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German rearmament (''Aufrüstung'', ) was a policy and practice of rearmament carried out in Germany during the interwar period (1918–1939), in violation of the
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...
which required
German disarmament
The disarmament of Germany after World War I was decided upon by Allied leadership at the Paris Peace Conference. It was viewed, at the time, as a way to prevent further conflict with Germany and as punishment for Germany's role in World War I. T ...
after WWI to prevent Germany from starting another war. It began on a small, secret, and informal basis shortly after the treaty was signed, but it was openly and massively expanded after the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
came to power in 1933.
Despite its scale, German re-armament remained a largely
covert operation
A covert operation is a military operation intended to conceal the identity of (or allow plausible deniability by) the party that instigated the operation. Covert operations should not be confused with clandestine operations, which are performe ...
, carried out using front organizations such as glider clubs for training pilots and sporting clubs, and Nazi
SA militia groups for teaching infantry combat techniques. Front companies like
MEFO
MEFO was the more common abbreviation for (german: MEtallurgische FOrschungsgesellschaft m.b.H., en, Society for Metallurgical Research LLC), a dummy company set up by the Nazi German government to finance the German re-armament effort in the ...
were set up to finance the rearmament by placing massive orders with
Krupp
The Krupp family (see pronunciation), a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, is notable for its production of steel, artillery, ammunition and other armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG (Friedrich Krup ...
,
Siemens
Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad.
The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...
,
Gutehofnungshütte, and
Rheinmetall for weapons forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles.
Carl von Ossietzky
Carl von Ossietzky (; 3 October 1889 – 4 May 1938) was a German journalist and pacifist. He was the recipient of the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in exposing the clandestine German re-armament.
As editor-in-chief of the magazine ''Die ...
exposed the reality of the German rearmament in 1931 and his disclosures won him the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize but he was imprisoned and tortured by the Nazis, dying of tuberculosis in 1938. Von Ossietzky's disclosures also triggered the
re-armament policy in Great Britain, which escalated after
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
withdrew Germany from the
League of Nations
The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...
and the
World Disarmament Conference
The Conference for the Reduction and Limitation of Armaments, generally known as the Geneva Conference or World Disarmament Conference, was an international conference of states held in Geneva, Switzerland, between February 1932 and November 1934 ...
in 1933.
Despite notable warnings by von Ossietzky, Winston Churchill and others, successive governments across Europe failed to effectively recognize, cooperate, and respond to the potential danger posed by Germany's re-armament. Outside of Germany, a global
disarmament movement was popular after World War I and Europe's democracies continued to elect governments that supported disarmament even as Germany pursued re-armament. By the late 1930s, the German military was easily capable of overwhelming its neighbors and the rapidly successful German conquests of Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France proved just how poorly prepared Germany's neighbors were to defend themselves.
History
Weimar era
Germany's post-1918 rearmament began at the time of the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is al ...
, when the
Chancellor of Germany
The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,; often shortened to ''Bundeskanzler''/''Bundeskanzlerin'', / is the head of the federal government of Germany and the commander in chief of the Ge ...
Hermann Müller, who belonged to the
Social Democratic Party
The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology.
Active parties
Fo ...
(SPD), passed cabinet laws that allowed secret and illegal rearmament efforts. During its early years (1918–1933), the rearmament was relatively small, secret, and supported by a cross-section of Germans motivated by a mixture of patriotism-based nationalism and economics-based nationalism. The latter motive viewed the
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...
, which was ostensibly about
war reparations
War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other. They are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war.
History
Making one party pay a war indemnity is a common practice with a long history.
R ...
and peace enforcement. France wanted to make sure Germany would never again be a military threat. However, in the mid-1930s Britain and France would decline to fight another war to enforce the Versailles Treaty, thus bringing the treaty's effects to an end.
