The Rest Is History - 406. The Nazis in Power: Hitler’s Road to War

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

“No one can doubt that this world will one day be the scene of dreadful struggles for existence on the part of mankind. In the end, the instinct of self-preservation alone will triumph.” Hitler has been planning for war since 1928. However, the Treaty of Versailles has placed immense limitations on his ability to rearm Germany, and he must first overcome internal enemies, whether the SA or the communists. He will then need to build-up the Nazi war machine, to allow him to expand the Third Reich and gain his much-desired lebensraum, “living space”. But with Germany facing economic decline, will Hitler’s push for rearmament provide a solution to the economy’s manifold problems? Or will the Führer simply use foreign policy coups as a smokescreen, to hide the dire straits facing the German people? Hitler can be certain of one thing - Britain and France do not want another war… Join Tom and Dominic in the third part of our series on the Nazis in Power, as they look at how Hitler, both materially and ideologically, prepared the country for war, and, as a brilliant opportunist, preyed on the Allies’ weaknesses in order to complete his rearmament of Germany. Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Nature knows no political frontiers. She begins by establishing life on this globe and then watches the free play of forces. Those who show the greatest courage and industry are the children nearest to her heart and they will be granted the sovereign right of existence. Nobody can doubt that this world will one day be the scene of dreadful struggles for existence on the part of mankind. In the end, the instinct of self-preservation alone will triumph. Before its consuming fire,

this so-called humanitarianism, which connotes only a mixture of fatuous timidity and self-conceit, will melt away as under the March sunshine. Man has become great through perpetual struggle. In perpetual peace, his greatness must decline. That was Adolf Hitler writing in 1925 in Mein Kampf, My Struggle. And Dominic, I have not put on a comic Austro-German accent because in a way this is too sombre, I think, for such flummery. I guess so, Tom. Because really this is the passage that sums up what Hitler is all about. The idea that man is born for competition and that unless he is embroiled in competition,

he will diminish and fade. And this is what governs Hitler's attitude to the purpose of Germany, that he has become the leader of Germany above all to bring Germany triumph in war. Is that an exaggeration to say that? No, I think it's absolutely right. And I think you did absolutely the right thing by the way and immediately translating mein kampf into my struggle because we always call it mein kampf we actually miss it's like with lebensraum or the fuhrer or any of these other words that we leave in german we actually miss what they mean and the idea of struggle of conflict is at the very heart of hitler's sense of and the world, isn't it? The most searing experience of his life was serving in the trenches in the Great War, and then the experience of defeat.

He believes, he has imbibed that idea that was so common in the 1880s and 1890s that comes out of the kind of social Darwinism of the day, that mankind is doomed to this life of conflict and war and actually doomed is the wrong word maybe isn't it because he thinks the only true nobility and meaning comes through through struggle through conflict and through defeating others but also it's not just mankind is it it's the different races of mankind that they are locked in a perpetual struggle. And that if, for instance, the Aryans, the German people do not triumph, then they will be conquered and defeated and disappear. As had seemed likely to happen in 1918, 1919. So for Hitler, you conquer or you die. So this is an existential struggle for him.

Absolutely it is. Absolutely. And Hitler, lots of people come to power all through history, planning wars. I mean, it's, you know, Alexander the Great was planning a war against the Persians, but Hitler is unusual in that his war is not a way of just getting prestige. It's not a strategic imperative. It's not a way of winning political support. I mean, it is all those things, but it's something more. War is absolutely at the essence of his project and constant war, I think. It's an ideology. It's an ideology, exactly.

So when the Nazis come to power in 1933, is Hitler planning war from that point? And if so, I mean, how is he dealing with the army who presumably again have to be the means by which he launches on his wars? It's a good question. So Hitler, it's very obvious to anybody who's studied Hitler's writings and his speeches that he is planning a war. So in May 1928, he had said, you know, my priority will be to lead our people into bloody action that's five years before he takes power um but he's sort of downplayed that in the early 1930s when he was slightly rebranding the nazis as a populist party of social protest because obviously if you say to people i'm going to lead this into a bloody conflagration a lot of people would say no not for me thanks right but

but if he's saying uh i am going to reverse the humiliating limitations that have been placed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty, then that's very different, isn't it? Yes. So Hitler comes to power at the end of January 1933. And one of the first things he does on the 3rd of February is he goes to meet the army chiefs, the generals, the head of the army, Wernher von Blumberg, who is his defense minister, his war minister. And Hitler says to the army, who many of them are quite suspicious of him, he's only a corporal, remember, and they are conservative and they're nationalists, but a lot of them are not Nazis. And he says to them, listen, my priorities are sort of A, to deal with Germany's internal

enemies, to crush Marxism. That's brilliant as far as they're concerned. They don't like Marxism. And secondly, he says, in the long run, we're going to want to expand. We're going to want to build up the army. And we're going to want to have some living space in the East, Lebensraum. That idea, that word, Lebensraum, living space, is very current in the early 1930s. It's not just the Nazis who used that word. And again, they are delighted by this. They're like, brilliant. Those are our ambitions. They are burning with resentment. They believe they've been stabbed in the back in 1918. They think they were humiliated in the

Treaty of Versailles and very poorly treated. They want to build up their army again. They want to recapture some of the territory that Germany lost. In those ambitions, they're probably no different from the military elite of any other country that would have lost the First World War. So actually, they think, great, I don't necessarily love Hitler, but his ambitions tally with my own. And how much popular support is there for this? Well, I think loads of popular support. So I think that idea of having more living space, of expanding to the East, is very popular with business elites, for example. I mean, they look at something like Poland, Czechoslovakia and so on. They say, this should be our backyard.

But what do they think is going to happen to the Poles or the Czechs? How does that work, do they think? Well, don't forget, most of these... We know what Hitler thinks, but... Yeah, but most of these people had lived in the Second Reich, in the Kaiser's empire, and that had loads of poles and so on in it. I mean, it's not unthinkable to them. So that's what they think is going to happen. They imagine it as being like the Bismarckian Reich. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it.

