Hoßbach transcript

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The Hoßbach Minutes , often also referred to as the Hoßbach Minutes , is a transcript made by Colonel Friedrich Hoßbach without an order and based on catchphrases of a meeting on November 5, 1937 in Berlin , during which Adolf Hitler gave a monologue of several hours to the most important representatives of the Wehrmacht and Foreign Minister von Neurath presented the main features of his foreign policy, which was geared towards violent expansion. The Hoßbach transcript is a central source for the prehistory of the Second World War and served the prosecution in the Nuremberg trials as evidence that the defendants were preparing a war of aggression .

Conference on November 5, 1937 in Berlin

Hitler had invited the military leadership and Foreign Minister Neurath to a conference on November 5, 1937 in order to discuss problems of the armaments industry, in particular the sometimes insufficient supply of steel. With the meeting of Minister of War took Werner von Blomberg , the commanders of the army , navy and air force , Werner von Fritsch , Erich Raeder and Hermann Goering and Foreign Minister Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath and Hitler's Wehrmacht - adjutant , Colonel Friedrich Hossbach , in part. The immediate cause was Raeder's request to provide the Navy with more steel than before for shipbuilding. In the conference, a sustainable consensus on the allocation of raw materials was to be achieved with Hermann Göring, who was responsible for the four-year plan . However, Hitler deviated from the topic right from the start and offered the participants insights into his wide-ranging foreign policy goals in a lecture lasting several hours. This was followed by a lively discussion on this topic, and only afterwards a debate on steel quotas .

Origin and transmission history

Five days after the conference in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin , Colonel Hoßbach made a transcript of this conference of his own accord on the basis of brief notes. He limited himself largely to Hitler's line of thought. The reactions of the participants in the meeting were - as Hoßbach noted with regret in his book - inadequate. It is therefore wrong to speak of a protocol , since the document cannot be ascribed an official character (countersignature). The history of the transmission of the document, which can correctly be called “written down”, is complicated and thus gave rise to discrediting the document as a forgery.

In November 1943, Colonel Count Kirchbach from the War History Department of the General Staff had a copy made of the handwritten original that was then kept in the OKW archives. In January 1944 he gave the copy to his brother-in-law Viktor von Martin, who passed it on to the British military government in autumn 1945 . This copy initially disappeared after 1945, which fueled allegations of forgery. The original had fallen into the hands of a team from the Allied High Command. A typewritten copy (the handwritten original could no longer be found) was presented by the prosecution in the trial of the major war criminals as Evidence Document PS-386.

In 1989 the Kirchbach copy was found together with a letter from Viktor von Martin to the British occupation authorities in British files that were previously inaccessible. This copy and PS-386 were absolutely identical, which invalidated the allegation of forgery. In addition, a parallel transmission in the estate of the then Chief of Staff of the Army, Ludwig Beck , shows that the transcript used later is identical to the original written by Friedrich Hoßbach on November 10, 1937.

Hoßbach, who was questioned about the document in June 1946, stated that he had to “accept a reproduction of his own writing as present in terms of content, composition and style” , this statement can also be found in his book. Hermann Göring and Erich Raeder, who were accused of preparing for a war of aggression , tried to weaken the document in terms of its informative value by either emphasizing (like Göring) that this was not a verbatim protocol or (like Raeder) individual, harmless-sounding passages as Key messages exposed. On the other hand, the co-defendant at that time Reich Foreign Minister Neurath emphasized that Hitler's declaration of intent "shook him to the extreme" and caused him to resign, since the foreign policy he had pursued exclusively by peaceful means was to be abandoned.

content

Hitler began his remarks by stating that the aim of German policy must be to respond to Germany's “space shortage”. Since a self-sufficient supply of Germany with the previous territorial status is not possible, but the German economy cannot make itself dependent on foreign trade, an expansion of the German territory is inevitable. In doing so, Germany must arm itself against Bolshevism as well as against the "hate opponents" England and France. As the following excerpt shows, Hitler accepted the war and distinguished several scenarios.

“The aim of German politics is to secure and maintain the mass of the people and their increase. So it is the problem of space. [...] To solve the German question, there could only be the path of violence, it could never be risk-free. [...] If you put the decision to use force at risk at the top of the following explanations, then you have to answer the questions “when” and “how”. There are three cases to be decided:

Case 1 (time: 1943–1945):
After this time, only one change to our disadvantage can be expected.