An example of the Weimar clandestine rearmament measures was the training and equipping of police forces in a way that made them not just
paramilitary
A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...
in organizational culture (which most police forces are, to one degree or another) but also well prepared to rapidly augment the military as
military reserve force
A military reserve force is a military organization whose members have military and civilian occupations. They are not normally kept under arms, and their main role is to be available when their military requires additional manpower. Reserve f ...
s, which the treaty did not allow. Another example was that the government tolerated that various
Weimar paramilitary groups
Paramilitary groups were formed throughout the Weimar Republic in the wake of Imperial Germany's defeat in World War I and the ensuing German Revolution. Some were created by political parties to help in recruiting, discipline and in preparation ...
armed themselves to a dangerous degree. Their force grew enough to potentially threaten the state, but this was tolerated because the state hoped to use such
militia
A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...
s as military reserve forces with which to rearm the
Reichswehr
''Reichswehr'' () was the official name of the German armed forces during the Weimar Republic and the first years of the Third Reich. After Germany was defeated in World War I, the Imperial German Army () was dissolved in order to be reshaped ...
in the future. Thus various ''
Freikorps
(, "Free Corps" or "Volunteer Corps") were irregular German and other European military volunteer units, or paramilitary, that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. They effectively fought as mercenary or private armies, regar ...
'', ''
Der Stahlhelm
' (German, 'The Steel Helmet, League of Front-Line Soldiers'), commonly known as ''Der Stahlhelm'' ('The Steel Helmet'), was a German First World War veteran's organisation existing from 1918 to 1935. It was part of the "Black Reichswehr" and ...
'', the ''
Reichsbanner'', the
Nazi SA, the
Nazi SS
The ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS; also stylized as ''ᛋᛋ'' with Armanen runes; ; "Protection Squadron") was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe dur ...
, and the
Ruhr Red Army
The Ruhr Red Army (13 March – 12 April 1920) was an army of between 50,000 and 80,000 left-wing workers who conducted what was known as the Ruhr Uprising (''Ruhraufstand''), in the Weimar Republic. It was the largest armed workers' uprising in ...
grew from street gangs into
private armies
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
.
For example, by 1931
Werner von Blomberg
Werner Eduard Fritz von Blomberg (2 September 1878 – 13 March 1946) was a German General Staff officer and the first Minister of War in Adolf Hitler's government. After serving on the Western Front in World War I, Blomberg was appointed chi ...
was using the SA in preparation for border defense in
East Prussia
East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label=Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...
.
Another aspect of Weimar era rearmament was massive investment in
dual use
In politics, diplomacy and export control, dual-use items refers to goods, software and technology that can be used for both civilian and military applications. technologies and fields of military technology which hadn't been mentioned in the Versailles treaty such as rocketry.
Walter Dornberger
Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (6 September 1895 – 26 June 1980) was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World War I and World War II. He was a leader of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket programme and other projects a ...
was tasked with developing
liquid fuel rocket
A liquid-propellant rocket or liquid rocket utilizes a rocket engine that uses liquid propellants. Liquids are desirable because they have a reasonably high density and high specific impulse (''I''sp). This allows the volume of the propellant ta ...
s for military purposes in 1930 and would become involved in the
V2 rocket
The V-2 (german: Vergeltungswaffe 2, lit=Retaliation Weapon 2), with the technical name ''Aggregat 4'' (A-4), was the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed ...
program later. The
Deutsche Luft Hansa
''Deutsche Luft Hansa A.G.'' (from 1933 styled as ''Deutsche Lufthansa'' and also known as ''Luft Hansa'', ''Lufthansa'', or DLH) was a German airline, serving as flag carrier of the country during the later years of the Weimar Republic and th ...
was never anywhere near profitability and aviation played only a minuscule role in the transportation of either passengers or cargo, but the planes it employed were very similar to then current military models and its existence allowed the growth of the domestic airplane building industry and the training of pilots, both of which could be converted to military use in circumvention of the prohibition of Germany maintaining an Air Force as lined out in the Versailles treaty.
