50. Brauchitsch claimed after the war to remember Hitler’s words at this point: ‘I would have to be an idiot to slide into a war on account of Poland like the incapable lot (die Unfähigen) of 1914’ (/MCxx.623).
51. IMG, xxxvii.546–56, Doc.079-L; DGFP, D, VI, 574–80 (quotations 576–80); Domarus, 1196–1201; Below, 163–4 for reactions. See also Weinberg II, 579–83.
52. Mario Toscano, The Origins of the Pact of Steel, Baltimore, 1967, 367 (and chs. 4–5 for the genesis and significance of the pact).
53. CD, 46.
54. Weinberg II. 565–6.
55. DGFP, D, VI, 450–52, No.341; see also Bloch, 225; and Toscano, Pact of Steel, 307–34; and, for Hitler’s comment on Ribbentrop, CD, 91.
56. By 1939, Sweden and Norway supplied 54 per cent of Germany’s imports of iron-ore, with 13 per cent coming from France, 8 per cent from Luxemburg, and most of the remainder from Spain, North Africa, and Newfoundland (Lotte Zumpe, Wirtschaft und Staat in Deutschland 1933 bis 194S, East Berlin, 1980, 175).
57. Weinberg II, 581, 584–93, and, a more negative assessment, Bloch, 223. For the level of economic penetration of the Balkan countries, see also Alan S. Milward, ‘Fascism and the Economy’, in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism. A Reader’s Guide, Harmondsworth 1979, 409–53, here 440–41; and George W. F. Hallgarten and Joachim Radkau, Deutsche Industrie und Politik von Bismarck bis in die Gegenwart, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1981,330–32. Wendt, Großdeutschland, 167–9,245–8, indicates the continued serious deficiencies for the German economy in 1939 despite such penetration.
58. Bloch, 235. According to Below, 155, Hitler had also begun to play with such ideas following the occupation of Czechoslovakia. At this point, Hitler was, he himself later claimed, unsure whether to strike first in the east or in the west (Domarus, 1422–3 (from Hitler’s speech to military leaders on 23 November 1939)).
59. See Ribbentrop, Zwischen London und Moskau, 171; Wolfgang Michalka, Ribbentrop und die deutsche Weltpolitik 1933–1940. Außenpolitische Konzeptionen und Entscheidungsprozesse im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1979, 278–9; and Wolfgang Michalka, ‘From the Anti-Comintern Pact to the Euro-Asiatic Bloc: Ribbentrop’s Alternative Concept to Hitler’s Foreign Policy Programme’, in Koch, Aspects, 267–84, here 275–8.
60. Weinberg II, 550–53, 568–77; Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin. Parallel Lives, London, 1991, 676–7; Bloch, 235; Geoffrey Roberts, The Unholy Alliance. Stalin’s Pact with Hitler, London, 1989, 109–19; Watt, How War Came, ch. 13. Carley, 1939: the Alliance that Never Was, examines in detail the failings of the French and British negotiations with the USSR.
61. Roberts, 151–4.
62. Ribbentrop Memoirs, 109. For Stalin’s speech, Roberts, 118; Weinberg II, 550. Ribbentrop (if his recollections were accurate) was reading too much into Stalin’s speech. Stalin was, in fact, keeping his options open by indicating that the Soviet Union intended to keep its distance from any war among capitalist-imperialist states (Weinberg II, 550).
63. Peter Kleist, Die europäische Tragödie, Göttingen, 1961, 52.
64. DGFP, D, VI, 266–7 (here 266), N0.215.
65. Gustav Hilger and Holger G. Meyer, The Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German-Soviet Relations 1918–1941, New York, 1953, 293–7. Hilger believed that Litvinov had been dismissed because he had pressed for an understanding with Britain and France, while Stalin had been more inclined to look to Germany. See also Bloch, 236; and Weinberg II, 570–72, for the change of Soviet foreign minister. Hitler referred to the significance of the dismissal of Litvinov in his speech to his generals on 22 August 1939 (Winfried Baumgart, ‘Zur Ansprache Hitlers vor den Führern der Wehrmacht am 22. August 1939. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung’, VfZ, 16 (1968), 120–49, here 145), and in his letter to Mussolini of 25 August 1939 (Domarus, 1254).
66. Kleist, 58.
67. Weinberg II, 573–4.
68. Below, 170.
69. Bloch, 236; Weinberg II, 573.
70. Weinberg II, 574; Bloch, 236.
71. DGFP, D, VI, 589–93, 597–8, Nos.441, 446 (quotation, 598).
72. DGFP, D, VI, 790, 810, 813, Nos. 570, 583, 588.
73. Weinberg II, 604–5; Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 678; Bloch, 237.
74. DGFP, D, VI, 755–6 (quotation 755), N0.700.
75. DGFP, D, VI, 1006–9, No.729; and Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Deadly Embrace, London, 1988, 122–6.
