Hitler's Plans for Global Domination

Nazi Architecture and Ultimate War Aims

Jochen Thies

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857454638
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

What did Hitler really want to achieve: world domination. In the early twenties, Hitler was working on this plan and from 1933 on, was working to make it a reality. During 1940 and 1941, he believed he was close to winning the war. This book not only examines Nazi imperial architecture, armament, and plans to regain colonies but also reveals what Hitler said in moments of truth. The author presents many new sources and information, including Hitler's little known intention to attack New York City with long-range bombers in the days of Pearl Harbor.

Part I

HITLER’S ULTIMATE GOALS 1920–1933

“Lebensraum” Only in the East?

Chapter 1

HITLER AND HIS CRITICS

Two months after the sensational outcome for the NSDAP in the national elections of September 14, 1930, which increased the party’s seats in parliament from twelve to 107, Hitler gave a speech in Erlangen.¹ The central theme of his lecture delivered November 13, 1930, in front of the professors and students of the university of that city in Franconia was Germany’s role in world domination. According to Hitler, Germany, more than any other nation in the world, was predestined for global supremacy. These comments did not go unchallenged. Bernhard Schmeidler, a professor of medieval and modern history, criticized Hitler’s comments on world supremacy very sharply and referred to them as “unbridled demagogy” and “factual nonsense.”² Three days after Hitler’s speech, the National Socialist student organization at the University of Erlangen (NSDStB) demanded a discussion with Schmeidler on the subject of German global supremacy. It was interrupted by riots and failed to offer any solution.

Current research has verified the events of November 1930 in Erlangen.³ Before Hitler’s seizure of power, there existed no organized social or political group in Germany who understood his ultimate goals, and therefore there was no one to provide a warning prior to his rise to power. As long as there is a lack of study in this area, the only references that can be made are to individuals who had more or less clearly predicted Hitler’s “program” since 1930.⁴ By September 14, 1930, Hitler was a significant political factor and had managed to find a large following among the German public. How, for example, did people react to the foreign policy parts of Mein Kampf? Up until 1933, some 287,000 copies had been purchased fairly voluntarily, long before the work became an obligatory addition to every German bookcase.⁵

From among the various books and brochures about Hitler that were in circulation before his “Machtergreifung” (seizure of power), three should be taken as an example of how Hitler’s ultimate goals were received by his contemporaries during the closing years of the Weimar Republic.⁶ The publishers of anti-Hitler literature were certainly not representative of the general public of their time. They were mostly intellectuals, staunch democrats, and defenders of the parliamentary system created during the first German republic. The author of a flyer from January 1931, viewed the “Hitler problem” with scientific distance and great knowledge. “If the ‘Third Reich’ is not satisfied with the land we have,” his analysis of Hitler’s foreign policy vision said, “then this part of the Earth should be set on fire. Because in the whole world lives according to Hitler eternally the idea of survival of the fittest.”⁷ It is interesting in this context that the author refused to see a common identity between Italian Fascism and National Socialism. “For Hitler the state is only an instrument to establish a utopian, racially superior leadership and for his plans of a social revolution.”⁸

More encompassing and detailed was the analysis of the Nazi foreign policy in a flyer dated September 1931. In this brochure, meant for distribution in Germany and abroad, the author based his views on an analysis of Mein Kampf, the daily “Völkischer Beobachter” (The People’s Observer), “Angriff” (Attack), and other National Socialist newspapers, as well as the comments of Nazi Party leaders. He concluded that National Socialism was an issue that was not just limited to Germany.⁹ Rather, there existed a much greater danger in Germany failing as a nation and consequently causing a catastrophe in Europe and the largerworld,¹⁰ because Hitler would seek nothing less than world supremacy.¹¹

In his book “Hitler’s Weg” (Hitler’s Way), published at the end of 1931, Theodor Heuss, who would later become the first president of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, and who at the time was a reader of political science at a special institute in Berlin (comparable to the London School of Economics), didn’t go quite as far in his evaluation of Mein Kampf. According to Heuss, the core of Hitler’s foreign policy was to acquire new territory in Eastern Europe. Heuss felt that this was his “maximum aim.”¹²

Notes

1. With regard to details of the speech, cf. 53ff, this volume.

2. The dissertation by M. Franze, Die Erlanger Studentenschaft 1918–1945 (Würzburg, 1972), 128ff, gives a vivid picture of the attendant circumstances of Hitler’s speech.