One of the reasons why this
militarization
Militarization, or militarisation, is the process by which a society organizes itself for military conflict and violence. It is related to militarism, which is an ideology that reflects the level of militarization of a state. The process of milit ...
of society was difficult to prevent relates to the distinction between the government executive and the legislature. The democratically elected government, being composed of groups of people, inevitably reflected the factional strife and cultural
militarism
Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mili ...
among the populace. But the
German Revolution of 1918–19
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
had not truly settled what the nature of the German state ought to be; Weimar Germany after its revolution was not very far from civil war—the different factions all hoped to transform the German state into the one that they thought it should be (which would require violent suppression of the other factions), and they expected their private armies to merge into the state's army (the Reichswehr) if they could manage to come to power.
During the Republic's era of democracy, they all participated in the democratic definition of coming to power (winning votes), but many of them, on all sides, planned to abolish or diminish democracy in the future, if they could first get into position to do so.
During the Weimar era, there was extensive economic interaction between Germany and the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
, and a component of German re-armament was
covertly holding military training exercises in the Soviet Union to hide their extent from other countries.
Germany–Soviet Union relations of the interwar period were complex, as bellicosity and cooperation coexisted in tortuous combinations.
Nazi government era: 1933-1945
After the
Nazi takeover of power in January 1933, the Nazis pursued a greatly enlarged and more aggressive version of rearmament. During its struggle for power, the 'National Socialist party' (
NSDAP
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
) promised to recover Germany's lost national pride. It proposed military rearmament claiming that the Treaty of Versailles and the acquiescence of the Weimar Republic were an embarrassment for all Germans. The rearmament became the topmost priority of the German government. Hitler would then spearhead one of the greatest expansions of industrial production Germany had ever seen.
Third Reich
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
Interior Minister
Wilhelm Frick
Wilhelm Frick (12 March 1877 – 16 October 1946) was a prominent German politician of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), who served as Reich Minister of the Interior in Adolf Hitler's cabinet from 1933 to 1943 and as the last governor of the Protectorate ...
, one of the most influential Nazi figures of the time, and
Hjalmar Schacht
Hjalmar Schacht (born Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht; 22 January 1877 – 3 June 1970, ) was a German economist, banker, centre-right politician, and co-founder in 1918 of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner ...
, who (while never a member of the NSDAP) was an initially sympathetic economist, introduced a wide variety of schemes in order to tackle the effects that the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
had on Germany, were the main key players of German rearmament policies (see
Reichsbank § Nazi period).
Dummy companies like
MEFO
MEFO was the more common abbreviation for (german: MEtallurgische FOrschungsgesellschaft m.b.H., en, Society for Metallurgical Research LLC), a dummy company set up by the Nazi German government to finance the German re-armament effort in the ...
were set up to finance the rearmament; MEFO obtained the large amount of money needed for the effort through the
Mefo bills
MEFO was the more common abbreviation for (german: MEtallurgische FOrschungsgesellschaft m.b.H., en, Society for Metallurgical Research LLC), a dummy company set up by the Nazi German government to finance the German re-armament effort in the y ...
, a certain series of
Promissory notes issued by the
Government of Nazi Germany
The government of Nazi Germany was totalitarian, run by the Nazi Party in Germany according to the Führerprinzip through the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. Nazi Germany began with the fact that the Enabling Act was enacted to give Hitler's gover ...
.
Covert organizations
A covert operation is a military operation intended to conceal the identity of (or allow plausible deniability by) the party that instigated the operation. Covert operations should not be confused with clandestine operations, which are performe ...
like the
Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule
The Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule (DVS), German Air Transport School, was a covert military-training organization operating as a flying school in Germany. It began during the Weimar Republic in Staaken, Berlin in 1925 and its head office was tra ...
were established under a civilian guise in order to train pilots for the future
Luftwaffe
The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German ''Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the ''Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabtei ...
. Although available statistics do not include non-citizens or women, the massive Nazi re-armament policy almost led to
full employment
Full employment is a situation in which there is no cyclical or unemployment#Cyclical unemployment, deficient-demand unemployment. Full employment does not entail the disappearance of all unemployment, as other kinds of unemployment, namely Structu ...
during the 1930s. The re-armament began a sudden change in fortune for many factories in Germany. Many industries were taken out of a deep crisis that had been induced by the Great Depression.
