the Jews. We are in the midst of these battles and the one against the Jews. The German historian Wolfram Wette wrote that Fritsch had come close to high treason with his letter, as he had taken the Reichswehreid oath to defend democracy, and in calling for a putsch to destroy the democracy that Fritsch had pledged to defend was an act of "extreme disloyalty to the republic to which he had sworn an oath". Fritsch was heavily involved in the secret German rearmament of the 1920s in which Germany sought to evade the terms of Part V of the Treaty of Versailles, which had essentially disarmed it by limiting its army to 100,000 soldiers and forbidding it to have aircraft or tanks. As such, Fritsch, who worked closely with the Soviet Union with the secret rearmament, favored a pro-Soviet foreign policy and had an extreme hatred for Poland. In 1928, Fritsch began work on the plan that became [[Fall Weiss (1939)|Fall Weiss]], the invasion of Poland in 1939. He was promoted to major-general (Generalmajor) in 1932 by Kurt von Schleicher, who regarded him as a promising young officer. Nazi rule After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Fritsch was a strong supporter of the new regime, which he saw as a radical force that, if influenced by people like himself, would be a force for the good. Wette wrote that as Fritsch was a member of "group of hardened anti-Semitics" in the officer corps, the anti-Semitism of Adolf Hitler was one of Fritsch's most important reasons for supporting the Nazi regime. Fritsch was promoted to Chief of the Army Command (Chef der Heeresleitung) on 1 February 1934, replacing General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord. This was partly because Hitler saw him as a supporter of his regime and partly because Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg valued Fritsch for his professionalism. In February 1934, when Blomberg ordered that all soldiers who might be considered Jewish (by having at least a Jewish parent or grandparent who converted; long before the Nazis, the Reichswehr did not accept Jews) be given dishonorable discharges, Fritsch made no objection and carried out the order. According to William Shirer in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Fritsch played a pivotal role when he balked at Hitler's initial proposal to the army that he succeed ailing President von Hindenburg upon his death. Fritsch ultimately betrayed the