The Nazis' Hossbach Memorandum of 1937

Consideration of the Hossbach Memorandum has played a significant role in deciding the question of Hitler’s intention to wage war in Europe. Hitler, Goering, and a number of other high-ranking military Germans met at the Chancellery in Berlin on 5^th November 1937 and Hitler outlined a number of his ideas as to where he saw things heading over the next few years. Count Friedrich Hossbach (the central figure in the above photo) was the staff officer who took the minutes of the meeting, which is why his name is attached to the document.

Hitler was clearly obsessed with the concept of “Lebensraum”, by which was meant “living space” for racially pure Germans. This concept was not new, in that it was not invented by the Nazis, but Hitler gave it the formulation of expansion eastwards into lands occupied by racially inferior people (in his eyes) such as the Slavs and the Poles.

At the “Hossbach” meeting, Hitler made clear that such moves would inevitably be opposed by France and Britain, so care would be needed to ensure that these powers would not cause trouble when the time came. The first move would be to absorb Austria and Czechoslovakia into the Reich.

Hitler believed that France would eventually fall into internal turmoil, at which point a move against the Czechs would be advisable. He also thought that Britain would soon be at war with Italy, and not in a position to wage war with Germany. Likewise, Russia was too preoccupied with events to the east, concerning Japan, to be an obstacle to Germany in the west.

However, Hitler said nothing about making war on his neighbours at an early date. He clearly believed that Germany would need to act before around 1943 or 1945, but that was six years ahead at the earliest.

As we all know, events moved faster than envisaged at the Hossbach meeting, with the “Anschluss” of Austria occurring in March 1938 (only four months after the meeting) and the annexation of the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia in September/October.

After Germany’s final defeat in 1945, the prosecutors at the Nuremberg tribunals produced the Hossbach Memorandum as evidence that Goering and others on trial had planned the war as far back as 1937. However, the British historian A J P Taylor, who was certainly no friend of Germany, took the view that the Memorandum proved nothing of the sort and could not be used as documentary evidence that Hitler was hell-bent on war at this time.

In Taylor’s opinion, all the Memorandum revealed was a vague rant on the part of Hitler concerning the possibility of a somewhat limited war at an indeterminate time several years in the future. To quote Taylor, “A racing tipster who only reached Hitler’s level of accuracy would not do well for his clients”.

Taylor’s words did not please those who wanted to prove intent on the part of Hitler, and he was accused by some of being an apologist for the Nazis. However, Taylor had shown that Hitler, not for the first or the last time, was able to combine aggressive talk with an inability to translate intention into plans for action. 

Historians have continued to argue ever since about whether the Hossbach meeting marked a turning point in the events leading to World War II, or whether it is wrong to see the Memorandum in this light. As with many incidents in history, it is always difficult to view an event in isolation from the events that followed it. 

© John Welford

Raising wartime morale in Paris

The date was June 12^th 1942. France had been under German occupation for two years and a parade of German soldiers marched down the Champs Elysées in Paris every day, reportedly between 12.15 and 12.45. For the ordinary French person, who was deeply patriotic and conscious of the symbolism of such an act, this was a humiliation that was difficult to bear.

At one end of the Champs Elysées stood (and still stands) the magnificent Arc de Triomphe, commissioned in 1806 to commemorate the victories of Napoleon Bonaparte and inscribed with the names of French military successes and the generals who carried them  out. Nothing could have lowered French morale more than to have this monument mocked by the seemingly invincible army of the hated Germans.

However, the Royal Air Force had a surprise in store. Flight Lieutenant Ken Gatward, together with his navigator Flight Sergeant George Fern, volunteered for a daring solo daytime mission, the aim of which was to ambush the German parade and perform the symbolic act of dropping the flag of the Free French on to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, from their twin-engined Bristol Beaufighter.

The mission had had to be abandoned three times, due to lack of cloud cover, but on the morning of June 12^th Gatward and Fern were able to fly at low level all the way across the English Channel and northern France, avoiding detection by not rising more than 30 feet above the waves or the ground. This plan nearly came unstuck when a bird was hit and got stuck in a radiator, but this did not impede the aircraft.

On reaching Paris exactly on time the plane banked over the Champs Elysées but there were no German troops to be seen. It turned out that the SOE (Special Operations Executive) agent who had given the original report about the daily parade had got the time wrong and the parade had yet to take place. However, the fighter plane was able to fire off a few salvos at the HQ of the Gestapo and the two RAF men saw a number of SS officers running for cover as the cannon shells found their mark.

The secondary objective of the mission, namely the dropping of the flag, was achieved to perfection, and the symbolic act of restoring pride to a demoralised nation was a triumph in itself. It proved to the ordinary French man and woman that they had not been abandoned and that, despite the apparently total control over them of the Nazi military machine, there were times when its impenetrability could be breached.  The sight of the German officers being reduced to waving their fists at the departing Beaufighter must have gladdened the hearts of many an onlooker.

