Anglo-American guarantee to assist France if it was attacked by Germany, was not enough to make the French change their minds. Clemenceau thought that the British and Americans, with their obsession with disarmament and their distance from France, were in no position to offer immediate and effective help; but faced with the united opposition of the other two great
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powers he eventually backed down. It was finally agreed that allied troops should occupy the Rhineland for fifteen years. There could be a phased withdrawal, provided that the Germans behaved themselves and observed the provisions of the treaty. Lloyd George felt that that even this was going too far. He did not want France to become too powerful, or Germany to be excessively humiliated, but Clemenceau, faced with the united opposition of Poincaré, the military and the Chamber of Deputies, could not afford to moderate his demands. Lloyd George therefore gave way, and in April the Council of Four agreed to the demilitarisation of the Rhineland and to a fifteenyear allied occupation, which could be extended if the Germans disregarded the provisions of the treaty. Marshal Foch’s sour comment on the Rhineland settlement was widely applauded in France: ‘William II lost the war, Clemenceau the peace.’ There was general agreement that Germany should be disarmed, but there were considerable differences about how this could best be achieved. A Military Commission was formed to discuss this problem. It suggested that the General Staff should be abolished, that a military air force, submarines, tanks and poison gas should be forbidden. The import and export of war materials should also be banned. The navy was to consist of only 15,000 officers and men, six battleships, six light cruisers, twelve destroyers and twelve motor torpedo boats. The question of what to do with the existing German navy led to a serious rift between Britain and the United States, and marks the beginning of a serious naval rivalry between the two countries. Initially the French preferred a volunteer army on the grounds than an armée de métier would be a breeding ground for Prussian militarism. Eventually they accepted the British argument that a conscript army would make it more difficult for the Germans to build up a reserve army of men who had served short terms in the armed forces. It was finally agreed that the army should be restricted to 100,000 men, who would be obliged to sign on for twelve years. The British government supported Belgium’s claims to Prussian Moresnet, Malmédy and Eupen, Dutch Limburg and Luxemburg, along with the internationalisation of the Scheldt. This was partly out of genuine sympathy for ‘gallant little Belgium’, which had suffered so much under German occupation, but also out of fear that a slighted Belgium would fall into the French orbit. The French resisted these claims, demanding a plebiscite in Luxemburg, knowing full well that it would go against the Belgians. The British had absolutely no sympathy for the Dutch, who had refused to surrender the Kaiser for trial for war crimes and who, as a cravenly neutral country, had made a handsome profit from Germany during the war. The conference encouraged
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the Netherlands and Belgium to sit down together and talk things over, but it came to nothing. The French refused to change their position and the Luxemburg question had to be dropped when a referendum in September 1919 showed an overwhelming majority for preserving the status quo. Woodrow Wilson sensibly remained aloof from these Anglo-French wrangles. British sympathy for Belgium was strictly limited and did not extend to a willingness to guarantee its independence. In 1920 a Franco-Belgian alliance was signed with little enthusiasm on either side. Italian demands for all the territory promised in the Treaty of London of 26 April 1915 were clearly contrary to the Fourteen Points, and were bound to lead to serious difficulties between the allies. The Italian foreign minister, Sonnino, provoked a cabinet crisis at home by insisting that Italy should claim Fiume and Istria in addition to the Dalmatian coast, and prompted a British diplomat in Paris to make the sniffy remark that the statesmen in Paris ‘all say that the signal for an armistice was the signal for Italy to begin to fight’. Some of Sonnino’s colleagues suggested that the claim to the Dalmatian coast should be dropped, and Fiume taken as compensation. Italian troops occupied Fiume (Reject) and most of Albania, including the port of Valona (Vlorë), the government refusing to consider any compromise. Although the British Foreign Secretary, Balfour, told Woodrow Wilson that ‘a treaty is a treaty’, most British officials had little sympathy for the Italians. They felt that their demands were excessive and they derided their contribution to the war effort. Clemenceau was in full agreement and snorted: ‘I am not going to give any cheese to the boys who ran away at Caporetto.’ Lloyd George somewhat disingenuously told the Italian prime minister, Orlando, that the British government, although prepared to stand by the Treaty of London, could not support the Italian claim to Fiume, which was not included in that treaty. The British, French and Americans agreed that Fiume should go to the new state of Yugoslavia, the British delegation being strongly in favour of a state for the South Slavs. In January 1919 the Royal Navy stopped the Italians from sending troops to restore King Nikita to the throne of Montenegro, the officer in command remarking that Montenegrins: ‘should be permitted to retain their inalienable right to murder each other, as and when they considered it necessary, provided that no inconvenience to the Allies is caused thereby’. In order to postpone any unpleasantness over Italian claims to Fiume, Balfour suggested that all questions pertinent to Germany should be discussed first. Faced with united opposition, Sonnino eventually gave way to this suggestion, but he did so with such ill grace that he was looked upon as a troublemaker rather than a victorious ally. When the question of Fiume was finally discussed in April the Italians refused to even consider any compromise
40 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
solutions, including the suggestion that Fiume could, like Danzig, be internationalised and administered by the League. Orlando, spurred on by mounting nationalist sentiment at home, left the conference in protest, only to return when Britain and France threatened to renounce the Treaty of London. Fresh rounds of discussions continued, but the Italians still refused to settle, prompting the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Charles Hardinge, to remark: ‘As much as I sympathise with Italy in every way, they are in my opinion, the most odious colleagues and Allies to have at a Conference . . . and “the beggars of Europe” are well known for their whining alternated by truculence!’ In September the Italian poet, playboy and proto-fascist Gabriele d’Annunzio seized Fiume with a handful of freebooters and cocked a snook at President Wilson whom he called ‘a Croatified Quaker’. Virtually bereft of US support, the Yugoslavs were obliged by France and Britain to negotiate with the Italians over free-city status for the port. The Italians, increasingly embarrassed by d’Annunzio’s antics, were now willing to talk. The Istrian peninsular was partitioned in 1920, and Fiume made a free city. Shortly afterwards the Italian army evicted d’Annunzio. This settlement did not last for long. In 1923 Mussolini sent in the troops and annexed the town. He thus took revenge on d’Annunzio, of whom he said that he was like a rotten tooth that should either be pulled out or filled with gold. The Duce preferred the latter course to silence a man who had stolen his thunder in 1919. Although there was complete agreement among the allies that Germany was responsible for the outbreak of the war, that complete restitution should be made and that German militarism was an absolute evil which had a to be eradicated, they failed to reach any agreement on how Germany should be treated. Woodrow Wilson hoped that it would at least be possible to apply the Fourteen Points to Germany, even if they had been ignored and contravened elsewhere. The French, deeply concerned about their future security against Germany, wanted massive reparations, and deliberately ignored Wilson’s assurance in a major speech in February 1918 that there would be ‘no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damages’. The British felt that French demands were dangerously excessive, but they too wanted their pound of flesh, including the German colonies, control over the Middle East, the lion’s share of the high seas fleet and substantial reparations. They were thus unable to play a convincing role as mediators between what to them appeared to be Wilson’s impractical idealism and France’s unbridled greed. The French felt that the British were being typically duplicitous, the Americans that they were short-sightedly selfish, and woefully lacking in the spirit of the new post-imperial age.
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The Imperial War Cabinet’s Committee on Indemnity reported that the total cost of the war to Britain was the astronomical sum of £24,000 million, and that Germany should foot the bill. The French wanted compensation for the terrible losses they had suffered, but also wanted to use reparations as a means to keep the Germans down for years to come. From the outset reparations for them were as much a guarantee of national security as they were compensation for past losses and wrongs. Wilson accepted the idea that there should be some compensation for damage done to civilians and their property and even contributions towards disablement allowances and war widows’ pensions, but he was horrified at the magnitude of the sums proposed by his principal allies. France and Britain thus found themselves lined up against the Americans over the question of reparations, but they also quarrelled vehemently between themselves about their relative shares of the amount Germany could be expected to pay. There was also bitter resentment over the size of the debt owing to the United States, a country that was scathingly described as the only belligerent country to have made a profit out of the war. It was suggested that if the Americans were prepared to cancel that debt it might be possible to be more magnanimous towards Germany and to live up to Wilson’s lofty principles. Obviously the president would never have been able to get Congressional approval for such a moratorium. These differences of approach and opinion were reflected in the Reparations Committee. The French thought that the Germans should be made to pay $200 billion, the British put the sum at $120 billion (the full £24,000 million), whereas the Americans thought that $22 billion was the absolute maximum that could be expected. There were equally conflicting views as to how much Germany would actually be able to pay and how these reparations payments should be divided up between France, Britain and the lesser allies. Lloyd George was convinced that it was absurd to make demands on Germany that were more than it could pay, and he feared that excessive reparations would be harmful to British trading interests in Germany. Lord Northcliffe’s Daily Mail and a number of Unionist MPs continued to stir up public opinion in favour of punitive reparations, thus placing the prime minister in an exceedingly awkward position. Eventually he trounced the hardliners in the House of Commons, and the victory of some moderates in the byelections convinced him that he could afford to take a more moderate and reasonable stand in Paris. However, when Keynes’ ‘heavenly twins’, a former governor of the Bank of England Lord Cunliffe and a judge, Lord Sumner, insisted that the British could not go below a figure of $47 billion, when the French had already dropped their demands to $40 billion, the prime minister
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was in full agreement. The British, to Keynes’ utter disgust, were now outdoing the French in their rapacity. The French minister of finance, Louis-Lucien Klotz, whose pat answer to all questions was ‘Germany will pay’ and of whom Lloyd George said he was the only Jew he had ever met who knew nothing about finance, while Keynes maliciously commented that he always appeared with ‘his shoulders a little bent in an instinctive deprecation’, suggested on 28 March that the total sum of reparations should be assessed after the Peace Conference by a specially convened Reparations Commission. Anxious that this tiresome problem should be tabled, there was general agreement to this proposal, but it still left open the question whether that total should represent the amount Germany owed in respect of the damage it had inflicted or whether it was merely an assessment of its ability to pay. The Americans felt that Germany should be forced to pay whatever it could over thirty years, but the French insisted that they should pay everything they owed, regardless of how long it took. Lloyd George supported the US position, but was determined that Britain should get a large chunk of the spoils. He still had to look over his shoulder at the Northcliffe press and other critics at home who kept up a chorus of denunciation of his excessive charity towards the Huns. Wilson threatened to leave the conference if the French did not moderate their stance, and demonstrably ordered the George Washington to get ready to sail from Brest. The French then agreed that reparations should be based on Germany’s ability to pay, but this simply opened up a fresh round of arguments about sums and payment schedules. The postponement of the final figure for reparations was an uneasy compromise. It was too soft for the hardliners and too harsh for the moderates. It led to years of wrangling on the Reparations Commission, thus undermining allied unity and fuelling Germany’s nationalist resentments. Obviously no reparations or compensation could be expected from the Germans unless they were shown to be guilty. There was absolutely no doubt among the statesmen in Paris that this was indeed the case and it was also generally agreed that leading Germans should be tried and punished for their crimes. It was not clear, however, how these war criminals should best be brought to trial and a special commission was established to examine this problem. There were those, Lloyd George among them, who felt that the Kaiser should be brought to trial and pay the penalty for the ‘biggest crime in history’, but Woodrow Wilson suggested that this would only serve to make a martyr of him. The commission reported that German guilt was based on the flagrant violation of the 1839 treaty, which guaranteed the neutrality of Belgium, and by individual acts such as forcing young girls into prostitution and using
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submarines to sink merchant ships. The debate about whether or not the Kaiser should be brought to trial continued, and when Wilson eventually came round to accept the arguments for a trial he questioned whether there would be enough evidence to secure a conviction. Lloyd George had little patience with this argument, and said that the important thing was to send him to ‘the Falkland Islands or the Island of Hell’. Then there was the question of whether the verdict should be based on a unanimous decision or by majority vote. Lloyd George did not trust the Japanese sufficiently to support the idea of a unanimous vote. For all these differences there was complete agreement that the Kaiser should be brought to trial, and the treaty stated that: ‘The Allied and Associated Powers publicly arraign William II of Hohenzollern, formerly German Emperor, for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.’ The treaty also contained three mentions of German guilt: in the preamble and in the section on reparations and sanctions. Article 231, drafted in part by John Foster Dulles, who as the principal US representative on the Reparations Committee was at the beginning of a distinguished if controversial career, became known as the ‘war guilt clause’. As none of the putative war criminals was ever brought to trial, the war guilt clause only had importance in that it provided the legal basis for the collection of reparations. For this reason and also because it was a point of national honour, it was seen in Germany as the most offensive and scurrilous section of the entire treaty. Not only was it felt to be grossly duplicitous, it was also denounced as illegal, in that it was a violation of the legal maxim nulla poena sine lege. The accused were deemed to be guilty of crimes that had not existed in international law at the time they were said to have been committed. On behalf of the German government, the insufferably haughty and condescending Brockdorff-Rantzau demanded to see the evidence for German guilt, insisted that the war had been one against Tsarist aggression and tyranny, and called for an impartial tribunal to investigate the origins of the war. The allies had no patience with these arguments. They saw the invasion of Belgium as a crime, and argued that under case law all crimes should be expiated. In Germany the war guilt clause remains a highly emotional issue even to this day. Neither Britain nor the United States had a coherent policy towards the new states in Eastern Europe. Only France fully supported them and was determined that they should be economically viable and strategically defensible. There were suspicions, voiced most loudly by the Italians, that the French were attempting to recreate the Habsburg Empire with its capital in Paris rather than in Vienna. The Americans were in a quandary about how to reconcile the principle of self-determination of peoples with the need for
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economic and strategic viability. The British were concerned about the inclusion of substantial ethnic minorities in the new states, but tended to side with the French, hoping to act as mediators, win influence in Eastern Europe and promote their trade interests. They felt that this could best be achieved within the Danubian Federation, a kind of Habsburg Empire without the Habsburgs, but this scheme was completely at odds with the determination of the new states to preserve and strengthen their newly won independence and sense of national identity. A further difficulty was that the Great Powers had virtually no troops in the area. The British withdrew their forces for service in the Middle East, and the French maintained a very modest presence. The successor states promptly set about grabbing as much territory as they could, and these incessant border incidents prompted the conference to issue a series of dire warnings, all of which were studiously ignored. Romania had been promised a large chunk of Transylvania, the Banat and the Bukovina under the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest with the Entente in August 1916. The allies now argued that since the Romanians had made an extremely hesitant and modest contribution to the war effort, these terms were too generous, adding that Serbia’s claims to the West Banat were fully justified. The Romanians advanced well beyond the line approved in the treaty, and precipitated a crisis that helped bring Béla Kun and the Communists to power in Hungary. With the Communists in command in Hungary the question of the Romanian-Hungarian border became entwined with the question of halting the spread of Bolshevism. Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson considered expelling the Romanians from the conference for violating the Treaty of Bucharest, but instead a blockade was imposed on Communist Hungary. There were influential supporters of the Romanians’ claims in the British Foreign Office, the French Chamber of Deputies and among staunch anti-Bolsheviks such as Poincaré. It was debated whether to send a joint allied force to Budapest to overthrow the Bela Kun regime, but nothing came of it. Eventually the detestation of Communism overweighed hostile feelings towards Romania, and the conference granted the Romanians carte blanche to oust the Hungarian Communists. This they did with considerable enthusiasm, but then the problem was how to stop the Romanians from pillaging the country and get them out of Hungary. The Romanian prime minister, Bratianu, insisted that Romanian troops would only leave Hungary if the powers agreed to the 1916 frontiers. Only after repeated allied threats, including that of breaking off diplomatic relations, did the Romanians agree to retreat behind the river Theiss, which still left a large chunk of eastern Hungary, including Debrecen, under their control.
