129. ADAP, D, IV, Dok.158, 170; Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 186; Adam, Judenpolitik, 235. It appears that his association of the Jews with the November Revolution of 1918 had also been reinforced at this time. Hitler referred vaguely to ‘threats from others’ to destroy the Reich in his annual speech to the party faithful on the anniversary of the proclamation of the Party Programme, on 24 February 1939, and immediately followed this by stating: ‘The year 1918 will never repeat itself in German history’ (Domarus, 1086). For Hitler’s ‘November Syndrome’, see Tim Mason, ‘The Legacy of 1918 for National Socialism’, in Anthony Nicholls and Erich Mathias, German Democracy and the Triumph of Hitler, London, 1971, 215–39.
130. Birger Dahlerus, Der letzte Versuch. London-Berlin. Sommer 1939, Munich, 1948,126 (recording Hitler’s comment to him on 1 September 1939); Documents concerning German-Polish Relations and the Outbreak of Hostilities between Great Britain and Germany on September 3,1939, London, 1939, 129, no.75 (Hitler to Henderson, 28 August 1939); Domarus, 1238 (Hitler’s speech to his military leaders, 22 August 1939).
131. Das Schwarze Korps, 24 November 1938, p.1; also cit. in Graml, Reichskristallnacht, 187.
132. Hans Mommsen, ‘Hitler’s Reichstag Speech of 30 January 1939’, History and Memory, 9 (1997), 147–61, emphasizes above all (see especially 157–8) the propaganda component of the speech. He places the speech in its context of the talks between George Rublee, the American Chairman of the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees (charged by President Roosevelt with trying to find a way out of the crisis of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany) and Helmut Wohltat, one of Göring’s close associates on the Four-Year Plan and on Jewish emigration. The negotiations were aimed at financing the emigration of 150,000 Jews within three years through an international loan of one and a half million Reich Marks. In Mommsen’s view (151), Hitler’s speech was ‘a rhetorical gesture designed to put pressure on the international community’ to accept the Reich’s blackmailing demand. He stresses (154) the need felt by Hitler ‘to promise effective measures on the part of the government in order to calm down the extreme antisemitic activities which endangered the emigration scheme that Göring and Schacht had worked out’. It seems doubtful, however, that Hitler was as serious about the Rublee-Wohltat scheme as Mommsen implies, and not altogether convincing to suggest (156) that it is ‘difficult to believe that [Hitler’s] inclination to exaggerate the issues involved was more than mere camouflage’.
133. Domarus, 1058.
134. Eberhard Jäckel, ‘Hitler und der Mord an europäischen Juden’, in Peter Märthesheimer and Ivo Frenzel (eds.), Im Kreuzfeuer: Der Fernsehfilm Holocaust. Eine Nation ist betroffen, Frankfurt am Main, 1979, 151–62, here 160–61.
<p>CHAPTER 4: MISCALCULATION</p>1. Michael Jabara Carley, 1939: the Alliance that Never Was and the Coming of World War II, Chicago, 1999, 77–9.
2. Donald Cameron Watt, How War Came. The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939, London, (1989), Mandarin paperback edn, 1991, 101–4. Generally, on Oster’s role in the resistance to Hitler (though not mentioning this episode), see Romedio Galeazzo Reichsgraf von Thun-Hohenstein, Der Verschwörer. General Oster und die Militäropposition, Berlin, 1982.
3. Watt, How War Came, 40, 101, and see ch.6 passim.
4. John de Courcy, Searchlight on Europe, London, 1940, 87; Watt, How War Came, 59–64; Weinberg II, 474–8.
5. Courcy, 85–8.
6. Weinberg II, 476–8; Watt, How War Came, 64.
7. See also Weinberg II, 467–8.
8. Weinberg II, 479ff.; Watt, How War Came, 41.
9. Weinberg II, 481–3; Watt, How War Came, 65.
10. Watt, How War Came, 66. The Poles initially took the ideas to be Ribbentrop’s own. But it seems plain that the German Foreign Minister was acting as Hitler’s mouthpiece. See Joachim von Ribbentrop, Zwischen London und Moskau. Erinnerungen und letzte Aufzeichnungen, ed. Annelies von Ribbentrop, Leoni am Starnberger See, 1953, 154–5.
11. Weinberg II, 484, and see 503.
