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Foreign Policy

Germany Table of Contents

Once his regime was consolidated, Hitler took little interest in domestic policy, his sole
concern being that Germany become sufficiently strong to realize his long-term
geopolitical goal of creating a German empire that would dominate western Europe and
extend deep into Russia. In a first step toward this goal, he made a de facto revision to the
Treaty of Versailles by ceasing to heed its restrictions on German rearmament. Soon after
becoming chancellor, Hitler ordered that rearmament, secretly under way since the early
1920s, be stepped up. Later in 1933, he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations to
reduce possible foreign control over Germany. In 1935 he announced that Germany had
begun rearmament, would greatly increase the size of its army, and had established an air
force. Italy, France, and Britain protested these actions but did nothing further, and Hitler
soon signed an agreement with Britain permitting Germany to maintain a navy one-third
the size of the British fleet. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, in violation of
various treaties. There was no foreign opposition.

In 1936 Germany began closer relations with fascist Italy, a pariah state because of its
invasion of Ethiopia the year before. The two antidemocratic states joined together to
assist General Francisco Franco in overthrowing Spain's republican government during the
Spanish Civil War (1936-39). In November 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Berlin-
Rome Axis. That same year, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact,
the three signatories pledging to defend each other against the Soviet Union and
international communism.

It was also in 1936 that Hitler informed the regime's top officials that Germany must be
ready for war by 1940. In response, the Four-Year Plan was established. Developed under
the direction of Hermann Goering, it set forth production quotas and market guidelines.
Efforts to regiment the economy were not without conflict. Some of the economic elite
desired that Germany be integrated into the world's economy. Others advocated autarchy,
that is, firmly basing the German economy in Central Europe and securing its raw
materials through barter agreements.

In the end, no clear decision on the management of the German economy was made. Large
weapons contracts with industrial firms soon had the economy running at top speed, and
full employment was reached by 1937. Wages did not increase much for ordinary workers,
but job security after years of economic depression was much appreciated. The
rearmament program was not placed on a sound financial footing, however. Taxes were
not increased to pay for it because the regime feared that this would dissatisfy workers.
Instead, the regime tapped the country's foreign reserves, which were largely exhausted by
1939. The regime also shunned a rigorous organization of rearmament because it feared
the social tensions this might engender. The production of consumer goods was not
curtailed either, again based on the belief that the morale of the population had to remain
high if Germany were to become strong. In addition, because Hitler expected that the wars
waged in pursuit of his foreign policy goals would be short, he judged great supplies of
weapons to be unnecessary. Thus, when war began in September 1939 with the invasion of
Poland, Germany had a broad and impressive range of weapons, but not much in the way
of replacements. As in World War I, the regime expected that the defeated would pay for
Germany's expansion.

Through 1937 Hitler's foreign policy had the approval of traditional conservatives.
However, because many of them were skeptical about his long-range goals, Hitler replaced
a number of high military officers and diplomats with more pliable subordinates. In March
1938, the German army was permitted to occupy Austria by that country's browbeaten
political leadership. The annexation (Anschluss) of Austria was welcomed by most
Austrians, who wished to become part of a greater Germany, something forbidden by the
Treaty of Versailles. In September 1938, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain
consented to Hitler's desire to take possession of the Sudetenland, an area in
Czechoslovakia bordering Germany that was inhabited by about 3 million Germans. In
March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech-populated western provinces of Bohemia and
Moravia, and Slovakia was made a German puppet state.

Immediately after the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, Britain and France
finally became convinced of Hitler's expansionist objectives and announced their intention
to defend the sovereignty of Poland. Because Hitler had concluded that he could not hope
for British neutrality in the coming war, he formed a formal military alliance with Italy--
the Pact of Steel. In August he signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, thus
apparently freeing Germany from repeating the two-front war it had fought in World War
I.

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