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On 25 November Sir George Clark, on behalf of the Supreme Council, recognised the new Hungarian coalition government. The Hungarians bombarded the statesmen in Paris with a series of notes pleading for a reduction in reparations, and for a less draconian territorial settlement. Count Apponyi, a lofty and impeccably mannered aristocrat with an antediluvian view of the world, insisted that the terms imposed on Hungary were far more stringent than those for any other defeated country, and that having lost two-thirds of its population Hungary was in no condition to meet the allied demands. The British and Italian governments gave the Hungarians a sympathetic hearing, but they were not prepared to do much about it. The French were eager to get the Peace Conference over and done with and the final Treaty of Trianon, signed on 4 June 1920, made a few minor concessions over reparations, but was otherwise virtually identical with the original conditions. The Austrians, having lost an empire, felt that their only hope of survival was to associate with Germany. The British and Americans were sympathetic to this idea because they felt that this would water down the Prussian element in Germany, which was seen as the source of all evil. Furthermore, since the Danubian Federation was obviously a non-starter, it was felt that a federation of German states might be a workable alternative. France and Italy were utterly opposed to this idea, as were the successor states. They wanted the permanent separation of the two countries written into the treaties, the allies undertaking to stop by force any move towards an Anschluss. In the end, the Treaty of Saint Germain did contain a reference to the possibility of revising this article, but it was generally assumed that once the Austrian economy was on a firm footing enthusiasm for union with Germany would wane. The Treaty of Versailles expressly forbade the Anschluss. There were further revisions to the territorial settlement when Klagenfurt was returned to Austria after a plebiscite, having been seized by the Yugoslav army. The Burgenland was also given to Austria, largely to weaken a Hungary still controlled by Bela Kun’s Communists. Reparations were demanded of Austria and there was also a war guilt clause. The allied assertion that it had only been the German-speaking citizens of the Habsburg Empire who had supported the war was particularly resented, and the Austrians predictably denounced the reparations as wildly excessive and unrealistic. Only very minor concessions were made in the Treaty of Saint Germain, signed on 10 September 1919, and it was not until 1921, when Austria was virtually bankrupt, that it was agreed that the reparations bill was greatly in excess of its ability to pay. Of all the Eastern European states, Bulgaria was the most detested by the allies. They felt that Bulgaria was the Prussia of the Balkans, as the Greek
46 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
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47
Prime Minister Venizelos claimed, and that it had consistently acted from the very basest of motives. Having grabbed territory in the Second Balkan War of 1913, the Bulgarians had joined the Central Powers in the hopes of picking up some more spoils, and had conducted the war in a brutal and cowardly manner. This abhorrence for Bulgaria was further intensified by a desire to have the best possible relations with Bulgaria’s traditional enemies, Greece and the new state of Yugoslavia. Once again the Italians were an exception. Determined to frustrate the Yugoslavs and the Greeks, they began to intrigue with the Bulgarians. The Americans, with their intermittent obsession with the self-determination of peoples, were also inclined to be more lenient towards the Bulgarians than either the British or the French. In discussing whether Western Thrace, most of which had been seized by the Bulgarians from the Turks in 1913, should go to Greece, the British and the French found themselves lined up against the Italians and the Americans. The Italians put forward largely specious ethnic and economic arguments in favour of Western Thrace remaining part of Bulgaria. The Americans claimed that the loss of this territory would cause such resentment that it would prompt the Bulgarians to go to war once more. The British and the French insisted that Bulgaria should be punished, and that Venizelos could not be expected to return to Athens empty handed. They challenged Italy’s arguments by pointing out that Bulgaria would still have access to the Black Sea, and thus to the Aegean, since the Straits were to be internationalised. The Greeks were also the largest minority group in the region. In the end it was agreed that Western Thrace should be occupied by the allies, who then handed it over to the Greeks in 1920, much to the fury of the Bulgarians. US requests that the principle of self-determination be applied to Macedonia were quashed, for it would have led to an even greater state of chaos, so that Yugoslavia and Greece retained possession of the territory they had won in 1913. Far more difficult was the problem of the Southern Dobrudja, which the Romanians had taken from Bulgaria in 1913. The Romanians were a minuscule minority, and the Americans insisted that the territory should be returned to Bulgaria. The British and the French stuck to the principle that an ally should not be obliged to give up territory to a foe, even though this might not seem quite equitable, or contribute to a lasting peace. This difficult question was shelved, and the Southern Dobrudja was not even mentioned in the Treaty of Neuilly of 27 November 1919. The Treaty of Neuilly left the Bulgarians bitter and resentful and a source of potential instability in the Balkans; but their rivals had been greatly strengthened. Romania emerged from the war with double the area and population. Serbia was transformed into Yugoslavia, which was three times the size. Greece
48 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
had increased by 50 per cent. Bulgaria’s economy was in ruins, and unable to meet the reparations payments demanded of it. With a ban on conscription, Bulgaria had virtually no army to redress its grievances. The future of the Baltic states was another issue that exacerbated AngloFrench rivalry. Given France’s predominant position in Poland, the British were determined to establish a counterweight in the Baltic states. The immediate problem was that they were forced to rely on German troops to keep the Bolsheviks out of the area. These did not prove very effective and the Bolsheviks seized part of Estonia and occupied Latvia. A counter-offensive by anti-Bolshevik forces, in which General Count Rüdiger von der Goltz’s German Brigade played an important role, succeeded in forcing back the Bolsheviks, but this did not solve the problem of the future of the states. The Whites, who were observers in Paris, insisted that the Baltic states should remain an integral part of a Russia freed from Bolshevism. The Poles helped to drive the Bolsheviks out of Lithuania, but then refused to leave Vilna. Von der Goltz overthrew the government of Latvia. A Baltic commission was formed to deal with these problems, and called for the withdrawal of the Germans and Poles, and the formation of local armies under the supervision of the British Military Mission. The issue of future relations with Russia was settled when Yudenich’s White Russian Baltic Army was crushed by the Red Army in the autumn of 1919. German and Polish forces withdrew and early in 1920 the Soviets reluctantly recognised the independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Although there were a few enthusiastic advocates of a League of Nations in Britain, it was regarded with suspicion in Whitehall, where the balance of power and the strength of the navy were seen as more reliable guarantees of peace and stability. President Wilson’s starry-eyed belief in a post-war world guaranteed by a League of Nations was shared by some influential figures, among them Lord Robert Cecil, the under-secretary of state for foreign affairs with the remit to help draft the League Covenant, and the South African General Smuts whose reputation as a political oracle was as yet untarnished. Public opinion endorsed the scheme, and Lloyd George began to think that support for the League was a modest price to pay for the friendship of the United States, and for calming his radical critics at home. The French felt that the purpose of the League was to guarantee the peace treaties, save the world from aggression and enforce international justice. The Americans felt that this could best be ensured by general disarmament and by the application of sanctions against offending nations. This did not go nearly far enough for the French, who wanted an international force, a proposal that Lloyd George found intolerable. He did not see why the League should have as its main function the protection of France against renewed German
THE PEACE TREATIES
49
aggression, and doubted that it would ever be able to create an effective international police force. The French supported the plea by the smaller states that they be included in the Council of the League of Nations, for they felt that they would be more likely to resist German revisionist moves, and had a bigger stake in upholding the treaties than had the great Anglo-Saxon powers. But the idea that the League should have real power and should represent the interests of the smaller nations was unacceptable to the British. Many Americans, always concerned about their sovereignty and Congressional rights, also had serious reservations, particularly as it implied interference with the sacrosanct Monroe Doctrine. After much discussion it was agreed that the smaller states should be represented on the Council, but it was left open how they would be selected. There was unanimity on one point: the League was primarily designed to keep down the Germans, and Germany was not to be admitted to the League until a vaguely defined period of post-war reconstruction was over. A French proposal that German war guilt should be written into the Covenant was rejected as being contrary to the spirit of ‘union and concord between peoples’, as the Portuguese representative rather sanctimoniously remarked. Discussions over the League were also embittered by the growing rivalry between Britain and the United States. The British were furious that the US naval building programme aimed to create a fleet that was larger than the Royal Navy. The Americans said they would agree to reduce the size of their navy when the League began to function properly, but as Lloyd George and most of his advisers doubted that this would ever happen, this was hardly consoling. The Americans agreed to a modification of their naval building programme when Lloyd George made veiled threats that he would oppose Wilson’s attempts to uphold the Monroe Doctrine against any attempt by the League to interfere in Pan-American affairs. At last a Covenant was agreed upon, but it was a vapid document that avoided all contentious issues. Even so, it went too far for those, such as Lloyd George, who feared that the inclusion of the smaller states on the Council, combined with the obligation for combined action by members against any state that attacked another, or which threatened aggression, would lead to the smaller states dragging the great powers into wars in which their interests were not at stake. Others, such as the French, felt that these obligations were so vaguely defined as to be virtually valueless. The League of Nations was thus launched with little enthusiasm, and the chances of success did not look bright. Behind all the problems of the peace settlement was an inability to understand that the pre-war certainties had been destroyed. The statesmen in Paris
50 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
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THE PEACE TREATIES
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were not shortsighted or stupid. A civilisation had collapsed around them with such rapidity that they were left stunned and unable to fathom what was happening to them. The age of liberalism had gone and the future was to be inherited by the dictators: single-minded and mean-spirited men whose utter contempt for liberal values was such that the statesmen of a more traditional cast of mind were left totally perplexed. The awkward compromises they had made in the past were now regarded by many as crimes, rather than hallmarks of the diplomatist’s art. The once honourable label of ‘appeaser’ was thus to become a term of opprobrium. Liberal principles were inevitably compromised in the peace settlement, even though most of the men responsible for framing the treaties had impeccable liberal credentials. In order to ensure that nothing so dreadful as the last war would ever happen again, they were determined that liberal democratic principles should apply throughout the world through the offices of the League of Nations. They seem to have believed that liberal principles would be widely accepted. Unfortunately, there were states which felt that these apparently obvious truths were shams and delusions, designed to cover up ruthless exploitation and repression. Even more serious was the contradiction within liberal thinking between a deep-seated revulsion against violence and the need to use force to uphold the law. Peace was the greatest virtue, therefore the use of violence to ensure the rule of law was something that the statesmen of Versailles had difficulty in accepting, Furthermore, for all the talk about the rule of law, each state was jealous to preserve its own sovereignty and to hide its own injustices and violations of the principles, to which it paid lip service, from international scrutiny. Those who were intent on destroying the peace settlement, headed by the dictators, were quick to use such contradictions against those who had designed it, and they did so to devastating effect. They were to score their greatest triumphs over the nationalities question. After all, if the liberal belief in the self-determination of peoples was correct, then the peace settlement was a gross injustice, and many well-meaning people agreed. If there was an injustice, or even the suggestion of a wrong, then it should become the subject of negotiation and settled by compromise rather than violence. It did not matter that the percentage of people in Europe who were obliged to live in an alien land was a mere 4 per cent, nor that most of them were reasonably content until awoken to the horrors of their fate by unscrupulous demagogues. In a small area such as Europe, with so many different languages and cultures, problems of this kind are inevitable. A matter of principle was involved that gave the liberal-minded statesmen a bad conscience, which in turn made them anxious to negotiate, thus undoing the peace settlement and handing over the initiative to those who were implacably opposed to everything it stood for.
