ABSTRACT
Brauchitsch at first seemed to be won over, for, like the rest, he held the armed forces in their existing state of unreadiness to be quite incapable of carrying on a war. Von Fritsch was anxious enough for security reasons to reoccupy the zone, but told Adolf Hitler that he felt it would be utterly wrong to accept the risk of war on that account. In June of 1937, Ludwig von Beck, on his own initiative, went unofficially to Paris, where he called on General Gamelin and on Daladier, at that time French Minister of War, and also met the French General Staff. Within a month of Beck’s Paris visit, however, there were plain indications that Hitler was changing course, for in June Blomberg received orders to keep the forces in a state of permanent readiness for immediate mobilization and to issue the instructions contained in the celebrated Blomberg directive.