I mean, some of them are more extreme, of course. Some of them are more radical, but not all of them. A lot of them are monarchists or were monarchists. A lot of them think, great, let's bring back the world of 1880s, 1890s Germany, you know, big power in Europe. Okay, subject peoples, empire, economic expansion. Spikes on helmets, all that spikes on helmets you know sockets the french all that sort of thing and that's not just it's not so it's not just the conservatives and business elites it's loads of ordinary germans so if you're an apolitical german and you've lived through the nightmare of the first world war the early 1920s the revolution and so on weimar inflation great depression all that stuff the idea of being great again the idea of actually recapturing your lost

virility and credibility and self-respect and all of that stuff, as far as you're concerned, what's not to like? This all sounds great. And if Hitler, this vulgar guy, is the vehicle for that, brilliant. So there are two massive problems though, facing anyone who wants a policy of military expansion. And the first is that there are internationally agreed limitations on Germany's ability to expand its armed forces. I mean, they are written into international treaties that Germany has signed. But the other one is the fact that Germany is skint. And as Cicero famously said, the sinews of war are having lots of cash, basically. So if you don't have money, you can, as Cicero famously said, the sinews of war are having lots of cash, basically.

So if you don't have money, you can't rearm. But those two things are interlinked to some degree. So rearmament against the principle of the treaties. I mean, almost everybody in Germany who is not, you know, firmly on the left thinks that will happen in the long run. They think we were forced to sign these treaties, which they were, and in the long run, whether by diplomacy or just by a series of coup de main, we will reassert our right to have an army. And that will obviously be very useful for us with reinvigorating the economy. But Dominic, sorry to do it, but Dominic, but just to say, well, it'll be fine, they'll just rearm. I mean, there is a very obvious problem, which is that the whole of the West of Germany,

basically in the Rhineland, has been demilitarized. And that means that the French could just march in and seize the Ruhr, which is Germany's industrial heartland, which they've already done once. Yeah, in the 20s. seize the Ruhr, which is Germany's industrial heartland, which they've already done once. Yeah, in the 20s. You know, that's a dangerous problem for the German high command to negotiate, isn't it? Exactly. They're playing a massively dangerous game. You're absolutely right. So on the one hand, they've got a small army. They're limited under treaty to just 100,000 men, far smaller than the army of France. And second is, you under the treaty of versailles and then the treaty of locarno they have demilitarized the rhinelands that's the region all along germany's western

border and effectively that just means the french can walk in there's no german troops there to stop them by law the german is not allowed to have troops there to stop them the french can swan in as you say just capture germany's industrial base so hill is in a he's in quite a weak position at the beginning he's got a couple of things in his favor first of all there is a massive domestic constituency for rearmament not just because it means regaining your pride but it also won't bring a big economic boost one of his first cabinet meetings he actually says everything has to be about rearmament. All the spending, they're having a big argument about a dam in Silesia.

And he says, listen, everything must be, you know, these things are interlinked. So reinvigorating the domestic economy, we can do that through rearming. So the autobahns, for example, Tom, the motorways, he regards them as great military arteries. He's thinking about having them covered and tanks rolling along them and stuff. I mean, actually, it doesn't really work out that way. And there's lots of people who are delighted by this. I was amazed by this because I had vaguely thought that the German economy recovers

because Hitler is basically pursuing Keynesian policies. In other words, he's paying people to do things, like the New Deal in the United States at the same time. And I'd always thought that the Autobahns were the kind of poster boys for this policy, but apparently not true at all. So I was reading Adam Tooze's great book, The Wages of Destruction, about the German economy. And he says that they were never principally concerned as work creation measures, and they didn't contribute at all, really, to the relief of unemployment, which came as complete news to me. They're purely done for

military purposes, basically, are they? Yeah. Everything in Hitler's mind is, if there's not a military purpose to it, if it's not making Germany fitter, healthier, stronger, more prepared for war then it's kind of pointless i think that's his that's his approach just sticking to the autobahns because it relates to the military is actually again which came as a surprise to me although it shouldn't have done because my brother's always going on about it how backward the german economy is so one of the issues with the autobahns is that Germany just doesn't really have any kind of domestic cars. So again, Adam Tooze has some amazing stats. In 1935,

US vehicle ownership was 20.5% of the population. In Britain, it was 4.5%. In Ireland, it was 1.8%. And in Germany, 1.6%. Because now we think of Germany as the home of the motor industry. But there's no kind of economic base in that sense. So how are the Nazis getting Germany into a position where people are starting to feel richer? And how are they able then to translate that into the process of rearming? Or is it kind of interfused? Well, they are interfused. The Germans are adopting, I suppose, what you would say. rearming or is it kind of interfused well they're there they are interfused um the germans are

adopting i suppose what you would say i mean if one were being very sort of simplistic you'd say a kind of keynesian approach in that they are spending an awful lot of money they are trying to have everything at once they're throwing money at the economy in terms of building stuff and building factories putting people to work in rearming. That's what they're doing. And they are sort of trying to ride two horses at once because at the same time, Germany is an economy that is dependent on imports, particularly imported foods. And raw materials. And raw materials.

They don't have enough raw materials. So actually from the very beginning, the economic approach they take is predicated on war. The aim is that they will plunder. Yeah. That they'll get the raw materials by conquering neighboring countries. The model they adopt, which is to sort of go for this crash rearmament program,

it will not work. The wheels will completely fall off and you'll have colossal inflation and shortages on the shelves and not enough food and all of this, unless you can somehow acquire loads of new territory and loads of new raw materials. So in other words, they deliberately pick an economic approach that makes war inevitable. That's obviously the argument of Adam Tooze and other historians, Richard Evans and so on.

