Talk:Adolf Hitler

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Length and Readability

It seems to me that the article is perfectly readable, and most people accessing this page will be wanting access to all info at once, rather than separate articles which may be overly frustrating having to access several articles. I suggest we get rid of the banner given that, with Hitler being an individual, not an historical period, a single article makes more sense, and we can always clean up if necessary; it's only really the rearmament and alliance section which is too long. What're your thoughts? Crease7 (talk) 18:23, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it's readable, but even with DSL, the page loads slowly, especially when editing it. When I was cleaning up the images, the page froze up a few times. I haven't had a chance to read the assessment notes to why the article got de-listed, but maybe there would be some suggestions there too. I'll look into it when I get a chance. Thanks, --Funandtrvl (talk) 22:30, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I also like things all on one page. I absolutely agree - don't split it into annoying sections. But some of the sections on the page are just way too long. Just huge uninviting blocks of text. I think some of the sections could be reduced by half their length. Andrewthomas10 (talk) 22:00, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Agree also, about things being on one page, and that several sections are way too long and need to be pared down, especially those sections that have a "main article". --Funandtrvl (talk) 16:33, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Hitler's First Honorary Citizenship

This may be of interest: I own a document that may show that Rosenkopf was the first German town to grant Hitler with honorary citizenship, not Bad Doberan, which was brought up (to the town of Bad Doberan's embarrassment) during the 2007 G8 Summit there by ABC News and the story also ran on the BBC. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Doberan Here is my document: http://www.flickr.com/photos/the-view-from-up-here/sets/72157626823199653/with/5826897828/

(Kevin Canada (talk) 04:21, 13 June 2011 (UTC))

You might want to read up on WP:RS. If you have a real document, then it has some scholarly value. Wikipedia, however, isn't the place to determine the authenticity or historical value of your document. Take it to a researcher interested in it, let them publish it, and someday, we can write one sentence about it, while citing that source. Otherwise, it means little to this article. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 04:46, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Hitler and the surname Salomon?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm1xLCOLVkY I came across this video and googled "Hitler Salomon"

In fact, there is one single and excellent explanation to the theory of Hitler's jewry. In 1932, still worried about his family's origin, Hitler asked the Austrian genealogist Karl Fiedrich von Frank to investigate his family tree : number 45 in the tree was a great great great Catholic grandmother named Katharina Salomon from the parish of Döllersheim. It was the appearance of the jewish-souding name that started speculations about Hitler’s jewish background. In fact, Frank had made a mistake and corrected it : the ancestor was in reality a Maria Hamberger from Nieder-Plöttbach. Frank corrected the mistake as early as August 1932. But the print run containing the error had already been shipped, a lot of newspapers men picked up on it and once a false rumor concerning a figure like Hitler was in the air, it was extremely difficult to stop it.

Who is Karl Fiedrich I tried to google him and can't find anything?--Jimmyson1991 (talk) 11:44, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

There was a Karl Friedrich von Frank (you missed out the r). There is also his lawyer Hans Frank, who he asked to check up on the matter. Paul B (talk) 21:26, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Death toll

I would like to propose the following additions: [1] concerning the Polish and Soviet victims of Hitler's war and genocidal policies in occupied territories.

Almost six million Polish citizens perished during the war — nearly one-fifth of Poland's population — half of them Polish Jews.

The Soviet Union lost as many as twenty-seven million people during the war, at least half of them civilians. Some historians speak of the siege of Leningrad operations in terms of genocide, as a "racially motivated starvation policy" that became an integral part of the unprecedented German war of extermination against populations of the Soviet Union generally. The Russian Academy of Sciences in 1995 reported civilian victims in the USSR at German hands, including Jews, totaled 13.7 million dead, 20% of the 68 million persons in the occupied USSR.

Also, I am going to reduce several overly long sections, text can be copypasted elsewhere (German re-armament, Munich Agreement etc.), but feel free to revert my edits. Tobby72 (talk) 20:58, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Do remember that this article is about Hitler, not the war. Britmax (talk) 21:02, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I have found a lot of interesting information:

Although he ruled only 13 years, Adolf Hitler swept away much of traditional Germany, overthrew numerous governments, and caused the deaths of approximately 40 million people. ... The death toll in Europe during World War II is Adolf Hitler's darkest legacy. Nearly every European power sacrificed large numbers of soldiers and civilians, with the Soviet Union suffering a staggering 27 million dead. — David W. Del Testa, Florence Lemoine, John Strickland (2003). Government leaders, military rulers, and political activists Greenwood Publishing Group. p.83. ISBN 1573561533

