bound Britain, France, Germany and Italy, in no
more than platitudes of goodwill, to consult with
each other within the framework of the League.
In Germany, meanwhile, a National Defence
Council had been secretly set up in April 1933 to
coordinate military planning. It would take time
to build up the necessary infrastructure – to set
up and equip factories to manufacture large quan-
tities of tanks, planes and the weapons of mech-
anised warfare. The lack of swift early progress
was an inherent problem of complex modern
rearmament, as Britain was to discover to its cost
later on. Financial responsibility for providing the
regime with all the credit it needed belonged
to Hjalmar Schacht, who was appointed head of
the Reichsbank by Hitler when the incumbent
showed reluctance to abandon orthodox finan-
cial practice. Hitler in February 1933 secretly
explained to the army generals and to the Nazi
elite that the solution to Germany’s problems
could be found only in the conquest of territory
in the east. It is clear that Hitler did not expect
France simply to stand by and allow Germany to
aggrandise its power in the east. ‘I will grind
France to powder’, he told the visiting prime
minister of Hungary in June 1933. But until a
superior German military strength could be built
up, Hitler explained to his henchmen, he would
have to talk the language of peace.
Deeds were more convincing than words. In
October 1933, in a deliberately aimed blow at the
League of Nations, Germany withdrew from the
disarmament conference at Geneva and from the
League of Nations as well. Hitler then sought
approval by a plebiscite and claimed in November
that 95 per cent of the German people had
expressed their approval in the ballot box. While
he exaggerated the manipulated vote, he did
secure overwhelming approval, the people were
elated by Hitler’s handling of this aspect of the
Versailles Diktat – Germany would no longer be
pushed around. What followed? An outburst of
anger by the other powers? Talk of sanctions? The
British government decided Germany should be
conciliated and coaxed back to Geneva, and put
pressure on the French to make concessions.
Hitler’s priorities in 1933 and 1934 were
clear: first rearmament and conscription, then a
Nazi takeover in Austria and the return of the
Saar, and at home the consolidation of power.
Although Hitler’s next diplomatic move startled
Europe it was obvious Realpolitik. He wished to
weaken the two-front threat posed by the alliance
between Poland and France. And so in January
1934 he concluded a non-aggression pact with
Poland, thereby renouncing German claims to
Danzig and to the Polish corridor, the strip of
territory separating East Prussia from the rest
of Germany. It was no more than a temporary
expedient. It shows how little faith the Poles
placed in the French alliance. In April 1934 the
French broke off further disarmament discussions
with Germany. French political weakness at home
turned this apparently tough stand into an empty
gesture. French ministers were under no illusions
about Hitler’s intentions, but a preventive war
was again rejected. All that was left was diplo-
macy; but the mood was profoundly pessimistic,
and although France would seek closer ties with
Britain, little headway was made until 1936.
The foreign minister, Louis Barthou, made a
determined effort for some months in 1934 to
revive France’s Eastern and Danubian alliances
and alignments of the 1920s and to couple this
pressure on Germany with the offer to bind
Germany to an ‘Eastern Locarno’, whereby the
Soviet Union, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
the Baltic states and Finland would all guarantee
each others’ territories and promise to assist one
another. This pact was to be linked to the League
of Nations. No one can deny that Barthou was a
man of real energy, but the idea of an ‘Eastern
Locarno’ was pure moonshine. Hitler had rather
cleverly pre-empted Poland’s possible involve-
ment. Poland preferred to maintain its own non-
aggression treaty with Russia and with Germany
and to retain a free hand. Hitler would not agree
either. Although he did not feel bound by treaties,
he preferred, for the sake of public feeling at home
and in order not to antagonise Germany’s neigh-
bours prematurely, to sign no unnecessary treaties
which he would have to break later on.
More promising was France’s rapprochements
in 1934 with Russia and with Italy, which were
to bear fruit in 1935. Barthou also sought to draw
closer to Yugoslavia. His diplomacy was tragically
1
THE CRUMBLING PEACE, 1933–6 207
