This dissertation, too, rejects Mason’s characterisation of Germany’s situation in 1939. Yet while the Reich did not experience a domestic crisis in 1939, it was forced to realise the structural limits of its peacetime rearmament efforts, and in so doing to realise the fantastic nature of its plans that stretched into the mid-1940s. The Reich was also forced to realise, moreover, that its planned foreign policy was a failure, and that it would have to improvise in light of these changing circumstances. Thus, war in 1939 became the best option available due to increasingly desperate domestic and international constraints. Therefore, instead of a series of miscalculations and blunders leading into war, the Reich was forced to improvise a new position in order to respond to its rapidly changing international and domestic problems. By July 1939 the Reich’s diplomatic strategy had fallen to pieces, with Poland refusing to join Germany as a junior partner, despite the offer of territorial gains; the Italians and Japanese refusing to join any war against the British and French for the time being; the Allies were becoming increasingly unwilling to tolerate such a militarily belligerent Germany; and the Reich’s increasingly over-cooked economy was unable to deliver on the gargantuan orders of military equipment needed by the Wehrmacht. This thesis will explore these issues in three chapters, covering the diplomatic machinations of the Reich, including a detailed exploration of its relationship with Poland, the economic constraints to further peacetime rearmament, and the proportional superiority enjoyed by the Wehrmacht in 1939. Ultimately this thesis will show that, with the conclusion of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union in August 1939, and the comparative readiness of the Wehrmacht for war, Germany still possessed significant freedom of
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