THE PEACE TREATIES
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case of Sanjurjo, it was forgotten that in the age of the telephone and the aeroplane they were still a major threat. The revolt began on 17 July in Morocco when the leadership was betrayed and a group of junior officers took action. The Legion had little difficulty in crushing what little resistance they met. The High Commissioner, Alvarez Buylla, was placed under house arrest and executed a few days later. For the forty years of Franco’s dictatorship 18 July was celebrated as the Day of the Movement, for it was on this day that he imposed military law on the Canary Islands, formally congratulated the rebels in Morocco and ‘proclaimed’. He
346 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
then climbed into the ‘Dragon Rapide’, an aeroplane of Olley Airways Co., kindly provided by the English Catholic publisher, Douglas Jarrold, and the British pilot flew him to Casablanca where he arrived on 19 July. Meanwhile in Spain General Queipo de Llano, head of the border guards and recent convert to the Movement, took over control in Seville on 18 July. Military law was proclaimed in a number of major cities in Andalusia, whereas in others forces loyal to the government offered some resistance. By the following day Andalusia, which was to be the bridgehead for the North African Army, was under rebel control. There were ‘pronouncements’ in several cities in Castile and Aragon, but the civil war had not yet begun. When Casares Quiroga heard of the generals’ revolt he broke down and resigned. His successor was a left-wing Radical, Martinez Barrio. He hoped to negotiate with the generals, and like Quiroga refused to arm the workers in defence of the republic. They in turn took no notice of this ban and armed militia units sprang up all over republican Spain. Barrio, unable to resist this mounting pressure from below, resigned and a new government was formed by José Giral, a close friend of Azaña, who had to accept the fact that the working class had taken the defence of the republic into its own hands. In these early days neither side acted with any great degree of decisiveness. Had the workers been armed immediately and loyal troops mobilised the pronunciamiento could well have been nipped in the bud. The rebels also failed to act swiftly and decisively. Most of the senior army officers and the Republican Assault Guards in Madrid were loyal to the republic, and it was they rather than the armed workers who stopped the rebels in the Montaña barracks in Madrid. In Barcelona the commanding general and the Civil Guards were also loyal to the republic, and it was the Civil Guards who intervened decisively against the rebels. General Goded arrived late from North Africa, his hydroplane having broken down, was captured and promptly shot. The anarchists in the CNT claimed they had won a glorious victory, but although the myth persisted, it was the Civil Guards who had saved the city for the republic. General Queipo de Llano in Seville was the exception, single-handedly arresting loyalist officers and terrorising the citizenry into submission. In most places where the Civil Guards and the Assault Guards were loyal to the republic, or to their prospects for a pension, the rebels failed; elsewhere they had little difficulty. Once they were in command of an area there was little that the workers could do. Galicia, which had a large, organised working class, was quickly overrun by the rebels, as were other strongholds of the left such as Saragossa, Oviedo and Valladolid. Strikes against the revolt were futile, for the strikers were promptly shot. In towns such as Valencia and Malaga, where the vast majority of the population was passionately committed
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 347
to the defence of the republic, the rebels had little chance of success. Only in Navarra, particularly in Pamplona, was there widespread popular support for the rebels. This was the stronghold of the Carlist youth organised in the Requetés, prepared to fight alongside General Mola for ‘Christ and the King’ against the republic, even though Mola was an outspoken opponent of Basque nationalism. After a few days of sporadic and confused fighting Spain was clearly divided. The nationalists controlled a broad strip from the Atlantic coast to the French border, although the northern coast was republican. Southern Spain from Barcelona to Malaga was republican, and the area around Madrid formed a large salient pushing into enemy territory. Oviedo, Seville and Cordoba were nationalist strongholds, deep in republican country. These divisions did not necessarily coincide with traditional political alignments. Republicans caught in Galicia, Estremadura or Andalusia kept their mouths shut, conformed or were shot. Monarchists and Falangists in Santander prudently did the same. The working class remained solidly republican, but there were fierce divisions over precisely what they implied. The aristocracy and upper middle class were nationalist in their sympathies. But it was uncertain which way the professionals, civil servants and even the army officers would turn. They had little sympathy for the left and the militant proletarian rigmarole of the Popular Front, but for many the nationalists were also too extreme in the mystical nationalism, their anti-intellectualism and anti-modernism, not to mention their authoritarianism. The peasantry was also divided. The peasants of Castile, Navarre and Galicia were nationalists, and provided the mass of Franco’s army. The Catalan peasants were fervently republican, and in the south-west the peasants enthusiastically murdered their landlords and experimented with communes under the aegis of the FAI, or the socialist FTT; but once the region fell to the nationalists they were lost to the cause. In most of republican Spain the state apparatus collapsed and local revolutionary committees sprang up that were dominated by the anarchists and the Socialists. The local militias owed their allegiance to these juntas. The split between anarchists and Socialists was still bitter, and both distrusted the bourgeois republicans. In many areas there were indiscriminate and brutal murders committed in an orgy of revolutionary mindlessness. Churches were destroyed, priests killed and elaborate acts of public blasphemy staged. All this was grist to the nationalist propaganda mill, and the respectable readers of the world’s press were suitably horrified. For the republicans the problem was to channel this energy and enthusiasm into the effective defence of the government, but there was a great uncertainty about how this was to be done. In the republican camp there was considerable confusion about whether they
348 EUROPE BETWEEN THE WARS
were simply involved in a struggle to defend the democratic republic against the rebels, or whether they were in the midst of a revolution. If the latter, then the juntas, the militia, collectivisation, and even revolutionary violence, had to be accepted as an integral part of the struggle against the counterrevolutionary rebels. If the former, then all revolutionary experiments that were liable to alienate the middle class, loyal army officers and sympathisers abroad would have to be stopped immediately. In Catalonia this confusion was clearly apparent, for there were two ‘parallel governments’: the Generalidad presided over by the left republican nationalist Louis Companys, and the Anti-Fascist Militia Committee dominated by the CNT. In those parts of Spain such as Catalonia and Asturias that were dominated by the anarchists there was widespread collectivisation of the land, industry and even the retail trade. Much fervour went into this transformation of society, but it would seem that it had a deleterious effect on industrial production and horrified the middle class, whose support was badly needed. At the same time the anarchists refused to seize state power and dreamed of a new state, based on a loose federation of co-operatives. The Communists consistently and vehemently denounced these anarchist experiments for disrupting production and distribution, for alienating the bourgeoisie, and for their failure to realise that some form of planned economy was absolutely essential in wartime. They insisted that Spain was experiencing a ‘bourgeois democratic’ revolution, and was not about to be transformed into a Communist state. They pointed out that there were more important tasks to be performed than such absurd anarchist measures as forcing the unwilling barbers of Alicante into one vast co-operative, and announced that the most revolutionary action of all was to win the war. This was no empty rhetoric, for the first great victory of the republic, at Guadalajara, was due in large part to disciplined Communist troops, to Soviet tanks and to the advice of Red Army experts. Similarly the Communist ‘Fifth Regiment’ played a critical role in the defence of Madrid and the International Brigades, which were organised by the Communists, arrived at the Madrid front in November 1936 and were admired both for their military prowess and as a clear demonstration of effective international support for the republic. The military efficiency of the Communists won them the admiration of those soldiers who remained loyal to the republic. Their spirited defence of the property rights of the peasant farmer, the small shopkeeper and the modest entrepreneur made them the hope of those who wished to save Spain from revolutionary upheaval and to put an end to impulsive anarchist experiments. The Communists thus became the party of moderation, normalcy, efficiency and the broad-based, centre–left coalition. The success
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 349
of this party line was spectacular. In July 1936 the party had about 40,000 members, but by March the following year it had increased to about 250,000, many of the new recruits coming from the middle class, and even from the aristocracy. The moderate republicans lost their will to govern, as was dramatically demonstrated by Azaña who went on a retreat to the monastery at Montserrat. The anarchists distrusted state power, and the Socialists were uncertain whether to turn left or right. The Communists, with their iron discipline, their consistent political line and their supplies of Soviet arms, thus became the leading political force in republican Spain, but they used their power and influence with such ruthlessness that they gradually lost the vast fund of sympathy they had accumulated in the early months of the civil war. In September 1936 a section of the OGPU was formed in Spain that promptly set about the destruction of POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista), a party denounced as ‘Trotskyite’ although disowned by Trotsky, which had openly denounced the vicious practices of Stalin’s Russia, where the show trials were in full swing. It also condemned the policy of the Popular Front as reactionary and counterrevolutionary, while also attacking the anarchists for their refusal to understand the need for seizing state power. The Communists’ determination to create an effective people’s army led to the appointment of political commissars and a degree of party control over the armed forces of the republic that was resented by many non-party soldiers, resulting in an opposition group within the army, which was to seriously damage its effectiveness. Clearly no republican government could be fully effective as long as the anarchists refused to join in the common endeavour. In September 1936 the CNT underwent a miraculous conversion and decided to enter the government of Catalonia. In November they joined the government in Madrid. All the factions in Spain, apart from some extreme anarchists and POUM, which was a Catalonian party, were now represented in a government under Largo Caballero. He was probably the only politician in Spain who had sufficient popular support to head such a disparate coalition, but having played the maximalist for years he doubtless felt uncomfortable in his new role as prime minister of a government devoted to curbing any revolutionary enthusiasm. The CNT had no other choice but to join the government. They knew that if they were to pursue their own vision of a libertarian Spain the republican forces would remain hopelessly divided, and victory for the rebels would be inevitable. They came to realise that their vision of a new society could only be realised by a dictatorship, which in itself would be a denial of their fundamental principles. They also realised that the power of the Popular Front government was growing, and that their only chance of influencing events
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was from within the government. This reasoning was unacceptable to most anarchist militants. They insisted that the CNT leadership had thrown away their principles, had allowed the anarchist militia to be absorbed into the republican army, had agreed to the centralised control over the committees and had got nothing in return but four minor ministries. Such criticisms were at least partially justified, for the anarchists henceforth played a secondary role, the leadership lost touch with the rank and file, and the movement became hopelessly split. Yet it is difficult to see what else they could have done under the circumstances. A wartime alliance was essential if the nationalists were to be defeated, but the anarchist philosophy made no allowances for such tactical moves. Thus Largo Caballero’s government was divided and confused, and the addition of the anarchists did nothing to improve the situation. Nor did they have effective control over the rest of republican Spain. The Basque provinces and Catalonia behaved increasingly like autonomous states, and from Madrid it looked as if they were not doing their full share in support of the war effort. In Catalonia the CNT hoped to realise their dreams of an anarchist revolution, and therefore supported the Catalan separatists in their struggle against the government in Madrid. Santander also had its own regional council, but the great anarchist stronghold was Aragon. In anarchist eyes the Council of Aragon presided over a utopia the likes of which the world had not yet seen, and that was imagined to combine efficiency with true libertarianism. To the Communists it was a mare’s nest of venal and incompetent revolutionary infantilists, which had to be destroyed. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, the squabbles over Aragon, as with those over Catalonia, were indicative of the fundamental rift within the republican camp that seriously prejudiced their chances of defeating the nationalists. The nationalists were beset by no such difficulties. There were different monarchist factions, Falangists and assorted right-wing groups, but when Franco was proclaimed head of state as well as commander-in-chief of the armed forces on 1 October 1936, three days after nationalist troops stormed the Alcazar in Toledo, there was no one to challenge his authority. The army knew that unified command was essential, and there was little doubt that Franco was the outstanding candidate for the post of commander-in-chief. Of the leading generals Sanjuro and Goded had been killed and Mola was soon to be. Franco’s army was the most effective force in the nationalist army, and he was a thoroughly professional soldier renowned for his cool-headedness, bravery and excellent staff work. The other generals accepted him as their leader by electing him commander-in-chief of the army on 28 September 1936. There was no civilian on the nationalist side of comparable stature, for José
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 351
Antonio Primo de Rivera was in a republican jail in Alicante and was shot in November, Calvo Sotelo was murdered and Gil Robles had fled the country. Franco was determined not only to command the army, but also to wield absolute political power, an ambition which alarmed some nationalists, but such critics were soon silenced by his wily, pragmatic and ruthless exercise of authority, and by the belief that he would soon restore the monarchy. No one foresaw that he would cling on to virtually absolute power until his death thirty-nine years later. The republican army was intoxicated by the belief that spontaneity, enthusiasm and the proletarian spirit were enough to crush the professional and disciplined nationalists. The militia units were beset by party factionalism, their command structure was haphazard, they were chronically short of essential supplies, lack of discipline was often seen as a positive virtue, training was rudimentary and their courage frequently failed them on the battlefield. Obviously this ragtag army had to be properly trained, disciplined and converted into a professional army. This process began in October 1936 against the staunch opposition of those who still clung – all evidence to the contrary – to their fond belief that a ‘revolutionary’ war had to be fought by ‘revolutionary’ means. Gradually most republicans came round to agreeing with an anarchist intellectual who wrote: ‘there is no such thing as an anarchist war: there is only one war and we must win it.’ The first step was to create Mixed Brigades of the Popular Army, which ended the identification of military units with specific parties. This process was incomplete, so that the Communist fifth regiment was still dominated by the Communists, and anarchist units were still run by the CNT. Officers were no longer elected by their men, saluting was enforced, and political commissars were appointed, in theory to handle the difficult relations between the parties but in practice often to push the party line. Since the Communists dominated the corps of commissars this greatly strengthened the hold of the party over the army, but many of the commissars conscientiously supported their officers, and encouraged the men in the interests of the common cause. The Popular Army was in large part the creation of the Communists who were the most insistent of the parties on the need for discipline and professionalism. They were supported in this endeavour by regular officers and NCOs who were loyal to the republic, and whose contribution would have been even greater were it not for the widespread suspicion that all regular soldiers were potential traitors or ‘fifth columnists’ (a phrase coined by General Emilio Mola Vidal as he marched on Madrid with four columns, claiming that he had a ‘fifth column’ of sympathisers in the capital). Many of these officers joined the Communist Party in the conviction that it alone understood the
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imperatives of warfare. Their work was impressive and there can be no doubt that the Popular Army was far more effective than the militias and those, such as George Orwell, who argued otherwise were allowing political predilections to override military facts. It was chronically short of arms and ammunition. Many of the commanding officers were outstanding, but junior officers were inadequately trained, so that the army performed poorly at the tactical level. Perhaps most serious of all were the persistent political jealousies, rivalries and even hatreds, mainly between the CNT and the Communists, which undermined its morale and effectiveness. The nationalist army suffered from similar weaknesses. Madrid, with the War Ministry and General Staff, was in republican hands and the division of Spain had destroyed the command structure of the regular army. In the first weeks of the war the nationalists also fought in isolated columns with no overall strategic concept. As did the republicans, they suffered from a shortage of officers, but not to the same extent. The nationalists had outstanding troops in the Foreign Legion that, in spite of its name, was comprised mainly of Spaniards, and the ferocious and brutal Regulares, the native troops from North Africa. As Muslims the latter made curious allies in Franco’s Christian crusade against Godless Communism and materialism, as the republicans were not slow to point out. Although Mussolini and Hitler were soon to send help to the rebels, an international Fascist plot to overthrow the republic existed only in the febrile imagination of republican propagandists. On the other hand, without such help the nationalists might well have been defeated. The Spanish navy had resisted the golpistas and still controlled the Straits of Gibraltar. The bulk of the army was still stranded in Morocco, the early engagements had not been successful, and General Mola even contemplated suicide. While he was still in North Africa Franco sent two Germans with excellent connections with the Nazi Foreign Organisation (Ausland-Organisation – AO) to Berlin. Through the intermediary of the head of the AO, Bohle, and Rudolf Hess the two men were introduced to Hitler, who was in excellent spirits after attending a performance of Siegfried at Bayreuth. He immediately ordered twenty Junkers 52 transport aircraft to be sent to North Africa. This decision, typically on the spur of the moment after a brief consultation with an initially reluctant Göring, was taken in the hopes of securing a friendly government in Madrid, and thus tipping the balance against the Franco-Soviet alliance, made Franco the most powerful of the generals, and did much to secure his emergence as undisputed Caudillo. Mussolini had been involved in Spanish affairs before the revolt. He had helped to train Carlist troops and financed the Falange. But he knew nothing
