That's not swearing, it's an "aspiration", a form of prayer. Though I rather doubt if that would have been Steve's intention.
.........

I think discussions about the war and the build-up to the war really belong in another thread. (But as a final nod here to that topic, I'd point out one rather major gap in his analysis. In 1938. Russia would not have been a sympathetic neutral, as in 1939, but a formidable adversary. Germany would have faced a war on two fronts, and that was not something the general staff relished. Three fronts actually, west, east and south.)