Did Hitler intend to invade France And Britain?

I see that Pat Buchanan, an American isolationist, refers to a book by Richard Overy to suggest that Hitler never intended to invade France, or Western Europe, or Britain, and it was just France and Britain's desire to defend Poland that forced him to attack West. Supposedly all he wanted to do was attack East - Russia and Poland would be the new German "lebensraum".
Is this the nonsense that I think it is? If so, is there any documentation of German intentions?

 

Welcome aboard.

A good question indeed. There's already an existing thread where this is being discussed: http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/general/16372-would-hitler-really-have-invaded-britain.html

 

Hello and welcome to the forum.

It was an excellent question first time around and if you look at the thread, lots of good information.

As a newcomer it is alway's a good idea to use our forum search facility to see if a similar question or topic has been discussed.

With regards to the invasion of the UK, it is always open to conjectures, but personally I think that Hitler did want to invade after holding out and refusing to surrender or negotiate.

Putting it very simplistic, I believe that it was the German High Command when seeing the plans, with the logistics required, then also witnessing the RAF in actions against the Luftwaffe, which put an end to any such thoughts.

Regards
Tom

 

I think this question differs in that the original thread dealt with the intention to invade Britain once German forces were standing on the French coast.

The new question is rather more whether Germany would have ignored the western allies entirely had war not been declared. I somehow doubt it.

 

howdy, welcome to the forum,as an american i must ask you to please ignore any thing you hear from that blowhard goof ball.

 

I may be wrong, but I think the OP's question is more to do with Hitler's intentions before Britain and France declared war? I've been doing some reading on this myself recently and can recommend two books worth examining in detail: David Faber's "Munich: the 1938 Appeasement Crisis" (Simon & Schuster 2008, Pocket Books 2009) and Donald Cameron Watt's "How War Came" (Heinemann 1989, Mandarin 1990).

"How War Came" is based on the author's study of diplomatic and government papers from all over the world, threaded together with published and unpublished memoirs and contemporary press reports. Inevitably it can be heavy going at times, but his re-creation of the two years - and particularly the final three months - leading up to September 1st 1939 is (IMHO) a masterpiece. Norman Stone, Alan Bullock and John Keegan thought so too - all three are quoted on the cover of the paperback.

In short - Hitler really didn't believe Britain and France would go to war over Poland. Until it was too late.

 

To my mind, Hitler could not have been clearer in his setting out his aims in this meeting just prior to the British\French declaration of War:

11 August 1939, obersalzberg
League of Nations High Commissioner in Danzig, Swiss diplomat Carl Burckhardt, has an audience with Hitler, 'the most profoundly feminine man' he has ever encountered. Burckhardt has also never met before 'any human being capable of generating so terrific a condensation of envy, vituperation and malice' as Hitler does. The Fuehrer tells Burckhardt that 'the Polish army already has the mark of death stamped on its countenance'. Then Hitler, with astonishing frankness, tells the Swiss that everything he is undertaking is funda­mentally aimed at Russia, just as he wrote in Mein Kampf back in 1925. If Britain and France are so stupid as not to recognise this, he tells the Swiss diplomat, then he will be forced to join with Russia in order to annihilate them. Then, he will turn on Russia and gain the Lebensraum (living space), so vital for the German race. Back home in Basle, Burckhardt reports the conversation to British and French diplomats. He fails, however, to mention Hitler's remarks about Russia because he believes 'a German-Soviet pact was simply too absurd to contemplate'.

 

Could Hitler have left Alsace in French hands, even if war had not been declared ? There were scores to settle there and an undefeated France would have been quite a liability at the rear of an army committed to the east.

 

that blowhard goof ball


I presume you mean that t1t Pat Buchanan - as opposed to the original poster of this thread? I've dealt with Buchanan's grasp on WWII history before (shudder).

Mine is another vote for "How War Came", it's on my personal collection of a dozen useful books on the shelf right beside me...as opposed to the piles dotted about the floor LOL

No, Hitler never assumed the British and French would declare war - but not because of any fundemental understanding of his postion, or sympathy with it, or anything like that; simply that he thought that having backed down once over Czechoslovakia, they'd do so again.

But once they had - he was immediately obligated to securing his "rear" - but thought he would be forcing them to the negotiating table eventually....not beating one and forcing the other's back to the wall and into fighting on!

