Know Your Enemy

Abstract

Immediately after the overthrow of the imperial regime in Germany in 1918 we believed that a democratic Germany would be willing to contribute actively to the rebuilding of Europe. It may be possible that those German elements who ruled Germany under the Weimar regime were willing to co-operate, but on the one hand they were thwarted both in the domestic and in the foreign field, and on the other hand we completely underrated the old militaristic forces still existing in democratic Germany. The election of Hindenburg as President of the German Republic in 1925 virtually meant the victory of the aristocratic, militaristic elements in Germany. From the beginning, these elements, with the financial backing of the leaders of the big industrial concerns, like Krupp, Stinnes, Thyssen, the I. G. Farben, and others, strengthened their position continually between 1925 and 1933, and, especially after 1932, sought and found co-operation with the Nazi movement, which, in the field of foreign policy, pursued the same aims as they. The Treaty of Versailles limited the German Army to 100,000 men and stipulated that it should be a so-called standing army of volunteers who had to sign up for at least twelve years of military service. After the election of Hindenburg the old military Junker class took the training of this army in hand. The able General von Seeckt became Commander in Chief. Because the members of this army had to fulfill a military service of twelve years, they became so highly trained that they soon formed the skeleton of the big German armies of today. When in 1935 Hitler proclaimed the rearmament of the German Reich, he had at his disposal a well-trained corps of 100,000 men-all officer material-and, moreover, the equipment secretly acquired during the latter part of the so-called democratic republican regime of the Junker-inspired and militarily backed Hindenburg era.