Transcript Nazi Foreign Policy

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
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“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.”
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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.