So for Hitler, there's an ideological dimension. We need to conquer because the race demands it, the impulse of the blood demands it. But also there's an economic one that we're going to borrow loads of money to invest in tanks and Stukas and whatever. And then we don't have to worry about that debt because we're just going to use our tanks and Stukas to grab the money and the raw materials that will then enable us to pay it back. They are speculating to accumulate, I suppose you might say, Tom. And what they're trying to accumulate is other people's countries. Yes. Now, just to go back to the point you made a while ago,

which is about Hitler's weakness and so on, and how on earth is he going to do this, he does have one thing in his favor, which is the Allies, who in the 1920s had been very hardline towards Germany, have over time become much less hardline. And actually, by the time Hitler comes to power, there are an awful lot of people, especially in somewhere like Britain, who think, do you know what? The Germans have been pretty hard done by. The First World War, now I think about it,

it was a terrible tragedy and a mistake. And the terms at the end, I understand why we imposed harsh terms, but they were harsh. The Germans aren't such bad chaps, really. And obviously, we can't force them to live like dogs forever. At some point, we will have to readmit them on equal terms. I mean, Germany is a big place. They were proud people. And Hitler is brilliant. He is, I mean, he has many, many terrible qualities.

He's lazy. He doesn't read stuff. That's not the worst quality. Yeah. But as an executive. As a leader. Yeah. As a leader.

But he is an astonishingly good opportunist. He's brilliant at seeing the weaknesses in other people's position and exploiting them. He can just sniff it out, can't he? Sniff it out. And this is what he does with the Allies. He knows that the British are not that bothered about what's going on on the continent. He knows that there are a lot of people in France who don't want another war, who hate the thought of repeating the slaughter. And he is determined to exploit that and to

exploit the guilt that people feel. And of course, lots of people feel he has legitimate grievances. Right. And that passage of Mein Kampf that we read at the beginning, where he sniffs at the humanitarian impulse, he is exploiting the humanitarian impulses in, say, the British and French popular opinion. He absolutely is. He sees them. He gets reports on them. He sees it as weakness. He does see it as weakness. In every way. Yeah.

Yes. So from the start, the interesting thing about this is he proceeds slowly and carefully with a series of calculated gambles and one by one they work. I don't know whether the analogy is building bricks or toppling dominoes, but whichever metaphor you choose, I guess the first one is his decision to walk out of the disarmament talks that are under the aegis of the League of Nations that are happening in Geneva. They've been going on for a while, but they haven't really got anywhere

because the French in particular are not terribly keen on disarming. And in October 1933, this is the first of a series of coups, great coups, PR triumphs. Hitler says, I'm going to pull out of the Geneva conference under Sarming because why should Germany when we're so weak compared with everybody else anyway? And what's more, the League of Nations is just, I mean, it's basically a conference of the victors.

It's humiliated us. You know, no one takes us seriously. The League of Nations has never sort of been just to us. We're walking out of the League of Nations. It's hard to think of anything more calculated to provoke Hitler's contempt than a disarmament process at the League of Nations. Yeah, that's true. I mean, he hates it. And the League of Nations kind of internationalist talking shop that he regards, you know, with utter disdain. But of course, he's still playing the victim card,

isn't he? That's the irony of it. That's the fiendish cunning of it, is that he's not condemning the League of Nations as a Nazi. He's condemning it because it is Victor's justice. Exactly, Tom. Yeah, that's absolutely right. So when ordinary Germans hear this, many of them are absolutely delighted. They're like, yeah, we're always being pushed around and humiliated. Finally, someone has the guts to say, sod you. They're like, yeah, we're always being pushed around and humiliated. Finally, someone has the guts to say, so do you. We're not going to sit here and just be sort of made fun of and belittled. The League of Nations has done nothing for us.

What are we wasting our time with it for? There's a pattern that starts now, which is that Hitler will have a great foreign relations coup, and then he will call an election at the Reichstag. The Nazis are pretty much the only party, so it's not really much of an election. Or a plebiscite or something. He loves a plebiscite. Nobody enjoys plebiscites more than Adolf Hitler. He'll have a plebiscite and says, what do you think of my latest idea? And he gets, once again, 95% approval in the plebiscite, 92% victory in the Reichstag so-called election. And everybody's sort of, well, what a tremendous business. And of course, loads of nationalists. Indeed, you don't even have to be a fervent

nationalist. You could just be a sort of slightly conservative patriot. And you could say, finally, someone's told the French where to get off. Brilliant. Now, in 1934, the following year, he does two things, one of which is very smart. And the other one is a sign of the danger of overreaching. So the very smart thing is he's still as you said at the beginning really quite weak the french could walk in at any moment and they're also worried about the polls on the other side so hitler does something that many of our listeners may find grimly ironic he signs a non-aggression treaty with the polls 10 year non-aggression treaty and And what year is this? 1934. Yeah, January 1934. Due to run out in 1944. Yes. I wonder if he'll stick to it. Well, exactly.

And the Poles think, brilliant, we've secured our Western border. Europe is shocked because the Poles are meant to be allies with the French. The French have been trying to build this sort of ring around Germany, and Hitler has broken it by signing this deal with the Poles. And that means that Hitler now is free from the fear of being encircled. He's not going to be attacked on two flanks by the French and from Eastern Europe. The other thing that he does, which is a sign of the dangers of overreaching, an illustration of the risks in his foreign policy, and we'll talk much more about this in the next episode. He sort of semi-tries to orchestrate a coup in Austria. So Austria, obviously German speaking, his homeland,

place where he was born, his dream is to reunite it with the Reich. And a load of Austrian Nazis assassinate the chancellor of Austria, a guy called Dolfus. Again, we'll talk more about this next time. And it doesn't go well. The Italians under Mussolini say they sort of move an army to the border, don't interfere with Austria. And Hitler basically has to back down. And it's very embarrassing for him. And it's a reminder at this stage, he's been in for what, just over a year? It's a reminder of how weak he is and it's a sign that actually if his neighbors do stand up to him he can be forced to back down it's very embarrassing because also there's a night of long knives and all that kind of going on at the same time isn't there so he's not secure yeah and in fact at the end of that year 1934 he's still not totally secure

the army by the way so there's another little burst of tension, even after the Knights of the Long Knives. At the end of 1934, the army is sort of displeased about the SS who are being armed and stuff. They're still a bit sore about the stormtroopers, the SA. And there's a bizarre meeting they have at the beginning of 1935 where Hitler talks, as he so often does. He's got a kind of Fidel Castro-esque appetite for long speeches. He talks for 90 minutes and then starts crying during the speech.

