In September 1937 Mussolini arrived in Berlin on a state visit. He had drifted into his embrace with Hitler following his 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, which had prompted the League of Nations to impose mild sanctions against Italy. Before this contretemps with the West, Mussolini had been a vociferous critic of Hitler, calling the Führer a “horrible sexual degenerate.” He feared that the Führer intended to annex Austria (which he eventually did) and tear the South Tyrol from Italy (which he did not). Mussolini had also resented Hitler for challenging his claim to being the biggest bully on the European block. Now, however, as he celebrated the recently concluded “Rome-Berlin Axis” with his visit to the German capital, the Italian leader was all smiles for his new friends. Berlin, in turn, put on a splendid reception for its guest. The route down which II Duce drove, the “Via Triumphalis,” was decorated with pylons displaying alternately the ax and bundle of fascism and the eagle of the Reich. Along Unter den Linden hundreds of columns capped with eagles towered over the recently planted lime trees. At a monster rally near the Olympic Stadium Hitler praised Mussolini as one of those rare geniuses who “are not made by history but make history themselves.” He promised that the Italian and German nations together would vanquish the Marxist evil. In halting, barely intelligible German, Mussolini replied by thanking Germany for standing by it in its crusade to bring civilization to Ethiopia. The friendship between Germany and Italy, he declared, would soon change the world. “Tomorrow all Europe will be fascist; one hundred fifteen million men will arise, joined together in an unshakable faith.” Just as he said this, a storm erupted and drenched the crowd. France’s ambassador, Andre Francois-Poncet, later commented: “The very elements warned mankind of what evils the meeting of the dictators was to let loose upon it.”
Those evils were not long in coming. In March 1938 Hitler annexed Austria, bringing his native country “home to the Reich.” Mussolini meekly accepted this fait accompli, for which the Führer expressed his eternal gratitude. Next, Hitler began putting pressure on Czechoslovakia, insisting that its westernmost region, the Sudetenland, which harbored many ethnic Germans, be joined to the Reich. When the Western powers, which heretofore had reacted to Hitler’s transgressions against the Versailles system with mild protests, expressed opposition to the proposed dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, Hitler was furious; war appeared imminent. In Berlin, among other signs of war preparation, an antiaircraft gun was installed on the roof of the I. G. Farben building across from the Hotel Adlon. However, war was averted, at least for a time, by the infamous Munich Conference of September 1938, which turned the Sudetenland over to Germany while “guaranteeing” the sanctity of the rest of Czechoslovakia.
In Berlin the Munich agreement was greeted with cheering in the streets. According to William Shirer, Berliners had shown considerable fear when, at the height of the Czech crisis, a motorized division swept down the Wilhelmstrasse. Now they responded with “delirious joy” at the news that Hitler had once again achieved a foreign policy victory without recourse to arms.
But not everyone was praising the Führer; on the domestic front some of his policies were beginning to occasion resentment and resistance. The Nazi regime’s accelerating efforts to “coordinate” the mainstream churches, for example, inspired opposition from certain elements within the clergy and laity. Berlin emerged as a center of religious opposition, especially from the Protestant camp.
A key figure in the Protestant opposition was Martin Niemoller, a former submarine captain who was a pastor in the Berlin district of Dahlem. Alarmed by the Nazis’ imposition of an “Aryan paragraph” on the churches, which denied membership in the Christian community to persons of Jewish or other non-Aryan backgrounds, Niemoller formed the Pfarrernotbund (Pastors’ Emergency League) to combat racism in the church. The group was careful to call itself “nonpolitical” and to insist that its agenda was purely spiritual. But when Niemoller refused to fill out a questionnaire concerning his own racial background, he was suspended from his position. In response, 600 members of his parish sent telegrams of protest to Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller, the new pro-Nazi head of the Evangelical Church. Hitler personally intervened in the affair, inviting Niemoller to a meeting with him and the church authorities. This resulted in a toe-to-toe confrontation between the pastor and the Führer. When Niemoller continued to preach against the Nazi regime despite warnings to desist, he was packed off to Sachsenhausen as a “personal prisoner of the Führer’s.”