Flight Lieutenant Gatward was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his bravery, and after the war he was honoured by the French government and presented with own French tricolour flag. His unusual mission showed that raising morale can be one of the most effective weapons in winning a war.

Ken Gatward continued to serve in the RAF for thirty years before retiring. He died in 1988 at the age of 84.

© John Welford

The Battle of Stalingrad, 1942-3

31^st January 1943 saw one of the major turning points of World War II when the German Sixth Army surrendered at Stalingrad.

When Adolf Hitler had ordered the capture of Stalingrad the previous September he believed that the Red Army was on the point of collapse and that the fall of the city named after the Soviet leader would be the knockout blow, both physically and psychologically. However, he had completely overlooked not only the size of the force that was ready to be launched against the Germans but also the determination of the Russian people to oppose him. Also, just like Napoleon Bonaparte more than a century before, he had ignored the effects of the Russian winter which comes early and with devastating consequences.

The battle for Stalingrad was savage and costly, as troops fought their way through the city street by street and building by building, most of which were soon reduced to rubble.

The snow began falling on 12^th November and on 22^nd November the entire Sixth Army, of nearly 300,000 men, was surrounded and cut off from its supply lines. Thousands of men died from exhaustion and starvation, as well as from Red Army attacks.

When surrender was eventually forced on the Germans there were only 91,000 prisoners to be taken, including 22 generals. An eye-witness remarked that the generals appeared to be in considerably better shape than the soldiers under their command.

Of those 91,000 men, only 5,000 survived being prisoners of war and were released when the war ended. Even so, the final tranche of 2,000 men did not get home until 1955, ten years after peace had been declared.

© John Welford

Operation Market Garden: Monty's bridge too far

17^th September 1944 saw the launch of Operation Market Garden, the campaign that Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery hoped would end the Second World War by Christmas.

The plan was to complete the Allied invasion of Europe by attacking Germany via the northern route, i.e. through the Netherlands, although this would mean crossing the River Rhine at its widest point.

The plan was to land 20,000 airborne troops behind the German lines near Arnhem, on the far side of the Rhine, capture all the bridgeheads over the river, then hold these positions while ground-based troops caught up. Montgomery was confident that the latter would reach the captured bridges within two days.

However, the strength of German resistance was much greater than had been anticipated and the plan went wrong both with the airborne and ground assault. Capturing the bridges took much longer than expected and the armoured divisions moving north towards Arnhem could only move painfully slowly.

An attempt to reinforce the airborne troops went disastrously wrong when a division of Polish paratroopers landed on the wrong side of the river.

Eventually the signal was given to withdraw and the surviving troops escaped back across the Rhine, some of them having to swim. 17,000 Allied troops were killed, wounded or captured, and the generals were forced to think of a different way of achieving their objective.

The title of the 1977 film based on the campaign was entirely appropriate – “A Bridge Too Far”.

© John Welford

The Altmark incident, 1940

The United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 3^rd September 1939, but it was not until May 1940 that most people in Britain were aware that there “was a war on”. This period of relative inactivity became known as “the phoney war”.

However, the word “relative” is important, because there was action at sea right from the start, including the sinking of a British aircraft carrier (HMS Courageous) within weeks of war being declared, with more than 500 lives being lost.

Another naval action occurred on 16^th February 1940. HMS Cossack pursued a German supply ship, the Altmark, and forced it to run aground in a Norwegian fjord (see photo). The action had two unexpected consequences.

The first of these was that when the Altmark was boarded and its hatches opened, the Royal Navy sailors discovered that the ship was carrying around 300 British merchant crewmen who had been rescued and captured when their ships had been sunk earlier the previous year by the German battleship Graf Spee. They were being transported to Germany where, given their civilian status, they could not have expected the treatment accorded to accredited prisoners of war. They could have found themselves working for the rest of the war in German factories as virtual slave labour.

HMS Cossack returned to Britain with the rescued seamen, leading to much rejoicing on the part of the British people. However, the incident was seen by the Norwegians as an act that violated their neutrality, and by Germany as a threat to their supply route for Swedish iron ore. The second consequence of the incident was therefore that Hitler pushed his already planned invasion of Norway to the top of his list of priorities and delayed plans to invade France and the Low Countries.

The rescue of the British merchant crews led to a new catchphrase. When the hatches of the Altmark were opened and the crewmen discovered, the Royal Navy sailors announced “The Navy’s here”. Winston Churchill used this in a speech in London when he announced that, to Nelson’s famous signal “England expects that every man will do his duty” should be added the words “The Navy’s here”.

© John Welford