Hitler hated Poles only slightly less than Jews. The Nazi annihilation of the Poles in fact began when the Wehrmacht crossed the Polish frontier in September 1939. German soldiers had been directed by the Führer himself to kill "without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need." From the Nazi point of view, Poles were untermenschen (subhumans) who lived in an area coveted by the superior German race. Poland was not simply to be defeated and occupied, as the nations in Western Europe later were. "The aim is not the arrival at a certain line," declared Hitler, "but the annihilation of living forces." — Richard C. Lukas (1989). Out of the inferno: Poles remember the Holocaust. University Press of Kentucky. p.2. ISBN 0813116929

Hitler gave repeated instruction to the military not to treat the Red Army as normal soldiers, to ignore the rules of war, and give no quarter. From the very beginning of the planning stage the Wehrmacht was deeply implicated in the criminal conduct of this unspeakably frightful campaign. Most of his generals enthusiastically endorsed Hitler's demented vision of a crusade against these Asiatic-Jewish-Bolshevik sub-humans. — Martin Kitchen (2006). A history of modern Germany, 1800-2000. Wiley-Blackwell. p.301. ISBN 1405100419

Hitler ordered that when Moscow and Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) were surrounded, no surrender of those cities would be accepted. Instead, they were to be razed to the ground when they were taken, along with their population. — Alan J. Levine (1996). Race relations within western expansion. Greenwood Publishing Groupp. 106. ISBN 0275950379

Hitler ordered that Moscow and Leningrad were to be razed to the ground; their inhabitants were to be annihilated or driven out by starvation. These intentions were part of the 'General Plan East'. — Ian Dear, Michael Richard Daniell Foot (2001). The Oxford companion to World War II. Oxford University Press. p.88. ISBN 0198604467

Tobby72 (talk) 01:12, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Cleanup

Done [2]. Removed the following text:

In March 1933, to resolve the deadlock between the French demand for sécurité ("security") and the German demand for gleichberechtigung ("equality of armaments") at the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald presented the compromise "MacDonald Plan". Hitler endorsed the "MacDonald Plan", correctly guessing that nothing would come of it, and that in the interval he could win some goodwill in London by making his government appear moderate, and the French obstinate.

In May 1933, Hitler met with Herbert von Dirksen, the German Ambassador in Moscow. Dirksen advised the Führer that he was allowing relations with the Soviet Union to deteriorate to an unacceptable extent, and advised to take immediate steps to repair relations with the Soviets. Much to Dirksen's intense disappointment, Hitler informed him that he wished for an anti-Soviet understanding with Poland, which Dirksen protested would imply recognition of the German-Polish border, leading Hitler to state he was after much greater things than merely overturning the Treaty of Versailles.

In June 1933, Hitler was forced to disavow Alfred Hugenberg of the German National People's Party, who while attending the London World Economic Conference put forth a programme of colonial expansion in both Africa and Eastern Europe, which created a major storm abroad. Speaking to the Burgermeister of Hamburg in 1933, Hitler commented that Germany required several years of peace before it could be sufficiently rearmed enough to risk a war, and until then a policy of caution was called for. When the president of the Reichsbank, the former Chancellor Dr. Hans Luther, offered the new government the legal limit of 100 million Reichmarks to finance rearmament, Hitler found the sum too low, and sacked Luther in March 1933 to replace him with Hjalmar Schacht, who during the next five years was to advance 12 billion Reichmarks worth of "Mefo-bills" to pay for rearmament.

A major initiative in Hitler's foreign policy in his early years was to create an alliance with Britain. In the 1920s, Hitler wrote that a future National Socialist foreign policy goal was "the destruction of Russia with the help of England." In May 1933, Alfred Rosenberg in his capacity as head of the Nazi Party's Aussenpolitisches Amt (Foreign Political Office), visited London as part of a disastrous effort to win an alliance with Britain. In October 1933, Hitler pulled Germany out of both the League of Nations and World Disarmament Conference after his Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath made it appear to world public opinion that the French demand for sécurité was the principal stumbling block.

In line with the views he advocated in Mein Kampf and Zweites Buch about the necessity of building an Anglo-German alliance, Hitler, in a meeting in November 1933 with the British Ambassador, Sir Eric Phipps, offered a scheme in which Britain would support a 300,000-strong German Army in exchange for a German "guarantee" of the British Empire. In response, the British stated a 10-year waiting period would be necessary before Britain would support an increase in the size of the German Army. A more successful initiative in foreign policy occurred in relations with Poland. In spite of intense opposition from the military and the Auswärtiges Amt who preferred closer ties with the Soviet Union, Hitler, in the fall of 1933 opened secret talks with Poland that were to lead to the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact of January 1934.

In February 1934, Hitler met with the British Lord Privy Seal, Sir Anthony Eden, and hinted strongly that Germany already possessed an Air Force, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. In the fall of 1934, Hitler was seriously concerned over the dangers of inflation damaging his popularity. In a secret speech given before his Cabinet on 5 November 1934, Hitler stated he had "given the working class his word that he would allow no price increases. Wage-earners would accuse him of breaking his word if he did not act against the rising prices. Revolutionary conditions among the people would be the further consequence."

