German re-armament
Encyclopedia
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...
.
During its struggle for power the National Socialist party promised to recover Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
's lost national pride. It proposed military rearmament claiming that the Treaty of Versailles and the acquiescence of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
were an embarrassment for all Germans.
Despite its scale, the Aufrüstung was largely a secret operation
Covert operation
A covert operation is a military, intelligence or law enforcement operation that is carried clandestinely and, often, outside of official channels. Covert operations aim to fulfill their mission objectives without any parties knowing who sponsored or carried out the operation...
, carried out mostly in a cloak-and-dagger manner through organizations (some of which were racketeer-style fronts
Front organization
A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy groups, or corporations...
) engaged in covert operations. Disclosures of Nazi re-armament triggered the Re-armament policy in the United Kingdom, which escalated after Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
withdrew Germany from the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
and the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1933.
History
Germany's post World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
re-armament began at the time of the Weimar Republic, when the Chancellor of Germany Hermann Müller
Hermann Müller (politician)
' , born in Mannheim, was a German Social Democratic politician who served as Foreign Minister , and twice as Chancellor of Germany under the Weimar Republic...
, who belonged to the SPD
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
Social Democratic Party, passed cabinet laws that allowed secret
Deception
Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, bad faith, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth . Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, and sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment...
and illegal re-armament efforts.
After the Nazi takeover
Machtergreifung
Machtergreifung is a German word meaning "seizure of power". It is normally used specifically to refer to the Nazi takeover of power in the democratic Weimar Republic on 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, turning it into the Nazi German dictatorship.-Term:The...
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
Wilhelm Frick
Wilhelm Frick was a prominent German Nazi official serving as Minister of the Interior of the Third Reich. After the end of World War II, he was tried for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials and executed...
, one of the most influential Nazi figures of the time, and Hjalmar Schacht
Hjalmar Schacht
Dr. Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht was a German economist, banker, liberal politician, and co-founder of the German Democratic Party. He served as the Currency Commissioner and President of the Reichsbank under the Weimar Republic...
, a Nazi fellow traveling economist who introduced a wide variety of schemes in order to tackle the effects that the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
had on Germany, were the main key players of German rearmament policies.
Dummy companies
Dummy company
A dummy corporation or dummy company is an entity created to serve as a front or cover for one or more companies. It can have the appearance of being real but lacks the capacity to function independently. The goal of a dummy corporation can be to conceal true ownership and/or avoid taxes...
like MEFO
MEFO
MEFO Company was the more common name for Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft, m.b.H. , a dummy company set up by the Nazi German government during 1934 to finance the German re-armament effort before World War II.-Origins:...
were setup to finance the re-armament; MEFO obtained the large amount of money needed for the effort through the Mefo bills
Mefo bills
A Mefo bill , named after the company Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft, was a promissory note used for a system of deferred payment to finance the German rearmament, devised by the German Minister of Finance, Hjalmar Schacht, in 1934...
, a certain series of credit notes issued by the Government of Nazi Germany.
Covert organizations like the Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule
Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule
The Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule , German Air Transport School, was a covert military-training organization operating as a flying school in Germany...
were established under a civilian guise in order to train pilots for the future Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
.
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.
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.
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. Shipyard
Shipyard
Shipyards and dockyards are places which repair and build ships. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance and basing activities than shipyards, which are sometimes associated more with initial...
s, for example, created branches that began to design and build aircraft
Aircraft
An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft 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.Although...
. Thus the German re-armament provided an opportunity for advanced, and sometimes revolutionary, technological improvements, especially in the field of aeronautics.
The Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
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
Condor Legion
The Condor Legion was a unit composed of volunteers from the German Air Force and from the German Army which served with the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War of July 1936 to March 1939. The Condor Legion developed methods of terror bombing which were used widely in the Second World War...
German expeditionary forces against the Republican Government
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
on Spanish soil with the permission of Generalísimo Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
. 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 Geog Thomas. He suggested that the German economy needed to achieve Autarky
Autarky
Autarky is the quality of being self-sufficient. Usually the term is applied to political states or their economic policies. Autarky exists whenever an entity can survive or continue its activities without external assistance. Autarky is not necessarily economic. For example, a military 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.
Conjectures
Since World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, both academics and laypeople have discussed the extent to which the German re-armament was an open secret
Open secret
An open secret is a concept or idea that is "officially" secret or restricted in knowledge, but is actually widely known; or refers to something which is widely known to be true, but which none of the people most intimately concerned are willing to categorically acknowledge in public.Examples of...
among national governments. The failure of Allied national governments to confront and intercede earlier is often discussed in the context of the appeasement
Appeasement
The term appeasement is commonly understood to refer to a diplomatic policy aimed at avoiding war by making concessions to another power. Historian Paul Kennedy defines it as "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and...
policies of the 1930s. A central question is whether the Allies should have drawn "a line in the sand" earlier than September of 1939, which might have resulted in a less devastating war and perhaps a prevention of the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
.
See also
- Anglo-German Naval AgreementAnglo-German Naval AgreementThe Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 18, 1935 was a bilateral agreement between the United Kingdom and German Reich regulating the size of the Kriegsmarine in relation to the Royal Navy. The A.G.N.A fixed a ratio whereby the total tonnage of the Kriegsmarine was to be 35% of the total tonnage...
- MEFOMEFOMEFO Company was the more common name for Metallurgische Forschungsgesellschaft, m.b.H. , a dummy company set up by the Nazi German government during 1934 to finance the German re-armament effort before World War II.-Origins:...
- Deutsche VerkehrsfliegerschuleDeutsche VerkehrsfliegerschuleThe Deutsche Verkehrsfliegerschule , German Air Transport School, was a covert military-training organization operating as a flying school in Germany...
- Re-armamentRe-armamentIn British history, Re-armament refers to the period between 1934 and 1939, when a substantial programme of re-arming the nation was undertaken to meet the threat posed by Hitler's Nazi Germany....
in the UK - WiederbewaffnungWiederbewaffnungWiederbewaffnung refers to the United States of America plan to help build up West Germany after World War II. They could not function outside an alliance framework . These events lead to the establishment of the Bundeswehr, the West German army, in 1955.Heinz Guderian stated that the fight was...