The creation of
Mefo bills
MEFO was the more common abbreviation for (german: MEtallurgische FOrschungsgesellschaft m.b.H., en, Society for Metallurgical Research LLC), a dummy company set up by the Nazi German government to finance the German re-armament effort in the y ...
was the first fiscal step that Germany took on the road to rearmament. The
Versailles Treaty
The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...
prohibited the German government from rearming. Therefore, to rearm to the capacity that Hitler was trying to attain, the Reichsbank would have to extend the German government an almost unlimited amount of credit towards the rearmament program while hiding the accumulation of Government debt from the international community. Contrary to this goal, the then
Reichsbank
The ''Reichsbank'' (; 'Bank of the Reich, Bank of the Realm') was the central bank of the German Reich from 1876 until 1945.
History until 1933
The Reichsbank was founded on 1 January 1876, shortly after the establishment of the German Empi ...
President
Hans Luther
Hans Luther () (10 March 1879 – 11 May 1962) was a German politician and Chancellor of Germany for 482 days in 1925 to 1926. As Minister of Finance he helped stabilize the Mark during the hyperinflation of 1923. From 1930 to 1933, Luther was h ...
would only extend credit of one-hundred million Reichsmarks to rearmament, so to work around this, Hitler replaced Luther with Hjalmar Schacht. Schacht turned Luther’s “employment creation bills” program into a system that would allow the German government to receive an unlimited amount of credit to put towards their program.
[Weinberg, Gerhard L. The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1994. Page 31] Schacht created the ''Metallurgische Forschungs-G.m.b.H'', a shell company that would issue short-term treasury notes, which would “function as a concealed form of money.”
The company would sell over 12 billion Reichsmarks worth of Mefo-bills by 1938, money which would all go to fund rearmament. Since Schacht’s company did not function and instead just worked as a front for government-issued debt, this allowed the
Nazi Regime
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
to conceal their rearmament funding from the international community.
[Weinberg, Gerhard L. The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1994. Page 350] Without the creation of the Mefo program, the international community would have been immediately alarmed at the raising of funds by
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, and the rearmament program would be threatened by external intervention.
In another instance of
money market
The money market is a component of the economy that provides short-term funds. The money market deals in short-term loans, generally for a period of a year or less.
As short-term securities became a commodity, the money market became a compon ...
fraud, one can examine Schacht’s manipulation of the American international exchange system, which provided Germany an arbitrage opportunity allowing them to fund their rearmament program. After attaining the position of
Reichsbank
The ''Reichsbank'' (; 'Bank of the Reich, Bank of the Realm') was the central bank of the German Reich from 1876 until 1945.
History until 1933
The Reichsbank was founded on 1 January 1876, shortly after the establishment of the German Empi ...
President in 1933, Schacht told the American Government that the German corporations, government, and municipalities would be unable to pay their interest payments to American bondholders on American denominated debt. The cancellation of interest payments was due to the lack of foreign exchange that Germany claimed they had in their treasury.
[Weinberg, Gerhard L. The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1994. Page 136] Although German exchange resources had been depleted during the great depression, the German government was not short enough on foreign exchange to completely stop paying bond coupon payments. Instead, the German government wanted to use the foreign exchange to pay for rearmament and fund its activities abroad, an example being the support of
Konrad Henlein
Konrad Ernst Eduard Henlein (6 May 1898 – 10 May 1945) was a leading Sudeten German politician in Czechoslovakia. Upon the German occupation in October 1938 he joined the Nazi Party as well as the '' SS'' and was appointed ''Gauleiter'' of the ...
and the
Sudeten German Party
The Sudeten German Party (german: Sudetendeutsche Partei, SdP, cs, Sudetoněmecká strana) was created by Konrad Henlein under the name ''Sudetendeutsche Heimatfront'' ("Front of the Sudeten German Homeland") on 1 October 1933, some months afte ...
