driving force behind such a change was that the Sudeten crisis had forced the Reich’s leadership to contemplate and digest an unwelcome new reality: Germany would be forced to fight in the West before it could turn its attention eastward. 143 As part of this newly established strategy Germany set itself on a course of massively increased military spending, liquidation of the rump of Czechoslovakia 144 , and alliance building with Japan, Italy and its eastern neighbours, particularly Poland. Its one objective – to create a strong Axis bloc that could stand up to the economic and military pressure of the Allies, their empires, and potentially even the United States. 145 From this moment the Reich firmly fixed its focus upon a confrontation with the West, and the first element of this nascent strategy was the enrolment of Poland into the Axis bloc. It is not hard to see why Germany found this idea appealing: Poland in 1938 was no democracy, but rather, in the words of Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano ‘Poland is living under the dictatorship of a dead man [Józef Piłsudski].’ 146 Moreover, the Poles were vociferously anti- communist, with Hitler even describing the country as a ‘bulwark against Bolshevism’. 147 Poland was, therefore, something of a natural 143 Ibid, p. 288. 144 Nazism 1919-1945: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination , eds. J. Noakes and G. Pridham, Vol. 3, (Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 1988), p. 116. 145 Tooze, p. 292. 146 The Ambassador in Italy to the Foreign Ministry, Rome, March 5, 1939, in Documents on German Foreign Policy: 1918-1945 , Series D, Volume V, ed. by Bernadotte E. Schmitt et al, (London, Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1953), p. 178. 147 William Carr, Arms, Autarky and Aggression: A Study in German Foreign Policy 1933-1939 ¸ (London, Camelot Press, 1972), p. 107.
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