HITLER'S FOREIGN POLICY

Hitler had 3 main foreign policy aims:
  • Destroy the Treaty of Versailles
World War I had been devastating for Germany, as it had been for Britain, France and Russia, However, many Germans had refused to believe they had been defeated. After all, no foreign troops had occupied Germany after the war. Hitler, as was popular with many Germans at the time, believed that Germany had been betrayed by communists and Jews operating in the higher levels of German government and military. They were also to blame for signing the unjust Treaty of Versailles- Hitler would come to call them as the "November criminals". Although Germany had already stopped paying reparations by the time he came to power, he pledged to take back lost territory and rebuild the military.

  • Create Lebensraum (living space) for the German Volk (German speaking peoples)
Hitler was also determined to reunite all ethnic Germans who were now dispersed across Europe as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. He would do this by creating an empire (or Reich ) in eastern Europe.

  • Defeat communism
By defeating the Soviet Union, until 1945 the world's only communist state, Hitler would not only destroy an ideology he blamed for Germany's defeat
in WWI, but also to achieve his second aim of carving out an empire in eastern Europe.

There were 10 steps Hitler took on his way to achieving these aims:
  1. Rearmament
  2. Saar plebiscite
  3. Remilitarization of the Ruhr (or Rhineland)
  4. The Spanish Civil War
  5. Anti-Comintern Pact
  6. Anschluss with Austria
  7. Sudetenland Crisis
  8. Invasion of Czechoslovakia
  9. Nazi-Soviet Pact
  10. Invasion of Poland

Click on this link to view an interactive timeline of these events:

Hitler's Foreign Policy Timeline