In Berlin on May 4, the Soviet embassy hosted a banquet to celebrate a recently signed modest new bilateral trade protocol, without new credits—the existing 200-million-mark loan remained to be drawn down—but with procedures to fix short-term clearing of accounts (inhibited by currency regulations).322 Bessonov told a German foreign ministry official of Soviet readiness to do what was necessary to create the “preconditions of (Soviet-German) détente.”323 Hitler had appointed Herbert Göring head of a new office for raw material and foreign exchange, crucial for the rearmament economy.324 The indefatigable Kandelaki managed to obtain an audience with him (May 13) through a cousin of the Luftwaffe head, during which an amiable Göring promised to make inquiries about Kandelaki’s request for assistance in obtaining the military technology he sought, and professed delight at the recent trade protocol. Göring also pledged that “all his efforts were directed toward making closer contacts with Russia again, politically, too, and he thought the best way would be through intensifying and expanding mutual trade relations.” He added, “If the Russian gentlemen encountered difficulties in Germany or were faced with questions with which they were making no headway, he most cordially invited them to turn to him at any time. He was always ready to receive them and assist them by word and deed.”325 Schacht, the next day, tried to downplay Göring’s remarks, but Kandelaki departed immediately to report in Moscow.326 A few days later, Göring would agree with a group of German industrialists that business with the Soviet Union was important and promised at some point to bring the issue up with Hitler, “whose attitude to it, admittedly, was not very sympathetic.”327
Göring wanted no more from the Soviets than raw materials in a strictly nonpolitical trade relationship, and he played a complex game. The day after meeting Kandelaki, he received Polish foreign minister Beck and informed him that the Soviet representative had been insisting on a meeting and, finally, had been granted one, during which Kandelaki had made “a concrete proposal for the purchase of several warships and armaments in Germany. The Soviet delegation gave us to understand that Stalin, in contrast to Litvinov, is positively inclined to Germany.” Göring claimed he had presented the Soviet enticements to “the chancellor,” who “energetically spoke against such suggestions.” That was what the Poles wanted to hear. Still, Beck had to understand that Soviet-German rapprochement was at least under discussion. Thus did Göring put pressure on Warsaw to improve Polish-German relations—on Berlin’s terms—while continuing to sabotage any possible Polish-Soviet rapprochement by dangling the possibility of German-Polish joint military action, should the Red Army attack.328
Inside the Soviet regime, the British remained the fixation. “Fascism’s strength is not in Berlin, fascism’s strength is not in Rome,” Kalinin, head of the Soviet state, said in May 1936, echoing comments by Molotov. “Fascism’s strength is in London, and not even in London per se but in five London banks.”329 Mussolini—infuriated by League of Nations sanctions over his Abyssinian invasion—had threatened to quit that body, but it hardly mattered. He publicly drew closer to Nazi Germany.330 On the battlefield, Italy had snatched victory from what briefly looked like possible defeat, and in early May 1936, Emperor Haile Selassie, although refusing to vacate the throne, fled into exile. Italy would merge Abyssinia with Eritrea and Somaliland, forming Italian East Africa; King Victor Emmanuel III would be proclaimed emperor. Mussolini was denounced as the worst of the dictators, a “mad dog act,” or, in the words of Britain’s Anthony Eden, a “gangster”—language that was not heard publicly from Whitehall about Hitler.331 A smiling Hitler told British ambassador Phipps, in regard to Mussolini’s aggression in Abyssinia (May 14), “With dictators, nothing succeeds like success.”332 Four days later, Germany’s foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, confidently told William Bullitt, now the U.S. ambassador in Berlin, that Germany would annex Austria at some point, and no one would stop it.333
CULTURAL TRIUMPHS, TROTSKYITES