I remember learning in school that during the 1930s there was a steady build-up of the German military capability.
I thought there was a depression going on during that same time period. How did Germany have the resources to build all those tanks, planes, and ships? I realize that slave labor had something to do with it.
Seeing the massive military build-up why didn’t our European allies panic and start their how massive build-up? Did they think Germany wasn’t planning to attack neighboring countries? Did it all happen much faster than I think it did?
Certainly, by the time Germany invaded Poland, it was too late to start the allied military build up (It took the US many years to prepare for D-Day and by then France had fallen).
Did Germany somehow convince the world it wasn’t planning to dominate Europe and trick the allies into not preparing for war? How could the world’s leaders trust Hitler and be duped, including the Russian leaders?
The slave labor camps did not really get going until after the war had started. The military build-up was a jobs program that helped get Germany out of the Depression. A lot of people saw the economic progress in Germany, and wanted to emulate the Nazis.
The other countries did start building up. Unfortunately, Germany had a big head start. The democracies also had pacifist factions that hampered the effort.
A lot of people were horrified by the prospect of war, and hoped that Hitler was bluffing. Or they hoped that he would be satisfied with Czechoslovakia. Or they hoped that he would be satisfied with Poland. In the words of Churchill, “Appeasement is hoping that the crocodile will eat you last.”
Mixed. Until mid-1938, many saw their build-up (much of which was concealed and/or disguised) as no more than braggadocio, status assertion and no more than any country was entitled to. Even some of those who sensed their ambitions saw the issue as a matter of hoping the Nazis would fight the “others” (Russians, or Britain and France).
By late 1938, it was clearly a matter of when and how (and against whom), rather than whether, there would be open warfare.
“My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”
Deficit spending and inflation. The Nazi government employed all sorts of techniques to hide the extent of public debt they were running up to finance the build-up; one of these tools were Mefo bills, whereby arms deliveries of the German industry were paid for by means of bills of exchange (a kind of IOU) underwritten by a shell company of the government. These bills could then be discounted (i.e., bought) by German banks, which would then be re-discounted (i.e., bought from the banks) by the German central bank, the Reichsbank. In effect it was an elaborate scheme to finance the build-up through the printing press, with public debt accumulating in the central bank, but in a manner that was not transparent.
and 3) The attitudes of other governments varied. Legally, Germany was prohibited from armament by the Versailles Treaty of 1919, so other governments could have invoked that to justify military action. This wouldn’t have been unheard of; in 1923, France and Belgian occupied the Ruhr area (one of the most heavily industrialised regions of Germany) to enforce reparations claims from the Versailles Treaty. This occupation was highly unpopular in Germany and controversial internationally, and it ended in 1925 upon pressure from the US and the UK. There was, to some extent, sympathy in other countries, especially in the UK, where some politicians thought that the Versailles Treaty was treating Germany too harshly and that some re-armament on the German side was a legitimate aim. All in all, there was no harmonised strategy on the part of the Western Allies on how to deal with Germany; France, in particular, was often advocating a harsh stance, whereas Britain was less adamant, an attitude which ultimately led to 1938 Appeasement, hoping that concessions towards Hitler would avert another war.
Hardly anybody in the West believed that Hitler had peaceful intentions, but opinions differed as to how far he would go. Many were hoping that, with some concessions (most importantly, the Munic Agreement), he would be satisfied and refrain from further aggression.
All of Europe’s leaders had vivid memories of the first war and the thought of getting into another one so soon after was too horrible to bear. Churchill was painted as a “warmonger” and worse by his political opponents, for suggesting that we should attempt to match the military build-up he saw across the Channel. Many of them probably thought that Hitler was too busy getting Germany running again to declare war on the rest of Europe.
I’ll add that this was part of the “socialism” of National Socialism. Hitler believed that high finance was effectively an illusion, created by the Jews to gain control of the world. He saw no reason why ink marks in a ledger should prevent the German people from going back to work and lifting Germany out of the mire. At least temporarily the Nazi regime could make this look true, although it’s been said that Germany went to war when it did in part because the the financing schemes were becoming untenable.
Keep in mind that Germany was a dictatorship and countries like the UK and France were democracies.
Hitler could order all sorts of things done without having to worry about the press, legislators, etc. complaining about the costs. The other countries not so much. (With Stalin being in an entirely different category, of course.)
A lot of people, including many in government, couldn’t conceive of Hitler going to war like he did and so balked at the expense of prepping for something that was either a long way off or never going to happen.
Remember that FDR for most of the Great Depression was also spending money. But on domestic programs. This was the classic mindset of how to get out of one: borrow and spend money, give people jobs and income.
In a recent TV documentary here, they included a clip where Goebbels was commending Roosevelt’s departure from the economic orthodoxy of the day and how much the Nazis agreed with it - I didn’t check the date, but it was clearly early enough for him to be wanting to seem house-trained for the foreign press.
For tanks it’s important to remember that they didn’t build a big chunk of the armor that enabled the early blitzkrieg. They captured them from Czechoslovakia.