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of the generals’ plans. He supported the rebels against the advice of his military entourage, prompted by his foreign minister and son-in-law, Ciano. Twelve Savoia bombers were sent to North Africa, followed by large numbers of troops. There were almost 50,000 Italian soldiers fighting in Spain at the height of their involvement. Hundreds of aeroplanes were sent to the nationalists, along with large numbers of tanks and artillery. Probably more important were the specialist instructors and technicians, who were to provide Franco’s army with superior communications, and helped to ensure more effective deployment of tanks, artillery and aircraft. The republicans could not count on such prompt support from their supposed friends. The French Popular Front government was naturally sympathetic to the republic, but Blum’s freedom of action was strictly circumscribed. Conservatives in the Senate were vehemently opposed to intervention in Spain. The Radicals, among them his foreign minister and minister of war, did not want to get involved. There were very strong pacifist sentiments on the left and a widespread fear that the Spanish Civil War might spill over into France, where political passions were running dangerously high. Most important of all was the attitude of Britain, for the French had no desire to find themselves isolated and in conflict with Germany and Italy. For the British Foreign Office the real danger was the spread of Communism, not Fascism; many Conservatives in Baldwin’s national government sympathised strongly with the nationalists and admired Mussolini, some even going so far as to extend such cordial feelings to Hitler. There were substantial British investments in Spain, and it was feared that these might well be seized by the republicans. The British made no assessment of the strategic implications of a nationalist victory for Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, in spite of Liddell Hart’s promptings, and urged the French not to get involved. This attitude, later enshrined in the Non-intervention Agreement, amounted to tacit but effective support of Franco by ignoring the support given by the dictators to the nationalists, while at the same time denying the republic the right to buy arms abroad to defend itself against the rebels. The result of this policy was to push the republic into the arms of the Soviet Union, thus directly contributing to the spread of Communist influence that the British had tried to avoid. Stalin probably decided to help Spain in December 1936. He hoped to strengthen the Soviet Union’s position against Nazi Germany, to pose as the upholder of legitimacy and the status quo, to clearly identify himself as the leader of the great anti-Fascist struggle, and also to divert attention away from the Moscow show trials that were then at their peak. Soviet tanks began to arrive in Spain in October and were superior to the German Mark IIs; similarly the I.15 and I.16 fighters were far
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more effective that anything on the nationalist side, until the Germans sent the Messerschmitt Bf 109, a plane that had its test flights in September 1935, and which was at that time the finest fighter in the world. Soviet equipment gave the republic an initial technical superiority, but this was never properly exploited and was lost by mid-1937. Soviet assistance was substantial, although the republic paid for it dearly, both in gold and raw materials. It was enough to stave off immediate defeat and to prolong the war, but it was not enough for a republican victory. Although much of Spain’s industrial region was in republican hands, it was unable to supply large armies, and supplies from abroad were absolutely critical. The republic only survived until 1938 because the French border was opened, and its defeat later that year was due in part to the closing of that frontier at British insistence. The Soviet Union was becoming increasingly concerned about the Japanese threat in the east, and after Munich was beginning to abandon collective security and to consider the possibility of reaching an understanding with Hitler. The most widely publicised example of foreign aid was the International Brigades. Organised and controlled by the Communists, they were manned chiefly by workers who volunteered for a variety of reasons. Boredom, disillusionment and the desire for adventure, all of them fuelled by the depression, were at least as important as political idealism. The intellectuals got most of the glory, but also did their fair share of the dying, soon to become martyrs of the great anti-Fascist struggle. These included John Cornford, great-grandson of Darwin, a brilliant young historian and promising poet, who was far too romantic a soul to be totally bound by the Communist orthodoxy he espoused. Then there was the Rev. R.M. Hilliard, the ‘Boxing Parson’, and Christopher St John Sprigg, an assiduous writer of detective stories, who as ‘Christopher Caudwell’ churned out Marxist tracts and robustly proletarian poetry. The brigades were poorly trained, badly equipped and subject to endless Communist interference and eventually persecution. Many quickly became disillusioned, as the volunteer who said: ‘They told me this was a revolution, but it’s nothing but a fucking war!’ The brigades never had more than about 20,000 men and thus never played a really decisive part in the war, and they left 10,000 dead: testament both to their bravery and to the poor quality of many of the officers. Their courage was considerable and in time they became effective soldiers who inspired the Spanish to fight harder. The propaganda effect of the International Brigades was considerable, for here was proof of international solidarity with the just cause of the Spanish people and with the struggle to halt the march of Fascism. The nationalists also made use of the brigades as proof that the republic was controlled by international Communism. The nationalists were unable to attract anything
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like the same number of volunteers. ‘General’ O’Duffy led his Irish contingent of ‘blueshirts’ with such whiskey-sodden incompetence that he was probably an asset to the republic. There was an odd assortment of quasi-fascists, ultra-Catholics, White Russians and unemployed mercenaries who joined the nationalists, but their contribution was insignificant. The Spanish Civil War has often been described as a dress rehearsal for World War II. In military terms this is far from the truth. Although some sophisticated equipment was tried in battle for the first time, both sides were starved of material, fighting with antiquated weapons on thinly held fronts with inadequate communications, little armour and poor air support. Civilians were bombed to an extent that caused grim foreboding of things to come, but morale held and shelters proved most effective. The overextended fronts meant that tanks and airpower were decisive, and it was nationalist superiority in both which ultimately decided the war. The nationalists’ aim at the beginning of the war was to seize Madrid with Mola advancing from the north, supported by two other forces from Saragossa and Valladolid. The troops from Saragossa were diverted to Barcelona, which Goded had failed to take, the other two groups were held up in the mountains around Madrid by republican troops and militia who fought with great tenacity. The task of taking Madrid was now left to Franco, who advanced from the south having taken Toledo, some 70 kilometres from the capital. Nationalist troops overran the suburbs by 4 November, Azaña’s government had fled to Barcelona, and it seemed a foregone conclusion that the city would fall within a matter of days. Elaborate plans for a victory parade were made, but the city refused to fall. There were some 12,000 men on the nationalist side, tired after their long march and fierce fighting to raise the republican siege of the Alcazar. Franco’s colonial troops were supported by General Mola’s cavalry, along with a handful of German tanks. They came up against the determined resistance of the Communist Fifth Regiment, the 3,000 men in Durruti’s anarchist column from Aragon, and the first units of the International Brigade that, although minuscule, were a tremendous boost to morale. It has been estimated that the republicans could muster at least 23,000 men, equipped with Soviet tanks and advised by Soviet experts. Soviet fighter planes, nicknamed moscas (flies), chased the Heinkel bombers to good effect. Fighting was fierce, often house-to-house and hand-to-hand, and the famous slogan ‘They Shall Not Pass’ was put to the test. In the initial attack the republican forces were disorganised, there were large numbers of desertions and the military junta headed by General Miaja was unable to impose an effective command over the different militia units, but they managed to stop the nationalists. Franco’s troops reached the
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university city, but were beaten back in fierce fighting. On 23 November Franco was obliged to abandon his plan to take Madrid by frontal assault and resigned himself to fighting a lengthy war. Franco blamed his failure on the ‘shock troops of international communism’, but there is little supporting evidence for this assertion. Communist troops fought bravely, but they were poorly trained, inexperienced, inadequately supplied and poorly organised. The defence of Madrid depended on the units of the regular army and security forces which remained loyal to the republic, the efforts of regular officers who were appointed to the Mixed Brigades, and the tremendous spirit of the people of Madrid who were utterly determined that their city should not fall. The nationalists did not abandon hopes of taking Madrid and aimed to do this by encircling the city and thus isolating it. In a series of bloody encounters in December and January the republican forces fought with increasing skill and confidence, and the nationalist offensive ground to a standstill. Troops on both sides dug themselves in amid the winter rains, and fought limited battles of position. Madrid had been saved, although it was hardly the ‘tomb of Fascism’ that the Communists loudly proclaimed. Nevertheless the defence of Madrid was a tremendous boost to republican morale and ‘No Pasarán’ was shown to be a great deal more than an empty boast. Elsewhere the war went badly for the republic. The Basque region was cut off from France and from republican Spain. In the east the anarchists were more intent on orchestrating their social revolution than they were in fighting the nationalists, and little progress was made, even though the rebels were hopelessly outnumbered. The CNT uncharitably blamed their failure on the refusal of the government to give them the arms they needed to do the job. A fundamental weakness of the republicans was that although they were determined in defence, as the battle for Madrid had shown, they were ineffective on the offensive. Lacking operational skill or tactical cunning, they tended to believe that courage was all that was needed. The suicide charges of the singularly inept Hungarian Communist General ‘Gal’ ( Janos Galicz) were typical of this approach, and the casualty rate in the International Brigades that he commanded were intolerably high. Stalin was not amused, and Gal was promptly shot on his return to the Soviet Union. In the south Malaga fell to the Italians in February 1937 without offering much resistance. Once again the republican forces devoted most of their energy to burning churches and squabbling among themselves, their leaders both civil and military were inept, and little help came from nearby republican areas. The Italians celebrated the seizure of Malaga as a heroic victory, showing scant regard for truth and much to the annoyance of Franco. The nationalists
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established a reign of terror in Malaga, which was effectively used by republican propagandists as a warning further to inspire the defenders of Madrid. General Mario Roatta boasted of a great Fascist victory and marched his Corpo di Truppe Volontarie north to Guadalajara, 60 kilometres north-east of Madrid, in the hope of another easy victory. He had sufficient artillery, armoured vehicles, adequate motorised logistical support and airpower. This was to be a textbook modern offensive, presaging German armoured warfare, which would establish Italy’s reputation as a major military power. The republicans were hopelessly outnumbered and fell back, but the Italians mounted their offensive on a very narrow front in foul weather and were unable to resist the republican counter-attack that was launched almost as soon as the reserves were in place. The republicans made skilful use of their Soviet tanks and aircraft and there was effective cooperation between Spanish troops and the International Brigades. The Italians were routed, and among the victors were their anti-Fascist compatriots in the Garibaldi Battalion. It was a terrible humiliation for Mussolini, but Franco was relieved that the Italians had not had another victory which might have undermined his claim to be the true saviour of Spain. The republicans celebrated a great victory and Ernest Hemingway, an unerringly poor judge of men and events, proclaimed it to be one of the truly decisive battles of all time. The propaganda value of the battle was enormous, for now the whole world, even Anthony Eden, realised the extent of Italian involvement in the war. The myth of ‘non-intervention’ was exposed, and the republicans could claim to be fighting against vicious foreign invaders. After their defeat at Guadalajara the nationalists realised that Madrid could not be taken except at very great cost, and therefore decided to concentrate their efforts on the north, to deny the republicans access to the sea and use of the considerable industrial resources of the region. General Mola launched his attack at the end of March and made effective use of heavy artillery and aerial bombardment that had a devastating effect on republican morale. On 26 April 1937 the Condor Legion attacked the small Basque town of Guernica (Gernika) and razed it to the ground. Guernica, with 7,000 inhabitants, was the sacred town of the Basques. It lay 30 kilometres from the front and, apart from a small factory producing sporting guns, had no possible military significance. Monday was market day in Guernica. The bombing by Savoia-79s and Heinkel 111s began in the afternoon and was followed by a wave of Junkers52s. The bombardment lasted three hours, beginning with high explosives and followed by incendiaries. Civilians were machine-gunned as they fled. The population was terrified, the centre of the town set ablaze and hundreds
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The ruins of the Basque town of Guernica, 26 April 1937 after the attack by the Condor Legion
killed. The gun factory was untouched, as was a strategically important bridge, and the Tree of Guernica, a potent symbol of Basque nationalism, survived. The wilful destruction of Guernica sent shock waves of horror throughout the world. Here was a vivid and ghastly example of the destructive capability of bombers. Here too was a reminder of the savage brutality of the Germans. The nationalists claimed that Guernica had been destroyed by ‘red separatist incendiaries’, an absurd lie that was eagerly taken up by the British Catholic press. Most of the world knew perfectly well that it was the work of the Germans, and this absurd denial made them appear even more perfidious. Casualties were insignificant by later standards and were greatly exaggerated by the republicans. This did much to discredit the nationalists, but it did nothing to strengthen civilian will to resist as General Mola’s troops continued their advance. Bilbao fell in June, having been besieged, blockaded and bombarded in a well-planned offensive by General Sancho Dávila who succeeded General Mola who was killed when his aeroplane crashed on 3 June. In the course of the summer the remainder of the north fell to the nationalists. No compassion was shown towards the Basques, their language and culture was suppressed, and the victorious Christian crusaders treated their co-religionists with
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singular brutality. No attempt at reconciliation was made, and priests who had sympathised with the republic were shot. Asturias, a happy hunting ground for anarchists and violent anti-clericals, had refused to bow to a unified command, and was thus isolated and collapsed in October. The republicans seized the opportunity offered by the enemy’s concentration on the north to launch diversionary attacks. The first two attempts, at Segovia and Huesca, were disappointing failures. The major offensive was planned with considerable operational skill against the nationalist forces to the west of Madrid around Brunette. Initially the attack was a success but the republicans lacked the training, discipline and organisation to exploit their overwhelming numerical advantage. Franco threw in his reserves and the republicans were halted. Casualties were terrible: an estimated 25,000 on the republican side and 17,000 nationalists. The republicans lost 100 aeroplanes, the nationalists 25. Strategically the battle ended in a stalemate, but the republicans found themselves in a large salient that needed a skilful defence if it was to hold. The most that could be said for the operation was that it tied up General Franco, 30,000 men and the Condor Legion for three weeks and they were unable to concentrate on operations in the north. The republicans attempted another offensive towards Saragossa in August. The Popular Army proved incapable of fighting a battle of manoeuvre, the deployment of tanks was ineffectual, and communications between armour and infantry were seriously deficient. A chronic lack of reserves meant that the republicans could seldom follow up a local success, and they usually preferred to dig in rather than push on towards the capital of Aragon. Instead of concentrating on the main goal, the offensive got bogged down in a series of small local engagements, so the Battle for Saragossa soon degenerated into the Battle for Belchite, and Franco refused to be distracted from his offensive in Asturias. The Communists blamed this failure on the incompetent and treacherous Trotskyites and anarchists, who in turn accused the Communists of deliberately starving them of arms and equipment. Such accusations disguised the fact that the nationalists had a better-trained and better-equipped army under an effective central command. The republicans had by now lost the advantage, were dropping behind and had yet to master the difficult art of the offensive. The republic was also fighting a war in the midst of a political crisis, whereas the nationalists could concentrate on winning the war. Largo Caballero, envious, suspicious and brooding, still refused to accept that the revolution was over and that the conservative Communists should determine the future of Spain. He stoutly resisted the Communist attempt to unite with the Socialists. He opposed Communist control over the armed forces and tried to curb the
