12. DGFP, D, V, 125, no.99, 141, no.110 (12 November 1938, 5 December 1938). The Polish foreign minister Josef Beck was, in fact, somewhat less intransigent at first than others in the Polish government, but there was little prospect from the outset of any flexibility on Danzig and the Corridor. (See Weinberg II, 501.)
13. Domarus, 1065.
14. Watt, How War Came, 69; DBFP, 3, IV, 80, no.82, Shepherd to Halifax, 6 February 1939. According to Shepherd’s memorandum, Hitler’s meeting with his military leaders had taken place on 21 January 1939.
15. Watt, How War Came, 70.
16. DGFP, D, IV, 529, N0.411.
17. See Dülffer, 471–88 and especially 492ff. for the genesis of the Z-Plan; DRZW, i.465–73; and Charles S. Thomas, The German Navy in the Nazi Era, London, 1990, 179–80. See Weinberg II, 503 for plans to settle with France and Great Britain before turning to the east, and Keitel, 196–7, for the ‘Ostwall’.
18. TBJG, I/6, 158 (24 October 1938).
19. Irving, Göring, 241.
20. Keitel, 196.
21. Keitel, 196–7.
22. In a memorandum of 3 September 1939 ‘on the outbreak of war’, Raeder wrote: ‘Today the war against England-France has broken out, which, according to previous comments of the Führer we did not need to reckon with before around 1944.’ He went on to outline the battle-fleet that would have been ready at the turn of the year 1944–5. He then added: ‘As far as the navy is concerned, it is obviously in autumn 1939 still nowhere near sufficiently ready for the great struggle against England.’ (‘Aw heutigen Tage ist der Krieg gegen England-Frankreich ausgebrochen, mit dem wir nach den bisherigen Ausserungen des Führers nicht vor etwa 1944 zu rechnen brauchten… Was die Kriegsmarine anbetrifft, so ist sie selbstverständlich im Herbst 1939 noch keineswegs für den grossen Kampf mit England hinreichend gerüstet.) (BA/MA, PG/33965; and see Thomas, 187). I am grateful to Prof. Meir Michaelis for providing me with a copy of this memorandum. For remarks on the inadequate state of the army at the outbreak of war, see IfZ, F34/1, ‘Erinnerungen von Nikolaus v. Vormann über die Zeit vom 22.8–27.9.1939 als Verbindungsoffizier des Heeres beim Führer und Obersten Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht’, Fol.56.
23. Martens, Göring, 169–70.
24. Watt, How War Came, ch.4; for divisions over policy towards Poland among Hitler’s entourage, 68. For Göring’s diminishing influence on the direction of foreign policy at this time, to the benefit of his arch-rival Ribbentrop, see Kube, 299ff.; and for Ribbentrop, Bloch, ch.XI.
25. In his comments to his armed forces’ leaders on 23 May 1939, Hitler, though by this time bent on destroying Poland in the near future, again indicated that the armaments programme would only be completed in 1943 or 1944, pointing to the West as the main enemy (DGFP, D, VI, 575–80, Doc.433; and see the retrospective comments of Raeder in his memorandum of 3 September 1939, BA/MA, PG/33965 (quoted above in note 22)).
26. See DRZW, i.349–68; and also Bernd-Jürgen Wendt, ‘Nationalsozialistische Großraumwirtsch-aft zwischen Utopie und Wirklichkeit — Zum Scheitern einer Konzeption 1938/39’, in Knipping and Müller, 223–45, especially 239ff., for the mounting problems in the economy and the collapse of prospects of an alternative economic strategy to the ideologically determined aim of acquiring ‘living space’.
27. R. J. Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich, Oxford, 1994, 108–9, 196–7 (and 93ff. for the Reichswerke Hermann Göring); DRZW, i.323–31.
28. Tim Mason, Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class. Essays by Tim Mason, ed. Jane Caplan, Cambridge, 1995, 109.
29. Göring’s speech (Mason, Arbeiterklasse, 908–33, Dok.152) gave an overview of the major problems facing the German economy in shortages of labour and raw materials, inefficient production, and precarious finances; quotation, 925.
30. TBJG, I/6, 219 (13 December 1938).
31. See the speech by Schacht of 29 November 1938: IMG, xxxvi.582–96, especially 587–8, D0C.611-EC.
