Hitler’s Foreign Policy.doc

Hitler’s Foreign Policy A classic question for Single Party States is the following: To what extent do Single Party States pursue aggressive Foreign Policies? Your task is to analyze Hitler’s Foreign Policies and arrive at a conclusion on the question. How do we do this? First a definition needs to be established of what constitutes an aggressive foreign policy. Asdf Key Foreign Policy areas: Relations with the League of Nations Relations with the USSR / Nazi Soviet Pact Rhineland Anschluss Rearmament Sudetenland Poland We will now examine the key foreign policies of the Nazi Party. We will provide background to the policy and then gather evidence on how the objective was met. Finally, we will make a historical judgement of the policy using our definition (s) above. There is an example response below: Anschluss Anschluss is the union of Austria with the German Nazi state. The idea of grouping all German people into one state had been discussed for centuries without successful action. Prior to Bismarck unification of the northern German states it was generally thought that the unification of the German peoples could only succeed under the banner of the Austrian-Hungary Empire. Austria was one of the few German speaking areas that was not united in Bismarck military and political unitification movement. Following WW1, many German-speaking Austrians hoped to join with Germany as part of the promised right to self determination (Wilsons 14 points) and in corresponding realignment of Europe. However, the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the Treaty of Saint-Germain of 1919 explicitly vetoed the inclusion of Austria within a German state, because France and Britain feared the power of a larger Germany. Upon coming to power, Hitler immediately began to work to include Austria into Germany. A Nazi Austria coup took place in 1934 but failed. In 1936 the two governments signed the Austro-German agreements that recognized Austrian independence but also acknowledge that it wa