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influence of the Soviet experts and their meddlesome ambassador, Marcel Rosenberg. Largo Caballero was now on a collision course with the Communists, who were to use the crisis in Catalonia to engineer his downfall. By early 1937 the quarrel between the Catalan Stalinists in the PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya) and the ‘Trotskyites’ in the POUM had become so serious that it needed only a small incident to trigger violence on a large scale. On 3 May the police, who were controlled by the PSUC, seized the Barcelona telephone exchange, which was a CNT stronghold. POUM, who in spite of many serious differences sympathised with CNT as fellow militants, took to the streets in protest. The Communists in Valencia, where a republican government now presided, saw this incident as a golden opportunity to destroy POUM, put an end to Catalan autonomy and strengthen their hold over Catalonia. They were able to win a majority for the proposal to suspend the Catalan Statute and to send Assault Guards to Barcelona. At the same time the Communists launched a scurrilous press campaign against Largo Caballero and demanded that POUM should not only be banned but that its leaders should be tried for treason. The prime minister refused to treat a Workers’ Party as a criminal association, but was in no position to withstand the Communist attack. He was forced to resign, his post taken by Dr Juan Negrín on 17 May 1937. The Communists continued to pursue POUM with their customary determination and brutality. Andrés Nin, the highly respected leader of POUM, was murdered by the NKVD. An attempt to emulate Stalin’s show trials and accuse POUM of being Fascists, traitors, Bukharinites and Trotskyites misfired. Largo Caballero defended them against such absurdities, and George Orwell praised them lavishly in Homage to Catalonia, although the book remained virtually unread at the time. POUM was absurd not to support the Popular Front and accept that a strong government was needed in time of war. They were misguided and mistaken, but they were not ‘in the pay of European fascism’, nor were they ‘allies of the Gestapo’ or ‘beasts of prey’. Even the Communists had to be content with seeing the leadership convicted of the lesser charge of rebellion, for which they were given fifteen-year sentences. Negrín, a professor of psychology of some distinction, an intellectual who was also an effective administrator, was a passionate believer in individual liberty, and knew that this could only be achieved if the war was won, and that this would necessitate centralisation and discipline. The war was already lost and he has been unjustly lambasted by both sides for his failure. Franco’s supporters blamed him for prolonging a war that was clearly lost. Caballero, Prieto and Azaña all had private axes to grind. Republicans charged him with being a mere tool of the Communists, who in turn condemned him for being
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hopelessly weak and for his refusal to root out Marxist heretics. Catalonians and the Aragonese could never forgive him for his total disregard of their sensibilities, and his determination to end their autonomy. His position was close to that of the Communists, but he was far from being the uncritical fellow-traveller that his critics claimed him to be. With Largo Caballero’s supporters and the CNT no longer in the government Negrín had little choice but to hope that the Soviet Union would continue to support the republic, and that the British and French would realise the folly of appeasement and come to the defence of Spain. He could not afford to antagonise the Communists, but he was determined not to capitulate to them. That he came perilously close to doing so was due to the overwhelming force of circumstances, not to any fundamental weakness of character. Negrín’s government followed up the attack on Catalan autonomy with the dissolution of the CNT-dominated Council of Aragon. For Negrín this was essential for effective government, for the Communists it was a means of settling a political score. The Communist commanders carried out this task in a manner that greatly exceeded their instructions. CNT leaders were thrown into jail, the collectivised farms were forcibly dissolved and industry was decollectivised. Meanwhile Catalonia was brought under even closer control from Valencia, and the new secret police force SIM (Servicio de Investigación Militar) set about its task of hunting down subversives and traitors with a frenzy that bordered on the manic. To many who were used to the chaotic factionalism of earlier times it seemed as if behind the fig leaf of the Popular Front was a highly centralised Communist police state. The republic was certainly better organised to fight a war, but an increasing number of Spaniards asked themselves whether such a regime was really worth fighting for. The chaos had gone, but so had the enthusiasm. Negrín and his minister of defence, the Socialist Indalecio Prieto Tuero, were convinced that the Popular Army had to go on the offensive to wrest the initiative from the nationalists. General Rojo selected Teruel, a thinly held salient, for an attack that would divert Franco’s troops away from Madrid, which he was determined to seize after his successful campaign in the north. The attack began on 15 December 1937 and was initially successful. Then a sudden spell of freezing weather brought the nationalist counter-attack to a virtual standstill. On 8 January the Teruel garrison surrendered, but at the beginning of February Franco launched an offensive to the north of the town that broke through the republican line after a massive aerial bombardment and an old-fashioned cavalry charge. On 22 February Teruel fell to the nationalists. Republican troops under the Communist ‘El Campesino’ (Valentin González) fought tenaciously at Teruel, but it proved a major mistake to hang
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on to an indefensible position rather than retire to one that was easier to hold. El Campesino was able at the last moment to extricate the remainder of his exhausted men from Teruel. With few exceptions the Popular Army had not fought well at Teruel. Commanders refused to obey orders, troops mutinied and morale was pitifully low. Franco decided to follow up this victory with a drive south to the sea and the river Ebro, in order to divide republican Spain in two. The Popular Army never recovered from the defeat at Teruel. Faced with overwhelming air superiority and with punishing artillery barrages morale collapsed and whole divisions deserted. The International Brigades were brought up to stiffen the front, but they too had lost much of their effectiveness and were helpless against the nationalists. Franco reached the sea with little difficulty, and the republicans again began a frantic search for culprits, the Communists accusing their political rivals of cowardice and treachery, and were accused in turn of deliberately staging a disaster to discredit their opponents, particularly Prieto. After these disasters Prieto was convinced the war could not be won, and that the only hope lay in a negotiated settlement. Negrín and the Communists did not share his defeatism, the former because he still believed that France would come to the rescue of the republic, the latter because they were determined to tighten their grip on the republic and its army. All was illusion. Franco would never negotiate, France would not help, and the Communists’ ambitions infuriated many army commanders and further undermined morale. Communist optimism, although it was beginning to sound increasingly hollow, was every bit as damaging to the army as Prieto’s pessimism. The division between the Communists and their orthodox socialist allies and Caballeristas and their sympathisers in the CNT was as serious as ever, in spite of frantic attempts to paper over the cracks. Prieto’s resignation in April 1938 was taken as further evidence that the Communists were virtual dictators in Valencia and it was even suggested that they were ‘fascists’. The Communists replied with similar wit and originality that the CNT were ‘fascists’ and ‘agents of the Axis’. All did not seem quite lost in the spring of 1938: the French opened the border, giving supplies and renewed help to the republicans, and Franco made the serious mistake of marching against Catalonia. Republican troops put up an impressive defence as the nationalists advanced towards Valencia, and at the end of July they launched a sudden offensive on the Ebro. It was an unexpectedly well-executed attack, the river was crossed at night and Franco’s troops were caught by surprise, but the follow-through was badly bungled. The nationalists recovered to build strong defensive positions and to launch a series of counter-attacks, which halted the republican’s advance. Franco then allowed the battle to degenerate into a bloody slogging match, which
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was to last until November. He threw wave after wave of men on a wide front against strongly held positions, and they were beaten back at terrible cost. But with overwhelming superiority in the air and in artillery he was bound to win this battle of attrition. After three and a half months of fighting the nationalists crossed the river and the most important battle in the civil war was over by mid-November. Franco’s defenders argue that although the cost was high, the Battle of the Ebro destroyed the Popular Army. About two-thirds of the army was lost as casualties, prisoners and deserters. The nationalists had lost 30,000 men, the republicans twice as many. The Munich Agreement at the end of September put paid to any hope of help from Britain or France. Franco, his advance towards Valencia halted, decided to attack Catalonia in the final campaign of the war. Franco’s advance towards Barcelona turned into a rout. The republican army fell apart, Barcelona fell with scarcely a shot being fired, and Negrín escaped to France. He returned to Spain shortly afterwards to be with the Army of the Centre, which was still intact. In Madrid Colonel Segismondo Casado López made a pronunciamiento against Negrín, having been assured by Franco’s agents that there would be no reprisals if the republicans laid down their arms. Casado was supported by the Cipriano Mera Garciá of the CNT and by anti-Communist Marxists such as the Socialist trade unionist Julián Basteiro, who jointly formed a National Council that was welcomed by the majority of Madrid’s half-starved population. Once again Negrín left for France, on 9 February 1939, this time for good. In Madrid fighting broke out between Communists and Casado’s ‘traitors’. Franco stood aloof from this final and bloody internecine feud. It left Casado without a card to play, for Franco had no need to accept anything other than unconditional surrender. The National Council left Madrid, although Basteiro heroically stayed behind. The nationalists had little difficulty in taking Madrid at the end of March, where they were given a loud if somewhat forced welcome by a shattered populace. By I April Franco was master of all of Spain, his victory was total, and he was in no mood to forgive or forget. For republicans the future offered nothing but exile, death, imprisonment or silent submission. On that day the United States formally recognised Franco’s government. Franco had won the war and none disputed his leadership. The nationalists had not been plagued by the political divisiveness that beset the republicans. CEDA collapsed without a parliamentary forum, and the monarchist Renovación Española disbanded. Only the Falange and the Carlists remained as small factions with some popular support. Neither liked the unideological authoritarianism of Franco and the generals. The Carlists dreamed of the day when a Prince of Bourbon Parma would ascend to the throne of Spain, the Falange entertained inchoate and confused ideas of a ‘national revolution’. Franco and
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General Franco takes the victory parade in Madrid. By his side is Baron von Richthofen, commander of the Condor Legion
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his brother-in-law, Ramón Serrano Suñer, had no sympathy with such nonsense and forced the Carlists and the Falange to amalgamate into a new party that was given the convoluted but wide-ranging name of Falange Española Traditionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalistas. Manuel Hedilla Larrey, a crude and illiterate former dockworker who was head of the Falange, led a singularly inept coup against Franco. The ringleaders were arrested and condemned to death, their sentences later commuted to life imprisonment, partly because of a plea for clemency from the German ambassador. The Carlists were even easier to crush. Their leader, Manuel Fal Conde, was exiled, and Franco let it be known that he was lucky not to have been shot. Franco’s Spain was dull, repressive and old-fashioned. His vision of society was that of a soldier: officers gave orders and men obeyed. No questions were asked, The Falange, or Movimiento as it was known for short, was simply a means of transmitting such orders, and its unattractive ideologues were silenced for ever. The others rushed, as one Falangist sourly commented, ‘towards the flesh-pots of Egypt’. Ideology was provided not by the party but by the Church, and its stern Catholicism was heavily laced with nationalism. Its outriders among the laity, Opus Dei and ACNP (Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas – an organisation dating back to the early seventeenth century) grew in power and influence. At the same time opposition to this crusading mission was slowly growing among Catholics, who were concerned with reconciliation and with fundamental spiritual values. But they had to wait until the pontificate of John XXIII before they won the support of the hierarchy. Hundreds of thousands of refugees left their homeland rather than live in Franco’s miserable state. They were treated contemptibly, as were all others facing a similar plight in this the century of the refugee. Even the left disowned them as failures and nuisances. Interminable political squabbles between Communists and anarchists continued to make these years of exile even more wretched. Many fought and died for the allied cause in the vain hope that the defeat of Fascism would entail the fall of Franco. The 8,000 names of republican Spaniards inscribed on the memorial tablet at Mauthausen bear testimony to those who endured war and exile, only to be murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. There was only one country that helped these unfortunates. Mexico, which had generously supplied the republic with arms in spite of its own pressing problems of poverty, over-population and unemployment, now allowed any refugee who could meet the travel expenses to settle and work in peace. It was an exceptional act of charity at a time when men’s hearts had turned to stone. It was amply repaid, for the Spanish refugees made an enduring contribution to Mexican life and culture.
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CHAPTER 13
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t first those who helped to bring Hitler to power felt that they had good reasons to congratulate themselves for skilfully using the Nazis to overcome the political crisis while they remained in control of the situation. Hitler’s position seemed to be far from secured. In the ‘cabinet of national concentration’ there were only two Nazi ministers, Wilhelm Frick and Hermann Göring, but they held key positions. Frick was Minister of the interior and Göring, although a minister without portfolio, was commissioner for the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. Even so their power was limited. Göring was formally answerable to Papen as Reich commissar for Prussia. The state secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, Hans Pfundtner, although sympathetic to the Nazis, was not a party member; the minister of justice, Franz Gürtner, was a nationalist, and his state secretary had been in office since 1924. The parties of the left also shared the illusion that Hitler was an employee of the traditional right, their analysis of the situation clouded by their ideological obsession that this was merely a reshuffling of power within a monopoly capitalist state apparatus. Hitler’s first moves were to demand the dissolution of the Reichstag and to strengthen his hold over Prussia, Germany’s largest state and a socialist stronghold. By dissolving the Reichstag he silenced his opponents, who might have been tempted to use it as a forum to attack his policies. He could also make use of Article 48 without fear of a parliamentary veto, and he hoped to make significant gains in the forthcoming election, which would free him from the control of his coalition partners. They in turn unwisely agreed to new elections, having been promised by Hitler that the government would be unchanged, even though he had previously promised not to call an election in which the DNVP was unlikely to be able to improve its position. The government had a safe majority in the Reichstag, provided that it had the support of the Centre Party, but Hitler turned his back on them by refusing to give a guarantee that
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fundamental constitutional rights would be respected. The conservatives thus gave their full support to Hitler’s efforts to destroy parliamentary democracy, crush the left-wing parties and establish a permanent authoritarian regime, even though their own standing in the polls was unlikely to improve. The Reichstag was dissolved on 1 February and three days later the president issued the emergency decree ‘For the Protection of the German People’. Using as an excuse a call by the KPD for a general strike, the decree enabled the police to silence the press and forbid public meetings, and thus control the election campaigns of the opposition parties. Meanwhile Göring managed to push Papen into the sidelines and gain effective control over Prussia. On 6 February the Prussian parliament (Landtag) was dissolved in clear violation of the constitution, for it was contrary to a judgment in the supreme court, which had ruled after Papen’s coup in 1932 that the duly elected Social Democratic government of Prussia should remain in office, even though its powers were drastically curtailed. The Prussian Landtag had rejected a Nazi motion for dissolution, as had the three-man executive board, with Otto Braun and Konrad Adenauer voting against the Nazi president of the Landtag, Hans Kerrl. Göring acted swiftly to rid the Prussian police force of ‘unreliable elements’ and to bring it firmly under his control. In addition, the SA and SS were employed as auxiliary police to deal with ‘excesses by left-wing radicals, and particularly by Communists’. Göring instructed the police to forget their political neutrality and to use their weapons whenever necessary against the ‘enemies of the state’. It was virtually impossible for the SPD and the KPD to fight an election campaign. Their meetings were either forbidden or disrupted by the Nazis while the police stood aside. Their press was silenced and propaganda material seized. In some instances successful appeals were made to the Supreme Court against these practices, for even in extreme nationalist and conservative circles there was still a lingering belief in the rule of law. Not that this counted for much, since the judgments were handed down after the election. The bourgeois parties were so cowed that they voiced their criticisms in such circumspect language that Hitler’s image was hardly tarnished. The general mood was one of resignation, and there was still a faint hope that the ancient president would somehow restrain the government and keep it within the bounds of the law. Hitler was careful to avoid making any election promises, particularly on economic policy; instead he harped on about the horrors and humiliations of the past, and spoke in glowing but deliberately vague terms of a ‘national awakening’. Even the more sceptical industrialists were delighted, and Krupp, Vögler of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke and von Schnitzler of IG Farben helped to chip in several million marks to the Nazis’ election fund.
