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Essay on War
The European war which began on 1 September 1939 was Hitler's war. Historians will continue to argue about the social, economic and political forces which prompted him to take a series of calculated risks which led to full-scale war. They will debate the ideological roots of Nazi Germany's bid for world power, and examine the decision making process in the Third Reich. Nazi Germany is unthinkable without Hitler, as is Nazi Germany's war. That the invasion of Poland led to the most destructive and extensive war in history was due to Hitler's decisions to attack in the West in 1940 and then to invade the Soviet Union in 1941. He did not get quite the war he wanted, nor could he fight it on terms of his own choosing, but it was still his war.
In the course of 1937 Hitler made some important personnel changes, removing a number of leading figures who were critical of the irresponsible daring of Hitler's policies. The War Minister and the Chief of General Staff, Blomberg and Fritsch, were dismissed and Hitler appointed himself Minister of War. At the beginning of September the British Government persuaded the Czechs to accept Henlein's proposal for a Sudeten German parliament. Henlein was horrified at this suggestion, fearing that it would bring the crisis to an end. In the Reich, Hitler worked up his audience at the Nuremberg party rally into a frenzy of indignation over the grim lot of their racial comrades in the Sudetenland.
Hitler submitted to the Prime Minister a long list of Czech atrocities against the hapless Germans and announced that he was prepared to launch a world war to bring these unfortunates back into the fatherland.The Munich agreement gave Hitler almost everything he wanted. He was to be allowed to occupy the Sudetenland, and Polish and Hungarian claims against Czechoslovakia were to be respected......
