The People's Dictatorship A History of Nazi Germany

Chapter 7 examines the foreign policy of Nazi Germany during the 1930s, as well as the events of World War II from September 1939 through early 1941. Hitler did not see revision of the Treaty of Versailles as an end goal of policy, but rather as a pretext for pursuing a far more ambitious program geared toward the waging of war and the conquest of “living space” (Lebensraum). He issued reasonable-sounding demands for ethnic self-determination of German minorities in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and claimed to want peace even after telling his own military leaders that war would be necessary to achieve his aims. After annexing Austria in March 1938 with little pushback from other countries, Germany isolated Czechoslovakia, first annexing the Sudetenland in September 1938 and then destroying Czechoslovak statehood a few months later. The non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union opened the way for an attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, bringing Britain and France into the war. Germany defeated and partially occupied France in 1940 while British forces fled the continent. The German people supported the restoration of their country’s military power and the dismantling of the Treaty of Versailles but had mixed feelings about going to war.