83. Petzina, 48, 52. According to Hans Kehrl, Krisenmanager im Dritten Reich, Düsseldorf, 1973, 86, Göring was forbidden to pass on the document or even to read it out to his closest staff. Overy, Goering, 46, has a third copy given to Fritz Todt, engaged in building the Autobahnen. The evidence for this is unclear. Speer’s note attached to his copy of the memorandum (Treue, 184) remarked that there were only three copies, one of which he had received in 1944. If Todt had received a copy, it might have been expected to have remained in the files of his ministry, which Speer took over in 1942.
84. Treue, ‘Denkschrift’, 204–5; Engl. transi. in DGFP, C, V, 853–6, Doc. 490; and Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham (eds.), Nazism, 1919–1945. A Documentary Reader, vol.2, Exeter, 1984, 281–9.
85. Petzina, 51; Hayes, 155–65, especially 164.
86. Kube, 154–5 and n.22.
87. Treue, 206–7, 209–10; Engl. transl. in DGFP, C, V, 856–8, 860–61, Doc.490.
88. Kube, 156.
89. Kube, 156–7.
90. Kube, 156.
91. TBJG, I/2, 727 (15 November 1936).
92. Kube, 157.
93. Kube, 158, citing post-war testimony of Lammers and Friedrich Gramsch, State Secretary to Göring in the office of the Four-Year Plan.
94. Reden des Führers am Parteitag der Ehre 1936, Munich, 1936, 48–52; Domarus, 637–8; Kube, 155 and n.24.
95. Kube, 156–7.
96. A warning against equating the Four-Year Plan with the Stalinist Five-Year Plans is, however, appropriate, as noted by Hans Mommsen, ‘Reflections on the Position of Hitler and Goring in the Third Reich’, in Thomas Childers and Jane Caplan (eds.), Reevaluating the Third Reich, New York/London, 1993, 86–97, here 92.
97. Kube, 157–8.
98. See Griffiths, 206–7, 218–19, 268–9. Among the prominent British visitors who met Hitler during 1936 were Lord Londonderry (former Air Minister), David Lloyd George (highly respected former Prime Minister), and Thomas Jones (former senior civil servant and Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet, and a close associate of the current Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin).
99. Wolfgang Michalka, Ribbentrop und die deutsche Weltpolitik, 1933–1940. Außenpolitische Konzeptionen und Entscheidungsprozesse im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1980, 155, for the mandate. Hitler told Ribbentrop towards the end of July that he wanted him to become the next ambassador in London (See TBJG, I/2, 646 (22 July 1936)). Disappointed not to have been made State Secretary in the Foreign Office, Ribbentrop delayed making the appointment public until 11 August (Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop, London, 1994, 97–9). Ribbentrop’s own misleading version in his post-war testimony at Nuremberg was that he had personally asked Hitler to withdraw an earlier appointment as State Secretary in the Foreign Office, and to send him as Ambassador to London (IMG, x.267; and Ribbentrop, 60–61).
100. Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers, ed. Malcolm Muggeridge, London, 1948 (= CP), 44. Mussolini was sure that Ribbentrop would achieve nothing (CP, 46).
101. See the memoirs of Ribbentrop’s secretary during his time in London, Reinhard Spitzy, So haben wir das Reich verspielt. Bekenntnisse eines Illegalen, Munich, 1986, 101–3; Weinberg I, 275; Bloch, 100, 110, 111–34 (and note to 111 attributing the appellation to cartoonist David Low); Michalka, Ribbentrop, 157–8, for Ribbentrop’s lengthy absences.
102. Josef Henke, ‘Hitlers England-Konzeption — Formulierung und Realisierungsversuche’, in Funke, 584–603, here 592; Speer, 86; Fritz Wiedemann, Der Mann, der Feldherr werden wollte, Velbert/Kettwig, 1964, 152, 156 and 153–6 for the Duke of Windsor’s visit to the Berghof on 22 October 1937. According to Wiedemann (p.156) Hitler thought the Duke the most intelligent prince he had met, and that it was no wonder, because he was so pro-German, that he had been forced to abdicate.
103. Bloch, 122–3. Awkwardly for the readiness of Hitler and Ribbentrop to portray Winston Churchill as the arch-warmonger and leading exponent of anti-German sentiment in Britain, Churchill had been a staunch supporter of the King throughout the abdication crisis.
