jobs were tendered to Gentiles), and his bloodless foreign policy successes such as the reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 and the annexation of Austria in 1938, brought him almost universal acclaim. During this period, the SPD and the KPD managed to maintain underground networks, although the legacy of pre-1933 conflicts between the two parties meant that they were unable to co-operate. The Gestapo frequently infiltrated these networks, and the rate of arrests and executions of SPD and KPD activists was high, but the networks continued to be able to recruit new members from the industrial working class, who resented the stringent labour discipline imposed by the regime during its race to rearm. The exiled SPD leadership in Prague received and published accurate reports of events inside Germany. But beyond maintaining their existence and fomenting industrial unrest, sometimes resulting in short-lived strikes, these networks were able to achieve little. There remained, however, a substantial base for opposition to Hitler's regime. Although the Nazi Party had taken control of the German state, it had not destroyed and rebuilt the state apparatus in the way the Bolshevik regime had done in the Soviet Union. Institutions such as the Foreign Office, the intelligence services and, above all, the army, retained some measure of independence, while outwardly submitting to the new regime. In May 1934, Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, Chief of Staff of the Army, had offered to resign if preparations were made for an offensive war against Czechoslovakia. The independence of the army was eroded in 1938, when both the War Minister, General Werner von Blomberg, and the Army Chief, General Werner von Fritsch, were removed from office, but an informal network of officers critical of the Nazi regime remained. In 1936, thanks to an informer, the Gestapo raids devastated Anarcho-syndicalist groups all over Germany, resulting in the arrest of 89 people. Most ended up either imprisoned or murdered by the regime. The groups had been encouraging strikes, printing and distributing anti-Nazi propaganda and recruiting people to fight the Nazis' fascist allies during the Spanish Civil War. As part of the agreement with the conservative forces by which Hitler became chancellor in 1933, the non-party conservative Konstantin von Neurath remained foreign minister, a position he retained until 1938. During Neurath's time in control, the Foreign Office with its network of diplomats and access to intelligence, became home to a circle of resistance, under the