ABSTRACT
The 1933 advent of Hitler’s regime, and the arms build-up that followed, produced a distinct shift in the military balance of power. Hitler’s remilitarization of his adopted nation, as well as the dictator’s virulent demands for territorial readjustment, nurtured already nascent fears of German aggression. The apprehensive small states of the eastern Baltic increased their respective armaments expenditures, and France and Britain, eventually, began to rearm. Fear of Nazi ambitions generated a final round of naval contracts before the specter of war once again descended upon Europe, and the pre-1939 atmosphere of uncertainty produced new shifts in French and British influence in the nations of the eastern Baltic.
