Hitler’s Aims
Hitler was never secretive about his plans for Germany. His aims were explained in detail in his book Mein Kampf, of what he would do to make Germany a great nation again. His main aims were to:
Abolish the Treaty of Versailles
Like many Germans, Hitler believed that the Treaty of Versailles was unjust. He hated the Treaty and the German politicians were in his view, “November Criminals”. The worst aspect of the Treaty was that it was a reminder to the Germans of their defeat in the First World War and their humiliation by the Allies. His promise to the German people was that if he was the leader of Germany he would reverse this. By the time Hitler came to power, some of these terms had already been changed. The largest if these was Germany no longer had to pay reparations. However, most of the conditions were still in place.
Expand German Territory
Another term of the Treaty was that land was taken away from Germany. Hitler wanted this territory back. He also wanted an Anschluss with Austria, and with any other German minorities in other countries such as Czechoslovakia. As well as regaining old land, he also desired to make an empire in the east, for the Germans to have Lebensraum, or living space.
Destroy Communism
A German empire in the Soviet Union would also help Hitler with one his other objectives, which was to defeat communism. Hitler was anti-communist. He also believed that Bolsheviks had contributed to Germany losing the World War. This aim was accepted in the West, due to the growing fear of communism. Therefore, people were lenient towards his other aims.
Rearmament
As soon as Hitler came to power in 1933, one of his first steps was to increase Germany’s armed forces. Consequent...
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... take over the border districts of Czechoslovakia.
3. Britain and Germany would never go to war.
On 1 October German troops marched into the Sudetenland with no resistance. Although the British people welcomed the Munich Agreement, they did not trust Hitler. In March 1939 they were proved right. On 15 March, with Czechoslovakia in chaos, German troops took over the rest of the country.
There was no resistance from the Czechs. Nor did Britain and France do anything about the situation. However, it was now clear that Hitler could not be trusted. For Chamberlain, this was a step too far. Unlike the Sudeten Germans, the Czechs were not separated from their homeland by the Treaty of Versailles. This was an invasion. Britain and France told Hitler that if he invaded Poland they would declare war on Germany. The policy of Appeasement was ended.
Hitler wanted a pure nation and he thought he could get that by having only the Aryan race in Germany (“Background”). The people of Germany, seeing their economic problems start to get better, ignored the discrimination and let the Nazis put their plan into action. Hitler had one goal and that was to kill every single Jew in Europe (Haugen and Musser). After capturing towns, cities, and countries, Hitler would take all the Jews and put them into concentration camps (Haugen and Musser). Some camps were designed purely to kill every single Jew that was sent there, while some were labor camps.
The harshness of the Treaty and the way in which it blamed Germany for World War I crippled Germany. Much of its territory was taken away from it, including West Prussia that went to form a new Polish Corridor to the sea. Plus the Treaty forced Germany to reduce its army, demilitarise the Rhineland and get rid of its navy. The Treaty also forced harsh reparations for the War resulting in a great deal of the German people resenting the Allies. And it was later that Hitler used the bitter memories of Versailles to gain public support for his actions.
Other countries mainly Britain responded to Hitler’s actions with appeasement and by not stopping him early on with collective security it directly caused World War Two. Collective Security is when multiple countries work together to strengthen a country in need. Based off of document 6 Winston Churchill suggested that Britain, France, and other nations should come together and protect Czechoslovakia from Hitler to stop the growth of Nazi power. Collective Security could have prevented Czechoslovakia from coming into German control. While in accordance with document 9 nobody could openly oppose Hitler’s massive forces he had accumulated. Which is why they didn’t use collective security to protect Czechoslovakia. Instead they used The Munich Agreement to appease to Hitler. The Munich Agreement handed over Czechoslovakia in hopes it would diminish Hitler’s need to keep taking over surrounding countries. Stated in document 7 The Munich Agreement was unnecessary because Czech defenses were relatively strong and during this time Germany wasn’t at its zenith of strength. Also Hitler’s generals were going to try to overthrow Hitler if he attacked Czechoslovakia because the Generals believed it was a foolish endeavour that would mean the downfall of
Hitler wanted his country’s population to grow. The German land mass was small and if Hitler wanted a growth in population he would need more land. Hitler was quoted saying, “The growth in population could only be compensated by growth-expansion of the Lebensraum.” One reason why Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 was for what Hitler called Lebensraum. Lebensraum means living space. Hitler needed new soil for the surplus German population. Hitler knew that most of the world had already been carved up by colonial powers, so he looked east for new land. Hitler said, “If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.” Hitler believed Russia as the only country large enough to meet “Germany’s territorial requirements for living space.” Hitler saw how vast the Soviet Union territory was and he wanted the German people to have the rich lands that it possessed for the surplus German population. If Hitler succeeded in taking the lands east of Germany, he would have enough room for Germany’s surplus population. The Soviet Union had many acres of unsettled land. The Soviet Union stretched all the way from Eu...
