Nazi foreign policy 1933 to 1939, including withdrawal from the League, conscription and rearmament, the Rhineland, the Anschluss, the Munich Agreement, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and the invasion of Poland

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to explain the aims, methods, and outcomes of Nazi foreign policy from January 1933 to September 1939. Strong answers integrate ideology (Lebensraum, racial war, revision of Versailles), tactics (patience, gamble, exploitation of appeasement), and the contingent diplomacy of 1938 to 1939. The Taylor-Overy debate sets the historiographical frame.

The answer

Aims

Hitler's foreign-policy aims were laid out in Mein Kampf (1925 to 1926) and the Second Book (1928, unpublished in his lifetime).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

• Revision of Versailles: end the territorial losses, reparations, and disarmament clauses.
• Anschluss and Volksdeutsche unification: incorporate Austria and German-speaking minorities (Sudetenland, Memel) into the Reich.
• Lebensraum: living space for the German people, principally in the USSR, accompanied by racial war against Slavs and Jews.

Klaus Hildebrand and Andreas Hillgruber developed the "Stufenplan" (staged plan) thesis from the 1960s: Hitler had a sequence of escalating aims that culminated in war for Lebensraum.

Tactical patience, 1933 to 1935

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.

The German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact (26 January 1934), negotiated with Pilsudski, bought 10 years of eastern peace. It broke the French eastern alliance system and signalled that Germany was a respectable diplomatic partner.

The Saar plebiscite (13 January 1935) returned the territory to Germany at 90.8 per cent. Conscription was reintroduced on 16 March 1935; the Luftwaffe was announced on 9 March 1935. Goering signalled both moves in advance to test reactions.

The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (18 June 1935) authorised a German fleet of 35 per cent of British tonnage, with submarine parity. Britain had thus validated unilateral violation of Versailles without consulting France. The Stresa Front (Britain, France, Italy, 14 April 1935) had collapsed within two months.

The Italian invasion of Abyssinia (3 October 1935) and the half-hearted Anglo-French response destroyed the League's credibility and divided Italy from Britain and France.

The Rhineland, March 1936

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.

Hitler later called the operation "the most nerve-wracking 48 hours of my life." The British view was that "they are only going into their own back garden." The success destroyed the Locarno Treaties and vindicated Hitler against the cautious General Staff and Foreign Office. The Wehrmacht began to fortify the Rhineland (the West Wall, from 1938).

The Axis and the Spanish Civil War

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.

The Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan (25 November 1936) was joined by Italy (November 1937). The Pact had limited operational content but signalled diplomatic alignment.

The Hossbach Conference and the army purge

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.

In February 1938, Blomberg was forced out (after a scandal over his wife's past) and Fritsch on a fabricated homosexuality charge. Hitler abolished the Ministry of War, took personal command of the armed forces as Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht through the new High Command (OKW), and replaced Neurath with the more pliable Ribbentrop. The Blomberg-Fritsch crisis cleared the way for the Anschluss.

Anschluss, March 1938

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. The 10 April plebiscite endorsed union with Germany at 99.7 per cent. Britain and France protested but did not act.

Munich, September 1938

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).

At Munich, Hitler, Chamberlain, French Premier Daladier, and Mussolini agreed to the German annexation of the Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia was not represented. Chamberlain produced an Anglo-German declaration of friendship which he waved on the steps of 10 Downing Street as "peace for our time." Six months later, on 15 March 1939, the Wehrmacht occupied Prague. Bohemia and Moravia became a German Protectorate; Slovakia became a Nazi client.

The end of appeasement

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 Pact of Steel with Italy was signed in Berlin on 22 May 1939, committing Italy to war alongside Germany; Mussolini privately added a note that Italy would not be ready until 1942.

The Nazi-Soviet Pact and the invasion of Poland

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.

A staged "Polish" attack on the Gleiwitz radio station (31 August 1939) provided the pretext. Germany invaded Poland at 4.45 am on 1 September 1939. Britain and France issued ultimatums and declared war on 3 September. The USSR invaded eastern Poland on 17 September. Poland fell within five weeks.

Timeline of Nazi foreign policy

Historiography

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.

A.J.P. Taylor (The Origins of the Second World War, 1961) treated Hitler as an opportunist German nationalist responding to circumstances. Taylor's view is largely rejected but remains a key historiographical reference.

Klaus Hildebrand and Andreas Hillgruber developed the "Stufenplan" thesis: Hitler had a staged plan of escalating aims culminating in a war for Lebensraum.

Gerhard Weinberg (The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany, 1970-1980) is the standard archival study, supporting the intentionalist view.

Donald Cameron Watt (How War Came, 1989) is the standard granular account of 1938 to 1939.

How to read a source on this topic

Sources on Nazi foreign policy commonly include the Hossbach Memorandum, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, the Munich Agreement text, the Nazi-Soviet Pact (with secret protocols, published after 1945), David Low's "Stepping Stones to Glory" cartoon (8 July 1936), and Chamberlain's "peace for our time" photograph. Three reading habits.

First, weigh stated against actual aims. The Hossbach Memorandum (1937) outlines war by 1943 to 1945; the public 1937 to 1938 diplomacy stressed the Sudetenland as the last territorial demand. Use the Memorandum to read the public claims sceptically.

Second, fix the date precisely. Appeasement in October 1938 (Chamberlain at Heston) is a different mood from appeasement in March 1939 (Prague occupied). British public opinion reversed within six months.

Third, note what is absent. Czechoslovakia was not at Munich; Stalin was not at Munich. The Anglo-Soviet talks of summer 1939 failed without producing a treaty. Omissions are themselves part of the source's evidence about the politics of appeasement.

Common exam traps

Treating Hitler's foreign policy as opportunistic only. Taylor's revisionism is largely rejected; the modern consensus is Overy's intentionalist account.

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

Misdating the Nazi-Soviet Pact. 23 August 1939, not 1 September.

Treating the Rhineland gamble as risk-free. Hitler's General Staff had ordered withdrawal if France resisted. The success was a French and British failure, not a foregone conclusion.

In one sentence

Nazi foreign policy between 1933 and September 1939 combined tactical patience (League withdrawal 1933, Polish Pact 1934, Naval Agreement 1935) with bold revisionist gambles (Rhineland 1936, Anschluss 1938, Munich 1938) and exploitation of British and French appeasement to dismantle Versailles, before the Pact of Steel (22 May 1939) and the Nazi-Soviet Pact (23 August 1939) cleared the way for the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and the general war that, as Overy argues against Taylor, Hitler had always intended.