ABSTRACT
Hitler had conquered in Germany; his rise to supreme power as Fuhrer and Chancellor, after the death of Marshal Hindenburg, was the logical result. His tactics proved right, since his opponents had left him the monopoly of the exercise of "psychical violence" upon the masses, and had been either unable or unwilling to oppose him with the same weapons. The first blow outside the frontiers of the Reich was struck in the Saar. In the plebiscite on the question of return to the Reich, Goebbels and Hitler saw the possibility of making large-scale employment of their methods. Thus Hitler won his first propaganda battle in the international field, beating France in the Saar. His next coup was the reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936. From then on it should have been clear that the same thing would happen time after time, but the leaders in the democratic countries refused obstinately to open their eyes to Hitler's principles of action.
