Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction by Jane Caplan
- 1 Some origins of the Second World War
- 2 The primacy of politics. Politics and economics in National Socialist Germany
- 3 The origins of the Law on the Organization of National Labour of 20 January 1934. An investigation into the relationship between ‘archaic’ and ‘modern’ elements in recent German history
- 4 Internal crisis and war of aggression, 1938–1939
- 5 Women in Germany, 1925–1940. Family, welfare and work
- 6 Intention and explanation. A current controversy about the interpretation of National Socialism
- 7 The containment of the working class in Nazi Germany
- 8 The Turin strikes of March 1943
- 9 The domestic dynamics of Nazi conquests. A response to critics
- 10 Whatever happened to ‘fascism’?
- Bibliography of publications by Tim Mason
- Bibliography of works cited
- Index
9 - The domestic dynamics of Nazi conquests. A response to critics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction by Jane Caplan
- 1 Some origins of the Second World War
- 2 The primacy of politics. Politics and economics in National Socialist Germany
- 3 The origins of the Law on the Organization of National Labour of 20 January 1934. An investigation into the relationship between ‘archaic’ and ‘modern’ elements in recent German history
- 4 Internal crisis and war of aggression, 1938–1939
- 5 Women in Germany, 1925–1940. Family, welfare and work
- 6 Intention and explanation. A current controversy about the interpretation of National Socialism
- 7 The containment of the working class in Nazi Germany
- 8 The Turin strikes of March 1943
- 9 The domestic dynamics of Nazi conquests. A response to critics
- 10 Whatever happened to ‘fascism’?
- Bibliography of publications by Tim Mason
- Bibliography of works cited
- Index
Summary
there is widespread agreement that the war that began in September 1939 was a disaster for Nazi Germany. This was Hitler's own view, clearly expressed at the time. Contrary to the foreign policy axioms laid out in Mein Kampf and frequently repeated by Hitler thereafter, the Third Reich found itself at war with Britain and the British Empire. Contrary to the ‘timetable’ for military expansion that Hitler elaborated in November 1937, the Third Reich found itself involved in a major European war already in 1939, rather than in the years 1943–5, the period that Hitler seemed to believe would be optimal for large-scale imperial expansion. Hitler's own erratic, confused, and increasingly unrealistic conduct of policy in the ten weeks that followed the British and French declarations of war is but one proof of the extreme seriousness of the new international situation brought about by the German invasion of Poland. The Nazi–Soviet Pact was an expedient that did not make good this damage. The invasion had consequences of an irreversibly damaging nature to the interests of the Third Reich (for example, the future intervention of the USA), which Hitler's prior calculations had ruled out as to be avoided at all costs.
What went wrong? I think it is important to put the question in this way because it is quite conceivable that Nazi domination of Europe and of adjacent subcontinents could easily have been wider, longer and even more destructive than it actually was.
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- Information
- Nazism, Fascism and the Working Class , pp. 295 - 322Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995