“I am enclosing an additional copy for Hess, and ask you to transmit the letter to Hess by messenger, as I do not want to write a letter to Hess for fear that it might be read somewhere. Mit bestem Gruss, Dein Amo.”
Then enclosed with that is “Air Force Organization”:
“Purpose: Preparation of material and training of personnel to provide for the case of the armament of the Air Force.
“Entire management as a civilian organization will be transferred to Colonel Von Willberg, at present Commander of Breslau, who, retaining his position in the Reichswehr, is going on leave of absence.
“(a) Organizing the pilots of civilian air-lines in such a way as to enable their transfer to the air force organization.
“(b) Prospects to train crews for military flying. Training to be done within the organization for military flying of the Stahlhelm”—I believe that means the “steel helmet”—“which is being turned over to Colonel Hänel, retired.
“All existing organizations for sport-flying are to be used for military flying. Directions on kinds and tasks of military flying will be issued by this Stahlhelm directorate. The Stahlhelm organization will pay the military pilots 50 marks per hour flight. These are due to the owner of the plane in case he himself carries out the flight. They are to be divided in case of non-owners of the plane, between flight organization, proprietor, and crew, in the proportion of 10-20-20. . . . Military flying is now paid better than flying for advertisement (40). We therefore have to expect that most proprietors of planes or flying associations will go over to the Stahlhelm organization. It must be achieved that equal conditions will be granted by the RWM, also the NSDAP organization.”
The program of rearmament and the objectives of circumventing and breaching the Versailles Treaty are forcefully shown by a number of Navy documents, showing the participation and cooperation of the German Navy in this rearmament program, secret at first.
When they deemed it safe to say so, they openly acknowledged that it had always been their objective to break Versailles.
In 1937 the Navy High Command published a secret book entitled The Fight of the Navy Against Versailles, 1919 to 1935. The preface refers to the fight of the Navy against the unbearable regulations of the Peace Treaty of Versailles. The table of contents includes a variety of Navy activities, such as saving of coastal guns from destruction as required by Versailles; independent armament measures behind the back of the Government and behind the back of the legislative bodies; resurrection of the U-boat arm; economic rearmament and camouflage rearmament from 1933 to the freedom from the restrictions in 1935.