History of germany

The Thousand-Year Reich: from1934

Hitler's last step in achieving total control of Germany is eased by his willing accomplices, the senior army commanders. Indifferent to the naked evidence of criminality in the government, they welcome the taming of the SA. And when Hindenburg dies, on August 2, they immediately agree that Hitler will now combine the roles of president, chancellor and supreme commander of the armed forces.

Moreover the allegiance of the army is now to be personal. On the very day of Hindenburg's death, each officer and man in the German army swears by God to 'render unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and People, Adolf Hitler' and to 'be ready, as a brave soldier, to stake my life at any time for this oath'. 

On August 19 a plebiscite is put to the German people, asking whether Hitler shall now become head of state as Führer (leader) and Reich Chancellor. More than 38 million voters say yes (and more than 4 million have the courage to say no). At the party rally in Nuremberg in September Hitler declares that the Nazi revolution is now complete; and 'in the next thousand years there will be no other revolution in Germany'.

Thus begins the heady concept of the Third Reich, the Thousand-Year Reich, completing the trio of the First Reich (the Holy Roman Empire) and the Second Reich (achieved byBismarck for the Hohenzollern dynasty). In the event it will be the shortest of the three, lasting eleven years rather than a thousand. 

The economy and the nation: 1933-1938

There are three main planks to Hitler's economic and national policy: the reduction of unemployment, rearmament to make Germany strong again, and the restoration of the greater Germany diminished by thetreaty of Versailles. Unspoken aspects of the third aim are the annexation of Austria and the eventual need to expand into Slav areas to the east in order to give the German peopleLebensraum or 'living space' (both the phrase and the concept were probably suggested to Hitler by Rudolf Hess in their shared prison cell in 1923).

By a policy of massive investment in public works such as road building (the German autobahns, the world's first motorways, bring widespread international admiration), Hitler achieves rapid success with unemployment. The figure of 6 million unemployed when he takes power, in January 1933, is down to 2.6 million by December 1934. 

The following month brings him a great success in the rich mining district of the Saar. This region has been part of Germany from 1815. But a hundred years later the treaty of Versailles places it under the control of the League of Nations - with the output of the mines going to France as part of Germany's reparations. At the same time the treaty stipulates that the inhabitants shall vote in 1935 whether to merge with Germany or France or stay with the League. 

Anti-French feeling in the district would no doubt have provided the same result, but powerful Nazi propaganda ensures a 90% majority for merging with Germany when the plebiscite is held in January 1935. Hitler acquires a valuable industrial region. 
Two months later, in March 1935, Hitler takes his first calculated international gamble. In blatant violation of the terms of the treaty of Versailles he announces that he is reintroducing conscription in order to build up a peacetime army and navy. The great European powers duly register their protests but take no action.

A year later Hitler chances another equally bold step. The treaty of Versailles has specified that the Allies can occupy until 1935 the Rhineland, the important strategic area in the west of Germany bordering France. Theforeign divisionshave been withdrawn early, in 1930, but the treaty also states that the region shall be permanently demilitarized. In March 1936 Hitler moves troops into the Rhineland. Again he hears only verbal objections. 

The build-up of an army requires a build-up of armaments. In further violation of the treaty, Hitler launches a massive rearmament programme. German expenditure on arms rises from 2 billion Reichsmarks in 1933 to 16 billion in 1938. Unemployment, and the attendant public unrest, becomes a thing of the past. And foreign governments seem strangely willing to believe Hitler's protestations that his army and navy will be for defensive purposes only. Britain even signs a naval pact with Germany in 1935.

Even when Hitler first uses his army in a display of strength on foreign territory, he contrives to argue that his troops have been invited across the border, in March 1938, into neighbouring German-speaking Austria. And certainly there is cheering on the streets.