The German re-armament (Aufrüstung) was a massive effort led by the NSDAP in the early 1930s in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. During its struggle for power the National Socialist party 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.[1]
Despite its scale, the Aufrüstung was largely a secret operation, carried out mostly in a cloak-and-dagger manner through organizations (some of which were racketeer-style fronts) engaged in covert operations. Disclosures of Nazi re-armament triggered the Re-armament policy in the United Kingdom, which escalated after Adolf Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations and the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1933.[2]
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Germany's post World War I re-armament began at the time of the Weimar Republic, when the Chancellor of Germany Hermann Müller, who belonged to the SPD Social Democratic Party, passed cabinet laws that allowed secret and illegal re-armament efforts.[3]
After the Nazi takeover of power the re-armament became the topmost priority of the German government. Hitler would then spearhead one of the greatest expansions of industrial production and civil improvement Germany had ever seen.
Third Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, one of the most influential Nazi figures of the time, and Hjalmar Schacht, a Nazi fellow traveling economist who introduced a wide variety of schemes in order to tackle the effects that the Great Depression had on Germany, were the main key players of German rearmament policies.[4]
Dummy companies like MEFO were setup to finance the re-armament; MEFO obtained the large amount of money needed for the effort through the Mefo bills, a certain series of credit notes issued by the Government of Nazi Germany.[5] Covert organizations like the Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule were established under a civilian guise in order to train pilots for the future Luftwaffe.[6] The Soviet Union played a critical role in German re-armament. In exchange for German military instructors and arms development collaboration, Lenin's War Commisar, Leon Trotsky, entered into an agreement with Hans Von Seeckt to provide a remote area where German arms could be developed and training could be conducted out of sight of the Great Powers. The Germans manufactured tanks, shells, aircraft, and even poisonous gas in the Soviet towns of Lipetsk, Saratov, Kazan, and Tula. In exchange, Soviet commanders, selected by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevski, were trained in German military academies.[7]
Although available statistics don't include non-citizens or women, the massive Nazi re-armament policy, almost led to full employment during the 1930s. Real wages in Germany, however, dropped by roughly 25% between 1933 and 1938.[8]
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. Some large industrial companies, which had until then specialized in certain traditional products began to diversify and introduce innovative ideas in their production pattern. Shipyards, for example, created branches that began to design and build aircraft. Thus the German re-armament provided an opportunity for advanced, and sometimes revolutionary, technological improvements, especially in the field of aeronautics.[9]
The Spanish Civil War 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 techiques were tested by the Condor Legion German expeditionary forces against the Republican Government on Spanish soil with the permission of Generalísimo Francisco Franco. Hitler insisted, however, that his long-term designs were peaceful, a strategy labelled as "Blumenkrieg" (Flower War).[10]
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 Geog Thomas. He suggested that the German economy needed to achieve Autarky (or self sufficiency) and one of the main proponents behind this was I.G Farben. 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 economy for war.
Throughout the process of re-armament in the 1930s, Hitler attempted to justify his envisioned policies, including Lebensraum, through the liberal program which democracies were utilizing around the world.He was critical of the British, as they condemned his demands for territory while they were maintaining colonial possessions around the globe. Through Hitler's reasoning, the British had looked at India and believed they could put it to better use by conforming it with the British model. Thus, Hitler sought to utilize the same logic for his conquests. He looked at nations such as Poland, and deeming the Polish to be inferior, reasoned it was justifiable to colonize the nation and subjugate its people under his program.
"Three hundred years earlier England had gradually built her Empire, not perhaps through the free will or the unanimous demonstrations of those affected, but for 300 years this World Empire was welded together solely by force. War followed war. One nation after another was robbed of its freedom-one state after another was shattered so that the structure which calls itself the British Empire might arise. Democracy was nothing but a mask covering subjugation and the oppression of nations and individuals. This State cannot allow its members to vote if today, after they have been worked upon for centuries, they should freely choose to be members of this Commonwealth. On the contrary, Egyptian Nationalists, Indian Nationalists in their thousands are filling the prisons. Concentration camps were not invented in Germany; it is the English who were the ingenious inventors of this idea. By these means they contrived to break the backbone of other nations, to remove their resistance, to wear them down, and make them prepared at last to submit to this British yoke of democracy." Adolf Hitler at the Berlin Sports Palace 1941
Since World War II, both academics and laypeople have discussed the extent to which the German re-armament was an open secret among national governments. The failure of Allied national governments to confront and intercede earlier is often discussed in the context of the appeasement 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.
"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 in 1936 would probably have yielded even better results than firmness at the time of Munich." -George Kennan [11]