On rearmament
Starting on page 62
Promoting programs to alleviate unemployment, rebuild the economy and socially unify the nation,
Hitler devoted far less attention to strengthening national defense. Provisions of the Versailles treaty
had reduced the German army to a 100,000-man force comprising professional soldiers with long
enlistments. It possessed no armor, heavy artillery or chemical weapons. The treaty forbade Germany
to maintain an air force. Following the London Ultimatum, the Allies banned production of motorized
airplanes within the Reich. This drove Germany’s leading aeronautics firms Junkers, Dornier and
Heinkel to continue aircraft development in Sweden, Switzerland and Russia. After World War I, the
Allies had required the Reich’s navy to steam its modern surface fleet to a British port. Remaining
with the navy, reduced to just 15,000 sailors, were six obsolete ships of the line, six small cruisers,
twelve destroyers and twelve torpedo boats. There were no submarines.
In June 1919, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau had stated, “German disarmament
represents the first step toward multilateral reduction and limitation of arms…. After Germany has
shown the way, the Allied and associated powers will follow the same path in complete security." 108
Nonetheless, during the 1920s, France, Britain, the United States, Italy, Japan and the USSR had
resumed a partial arms race, focusing on the expansion of naval and air forces. This breach of faith
offered Germany the moral foundation to rearm in defiance of the treaty.
Thanks to the small size and limited weaponry of the German army, the country possessed virtually
no armaments industry in 1933. The Germans had to conduct secret experimental development of
armored vehicles, artillery and military aircraft, since it was still illegal. Though engineers re-tooled
some factories for arms production, Hitler introduced proposals for international armaments
reduction during the first two years in office. During 1933 and 1934, the Reich devoted less than four
percent of the budget to defense. This was not even half the percentage spent by France, Japan and the
USSR, which already maintained large arsenals.109
Germany was in a position to implement a massive rearmament program, had Hitler wanted it, by
1936. Factories were operating at nearly full capacity. The Reich possessed a modern, efficient
machine tool industry. The USA and Germany controlled 70 percent of the international export market
of this commodity, with minimal corresponding import. In fact, in 1938 Germany had 1.3 million
machine tools in industry, twice the number of England’s.110 This circumstance, however, proved of
little value to Germany’s armed forces because Hitler did not assign priority to the manufacture of
military hardware.
Industry in Germany focused on housing construction, improving working conditions for labor,
public works, consumer goods, and KdF automobile and ship-building programs. These projects
consumed large quantities of materials such as metals, rubber and timber, and employed a significant
percentage of skilled labor. Qualified tradesmen, engineers and technicians were unavailable for the
arms industry. One German historian concluded, “In the six-and-a-half years until the outbreak of the
war, the German economy achieved enormous success. But the result of these huge endeavors
remained relatively small for the armed forces, in the face of demands from the civilian sector."111
One of Germany’s more famous public works, the Autobahn, was without strategic value, contrary
to popular assumption. The general staff concluded that the expressway system would be too easy for
enemy airmen to spot from high altitude in wartime, and motorized units using the autobahn, if strafed,
would have no place to take cover.112 Few pre-war military formations were motorized anyway, and
the army relied mainly on rail transport. In contrast to his senior army commanders, Freiherr von
Fritsch and Ludwig Beck, Hitler fully recognized the tactical value of armor in future warfare.
However, as to the expansion of this service branch, the attention he customarily devoted to parallel
civil projects was again lacking. In the opinion of a renowned military analyst, Sir Basil Liddell-
Hart, “He ultimately paid the penalty for not promoting it more emphatically."113
I
You can continue for yourself from here, I'll move on to the next points.