Written: 2 June 1933.
Source: The Militant, Vol. VI No. 42, 9 September 1933, p. 3.
Originally published: Harpers Magazine.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Einde O’Callaghan for the Trotsky Internet Archive.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2015. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.
The skeptical, or the simply cautious reader will reply that our interpretation of the Hitler program is, at best, a hypothesis, which has certain marks of verisimilitude but by no means the stamp of authenticity. To this one can reply: the program flows from the imperative logic of the circumstances and in big politics one must have as the point of departure that the opponent will always make his best moves. The difficulty of literally proving the “hypothesis” unfolded above, lies in the fact that the opposition literature if the National Socialists is exceptionally abundant and contradictory, whereas the governmental practise is still very recent and meager. The author was fully aware of this difficulty when he undertook this work. But we were assisted by a fortunate accident which supplied us in time with a political document of extraordinary value.
We refer to an Open Letter of Hitler to Papen, published in the form of a little brochure on October 16, 1932. Rather sharply polemical in tone, the Letter remained unnoticed outside of Germany. The leaders of National Socialism talk and write too much! Still, it should have found a place on the table of every diplomat or journalist who occupies himself with the present-day foreign policy of Germany. Let us recall the circumstances of the polemic. Papen was then Chancellor. Hitler was in expectant opposition – between August 13, when Hindenburg refused to appoint him head of the government, and January 30, when the Field Marshall was forced to yield the command of Germany to Hitler. The Open Letter was not destined for the masses, but for the ruling classes, and had as its aim to prove to them that the social regime of Germany cannot be saved solely by bureaucratic methods; that only the National Socialists have a serious program in foreign policy; finally, that he, Hitler, is as far removed from effete resignation as he is from adventurism. The letter is almost void of demagogy, it is serious in tone and veracious in essence. Today, it may be assumed. Hitler would gladly burn his own brochure in the furnace. All the more attentively should his adversaries examine it.
”It is absurd to think,” Hitler explained to Papen, “that the power which disarmed us will today seriously also disarm itself without being forced to do so.” It is just as absurd to wait for France to agree some fine day or other to the rearmament of Germany. Its enormous military preponderance relieves France of the necessity of an entente with a vanquished foe on the basis of equality of rights. Any attempt to propose a military agreement to France in return for armaments, will not only be very coldly received but will immediately be brought to the attention of the state against which it might be aimed! Hitler is alluding of course to the Soviet Union. It is possible for Germany to gain the right to arm itself only by means of “a genuine re-establishment of the European equilibrium”. England and Italy are interested in the realization of this goal, but in no case and under no conditions is France. “It is inconceivable to think that the lack of intimacy and of concordance with England and Italy can be made up for by the establishment of better relations with France!” The fundamental thesis of the foreign policy of Hitler, which places a cross over the ideas, or if one prefers, over the illusions of Locarno, leaves nothing to be desired in the way of clarity. In the declaration of May 17, we will not of course find so clear an exposition. But the declaration in no way contradicts the Open Letter: on the contrary, it develops and applies its program for a definite stage.
The goal of German policy is the re-establishment of the military sovereignty of the state. Everything else is only a means thereto. But the means need not at all be constructed in the image of the goal. Under no circumstances must Germany present itself to the world with a rearmament program of its own, even less so to this Disarmament Conference. For two reasons no conference is able to adopt a decision which would radically change the material relationship of forces; the very demand for the right to armaments, while remaining a purely platonic demonstration, will nevertheless permit France to suppress the question of its own disarmament and, what is worse yet, bring England closer to France.
This latter result is .according to Hitler, already obtained to a certain degree as a result of the thoughtless policy of Papen. England is forced to support France much more than it wants to. It must be recognized that the criticism addressed by Hitler to the “Gentlemen’s Club”, and to the Chancellor of the Reich himself as a dilettante and an adventurer, is not merely biting but also quite convincing. The “national” barons and bureaucrats have no foreign policy at all. The rattling of an inexistent weapon is dictated to them by domestic considerations: they are ready to utilize the nationalist movement while arresting, at the same time, its further growth. Undoubtedly taking his inspiration from Bismarck, Hitler does not recoil from a blow at the last Hohenzollern: Papen and his colleagues are only the epigones of the theatrical policy of Wilhelm II, with this fundamental difference, that the Kaiser had a first class army, whereas they have only the memory of it. Hitler hits a bull’s eye here.
It is not hard, after this, to understand how badly mistaken was that part of the press and diplomacy which sought to discover the real program of the present German government in the rhetoric of Papen on the peculiar charm of death on the field of battle. It must not be lost sight of that Papen, whom the Nazis, during the brief period of his rule, treated as a captain of the dragoons, feels himself in their midst like a man who is constantly on probation. On May 13, he adopted an unusually loud tone so as to put himself in harmony – but he was mistaken in his calculations. One may have his own opinion about the tastes of an elderly captain of the dragoons who, between taking a dose of Urodonal and drinking down a glass of Iluniadi-Jenos water, propagates among young people the advantages of shrapnel over arteriosclerosis; but one thing is indisputable: behind Papen’s discourse is concealed no program. The “pacifism” of the present Chancellor is much more dangerous than the bellicose flights of the Vice-Chancellor.
In passing, we find the explanation for the sharp contradiction between Hitler’s declaration and the previous policy of Neurath, Nadolny and others. Hitler became Chancellor at the cost of accepting a ministry of barons and privy councillors. The camarilla around Hindenburg consoles itself with the idea of pursuing also its policy under Hitler. In all likelihood, it is only the threatening repercussions of Papen’s speech that gave Hitler the possibility of finally taking into his hands the helm of foreign policy. It is not Wilhelmstrasse which dictated the declaration of May 17 to the new Chancellor. On the contrary, it is Hitler who subdued the fantasies of the barons and the privy councillors of Wilhelmstrasse.
