Question for all you history buffs, I've been doing a little research lately regarding Adolf Hitler and Nazism. What were Hitlers motives behind going to war with Britain and the western powers? The British were not his natural enemy; he tried to form an alliance with them several times in the 30s. Nazism called for lebensraum, but did he not achieve this when he occupied Poland, Czeckoslovakia and Austria? Even after Germany invaded Poland, the British and French did nothing, knowing that their overseas empires could not be sustained during a long war. Hitler could have stopped there and enjoyed his spoils, or he could have stopped and enjoyed his spoils after conquering France and the low countries. Yet he still persisted with attacking Britain and, later, Russia. Why? What caused this man to spin his countries war machine out of control to the point of global war? Why did he find it necessary to take on Britain and France, and Russia for that matter?

He was bat-shit crazy, like most dictators, who need a lead injection to the head, or a noose around their necks?

Taking on Russia was his "Waterloo" and his generals TOLD him so, but he would have none of that. They ate his Nazi forces alive and the Russians were not even at full strength when they did so.

France was a natural however, since the Germans had lots of grudges, due to the Treaty of Versailles after WW I.

He never wanted a war with the UK. He did want to dominate them politically and he was always eyeing an opportunity to have revenge against the french for WW1. When he invaded poland, because of the polish alliance with France and the UK, they both declared war. His main intention was always to take out Stalin and push German territory into Russia. He almost did it but he miscalculated two things, the British resolve to fight on and the stability of Soviet Government. He signed the non aggression pact with the soviets so he could take out the west, and then was planning to take the soviets out. He got close, but could not knock out the UK, he hoped they would ask for a truce, and he knew a land invasion would have little chance. So he turned back to the USSR and hoped that taking out Stalin would convince the UK they were sunk.

No doubt he did some crazy shit, but I do think he was demonized way more then he deserved. Whenever you hear the the name 'hitler' you instantly think of 6 millions jews gassed, while the number goes up and down every few years. In the early 90's a jew named David Cole did a huge amount of research into the gas chamber story and made a documentary debunking the existance of gas chambers completely. He went on the David Donahue show discussing his research but left the stage after a while. His fellow jews got so angry that he went into hiding for years for fear of losing his life. Hitler targeted jews for a few reasons. Mostly their quest to control banks, media, and governments and their quest to genocide the white race by promoting race-mixing and interracial marriage amongst non-jews only, and open immigration into white countries only. For the last few decades while we've been pumped to remember the holocaust, we completely missed the tragedy of the bolshevik revolution.



30 million russian christians slaughtered at the hands of jewish communist leaders. But that's not important. Just 6 million jews, and we have to worship those 6 million with our lives or we are evil nazi's.

A British geographer named Sir Halfred Mackinder crunched some numbers, looked at a map, and assessed that all great empires in the past had a land base and he made a theory called the geographic pivot of the heartland. His theory was that because the country of Germany is near the heartland it must be trying to take over the world. This made the British rulers nervous. Germany, trying to be like Britain, have a Navy (even being a land locked nation, how silly), and acquire a few territories, well, all this made Britain very anxious that it was losing its grip on running the trade economy. It got France to break its agreement of peace with Germany, silently. Russia did the same after awhile. Though it is historically alleged that Germany attached Russia, the build up on the border in position for an offensive attack on Germany indicates Germany's attack was likely preemptive. Long and short of the story. Everything Germany did, ever did, and ever does since is interpreted as wanting to take over the world.

Hitler's bluff was called by the UK and France. He honestly did not think they would stand up for "another" slavic nation in eastern Europe that he was going to gobble up, and Soviet Russia? Immese distrust between Stalin and the UK / France.

At first when Hitler attacked Poland..........many in the French and British "parliments" called it a "sits-krieg" in the West. France could've easily swarmed into Germany over the 'Maginot Line' and England could've started pummeling Germany's cities immediately.......remember in the British parliment when Chamberlain was speaking and a roar and chant rose from the benches "Speak for England! Speak for England!"

People were tired of Hitler's lies and pomp. It was time to take action. Appeasement led to Czecolovokia ceasing to existing. Add with a "non-aggression pact" with Russia...it would be only a matter of time now before Hitler started demanding other areas of europe. The "turn" of the West was coming, and Churchill saw it back in 1937-1938. He called Chamberlins piece of paper from the talks in 1938 "a grumbling defeat of England and English pride"

I personally believe that the West, aside from a few people really thought Hitler wasn't that "stupid" and they underestimated the power and industriouness of the average German citizen.

