‘It is, in fact, notoriously difficult to chart the channels through which information and power flowed to and from the Führer. Hitler was averse to paperwork; most of his involvement in government took the form of face to face encounters between himself and his subordinates of which little or no record survives save brief comments about his wishes or simply that “the Führer has been informed”.’ 229 This problem confronts any historiographical interpretation of the Third Reich, but in the case of examining the structural origins of the war it is a somewhat less obstructive problem due to the availability of more data on economics and rearmament than on the personal pronouncements of Hitler. What is more, from what is available of Hitler’s pronouncements it is possible to construct a compelling narrative of domestic pressure and friction leading to war. Thus, the Third Reich entered 1939 with a short to mid-term conception of a diplomatic and economic strategy, only to see it founder against concerted international opposition and binding balance of payments problems and raw material shortages. Yet, by the summer of 1939 this position had been significantly alleviated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that freed Germany from many of its strategic concerns, both diplomatic and economic, and gave it freedom to act unilaterally where before it had been unable to. This decision to act was, moreover, taken in light of an increasingly unfavourable international situation that threatened to erode, and ultimately destroy, the Wehrmacht’s proportional superiority. There is sufficient evidence that Hitler took these problems seriously, and that combined they gave an added impetus for war that could otherwise
229 Noakes and G. Pridham, (1984), p. 196.
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