ABSTRACT
Only three days after he had been made chancellor, on February 3, 1933, Hitler held a secret meeting with Germany’s top generals. He spoke of the need toeliminate democracy and Marxism and create a new domestic unity that would allow for rearmament as the necessary prerequisite for the “conquest of Lebensraum” in the east. This policy, he explained, would eventually lead to war with France. His only immediate concern, though, was whether France might choose to wage a preventive war now in order to frustrate Germany’s attempt to rearm. This speech reveals that even before he had consolidated his power, Adolf Hitler had a distinct vision of his ultimate goals. Domestic reconstruction was simply the first stage in the fulfillment of his foreign policy aims, and those aims ultimately meant war. World War II in Europe was clearly Hitler’s war. Other powers may have made that war possible by refusing to resist Hitler’s Germany earlier, but there is no doubt that Nazi Germany’s actions made it inevitable.