Later in March 1935, Hitler held a series of meetings in Berlin with the British Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon and Eden, during which he successfully evaded British offers for German participation in a regional security pact meant to serve as an Eastern European equivalent of the Locarno pact while the two British ministers avoided taking up Hitler's offers of alliance. During his talks with Simon and Eden, Hitler first used what he regarded as the brilliant colonial negotiating tactic, when Hitler parlayed an offer from Simon to return to the League of Nations by demanding the return of the former German colonies in Africa.

Starting in April 1935, disenchantment with how the Third Reich had developed in practice as opposed to what been promised led many in the Nazi Party, especially the Alte Kämpfer (Old Fighters; i.e., those who joined the Party before 1930, and who tended to be the most ardent antisemitics in the Party), and the SA into lashing out against Germany's Jewish minority as a way of expressing their frustrations against a group that the authorities would not generally protect. The rank and file of the Party were most unhappy that two years into the Third Reich, and despite countless promises by Hitler prior to 1933, no law had been passed banning marriage or sex between those Germans belonging to the "Aryan" and Jewish "races". A Gestapo report from the spring of 1935 stated that the rank and file of the Nazi Party would "set in motion by us from below," a solution to the "Jewish problem," "that the government would then have to follow." As a result, Nazi Party activists and the SA started a major wave of assaults, vandalism and boycotts against German Jews.

After the signing of the A.G.N.A., in June 1935 Hitler ordered the next step in the creation of an Anglo-German alliance: taking all the societies demanding the restoration of the former German African colonies and coordinating (Gleichschaltung) them into a new Reich Colonial League (Reichskolonialbund) which over the next few years waged an extremely aggressive propaganda campaign for colonial restoration. Hitler had no real interest in the former German African colonies. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had excoriated the Imperial German government for pursuing colonial expansion in Africa prior to 1914 on the grounds that the natural area for Lebensraum was Eastern Europe, not Africa. It was Hitler's intention to use colonial demands as a negotiating tactic that would see a German "renunciation" of colonial claims in exchange for Britain making an alliance with the Reich on German terms.

In the summer of 1935, Hitler was informed that, between inflation and the need to use foreign exchange to buy raw materials Germany lacked for rearmament, there were only 5 million Reichmarks available for military expenditure, and a pressing need for some 300,000 Reichmarks/day to prevent food shortages. In August 1935, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht advised Hitler that the wave of antisemitic violence was interfering with the workings of the economy, and hence rearmament. Following Dr. Schacht's complaints, plus reports that the German public did not approve of the wave of antisemitic violence, and that continuing police toleration of the violence was hurting the regime's popularity with the wider public, Hitler ordered a stop to "individual actions" against German Jews on 8 August 1935. From Hitler's perspective, it was imperative to bring in harsh new antisemitic laws as a consolation prize for those Party members who were disappointed with Hitler's halt order of 8 August, especially because Hitler had only reluctantly given the halt order for pragmatic reasons, and his sympathies were with the Party radicals. The annual Nazi Party Rally held at Nuremberg in September 1935 was to feature the first session of the Reichstag held at that city since 1543. Hitler had planned to have the Reichstag pass a law making the Nazi Swastika flag the flag of the German Reich, and a major speech in support of the impending Italian aggression against Ethiopia. Hitler felt that the Italian aggression opened great opportunities for Germany. In August 1935, Hitler told Goebbels his foreign policy vision as: "With England eternal alliance. Good relationship with Poland . . . Expansion to the East. The Baltic belongs to us . . . Conflicts Italy-Abyssinia-England, then Japan-Russia imminent."

At the last minute before the Nuremberg Party Rally was due to begin, the German Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath persuaded Hitler to cancel his speech praising Italy for her willingness to commit aggression. Neurath convinced Hitler that his speech was too provocative to public opinion abroad as it contradicted the message of Hitler's "peace speeches", thus leaving Hitler with the sudden need to have something else to address the Reichstag in Nuremberg, other than the Reich Flag Law.

In October 1935, in order to prevent further food shortages and the introduction of rationing, Hitler reluctantly ordered cuts in military spending. In the spring of 1936 in response to requests from Richard Walther Darré, Hitler ordered 60 million Reichmarks of foreign exchange to be used to buy seed oil for German farmers, a decision that led to bitter complaints from Dr. Schacht and the War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg that it would be impossible to achieve rearmament as long as foreign exchange was diverted to preventing food shortages. Given the economic problems which were affecting his popularity by early 1936, Hitler felt the pressing need for a foreign policy triumph as a way of distracting public attention from the economy.

