The Shaping of the Nazi State (RLE Nazi Germany & Holocaust)

Peter D. Stachura

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317621935
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Representing the scholarship of historians who have largely based their findings on previously unpublished material, this volume (originally published in 1978) provides a critical and provocative assessment of many established opinions on significant themes related to the dramatic rise and development of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Movement. The volume discusses among other things:

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• The development of Hitler's foreign policy ideas

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• The contributions of Gottfried Feder and Gregor Strasser to the successful growth of the Nazi party

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• The social composition of the Stormtroopers

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• The bureaucratic structure of the Third Reich

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• The character and scope of resistance within Germany to the regime

1	THE EVOLUTION OF HITLER’S IDEAS ON FOREIGN POLICY 1919–1925
	Geoffrey Stoakes

Over the past few years the foreign policy ideas formulated by Adolf Hitler in the Kampfzeit have been subjected to intensive scrutiny. It is now clear that Hitler’s ideas on foreign affairs, far from being a conglomeration of illogical ideological prejudice and crude predictions based on his reading of political history, actually formed part of a coherent and all-embracing Weltanschauung.¹ Particular aspects have been examined in exhaustive detail: Nazi attitudes to the acquisition of colonies;² the development of the navy;³ the problem of Hitler’s world ambitions;⁴ and the origins of the ‘alliance system’ outlined in Mein Kampf.⁵

The aim of this essay is to re-examine current interpretations of the origins of Hitler’s foreign policy with particular reference to the position of Russia and England in the Nazi foreign policy programme. For it seems to this writer that there is still a marked tendency amongst many historians to concentrate unduly on the figure of Adolf Hitler and to overlook the ideas of other party members who may well have made significant contributions to the formulation of foreign policy ideas.⁶ The relative neglect of the writings of Alfred Rosenberg, probably Hitler’s earliest adviser on foreign affairs, is a case in point; these writings are studied, if at all, only to illustrate his differences with Hitler.⁷ For example, it is generally assumed that Rosenberg’s ideas were characterised by ideological rigidity and Hitler’s by the flexibility of the Realpolitiker. This is an oversimplification of the position resting on a study of their respective careers only after 1933 and ignoring their relationship in the 1920s. Only if Hitler’s thought processes are studied within the context of the Nazi party as a whole is it possible to arrive at valid conclusions about the relative importance of Hitler’s personal contribution to the development of Nazi ideology.⁸ So far this has not been attempted.

A second aim of this essay is to reassess the relative importance of ideological factors and personal influences in the fashioning of the party’s foreign policy. For it is curious how reluctant historians are to pay serious attention to ideological factors. Since Jäckel’s brilliant synthesis appeared, everyone pays lip service to the view that a combination of ideological considerations and Realpolitik forged Hitler’s outlook. But with the exception of Günther Schubert⁹ no historian has seriously considered the possibility that ideological factors actually determined (and not merely reinforced) Hitler’s ‘alliance system’.

Klaus Hildebrand in his study of the foreign policy of the Third Reich takes 1924 as a starting-point because ‘Hitler’s remarks on foreign policy between the years 1919–23 seem far more conventional and indeed resemble those indiscriminate pan-world aspirations of the Wilhelmine policies of the conservatives in Germany and within the Nazi party which he attacked so strongly in Mein Kampf.’¹⁰ On the contrary, in the years 1919–23 the Nazis were in fact developing – behind a carefully nurtured facade of conventionality – many of the ideas, which appear so novel in Hitler’s autobiography. This is particularly true of Hitler’s plans for England and Russia. If applied only to the years 1919–20, Hildebrand’s judgement would have far more validity. For it is perfectly true that in the first year of his membership of the German Workers’ Party, Hitler’s speeches on foreign affairs were mainly concerned with vitriolic attacks on the Versailles settlement, and his view of the international powers was coloured by his unfailing demand for the revision of this treaty. England was castigated along with America and France as one of Germany’s ‘absolute enemies’.¹¹ Hitler’s hostility towards England was based on the belief that she had been responsible for the seizure of Germany’s colonies, which, by robbing her of supplies of raw materials, had destroyed her competitiveness in world markets.¹² Hitler was more sympathetic towards Russia. He described her as one of those states which ‘became our enemies because of their unfortunate situations or because of circumstances.’¹³ According to Hitler, Russia and Germany had no conflicting interests whilst Russia followed ‘an asiatic policy of conquest’; in fact, before the war only ‘the international Jewish press concern’ had prevented an alliance between the two nations.¹⁴