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On 27 February a simple-minded Dutchman, Marinus van der Lubbe, set fire to the Reichstag. Hitler, Göring, Goebbels and Frick promptly announced that this was designed as a signal for a Communist insurrection, which was to be supported by the Social Democrats. With almost paranoid belief in a vast Communist conspiracy, which was widely held among the parties of the right, many Germans became trapped in their own propaganda and believed this to be true. It is certain the KPD had no plans for an uprising, and almost equally certain that had they, they would not have been supported by the SPD. Both the Nazis and KPD made the maximum use of the situation. The Communist propagandist and newspaper publisher, Willi Münzenberg, mounted a skilful campaign from Paris which attempted to prove that the Nazis had organised the fire themselves in order to destroy the KPD, and recent evidence suggests that this version of events may indeed contain a grain of truth, even though the evidence at the time was entirely fraudulent. The controversy over who was responsible for the Reichstag fire continues, and it is no longer possible to assert with absolute certainly that van der Lubbe acted alone, although the weight of the evidence suggests that he did. On the day after the fire, Hindenburg signed another emergency decree ‘For the Protection of the People and the State’. The decree abolished at one stroke all the fundamental rights of a democratic state: freedom of speech, the right to privacy and the protection of property. It allowed the government to interfere directly in the affairs of the individual states whenever it deemed necessary. Frick, as minister of the interior, was given plenipotentiary power to implement the decree. He decided to give the states a free hand, and then promptly set about banning the KPD’s press, meetings and party organisations. Thousands of party functionaries were arrested, particularly in Prussia, where Göring used these exceptional powers to the full. The Nazis decided not to ban the KDP outright, for fear that the SPD would pick up a large number of extra votes. The decree was also used to step up the persecution of the SPD, in spite of Foreign Minister von Neurath’s suggestion that this might be harmful to Germany’s image abroad. Hitler took no notice of such objections, assuring the foreign press that these measures were purely temporary and were designed to meet a specific threat from the Communists. In fact the Reichstag fire decree was to be one of the most important steps towards the creation of the Nazi dictatorship. It enabled the party to ignore the normal process of law and destroy fundamental rights and freedoms. In spite of these measures the NSDAP only succeeded in winning 43.9 per cent of the popular vote in the elections of 5 March 1933, the government parties winning a narrow majority of 51.8 per cent. The KPD got 1.1 million votes, which was remarkable under the circumstances, but a disastrous result
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compared with the 5.9 million votes in November 1932. The SPD managed to hang on to most of their voters, the DNVP and Centre made modest gains. Although the election results fell far short of the ‘revolution’ that Hitler proclaimed, they were sufficient for his purposes. There could be no question at all that the NSDAP was the senior coalition partner, and by arresting all the Communist deputies in the Reichstag and the Prussian Landtag the Nazis had an absolute majority in both houses. In those states where they did not yet dominate the government open terror was now used. The SA and the SS no longer acted as an auxiliary to the police and beat up, humiliated, arrested and murdered numerous opponents of the regime. Jewish civil servants, judges and prosecutors were summarily dismissed, along with other ‘unreliable’ officials. Jewish businesses were boycotted. In Prussia alone some 25,000 arrests were made in March and April. Frick appointed Nazi police commissioners in many of the more important states, and special commissioners were sent throughout the country to complete the process of Gleichschaltung – the centralisation of power under Nazi control. The Nazis made carefully coordinated demonstrations that very often led to violence, and this was then used as a pretext to curtail the authority of the states under the terms of the emergency decree. This again was flagrantly unconstitutional, for the decree was specifically aimed against ‘Communist acts of violence harmful to the state’. Non-Nazi state governments were warned that if they did not resign to make way for Nazi governments there would be no possibility of guaranteeing that law and order would be preserved. Under such threats the governments gave way one by one. On 16 March 1933 this process was completed when the Bavarian government, which had tried hard to preserve its independence, finally resigned, having been stripped of most of its powers by the appointment of various commissioners. Perhaps the most important of such appointments was that of Heinrich Himmler as head of the Munich police force. This was to be the start of a remarkable career in law enforcement. There were some complaints from the nationalists about the SA’s use of terror, and the rowdy and lawless behaviour of the party activists. Even Papen complained to Hitler, only to be told to mind his own business and then treated to a long diatribe about the feeble bourgeois world, which preferred the kid glove to the mailed fist. But Hitler realised that something had to be done to placate the nationalists and to draw people’s attention away from the violence, the newly built concentration camps, and the illegality of the Gleichschaltung. A ceremony was held in Potsdam to celebrate the opening of the new Reichstag at which Hitler paid homage to Hindenburg, the SA marched in step with the Reichswehr, and the young idealists of the movement showed their
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respect for Germany’s splendid heritage. It was made to seem that the days of Weimar were over and that Germany had returned to the glorious traditions of Potsdam. Goebbels cynically described the event in his diary as a ‘sentimental comedy’. The Reichstag had only one task to perform: to pass a bill that would end parliamentary government in Germany. This Enabling Act was debated on 23 March, the Reichstag meeting in its temporary home in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin, ominously surrounded by units of the SS and SA. Hitler had difficulty in getting the necessary two-thirds majority for a constitutional amendment that would allow the government to pass any laws, including further constitutional changes, without consulting the Reichstag or the senate (Reichsrat ), and without asking the president to issue the necessary decrees. Among the bourgeois parties there was a widespread belief that the Enabling Act was a necessity, and that the violent excesses of the last few weeks were due to the very real threat of a Communist uprising. It was felt that the government had been perfectly justified in acting decisively and harshly at such a time of national danger. The incessant propaganda campaign, and the muzzling of the liberal press, had helped people to turn a blind eye to the real purpose of the law, to its unconstitutional origins and illegal implementation. The Social Democrats managed to convince themselves that the law was directed solely against the Communists and that their party and their Free Trade Unions (ADGB) would survive. When these unions were declared illegal the Christian Trade Unions imagined that they had been spared. When they were banned it was hoped that it might be possible to keep the organisation going under the umbrella of the German Labour Front (DAF). Similarly the parties believed that Hitler would ban only the KPD, then that the SPD would be the last party to be outlawed. Soon only NSDAP remained. The Centre Party held the key to obtaining a majority for the Enabling Act, and they were easily won over by Hitler’s repeated assurances that he wanted better relations with the Vatican, respected the importance of the Christian churches and would listen to the Centre Party’s views on how the law would be implemented. Brüning, to his credit, was one of the few party members who realised that the law was exceedingly dangerous and could easily be abused. The SPD was the only party to vote against the bill, but even they hinted that negotiations were still possible, and they were not totally free from the widespread illusion that Hitler would respect the rule of law. The Social Democrat Otto Wels was the only member who had the courage to speak out against the bill. His measured but passionate plea for democracy, the rule of law and the fundamental principals of his party incited Hitler’s fury, but had no influence on the outcome. There were 444 votes in
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favour and only 94 against. Even though the bill had been pushed through in a blatantly unconstitutional manner it was formally renewed twice, and thus provided the pseudo-legal basis for 12 years of dictatorship. Hitler decided to tolerate the political parties for a little while, for he needed them to decorate the Reichstag when he gave a major speech on foreign policy on 17 May, in which he made repeated professions of his dedication to the cause of peace. The Free Trade Unions were banned on 2 May, the day after Goebbels staged a ‘Day of National Labour’, and the SPD knew that it was only a matter of time before they too would be outlawed. A number of the leading figures in the party left for Prague, where for a while they enjoyed freedom of speech; others decided to attend the foreign policy debate. On 22 June the party was banned, its assets seized and its members treated as enemies of the state. On 5 July the Centre Party was dissolved. The Catholic hierarchy had already decided to abandon the party and to support the Nazi regime, so that in spite of this ban negotiations for a concordat with the Holy See continued, and they were completed on 8 July. The Catholic Church was guaranteed full rights to administer the sacraments, and its property was protected. Pastoral letters could be published, and Catholic schools were still tolerated. Cardinal Secretary Pacelli (the future Pius XII) agreed that all political and social organisations of the Church should be disbanded, and that the Church would support the regime. The DNVP had already disappeared, many of its members having joined the NSDAP in the mad rush to jump on the bandwagon in March, and Hugenberg had been forced to resign from the cabinet having hastened his own downfall by his singularly inept behaviour at the World Economic Conference in London. On 14 July all political parties other than the NSDAP were forbidden, and Germany was now a one-party state, with Adolf Hitler its unchallenged dictator. On 12 November elections were held for the Reichstag in which the voters were asked to acclaim the ‘Führer’s List’. Terrified that they would be punished for not turning out to vote, more than 95 per cent of the electorate cast their votes, and 92.2 per cent voted for the list. The new Reichstag was a mockery, being little more than a servile audience in front of which Hitler could make some of his more bombastic speeches. It did, however, serve a more practical purpose. It was needed at times to pass certain pieces of legislation that did not quite fit under the umbrella of the Enabling Act, or which had to be passed quickly. The most notorious of these were the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which marked a new and sinister stage in the German persecution of the Jews. The process of Gleichschaltung did not merely affect the states, it also touched the organisations that were not under direct state control. Between March
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Charisma: adoring crowds welcome Hitler to the ‘victory party rally’ in 1933
and July 1933 the Nazis made use of their commissioners, party functionaries and the ‘Combat League of Middle Class Businessmen’ to purge all business associations, farmers’ clubs and professional organisations of opponents of the regime and of Jews, ensured that all leading positions were held by party members, reorganised them strictly according to the ‘leadership principle’, and amalgamated them into single organisations. With the abolition of the trade unions all manual and clerical workers were forced to join the ‘German Work Front’ (DAF). The various farmers’ associations were combined to form the Reich Food Corporation, and lawyers were forced into the ‘Legal Front’. All these organisations were closely supervised by the NSDAP. The ‘Combat
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League for German Culture’ tried to Nazify the museums, cultural organisations and academies of the fine arts, but their efforts resulted in chaos. In September 1933 a ‘Reich Chamber of Culture’ was formed that brought all the cultural activities of the country under party control. The Catholic Church had decided to make its peace with Hitler’s regime, and in these early years gave him little cause for concern. The situation was somewhat different with regard to the Protestants. One group, the ‘German Christians’, fully supported the Nazis and even called themselves ‘Evangelical National Socialists’. Those who found that National Socialism and the gospel message were irreconcilable joined Pastor Martin Niemöller’s ‘Pastors’ Emergency League’, which formed the basis of the Confessing Church. Hitler publicly supported the German Christians and their leader, Ludwig Müller, was appointed Reich Bishop after considerable pressure had been brought to bear on the Church. The Confessing Church was a centre of opposition to the regime, and since its members were mostly solid conservative bourgeois this was something new and troublesome to the regime. Its spokesmen were to suffer terribly at the hands of an increasingly repressive regime. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged; Niemöller was arrested in 1937 and mercifully survived the war. Big businessmen and bankers were virtually exempt from the process of Gleichschaltung. The Nazi programme’s strictures against cartels and monopolies, chain stores and the ‘slavery of interest’ were studiously ignored, as Hitler had promised. The Reich Association of German Industry had its name slightly modified to make it sound more ideologically respectable, but it remained unchanged in essence. Krupp stayed in the chair, and it did not have to suffer undue interference from party officials. Hitler needed the support of big business, and it was not until 1936 that political pressure was increasingly brought to bear on this sector of the economy. Hitler was determined to avoid discussing the economy in the campaign for the elections in March 1933 for, as he pointed out, no solution he might suggest would be acceptable to all the millions of voters he hoped to attract. The appointment of Schacht as President of the Reichsbank was greeted with sighs of relief on the Rhine and Ruhr, for an impeccably orthodox financier with excellent connections throughout the business world had been appointed, rather than some party exotic such as Gottfried Feder with his bizarre economic theories and questionable background. Schacht’s appointment was most unpopular in the Nazi Party. The ‘Party Comrades’ (PGs) wanted to see some dramatic changes made, even if they were not quite sure what, and Schacht was a typical example of the old regime, which they hoped to destroy in the white heat of a National Socialist revolution.
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Hitler and his circle had only the vaguest notions of economics and were uncertain how to tackle the problem of unemployment, which was still by far the most serious problem facing the country. They were fortunate that Schleicher’s job-creating programme began to have some effect, but in spite of pumping considerable sums of money into public works and housing projects unemployment remained unacceptably high. The industrialists were somewhat critical of these early efforts to reduce unemployment. The encouragement of labour-intensive projects, and attempts to move women out of the workforce and back into the home, the reduction of working hours and tax concessions to small businesses were not seen as serious efforts to stimulate production, and were subject to ideological bias and favouritism. Even Kurt Schmitt of Allianz Insurance, who succeeded Hugenberg as minister of economics, was critical of many aspects of the programme. Gradually these criticisms waned, for the programme did bring down the number of unemployed, and leading businessmen were reassured that Hitler’s government was responsible in economic matters and was not the prisoner of the extremist ideologues of the movement. Certain sectors of industry also profited considerably from larger armaments orders, and this also had some effect on the level of employment. Schacht was in favour of a modest degree of rearmament as a means of overcoming the economic crisis, and encouraged it by providing the necessary credit by means of ‘Mefo’ bills. These were drawn on the Metall-Forschungs-Gmbh, a government owned company with limited capital, and armament manufacturers could discount them at the Reichsbank. Schacht fondly imagined that this programme would be slowed down once the economy had recovered, and seems to have been unaware that Hitler had no such intentions. Even the limited rearmament programme of these early years caused severe dislocations. There was soon an acute shortage of foreign exchange to which rearmament contributed, but which was also caused by foreign investors being reluctant to leave their money in a country that still seemed to have a very uncertain future. Exports were affected by the fact that Germany was seen abroad as a repressive and unjust state, and by rising tariffs which were designed to make the country less dependent on foreign markets. Schacht tried to deal with this problem by directing German trade towards countries that would pay for German goods by sending foodstuffs and raw materials. Blocked credit accounts were used to encourage exports. German importers offered handsome prices for foreign goods, but the money could only be spent in Germany. This worked quite well in the Balkans, but Germany’s traditional trading partners were not attracted by the scheme. Similar attempts to substitute credits in marks for interest payments on foreign currency accounts
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were even less successful, and damaged Germany’s credit rating. By the end of 1933 exchange controls had been further tightened. All these measures harmed Germany’s export industries, and made the foreign exchange problem even more serious. In September 1934 Schacht unveiled his ‘New Plan’ to deal with these problems. It imposed import quotas, encouraged barter agreements and directed German foreign trade towards Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In these measures there were elements of a planned economy, but there was no fundamental conflict of interest between Hitler and the industrialists. Industry had to accept allocations of foreign currency and of raw materials, as well as price controls, but fundamental property relationships remained unchanged and unchallenged. The state invested heavily in industry, but initially without nationalisation. Thus the state provided capital for IG Farben to build large factories for the production of artificial petrol and rubber, and bought guaranteed amounts of these commodities without demanding any direct control over the company. This increasing level of state intervention inevitably reduced entrepreneurial control over investment and production strategies, and even though industrialists were amply represented on state planning boards their political influence was considerably less than it had been during the Weimar Republic. The essentials of a market economy were thus preserved, and industrialists were greatly assisted. This was in marked contrast to the treatment of the workers, who lost virtually all their political and economic power. When the trade unions were destroyed they were not incorporated into the National Socialist Works Cells Organisation (NSBO) but into the German Labour Front (DAF), which was created in May 1933 and headed by a foul-mouthed drunkard, Robert Ley. Questions relating to wages and industrial disputes were handled by Trustees of Labour, who acted almost exclusively in the interests of the employers. This was the source of considerable conflict, because the NSBOs, as the SA, were centres of ‘left-wing’ Nazi activity. Their members voiced strident pseudo-socialist and revolutionary demands, complained of the rapacity of the capitalists, and at times even had the temerity to speak up on behalf of the workers. The DAF was also not entirely free from such elements, and many of its functionaries hoped that it would play a leading role in the Nazi state by influencing social and labour policies. In November 1933 the DAF was reduced to being a purely propagandistic organisation devoted, in the words of its ‘Appeal to All Productive Germans’, to ‘the education of all working Germans for the National Socialist state and for the National Socialist way of thinking’. To sugar the pill, a large travel company was formed under the aegis of the DAF to provide cheap holidays and leisure activities. This imitation of the Italian Fascist Dopo Lavoro was given the absurd name