His intention was to fight only Poland, but earlier that year he had crossed a line by invading the remainder of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 even though he had promised he wouldn't demand anymore concessions.

As a result Britain and France saw that Hitler couldn't be trusted anymore, and at the same time Hitler believed they wouldn't act because they had acted so spineless earlier. When he invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war as they said they would.

As for invading the Soviet Union, there were two main reasons: one was the ideological motive that hadn't changed since the 1920s, namely the acquisition of Lebensraum (living space) for the German people; the second was British obstinacy which Hitler hoped to break by knocking out the USSR so that Britain would realize it would stand alone.

Hitler underestimated the will of Britain to fight on and he underestimated the strength of the Soviet Union (though to be fair he nearly won there; and if he hadn't treated the non-Russian ethnicities like sub-humans they would have sided with him, seeing him as a liberator). And then he declared war on the US to aid his Japanese ally and when he did that it was only a matter of time before Germany would be defeated.

At the onset of WWII, both Britain and the USSR were militarily weak and unprepared for war. The conquering of most of Europe by Germany made Britain and the USSR feel threatened and made eventual war with Germany likely or even inevitable. Hitler had two choices: he could go to war quickly with Britain and the USSR at a time when they were weak or wait until later when they would be stronger and more prepared. Attacking quickly and fighting an offensive war at the time and place of Hitler's choosing against weak opponents makes more sense from a military strategy point of view than does waiting and fighting a defensive war against strong opponents at the time and place of their choosing.

I tend to think the Lebansuan thing may have been more of an argument trying to motivate the people that they should agree to go to war to win more territory. Before the formation of the nation state and definitive borders, borders changed. When one group got pushed out of their territory, they moved and pushed someone else. Now all the borders are fixed and with the doing away of those ignoble justifications for war, the justifications take on a cognitive rational, like woman's rights to choose as the reason to allow abortion. Its not good enough to simply state, I can't afford/support the child, I don't want it. Reasons now have to be dressed up with all this intellectual sounding reason.

I think it's a bit more than that. Lebensraum had been the core of Hitler's ideology alongside antisemitism since the 1920s and it was founded on earlier notions that Germany deserved some kind of colonial empire. Hitler himself said that Eastern Europe would be to Germany what India was to Britain, a source of national wealth (in Hitler's view; I'm not saying I agree).

Germany is not a land-locked nation! The port of Bremen. The shipyards of Rostock and Hamburg

Yeah, I guess Hitler really sought an empire what with the invasion of Russia. Russia had a lot of jews, the competing ideology and was rich with oil and agricultural products so I guess he had his reasons for wanting to wipe them out.

Would leaving Britain and France alone and going straight on into Russia after Poland been a possible option? If the British/French did nothing for their ally Poland (other than politically declare "war" on Germany), why would they intervene for the Soviets when they also opposed Stalin/Communism? WW2 then would have been a war exclusively between National Socialism and Communism.

That would put Germany in exactly the position Hitler wanted to avoid, namely a two front war. Also, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 foresaw in economic deliveries by the USSR to Germany which were quite useful considering the expected British naval blockade (the Royal Navy outnumbered the Kriegsmarine 4:1 at this time). If Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1939 - which was not possible considering that in 1939 his army was several times smaller than in 1941 - it would place the bulk of the German army in the east; as incompetent as the British and French armies were, even they would have been able to waltz into Germany's economic heartland (the Ruhr Area) in such an event.

Maybe he felt forced to attack first? I mean, these countries were hostile by the time he attacked them. Maybe he was expecting them to invade him, so he attacked first in an attempt to win by surprise.

The Nazi's had a non-aggression pact with the USSR. Of course, Hilter broke that pact and lost his empire largely due to the invasion of Russia.

Had I been in his place, I would have consolidated western and southern Europe, built up the forces needed and only then gone after Stalin's USSR, during the non-winter months in the Soviet Union, if possible.

Of course, the Soviets would have been building up their armed forces by then, so there would be no guarantee that the Nazi's could have taken on Mother Russia, but assuming that Hitler was sane, which he was not, he would have had control of all of Western Europe, eventually the Nazi's would have taken down the UK itself, I am pretty sure of that much, at least.

War is a game of numbers and proper timing, to be sure.