Five Brothers and a War

Hitler Prepares for War—1935

On Friday, March 15, 1935, Hitler announced to his cabinet and generals that Germany would openly defy the military limitations set by the Treaty of Versailles and re-arm. The following day, this was announced to the entire world. A part of the change would be an increase of the size of the army to 550,000, to be made possible through mandatory military conscription. While some generals waited anxiously for a military response from Britain or France, nothing happened, aside from some weak diplomatic objections. Hitler then gave a speech reassuring the world that all he wanted was peace. Hitler had begun a pattern of behavior of making dramatic moves on Saturdays when people could not react immediately, then after a muted reaction came, to make conciliatory statements to appear to walk back the move. By doing this, he kept everyone off-balance, and considering the impacts of the Great Depression, kept other nations from making large scale military build-ups to respond to him. He would also grant himself sufficient time between moves to minimize the anger from other nations. As they became used to his previous move, he would move again. An example of Hitler’s duplicity was shown on May 21, 1935 when he gave a speech which in part said that, "The blood shed on the European continent in the course of the last three hundred years bears no proportion to the national result of the events. In the end, France had remained France, Germany Germany, Poland Poland, and Italy Italy. What dynastic egotism, political passion and patriotic blindness have attained in the way of apparently far reaching political changes by shedding rivers of blood has, as regards national feeling, done no more than touched the skin of nations. It has not substantially altered their fundamental characters. If these states had applied merely a fraction of their sacrifices to wiser purposes the success would certainly have been greater and more permanent." Those word were very reassuring to a nervous world. But on the exact day he spoke those words, Hitler also secretly ordered that Germany be put on a war-economy, whereby great resources would be committed to the military and simultaneously re-established the Army’s General Staff structure in order to put in place an organization that could support a war. -1938

nazi germany

Hitler in Berlin, 1935

Five Brothers and a War

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