At the start of the war their “tanks” were dominantly the Panzer I and Panzer II that were clearly outclassed by all but the most obsolescent enemy armor. The Panzer I was armed with two 7.92mm machineguns in the turret. There was no main gun to fight other tanks or armored vehicles. The Panzer II was the bulk of the German armor force. It was armed with an already obsolescent 20mm main gun in the turret along with a 7.92mm machinegun mounted coaxially. ISTR that at the start of the war that gun still only had armor piercing rounds but can’t find a good cite for when they finally fielded an HE round for use against troops in cover or exposed at longer ranges. That gun had little chance of penetrating anything but light tanks at any but the shortest engagement ranges. There were smaller numbers of Panzer III and IV medium tanks. The Panzer IV wasn’t equipped to fight enemy armor at the start of the war. It had a short barreled 75mm main gun. The low velocity round had poor armor penetration capabilities. The large turret ring enabled it to be upgunned and become an effective medium tank until war’s end. At the time of the Battle of France it was more a mobile support gun than an effective anti-tank system, though.
Czech armor supplied a big chunk of what Germany used in the conquest of Poland and France. The LT-35 became the Panzer 35t in German service. The LT-38 became the Panzer 38t. Both mounted capable 37mm main guns that could struggle with some of the more modern tanks but put them on par with the Panzer III capability. Both suffered from brittle armor that offered less effective protection against penetration and increased spalling (chips/splinters breaking off the armor and flying around inside both on penetrating and some non-penetrating hits.) Still they were more capable than anything except the less numerous Panzer III. They formed a big chunk of the panzer force for Poland and France. If you discount the not very capable against armor Pz Is and IIs they were the bulk of German armor for those fights. Both continued to serve into Barbarossa.
Germany had captured the Skoda factories for them in the Sudetenland. That allowed production without investment in building the facilities or tooling. It also allowed production of spare parts for the Pz38t. The Panzer 35t was already obsolescent in Czechoslovakian service at the time. Germany ended production of parts relatively early and just used them up via cannibalization and use of existing parts stores.
Those factories continued to provide for long term service of the Pz38t chassis in other designs once the tank itself was withdrawn from German service. It was mechanically reliable and served as the basis for production of the Marder III and Jagdpanzer 38 tank destroyers till near the end of the war.
The Marder series in general provides a broader look at Germans bootstrapping off captured equipment and production facilities. The Marder I was built on three different hulls. Two French built chassis and one Polish chassis were used. Many of the initial guns used for them were Russian produced anti-tank guns captured during Barbarossa. The Marder II used surplus Panzer IIs that were retired and repurposed along with some captured French hulls.
Germany was using war to fuel building their military in the early stages. When Neville Chamberlain gave up the Sudetenland he also essentially gave Germany the heavy equipment for multiple Panzer divisions.
That wasn’t the “classic mindset” - it was a revolutionary approach to public finances as a way out of depression championed by Keynes, and Roosevelt initially was suspicious of it.
Right. The classic mindset was for the government to do nothing about the economy and let the “invisible hand” of the marketplace fix it. But where do you get the notion Roosevelt was suspicious at first? He started the New Deal right from the beginning of his presidency.
A lot of countries in the 30s looked favourably on Nazi Germany because the Nazis were rabidly anti-communist. They didn’t prevent the Nazis from re-arming Germany because they (correctly) saw the USSR as Nazi Germany’s biggest enemy.
Everybody knew that the real war would be between Nazi Germany and the USSR. They didn’t forsee that Hitler and Stalin would come to an understanding which meant that Germany was able to turn west, and to knock France and the UK out of the coming war. The UK survived and won the Battle of Britain, of course, so it could have turned out a lot worse. But the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the subsequent carve-up of Poland came as a nasty surprise to western Europe.
With regards to questions 2 and 3 and France: The French had fought too many wars against Germany to just assume that they would be left alone. They had practiced universal conscription well before WW1 and continued to do so until they fell in WW2, so they had a reasonably large standing army and even larger reserves. Their professional army, however, was quite small, as the left-wing inter-war government feared that a large professional military might launch a coup (I’m not sure how realistic this fear was but the years after 1918 saw loads of rebellions, coups and revolutions). The government was also fearful that conscripts might fall under the sway of any potential coup-launching officers if their conscription terms were too long, so they were kept short, at times lasting only a year.
The problem with an army like this is that it really difficult to train reservists on new equipment. That lead to French tank design, doctrine and production lagging behind for most of the 1930’s. When they finally ramped up it was too late and they ended up lots of tanks that were unfinished (often lacking radios) and crewed by men who didn’t know how to use them. Combined with the disorganized mess that was the Anglo-French command structure in 1939-40 and it should come as no shock that the French army was better on paper than in the field.
Nicholas Moran, AKA The Chieftain, has a great video on the topic.
Germany was one of the first countries to get off the gold standard which caused the deflation that led to the great depression. Thus they were able to recover sooner than most of the allies.
France had been building up its military and had some of the best tanks in the world and a army almost the size of Germany’s despite having half the population of the Germany.
Roosevelt campaigned on cutting the spending surge of Hoover and criticized Hoover for putting people on welfare. When he was elected he changed his mind very quickly after a brief period of budget cutting.