In an interview with the French journalist Bertrand de Jouvenel in February 1936, Hitler appeared to disavow Mein Kampf by saying that parts of his book were now out of date and he was not guided by them, though precisely which parts were out of date was left unclear. In July 1936, he offered to Phipps a promise that if Britain were to sign an alliance with the Reich, Germany would commit to sending twelve divisions to the Far East to protect British colonial possessions there from a Japanese attack. Hitler's offer was refused.

During the 1936 economic crisis, the German government was divided into two factions, with one (the so-called "free market" faction) centering around the Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht and the former Price Commissioner Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler calling for decreased military spending and a turn away from autarkic policies, and another faction around Göring calling for the opposite. Supporting the "free-market" faction were some of Germany's leading business executives, most notably Hermann Duecher of AEG, Robert Bosch of Robert Bosch GmbH, and Albert Voegeler of Vereinigte Stahlwerke. Hitler hesitated for the first half of 1936 before siding with the more radical faction in his "Four Year Plan" memo of August. Historians such as Richard Overy have argued that the importance of the memo, which was written personally by Hitler, can be gauged by the fact that Hitler, who had something of a phobia about writing, hardly ever wrote anything down, which indicates that Hitler had something especially important to say.

In the memo, Hitler wrote:

Since the outbreak of the French Revolution, the world has been moving with ever increasing speed toward a new conflict, the most extreme solution of which is called Bolshevism, whose essence and aim, however, are solely the elimination of those strata of mankind which have hitherto provided the leadership and their replacement by worldwide Jewry. No state will be able to withdraw or even remain at a distance from this historical conflict . . . It is not the aim of this memorandum to prophesy the time when the untenable situation in Europe will become an open crisis. I only want, in these lines, to set down my conviction that this crisis cannot and will not fail to arrive and that it is Germany's duty to secure her own existence by every means in face of this catastrophe, and to protect herself against it, and that from this compulsion there arises a series of conclusions relating to the most important tasks that our people have ever been set. For a victory of Bolshevism over Germany would not lead to a Versailles treaty, but to the final destruction, indeed the annihilation of the German people . . . I consider it necessary for the Reichstag to pass the following two laws: 1) A law providing the death penalty for economic sabotage and 2) A law making the whole of Jewry liable for all damage inflicted by individual specimens of this community of criminals upon the German economy, and thus upon the German people.

Hitler called for Germany to have the world's "first army" in terms of fighting power within the next four years and that "the extent of the military development of our resources cannot be too large, nor its pace too swift" (italics in the original) and the role of the economy was simply to support "Germany's self-assertion and the extension of her Lebensraum." Hitler went on to write that given the magnitude of the coming struggle, that the concerns expressed by members of the "free market" faction like Schacht and Goerdeler that the current level of military spending was bankrupting Germany were irrelevant. Hitler wrote that: "However well balanced the general pattern of a nation's life ought to be, there must at particular times be certain disturbances of the balance at the expense of other less vital tasks. If we do not succeed in bringing the German army as rapidly as possible to the rank of premier army in the world . . . then Germany will be lost!" and "The nation does not live for the economy, for economic leaders, or for economic or financial theories; on the contrary, it is finance and the economy, economic leaders and theories, which all owe unqualified service in this struggle for the self-assertion of our nation." Documents such as the Four Year Plan Memo have often been used by right historians such as Henry Ashby Turner and Karl Dietrich Bracher who argue for a "primacy of politics" approach (that Hitler was not subordinate to German business, but rather the contrary was the case) against the "primacy of economics" approach championed by Marxist historians (that Hitler was an "agent" of and subordinate to German business).

In August 1936, the freelance Nazi diplomat Joachim von Ribbentrop was appointed German Ambassador to the UK. Before Ribbentrop left to take up his post in October 1936, Hitler told him: "Ribbentrop . . . get Britain to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, that is what I want most of all. I have sent you as the best man I've got. Do what you can . . . But if in future all our efforts are still in vain, fair enough, then I'm ready for war as well. I would regret it very much, but if it has to be, there it is. But I think it would be a short war and the moment it is over, I will then be ready at any time to offer the British an honourable peace acceptable to both sides. However, I would then demand that Britain join the Anti-Comintern Pact or perhaps some other pact. But get on with it, Ribbentrop, you have the trumps in your hand, play them well. I'm ready at any time for an air pact as well. Do your best. I will follow your efforts with interest".

