To what extent can Hitler be held responsible for the outbreak of world war two?.
It seems that Hitler did have consistent aims and plans which would be carried out when he came to power. His dream was to build a "new Germany" under his own leadership, to overturn the treaty of Versailles and to establish Germany as a major European power.
His book Mein Kampf lays out his four foreign policy aims which were:.
1.The destruction of the Treaty Of Versailles. This would allow Germany to rearm and regain lost territory.
2.To gain territory (living space) for Germany in eastern Europe. This would a war in order to defeat Soviet Bolshevism.
3.To include all German-speaking people in his proposed "Third Reich", especially those living in Austria, the Sudeten area of Czechoslovakia and Danzig.
4.To create a "racially pure" German state that would be the most dominant power in Europe. .
It is clear from these four points that he was very opportunistic, he was willing to go to war to achieve these aims. It would appear that at this point, he was aiming at European domination. He knew that these aims could not be achieved without a war. In this policy alone, we see that Hitler is prepared to fight in order achieve his objectives. Many of Hitler's policies were achievable only through war; he knew that for him to succeed, Germany must become involved in a European conflict of some sort.
Probably the best-known exposition of the lebensraum policy is the Hossbach memorandum of November 1937. It is not an official document but a second or even a third hand account. But it is a detailed version of how Hitler thought things might go over the next eight years after. He told the meeting that the chief aim of German foreign policy was the conquest of living space, which had to be achieved by force between 1943 and 1945. He also made it clear that Austria and Czechoslovakia would have to be seized. He predicted that these actions might provoke a war with Britain and France.