The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [4]
Andrew Roberts
April 2009
www.andrew-roberts.net
Prelude
The Pact
On Thursday, 12 April 1934, General Werner von Blomberg, Germany’s Reichswehrminister (Minister of Defence), and thus the political master of the German armed forces, met the Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, aboard the Deutschland, an 11,700-ton pocket battleship. There they entered into a secret pact by which the Army would support the Nazi leader in taking the presidency of Germany upon the death of Paul von Hindenburg, on condition that the Reichswehr would retain complete control over all matters military. The chief of the Sturmabteilung (SA, or Brownshirts), Ernst Röhm, had been pressing for a new ministry comprising all the armed forces of Germany, with himself at its head, a situation that augured ill for both Blomberg and ultimately possibly also for Hitler. Showing his readiness to put the Deutschland Pact into immediate effect, on 1 May Blomberg ordered the incorporation of the swastika motif on to the uniforms of the armed forces.
On 21 June, with Röhm forcefully continuing to press his case, Blomberg warned Hitler that unless measures were taken to secure internal peace, Hindenburg would declare martial law and ask the Army to restore order, a situation that would leave the Chancellor sidelined and weakened. Hitler took the hint. Nine days later, his personal Schutzstaffel (SS) bodyguard acted with sudden ferocity against Röhm on what became known as the Blood Purge or the Night of the Long Knives, in a series of summary kidnappings and executions that left 200 people dead. Not only did the Army not act during the Purge, but the very next day, 1 July, Blomberg issued an Order of the Day commending ‘the Führer’s soldierly decision and exemplary courage’ in liquidating the ‘mutineers and traitors’ of the SA.
A month later, on Thursday, 2 August 1934, Hindenburg died, and – with the complete support of the Army – Hitler assumed the presidency and with it the supreme command of the armed forces under a law agreed by the Cabinet during Hindenburg’s lifetime.1 Blomberg ordered that a new oath of allegiance be sworn to Hitler personally, rather than to the office of the presidency or to the state. ‘I swear by God this sacred oath,’ its unambiguous wording went, ‘that I will render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich and Volk, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will be ready as a brave soldier to risk my life at any time for this oath.’ At Hindenburg’s funeral on 7 August, Blomberg suggested to the new President that all soldiers should henceforth address him as ‘Mein Führer’, a proposal which was graciously accepted.
Hitler had won ultimate power, but only at the sufferance of the German Army, and just two days after Hindenburg’s funeral, on Thursday, 9 August 1934, Blomberg wrote a terse, one-sentence (and hitherto unpublished) letter to Hitler, stating: ‘Mein Führer! Ich bitte an die in Aussicht gestellte Verfügung an die Wehrmacht erinnern zu dürfen. Blomberg’ (My Leader, I would like to remind you of your statement to the Wehrmacht. Blomberg’).2 The tone was somewhat peremptory, reminding Hitler of his side of the Deutschland Pact, a pledge without which he would not have been able to gain the military and political supremacy that was to allow him, only five years later, to plunge the world into the most catastrophic war mankind has ever known. Blomberg was in a position to insist on proper observation of the Pact, for as the British historian of the German High Command, Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, wrote:
Till August 1934 the Army could have overthrown the Nazi regime at a nod from their commanders, for they owed no allegiance to the Chancellor; but, with the acceptance of Hitler’s succession, the Generals had added one more fetter, perhaps the strongest of all, to those psychological bonds