Hitler’s first major speech on foreign policy after taking office as Chancellor, delivered to the Reichstag on May 17, 1933, was a plea for peace, equal rights and mutual understanding among nations. So reasonable and persuasively argued was his appeal that it was endorsed even by representatives of the opposition Social Democratic Party. Two years later, in his Reichstag address of May 21, 1935, the German leader again stressed the need for peace on the basis of mutual respect and equal rights. Even the London Times regarded this speech as “reasonable, straightforward and comprehensive.”
Such appeals were not mere rhetoric. On March 31, 1936, for example, Hitler’s government announced a comprehensive plan for strengthening peace in Europe. The detailed paper included numerous specific proposals, including demilitarization of the entire Rhineland region, a western Europe security agreement, and categorical prohibition of incendiary bombs, poison gas, heavy tanks and heavy artillery.
Although this wide-ranging offer, and others like it, were rejected by leaders in London, Paris, Warsaw and Prague, Hitler’s initiatives were not entirely fruitless. In January 1934, for example, his government concluded a ten-year non-aggression pact with Poland. (Unfortunately, the spirit of this treaty was later broken by the men who took power in Warsaw after the death of Poland’s Marshal Pilsudski in 1935.) One of Hitler's most important foreign policy successes was a comprehensive naval agreement with Britain, signed in June 1935. (This agreement, incidentally, abrogated the Treaty of Versailles, thereby showing that neither London nor Berlin still regarded it as valid.)
For years Hitler sought an alliance with Britain, or least a cordial relationship based on mutual respect. In that effort, he took care not to offend British pride or sensibilities, or to make any proposal that might impair or threaten British interests. Hitler also worked for cordial relations with France, likewise taking care not to say or do anything that might offend French pride or infringe on French national interests. The sincerity of Hitler’s proposals to France, and the validity of his fear of possible French military aggression against Germany is underscored by the immense manpower and funding resources he devoted to construction of the vast Westwall (“Siegfried Line”) defensive fortifications on his nation’s western border.
Over the years, historians have tended either to ignore Hitler’s initiatives for reducing tensions and promoting peace, or to dismiss them as deceitful posturing. But if the responsible leaders in Britain and France during the 1930s had really regarded these proposals as bluff or insincere pretense, they could easily have exposed them as such by giving them serious consideration. Their unresponsive attitude suggests that they understood that Hitler’s proposals were sincere, but rejected them anyway because to accept them might jeopardize British-French political- military predominance in Europe.
In the following essay, a German scholar reviews proposals by Hitler and his government -- especially in the years before the outbreak of war in 1939 – to promote peace and equal rights in Europe, reduce tensions, and greatly limit production and deployment of armaments.
The author, Friedrich Stieve (1884-1966), was a German historian and diplomat. During the First World War he served as press attaché with the German embassy in Stockholm. He represented Germany’s democratic government as his nation’s ambassador in Latvia, 1928- 1932. He then moved to Berlin where he headed the cultural- political affairs bureau of the German Foreign Office, 1932- 1939. He held a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg, and was a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Books by Stieve include Geschichte des deutschen Volkes (1939), Wendepunkte europäischer Geschichte vom Dreißigjährigen Krieg bis zur Gegenwart (1941), and a collection of poems.
Here, below, is a translation of the lengthy essay by Dr. Stieve, Was die Welt nicht wollte: Hitlers Friedensangebote 1933-1939, issued by the “German Information Center” and published as a 16-page booklet in Berlin in 1940. Along with editions that were soon issued in French and Spanish, an English-language edition was published as a booklet, apparently in 1940, by the Washington Journal of Washington, DC.
Hitler did not want war in 1939 – and certainly not a general or global conflict. He earnestly sought a peaceful resolution of the dispute with Poland over the status of the ethnically German city-state of Danzig and the “Corridor” region, which was the immediate cause of conflict. The sincerity of his desire for peace in 1939, and his fear of another world war, has been affirmed by a number of scholars, including the eminent British historian A. J. P. Taylor. It was, of course, the declarations of war against Germany by Britain and France on Sept. 3, 1939, made with secret encouragement by US President Roosevelt, that transformed the limited German-Polish clash into a larger, continent- wide war.
To justify its declaration of war, Britain protested that Germany had violated Polish sovereignty, and threatened Poland’s independence. The emptiness and insincerity of these stated reasons is shown by the fact that the British leaders did not declare war against Soviet Russia two weeks later when Soviet forces attacked the Polish Republic from the East. Britain’s betrayal of Poland, and the hypocrisy of its claimed reasons for going to war against Germany in 1939, became even more obvious in 1944-45 when Britain’s leaders permitted the complete Soviet takeover and subjugation of Poland.
Germany’s six-week military campaign of May-June 1940 ended with a stunning victory over numerically superior French and British forces, and the rout of British troops from the European mainland. In the aftermath of this historic triumph, Hitler and his government made yet another important effort to end the war.
In a speech delivered to the Reichstag on July 19, 1940, which was broadcast on radio stations around the world, the German leader said:
“... From London I now hear a cry – it’s not the cry of the mass of people, but rather of politicians – that the war must now, all the more, be continued ... Believe me, my deputies, I feel an inner disgust at this kind of unscrupulous parliamentarian destroyers of peoples and countries ... It never has been my intention to wage wars, but rather to build a new social state of the highest cultural level. Every year of this war keeps me from this work ... Mr. Churchill has now once again declared that he wants war ... I am fully aware that with our response, which one day will come, will also come nameless suffering and misfortune for many people ...
“... In this hour I feel compelled, standing before my conscience, to direct yet another appeal to reason in England. I believe I can do this as I am not pleading for something as the vanquished, but rather, as the victor speaking in the name of reason. I see no compelling reason for this war to continue. I am grieved to think of the sacrifices it will claim ... Possibly Mr. Churchill again will brush aside this statement of mine by saying that it is merely an expression of fear and of doubt in our final victory. In that case I shall have relieved my conscience in regard to the things to come.”
Following up on this appeal, German officials reached out to Britain through diplomatic channels. But Winston Churchill and his government rejected this initiative, and instead insisted on continuing the war. – with, of course, horrific consequences for Europe and the world.
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