Criticism
Churchill’s The Second World War, published from 1948, said that the war was simply the completion of a second Thirty Years War, while books by A. J. P. Taylor and Fritz Fischer in the 1960s blamed the German people and saw Hitler’s plans as a continuation of the German foreign Policy of Bismarck and Wilhelm II. Churchill claimed that WWII was simply part two of a thirty years war, echoing Foch’s remark that the Treaty of Versailles was "an armistice for twenty years."
However, Henig shows Hitler’s foreign policy differed from the past in four distinctive areas.
- As Hilder said, German Eastward expansionism pre-1919 was to preserve the status quo, not for racial genocide.
- Hitler, as stated in Mein Kampf and reiterated in 1933, rejected Wilhelmine colonial and trade policies.
- Hitler, unlike Bismarck, intended to destroy Russia.
- Hitler intended to destroy the international system itself which Gustav Stresemann had used for revision.
All four differences are integral parts of Hitler’s long-term plans. Bell agrees that the new elements are more important than the continuity arguments, adding that German political and military leaders in the 1930s did not want a war of conquest. This helps dispel a second theory, namely Taylor’s and Fischer’s ideas that the German people themselves were to blame. In 1936, the Reichstag cheered Hitler’s peace proposals, and Broszat believes that the German people wanted simply peaceful revision. Hitler also agreed to Munich, at least in part, because he saw the complete lack of enthusiasm for war in Germany. Rich agrees that Hitler was a completely unique, or abnormal, phenomenon, ultimately expressed in his genocide, as previous Germans rulers of Poland never pursued extermination.
Read more about this topic: Second Thirty Years War
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