Warlords
Under scrutiny
Imperialist tendencies
Hitler |
***** |
Until the invasion of Poland in 1939, supporters of appeasing Hitler could convince themselves that he harboured no imperial ambitions. All the territory he had taken over up to that point – in the Ruhr, the Rhineland, Austria and the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia – was inhabited by Germans. The seizure of Poland and the subsequent invasion of the USSR in pursuit of German lebensraum, or 'living space', to the east put an end to that delusion. This was to be Germany's Third Reich – empire – with Hitler, Der Führer, as its emperor.
