Given the usual presumptions about the internal politics of the Third Reich, this suggestion of concerted and long-term preparations may strike some readers as far-fetched. However, the evidence is there in October and November 1938. And the best reason for thinking that in the last months of 1938 a degree of overall strategic coherence was reached by Hitler’s regime was the shock therapy provided by the Sudeten crisis. In September 1938 the German leadership had confronted the real possibility that they would soon be involved in a general European war. It is perhaps not surprising that in the
...more