In doing this, Schacht realized an arbitrage opportunity. In defaulting on their debt, the Germans would subsequently decrease the value of the debt on the American markets, where they could then go and repurchase the bonds with the “allegedly nonexistent foreign exchange at a fraction of their face value.” The debt purchaser could then sell the bond back to the issuer and exchange it for the American dollar-denominated debt for Reichsmarks. The German government could then take the foreign exchange that they had received and pay for their rearmament program, an example being purchasing American plane parts with the US dollars they accumulated from this program. Schacht took the program even further; he would allow German exporters to use a portion of their foreign exchange reserves to purchase the debt. They would then turn around and sell the debt back to the debtors for
Reichsmark
The (; sign: ℛℳ; abbreviation: RM) was the currency of Germany from 1924 until 20 June 1948 in West Germany, where it was replaced with the , and until 23 June 1948 in East Germany, where it was replaced by the East German mark. The Reich ...
s, subsidizing exports at the expense of the bondholder while allowing German debtors to repurchase their debt at a large discount. The American bondholder would risk the value of the bond dropping significantly, or they could resell to the German exporters. Schacht’s plan allowed the Nazi Regime to make a foreign exchange that they could use for rearmament and support
their propaganda efforts abroad.
By 1935, Hitler was open about rejecting the military restrictions set forth by the Treaty of Versailles. Rearmament was announced on 16 March, as was the reintroduction of
conscription
Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...
.
Some large industrial companies, which had until then specialized in certain traditional products began to diversify and introduce innovative ideas in their production pattern.
Shipyard
A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...
s, for example, created branches that began to design and build
aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines ...
. Thus, the German re-armament provided an opportunity for advanced, and sometimes revolutionary, technological improvements, especially in the field of
aeronautics
Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...
.
Work by labour historians has determined that many German workers in the 1930s identified passionately with the weapons they were building. While this was in part due to the high status of the skilled work required in the armaments industries, it was also to do with the weapons themselves - they were assertions of national strength, the common property of the German nation.
Adam Tooze
John Adam Tooze (born 1967) is an English historian who is a professor at Columbia University, Director of the European Institute and nonresident scholar at Carnegie Europe. Previously, he was Reader in Twentieth-Century History at the Universi ...
noted in 2008 that an instruction manual given to tank crews during the war made clear this connection:
For every shell you fire, your father has paid 100 Reichsmarks in taxes, your mother has worked for a week in the factory ... The Tiger costs all told 800,000 Reichsmarks and 300,000 hours of labour. Thirty thousand people had to give an entire week's wages, 6,000 people worked for a week so that you can have a Tiger. Men of the Tiger, they all work for you. Think what you have in your hands!
The
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
(1936–1939) would provide an ideal testing ground for the proficiency of the new weapons produced by the German factories during the re-armament years. Many aeronautical bombing techniques (i.e.
dive bombing
A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target simplifies the bomb's trajectory and allows the pilot to keep visual contact throughou ...
) were tested by the
Condor Legion
The Condor Legion (german: Legion Condor) was a unit composed of military personnel from the air force and army of Nazi Germany, which served with the Nationalist faction during the Spanish Civil War of July 1936 to March 1939. The Condor Legio ...
German expeditionary forces against the
Republican Government
Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy, is a type of democracy where elected people represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy. Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of represe ...
on Spanish soil with the permission of Generalísimo
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War ...
. Hitler insisted, however, that his long-term designs were peaceful, a strategy labelled as ''Blumenkrieg'' ("Flower War").
Re-armament in the 1930s saw the development of different theories of how to prepare the German economy for total war. The first amongst these was 'defence in depth' which was put forward by
Georg Thomas. He suggested that the German economy needed to achieve
Autarky
Autarky is the characteristic of self-sufficiency, usually applied to societies, communities, states, and their economic systems.
Autarky as an ideal or method has been embraced by a wide range of political ideologies and movements, especially ...
(or self-sufficiency) and one of the main proponents behind this was
I.G. Farben
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (), commonly known as IG Farben (German for 'IG Dyestuffs'), was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, Agfa, ...