So it wasn't as much he got the war he didn't expect....more that he got the war he was always going to get, just didn't believe he would.

 

I may concede that at the point in time AH wrote his Mein Kampf he was not intending on a conflict with the Western Powers, but AH was never made famous for coherence. The fact remains that Denamark did not invade itself, nor did Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, writing only of countries to the West of Germany.

So those may not have been his intentions in 1925, but they became so later and with gusto. As for Mr. Buchanan, it appears he is another instance of the saying "Opinions are like you-know-what, everybody has one".

 

phylo roadking, yes indeed i was refering to pat buchanan, and not the original poster, my appologies to one and all if that was what was unintenionaly seemed to read. oh by the way i do belive that hitler never intended to stop short of the english channel.

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/35919416/Fuehrer-Directives-and-Other-Top-level-Directives-of-the-German-Armed-Forces-1939-1941-USA-1948




Translated by US forces, there is also a directive frmm 1942 -

 

The main cause of the Second World War was that Hitler never thought that Great Britain and France would fullfil their guarantee towards Poland.Hitler took the gamble to invade Poland after declaring that he had no futher territorial demands after the German Sudetenland was annexed in the autumn of 1938.The overruning of the rest of Czeckoslovakia in March 1939 put Great Britain and France in a position whereby they could not trust Hitler's word.

Hitler for his part,saw the British as a fellow Aryans but was forced to act in the west because the British would not back down.Hitler saw the operations in the west as of being a short duration but nevertheless neccessary to avoid committing himself to war on two fronts (an error committed by the Kaiser in the Great War)

One aspect of the political situation at this time is that the presence of Hess in Britain in May 1941.No matter what we know of Hitler's reaction to his Deputy being in Britain "unauthorised",there is the suspicion that Hess was trying to achieve some agreement with Britain in order to give German a free hand in Russia,without having to conduct war against the British.

Hitler's intention to mount operations against Russia irrespective of other events unfolding proved to be his biggest mistake.There were quite a number of his regime,knew the war was lost after the defeat at Stalingrad.By the summer of 1943 after Kurst,there was no doubt that the Third Reich would be subject to continual shrinkage and the eastern front operations would represent high rates of manpower wastage.

Hitler never learnt the lesson of strategy from the Kaiser that contributed to Germany losing the Great War.

Hitler's intentions are well recorded in the Hossbach Memorandum.These were minutes taken by Hossbach of Hitler's meeting with his top military leaders on November 5 1937 and were highly secret.The document revealed Hitler's planned aggression and was used in evidence at Nuremburg trials against the Third Reich regime.Now regarded as the watershed between the Third Reich acting within the German state boundaries and the date when Hitler laid down his vision of a Greater German Reich.

 

Harry,

A good post.

If I remember correctly, I once read that the German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop, actually warned Hitler that both France and Britain would not stand idly by if Germany invaded Poland and that both would declare war.

The fact is Hitler was his own council then as previous events had alway's gone his way.

Hitler made a mistake. Some may say the first of many.

Regards
Tom

 

To my mind, Hitler could not have been clearer in his setting out his aims in this meeting just prior to the British\French declaration of War:

11 August 1939, obersalzberg
League of Nations High Commissioner in Danzig, Swiss diplomat Carl Burckhardt, has an audience with Hitler, 'the most profoundly feminine man' he has ever encountered. Burckhardt has also never met before 'any human being capable of generating so terrific a condensation of envy, vituperation and malice' as Hitler does. The Fuehrer tells Burckhardt that 'the Polish army already has the mark of death stamped on its countenance'. Then Hitler, with astonishing frankness, tells the Swiss that everything he is undertaking is funda­mentally aimed at Russia, just as he wrote in Mein Kampf back in 1925. If Britain and France are so stupid as not to recognise this, he tells the Swiss diplomat, then he will be forced to join with Russia in order to annihilate them. Then, he will turn on Russia and gain the Lebensraum (living space), so vital for the German race. Back home in Basle, Burckhardt reports the conversation to British and French diplomats. He fails, however, to mention Hitler's remarks about Russia because he believes 'a German-Soviet pact was simply too absurd to contemplate'.
Well,this is something I should not use to prove something .
1°the reliability of Burckhardt is not reliable
2°on 11 august,there was not yet a beginning of negociations with Stalin.
3°following Burckhardt,Hitler told him:I will join the Russians,and than,later ,I will attack him,and,this ,while every one knew that Burckhardt was an incorrigible chatterbox
4° Burckhardt said he did not mention the possibility about the pact with Stalin,but,how could we know that Hitler was telling him this?
There is no proof for the whole story,except ,the word of Burckhardt .