As this last comment suggests, during the course of 1920 Hitler began to apply his deep-rooted anti-semitic prejudices to foreign affairs (he had already blamed Germany’s internal disorder on the Jews in 1919). The development of this international dimension to Hitler’s anti-semitism has been attributed to the publication in January 1920 of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the famous tract which purported to reveal the existence of a Jewish world conspiracy to achieve global domination. It has been suggested that Hitler read the ‘Protocols’ between February and May 1920 and from that time on applied anti-semitic observations to his foreign policy speeches.¹⁵ This seems to be the likeliest explanation since Hitler was also being tutored in the machinations of the ‘conspiracy’ by Alfred Rosenberg, who quickly became the acknowledged party expert on Russian affairs and the conspiracy (and possibly also by Dietrich Eckart). In 1919 Rosenberg observed that the collapse of Russia into Bolshevism in 1917 completed the first stage of the Jewish conspiratorial plan, since Russian nationalism had been subverted and Russia was in the hands of several ‘Jewish-Bolshevik’ leaders; Germany would be next to suffer destruction by the Jews.¹⁶ Whoever was responsible for revealing to Hitler the relevance of the conspiracy to the study of foreign affairs, the important point is that its impact on Hitler’s assessment of Russia was immediate. The hitherto friendly attitude towards Russia was tempered by an aversion to her present rulers: ‘an alliance between Russia and Germany’, he pointed out, ‘can only come into being when Jewry is deposed.’¹⁷

Were Hitler’s reservations about a Russian alliance perhaps caused by considerations of Machtpolitik alone? Certainly Hitler quoted the physical weakness of Russia after the ravages of the civil war which raged from 1917–20 as a contributory factor.¹⁸ Also important was the fact that Russia under Bolshevik leadership had adopted a policy of imperialist development. ‘Bolshevism’, Hitler declared, ‘is only a cloak for the construction of a great Russian empire.’¹⁹ Whether these political considerations or the ideological insights carried more weight with Hitler at this stage is frankly uncertain; there is certainly no evidence to justify the confident conclusion that ‘the danger lay for Hitler not in Lenin’s proposal to bring to fruition a world-wide revolution emanating from Germany, but in the strategic striving of the Soviet Union for an increase in her territory.’²⁰ If strategic factors really determined Hitler’s foreign policy, why is there no evidence of Hitler’s hostility towards the leaders of Bolshevik Russia before 1920? There was, after all, abundant evidence of Russia’s territorial aggrandisement at this time – the Red Army’s advance into the Baltic States in 1918–19 gave early warning of Russia’s aggressive designs on Eastern Europe. Why, then, did Hitler only begin to express reservations about a Russian alliance in 1920? The explanation which cannot be ignored is that ideological ‘insights’ – that is, the revelation that the Jews were the force behind Bolshevism – led to a fundamental revision of Hitler’s view of Russia.

