Quick questions on Nazi foreign policy 1933-1939: HSC Modern History National Study

Hitler's foreign-policy aims were laid out in Mein Kampf (1925 to 1926) and the Second Book (1928, unpublished in his lifetime). Three priorities:

Germany withdrew from the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations on 14 October 1933, blaming French intransigence on equal arms levels. The withdrawal was endorsed by a 12 November 1933 plebiscite at 95 per cent.

German troops entered the demilitarised Rhineland on 7 March 1936. Three German divisions (around 22,000 men) marched in; their orders were to withdraw if France resisted militarily. France did not.

The Rome-Berlin Axis was announced by Mussolini on 1 November 1936. Hitler and Mussolini intervened in the Spanish Civil War (from July 1936) on Franco's side. The Condor Legion (around 16,000 German air and ground personnel) supplied tactical air support and bombed Guernica on 26 April 1937. The war provided combat training for the Luftwaffe.

At the Reich Chancellery on 5 November 1937, Hitler outlined his foreign-policy plans to the service chiefs and Foreign Minister Neurath. The Hossbach Memorandum (notes taken by Colonel Friedrich Hossbach) records Hitler's intent to acquire Austria and Czechoslovakia and to wage a general war by 1943 to 1945. War Minister Blomberg and Army Commander Fritsch raised cautious objections.

Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg attempted to call a plebiscite on Austrian independence for 13 March 1938. Hitler issued an ultimatum on 11 March; Schuschnigg resigned. Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the new Chancellor, "invited" the Wehrmacht in. Hitler entered Vienna on 14 March.

Hitler demanded the Sudetenland (the German-speaking border regions of Czechoslovakia, with 3.5 million ethnic Germans and most of the country's industry and fortifications). Chamberlain flew to Germany three times in September: Berchtesgaden (15 September), Bad Godesberg (22 September), and Munich (29 to 30 September).

The Prague occupation ended British public support for appeasement. The British guarantee of Polish independence (31 March 1939) followed; Lithuania ceded Memel under German pressure on 23 March. Hitler concluded that the western powers had decided to fight; he ordered the Wehrmacht to plan for war on Poland (Fall Weiss, 3 April 1939).

The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was signed in Moscow by Ribbentrop and Molotov on 23 August 1939. Secret protocols divided Eastern Europe into spheres: Estonia, Latvia, Finland, eastern Poland, and Bessarabia to the USSR; western Poland and Lithuania to Germany.

Richard Overy (The Origins of the Second World War, 1987; Why the Allies Won, 1995) is the modern consensus: Nazi foreign policy was driven by ideology (Lebensraum, racial war) from the start. The war was Hitler's by design.

Taylor's revisionism is largely rejected; the modern consensus is Overy's intentionalist account.

It is the central document of Nazi war planning. Date: 5 November 1937.

23 August 1939, not 1 September.

Hitler's General Staff had ordered withdrawal if France resisted. The success was a French and British failure, not a foregone conclusion.