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Origins of World War II - A Realistic View

© William Waller

Is it true to say that Hitler wanted to dominate the world? Or was it simply the awful mixture in his mind, of nationalism and the insane idea of Aryan purity, that led from local conflict to world war? The word 'simply' is a terrible word in this context but it means exactly what it says. Without any other matters affecting it or influencing it, Hitler's mind took it as axiomatic that what he wanted was the only true aim of international relationships. No other aim could exceed it or match it, but to stand in its way was, in the end, to invite the most horrific retaliation.

To begin the wants, there was simply reclamation. To the German people and to Hitler, there was something unnatural in whole populations of German-speaking people being regarded, and sometimes regarding themselves, as non-Germans; it was a contradiction in terms. The people in the Saar voted to return to German, by then Nazi, rule. The Rhineland stopped working on Berlin's orders and when, eventually, a German army entered, it was welcomed as a saviour. The people of the Sudetenland had enjoyed a good standard of living under Czechoslovak rule but welcomed the Nazis when they 'invaded' in 1938. Many Austrians, however, would never and, to this day still do not, consider themselves as German and yet voted for annexation by Germany in 1938. After each of these 'reclamations' Hitler would usually have speeches ready about his wish for peace and that he had "no more territorial ambitions", that what had happened was merely a return to Germany of her people. In the case of Danzig and the Danzig Corridor, however, the only claim Hitler could make was based on Bismarck's seizure of part of Poland in its partition between Prussia, Russia and Austria less than a hundred years before. Still, the presence of the corridor, needed to give Poland access to the sea, separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany and this could not be tolerated. Starting from October 1938, however, thePoles resisted the bullying and eventually Hitler took the action which brought on World War II.

If it is accepted as a theory that, having got back all Germans into one unified Germany and that the rest of the world would have allowed it, would this have prevented wholesale war? As far-fetched as the theory may seem, it seems logical to assume that Hitler now had his lebensraum and could relax and build the whole into a strong economic unit and attain the status of a world power. But the world would have ignored the obviously deranged part of Hitler's makeup and the blueprint in Mein Kampff. Diplomats had noted strange behaviour at meetings, and had heard rumours of crazed outbursts but no one could have prepared them for dealing with an obsessed madman who was, at the same time, a consummate politician. Beside his insane hatred of the Jewish people, Hitler hated the Slavs and gypsies, and any race that was not 'Aryan', and what he proposed for them would have led, sooner or later, to conflict. These were all sovereign countries and, although many of them would never have been able to resist Germany's armed strength, Hitler's proposed enslavement of such 'inferior' races, to direct their labour force as needed and death for all the old, the criminal, the mentally sick, the chronically ill, the undesirable elements were ,of course, completely unacceptable to the world at that time.

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