Yes, the whole kind of theatrical, the master showman. Yeah, begging for the loyalty of the generals. And the generals say, okay, fair enough. You know, we'll, yeah, stop crying. Stop crying, exactly. Dry your eyes, mate. And the funny thing with Hitler is that whenever he's in trouble at this point, luck just plays completely into his hands because his luck would have it under the sort of timetable, which he doesn't control. There's a region called the Saarland in the far west of Germany, which is a sort of, it's a big, what is it? Co mining aren't coal and iron territory and since the end of this first world war under the treaty of versailles it has been put under the formal control of the league

of nations and the french have had a right to the zaland's economic resources now you can absolutely see if you're even a remotely patriotic german yeah i'm not happy about that this is like such a standing affront i mean it's such a sort of weeping sore now after 15 years the deal was that the half a million people of the czar land could have a yet another plebiscite on whether or not they would go back to germany or whether they would join the french of course they were always going to go back to germany But the Nazis pour tons and tons of resources into the referendum campaign. They make loads of effort to win over their very Catholic voters in the Saarland. And Catholics are sometimes, they're a bit iffy about Hitler. But the local Catholic hierarchy are persuaded to back Hitler and the Nazis and the idea of reunification with germany so it is in january

1935 91 of the zahlan's electorate vote to join the german dictatorship rather than the french democracy and again a great boost for hitler a great little a little nice little coup to show that he is you know he is making germany great. But the bigger thing, which is on his mind all this time, is building up the army. So the army, as I said, was about 100,000 men, much smaller than the French army. The army, at the beginning of March 1935, a guy called General Beck, Ludwig Beck,

later was involved in the Stauffenberg plot in the 1940s, 1944, Operation Valkyrie, but anyway, that's by the by. Beck prepares a big memo and he says, ideally, we would like an army of 23 divisions, which would be about 300,000 men. And they're limited to 100,000. Yes, under the Treaty of Versailles.

So here again, you've got a very good example, I think, Tom, of how even if that person is not Adolf Hitler, this is probably going to happen at some point. So had the most likely alternative to Hitler happened, which is a kind of nationalist general as a dictator of Germany in the 1930s, he would have probably done a similar kind of thing, tried to expand the army and basically said, sod you to the Treaty of Versailles. But Hitler goes about doing this

in a very sort of characteristically Hitlerian way. you know he's he's heard all this he knows that he would have to bring back conscription to build up the army and he knows the french and the british would be appalled by this and on the 13th of march he's called his his adjutant who's a guy called lieutenant colonel hosbach to his um to a hotel everything happens in hotels in this story i mean hitler is that the amount of kind of work that's going on at hotel receptions. So this is why Wes Anderson needs to do his biopic on Hitler. Absolutely. So Hitler's staying in this hotel in Munich and this adjutant turns up. The guy arrives and Hitler, of course, is still in bed because he's so lazy. So Hitler gets up just before midday and says to the adjutant, I think we should increase the army. I'm persuaded even now. How many people do you think they should and says to the Adjutant, I think we should increase the army. I'm persuaded of it now.

How many people do you think they should have? And the Adjutant says, I don't know, 36 divisions, which is more than half a million men, far bigger than even the army themselves wanted. And Hitler says, brilliant, yeah, let's do it. Go for it. And on Saturday, the 16th of March, he announces it. He says, we're going to have a new army, 36 divisions.

Without consulting with the generals. The generals, when they hear this, are absolutely, they can't believe it. This is far more than they had, because they think this will undoubtedly inflame the allies. You know, this is such a slap in the face to them. And what happens? The Italian ambassador apparently went kind of white with anger. The French ambassador sort of started huffing and puffing and shrugging his shoulders and expostulating.

The British guy reacted with kind of phlegmatic indifference. Sans foi. Yeah, sans foi. Very British. He said, what about your air force and your fleet? Do you still have similar plans for those? You know, he kind of didn't bat an eyelid. Well, it's always the fleet for the British, isn't it?

It is. And in Germany, the reaction is utter, utter, utter euphoria. What always happens with Hitler's coups is at first people are kind of, oh no, the French are going to attack us. Yeah. And then when it becomes obvious after day one, the French are going to do nothing at all. Huge crowds assemble, people cheering and shouting.

They're waving flags and stuff. The next day, they have a big parade. It becomes a public holiday called Heroes Memorial Day. They're playing Beethoven. The war minister, General Blomberg, he comes out and he gives a speech. He says, the world has been made to realize Germany did not die of its defeat in the world war. Germany will take the place she deserves among the nations. Richard Evans, like a lot of historians, quotes a really interesting diary by a Hamburg housewife called Louisa Solmitz,

because she is a kind of small C conservative nationalist Hamburg housewife whose husband is of Jewish descent. Yeah. And so their child has not been given Aryan status, right? Exactly. So there's a kind of ambivalence about the Nazis. And yet she could not be more ecstatic all over it. When she heard the announcement, she says, I rose to my feet. It overcame me the moment was too great i had to listen standing the day that we had longed for since the disgrace of 1918 we would never have experienced versailles if such actions had always been taken and such

answers always given and the the spd who have been exiled the social democrats they have agents who are writing reports. They're brilliant sources on public opinion in Germany. And there's just one report, enthusiasm on the 17th of March, enormous. The whole of Munich was on its feet. People can be compelled to sing, but they can't be forced to sing with such enthusiasm. The trust in the political talents and will of Hitler becomes greater all the time. Hitler is loved by many. So another of Hitler's gambles has worked.