The armament of the army, navy and air force as well as the formation of the officer corps are almost finished. The material equipment and armament are modern, and if you wait a little longer you run the risk of becoming obsolete. [...] If the Führer is still alive, it is his irrevocable decision to resolve the German spatial issue at the latest in 1943/45. The need to act before 1943/45 would be considered in cases 2 and 3.

Case 2:
If the social tensions in France develop into such a domestic political crisis that the latter absorbs the French army and eliminates it for use in war against Germany, the time has come to act against the Czech Republic.

Case 3:
When France is so tied up by a war with another state that it cannot 'proceed' against Germany.

In order to improve our military-political situation, our first goal must be to overthrow the Czech Republic and Austria at the same time , in order to eliminate the flank threat of any action to the west. "

Evaluation of the content and the objectives of the lecture

  • Hitler's idea of ​​“ living space ” and the determination to create it with armed force if necessary were already known (see Liebmann recording ), new - and alarming - was only the concrete time frame.
  • Hitler attributed the need to implement these plans quickly to the acute but dwindling armaments advantage and the short time he would have to implement his plans for health reasons.
  • Since the Soviet Union , Poland and the rest of Eastern and Southeastern Europe only play a subordinate role in the lecture, the lecture cannot be viewed as a blueprint for the Second World War.
  • Before the Munich Agreement , Hitler expected the Western powers to intervene in an action against Austria or Czechoslovakia . However, he was convinced that he would be able to align the spheres of interest with Great Britain, which would prevent France from entering the war.
  • Hitler's presentation was probably also intended as a test of the extent to which the most important representatives of the institutions that had to implement these plans were also prepared to do so.

Reactions of the meeting participants

According to Hoßbach, “the discussion took on very sharp forms at times”. Blomberg and Fritsch "repeatedly pointed out the need for England and France not to appear as our opponents". Hitler stated "in repetition of his previous statements that he was convinced of the non-participation of England and therefore did not believe in a military action by France against Germany":

“According to his whole attitude, the behavior of Blomberg and Fritsch must have made it clear to the Führer that his political lines of thought had only met with sober, factual counter-statements instead of applause and approval. And he knew well enough that the two generals were opposed to any military involvement that we challenged. Before the story begins, it is a sin of omission on my part that the statement of Blomberg and Fritsch ... was not listed in its entirety and not with the dialectical sharpness that actually took place in my writing of November 10, 1937. "

- Friedrich Hossbach : Between the Wehrmacht and Hitler

Foreign Minister Neurath also raised concerns. In his opinion, Germany does not have the resources for a new war. In a conversation with Hitler a little later, he emphasized that he did not want to share responsibility for such a policy and offered Hitler his resignation, which the latter subsequently accepted.

Not all parties considered the meeting to be significant. Raeder claimed both in Nuremberg and in his biography "Mein Leben" that he had the impression that Hitler "did not intend to turn to a warlike policy".

Follow the meeting

On February 4, 1938, near the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis , there was extensive personnel restructuring, in which all three critics lost their previous posts, with Joachim von Ribbentrop, a National Socialist, became the new Foreign Minister and with the establishment of the High Command Wehrmacht Hitler himself took over the role of Minister of War. Contemporary witnesses and also the historiography after the Second World War speak of a causal connection between the criticism of the plans presented by Hitler on November 5, 1937 and the reorganization of the Wehrmacht leadership.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Friedrich Hossbach: Between Wehrmacht and Hitler , p. 219 f.
  2. ↑ Bradley F. Smith: The delivery of the Hoßbach transcript in the light of new sources , in: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 38 vol., 1990, pp. 329–336. Internet: Issue archive VfZ 38 (1990), issue 2/137 (pdf; 7.4 MB)
  3. ↑ Affidavit IMT, Vol. XLII, p. 228 ff.
  4. ^ Friedrich Hossbach: Between Wehrmacht and Hitler , p. 219.
  5. ^ Friedrich Hossbach: Between Wehrmacht and Hitler , p. 216.
  6. ^ Friedrich Hossbach: Between Wehrmacht and Hitler , p. 217
  7. ↑ p. 219 f.

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