The purposes and objectives of the German General Staff and High Command group during the period prior to the absorption of Austria may be summarized as follows:
(i) Secret rearmament, including the training of military personnel, the production of war munitions, and the building of an air force;
(ii) The creation of a military air force, announced by Goering on 10 March 1935;
(iii) The law for compulsory military service, of 16 March 1935, fixing the peace-time strength of the German Army at 500,000; and
(iv) The reoccupation of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936 and the refortification of that area.
These events are historical facts not requiring proof. Likewise, the impossibility of the Nazis’ achieving these ends without cooperation by the Armed Forces is indisputable from the very nature of things.
Events and circumstances during the period 1933-36 are discussed in Section 2 of Chapter IX. Chief among these were the secret expansion of the German Navy in violation of treaty limitations, under the guidance of Raeder; the secret Reich Defense Law of 21 May 1935, adopted the same day that Germany unilaterally renounced the armament provision of the Versailles Treaty (2261-PS); von Blomberg’s plan, 2 May 1935, for the reoccupation of the Rhineland (C-139); and von Blomberg’s orders of 2 March 1936 under which the reoccupation was actually carried out (C-159). All these events clearly required the closest collaboration between the military leaders and the Nazis.
The state of mind and objectives of the German military leaders during this early period are significant. The viewpoint of the German Navy on the opportunities which Naziism offered for rearmament so that Germany could achieve its objectives by force or threat of force, is reflected in a memorandum published by the High Command of the German Navy in 1937 entitled “The Fight of the Navy against Versailles, 1919-35” (C-156). This memorandum was compiled by a naval captain named Schuessler in the German Admiralty. The preface contains the following statements:
“The object and aim of this memorandum is to draw a technically reliable picture based on documentary records and the evidence of those who took part, of the fight of the Navy against the unbearable regulations of the Peace Treaty of Versailles.”
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