And I think we should take a break at this point. And Dominic, when we come back, there will be more gambles and we will see if they work. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

Hello, welcome back to The Rest Is History. And Dominic, the storm clouds of war are gathering. That's what it's all about. How are the Allies responding to the gathering darkness of the storm clouds of war? Well, I'm sure they love the metaphor just as much as we do, Tom. So the Allies at first, the former Allies reaction to hitler's uh reintroduction of conscription and his decision to go for rearmament they are very displeased they meet about a month later in a place called streza in italy uh so this is in april 1935 the british the french and

italians and they say right we're going to contain germany we're going to you know make a public statement germany cannot you know the next next place that Germany will probably go for will be Austria. We will guarantee the integrity of Austria. That guarantee will be our kind of public show, our statement that we're not prepared to allow Germany to sort of rip up treaties and behave like a bully boy on the world stage. And the fact that this is happening in Italy, a reminder that Italy had been one of the allies in the First World War, and therefore one of the victors. And Mussolini at this point is still very much on the side

of the two democracies, Britain and France. He is. He is. So Mussolini, whom Hitler thinks Mussolini is brilliant to some degree, and is very influenced by Mussolini, because, of course, Mussolini comes first. But Mussolini had almost, you you know there'd been a danger of war in 1934 over Austria and at this point as you say Mussolini is lined up on the on the other side so the Straser front as it is called it lasts for basically two months and the country that screws it up is not Italy, right? But Britain. But Britain. Yeah. Very disappointing scenes, Tom. So the British and the Germans have been

in naval talks. Because as you said before, the British are really most interested in the Royal Navy. And all the time, by the way, the British are looking at the continent and what's going on, but they're distracted by India, by the Great Depression, the empire, all these other things. Worried about Japan as well, aren't they? Yeah, as far as they're concerned. They just want stuff in Central Europe to kind of, they just want Hitler to pipe down, everything to be quiet and stable.

They're not that bothered about it. Distant countries of which we know little. Exactly, exactly. So they've been having these naval talks with the Germans, basically allowing the Germans to have a navy that is 35% as big as the British one. And in June 1935, they reach a deal. They reach a deal with a man called Ribbentrop, from whom, unfortunately, the world will be hearing more.

Joachim von Ribbentrop, who is a... He actually fought very bravely in the First World War on an iron cross, but in Britain, he's forever known as a champagne salesman. Yes, a champagne salesman. And a chap who doesn't really, didn't go to the right club. He absolutely didn't go to the right club, Tom. I think because we are a patriotic podcast, we should talk of Ribbentrop and treat him with exactly the same snobbish contempt that people did in Britain.

Whatever I would have done. He's definitely a guy who wears the wrong shoes. He absolutely is. He's always got the wrong trousers on. Well, they're shiny. He's trying too hard. Yeah. You know, he's always trying too hard and wearing a very sharp, expensive suit that's just ill-judged.

Not wearing baggy tweed. Yeah, exactly. He's a terrible man and everyone in Britain despises him. And he knows this and he absolutely loathes the British. But it's Ribbentrop who concludes this naval deal with the British in 1935. And this again, you know, the British have basically gone behind the backs of the French to do this deal with the Germans because the British think, ah, give them a few of these things, which are not unreasonable, it's not unreasonable for the Germans to ask for a navy. You can't hold them responsible for 1914 forever. At some point, you're going to have to let them have a navy. Let it be now. Let's buy them off. And of course, to Hitler, that sends the message, you can always divide and rule. You can always persuade either the British or the French to go behind the backs of the other one and to give you what you want. So the Straser front is pretty much dead from that point onwards, because it's obvious the

Allies are never really going to act in concert. And at this point, so the middle to end of 1935, it has to be said, Hitler has played his hand unbelievably well. I mean, Ian Kershaw, in his brilliant biography of Hitler, he writes as follows. He says, for the German people, Hitler seemed to be achieving the unimaginable. He had, it seemed, single-handedly broken the shackles of Versailles, restored military pride, and made Germany once more a force to be reckoned with in international affairs. And Kershaw also says, I think really importantly, at this point, and I quote, there was nothing specifically Nazi about his achievements. Any patriotic German could find something to admire in them.

And I think that's really important that people get that. At this point, you might disapprove of Hitler domestically. But if you have even an ounce of kind of patriotic pride in Germany, you would say, we should have a navy. navy you know we should have the czar land you know all of these kinds of we should be proud and have our territorial integrity and all these kinds of things obviously the the drive to rearmament requires an emphasis on guns rather than on butter and i was again really interested reading adam twos and he, remarkable evidence collected by labor historians demonstrates the passionate identification that many German workers in the 1930s clearly felt with the weapons they were producing. And he says that in part, this is because of the high status that's attached to the skilled to do with with the armaments themselves that they are assertions of national strength yeah that the average worker is made to feel good about what

he's producing and that presumably this is something that steals workers in the face of the sacrifice that the process of realment requires of them because if money is being invested in armaments it's not being invested in consumer durables. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think that Adam Too's point is really important. There's nothing wrong with being patriotic, and there's nothing wrong with being a patriotic German. And we joke, Tom, about being a patriotic podcast, for example. Had you been in Germany in the 1930s, early early 1930s you might well have been horrified by all kinds of hitler's domestic policies regarded hitler himself as a very bad man been shocked by the anti-semitism the violence the dictatorship all those things but if you in 1935 had looked at

all his foreign policy achievements and had looked at the guns being produced and the emphasis on an army and all that stuff the chances are that you would say, you know, great, good. I mean, the other stuff I don't like, but this I do approve of. Because as Kershaw says, any nationalistic German would have felt like that. And I think a lot of workers, absolutely, they have things they resent. But as you say, the problem is you can't have everything. Right. And because they are spending their, they have very little hard currency.

