Finally, during two unusually long sessions with the military men in the Little Corner (February 28, March 8), Stalin acknowledged reality.10 The regime resolved to be more forceful in standing up to Japan, and admitted that Germany might start a war against the Soviet Union not opportunistically, waiting for Japan to act, but on its own initiative.11 Above all, the PR (Poland-Romania) war plan was displaced by a new GP (Germany-Poland) plan, in which Poland as well as Romania remained enemies, but only as auxiliaries: Nazi Germany eclipsed them.12 Soviet diplomacy, predicated upon disruption of European solidarity and avoidance of commitments, was even slower to turn. Membership in the League of Nations had brought little, and negotiations for the regional security system known as the Eastern Pact were effectively dead, but time and again the politburo instructed the Soviet envoy Vladimir Potyomkin in Paris, “Do not rush ahead and thereby foster the misconception that we need the [Franco-Soviet bilateral alliance] more than the French. We are not as weak as some suggest.”13 By spring 1935, however, Soviet foreign policy more seriously contemplated securing the country against Nazi Germany.14 Stalin both countenanced and exerted a break on that shift, refusing to abandon pursuit of closer economic, and ultimately political, ties with Berlin. At the same time, he wanted the world to recognize that the country he led was a revived great power.
THE HITLER PROBLEM
British officials feared that an arms race would derail its fragile economic recovery, and that another war would no better solve the German problem than had the Great War. Hitler had invited foreign secretary Sir John Simon as well as Lord Privy Seal Anthony Eden to Berlin. On March 7, 1935, three days before the scheduled visit, London published a policy paper urging a sheepishly modest ₤11 million increase in military spending, citing German rearmament and bellicosity. Hitler developed a “cold,” and the visit was put off (“Those ruling England must get used to dealing with us on an equal footing”).15 On March 9, Göring assembled foreign military attachés to announce the existence of a German air force, which was prohibited by Versailles. On March 15, the French National Assembly debated a doubling of army service, from one to two years. Using this as a pretext, the next day, in a further flouting of Versailles, Hitler declared reintroduction of conscription for the Reichswehr—renamed the Wehrmacht—tripling its size to 300,000, which was to rise at some unspecified date to 550,000 (pundits predicted 3 million). Pravda prominently reported Nazi Germany’s actions.16 On March 17, representatives of France, Britain, Italy, and the Soviet Union discussed “protesting” Hitler’s actions at the League, but Britain and France demurred.17 That same day, Heroes’ Memorial Day in Germany, Hitler celebrated the rebirth of the German army in the State Opera House, and afterward staged a review of the Wehrmacht, effectively a military parade, to jubilant crowds.18 Belatedly, the Führer now deigned to receive Simon and Eden after all. The pair, rather than cancel in protest, paid the first visit by British high officials to Hitler as chancellor.
Hitler met them in the morning and the afternoon on both March 25 and 26, wearing a brown tunic with a red swastika armband, and launched with a monologue on the menace of Bolshevism and Soviet expansionism, insisting that he merely wanted to improve the welfare of the German people, who had been through a bitter fifteen years. He further declaimed that Germany’s exit from the League of Nations had been approved by 94 percent of the people, and that no one in Germany imagined annexing Austria, given the principles of state sovereignty and noninterference. He raised hopes for a bilateral naval pact by accepting that his fleet be limited to no more than 35 percent the size of Britain’s—three times the size of the Versailles restrictions—provided the Soviet Union did not expand its own military even more than it had. He also boasted that he had already achieved air parity with Britain, a falsehood that, when leaked, would set off a storm in London. “He emphasized his words with jerky, energetic gestures of the right hand, sometimes clenching his fist,” Hitler’s interpreter wrote. “He impressed me as a man who advanced his arguments intelligently and skillfully.”19
Hitler parried the Britons’ efforts to draw Germany into any multilateral agreement, such as a pact covering Austria or German readmission to the League of Nations. He noted that he “could give the British ministers the assurance that Germany would never declare war on Russia,” but added that Bolshevik doctrine, political aims, and military capabilities meant that “from Russia there was greater probability of war than from other countries. Moreover, the risks for Russia in a possible war were smaller than those for other powers. Russia could with impunity allow the occupation of great tracts of her territory as large as Germany; she could permit bombardment of great regions; she could therefore wage war without risking destruction.” It was a shrewd lament, and revealed Hitler’s deepest preoccupations.
A skeptical Eden voiced doubts that the Soviet Union would initiate a war. Hitler pronounced himself “firmly convinced that one day cooperation and solidarity would be urgently necessary to defend Europe against the Asiatic and Bolshevik menace.” The Führer thanked his guests and voiced hope that they had understood his efforts to raise his country to equal status with other nations. “The British ministers,” according to their record, avowed that they “would take away very pleasant memories of the kindness and hospitality shown them.”20 In the evening, Hitler, in tails, hosted a banquet and concert at the Chancellery. Press accounts made it hard to discern what, if anything, had transpired. But the mere fact of the visit conveyed British readiness to renegotiate already imposed treaty obligations.
Stalin’s spies in London (the Irish John King, a cipher clerk at the foreign office, recruited in mid-February 1935) and in Rome (Francesco Constantini, an Italian employee at the British embassy) each delivered copies of the British foreign office record of the conversation, which ran to 23,000 words. But NKVD intelligence forwarded a severely condensed Russian translation of just 4,000 words, selecting only certain statements, which they removed from context, to form a new single stream. Their editing made it seem that the British had given Hitler carte blanche to annex Austria and schemed to instigate a Nazi-Soviet clash.21 “Mister Hitler,” the NKVD version of the British record had the Nazi stating, “would not sign an agreement he could not accept, but if he did take on obligations, he would never violate them.”22