Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

416 DER FUEHRERwell as by her total rejection of disarmament), could be put out ofexistence overnight. . . . This great national combination under Germanleadership, which I see torming step by step as the new face of Europein the immediate future, would be a bulwark against Bolshevism. . . .'Hitler concluded his correspondence with Herve by saying that 'to mydeepest regret, I must reject any offer of German rearmament and aGerman-French military alliance.' His reason was that the German-French alliance would prevent the formation of a fascist world front andlead to new wars. He, Hitler, wanted peace — peace among Fascists.The Central European bulwark which Rothermere foresaw was indeedon its way. On March 19, 1931, Germany concluded a customs unionwith the little republic of Austria, the 'brother land,' which had beenforbidden to join with Germany by the victors of 1919. Austria, acountry without any appreciable resources, a country where even thepeasants starved on their stony mountainsides, was even more deeplyshaken by the crisis than Germany; the political parties were even moreradical, the contradictions more violent. Cut off from its economicresources by the disintegration of the Hapsburg monarchy in 1919, thecountry was living solely on its spiritual forces which were bleeding itto death; solidly German in nationality and strongly conscious of it, itwas torn ideologically into two main groups: the faithful Catholicpopulation, for the most part peasants and middle class, and the stronglyanticlerical Socialist working class. The armed intellectuals and bohemianshad also put in an appearance, and had mobilized manybourgeois and peasants; the workers had likewise mobilized. A starvingAustria, bristling with arms, was on the brink of civil war.The customs union was an emergency act. An exhausted Austriaentered into an economic union with an exhausted Germany. Anenlarged economic area was created, an even larger one was planned,for all the Danubian countries to the southeast of Austria (Hungary,Yugoslavia, Rumania) lived in large part from the sale of their agrarianproducts to Germany. Germany and Austria offered to take them intotheir new economic grossraum. It was Bruning's first attempt at a 'greatpolicy of liberation.'It is understandable that the leading men of Czechoslovakia be-