On the Anne Frank website it said, “Hitler claimed that Jews were not only responsible for the unfair German defeat, but were also blocking Germany’s recovery.” The Treaty of Versailles that was signed in 1919 made Germany give up large areas of land and paid painfully high reparations to the allied victors.” Hitler was mad because Germany lost a lot of land. According to the book Why Did Hitler Hate Jews, in 1923 he tried to take over Bavaria a section of Germany. This attempted takeover was called the Beer Hall Putsch. His attempt failed and he went to
This went hand in hand with the nationalist ideas of the Nazi party. Also, while in power, Hitler spoke many times, justifying violence against both Poland and France with rousing reference to reclaiming Germany’s lost lands and heritage taken by the treaty. Finally, Hitler was clearly angered on a personal level by the treaty, and sought his own reparations from the countries that signed the document. Evidence supports that this anger did influence some of his decisions during the War. Hitler spoke at length over his political career, and many of his speeches have been saved and translated from his time as a politician.
As an Austrian born soldier-turned-politician, Hitler was fascinated with the concept of the racial supremacy of the German people. He was also a very bitter, very evil little man. In addition, having lost the war, the humiliated Germans were forced by the Allies to sign the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 that officially ended World War I. According to the harsh terms of the treaty, Germany had to hand over many of its richest industrial territories to the victors, and was made to pay reparations to the Allied countries it devastated during the war. Germany lost its pride, prestige, wealth, power, and the status of being one of Europe's greatest nations.
The pent up emotions eventually led to the rise of the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler, who were angered by their loss of territory, military restrictions, economic reparations, and the war guilt clause. The stipulations of the Versailles Treaty were aimed at bringing down Germany and making it as weak as possible. One of the solutions the the victors came up with was to take territory away from Germany, resulting in the country losing more than forty percent of its coal producing areas. They took away the Polish Corridor, parts of East Prussia, parts of Denmark, as well as Lorraine-Alsace (Doc A). Taking away the Polish Corridor put Germany in a difficult position, as it geographically split Germany into two pieces.
His goal was to revenge to the world from all the humiliation and infuriation after WWI. Hitler was a genius of politics. He knew how to put things to his advantage even when it wasn't going right. First, building an army is against the Treaty of Versailles. What is the Treaty of Versailles? It is an agreement for peace among the nations after World War I. But Hitler somehow convinced the other nations that building an army of Nazi regime is connected to Germany’s own politics with his knowledge of politics. Although his goal can be very stupid and cruel, but he did get Germany to full power and expanded the territory of Germany. In 1939, he started to outbreak the World War II and conquered 12 countries in Europe only in approximately 3 years, including Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, The Soviet Union, Italy, and lastly, Hungary. So how was it possible for Adolf Hitler and Nazi to invade those nations? First, he was a strategic leader. He had good visionary of the situations around. And his strategies were political, not forceful; which the other countries didn't expect.
Germany, Hitler in specific, was one of the leading reasons as to why the world plunged into World War II. Hitler was allowed to take control over Czechoslovakia by Britain, France, and Italy to keep him
His future plans for the nation were set by his strategic, racial, economic and ideological motives: • One of Hitler’s long-term aims was live-in-a-room. He planned on creating an empire of 250 million Aryans. For this to be successful, he would need more living space. A powerful nation such as Russia would not only provide land, but also grain, oil and other assets, which would support the German empire. Kenneth Macksey – British Historian: Macksey believes the invasion of Russia was destined to fail at the beginning due to the unpreparedness of the German forces and their overconfidence in a swift victory.
...t, Hitler believed that the British government would reconsider its policy of appeasement. He thus decided to invade Poland on September 1st 1939, on 3rd, British declared war against Hitler (Scaife 121). Hitler’s invasion of Poland was from the hope that the policy of appeasement would be used to solve the matter, but it failed.
According to Jeffrey Record, a “reassessment of the history of appeasement in the 1930s,” (v) includes Hitler and the choice to stay unrivaled as a national threat and the lack of a threat after the end of World War II. Record also includes the security choices of the Anglo-French in the 1930s and how they were influenced by important factors that were either ignored or not understood. He goes on to say that hindsight and how it infuences our views on past events. Lastly, Record talks about how, “invocations of the Munich analogy to justify the use of force are almost invariably misleading because security threats to the United States genuinely Hitlerian in scope and nature have not been replicated since 1945” (vi).
He believed that the Germans were the 'master race'. Going around saying this will make people feel inferior and think the Germans have no authority over them, this caused conflicts. Hitler thought that the Treaty of Versailles should be cancelled and land taken from Germany must be returned. This led to problems as they were demanding land, which not only is against the Treaty's wishes, but will make then a lot stronger when or if future wars do happen. He said that all people of German blood, including many in Austria and Czechoslovakia, must be allowed to live in Greater Germany.
...en dealt with in a firm manor. Hitler was able to use his countries momentum and his negotiation skills to achieve what he wanted for Germany and made a deal he knew that he was not going to honor and eventually lead to WWII. Prime Minister Chamberlain also needed to be aware of possible deception that he was likely going to face with dealing with Germany. “When German troops invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1929, Hitler’s promise that Sudetenland was his ‘last territorial demand’ was revealed for the lie it has always been. At best Chamberlain’s summit diplomacy has bought Britain another 11 month to prepare for war at the considerable expense of Czechoslovakia’s freedom”(Rathbone 19). In fairness, Chamberlin had avoided war for a period of time, but the consequences were much greater in the sense that war was inevitable and his people’s lack of faith.