The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [6]
November 1936 saw active German intervention in the Spanish Civil War, when Hitler sent the Condor Legion, a unit composed of over 12,000 ‘volunteers’ as well as Luftwaffe warplanes, to support his fellow Fascist General Francisco Franco. Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, meanwhile, sent forces that were eventually to number 75,000 men. It was in Spain that the technique of carpet bombing was perfected by the Legion, which dropped nearly 2.7 million pounds of bombs, and fired more than 4 million machine-gun bullets. Britain and France held a conference in London attended by twenty-six countries, which set up a committee to police the principle of non-intervention in Spanish affairs. Both Germany and Italy took seats on it, which they kept until June 1937, by which time the farce could not be played out any longer.
November 1936 also saw Germany, Japan and subsequently Italy sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, aimed at opposing the USSR’s Third Communist International, but also creating what became known as the Axis. The mise-en-scène for the Second World War was almost in place, except for one sensational twist in the plot still to come.
For the moment, however, Hitler cranked up his sabre-rattling policy towards his neighbours, and particularly those with large German populations contiguous with the borders of the Reich. That it was all part of a wider master-plan – albeit one that was to be moved forward as opportunities presented themselves – was conclusively proven by the minutes of a meeting he called in the Reich Chancellery for 4.15 p.m. on Friday, 5 November 1937. This lasted nearly four hours and was intended to leave the senior executive officers of the Reich under no illusions about where his plans were leading. Speaking to Blomberg (who had been made the first field marshal of the Third Reich in 1936), General Werner von Fritsch, commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, Admiral Erich Raeder, commander-in-chief of the German Navy, Göring, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, and the Foreign Minister, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, with the minutes taken carefully by his adjutant Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, the Führer began by stating that the purpose of the meeting could not be discussed before the Reich Cabinet ‘just because of the importance of the matter’.6
He then explained how the histories of the Roman and British Empires ‘had proved that expansion could be carried out only by breaking down resistance and taking risks’. These risks – by which he meant short wars against Britain and France – would have to be taken before the period 1943–5, which he regarded as ‘the turning point of the regime’ because after that time ‘The world would be expecting our attack and would be increasing its counter-measures from year to year. It would be while the world was still preparing its defences that we would be obliged to take the offensive.’ Before then, in order to protect Germany’s flanks, Hitler intended ‘to overthrow Czechoslovakia and Austria’ simultaneously and ‘with lightning speed’ in an Angriffskrieg (offensive war). He believed that the British and French had ‘already tacitly written off the Czechs’ and that ‘Without British support, offensive action by France against Germany was not to be expected.’7 Only after the speedy destruction of first Austria and Czechoslovakia and then Britain and France could he concentrate on the creation of a vast colonial empire in Europe.
The seeming immediacy of these plans deeply alarmed Blomberg and Fritsch – Fritsch even proposed postponing his holiday which was due to start the following Wednesday