Hitler excelled at the bold gesture. On March 7, 1936, which happened to be two days after Pravda and Izvestiya published Stalin’s interview, the Führer sent troops into a zone on the left bank of the Rhine River that bordered France and had been demilitarized for an indefinite period by the Versailles Treaty. His wooing of Britain had partially succeeded, getting him the Anglo-German naval pact, which fell short of the total acquiescence he sought but put some distance between Britain and France. His scheming to drive a wedge between Italy and France had failed—until Mussolini moved to realize long-standing designs by invading Abyssinia, opening a rift between Rome and the Western powers. True, Hitler’s maneuvering with Poland had helped provoke the Franco-Soviet pact, but that agreement seemed only to have spurred more Soviet approaches to him. In the Rhineland occupation, Hitler had overcome his foreign ministry’s opposition and his own usual last-minute attack of nerves.300 “Fortune favors the brave!” Goebbels had written in his diary the day Hitler informed him of the decision for the Rhineland action. “He who dares nothing wins nothing.”301
British officials were exasperated: they had been about to offer Germany remilitarization, but, as Eden told the cabinet (March 9), “Hitler has deprived us of the possibility of making to him a concession which might otherwise have been a useful bargaining counter in our hands in the general negotiations with Germany which we had it in contemplation to initiate.”302 London appealed pro forma to the League of Nations (March 12) and strenuously worked to restrain any French response.303 French ruling circles lacked the confidence to stand up to Germany alone.304 Only a small contingent of the fledgling Wehrmacht had entered the demilitarized zone, ostensibly so as not to give the impression of a Western invasion. One or two French divisions would have sufficed to drive them out.305 Instead, German industry could now be organized for war without concern for the security of the Rhine and the Ruhr. France was humiliated. “In these three years,” Hitler exulted at a hastily summoned session of the neutered Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House, “Germany has regained its honor, found belief again, overcome its greatest economic distress, and finally ushered in a new cultural ascent.” He cited the recently ratified Franco-Soviet alliance as justification for his remilitarization. “The revolution may take place in France tomorrow,” he added. “In that case, Paris would be nothing more than a branch office of the Communist International.”306
France managed to get Britain to sign a diplomatic note specifying that in the event of a German attack on France, the two Western powers would enter into general staff talks, which fell short of automatic military assistance but was a step.307 Stalin locked down his Mongolian vassals in a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, signed in Ulan Bator (March 12), which formalized the already imposed military alliance for a ten-year period.308 Some observers also expected Hitler’s action to deepen Franco-Soviet ties, but French officials complained that Stalin was more interested in provoking war between France and Germany than in cooperating with France to fight.309
Stalin just did not view the French as offering anything remotely comparable to Germany economically. (Thanks to a well-placed spy, Karl Behrens, the Soviets were receiving technical blueprints from AEG, Germany’s preeminent heavy electrical engineering firm.) Also, the Rhineland’s remilitarization indicated that the USSR might not be the principal target of German aggrandizement.310, 311 Molotov gave an extended interview in Moscow to the editor of the influential French newspaper Le Temps (March 19, 1936) stating that Germany might start a war—in the west. He did reaffirm the Franco-Soviet pact and admit that “a certain part of the Soviet people” felt implacable hostility toward Germany’s current rulers, but he volunteered, unartfully, that the “chief tendency, determining the policy of Soviet power, thinks an improvement in Soviet-German relations possible . . . yes, even Hitler’s Germany.”312
CHARISMATIC POWER