3. Standard: K. Lange, Hitlers unbeachtete Maximen. “Mein Kampf” und die Öffentlichkeit (Stuttgart, 1968); not satisfactory: P.W. Fabry, Mutmaßungen über Hitler. Urteile von Zeitgenossen (Düsseldorf, 1969); further: A. Grosser, Hitler, la presse et la naissance d’une dictature (Paris, 1959).

4. Such studies should differentiate at least on two levels: they should incorporate the reactions on the NSDAP elections results inside Germany (working class, middle class, young academics, high civil servants, generals etc.) between 1930–1933 and make a difference between the late Weimar Republic and the first years of the dictatorship, when more and more Germans left the country. It is especially difficult to judge the literature of emigrants. What was propaganda and what was serious analysis? The comment of the émigré chancellor H. Brüning at the end of 1941 refers to other problems: “The worst thing is that most emigrants do not know what happened in Germany between the last war and the Nazi’s rise to power. You can hardly find three emigrants who can agree. Emigrants often have no possibility to know what people at home really feel. Generally everybody knows something about the city or the province in which he lived. This leads to completely false judgments.” –H. Brüning, Briefe und Gespräche 1934-1945, ed. C. Nix, (Stuttgart, 1974), 378. Further available literature includes K.R. Grossmann, Emigration. Geschichte der Hitler-Flüchtlinge 1933–1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1969); P. Stahlberger, Der Zürcher Verleger Emil Oprecht und die deutsche politische Emigration 1933–1945 (Zurich, 1970); J. Radkau, Die deutsche Emigration in den USA. Ihr Einfluß auf die amerikanische Europapolitik 1933–1945 (Düsseldorf, 1971) Generally it should be noted that the study of emigration is still in the phase of collecting material.

For the main questions in this study, the following studies, mostly written in exile, should be mentioned: I. Harand, “Sein Kampf“. Antwort an Hitler (Vienna, 1935), 6, 332, 337; K. Heiden, Adolf Hitler. Eine Biographie, 2 vols. (Zurich, 1936–37), 2: 237ff, 332f; R. Olden, Hitler (Amsterdam, 1936), 206; H. Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler (Zurich, 1940), 42ff, 61ff, 105, 115ff. and elsewhere. Rauschning, Die Revolution des Nihilismus. Kulisse und Wirklichkeit im Dritten Reich (Zurich-New York, 1938), 332 (!), 384ff, 477, and elsewhere; A. Stein, Adolf Hitler, Schüler der “Weisen von Zion” (Karlsbad, 1936), 31f, 83ff, 108, and elsewhere.

To establish the attitude of the population before and after 1933, W. Kempowski produced a remarkably methodical study worth reading: Haben Sie Hitler gesehen? Deutsche Antworten, epilogue by S. Haffner (Munich, 1973).

5. Lange, Hitlers unbeachtete Maximen, 31.

6. Further points from Lange, 38ff.

7. G. Schultze-Pfaelzer, Anti-Hitler. Eine unabhängige Zeitbetrachtung (Berlin, 1931), 17.

8. Ibid., 28.

9. H. Klotz: Die Außenpolitik der Nationalsozialisten (Berlin, 1931), 3.

10. Ibid., 32.

11. Ibid., 19.

12. T. Heuss, Hitlers Weg. Eine Schrift aus dem Jahre 1932, ed. E. Jäckel (Tübingen, 1968). Compare also J.C. Hess, Theodor Heuss vor 1933. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des demokratischen Denkens in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1974), 99.

Chapter 2

CURRENT RESEARCH

Even after the extensive discussion regarding the emergence and development of Hitler’s “program”¹ in the 1970s, there are still important points that controversy.² Along with diverging opinions on the content of Hitler’s comments³ and on the extent of his plans for expansion, new studies have shown that there is no clarity about the time frame in which his “program” was to be enacted.

Hillgruber⁴ characterized the period from 1919 to 1928 as a time frame in which Hitler’s ideas progressed in various “stages,” toward a “program” that was solid at ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I. Hitler’s Ultimate Goals 1920–1933: “Lebensraum” Only in the East?
• Part II. Hitler as Architect
• Part III. Hitler and Military Issues: From Whale Bay to Lake Erie
• Part IV. Hitler in 1940–1941: When Visions Become Reality
• Selected Bibliography
• Index