History11 - Nazism in Germany 1918-1945: Foreign Policy

The immediate objective was to reestablish Germany’s position in world affairs; by this Hitler meant ending the humiliations attending the Treaty of Versailles, such as the demilitarized Rhineland and the limitations on German armaments. The chains of that treaty needed to fall with a loud clang, he said. The larger objective, the one he had spoken about since his entry into politics in the early 1920s, was the conquest for Germany of Lebensraum.

Heightened assertiveness also characterized foreign policies in Europe in 1937. But while Hitler’s involved explicit preparations for war, Britain’s consisted of explicit attempts to satisfy him with concessions. The conjuncture of these policies doomed the independence of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, and set Europe on a slippery slope to war.

Following the Nazi rise to power, Adolf Hitler's government conducted a foreign policy aimed at the incorporation of ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) living outside German borders into the Reich; German domination of western Europe; and the acquisition of a vast new empire of "living space" (Lebensraum) in eastern Europe.