Uncertainty about Hitler's Foreign Policy

There has been much debate amongst historians about Hitler's aims:

•   Some historians argue he had no aims at all, making up his policies as he went along, responding to situations when they arose.

•   Some historians argue that Hitler wanted a 'Greater Germany' (the invasions of Austria and the Sudetenland were claimed by Hitler to be the regaining of Germans for Germany) – but others have pointed out that ‘the move into the rest of Czechoslovakia showed that Hitler wanted more than just German land’.

•   The historian AJP Taylor argued that Hitler simply continued the aggressive foreign policy of pre-WWI Germany – but others point out that he did not seek the return of Germany's former colonies.

•   Many historians – and Hitler himself – claimed that he wanted to reverse the Treaty of Versailles:

My foreign policy was to abolish the Treaty of Versailles. It is futile nonsense for the rest of the world to pretend today that I did not reveal this program until 1933 or 1935 or 1937.  Instead of listening to foolish chatter, these gentlemen would have been wiser to read what I have written thousands of times.

Hitler, talking on 15 March 1939.

      – yet he left Germany's new western frontiers with France and Belgium intact.

•   Von Ribbentrop claimed that Hitler’s primary motive was fear of Communist Russia:

Hitler wanted a strong Reich at home and armed against all eventualities should a military power arise in the East”.

•   How important was the policy of Lebensraum?

•   Did Hitler want war all along – perhaps to re-fight World War One? Was World War Two a successful climax or a disastrous end to Hitler's foreign policy? Hitler himself said that "for me, war is a means to other ends” and during the war he claimed "I am a war leader against my own will."