. Hitler never put his full support behind Autarky and aimed for the development of 'defence in breadth' which espoused the development of the armed forces in all areas and was not concerned with preparing the German
war economy
A war economy or wartime economy is the set of contingencies undertaken by a modern state to mobilize its economy for war production. Philippe Le Billon describes a war economy as a "system of producing, mobilizing and allocating resources t ...
.
The re-armament program quickly increased the size of the German officer corps, and organizing the growing army would be their primary task until the beginning of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
on September 1, 1939. Count
Johann von Kielmansegg
Count Johann Adolf Graf von Kielmansegg (30 December 1906 – 26 May 2006) was a German general staff officer during the Second World War and later general of the ''Bundeswehr''.
Family
Johann Adolf Graf von Kielmansegg was the youngest of thre ...
(1906–2006) later said that the very involved process of outfitting 36
divisions kept him and his colleagues from reflecting on larger issues.
In any event, Hitler could boast on 26 September 1938 in the
Berlin Sportpalast
Berlin Sportpalast (; built 1910, demolished 1973) was a multi-purpose indoor arena located in the Schöneberg section of Berlin, Germany. Depending on the type of event and seating configuration, the Sportpalast could hold up to 14,000 people ...
that after giving orders to rearm the Wehrmacht he could "openly admit: we rearmed to an extent the like of which the world has not yet seen".
Toleration shown by other states
Since World War II, both academics and laypeople have discussed the extent to which German re-armament was an
open secret
An open secret is a concept or idea that is "officially" (''de jure'') secret or restricted in knowledge, but in practice (''de facto'') is widely known; or it refers to something that is widely known to be true but which none of the people most i ...
among national governments. The failure of
Allied
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
national governments to confront and intercede earlier in Germany is often discussed in the context of the
appeasement
Appeasement in an international context is a diplomatic policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power in order to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of the UK governm ...
policies of the 1930s. A central question is whether the Allies should have drawn "a line in the sand" earlier than September 1939, which might have resulted in a less devastating war and perhaps a prevention of
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
. However, it is also possible that anything that caused Hitler not to overreach as soon and as far as he did would only have condemned Europe to a more slowly growing Nazi empire, leaving plenty of time for a Holocaust later, and a successful
German nuclear weapons program
The Uranverein ( en, "Uranium Club") or Uranprojekt ( en, "Uranium Project") was the name given to the project in Germany to research nuclear technology, including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, during World War II. It went through sev ...
, safely behind a Nazi version of an
iron curtain
The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...
.
George F. Kennan
George Frost Kennan (February 16, 1904 – March 17, 2005) was an American diplomat and historian. He was best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War. He lectured widely and wrote scholarly hist ...
stated: "Unquestionably, such a policy might have enforced a greater circumspection on the Nazi regime and caused it to proceed more slowly with the actualization of its timetable. From this standpoint, firmness at the time of the
reoccupation of the Rhineland (7 March 1936) would probably have yielded even better results than firmness at the
time of Munich".
American corporate involvement
Some 150 American corporations took part in German re-armament,
supplying German companies with everything from raw materials to technology and
patent knowledge. This took place through a complex network of business interests, joint ventures, cooperation agreements, and cross-ownership between American and German corporations and their subsidiaries.
Resources supplied to German companies (some of which were MEFO front companies established by the German state) by American corporations included: synthetic rubber production technology (
DuPont
DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...
and
Standard Oil of New Jersey
ExxonMobil, an American multinational oil and gas corporation presently based out of Texas, has had one of the longest histories of any company in its industry. A direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the company traces its root ...
),
communication equipment (
ITT),
computing and tabulation machines (
IBM), aviation technology (which was used to develop the
Junkers Ju 87
The Junkers Ju 87 or Stuka (from ''Sturzkampfflugzeug'', "dive bomber") was a German dive bomber and ground-attack aircraft. Designed by Hermann Pohlmann, it first flew in 1935. The Ju 87 made its combat debut in 1937 with the Luftwaffe's Con ...
bomber),
fuel (
Standard Oil of New Jersey
ExxonMobil, an American multinational oil and gas corporation presently based out of Texas, has had one of the longest histories of any company in its industry. A direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, the company traces its root ...
and
Standard Oil of California), military vehicles (
Ford
Ford commonly refers to:
* Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford
* Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river
Ford may also refer to:
Ford Motor Company
* Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company
* Ford F ...
and
General Motors
The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...