 

ive just read about Hossbachs Memorandum and it looks quite clear to me. There was never a desire for war with Britain and France or a belief that it was ever on the cards. Not in 1937 at least.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~mkinnear/Hossbach%20memorandum.pdf

 

2°on 11 august,there was not yet a beginning of negociations with Stalin.



From Wiki...

Germany and the Soviet Union discussed entering into an economic deal throughout early 1939.[29] For months, Germany had secretly hinted to Soviet diplomats that it could offer better terms for a political agreement than could Britain and France.[30][31][32] On March 10, Hitler in his official speech proclaimed that directly.[33][34] That same day, Stalin, in a speech to the Eighteenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party, characterized western actions regarding Hitler as moving away from "collective security" and toward "nonintervention," with the goal being to direct Fascist aggression anywhere but against themselves.[35] After the Congress concluded, the Soviet press mounted an attack on both France and Great Britain.[35]
On April 7, a Soviet diplomat visited the German Foreign Ministry stating that there was no point in continuing the German-Soviet ideological struggle and that the countries could conduct a concerted policy.[36] Ten days later, the Soviet ambassador met the German Deputy Foreign Minister and presented him a note requesting speedy removal of any obstacles for fulfillment of military contracts signed between Czechoslovakia and the USSR before the former was occupied by Germany.[37] According to German accounts,[38] at the end of the discussion, the ambassador stated "'there exists for Russia no reason why she should not live with us on a normal footing. And from normal the relations might become better and better."[4][39] though other sources admit that it could be an exaggeration or inaccurate recounting of the ambassador's words.[40] Immediately after that, the Soviet ambassador had been withdrawn to Moscow and never returned to Germany.[37] According to Ulam, future conversations on the topic in Berlin were believed to continue with lower level officials working under the cover of a Soviet trade mission.[41]


Also, see here - Avalon Project - Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941

 

All this does not prove that on 11 august,the negociations about the Molotow-Ribbentrop pact had started,as there was no certainty (from the German POV) that Poland would remain resolute and continue to say no to Hitler's demands,the M-R pact was not YET needed .
It was also not certain that the negociations would succeed.
Thus,why should Hitler say to Burckhardt that he would make a deal with the SU,and,later,attack the SU ?Knowing that B would tell this to the B+the F,who would tell it,of course,to the Soviets ?
And,most important,this story was NOT told by B to the B+the F in 1939;why ? B said:no one would believe it.
Burckhardt told the story in 1961,when he was writing his memoirs (IMHO,because it would help selling his memoires),and,it is very doubtfull,that it was true :IMHO,50 % chance that it is an invention .
A good source is :Nathaly Meyer:Burckhardt and Hitler .

 

ive just read about Hossbachs Memorandum and it looks quite clear to me. There was never a desire for war with Britain and France or a belief that it was ever on the cards. Not in 1937 at least.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~mkinnear/Hossbach%20memorandum.pdf
Leaning on the HM(if we can,because the reliability has been questioned),we can say that the HM is containing nothing new:it is only a rehearsal of Hitler's well known opinions:if the situation was favourable(=a civil war in France,or a war between France and Italy),he would 1)eliminate Czechoslovakia and 2)annex Austria.
But,in reality,these favourable situations did not happen,and Austria came first.
There is nothing in the HM about an attack on F+B.Such attack was also impossible,because of the weakness of the Wehrmacht .

 

Harry,

A good post.

If I remember correctly, I once read that the German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop, actually warned Hitler that both France and Britain would not stand idly by if Germany invaded Poland and that both would declare war.

The fact is Hitler was his own council then as previous events had alway's gone his way.

Hitler made a mistake. Some may say the first of many.

Regards
Tom
I can be wrong,but I thought it was the opposite:Ribbentrop being convinced that B+F would do nothing .