Nazi Foreign Policy

“ Mein Kampf” While in Landsberg Prison in 1924, Adolf Hitler wrote “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”), a mixture of autobiography and political manifesto.

What Hitler wrote about foreign relations * “We must have revenge for the Treaty of Versailles.” * “We Germans are the master race. We have the right to make other races our servants.” * “We must make Germany strong by bringing all German-speaking people into one large country.” * “As Germany grows more powerful, we must have land and resources so that Germans can have space to live in and grow strong.”

These beliefs were shared by many other Germans These beliefs were shared by many other Germans. They meant that, once Hitler was the leader of Germany and dealing with other countries, his foreign policy would be aggressive expansionist racist aimed at destroying the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler’s foreign policy, therefore, was a key factor in the outbreak of the Second World War!

Why did Germans support these ideas? Versailles was always extremely unpopular with Germans. They saw it as a diktat ie a dictated peace settlement forced on them by the victorious allies and about which they had no say. This made Hitler’s foreign policy aimed at destroying Versailles very popular. Germans objected particularly to the fact that, in the war guilt clause, they were forced to take sole responsibility for the outbreak and suffering of the war. They felt this was unfair, as other countries had also acted aggressively.

Many Germans felt that Hitler was justified in breaking the terms of Versailles, as it was far too harsh on the German people, especially those now living outside Germany’s borders. Most Germans agreed with Hitler that all Germans should live within a Greater German empire or Reich. They therefore supported Hitler’s demands for the Anschluss. Many people felt that the Germans of Germany and Austria naturally belonged in one Greater German nation and that the ban on Anschluss in the Treaty of Versailles was unfair because it went against the idea that people should have the right to govern themselves (self-determination.) The achievement of Anschluss in March ’38 was therefore very popular. This meant that many Germans were also pleased when, after Munich, the Nazis took over the Sudetenland, where 3.25 Germans were living under Czech rule after the Great War. In this case Hitler claimed that Germans were being persecuted and that aggression was justified to protect these victims of foreign cruelty.

Rearmament Rearmament was another very popular policy which made Germans support Hitler. Many Germans felt that it was unfair that Germany had been forced to disarm by Versailles, whereas other countries, such as France, hadn’t. Rearmament at home helped create huge numbers of jobs, but it also made Germans feel strong again internationally after the humiliating defeat of the Great War. The superiority of German arms in the Spanish Civil War and the success of the Remilitarisation of the Rhineland gave Germans back their pride and self-respect, particularly when France and Great Britain took no strong action against Germany.

Lebensraum Many Germans knew they had lost the Great War because of lack of resources, such as coal and minerals. They supported, therefore, the idea of “lebensraum” (ie “living space”) which stated that the German people, in order to grow and develop properly, should be able to expand their territory far to the East, right up to the Ural Mts. in the Soviet Union. This would give them huge resources of coal, iron, steel, grain, etc as well as space for the Aryan population to multiply.

The Master Race The racist ideology of the Nazis was very popular with many Germans, as it justified Lebensraum as well as the taking back of the Sudetenland and the Polish Corridor from the racially-inferior Slav peoples of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Nazi propaganda reinforced the idea that the Slavs were inferior and that German – speaking Aryans had the right to take over their territory and even use them as slave labour.