To strengthen relationships with Japan, Hitler met in 1937 in Nuremberg Prince Chichibu, a brother of emperor Hirohito. However, the meeting with Prince Chichibu had little consequence, as Hitler refused the Japanese request to halt German arms shipments to China or withdraw the German officers serving with the Chinese in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Both the military and the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office) were strongly opposed to ending the informal German alliance with China that existed since the 1910s, and pressured Hitler to avoid offending the Chinese. The Auswärtiges Amt and the military both argued to Hitler that given the foreign exchange problems which afflicted German rearmament, and the fact that various Sino-German economic agreements provided Germany with raw materials that would otherwise use up precious foreign exchange, it was folly to seek an alliance with Japan that would have the inevitable result of ending the Sino-German alignment.

In a talk with the League of Nations High Commissioner for the Free City of Danzig, the Swiss diplomat Carl Jacob Burckhardt in September 1937, Hitler protested what he regarded as British interference in the "German sphere" in Europe, though in the same talk, Hitler made clear his view of Britain as an ideal ally, which for pure selfishness was blocking German plans.

Hitler had suffered severely from stomach pains and eczema in 1936–37, leading to his remark to the Nazi Party's propaganda leadership in October 1937 that because both parents died early in their lives, he would probably follow suit, leaving him with only a few years to obtain the necessary Lebensraum. About the same time, Dr. Goebbels noted in his diary Hitler now wished to see the "Great Germanic Reich" he envisioned in his own lifetime rather than leaving the work of building the "Great Germanic Reich" to his successors.

A striking change in the Hossbach Memo was Hitler's changed view of Britain from the prospective ally of 1928 in the Zweites Buch to the "hate-inspired antagonist" of 1937 in the Hossbach memo. The historian Klaus Hildebrand described the memo as the start of an "ambivalent course" towards Britain while the late historian Andreas Hillgruber argued that Hitler was embarking on expansion "without Britain," preferably "with Britain," but if necessary "against Britain."

The aggression against Austria and Czechoslovakia were intended to be the first of a series of localized wars in Eastern Europe that would secure Germany's position in Europe before the final showdown with Britain and France. Fritsch, Blomberg and Neurath all argue that Hitler was pursuing an extremely high-risk strategy of localized wars in Eastern Europe that was most likely to cause a general war before Germany was ready for such a conflict, and advised Hitler to wait until Germany had more time to rearm. Neurath, Blomberg and Fritsch had no moral objections to German aggression, but rather based their opposition on the question of timing – determining the best time for aggression. Hitler's intentions outlined in the Hossbach memorandum led to strong protests from the Foreign Minister, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, the War Minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, and the Army Commander General Werner von Fritsch, that any German aggression in Eastern Europe was bound to trigger a war with France because of the French alliance system in Eastern Europe (the so-called cordon sanitaire), and if a Franco-German war broke out, then Britain was almost certain to intervene rather than risk the chance of a French defeat.

Late in November 1937, Hitler received as his guest the British Lord Privy Seal, Lord Halifax who was visiting Germany ostensibly as part of a hunting trip. Speaking of changes to Germany's frontiers, Halifax told Hitler that: "All other questions fall into the category of possible alterations in the European order which might be destined to come about with the passage of time. Amongst these questions were Danzig, Austria and Czechoslovakia. England was interested to see that any alterations should come through the course of peaceful evolution and that the methods should be avoided which might cause far-reaching disturbances." Significantly, Halifax made clear in his statements to Hitler—though whether Hitler appreciated the significance of this or not is unclear—that any possible territorial changes had to be accomplished peacefully, and that though Britain had no security commitments in Eastern Europe beyond the Covenant of the League of Nations, would not tolerate territorial changes via war. Hitler seems to have misunderstood Halifax's remarks as confirming his conviction that Britain would just stand aside while he pursued his strategy of limited wars in Eastern Europe.

Hitler was most unhappy with the criticism of his intentions expressed by Neurath, Blomberg, and Fritsch in the Hossbach Memo. The British economic historian Richard Overy commented that the establishment of the OKW in February 1938 was a clear sign of what Hitler's intentions were since supreme headquarters organizations such as the OKW are normally set up during wartime, not peacetime.

On 3 March 1938, the British Ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson met with Hitler and presented on behalf of his government a proposal for an international consortium to rule much of Africa (in which Germany would be assigned a leading role) in exchange for a German promise never to resort to war to change the frontiers. Hitler, who was more interested in Lebensraum in Eastern Europe than in participating in international consortiums, rejected the British offer, using as his excuse that he wanted the former German African colonies returned to the Reich, not an international consortium running Central Africa. Moreover, Hitler argued that it was totally outrageous on Britain's part to impose conditions on German conduct in Europe as the price for territory in Africa. Hitler ended the conversation by telling Henderson he would rather wait 20 years for the return of the former colonies than accept British conditions for avoiding war.

Hitler's plans called for a massive military build-up along the Czechoslovak border, relentless propaganda attacks about the supposed ill treatment of the Sudetenlanders, and finally, "incidents" between Heimfront activists and the Czechoslovak authorities to justify an invasion that would swiftly destroy Czechoslovakia in a few days campaign before other powers could act. Since Hitler wished to have the fall harvest brought in as much as possible, and to complete the so-called "West Wall" to guard the Rhineland, the date for the invasion was chosen for late September or early October 1938.