),
funding (through investment,
brokering services, and loans by banks like the
Union Banking Corporation
The Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was a banking corporation in the US.
Founding member and one of its seven directors was Prescott Bush.
The banks assets were seized by the United States government on October 20, 1942, during World War II unde ...
),
collaboration
Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...
agreements, production facilities and raw materials. DuPont owned stocks in
IG Farben
Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (), commonly known as IG Farben (German for 'IG Dyestuffs'), was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate (company), conglomerate. Formed in 1925 from a merger of six chemical companies—BASF, ...
and
Degussa AG
Evonik Industries AG is a stock-listed German specialty chemicals company headquartered in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the second largest chemicals company in Germany, and one of the largest specialty chemicals companies in the ...
, who controlled
Degesch
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH (), oft shortened to Degesch, was a German chemical corporation which manufactured pesticides. Degesch held the patent on the infamous pesticide Zyklon, a variant of which was used to execu ...
, the producer of
Zyklon B
Zyklon B (; translated Cyclone B) was the trade name of a cyanide-based pesticide invented in Germany in the early 1920s. It consisted of hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), as well as a cautionary eye irritant and one of several adsorbents such ...
.
This involvement was motivated not only by financial gain, but in some cases by ideology as well.
Irénée du Pont
Irénée du Pont I (December 21, 1876 – December 19, 1963) was an American businessman, president of the DuPont company and head of the Du Pont trust.
Early life
Irénée du Pont I was born on December 21, 1876, in New Castle, Delaware, the so ...
,
director
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''D ...
and former president of DuPont, was a supporter of
Nazi racial theory and a proponent of
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
.
See also
*
Anglo-German Naval Agreement
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) of 18 June 1935 was a naval agreement between the United Kingdom and Germany regulating the size of the '' Kriegsmarine'' in relation to the Royal Navy.
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement fixed a ratio whe ...
*
MEFO
MEFO was the more common abbreviation for (german: MEtallurgische FOrschungsgesellschaft m.b.H., en, Society for Metallurgical Research LLC), a dummy company set up by the Nazi German government to finance the German re-armament effort in the ...
*
Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule
The Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule (DVS), German Air Transport School, was a covert military-training organization operating as a flying school in Germany. It began during the Weimar Republic in Staaken, Berlin in 1925 and its head office was tra ...
*
British re-armament
British re-armament was a period in British history, between 1934 and 1939, when a substantial programme of re-arming the United Kingdom was undertaken. Re-armament was necessary, because defence spending had gone down from £766 million in 1919 ...
*
West German rearmament
West German rearmament (german: Wiederbewaffnung) began in the decades after the World War II. Fears of another rise of German militarism caused the new military to operate within an alliance framework, under NATO command. The events led to the e ...
References
Further reading
* Corum, James S. ''The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940'' (1997)
* Muller, Richard R. "Hitler, Airpower, and Statecraft." in Robin Higham and Mark Parillo, eds., ''The Influence of Airpower Upon History: Statesmanship, Diplomacy, and Foreign Policy Since 1903 (2013): 85+.
* Overy, Richard J. ''War and Economy in the Third Reich'' (1995).
* Slepyan, Kenneth. "Mass Production and Mass Dictatorships: The Economics of Total War in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, 1933–1945." in Paul Corner and Jie-Hyun Lim, eds. ''The Palgrave Handbook of Mass Dictatorship'' (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016. 293-308.
* Tooze, Adam. ''The wages of destruction: The making and breaking of the Nazi economy'' (2008).
External links
NAZI Rearmament/Aufrüstung Historical Boys' Clothing
{{DEFAULTSORT:German Re-Armament
Economy of Nazi Germany
Re-armament
Military equipment of Germany
Military history of Germany
Military of Nazi Germany
Military of the Weimar Republic
Technological races