German Foreign Policy 1918-1945

The student of German foreign policy between 1918 and 1945 is confronted with masses of material—archival and published sources, books and articles, newspapers and serials. This material is dispersed in repositories in Europe and North America, classified and catalogued in different ways. Archival records are not always where one would expect them to be, since some collections were broken up after the war, while others were filmed and duplicated. The quantity and variety of scholarly publications is such that one can barely keep up with them and determine whether they are relevant to one’s work.

The student of German foreign policy is confronted also with certain unique conditions that will govern research on the subject. First, the depredations of the war and its aftermath tore sizable holes in the records accumulated by German ministries and offices. There is no assurance that documentation will be complete on any one subject or period, or that sufficient materials will be located in other collections to offset such losses. Second, and particularly characteristic of the Nazi period, the decline of the foreign ministry and the rise of rival agencies and organizations, each with its own purposes and priorities, created a profusion of foreign policies, of competing and overlapping jurisdictions. Researchers must therefore turn to the records not only of the foreign ministry but also of party plenipotentiaries, party agencies and offices, the adjutant or staff secretariats of the major players, and assorted maverick groups. And, finally, it should be noted that, in a period defined first by the terms of the peace treaty and then by the ambitions of a system driven to conquest, foreign policy was so deeply interwoven and interrelated with economic and financial policy, with military and rearmament policy that it is difficult to speak of foreign policy as such.

This handbook tells you about the various repositories and their holdings, their rules and regulations, and their facilities for research. It indicates the nature and extent of the gaps and losses in the materials that have survived. It guides you through the literature on the subject, making sources of information and of research available at a glance. And it describes how foreign policy was made and how it was implemented, so that you can decide what materials are pertinent and how they should be assessed.