They don't have much foreign exchange, but they are spending so much of it on expanding armaments that there's not much left over for the rest of the economy. And so in late 1935, the consequences of Hitler's choices become very apparent to most Germans because they're basically, they start running out of food. Right. And so at this point, the kind of patriotic feeling that, oh, brilliant, we're rearming starts to run up against the fact that the shops are empty. Exactly. So this is something that actually, if you're just, you know, image of the Third Reich, if it's all kind of Lenin-Riefenstahl, autobahns, you know. Afraid to say it probably is in my case, but. Shining factories and stuff. It's easy to miss this, that actually for ordinary Germans, life is sometimes very, very hard. And as we said, also, that the German economy is actually...

I hadn't realized until I read the Adam Tooze just how backward it was. Yeah, and it's also on very sort of weak foundations. So the one thing they were always running out of is fats. They have a massive problem with fats, don't they? So they're always running out of sort of butter and vegetable oil and things like this and there are massive queues in the shops that actually sales of butter at the end of 1935 have to be overseen by the police because people are fighting over butter meat is incredibly expensive the cost of frozen meat for example is going has gone up by 70 percent and as you say, in different circumstances, this would lead to

riots. People would be furious. And people are very discontented sometimes about the authorities. But Hitler has a knack of pulling out of the bag these foreign policy coups that buy him another six months. I mean, Hitler himself, he's seen as very abstemious, isn't he? Yes. A devoted servant to the German people because he doesn't draw his salary as reich's chancellor because basically he can live off the the royalties of mein kampf apart from anything else yeah but there are there are figures who are more extravagant yeah and i guess goering would be the archetype of that because he's building himself hunting lodges isn't he and he's got kind of jeweled scepters and there's a kind of brilliant description of him by

by ciano who's he's muslim his son-in-law isn't he um who runs into goring wearing a fur coat that resembled what a high-grade prostitute wears to the opera so all of this kind of goring fur coat malarkey i mean this must be going down quite badly if there's nothing in the shops agreed going is such a peculiar figure because he'd been a great war hero and he'd been, after the First World War, he was seen as something of a matinee idol, you know, a very dashing... He was in the Red Baron Squadron, wasn't he? Yeah. And what actually happens to him is it's as though he's attached to an air pump and every year somebody pumps him up a bit more. So he's getting fatter and fatter.

More and more ludicrous costumes. Yeah. And his costumes, he loves a kind of white tunic or white boots and all this kind of stuff. And hunting, as you say, massive meals and paintings. So there are a lot of people who say, oh, I hate the Nazi bigwigs. You know, they're bullies. They strut around. They live high on the…

High on the hog. High on the hog, exactly. That's the expression I was groping for. Yeah. They're stuffing themselves with quails. Well, we can't get it. The fats we need. But no one says this about Hitler.

It's like a medieval king. They say he's poorly advised. But the king himself, if he knew of our plight, would be... But he's seen also as monkish, isn't he? Yes, exactly. Kind of austere. I mean, the fact that he's kind of sitting around watching Mickey Mouse. And not getting up till lunchtime.

Yeah, but this isn't factoring through at all. No, no, not at all. They think he's incredibly hardworking, which of course he isn't. Anyway, as you rightly say, at the end of 1935, the fact that his economics is so terrible. I mean, it's bonkers, his economic agenda, which is to try and have everything and not to face any of the hard choices. That this has got Germany into real trouble.

And he needs another foreign policy coup. It's at this point that he decides, I'm going to go for the big one. And the big one is the Rhineland. So you said in the first half about how important this was, that this huge slice of Western Germany has been forcibly kind of demilitarized. The Germans are not allowed to station troops on the banks of the Rhine. And what that means is that the French can walk in

at will and just, you know, whatever the Germans do, the Germans will always be on the defensive. They can never attack the French. The French would always be attacking them. They have a spear pointed at the soft underbelly of the German economy. Very good. One might almost say. Yes. And Dominic, would you say it's fair to say that for the average German, the French are seen as the enemy?

They are, absolutely. At this point, by the way hitler is still quite keen on an alliance with britain he has very mixed feelings about the british a bit like the kaiser he kind of um envies the british he sees them as a great imperial power well they're anglo-saxon aren't they anglo-saxons exactly so they're kind of racial brethren but at the same time he's resent you know the british are always mocking his emissaries shoes or whatever it might be exactly and behaving snobbish i mean it's just it's just you know the cow's week with the kaiser it just continues right all over again never ends that's never a tragedy yeah anyway the rhineland so the issue that rhineland is not strategic for germany i mean it's such a humiliation this really rich and important

part of your country, and you're not allowed to put your own troops in it. The analogy would be if Britain were banned from stationing troops in the home counties. I mean, whether or not you wanted to, it would just be such a massive affront to your national pride. And Hitler realizes in the early months of 1936 that actually the chance to do this is becoming greater and greater not least because that sort of tacit that implicit alliance between Britain, France and Italy

has pretty much broken up the Italians have disgraced themselves by invading Abyssinia the previous year. A new Roman Empire. To try and build a new Roman Empire. So they've kind of been kicked out of the club of democracies. So the opportunity for a kind of rapprochement where Mussolini is there,

it's pretty much on the table at this point. He knows, his intelligence is telling him, his ambassadors, diplomats, and so on, is saying, the French are actually not going to do anything about it. If you do it, the French will be very, very annoyed. But they are too weak. They're too divided in France. France is very domestically divided at this point. But are they too weak? I mean, in military terms, they're presumably not. No, not in military terms. Tom, I'm tapping my head, my temple, like a football manager telling his team to regroup after

conceding a disastrous goal. They're choking. They are mentally shot. Yeah, they're chokers. Yeah. They are riddled with self-doubt and domestic division. The British, I mean, have made it pretty clear they don't give a damn what goes on in Central Europe.

I mean, Stanley Baldwin is prime minister, and much as I love Stanley Baldwin, he's never going to do anything about anything. So, you know, they're just going to let the Germans crack on and do what they want. Continuing the football analogy, this is like England refusing to play in the World Cup. Yeah. You know, it's not their business. They've got bigger fish to fry. Yeah, we've got bigger fish to fry.