Further increasing the tension in Europe was the May Crisis of 19–22 May 1938. The May Crisis of 1938 was a false alarm caused by rumours that Czechoslovakia would be invaded the weekend of the municipal elections in that country, erroneous reports of major German troop movements along the Czechoslovak border just prior to the elections, the killing of two ethnic Germans by the Czechoslovak police, and Ribbentrop's highly bellicose remarks to Henderson when the latter asked the former if an invasion was indeed scheduled for the weekend, which led to a partial Czechoslovak mobilization and firm warnings from London against a German move against Czechoslovakia before it was realized that no invasion was intended for that weekend. Though no invasion had been planned for May 1938, it was believed in London that such a course of action was indeed being considered in Berlin, leading to two warnings on 21 and 22 May that the United Kingdom would go to war with Germany if France became involved in a war with Germany. Hitler, for his part, was, to use the words of an aide, highly "furious" with the perception that he had been forced to back down by the Czechoslovak mobilization and the warnings from London and Paris, when he had, in fact, been planning nothing for that weekend. Though plans had already been drafted in April 1938 for an invasion of Czechoslovakia in the near future, the May Crisis and the perception of a diplomatic defeat further reinforced Hitler in his chosen course. The May Crisis seemed to have had the effect of convincing Hitler that expansion "without Britain" was not possible, and expansion "against Britain" was the only viable course. In the immediate aftermath of the May crisis, Hitler ordered an acceleration of German naval building beyond the limits of the A.G.N.A., and in the "Heye memorandum", drawn at Hitler's orders, envisaged the Royal Navy for the first time as the principal opponent of the Kriegsmarine.

At the conference of 28 May 1938, Hitler declared that it was his "unalterable" decision to "smash Czechoslovakia" by 1 October of the same year, which was explained as securing the eastern flank "for advancing against the West, England and France". At the same conference, Hitler expressed his belief that Britain would not risk a war until British rearmament was complete, which Hitler felt would be around 1941–42, and Germany should in a series of wars eliminate France and her allies in Europe in the interval in the years 1938–41 while German rearmament was still ahead. Hitler's determination to go through with Fall Grün in 1938 provoked a major crisis in the German command structure. The Chief of the General Staff, General Ludwig Beck, protested in a lengthy series of memos that Fall Grün would start a world war that Germany would lose, and urged Hitler to put off the projected war. Hitler called Beck's arguments against war "kindische Kräfteberechnungen" ("childish power play calculations").

On 4 August 1938, a secret Army meeting was held at which Beck read his report. They agreed something had to be done to prevent certain disaster. Beck hoped they would all resign together but no one resigned except Beck. However his replacement, General Franz Halder, sympathised with Beck and together they conspired with several top generals, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (Chief of German Intelligence) and Graf von Helldorf (Berlin's Police Chief), to arrest Hitler the moment he gave the invasion order. However, the plan would only work if both Britain and France made it known to the world that they would fight to preserve Czechoslovakia. This would help to convince the German people that certain defeat awaited Germany. Agents were therefore sent to England to tell Chamberlain that an attack on Czechoslovakia was planned and their intentions to overthrow Hitler if this occurred. However the messengers were not taken seriously by the British. In September, Chamberlain and French Premier Édouard Daladier decided not to threaten a war over Czechoslovakia and so the planned removal of Hitler could not be justified. The Munich Agreement therefore preserved Hitler in power.

Starting in August 1938, information reached London that Germany was beginning to mobilize reservists, together with information leaked by anti-war elements in the German military that the war was scheduled for sometime in September. In a response to the threatening situation, in late August 1938, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had conceived of Plan Z, namely to fly to Germany, meet Hitler, and then work out an agreement that could end the crisis. On 13 September 1938, Chamberlain offered to fly to Germany to discuss a solution to the crisis. Chamberlain had decided to execute Plan Z in response to erroneous information supplied by the German opposition that the invasion was due to start any time after 18 September. Though Hitler was not happy with Chamberlain's offer, he agreed to see the British Prime Minister because to refuse Chamberlain's offer would confirm the lie to his repeated claims that he was a man of peace driven reluctantly to war because of Beneš's intractability. In a summit at Berchtesgaden, Chamberlain promised to pressure Beneš into agreeing to Hitler's publicly stated demands about allowing the Sudetenland to join Germany, in return for a reluctant promise by Hitler to postpone any military action until Chamberlain had given him a chance to fulfill his promise. Hitler had agreed to the postponement out of the expectation that Chamberlain would fail to secure Prague's consent to transferring the Sudetenland, and was, by all accounts, most disappointed when Franco-British pressure secured just that. The talks between Chamberlain and Hitler in September 1938 were made difficult by their innately differing concepts of what Europe should look like, with Hitler aiming to use the Sudeten issue as a pretext for war and Chamberlain genuinely striving for a peaceful solution.

