HITLER 1933-1934

    In January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. In terms of foreign policy, the watchword for Hitler's early foreign policy plans while in office could be classified in one word: caution. Hitler was extremely cautious in his first two years, in most areas. Even in terms of the secret agreements with the Soviet Union, which existed from the 1920s to mutually help Germany and Russia increase their military power. These agreements were not discontinued by Hitler, and were only discontinued by the Russians after a bizarre and strange anti-Soviet speech by Hubenberg, one of Hitler's nationalist party allies, but somebody who was not part of the Nazi party, and somebody who Hitler really didn't like very much. So, that was discontinued by the Russians.

    Now, in 1934, things began to change quite dramatically. To the surprise of just about everyone in Europe, Hitler concluded a nonaggression pact with Poland. In terms of understanding this pact and an understanding of a lot of what happened later in terms of European foreign policy, and its reaction to Hitler, it is important to understand that the Polish government of Marshal Pilsudski was a very anti-Russian government, and a government quite sympathetic to Germany. Marshal Pilsudski had fought on the German side in World War I, and he was appointed by the Germans to run Poland when they were in charge. Much more important is the fact that Russia had tried to invade Europe in the early 1920s, and the Russian army had gotten as far west as Poland. So, this was a government that was quite sympathetic to Germany, and very, very hostile to the Soviet Union.

     In terms of other developments, in 1934 Hitler went to meet Mussolini in Venice. This was a disaster. Mussolini, in the first place, never liked Hitler, and the summit meeting - without going into details - was basically a complete disaster. Things just went from bad to worse in terms of German-Italian relations later in the year, because of an attempted coup in Austria against the Dollfuss regime, organized by local nationalists. Mussolini blamed Hitler for this, and during this coup, Dollfuss was assassinated and Italy and Germany came very close to going to war.

     More important, on the domestic front, 1934 marked the consolidation of Hitler's power in Germany. Two very, very important developments took place. One: the storm troopers - the SA headed up by Ernst Rohm - started to talk about a second revolution. Rohm made the very serious mistake to challenge not only Hitler's power, but the power of the Army. Rohm wanted to create a People's Army, that would, in effect, supplant the Reichswehr. Obviously, the German generals didn't think this was a very good idea.

    Hitler was facing nothing short of a Civil War in Germany. He was basically informed by the Army that he either put Rohm in his place - that place might be considered an early grave - or the Army would be likely to stage a coup against the government and do the job for him. Meanwhile, he was facing a potential revolution from Rohm. Hitler did what he had to do. He really didn't have a choice in the matter. He crushed Rohm, and crushed the rebellion within his own ranks. After this, a very important development took place, which was the death of General von Hindenburg, who was technically the head of the German state. This left Hitler in complete control of Germany, and by the end of the year, Hitler was in a position of - pretty close to  - absolute power in Germany.