Yeah. But also the British think, you know, why shouldn't the Germans have troops in the Rhineland? George Bernard Shaw said, you know, but it's like us sending troops to Portsmouth. Why wouldn't you have troops in Portsmouth? If you're an anti-appeasement historian, let's say, you say, oh my gosh, what a chance missed. This was the opportunity. Germany would never be so weak again. This was the moment. But it was. I mean, to be fair, wasn't it? It was the opportunity. But to me, it's inconceivable that the British and the French would have, I mean, to be fair, wasn't it? It was the opportunity. But to me, it's inconceivable that the British and the French would have, I mean, certainly inconceivable the British would have.

Imagine in the mid 1930s. But if the French had moved in, I mean, it would have worked militarily. They would, because basically, doesn't Hitler kind of deceive the French? He recruits loads of people from the police to dress up in the army to make it look as if it's a much bigger force than it actually is when they move in. So just to give you an indication of how he comes to the decision, by the way, because it involves another hotel. He's at another hotel in Munich. This time Goebbels is actually staying at the hotel and Hitler arrives in the lobby and says,

I've come to see Goebbels. And he says to Goebbels, I've decided to go for it. I want to remilitarize the Rhineland. I'm going to send in the troops. Goebbels writes in his diary. Goebbels loves a cliche as well, Tom. Does he? Fortune favors the brave. Well, he who dares nothing wins nothing, says Goebbels. That's very true. And had Goebbels been enjoying the buffet? Do we know? Breakfast buffet. No, I don't see them as having a buffet in that kind

of hotel. I think that's a la carte. carte. So as you say, they are going to send in 30,000 troops. I mean, a lot of these people are policemen disguised as troops. And actually of those, only a tiny fraction will go forward really deep into the Rhineland. The rest will hang around at the back. So just to repeat, if the French had sent an army in, I mean, I entirely take your point that they were never going to because they were mentally shot. But if they had, it would have... Totally worked. The Germans wouldn't have been able to occupy the Rhineland. The humiliation to Hitler would have been very profound. And a line would have been drawn in the sand that perhaps might have brought Hitler down. I mean, it's not wrong to argue that, is it?

It's not wrong. Do you know what, Tom? It would have taken the French only one division. If they had sent even one division across, Hitler's instructions to his troops were basically fall back immediately. We can't win, no confrontation. He's very nervous when it comes to it. And we will get to the extraordinary set piece of his announcement in a second, but you are dead right. It would have worked. The French were never, ever going to do it. Hitler had read the runes correctly the French were much too divided but also I think there are a couple of things to bear in mind number one is there is a widespread sense in western Europe we have been much too hard on the Germans and that is what has led to this situation that is why Hitler is there because so many Germans feel humiliated, resentful, victimized. If we keep doing this, if we keep attacking the Germans and keep punishing them, this

pattern will just repeat that they will elect or they will turn to demagogic strongmen and we'll just be stuck in this cycle forever. So that's point one. Yeah. They might turn to someone even worse than Hitler. I mean, is that seriously what they're thinking? How could anyone be worse than Hitler? Well, because don't forget, at this point, Hitler hasn't started a war.

Hitler hasn't invaded anybody. Yeah. So at this point... But they've read Mein Kampf, presumably, in the higher echelons of government. But a lot of them haven't, or they think it's just adolescent ranting. They don't know what we know, Tom. Second point, they are absolutely transfixed by the necessity of not having another great war. You can't understand any of the decisions people are taking without bearing in mind the horrendous experience. I entirely understand that.

And by the way, they think a second war will be far, far worse because of air power and bombing. Of course, because the bomber always gets through and everything. Of course, I get that. But having said that, their intelligence is faulty. They think that the forces occupying the Rhineland are much greater than they actually are. And that is a failure of intelligence. And if they'd had the intelligence, they would have realised that it wouldn't have precipitated a world war. And it would have been like the occupation of the Ruhr in the 20s. Tom, I don't disagree with that at all. I mean, I think you're absolutely right.

They could have done it. They absolutely could have done it. I mean, the French, if they wanted, could have been in Berlin for tea, but they weren't going to do it. Yeah. All right. And so this is Hitler's malign ability to sniff out weakness and to act on it. And he also, of course, as you described so brilliantly last week, he's a brilliant performer, and he and his team are brilliant at staging these set pieces.

And then this is one of his most remarkable appearances. The Reichstag on Saturday, the 7th of March, 1936, a meeting in a building called the Kroll Opera House, because, of course, the Reichstag has been burned down, and it hasn't yet been rebuilt. All the Nazi top brass are there. They're all very nervous. Wernher von Blumberg,

the head of the army, is kind of supposedly pale with tension because they know the French could do exactly as you say. The speech is going to be broadcast on the radio. So millions of people are listening.

And Hitler starts talking about Germany's humiliation. He says the French are very bad people. And he says, the French, by the way, have just signed an agreement with the Soviet Union,

you know, encircling us. So we have to do something about it. So we're the real victims here. We are the real victims. And he says, because of all this, the pacts of the 1920s have kind of lost their value. We don't regard ourselves as bound by them. And then he says, the German Reich government has therefore from today restored the full and unrestricted sovereignty of the Reich in the demilitarized zone of the Rhineland. And you quoted a guy in your last episode called William L. Shira, American correspondent. And he has this amazing description of the deputies jumping to their feet and they are screaming. Is this the little men with big bodies and bulging necks and cropped hair and pouched bellies and brown uniforms and heavy boots little men of clay in his fine hands yeah amazing and they're screaming

with delight and hitler raises a hand for silence then he says men of the german reichstag and you can hear a pin drop and he says in this historic hour when in the reichs western provinces german troops are at this minute marching into their future peacetime garrisons we all unite in two sacred vows and then he can't go on because the hubbub the sobbing the cheering the applause the salutes the hiles is so great and as um sarah says they were shouting shouting their eyes burning with fanaticism glued on their new God, the Messiah. I mean, that is how loads of Germans think. Because at that moment, one o'clock, as Hitler was speaking, his troops are crossing the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne. There are

thousands of people in the streets. Word has got around. People are throwing flowers. Women are crying. There are Catholic priests blessing them. And the French do nothing. And the joy of the German people is unconfined. And this presumably completely alters the strategic balance because now the French no longer have that bayonet point sticking into the soft underbelly of the German economy. Now the French have no option really but to kind of institute a defensive policy. Exactly.