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‘Strength Through Joy’ (Kraft durch Freude – KdF). The Association of German Industry expressed its heartfelt approval of these changes by promising to collaborate fully with the DAF. In January 1934 the Law for the Ordering of National Labour established the Führer principle in the workplace and destroyed the last vestiges of worker participation. This marked an end to the left-wing Nazis’ hopes for some form of partnership between capital and labour and for a radical modification of capitalism. The NSBOs now had virtually no influence, and did little except organise beer and skittles evenings for old party comrades. After the ‘Röhm Putsch’ in the summer of 1934 they were purged of ‘anti-capitalist’ activists and ceased to play anything other than a propaganda role, although Ley occasionally made use of some of the old activists in an attempt to enhance the importance of the DAF and to create a sense of community (Volksgemeinschaft ) and thus to emphasise his own significance as one of Hitler’s leading paladins. But the DAF had long since given up its attempts to represent the interests of the workers. The first important step towards controlling and even conscripting labour was taken in February 1935 with the introduction of workbooks. These enabled the authorities to direct workers into industries that were suffering from labour shortages now that massive unemployment no longer existed and the rearmament programme absorbed large numbers of workers. Freedom of the workplace was further eroded with the introduction of labour conscription in 1938/9. Although the Volksgemeinschaft was largely a sham, there can be no doubt that the Nazi state did restore a degree of social harmony. Unemployment, which had caused so much suffering and unrest in the final years of the Weimar Republic, was virtually ended by 1935. Although the workers had lost their fundamental rights and wages had been frozen at depression levels, at least everyone had a job. KdF, even though often a trifle short on the joy, was popular and offered holidays that previously had only been enjoyed by the middle classes. It also provided savings schemes designed to enable workers to buy a ‘people’s car’ (Volkswagen). The Volkswagen works was opened with great pomp and ceremony in 1938 and was run by the DAF, but not a single car was delivered to the unfortunates who had saved up for one. Even the burdens of this oppressive regime appeared to be shared equally by all social classes. Theoretically everyone had to serve in the compulsory Labour Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst – RAD) that was introduced in June 1935. There were new avenues opened up for social advancement through an emphasis on vocational training, and also within the swelling ranks of Nazi organisations. The DAF, for example, employed some 40,000 full-time
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workers. Nazi officials regarded themselves as forming a new class, drawn from all walks of life, and self-consciously different from the old elite. After 1936 there was a marked improvement in many workers’ living standards, which helped to reconcile them with the regime. Endless propaganda about the ‘ennobling’ effect of labour had some effect in giving the workers a new sense of self-worth, as did pathetic proclamations of the end of the class war and the creation of a new community based on uniquely German virtues rather than class distinctions. Most important of all, the people were reconciled to the regime because it was so strikingly successful. Once unemployment was solved there were a series of triumphs, which gave the Germans a feeling of strength and power. The military restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles were thrown off in 1935, and the Saar returned to Germany the same year. In 1936 the Rhineland was occupied. In 1938 Austria and the Sudentenland were incorporated into the Reich. Although the 99 per cent ‘yes’ votes in the plebiscite of 1936 cannot be taken as an accurate measure of public opinion, there can be no doubt that the regime was immensely popular and that Adolf Hitler was respected, revered and even loved by the vast majority of the people. Although Nazi support was strongest in the rural areas, there was considerable discontent with the government’s agricultural policies. At first the agricultural sector was delighted with the change of government, for the higher tariffs of foodstuffs and assistance for indebted farmers were very popular measures. When the government made its first moves towards agricultural self-sufficiency, as part of the policy of autarky, criticism became widespread. The Reich Food Estate (Reichsnährstand ), although some of its functions were decentralised, was a vast bureaucratic apparatus that, by fixing prices, production quotas and marketing boards, set about destroying the free market for agricultural products. Farmers found this state intervention in their affairs very irksome and complained about time-consuming paper work and insensitive officials. The much-publicised entailed farms (Erbhöfe), which were the Nazis’ special form of land reform, granted inalienable rights to farmers of impeccable racial provenance on medium-sized farms. This was frequently seen as a new form of serfdom, for the farmers could not sell their land, which had to remain within the family. Although these entailed farmers, who eventually made up one-third of all those with agricultural holdings, enjoyed certain advantages, they deeply resented their loss of freedom, and easy credit was not as freely available as had been promised. The great Junker estates were virtually unaffected by the Erbhof scheme. Attracted by industrial expansion and higher wages, large numbers of agricultural labourers began to leave the land to seek employment in the freer
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and more prosperous industrial sector. Between 1933 and 1938 some 800,000 people left the land, showing clearly that agriculture was lagging behind industry, and that the Nazi ideology of ‘blood and soil’ and the attempt to preserve the peasantry as the ‘life source of the Nordic race’, were having disastrous economic consequences. Robert Ley was sharply critical of Walter Darré, the minister of agriculture, suggesting that the Reichsnährstand was at least partly responsible for this flight from the land, and proposed that his DAF should have sole jurisdiction over agricultural workers. Enthusiasm for entailed farmers began to wane, and the relative failure of Nazi agricultural policy was acknowledged, giving rise to yet another power struggle within the Nazi elite, that between Ley and Darré. Hitler remained steadfastly committed to his vision of ‘blood and soil’, insisting that if it could not be realised within the existing boundaries of Germany it might be possible to create vast colonies in Eastern Europe. The fundamental drive for Lebensraum was thus further reinforced by unresolved political and economic difficulties, but this provided no answer to the fundamental problem that there was not enough German blood to till German soil, and the war was to show that the ‘people without space’ (Volk ohne Raum) was in fact a ‘space without people’. The more pragmatic and opportunistic policies adopted towards industry, with an emphasis on a ‘defence economy’, could not be reconciled with this ideologically motivated agricultural policy. As a result of the conflicting social and economic interests between the two sectors it was impossible to create the national community of which there was such seemingly endless talk. It was therefore hoped that a successful war of conquest would make it possible to overcome all these difficulties by imposing on the conquered territories a ‘New Order’ in which all these dreams would be realised. Radical Nazis had always insisted on the implementation of the sections of the party programme dealing with the destruction of the chain stores, co-operatives and impersonal, big-business enterprises. In the heady days immediately after Hitler became chancellor party activists terrorised Jewish businesses, boycotted the department stores and consumer co-operatives and secured far-reaching personnel and organisational changes in trade associations and chambers of commerce. These activities had a disastrous economic effect, and the National Socialist leadership accepted that the long-term goals of the party could not be achieved by rejecting modern business methods. When the Jewish-owned chain of department stores, Hertie, faced bankruptcy and the dismissal of 14,000 employees, Schacht pointed out that if all such stores were to vanish it would have a serious effect on employment figures. Hitler reluctantly accepted this argument, and the party was instructed to desist from any further attacks on the department stores. In the following years
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certain restrictions were placed on the department stores, such as the closing of restaurants and book departments, and additional taxes were imposed on them. In spite of these difficulties the department stores steadily increased their turnover, but were never able to reach the record levels of 1928; this was due more to a general reduction in consumption rather than a reduction of their share of total retail sales. Nothing was done to help small businessmen, even though they had been among the strongest of the party’s early supporters. The number of retail stores declined significantly and they were more than ever subject to the monopolistic practices of the manufacturers. The Reich Corporation of Handicraft, which like all similar organisations was soon completely under Nazi control, closed about 180,000 small concerns (about 10 per cent of the total) between 1936 and 1939 in the interests of increased efficiency. The ideological commitment to small business gave way to the prerogatives of economic efficiency, and those who felt cheated by this abandonment of party policy were able to give vent to their spleen by destroying Jewish businesses in 1938. The antiSemitic outrages of the unfortunately named ‘Night of Broken Glass’, in which 7,500 shops were looted and destroyed, was thus in part a surrogate for the failure to implement the party programme and a sop to the frustrated Radicals. The destruction of ‘Jewish capitalism’ was a substitute for an attack on those aspects of contemporary capitalism that the Nazi left had for so long wished to see modified or abolished. The 2 million members of the SA regarded themselves as the ‘watchdogs of the revolution’, and although they had no clear idea of what should be done they refused to submit to bureaucratic control, demanded the removal of the old elites from all positions of power and influence, and swore to continue the struggle for the creation of a new and specifically National Socialist Germany. These feelings were summed up in the call for a ‘second revolution’, which would realise the ambitions of the Nazi left. The SA had done much to help bring Hitler to power. Their devotion to Hitler was unquestioned, they had done much to destabilise the Weimar Republic by their street fighting and by terrorising their opponents. They were an impressive testament to the party’s strength and determination. When Hitler became chancellor their support was no longer needed and they rapidly became a liability. He had distanced himself from revolutionary Nazism and had secured the support of the traditional elites, who in turn were appalled by the excesses of the SA, both in word and deed. Ernst Röhm, the leader of the SA, hoped to create a National Socialist army in which the Reichswehr with its reactionary and old-fashioned officers would play a subordinate role. As he put it, in a singularly unattractive phrase:
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‘The grey rock must be drowned in the brown flood.’ This was all part of the rhetoric of the radical Nazis who wanted a National Socialist version of the people’s militia, along with the destruction of the chain stores and cooperatives, the abolition of all cartels and monopolies, and a drastic restructuring of banking and industrial corporations. The Reichswehr was appalled by such talk and Hitler went to great pains to reassure them that the army would be the ‘sole bearer of the nation’s arms’. Industrialists were similarly concerned about the activities of the SA, but Hitler calmed them down by telling a meeting of the Reich Governors in July 1933 that: ‘The ideas in our programme do not oblige us to act like idiots and overturn everything.’ By contrast, virtually nothing was done to appease the SA. Big business had survived the depression far better than smaller enterprises that were less able to make the economies of scale, and which found it far more difficult to get credit. Increasing levels of public investment caused interest rates to rise, which further hurt the small businessman, and postponed the day when ‘interest slavery’ would be abolished. The rise in prices and the wage freeze further exacerbated the situation. On his appointment as minister of economics Schmitt guaranteed that business would not have to put up with any ‘interference by the NSDAP’. Coming from the former directorgeneral of Germany’s largest insurance company, this infuriated the Nazi radicals, and the special commission on banking, which was established to appease them, had a similar effect. The commission was chaired by Schacht and was made up mainly of bankers and sympathetic academics. Although they did recommend a greater degree of state control over banking, this resulted in even greater profits for the banks. Similarly, the great estates of the Junkers, which were the object of particular criticism by the Radicals, were untouched by the law on entailed estates. Hitler was thus in a tricky situation. He saw the logic of Schacht’s dictum that the spinning wheel and folk dancing were very nice and pretty, but only big business could produce guns and submarines. On the other hand, he could not risk an open break with the SA and its supporters, and still had some residual sympathies for their views. For the first few months he did little but issue statements that the revolution was over, and evolution was the order of the day. Göring and Frick hinted at ‘concealed Bolshevik elements’ within the Nazi movement. Steps were taken to punish some of the SA and SS men who had committed criminal acts in their enthusiasm for the cause, and some of the ‘irregular’ concentration camps, into which the SA had herded their enemies in the early weeks of the Hitler government, were closed down. Hitler took the opportunity of an address to the general staff on the occasion of the anniversary of Schlieffen’s birthday on 28 February 1934 to
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assure the army that he supported them in their opposition to the SA and the radical Nazis. He told the generals that Nazi economic policies had been successful, but added that the boom would be over in eight years. Therefore living space would have to be found in the east. This would be achieved by a lightning campaign in the west, followed by a swift strike eastwards. For such a campaign a highly professional army was needed, and Röhm’s militia was clearly unsuitable for anything other than providing pre- and post-military training, and for political indoctrination. Hitler now felt that he had to move quickly against the SA because it was obvious that Hindenburg did not have long to live and he was determined to combine the offices of chancellor and president. The conservatives and nationalists were still critical of many aspects of the new regime, and there was much talk of restoring the monarchy when Hindenburg died, so as to have some check on National Socialist excesses. On 17 June 1934 Papen gave a speech at Marburg University, which had been written for him by Edgar Jung, an ultra-conservative Calvinist lawyer, whose hazy notions of ‘revolutionary conservatism’ were strongly influenced by the muddle-headed corporatist speculations of Othmar Spann. The speech was a forceful expression of the conservative opposition to Hitler. Men who had colluded with the Nazis in the vain belief that they could be tamed now realised that they had made a serious error of judgement and that Hitler had to be removed. It is doubtful whether Papen grasped the full implications of the speech that Jung had prepared for him, for it came as a bombshell. It was an outspoken attack on the regime’s radicalism, violence and lawlessness. A sharp distinction was made between conservative authoritarianism and the ‘unnatural totalitarian aspirations of National Socialism’. Dynamism and movement could achieve nothing but chaos, and the ‘permanent revolution from below’ had to be brought to an end. A firm structure was needed in which the rule of law was respected and state authority unchallenged. Goebbels promptly banned the publication of this speech, and no mention was made of it on the state radio. Jung was arrested and shortly after murdered along with a number of leading figures in this early conservative resistance to Hitler’s dictatorship. Jung’s spiritus rector, Othmar Spann, as an Austrian was temporarily spared. After the Anschluss he was brutally mishandled and left virtually blind. Hitler hastened to visit Hindenburg on his estate at Neudeck in an effort at damage control, but realised that the time had come to take more drastic action. Göring, Himmler and Blomberg decided that the SS should be set loose on the SA leadership, the weapons and logistical support to be supplied by the Reichswehr. Hitler then called a meeting of senior SA commanders at
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Bad Wiessee, where Röhm was taking the waters. In the early morning of 30 June Hitler arrived at Röhm’s hotel in a state of great agitation, riding crop in hand, accompanied by Goebbels and SA-Obergruppenführer (General) Viktor Lutze, who was to take over command of the SA, along with an SS detachment. Röhm and his associates were arrested, taken first to the prison at Stadelheim and then transferred to Dachau, where they were executed that evening by the SS. Röhm was killed on the following day, once Hitler had been finally persuaded to agree to his execution. This ‘Röhm Putsch’ or ‘Night of the Long Knives’ was not confined to the SA. A number of old scores were settled. Schleicher, his wife and his adjutant were gunned down in his own home. The former Bavarian minister president von Kahr was assassinated, as was the leader of a prominent Catholic layman’s group. Gregor Strasser was dragged off to the cellars of the Gestapo headquarters in the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin where he was shot. A music critic by the name of Dr Wilhelm Schmidt was also murdered, having had the misfortune to be confused with the SA leader Ludwig Schmitt. There were a total of 85 known victims on 30 June, but the real figure is almost certainly considerably higher. The coup against Röhm was a triumphant success. Hitler made much of the treachery of a friend who was a member of the tiny circle who addressed him with the familiar du, and released prurient details of his vigorous homosexuality. Respectable Germans were appalled as the lurid and partly fabricated story unfolded. The army, even though two distinguished generals had been brutally murdered, was delighted. Reichswehr Minister von Blomberg, one of the relatively few senior officers to be an active Nazi, extolled the Führer’s ‘soldierly determination and exemplary courage’ in destroying these ‘traitors and mutineers’, and issued an order that no officer should attend the funeral of their murdered brothers-in-arms. Papen congratulated Hitler, but was rewarded by being dismissed from his post as vice-chancellor, and was sent on a diplomatic mission to Vienna. Germany’s leading constitutional lawyer, Carl Schmitt, argued that in a state of emergency the ‘true leader’ could use virtually limitless power to destroy the enemies of the nation. The will of the Führer was thus the supreme law. After this National Socialist Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre the SA dwindled into insignificance. Röhm’s successor, Victor Lutze, was a pliable nonentity and the once powerful organisation became little more than a sporting and social club. In the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ the SA was unleashed once again in a carefully planned pogrom, and their vestigial radicalism found an outlet in wilfully destroying property and terrorising helpless people.
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The real winners on 30 June 1934 were not the conservative forces but the SS. This organisation had been founded in 1925 as Hitler’s bodyguard. From the outset it was distinct from the other paramilitary organisations of the time in that it saw itself as a sort of party police. In 1931 Himmler’s closest associate, the unrelentingly malevolent 25-year old Reinhard Heydrich, a racial fanatic who had recently been dismissed from the navy for dishonourable conduct, founded the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst – SD), which served as a Nazi secret police force. When Hitler became chancellor, Himmler rapidly gained control over the secret police forces of all the German states, with the exception of the Prussian Gestapo, which was controlled by Göring in his capacity as Reich commissar for Prussia. Göring was initially reluctant to hand over the Gestapo to Himmler, but finally gave way when Himmler agreed formally to serve under him in Prussia. Thus in 1934 all the secret police forces were amalgamated into a single Gestapo that was given the task of ‘investigating and countering all activities within the entire territory of the state which endanger the state’. Its activities could not be questioned in the courts, and the Gestapo was thus a law unto itself under the command of Heinrich Himmler. In January 1936 Himmler was made chief of all the police forces in Germany and the police, which had been under the control of the individual states, was now placed under a single Reich authority. Himmler was given the title of Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police, and henceforth appears in the exotic alphabet soup of the Third Reich as RFSSuChdDtPol. As a policeman Himmler was formally subordinate to Frick in the Ministry of the Interior, but in practice he was fully independent, in spite of the bitter rivalry between the two men. He did not even see fit to have an office in the interior ministry. Himmler divided the police into two main sections: the Order Police (Ordnungspolizei ) under Kurt Daluege, which was responsible for more conventional police activities, and the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei – Sipo) under Heydrich that included the Gestapo and the detective branch (Kriminalpolizei – Kripo). Shortly after the beginning of the war Heydrich amalgamated the Security Police with the SD to form the Head Office for State Security (Reichssicherheitshauptamt – RSHA). The definition of ‘state security’ was extremely broad, and covered such matters as ‘race research’, homosexuality and abortion. The leadership of the RSHA were not the misfits, rowdies, fellow-travellers and ‘ordinary men’ that typified the Nazi movement; they were highly intelligent and university-educated young men who made of their ghastly ideological vision a horrific reality. They were the brains behind terror and genocide.
