Hitler

32 Pages 8102 Words

The Growth and Implementation of Hitler’s Continental Expansionist Foreign
Policy Program

One of the most interesting historiographical debates about the Second
World War concerns the nature of Hitler’s foreign policy. Everyone knows
that the Second World War was horrible, even worse than the First, but it
has yet to be unequivocally decided what exactly was Hitler’s role in
bringing about such a catastrophe. The most important issue relates to the
question of whether or not Hitler had evolved a clear and coherent foreign
policy by the time he assumed office and to which he was to adhere until his
suicide in the bunker. Historical scholarship has produced two main
differing schools of thought on this subject, known as intentionalists and
structuralists. The intentionalists argue that Hitler did indeed have a
clear foreign policy program when he became Chancellor in January 1933. He
had formulated this strict set of ideas several years earlier, and he
consciously followed this plan throughout his twelve years in power. The
structuralists counter this by arguing from several angles that Hitler was
an unprincipled optimist with a central concern in “propaganda exploitation
and the protection of his own prestige.” (1) That he was subject to
pressures from elite groups and therefore not a free agent able to follow
any clear design. And finally that foreign policy has to be seen as a form
of social imperialism, an outward conveyance of domestic problems. All of
which reject any possibility of coherent intention or program in Nazi
Germany’s foreign policy.(2) The ferocity of this debate, perhaps best
personified by the AJP Taylor, Trevor-Roper duels, has only increased the
stubbornness of each side, and impeded any sort of configuration of a middle
group.(3) It seems almost impossible to prove that any side can be
completely and inequivocally correct due to the vast amount of sometimes
c...