236. TBJG, I/3, 158–9 (31 May 1937); Domarus, 696–7. According to Goebbels, Hitler was sorely disappointed in Raeder and Blomberg, who would have been satisfied with diplomatic protests (TBJG, I/3, 162 (2 June 1937)). Naval intelligence, which only reported the incident to Hitler at lunchtime on 30 May, though the news had come in on the Saturday evening, was seen as having failed miserably. Goebbels thought that Raeder would not be long in office (TBJG, I/3, 158 (31 May 1937), 162 (2 June 1937)). The American journalist William Shirer was informed that Hitler had been ‘screaming with rage all day’ and wanted to declare war on Spain (Shirer, 63). Goebbels — possibly echoing Hitler’s own opinion — expressed the view soon afterwards that Blomberg was weak and ‘a puppet in the hands of his officers’. Hitler’s own anger at Wehrmacht officers wanting to intervene in police matters, ‘where they understood not the slightest thing’, was also mentioned in the same entry (TBJG, I/3, 181 (22 June 1937)). By September, Göring, too, was expressing anger at the Wehrmacht leadership, which Goebbels saw on the way to becoming a ‘state within a state’ (TBJG, I/3, 257 (8 September 1937)). See also Goebbels’s comments along the same lines, TBJG, I/3, 316, 322 (28 October 1937, 2 November 1937), after Hitler, in a rage, had criticized monarchical tendencies in the Wehrmacht.
237. TBJG, I/3, 211 (24 July 1937).
238. TBJG, I/3, 221 (1 August 1937).
239. TBJG, I/3, 370 (15 December 1937), for the view that the Russian threat was at least partially removed through the Japanese victory over China.
240. TBJG, I/3, 198 (10 July 1937).
241. TBJG, I/3, 378 (22 December 1937); see also 385 (28 December 1937).
242. TBJG, I/3, 351 (30 November 1937).
243. See Wright and Stafford, ‘Hitler, Britain, and the Hoßbach Memorandum’, 100 and 120 n.167.
244. TBJG, I/3, 200 (13 July 1937). See also Goebbels’s own comments (p.252) on 3 September 1937.
245. TBJG, I/3, 177 (18 June 1937). Goebbels was still sceptical after the effusive expressions of mutual friendship following Mussolini’s state visit in September (TBJG, I/3, 283 (29 October 1937), 285 (1 October 1937)).
246. Schneider, Nr.42, 8, where the elaborate organization of the receptions for Mussolini in Munich and Berlin is also described.
247. Domarus, 737; Hauner, Hitler, 121.
248. TBJG, I/3, 281 (28 September 1937). See also 282–3 (29 November 1937), 2.84–5 (1 October 1937).
249. Joseph Goebbels. Tagebücher 1924–1945, 5 vols., ed. Ralf Georg Reuth, Munich, 1992 (Tb Reuth), iii.1100, n.88. See Norbert Schausberger, ‘Österreich und die nationalsozialistische Anschluß-Politik’, in Funke, 728–56, here 744–8.
250. Schausberger, ‘Österreich’, 746.
251. Schausberger, ‘Österreich’, 744; Geyl, 157.
252. TBJG, I/3, 201 (13 July 1937).
253. TBJG, I/3, 223 (3 August 1937).
254. TBJG, I/3, 266 (14 September 1937). In October, Hitler hinted to the Aga Khan that Austria, Czechoslovakia, Danzig, and the Corridor figured in German revisionism (Schmidt, 382).
255. TBJG, I/3, 369 (15 December 1937).
256. Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany. Starting World War II, 1937–1939, Chicago/London, 1980 (= Weinberg II), 289, and 287, where it is pointed out that foreign visitors were also starting to expect action against Austria in the near future. The economic gains from the seizure of assets in Austria were an attractive proposition with the German armaments economy under strain (Schausberger, in Funke, 744–8; and the fuller account in Norbert Schausberger, Der Griff nach Österreich. Der Anschluß, Vienna/Munich, 1978, ch.6).
257. TBJG, I/3, 223 (3 August 1937).
258. TBJG, I/3, 223 (3 August 1937).
259. Wright/Stafford, 102.
260. TBJG, I/3, 307 (20 October 1937). ‘This temporary state must disappear,’ (Dieser Saisonstaat muß weg) he had entered in his diary the previous day (306 (19 October 1937)).
261. TBJG, I/3, 327 (6 November 1937).
262. Jost Dülffer, Weimar, Hitler und die Marine. Reichspolitik und Flottenbau 1920–1939, Düsseldorf, 1973, 446–7.
263. Kube, 195. Klaus-Jürgen Müller, in his Das Heer und Hitler. Armee und nationalsozialistisches Regime 1933–1940, (1969), 2nd edn, Stuttgart, 1988, 243; and General Ludwig Beck. Studien und Dokumente zur politisch-militärischen Vorstellungswelt und Tätigkeit des Generalstabschefs des deutschen Heeres 1933–1938, Boppard am Rhein, 1980, 249, has Hitler summoning the meeting.