It should be remembered that Nazi ideology, revolving as it did around the notion of ‘international conspiracy of Jewry’ had implications for the whole field of foreign affairs (not just for Russia). Under the influence of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Nazi anti-semitism became a universalist racialist ideology postulating a struggle for existence between the forces of good and evil, represented by the Aryan race and Jewry respectively. To the Nazi mind, this was the ultimate struggle and every state in the world would be the battleground. The struggle between capitalism and marxism described by Lenin was completely illusory in the opinion of the Nazis. As early as 1918, Rosenberg had pointed out that there was, in essence, no dichotomy between marxism and capitalism; the overt and apparently antithetical confrontation between the two was, according to Rosenberg, a deliberate deception – the Jews were in the vanguard of both camps, as leaders of the proletarian revolution in Russia and as bankers in the financial centres of capitalist Western Europe.²¹ So despite apparent incompatibility, international marxism and international capitalism were manipulated by the Jews, whose real enemies were the forces of nationalism. In this struggle between Good and Evil, peaceful Western Europe was just as important a battlefield as war-torn Russia, where the two sides, represented by White Russian nationalists and the Bolshevik Red Army, were facing each other in the civil war. Rosenberg regarded the democratic regimes of Western Europe as, in fact, the first step towards Bolshevism. Put quite simply, world Jewry by propagating democratic and internationalist ideas in the West at the expense of nationalist aspirations, and by exploiting class conflicts in Russia, was attempting to lay the foundations for its own world domination.²² Hence to Rosenberg’s mind, the progress of the twofold machinations of the ‘Jewish world conspiracy’ materially affected the value of each and every European country as a prospective ally for Germany. If the triumph of Jewry in the guise of Bolshevism in Russia made a Russian alliance less attractive to the Nazis, would it not follow logically that the position of England would also be affected in Nazi eyes by similar ideological considerations? To this aspect of the problem we must now turn our attentions.

Rosenberg’s view of England was initially jaundiced by his belief that London was the centre of the ‘Jewish world union’ which co-ordinated the plans of world Jewry²³ and that following the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which committed Britain to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, the British Empire had assumed the role of ‘guardian angel’ of Jewry.²⁴ On the other hand, Hitler’s first recorded references to England in 1920 were full of righteous indignation at the severity of the Versailles treaty but even so his veneration for the British Empire could not be concealed: ‘the English as a nation’, he pointed out in one speech, ‘have reason to be proud.’²⁵ Hitler soon began to recognise that the Jews were at work throughout Europe and not just in Bolshevik Russia: ‘The Jew is sitting in Russia exactly as he does in Berlin or Vienna, and so long as capital remains in the hands of this race, there can be no talk of reconstruction because the Jews are working hand-in-glove with the international capitalists, who are also Jews, and sell out us Germans.’²⁶ However, even though Hitler appears to have adopted Rosenberg’s conspiratorial world view, anti-semitic arguments still do not appear in 1920 to have affected his view of England.

On the other hand, Rosenberg’s attitude towards England was undergoing a distinct modification. Initially he had interpreted the espousal of the zionist cause evident in the Balfour Declaration as an example of how the interests of British imperialism might coincide with those of the Jews. ‘England’, he wrote in 1920, ‘possessed India, Egypt and footholds on the Persian coast, and lacked only a territorial connection between these lands and here Palestine fell into place as part of a chain.’²⁷ Almost immediately, however, Rosenberg began to differentiate between the interests of Britain and those of world Jewry. The reason for the change is unknown, but henceforth Rosenberg’s animosity towards England was curbed by the realisation that in fact true British national interests did not coincide with the plans of world Jewry. The British failure to give adequate support to the White Russ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction Peter Dt Stachura
• 1. The Evolution of Hitler’s Ideas on Foreign Policy, 1919–1925
• 2. Gottfried Feder and the NSDAP
• 3. ‘Der Fall Strasser’: Gregor Strasser, Hitler and National Socialism 1930–1932
• 4. The Occupational Background of the SA’s Rank and File Membership during the Depression Years, 1929 to mid-1934
• 5. The Rise of the National Socialist Students’ Association and the Failure of Political Education in the Third Reich
• 6. The Nazi Organisation of Women 1933–39
• 7. The Oldenburg Crucifix Struggle of November 1936: A Case Study of Opposition in the Third Reich
• 8. Bureaucracy, Politics and the National Socialist State
• 9. The German Film Industry and the New Order
• Glossary and Abbreviations
• Contributors
• Index