Chapter 2 explores the situation of chaplains from 1933 to 1939. Studies of Nazi Germany often neglect these years, but developments and decisions made at this time proved crucial. The chapter opens with a look at a chaplain who accompanied the Condor Legion to Spain during the Civil War. Pastor Keding’s account encapsulates the central insight of this chapter: during the first six years of Hitler’s rule, a loyal military chaplaincy emerged. The men appointed to serve the new Wehrmacht as military bishops, the Catholic Rarkowski and Protestant Dohrman, were old-fashioned patriots who brought credibility to the chaplaincy. Procedures for selecting chaplains were developed to prioritize keeping out men deemed potential troublemakers. The lingering perception that Christianity had contributed to Germany’s failure to win in 1918 put chaplains on the defensive and led them to try to prove and re-prove their effectiveness. Chaplains seized the opportunity presented by German rearmanent in 1935 to expand their numbers. They endorsed exclusion of Jews and celebrated German triumphs from remilitarization of the Rhineland to annexation of Austria. By September 1939 they were ready for war.

This chapter intends to address how Hitler’s views on the US and Japan had evolved in the years prior to 1941. Despite the fact that his assessment of the USA in particular can be examined through a multitude of sources, many historians have chosen to limit themselves to a number of well-known value judgements from public wartime speeches. Unsurprisingly, these dwell extensively on the supposed “racial inferiority” of contemporary Americans and on the “Jewish influence” in the American centres of power. In similar fashion, his value judgement of the Japanese are usually reduced to his supposed “infatuation” with the Japanese warrior culture. A more extensive analysis of the available sources (speeches of the 20’s, records of private conversations, manuscripts from his own hand) quickly reveals a more complex picture. The Americans are regarded as the future rival of the new Germany, but also admired for their technological prowess, economic muscle and racist legislation. The Japanese, on the other hand are not accorded the same unstinted praise; his interest in them develops only in close synchronicity with every step Japanese governments of the 1930’s take which appears to indicate a lasting antagonism with the Anglo-American powers.