The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy

by Adam Tooze

Ministry hoped to win the support of Japan and Italy against Britain and France. By the spring of 1939, Ribbentrop had been able to achieve none of these objectives. Poland warded off Germany’s initial advances and even had the temerity to improve its relations with the Soviet Union. Japan was preoccupied with its war in northern China and had no interest in adding to its enemies. Italy was bent on a course of aggression that took it eastward into the Balkans, rather than westwards against France. When Hitler sent German troops into Prague on 15 March 1939 to establish a protectorate over the Czechs, the result was a diplomatic disaster.69 Though the occupation of Bohemia outflanked Poland’s border defences, Warsaw definitively rejected any possibility of an alliance with Germany. And by the end of the month, Britain had taken the unprecedented step of issuing a public guarantee of Poland’s territorial integrity. To give this promise substance, Britain and France opened negotiations with the Soviet Union over the possibility of concluding a security agreement that would protect the rest of Eastern Europe against any further German aggression. With hindsight it is clear that these negotiations were doomed to failure. Ironically, a guarantee to the Poles made a deal with the Soviets impossible. However, in the spring of 1939 the formation of a triple alliance of France, Britain and the Soviet Union against Hitler seemed inevitable.70 The