But let us return to the Open Letter. With an unusual bruskness, it attacks the slogan launched by Papen on naval armament: even if Germany had the means – and it hasn’t – it would not be permitted to convert them into warships and it would be powerless to violate the prohibition. The slogan of military armament alone drove England to the side of France: there you have the results “of your truly fatal leadership in foreign policy, Mr. von Papen!”
The struggle for the arming of Germany, on sea and on land, must be based upon a definite political idea. Hitler calls it by its name: the need of “strengthening the defense against the latent dangers of the East” is comparatively easy to motivate. Sympathy for such a program is guaranteed in advance on the part of “clear-visioned persons” in the West – obviously not in France. It is only from the standpoint of “the defense necessary for us in the East”, with regard to the Baltic Sea, that England can be persuaded to accept “corrections” also in the naval paragraphs of the Versailles treaty. For it must not be forgotten: “at the present time, it is important for the future of Germany to have an attitude full of confidence towards England”.
The German national movement can and should demand armament, but the German government must in no case expound this demand. Today, it must insist only and exclusively upon the disarmament of the victors. Hitler considered it self-evident that the Disarmament Conference is condemned to failure. “There would be no need at all”, he wrote three months before his advent to power, “for the German delegation to participate interminably in the Geneva Disarmament comedy. It would suffice to expose clearly before the whole world the wish of France not to disarm, for us thereupon to quit the Conference, stating that the peace of Versailles has been violated by the signatory powers themselves and that Germany must reserve for itself under these circumstances the drawing of the corresponding conclusions.”
The declaration of Hitler, as Chancellor, only serves to develop this melody. The refusal of the victors to disarm would signify the “final moral and real liquidation of the treaties themselves”. Germany would interpret such conduct as the desire “to remove it from the Conference”. In that case, it would be hard for it “to continue to belong to the League of Nations”. Truly, the Open Letter is indispensable as the key to the strategy of Hitler!
The departure of Germany from the League of Nations should be accompanied by a disaffection between France, on the one hand, and England and the United States, on the other. The first preconditions will be created for the reestablishment of the “European equilibrium” in which Germany must occupy a growing place. With the concordance of Italy and England, Hitler will acquire the possibility of re-arming Germany, not by petty contraband measures but by big “corrections” in the Versailles treaty. Parallel to this, will be developed the program of “defense” against the East. In this process, a critical point must inevitably supervene: war. Against whom? Should the line against the East prove to be the line of least resistance, the explosion can also take place along a different direction. For, if it is still possible to discuss to what degree offensive means are distinguished from defense means, it is already beyond discussion that the military means suitable for the East are equally suitable for the West.
Hitler is preparing for war. His policy in the domain of economics is not dictated by the abstraction of autarchy, but primarily by a concern over the maximum economic independence of Germany in case of war. To the aims of military preparation must also be subordinated the service of obligatory labor. But the very character of these measures indicates that it is not a question of tomorrow. An attack upon the West in the more or less proximate future could be carried out only on condition of a military alliance between Fascist Germany and the Soviets. But it is not the most turbulent sections of the White Guard emigration that can believe in the possibility of such an absurdity or can seek to make a threat out of it. The attack against the East can take place only on condition of the support of one or several states of the West. This variant is, at all events, the more real one. But here too the preparatory period will not be measured by weeks or by months.
The four-power pact, deciding nothing fundamental in advance, can only organize the mutual contact of the largest states of western Europe: it is a guarantee against hazards of a secondary order, but not against fundamental antagonisms. Hitler will strive to extract from the pact all the advantages for the attack against the East. The regulations of the pact predetermine no more than ten percent of its future destiny. Its real historical role will be determined by the actual relationships and the groupings of its participants, their allies and their adversaries.
Hitler is prepared for the next ten years not to undertake any military actions against either France or Poland. In the declaration, he fixed five years as the term which genuine equality of rights for Germany in the matter of armed forces must be accomplished. These terms need not, of course, be invested with a sacred significance, but indirectly they nevertheless outline the bounds, in point of time, within which the leading circles of Fascism confine their plans of revenge.
Domestic difficulties, unemployment, the ruination and the distress of the petty bourgeoisie, may, of course, push Hitler to premature actions which he himself, by a cool analysis, must regard as harmful. In living politics, one must base himself not only upon the plane of the opponent but also upon all the entanglements of the conditions in which he is placed. The historical development of Europe will not meekly obey the order of march worked out in the Brown House of Munich. But this order of march, after the seizure of power by Hitler, has become one of the greatest factors in European development. The plan will be altered in conformity with events. But one cannot understand the alterations without having before him the plan in its entirety.
The author of these lines does not consider himself at all called upon to mount guard before the Versailles treaty. Europe needs a new organization. But woe betide it if this work falls into the hands of Fascism. The historian of the twenty-first century will, in that case, inevitably have to write the epoch of the decay of Europe began with the war of 1914. Called the “war of democracy”, it soon led to the domination of Fascism which became the instrument concentrating all the forces of the European nations towards the aim of “the war for liberation” ... from the results of the preceding war. Thus, Fascism, as the expression of the historic blind alley of Europe, was at the same time the instrument of the destruction of its economic and cultural acquisitions ...
Let us hope, however, that this old continent still has sufficient vital strength left to open up to itself a different historical road.
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Last updated on: 22 October 2015