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As a gesture of his gratitude for the part they had played on 30 June 1934, Hitler constituted the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler as a regiment independent from the Reichswehr. Two further regiments were formed shortly afterwards. Hitler permitted further expansion of these SS military units in August 1938. The army thus found that they had got rid of one rival only to find themselves faced with another. There was fierce rivalry between the army and the SS, the army resisting every move to increase the size of the military units of the SS. The SS denounced the army as reactionary and lukewarm in its National Socialism, hinting that it was planning a putsch. By the end of 1938 there were only about 20,000 men in the military and Death’s Head units (Totenkopfverbände), but during the war the Waffen-SS was to become a vast military organisation. The police functions and the military units were two of the main pillars of Himmler’s SS empire. A third was provided by the Death’s Head units who manned the concentration camps. The SS had considerable experience in running such institutions, for they had set up Dachau in Bavaria as a model camp. Here the regime’s victims were systematically bullied, tortured and murdered in a secluded camp, without offending the sensitive German public who found the open violence of the SA, to which they had been eyewitnesses, somewhat disturbing. At the end of June 1933 Himmler appointed SS-Oberführer (Brigadier) Theodor Eicke commandant. He was a sadistic brute who had recently been released from a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. He immediately began to organise the SS Death’s Head units and was soon to be promoted inspector-general of the concentration camps, with his Berlin office in the Gestapo headquarters in the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. After 30 June 1934 the SA lost control over their concentration camps, which were henceforth administered by the SS, even though the SS was still formally subordinate to the SA. The chaotic and random brutality of the SA was now replaced by the systematic and cold-blooded methods of the SS. At the beginning of the war there were about 25,000 prisoners left in German concentration camps, but the Death’s Head units were ready for the great task that lay ahead of them to purify Europe politically and racially. Millions were to die in this dreadful enterprise, in which the combination of organisational complexity, unbridled brutality and ideological insanity, which was so characteristic of the SS, reached its horrible climax. The firm foundations of the SS state were laid in the years before the war, but it was not until the war began that it became a state within a state and National Socialism’s terrible apogee. Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. Hitler promptly combined the offices of chancellor and president and proclaimed himself ‘Führer and Chancellor of the Reich’. On the same day the Reichswehr was obliged to
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make an oath of allegiance to Hitler personally, rather than to the country or the constitution. Ministers were also required to swear a similar oath of loyalty and obedience to Hitler. Leading jurists proclaimed the end of a state based on the articulation of ‘many wills’ and its replacement by the single will of the Führer. This ‘Führer state’, in which Hitler’s will was the supreme law, resulted in considerable confusion, for it was often difficult to find out exactly what he wanted. The cabinet seldom met, and many ministers found it virtually impossible to get access to Hitler, especially during the summer when he was at Berchtesgaden. He not infrequently contradicted himself, ministers fought with one another during his long absences, and the government divided into those ministers who had ready access to the Führer and those who were excluded from the magic circle. Hitler tended to ignore the routine of government, rarely put anything down on paper and left his ministers alone to carry on the mundane business of government. Ministerial bureaucracies initiated laws without the cabinet or the Führer being involved. Hitler played a less direct role in government in the ‘Führer state’ than he had done before, and authority was delegated to a much greater extent. There was an even greater degree of confusion over who was subordinate to whom, resulting in a perpetual struggle for power. As early as June 1934 a senior civil servant wrote to Frick: Legally the state governors are subordinate to you as minister of the interior. Adolf Hitler is the state governor of Prussia. He has delegated his authority to Göring. You are also Prussian minister of the interior. As Reich minister of the interior, Adolf Hitler and the Prussian minister president are legally subordinate to you. Since you are the same person as the Prussian minister president you are subordinate to yourself as Prussian minister president and as Reich minister of the interior. I am not a legal scholar, but I am sure that such a situation has never happened before.
In these changes after Hindenburg’s death the authoritarian aspects were of greater significance than the ideological component. The Radicals in the SA and the NSBOs had been brutally destroyed or shunted aside. The commissioners who had imposed the party’s will on the states had been given alternative employment, and even the local party bosses, the Gauleiter, had far less authority as power was centralised and the federal structure demolished. So many of the party offices were hopelessly amateur and simply could not be entrusted with the affairs of state. Thus the foreign office professionals continued in their traditional role, while such party institutions as the Foreign Organisation of the NSDAP under Bohle, the Ribbentrop Bureau, Rosenberg’s quirky Foreign Policy Office and Göring’s own Research Bureau, along with
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The ‘racial community’: the Party Rally for Unity and Strength, 1934
a host of similar smaller research groups and policy centres, squabbled with each other and unsuccessfully attempted to influence the course of Germany’s foreign policy according to National Socialist principles. The Nazi party now played a totally subordinate role, and only some outstanding figures, such as Himmler, who owed their careers to the party, had any real authority.
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The exact relationships between the party and the state, between the Reich and the individual states, between the states and the communes, and between the absolutism of the Führer and the traditional organs of government were never clarified. A project of ‘Reich reform’ was mooted, but Hitler showed no interest in it and it was soon dropped. Frick proposed that the process of the promulgation of laws should be examined, but Hitler preferred to continue using emergency decrees, and showed a similar lack of enthusiasm for proposals to codify criminal and labour law. This emphasis of the authoritarian rather than the ideological aspects of the regime between 1934 and 1938 did not mean that the long-term goals of National Socialism had been abandoned. The Catholic Church complained about constant breaches of the Concordat, particularly the attacks on Catholic schools after 1935. Nazi policies on compulsory sterilisation, abortion and on the treatment of the handicapped met with strong opposition from the Church. In March 1937 the Pope issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge in which he spoke of the sufferings of the Church in Germany and the ‘battle of annihilation’ that was being waged against it. In the Evangelical Church the ‘German Christians’ remained utterly loyal to the regime, but the criticisms of the ‘Confessing Church’ were courageously outspoken. At the Dahlem synod in October 1934 they spoke of the ‘ecclesiastical emergency right’ to speak up against the totalitarian regime. The following year the Confessing Christians condemned Nazi philosophy as anti-Christian and false, suggesting that limits be placed on a Christian’s obligations to obey the state. The appointment of an old Nazi, Hans Kerrl, as Reich minister for church affairs did nothing to improve the situation. Part of the Confessing Church agreed to cooperate with some of the committees he established to examine the problems facing the churches, but most refused to have anything to do with the regime. In 1937 some 800 ministers of the Confessing Church were arrested. Had the Nazi regime survived it would undoubtedly have stepped up its attack on the churches, but with the outbreak of war it was decided to be a little more tolerant of them, in order to allow a nation at war the solace of religion and to avoid anything that might endanger national unity. In his first few weeks as chancellor it seemed almost as if Hitler had forgotten that anti-Semitism was a central doctrine of National Socialism. At this time his energies were directed largely against the left-wing parties, which as part of the ‘Jewish-Bolshevik world conspiracy’ were admittedly doubly sinister. Curiously enough his coalition partners in the DNVP were more enthusiastically völkisch in their anti-Semitism. It was they who brought in legislation that stopped the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe, a group
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that was particularly abhorred because of their orthodoxy and their poverty. It was not until after the Enabling Act that the Nazis really went into action against the Jewish community. Goebbels and the odious Gauleiter of Nuremberg, Julius Streicher, formed a ‘Central Committee’ to organise a boycott of all Jewish businesses in Germany. Most Germans treated the whole incident with thoughtless indifference, and the more traditional anti-Semites continued to shop at Jewish stores when prices seemed attractive. The regime had to call off the boycott after three days. Public reaction had not been nearly as positive as they had hoped, and it caused uproar abroad, particularly in the United States. Discrimination against Jews in the civil service and the professions and the ‘arianisation’ of important publishing houses such as Mosse and Ullstein were the most notable examples of the government’s anti-Semitic policies up until the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. These laws made marriages and sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jews criminal offences. Jews were forbidden to employ female non-Jews as domestic servants. Only those German citizens who had ‘German or similar blood’ could enjoy full civil rights. The thorny question of the definition of who was a Jew was still left open. After lengthy debates it was decided that a Jew was someone who had ‘three grandparents who were racially full-Jews’, a practising Jew with only two Jewish grandparents, or someone with two Jewish grandparents who was married to a Jew. Those who only had two Jewish grandparents were dubbed ‘Jewish half-breeds’ but for the time being still retained their civil rights. Also in 1935 the ‘Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People’ made it impossible for people with hereditary diseases to marry. There was not a little opposition to the Nuremberg Laws within the civil service, largely because the absurd ‘racial’ classification system of ‘Arians’, ‘Full Jews’ and ‘Miscegens’ grades 1 and 2, which was based on religious affiliation over three generations, seemed ludicrously vague. Until the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ in November 1938 about 170,000 German Jews emigrated. The remaining 375,000 preferred to stay, reassured by Hitler that the Nuremberg Laws were the final piece of legislation that would be passed on the ‘Jewish question’. Henceforth Jews in Germany were without rights, unable to practise their professions and trades, stripped of much of their property, subjected to special taxes and forbidden to enter most public places. Immediately after the pogrom about 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. The Jewish self-help organisation (Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland ), which had been founded by Leo Baeck, was brought under direct state control and headed by one of the most murderous of anti-Semites, Reinhard Heydrich. Its basic function was now to look after the funds from the emigration tax, which was imposed on wealthy Jews who wished to leave
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the country. Those who could afford to do so took advantage of this scheme, so that by the time the war began there were about 180,000 Jews left in Germany. The vast majority of the 6 million victims of the ‘Final Solution’ were thus foreign Jews. In August 1936 the Four Year Plan was announced. More than ever before economic interests were subordinated to preparations for war. The aim was now to achieve autarky by building up stocks of important raw materials and by the synthetic production of others. This placed a further strain on foreign exchange reserves, and a furious export drive to South America and the Balkans was launched in an attempt to overcome this problem. The resulting trade rivalry with the United States, Britain and even with Italy greatly increased international tension. Although big business still remained relatively autonomous and profits were still most satisfactory, it was now subjected more than ever to state control and to the imperatives of preparation for war. This caused further dislocations, and in November 1937 Schacht resigned as minister of economics, although he remained as the president of the Reichsbank until September 1939. Hermann Göring, as Plenipotentiary for the Four Year Plan, became de facto minister of economics, although Walther Funk had been appointed as Schacht’s replacement. Göring was torn between his enthusiasm for Hitler’s rearmament policy and the sober advice of his more conventional experts who were in agreement with Schacht that economic considerations should come first. Thus he harangued industrialists in December 1936 that political needs were paramount and that a victorious war would pay for the entire rearmament programme. Yet at other times he appeared to be a moderating influence on Hitler, and to be in favour of a great power policy that would not involve war, or fantastic schemes for a New Order. Hitler had little sympathy for the belief that lengthy preparations for war were necessary, and wished to maintain levels of civilian consumption in order to bolster his already immense popularity and prestige. This attempt to combine a massive rearmament programme with the maintenance of satisfactory levels of consumption necessitated planning a series of short, limited wars and avoiding armament in depth for a protracted war of attrition. But even so the economic crisis persisted, and there was an increasing shortage of manpower. Economic planners began to look at Austria and Czechoslovakia as reservoirs that could be tapped to overcome deficiencies in the domestic market, thus lending expert support to Hitler’s ideologically inspired desire for territorial expansion. These economic tensions and contradictions gave rise to signs of unrest among the workers and rural population. Goebbels’ propaganda machine
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churned out interminable material on the need for Germany to improve its defensive capability, but workers in the armaments factories refused to work overtime and there was an unusual degree of absenteeism. The extent to which this was a typical consequence of the effects of full employment in an industrial society, or whether it was a specific protest against National Socialist policies is certainly open to debate, but although the situation in 1939 was hardly one of crisis, considerations of these growing social tensions may well have contributed towards the decision to go to war in September. Schacht, as president of the Reichsbank, complained bitterly about the unbridled spending of public money, and pointed out that the deficit had risen from 12.9 billion marks in 1933 to 31.5 billion in 1938. The printing press was once again used to finance the ever-increasing expenditures, but the resulting inflation convinced many that the country faced a choice between war and bankruptcy. The attempt to rearm in defiance of economic reason threatened to undermine the much-trumpeted ‘Community of the People’, and a regime, which depended on success to keep it going, was threatened with failure unless it dared to leap into the unknown of war. It was hoped that indoctrination would overcome some of these difficulties. Goebbels made skilful use of the radio, which was already under state control, to get vast audiences for important speeches by party leaders. ‘People’s radios’, the VE 301s (Volksempfänger followed by 30/1, the date of Hitler’s accession to power) were introduced in August 1933. In that year only 25 per cent of households had radio sets, but by 1939 it had increased to 70 per cent. It was much more difficult to achieve a monopoly control over Germany’s 3,400 daily newspapers. There was a party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, and a small newspaper was produced in each Gau, but these local newspapers were of a very poor quality. The sizeable Communist and Social Democratic press was confiscated in 1933. In the following years the Nazi press chief, Max Amann, took over a large number of newspapers, so that by 1939 twothirds of the daily newspapers were controlled by the party. The liberal Frankfurter Zeitung was the only newspaper of note that was untouched, partly because it enjoyed a considerable reputation abroad, and partly because IG Farben was the majority shareholder; but it too was absorbed just before the outbreak of war. As was typical of the Third Reich, there were three bodies responsible for the press and there was frequent friction between them. Goebbels as propaganda minister claimed responsibility for the content of the German press and had a considerable say in personnel questions. Max Amann directly controlled the press and was responsible for the business side, and although he
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was not particularly concerned with the content of his newspapers there were some conflicts between him and Goebbels. The propaganda minister’s greatest rival, however, was not Amann but the ‘Press Chief of the Reich Government’, Otto Dietrich, who acted as spokesman for the government and who was part of Hitler’s immediate entourage. The minister of propaganda saw his press conferences, which amounted to little more than a series of instructions to the press on what to print, as an encroachment on his prerogatives. A tremendous effort was made to indoctrinate German youth with National Socialist ideas. The Hitler Youth (HJ), which was established in 1933, became compulsory by 1936. The equivalent for girls was the League of German Girls (BdM). Compulsory labour in the RAD (Reich Labour Service), which later also included girls, became increasingly a propaganda institution, for unemployment had long since been overcome. All these institutions were designed to break down class and educational differences, and to create a sense of common purpose based on ideological and racial purity. The strongly anti-intellectual bias of this enterprise can most clearly be seen in the special Nazi schools (Ordensburgen) and the Adolf Hitler Schools with their emphasis on unquestioning obedience and blind faith in the cause. These institutions did much to obscure the enduring class divisions within German society. There were opportunities within the vast state apparatus for those who had largely been excluded in the Wilhelmine Empire, and even under Weimar. The landed aristocracy was not quite as powerful as it had been, but it was still a privileged elite. Small inefficient firms were closed down, but big business, for all the restrictions and controls placed upon it, was fundamentally untouched. If there was a ‘social revolution’ in Germany it came with the total defeat of 1945, not because of the efforts of National Socialism. Although fundamentally in agreement with the aims of the Nazi regime, the army tried to preserve a degree of independence. The officer corps was unsympathetic to the attempt by the Nazis to have an absolute monopoly over the ideological training of German youth. Relations between the army and the SS were becoming increasingly strained. The SS felt that the officer corps was stuffy, conservative, snobbish and reactionary. There was also some concern in the upper echelons of the army that Hitler was prepared to risk war before the country was adequately prepared. Himmler, Heydrich and Göring, all of whom had their reasons for seeking revenge, mounted an attack on the army leadership. Göring resented the army for opposing the expansion of the Luftwaffe and nursed an ambition to become commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Himmler and Heydrich were determined to increase the armed units of the SS and to challenge the
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