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09/01/2009

Nevertheless, the German Reich remained vulnerable on its Western border, a circumstance that would later prompt Hitler's great rival, Winston Churchill, to say: "There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action" than World War II.

A provision of the Treaty of Versailles applied in western Germany that Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann had expressly accepted in 1925. It stipulated that there were to be no German tanks, garrisons or air bases in the Rhineland and within a zone extending 50 kilometers east of the Rhine River. This made it possible for the French army to occupy the Ruhr region, where the Third Reich produced much of its weaponry, without significant casualties. This was seen as an intolerable situation, not just by the Nazis, but also by almost all senior German military officers and diplomats.

On March 7, 1936, Germany was ready to change the status quo. Before dawn, the first freight trains, loaded with field artillery and draft horses, began rolling toward the eastern bank of the Rhine. But Hitler was taking a decidedly cautious approach, sending only about 30,000 soldiers into the demilitarized zone and allowing only 3,000 men to cross the river and advance to the border. The soldiers were under orders to avoid combat with the French at all costs, and to remain ready at all times to retreat within an hour.

The French, for their part, did nothing in response. While residents of the Rhineland and Saarland regions cheered on the troops, the French cabinet met in Paris. Prime Minister Albert Sarraut was determined not to allow the Germans to take control of the zone "unilaterally." As he would later report, he was one of very few people in France to hold this view. The people, the parties and his fellow politicians were all still traumatized by World War I, which was waged largely on French soil.

'I Have Never Really Endured Such Fear'

When French Chief of Staff Maurice Gamelin, choosing his words carefully, told the cabinet that a French advance would likely encounter the greatest German resistance, probably leading to war, and that France was not prepared for an offensive campaign, the cabinet members nodded approvingly and decided to leave the next move up to the British. Only if they joined in would the French take an active role, they concluded.

But London wasn't about to play along. If the French were unwilling to make a move, why should Britain send its sons to risk their lives?

At the time, French intelligence arrived at an absurd estimate of 295,000 German troops in the Rhineland. The specialists had included members of the SS, SA and other Nazi organizations in their count. Today, we know that a single division would have been sufficient to drive out Hitler's soldiers.

"I have never really endured such fear … If the French had been truly serious, it would have been the greatest possible political defeat for me," Hitler later told a confidant.

A Triumph for Hitler

Instead of the failure he feared, it was a triumph for Hitler -- and what a triumph it was. The Germans celebrated their Führer like a messiah. In a new Reichstag election on March 29, 1936, which was only moderately manipulated, close to 99 percent of the electorate voted for the Nazi Party. Even Goebbels was surprised.

Hitler had always felt intoxicated by the adulation of his supporters. The occupation of the Rhineland, as Kershaw writes, "substantiated Hitler's hubris." On March 14, 1936, the chancellor told an ecstatic crowd in Munich: "I go with the certainty of a sleepwalker along the path laid out for me by Providence."

He soon proclaimed to his generals that he had reached the irrevocable decision that Germany would have to act "by 1943-45 at the latest" to secure its Lebensraum ("living space"). Did this mean that the die had been cast? Was it still possible to avert war?

A massive military buildup had already been underway for some time. It took the Third Reich to the brink of bankruptcy, because its tanks and bombers had been paid for with borrowed money. But Hitler, a dilettante when it came to economic issues, was undaunted by economic constraints. In his world, it was will and not skill that triumphed.

However, the dynamics of the arms buildup also accelerated the rate of aggression. As raw materials and hard currency became increasingly scarce, a growing number of officials in Berlin began casting a covetous eye on Austria and Czechoslovakia -- on their gold and foreign currency reserves, their mineral resources and the Czechoslovak weapons factories.

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• Part 1: Why Wasn't Hitler Stopped?
• Part 2: 'Long Live War'
• Part 3: Mouthpiece of the Nationalist Masses
• Part 4: 'There Never Was a War Easier to Prevent'
• Part 5: An Historic Mission