Why did so few statesmen take Mein Kampf seriously?

The short answer

• The men who appointed Hitler. From 1930, Weimar chancellors increasingly governed through presidential emergency decrees. The conservatives around Hindenburg, particularly Franz von Papen, hoped that bringing the Nazi mass movement into government would give them its support without surrendering control. Papen was reported to have promised, “Within two months we will have pushed Hitler so far into a corner that he’ll squeak,” The Nazis had never won a majority in a free national election. Their access to the chancellorship depended on elites who preferred an authoritarian bargain to government by the left.
• The grievances of Versailles. Many Germans resented the 1919 settlement, and much of Weimar politics sought to revise it. Germany also retained the population and industrial potential to become a major European power. Hitler’s ambitions went much further than revision, but early demands for equality of armaments, the Saar and later the Rhineland could be presented as questions of fairness. Another government might accept one grievance without accepting his wider aims. The difficulty was that each concession could strengthen his position for the next demand.
• Disarmament and security. The Versailles settlement presented German disarmament as a first step toward general disarmament. At the world conference of 1932–33, France, twice invaded by Germany within living memory, wanted security before it reduced its arms; Britain pressed for reductions. The disagreement helped defeat the wider project. Hitler left claiming that Germany alone had been denied equality, and could present rearmament at home and abroad as catching up with powers that had failed to disarm.
• Different powers, different priorities. The powers that might have restrained Germany had different concerns. Britain weighed its global empire and finances, France its exposed border, and Italy its Mediterranean and African ambitions. The Soviet Union remained outside the League until 1934; the United States stayed outside it. Hitler could address governments separately: a 1934 pact reassured Poland, while the 1935 naval agreement offered Britain a limit. Each arrangement answered a particular concern and made a united response harder to sustain.

What it changed

An unequal rearmament timetable. One estimate puts German army spending in 1936 at perhaps ten times Britain’s, though the comparison depends on what is counted. Britain and France accelerated their own rearmament in 1936–37. Spitfires, radar defenses and French armored formations matured on different schedules, so a decision to rearm did not immediately supply the forces. That timing mattered to the balance in 1938–39 and to Hitler’s assessment of his opportunities.

Italy turns toward conquest. Mussolini pursued his plans for Abyssinia while the powers at Stresa were divided. Britain’s naval agreement weakened their partnership; Italy’s invasion and the sanctions that followed damaged it further. The next chapter follows the African war.

The Rhineland comes into view. The return of the Saar, the absence of military intervention against conscription and the weakening of Stresa changed the setting for Hitler’s next challenge. The demilitarized Rhineland was a physical restraint on Germany imposed by Versailles and reinforced by the Locarno agreements.