Hitler

they did not directly encourage or participate in it. Antisemitism had come by now to suffuse all walks of life. ‘The Nazis have indeed brought off a deepening of the gap between the people and the Jews,’ ran a report from the illegal socialist opposition for January 1936. ‘The feeling that the Jews are another race is today a general one.’
    IV
    Hitler, by late 1935, was already well on the way to establishing – backed by the untiring efforts of the propaganda machine – his standing as a national leader, transcending purely party interest. He stood for the successes, the achievements of the regime. His popularity soared also among those who were otherwise critical of National Socialism. With the party, it was a different matter. The party could be, and often was, blamed for all the continuing ills of daily life – for the gulf between expectations and reality that had brought widespread disillusionment in the wake of the initial exaggerated hopes of rapid material improvement in the Third Reich.
    Not least, the party’s image had badly suffered through its attacks on the Christian Churches. The dismal mood in those parts of the country worst affected by the assault on the Churches was only part of a wider drop in the popularity of the regime in the winter of 1935–6. Hitler was aware of the deterioration in the political situation within Germany, and of the material conditions underlying the worsening mood of the population. Anger, especially in the working class, was rising by autumn 1935 as a result of food shortages, rising food-prices, and renewed growth in unemployment.
    As the domestic problems deepened, however, the Abyssinian crisis, causing disarray in the League of Nations, presented Hitler with new opportunities to look to foreign-policy success. He was swiftly alert to the potential for breaking out of Germany’s international isolation, driving a further deep wedge between the Stresa signatories, andattaining, perhaps, a further revision of Versailles. Given the domestic situation, a foreign-policy triumph would, moreover, be most welcome.
    Under the terms of the 1919 peace settlement, the German Reich had been prohibited from erecting fortifications, stationing troops, or undertaking any military preparations on the left bank of the Rhine and within a fifty-kilometre strip on the right bank. The status of the demilitarized Rhineland had subsequently been endorsed by the Locarno Pact of 1925, which Germany had signed. Any unilateral alteration of that status by Germany would amount to a devastating breach of the post-war settlement.
    The remilitarization of the Rhineland would have been on the agenda of any German nationalist government. The army viewed it as essential for the rearmament plans it had established in December 1933, and for western defence. The Foreign Ministry presumed the demilitarized status would be ended by negotiation at some point. Hitler had talked confidentially of the abolition of the demilitarized zone as early as 1934. He spoke of it again, in broad terms, in summer 1935. However likely the reoccupation would have been within the next year or two, the seizing of that opportunity, the timing and character of the coup, were Hitler’s. They bore his hallmark at all points.
    The opportunity was provided by Mussolini. As we have noted, his Abyssinian adventure, provoking the League of Nations’ condemnation of an unprovoked attack on a member-state and the imposition of economic sanctions, broke the fragile Stresa Front. Italy, faced with a pessimistic military outlook, sanctions starting to bite, and looking for friends, turned away from France and Britain, towards Germany. The stumbling-block to good relations had since 1933 been the Austrian question. Since the Dollfuss assassination in mid-1934, the climate had been frosty. This now swiftly altered. Mussolini signalled in January 1936 that he had nothing against Austria in effect becoming a satellite of Germany. The path to the ‘Axis’ immediately opened up. Later the same month he publicly claimed the French and British talk of possible joint military action against Italy in the Mediterranean – not that this was in reality ever likely – had destroyed the balance of Locarno, and could only lead to the collapse of the Locarno system. Hitler took note. Then, in an interview with Ambassador Hassell, Mussolini acknowledged that Italy would offer no support for France and Britain should Hitler decide to take