When Chamberlain returned to Germany on 22 September to present his peace plan for the transfer of the Sudetenland at a summit with Hitler at Bad Godesberg, the British delegation was most unpleasantly surprised to have Hitler reject his own terms he had presented at Berchtesgaden as now unacceptable. To put an end to Chamberlain's peace-making efforts once and for all, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland be ceded to Germany no later than 28 September 1938 with no negotiations between Prague and Berlin and no international commission to oversee the transfer; no plebiscites to be held in the transferred districts until after the transfer; and for good measure, that Germany would not forsake war as an option until all the claims against Czechoslovakia by Poland and Hungary had been satisfied. The differing views between the two leaders were best symbolized when Chamberlain was presented with Hitler's new demands and protested at being presented with an ultimatum, leading Hitler in turn to retort that because his document stating his new demands was entitled "Memorandum", it could not possibly be an ultimatum. On 25 September 1938 Britain rejected the Bad Godesberg ultimatum, and began preparations for war. To further underline the point, Sir Horace Wilson, the British government's Chief Industrial Advisor, and a close associate of Chamberlain, was dispatched to Berlin to inform Hitler that if the Germans attacked Czechoslovakia, then France would honour her commitments as demanded by the Franco-Czechoslovak alliance of 1924, and "then England would feel honour bound, to offer France assistance".

Just what had caused Hitler to change his attitude is not entirely clear, but it is likely that the combination of Franco-British warnings, and especially the mobilization of the British fleet, had finally convinced him of what the most likely result of Fall Grün would be; the minor nature of the alleged casus belli being the timetables for the transfer made Hitler appear too much like the aggressor; the view from his advisors that Germany was not prepared either militarily or economically for a world war; warnings from the states that Hitler saw as his would-be allies in the form of Italy, Japan, Poland and Hungary that they would not fight on behalf of Germany; and very visible signs that the majority of Germans were not enthusiastic about the prospect of war. Moreover, Germany lacked sufficient supplies of oil and other crucial raw materials (the plants that would produce the synthetic oil for the German war effort were not in operation yet), and was highly dependent upon imports from abroad. The Kriegsmarine reported that should war come with Britain, it could not break a British blockade, and since Germany had hardly any oil stocks, Germany would be defeated for no other reason than a shortage of oil. The Economics Ministry told Hitler that Germany had only 2.6 million tons of oil at hand, and that war with Britain and France would require 7.6 million tons of oil. Starting on 18 September 1938, the British refused to supply metals to Germany, and on 24 September the Admiralty forbade British ships to sail to Germany. The British detained the tanker Invershannon carrying 8,600 tons of oil to Hamburg, which caused immediate economic pain in Germany.

Since London and Paris had already agreed to the idea of a transfer of the disputed territory in mid-September, the Munich Conference mostly comprised discussions in one day of talks on technical questions about how the transfer of the Sudetenland would take place, and featured the relatively minor concessions from Hitler that the transfer would take place over a ten day period in October, overseen by an international commission, and Germany would wait until Hungarian and Polish claims were settled. At the end of the conference, Chamberlain had Hitler sign a declaration of Anglo-German friendship, to which Chamberlain attached great importance and Hitler none at all.

In the aftermath of Munich, Hitler felt since Britain would not ally herself nor stand aside to facilitate Germany's continental ambitions, it had become a major threat, and accordingly, Britain replaced the Soviet Union in Hitler's mind as the main enemy of the Reich, with German policies being accordingly reoriented.

In the same speech, Hitler claimed "We Germans will no longer endure such governessy interference. Britain should mind her own business and worry about her own troubles". In November 1938, Hitler ordered a major anti-British propaganda campaign to be launched with the British being loudly abused for their "hypocrisy" in maintaining world-wide empire while seeking to block the Germans from acquiring an empire of their own. A particular highlight in the anti-British propaganda was alleged British human rights abuses in dealing with the Arab uprising in the British Mandate of Palestine and in British India, and the "hyprocrisy" of British criticism of the November 1938 Kristallnacht event. This marked a huge change from the earlier years of the Third Reich, when the German media had portrayed the British Empire in very favourable terms. In November 1938, the Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was ordered to convert the Anti-Comintern Pact into an open anti-British military alliance, as a prelude for a war against Britain and France. On 27 January 1939, Hitler approved the Z Plan, a five-year naval expansion program which called for a Kriegsmarine of 10 battleships, four aircraft carriers, three battlecruisers, eight heavy cruisers, 44 light cruisers, 68 destroyers and 249 U-boats by 1944 that was intended to crush the Royal Navy. The importance of the Z Plan can be seen in Hitler's orders that henceforward the Kriegsmarine was to go from third to first in allotment of raw materials, money and skilled workers. In the spring of 1939, the Luftwaffe was ordered to start building a strategic bombing force that was meant to level British cities. Hitler's war plans against Britain called for a joint Kriegsmarine-Luftwaffe offensive that was to stage "rapid annihilating blows" against British cities and shipping with the expectation that "The moment England is cut off from her supplies she is forced to capitulate" as Hitler expected that the experience of living in a blockaded, famine-stricken, bombed-out island to be too much for the British public.

