<P> The Spanish Civil War 1936--1939 would provide an ideal testing ground for the proficiency of the new weapons produced by the German factories during the re-armament years . Many aeronautical bombing techniques (i.e. dive bombing) were tested by the Condor Legion German expeditionary forces against the Republican Government on Spanish soil with the permission of Generalísimo Francisco Franco . Hitler insisted, however, that his long - term designs were peaceful, a strategy labelled as "Blumenkrieg" (Flower War). </P> <P> Re-armament in the 1930s saw the development of different theories of how to prepare the German economy for total war . The first amongst these was' defence in depth' which was put forward by Georg Thomas . He suggested that the German economy needed to achieve Autarky (or self - sufficiency) and one of the main proponents behind this was I.G. Farben . Hitler never put his full support behind Autarky and aimed for the development of' defence in breadth' which espoused the development of the armed forces in all areas and was not concerned with preparing the German economy for war . </P> <P> In any event, Hitler could boast on 26 September 1938 in the Berlin Sportpalast that after giving orders to rearm the Wehrmacht he could "openly admit: we rearmed to an extent the like of which the world has not yet seen ." </P> <P> Since World War II, both academics and laypeople have discussed the extent to which German re-armament was an open secret among national governments . A likely element in the thinking of some Western leaders was the willingness to condone a rearmed and powerful anticommunist Germany as a potential bulwark against the emergence of the USSR which, under Stalin, had successfully undergone a late military - industrial revolution (see Five - year plan). This line of thought was to re-emerge later when Nazi Germany launched' Operation Barbarossa' on Soviet territory . Many pragmatists thought it might be expedient to stand by as the Germans and Russians fought themselves to a bloody standstill in the East . The failure of Allied national governments to confront and intercede earlier in Germany is often discussed in the context of the appeasement policies of the 1930s . A central question is whether the Allies should have drawn "a line in the sand" earlier than September 1939, which might have resulted in a less devastating war and perhaps a prevention of the Holocaust . However, it is also possible that anything that caused Hitler not to overreach as soon and as far as he did would only have condemned Europe to a Nazi empire that metastasized more slowly and avoided prompt excision--leaving plenty of time for a Holocaust later, as well as nuclear weapons development, safely behind a Nazi version of an iron curtain . "Unquestionably, such a policy might have enforced a greater circumspection on the Nazi regime and caused it to proceed more slowly with the actualization of its timetable . From this standpoint, firmness at the time of the reoccupation of the Rhineland (7 march 1936) would probably have yielded even better results than firmness at the time of Munich ." - George Kennan </P>

Could war and rearmament be a reaction to the great depression