In 1919, Prime Minister David Lloyd George had told his military chiefs
that his Government intended that there would be no war for a minimum of
ten years. At the beginning of 1925, Conservative Prime Minister Stanley
Baldwin had no dispute with the old Lloyd George assumption, though he
had plenty of rancorous disagreement disagreements with his predecessor.
usuually over matters of no practical im****tance.
Being the defeated Power, Germany had no alternatives to arms reduction
at the end of the Great War. In fact, Germany's warmaking ability had
been so reduced that it needed supplements like the infamous Erdhardt
Brigade which had rebelled against Kaiser Albert and his ministers. In
the middle of the 1920s, Germany had no restraints left on it: the
Nationalist Opposition promoted a wish list of training and arms, ****ps
and airplanes with vigor, raising enthusiasm for themselves from the
many Germans who could not enjoy their prosperity without news of new
****ps and boats at Wilhelmshaven.
Gustav Noske, the perpetual Minister of War for the Governing Coalition,
departed from the Nationalist prospect of military expansion. He
endorsed a leaner, more effective military and commented that the 1919
Disarmament had been a blessing for Germany as it had forced the Armed
Forces to abandon outmoded equipment and bloated bureaucracies. The
Center Chancellor, William Marx, had embarked on a program of
infrastructure for rail, roads and ****pping, so military economies were
appreciated by the Government at large.
The Conservatives in London and the Socialists-Center-Bavarians in
Berlin could find common cause in the mutual modesty of their
militaries. The Geneva Treaty of 1926, negotiated in seesions of the
League of Nations, was an agreement that German ground forces and
British naval forces could expand by one-third each, but that none of
the German forces would be stationed in the Rhineland.
Hermann Goering was noticed in the debates over the confirmation of
Geneva in the Reichstag. In his second year of service in the
legislature, the air ace from the Great War was the strong, witty and
responsive leader the DNVP needed on the Reichstag floor. Kuno Graf von
Westarp thought too much over details, and limited his party's
effectiveness. Goering cared far less about details, insisting that
"things should get done by any means necessary."
Goering had been lucky. After his war as a fighter pilot, Goering had
met and fallen in love with a Swedish aristocrat, whose husband was
extremely indulgent towards Karin, even when she divorced him and
married Goering. With the social connections of his wife, and a postwar
boom in air trans****tation world wide, Goering engineered Baltic
Airlines, soon the second largest airline of Germany and the largest one
in Scandanavia. When his fortune was secure, Goering had contested and
won a district in Pomerania for the Nationalists.
Goering's rival on the left was Paul Joseph Goebbels of the Communists.
Adept at flattery for Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemberg (jocularly
called the Red King and Red Queen of German Communia), the limping and
sarcastic unemployed professor of literature and failed novelist went
left in politics. A doctrinaire sup****ter of Karl and Rosa, hence a
Trotskyist in the feud between Russian and German Communists, Goebbels
claimed that "bank robber Joe Stalin" had sent assassins after the
German Communist leaders. Though few non-Communists took the stories of
the saucy "little doctor" seriously, most people admitted the tales
were amusing and even non Party papers ran his three-times-weekly column
of opinion.
*GOERING*. Germany needs a Luftwaffe, a strong air arm to sweep the
enemy from our skies and give our ground forces immediate and immense
artillery sup****t as necessary.
*GOEBBELS* Would our good friend, the Napoleon from Pomerania, please
identify the enemy that he thinks needs to be swept from our sky? Before
he squanders the exchequer on his provocations against Britain and
France, could we see whether such expenditure has a purpose other than
depriving poor children of free and nouri****ng breakfasts and lunches at
school?
*GOERING* In my opinion, my little doctor, you are a rascal, who should
have been hanged a long time ago. You will be afraid when I catch you
when you are out of this Chamber, you scoundrel, you.
"GOEBBELS* With your girth, Fat Hermann, I would be surprised if you
could even catch crippled prey. You could not even chase me up a flight
of stairs. (1)
Another rising star among the Nationalists was Franz Seldte, a one
armed ex-front fighter and organizer for the Stahlheim (the "Steel
Helmet," Germany's number one veteran organization). Often compared to
Minister Noske, Seldte was an advocate of labor unions running public
works projects at government expense and seemed unconcerned about the
revival of the Hohenzollern star.
Influential thanks to his money was publisher and businessman Alfred
Hugenberg. In conversation and correspondence with Prince
Eitel-Friedrich, a younger son of ex-Kaiser William, Hugenberg learned
that Eitel- Friedrich would want to be Kaiser. And once his friend was
Kaiser, Hugenberg was to be his pal's Bismarck. Of course, the fact that
Hugenberg was known to be a favorite of Eitel-Friedrich meant that other
Nationalists were cool to the idea of that Prince rising to the top.
In the Social Democrats, attention came to film director and producer
Fritz Lang, who had completed his three-hour-long color and sound
version of the _Ring of the Nibelungen_ before getting a seat in the
Reichstag. The staggering technological progress of that movie and its
record box-offices in Europe, Asia, and the Americas revolutionized
cinema.
In 1927, there was a recession and several by-elections that year were
lost by the Government. Tension and jealousy were rising between the
two leaders of the Governing Coalition, Chancellor Marx and War
Minister Noske, and when Scheideman retired in 1927, there was no active
mediator between them.
In May 1927, police made an authorized raid on the Arcos office suite in
London, where the British Secret Service were sure they would find a
Soviet spy nest. The raiders found nothing but a commercial trade office
engaged in legalities and the Baldwin Government broke top-level
diplomatic relations with the Red Russians.
Karl Liebknecht had died of intestinal blockages the previous month,
and Rosa Luxemburg was distracted by grief and willing to listen to her
assistant, Goebbels. From his seat on the Reichstag floor, Communist
Deputy Goebbels spoke for his party in a denunciation of "that devil in
a party of atheists, Joseph Stalin."
*GOEBBELS* There is an Iron Curtain descending upon Europe, shutting off
an old and treasured nation from Europe and civilization. It is the
blight of the Stalinist cult of personality, the ****d dictator****p that
steals wealth, slaughters innocents, and persecutes the truth.
That bourgeois League of Nations does no good, for it does not act
against the clear and obvious danger posed by Stalin and his blackguards
of shame, misery and oppression. Strong immediate undeniable and actual
achievement!
Stalin must be destroyed. What Stalin did in London, he is doing in
Berlin, we know. We must act before Stalin does (2),
In hindsight, Goebbel's speech that day would be marked as the first
hint of the Anticomintern War.
Notes:
(1) Reichstag Proceedings (10 September 1926).
(2) Reichstag Proceedings ( 18 May 1927).
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