In November 1938, in a secret speech to a group of German journalists, Hitler noted that he had been forced to speak of peace as the goal in order to attain the degree of rearmament "which were an essential prerequisite ... for the next step". In the same speech, Hitler complained that his peace propaganda of the last five years had been too successful, and it was time for the German people to be subjected to war propaganda. Hitler stated: "It is self-evident that such peace propaganda conducted for a decade has its risky aspect; because it can too easily induce people to come to the conclusion that the present government is identical with the decision and with the intention to keep peace under all circumstances", and instead called for new journalism that "had to present certain foreign policy events in such a fashion that the inner voice of the people itself slowly begins to shout out for the use of force." Later in November 1938, Hitler expressed frustration with the more cautious advice he was receiving from some quarters. Hitler called the economic expert Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, General Ludwig Beck, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the diplomat Ulrich von Hassell, and the economist Rudolf Brinkmann "the overbred intellectual circles" who were trying to block him from fulfilling his mission by their appeals to caution, and but for the fact that he needed their skills "otherwise, perhaps we could someday exterminate them or do something of this kind to them".

In December 1938, the Chancellery of the Führer headed by Philipp Bouhler received a letter concerning a severely physically and mentally disabled baby girl named Sofia Knauer living in Leipzig. At that time, there was a furious rivalry existing between Bouhler's office, the office of the Reich Chancellery led by Hans-Heinrich Lammers, the Presidential Chancellery of Otto Meißner, the office of Hitler's adjutant Wilhelm Brückner and the Deputy Führer's office which was effectively headed by Martin Bormann over control of access to Hitler. As part of a power play against his rivals, Bouhler presented the letter concerning the disabled girl to Hitler, who thanked Bouhler for bringing the matter to his attention and responded by ordering his personal physician Dr. Karl Brandt to kill Knauer.

A significant historical debate has swung around the "Prophecy Speech". Historians who take an intentionist line, such as Eberhard Jäckel, have argued that, at least from the time of the "Prophecy Speech" onwards, Hitler was committed to the genocide of the Jews as his central goal. Lucy Dawidowicz and Gerald Fleming have argued that the "Prophecy Speech" was simply Hitler's way of saying that once he started a world war, he would use it as a cover for his already pre-existing plans for genocide. Functionalist historians such as Christopher Browning have dismissed this interpretation on the grounds that if Hitler were serious with the intentions expressed in the "Prophecy Speech", then there would not have been a 30-month "stay of execution" between the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, and the opening of the first Vernichtungslager in late 1941. Browning has also pointed to the existence of the Madagascar Plan of 1940–41 and various other schemes as proof that there was no genocidal master plan. In his opinion, the "Prophecy Speech" was simply an expression of bravado on Hitler's part, and had little connection with the actual unfolding of antisemitic policies.

Tobby72 (talk) 21:10, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Out of context Röpke quote

"Martin Luther's On the Jews and Their Lies may have also shaped Hitler's views. In Mein Kampf, he refers to Martin Luther as a great warrior, a true statesman, and a great reformer, alongside Richard Wagner and Frederick the Great.[30] Wilhelm Röpke, writing after the Holocaust, concluded that "without any question, Lutheranism influenced the political, spiritual and social history of Germany in a way that, after careful consideration of everything, can be described only as fateful."

The Röpke quote is out of context. Röpke did write this, but he wasn't talking about Luther's anti-Semitism and its potential influence on Hitler at all. Rather, he basically faulted Lutheranism for nurturing: (1) a separation of the spheres of political and private life, justifying obedience to the State despite the theoretical Christian morality held privately; and (2) collectivist morality, in which the sphere of the state intrudes into the sphere of private life. Although these factors in turn contributed, according to Röpke, to the overall German national character, which in turn somehow conditioned anti-Semitism, the connection is still rather indirect. The book is available on Google Books and one can easily verify this by browsing it.--91.148.159.4 (talk) 17:28, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Holocaust template

Removed from this article?! What shall be the reason? Hitler's name is in the template.--Eleven Nine (talk) 13:09, 11 July 2011 (UTC)