The offensive opportunity has gone. Exactly. This totally changes the strategic map of Europe. Now, when the French are looking at a war, they're thinking about being on the defensive. They will no longer just be able to march across the Rhine. It will actually be the Germans who are now able to strike into France. So that changes things. It also changes things, I think.

It obviously buoys up Hitler's popularity. All the crisis about the fats, I mean, that hasn't gone away, but nobody's thinking about butter now. They're so excited about the Rhineland. So that person we quoted earlier, the housewife, Louisa Solomitz, I was totally overwhelmed by the events of this hour, overjoyed at the entry march of our soldiers at the greatness of hitler and the power of his speech the force of this man now this is somebody whose whose domestic life has been you know upended by race laws by nazi race laws but she still thinks god this is amazing what a man Hitler is. And the thing is, it's clear that from this point, Hitler himself believes it.

He had once, Tom, when we did the first series about the rise of the Nazis, we talked about how at the beginning, Hitler had seen himself as the drummer, the guy who would... The John the Baptist. Yeah. At this point, 1936, this convinces him, I think. This really convinces him. He is the Messiah. That he is the Messiah. It. At this point, 1936, this convinces him, I think. This really convinces him. He is the Messiah.

That he is the Messiah. It's not just a metaphor. He thinks, he genuinely thinks, providence. He starts to use the word providence or destiny a lot. He thinks that providence has chosen, because all of these gambles have worked. Now, I suppose the question would be, what if he had stopped there? And if he had stopped there, which he could have done, he would have gone down as an exceedingly successful nationalistic leader of Germany.

But of course, the nature of what you were talking about, the Adam Tooze stuff, the economy, the will to power as well, and all of that, and the very nature of his ideology, which goes back to what we said right at the very beginning, he cannot stop there. There will always be something more. And actually, at the end of 1936, they take a decision that they will go all in on this economic program of autarky, which is self-sufficiency, of rearming. Goering is in charge of something called the Four Year Plan. Hitler sends a memo, which Goering reads to his cabinet. And Hitler says,

we are approaching a confrontation with worldwide Jewry, Jewishness, for which Bolshevism is really just the front. The Jews are behind Bolshevism. And he says, this is going to be an all-out existential struggle. We must be fit for war in four years go absolutely all in we now have a new pal in europe italy he's also of course we don't really have time to go into it and massively but both germany and italy are now intervening in the spanish civil war on the side of franco so that's brought them closer together so this is when guernica happens and they're trying out bombing techniques with the lwaffe. Exactly. In November 1936, so about just after Hitler has said, I plan to rearm completely and be ready for war in four years,

Mussolini starts to use the phrase, the axis. He says it in Milan in a speech in front of the cathedral. He says, Rome and Berlin is the axis around which Europe now revolves. At the end of that month, November 1936, Hitler approves the anti-comintern pact with Japan. So he now has an Asian ally as well. Which is very menacing for Britain. Yeah.

Irredentist power, which is keen to carve out an empire, to undo the work of the treaties in the 1920s. And there's a real sense, I think, at this point, 1936, 1937, that Hitler is seized with a sense of mission. For the first time, he thinks, I am actually going to do all this. I'm not just laying the foundations for somebody else in foreign policy, for a future regime, for my successor. I can achieve the greater Germany in my lifetime. And he's a terrible hypochondriac,'t he hitler so he's

always having kind of stomach spasms and eczema and stuff and thinking that this is about cancer isn't he because his his mother died of cancer and exactly he's also doing this absolutely bizarre thing tom i mean the thing with hitler is that you say about your wes anderson film i mean obviously it's an unbelievably dark and terrible story, but there are these weird comic elements. So Hitler was taking this kind of quack medicine that he had picked up in the trenches where he's drinking gun cleaning oil. Goodness. This doesn't do him any good.

I quote from Kershaw, causes headaches, double vision, dizziness and ringing in his ears. Blimey. What does he think he's curing? I think this is curing. What's it curing? His stomach pains. I mean, if I have a stomach pain. Yeah, that's not how you do it.

I don't drink gun cleaning oil. But anyway, Hitler does. So he thinks he doesn't have much time left. And he thinks, right, come on, let's do this. Four years, the whole thing. We can take the whole thing. And by the whole thing, he doesn't mean Central Europe. He doesn't even really mean Europe.

I mean, it's a mad thing to talk about because people don't generally talk about conquering the world unless they're Alexander the Great. Hitler really does think about conquering the world, doesn't he? He thinks Europe first and then the war with the USA and then we're done. But Dominic, he has to take steps. Yes. And you said how he has a dream of greater Germany. And of course, Hitler himself was born in Austria, which is a German speaking part of the Reich.

So I guess it's pretty clear by late 1937 what his next target is going to be. Would that be fair? I think that's right. I think the tempest is gathering, Tom, over the skies of Vienna, to use our much-loved metaphor. Yes. So at the end of the Nuremberg Rally that autumn, Hitler says to Goebbels, OK, the next thing is Austria. We're going to resolve that, and we will resolve it with force.

And on the 9th of November, 1937, he calls his military chiefs to the Reich Chancellery and Berlin, and it's there that he is going to lay out his plans. And Tom, we will tell that story, what happens at that meeting, and what happens afterwards in the next episode. But of course, members of the Restless History Club will be able to listen to it right away. Absolutely. So we will see you either straight away if you're a member of the Restless History Club, or we will see you on Thursday for the Anschluss, the German takeover of Austria. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works.

We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.