was not mere wishful thinking. It was in fact the strategic conception that the military and political leadership of the Reich were operating under at the start of 1939. The nexus of this conception can be found in the diary of Major-General Georg Thomas of the military-economic office of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OWK) who wrote in September 1938 that ‘The day of Munich. By telephone I receive instructions: all preparations now for war against England, target 1942!’ 133 With the invasion of Poland, it seemed to many that Germany had overplayed its hand and conjured upon itself the might of the British and French (the Allies), leaving Germany isolated and vulnerable. It would be true to say that Germany certainly found itself in a position of greater danger than its leadership had hoped for or anticipated at the start of the year. It has also often been asserted that Nazi Germany fell into war with Britain and France in September 1939 through some fundamental miscalculations on the part of Hitler, senior military figures and members of the Nazi Party who expected Britain and France to cave in on the issue of Poland’s guarantees, just as they had with guarantees to Czechoslovakia in 1938. 134 It is often implicit in this analysis that in so doing Germany inflicted upon itself an early war that it would have preferred to have avoided. Worse still, it is argued, a war against the West was not the Ostkreig for Lebensraum that Germany desired, but one it was forced into with the West, and for which it was underprepared. This line of argument
133 Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy , (London, Penguin Group, 2006), p. 288. 134 Richard Overy, ‘Hitler’s War and the German Economy: A reinterpretation’, The Economic History Review , New Series, Vol. 35, No. 2, (Wiley, Economic History Society, May 1982), p. 275.
78
Made with FlippingBook HTML5