ABSTRACT
The historian A.J.P. Taylor rightly argued that the British could defy Hitler in 1940 but could not undo his work. It was Hitler himself who came to their aid. By attacking the two great powers which only wished to be left alone, the United States and the Soviet Union, Hitler transformed a European war he could win into a world war he could not. The fact that Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States was largely to ingratiate himself with his Japanese ally compounded the blunder. Some of Hitler’s own advisers told him of his folly. Production Minister Fritz Todt informed him that Germany was fighting Britain, the strongest naval power, the Soviet Union, the possessor of the biggest army, and the Americans who had the biggest economy. Germany could not prevail against a combination of such opponents. Modern scholars have correctly argued that territorial conquest was not, however, the principal objective of Hitler’s war aims. Rather Hitler sought all along to murder the Jewish population of Europe and his persecution of Jews in Germany up to 1939 was a prelude to genocide. To support this argument it is necessary to examine Hitler’s priorities even when holding vast swathes of Soviet and Eastern European territory. Thus the Holocaust emerges as Hitler’s top priority ahead of territorial consolidation. For Hitler conquest was a means to an end; the ultimate end was the genocide of the Jews which lay at the heart of Nazi political ideology.
