Four Year Plan and the appointment of Göring as
the Plenipotentiary in charge. Göring was already engaged in
building a strong air force and on 8 July 1938 he announced to a
number of leading German aircraft manufacturers that the German Air
Force was already superior in quality and quantity to the English. On
14 October 1938, at another conference, Göring announced that
Hitler had instructed him to organize a gigantic armament program,
which would make insignificant all previous achievements. He said
that he had been ordered to build as rapidly as possible an air force
five times as large as originally planned, to increase the speed of
the rearmament of the navy and army, and to concentrate on offensive
weapons, principally heavy artillery and heavy tanks. He then laid
down a specific program designed to accomplish these ends. The extent
to which rearmament had been accomplished was stated by Hitler in his
memorandum of 9 October 1939, after the campaign in Poland. He said:
"The military application of our
people's strength has been carried through to such an extent that
within a short time at any rate it cannot be markedly improved upon
by any manner of effort . . . .
"The warlike equipment of the German people is at present
larger in quantity and better in quality for a greater number of
German divisions than in the year 1914. The weapons themselves,
taking a substantial cross-section, are more modern than is the case
of any other country in the world at this time. They have just proved
their supreme war worthiness in their victorious campaign . . . .
There is no evidence available to show that any country in the world
disposes of a better total ammunition stock than the Reich . . . .
The A. A. artillery is not equalled by any country in the
world."
I
n this reorganization of the economic life of Germany
for military purposes, the Nazi Government found the German armament
industry quite willing to cooperate, and to play its part in the
rearmament program. In April 1933 Gustav Krupp von Bohlen submitted
to Hitler on behalf of the Reich Association of German Industry a
plan for the reorganization of German industry, which he stated was
characterized by the desire to coordinate economic measures and
political necessity. In the plan itself Krupp stated that "the
turn of political events is in line with the wishes which I myself
and the board of directors have cherished for a long time." What
Krupp meant by this statement is fully shown by the draft text of a
speech which he planned to deliver in the University of Berlin in
January 1944, though the speech was in fact never delivered.
Referring to the years 1919 to 1933, Krupp wrote:
"It is the one great merit of
the entire German war economy that it did not remain idle during
those bad years, even