Hitler, Ribbentrop and Britain: The Breaking of Versailles Part One

By Nick Shepley

A fraudulent chancer, fantasist and con artist, Joachim Von Ribbentrop charmed Hitler and dominates the Fuhrer's inner circle for much of the 1930s. Hitler was totally taken in by the version of the world Ribbentrop presented to him, so much so that he became the Nazi leader's unofficial, then official ambassador, causing discord and diplomatic havoc wherever he went.This edition of Explaining History focuses on Hitler's first attempts to reshape the European order, by undermining the Treaty of Versailles, and attempting to build an alliance with Britain. It was an attempt doomed to failure, and fated to shape the nature of the coming war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AUK Academic
• Release date: Dec 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781783331130

Book preview

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The Breaking of Versailles Part One

Adolf Hitler was a man who was most comfortable working with a high degree of informality and he hated bureaucrats, paperwork, meetings and most other conventions of officialdom. He was far too certain of his own judgement, and his arrogance led him to place his trust in often embarrassingly unreliable or untrustworthy subordinates. Similarly, efficient, capable and professional men, particularly generals, were sidelined and ignored at times when their advice could well have determined the outcome of the Second World War. In this volume of Explaining Modern History, we will look at Hitler’s foreign policy goals, his relationship with the British up until 1936, and his chief agent in negotiations between the two powers, Joachim Von Ribbentrop. I will cover Hitler’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War, the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, the Anschluss with Austria and the destruction of Czechoslovakia in part two of this series.

In 1924, whilst living in the comparative comfort of Landsberg Prison following his incarceration after the failed attempt to seize power during the Munich Putsch, Hitler wrote his rambling manifesto, Mein Kampf. With the awestruck Rudolf Hess as his scribe, he poured out his thoughts and feelings about, amongst other things, hearing the news of the Treaty of Versailles. Hess faithfully recorded his thoughts about the day he heard of the armistice:

"Everything went black before my eyes; I tottered and groped my way back to the ward, threw myself on my bunk, and dug my burning head into my blanket and pillow. So it had all been in vain. In vain all the sacrifices and privations; in vain the hours in which, with mortal fear clutching at our hearts, we nevertheless did our duty; in vain the death of two million who died. Had they died for this? Did all this happen only so that a gang of wretched criminals could lay hands on the Fatherland.

I knew that all was lost. Only fools, liars and criminals could hope for mercy from the enemy. In these nights hatred grew in me, hatred for those responsible for this deed. Miserable and degenerate criminals! The more I tried to achieve clarity on the monstrous events in this hour, the more the shame of indignation and disgrace burned my brow."

Since he began his career in politics in 1919 Hitler had been determined to undo the Treaty Of Versailles. In his speeches throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, as Nazi fortunes improved, he made comparatively few speeches about the Jews, anxious not to offend or worry more conservative voters, but his impassioned appeals to an ingrained sense of anger and grievance over the treaty were well received.

John Maynard Keynes was amongst the many commentators at the Paris Peace Conference who recognised the resentment the treaty was likely to engender. The German delegation had not been invited to attend the deliberations, and the big three, David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Woodrow Wilson found between themselves a compromise which ultimately put off the date of the next war, instead of ending all wars, as was naively hoped for.

Clemenceau, the ‘Tiger of France’, knew his role well. He was present at the conference to articulate the anger and the desire for revenge of the French people after four years of horrific war fought mainly on French soil.

Lloyd George wrote in 1938, as the next European war was about to break out that:

"There never was a greater contrast, mental or spiritual, than that which existed between these two notable men (Wilson and Clemenceau). Wilson with his high but narrow brow, his fine head with its elevated crown and his dreamy but untrustful eye - the make-up of the idealist who is also something of an egoist; Clemenceau, with a powerful head and the square brow of the logician - the head conspicuously flat topped, with no upper storey in which to lodge the humanities, the ever vigilant and fierce eye of the animal who has hunted