PDF file: History - Advanced Higher - Germany - Education Scotland

Part D: The Impact of Foreign Policy on Domestic Circumstances
An overall knowledge and understanding of Nazi foreign policy up to the outbreak of
the Second World War is essential for this section but should be seen not just in its
own right but in terms of what is says about Hitler, about the nature of Nazism. This
foreign policy tackled one of Hitler’s main causes – the desire to end the Treaty of
Versailles – and his success here helped sustain his popularity in Germany. The
needs of foreign policy affected the economy very directly.
This section of the course will require notes on several aspects:
1. The Main Episodes in Foreign Policy 1933-39
This involves considering:
(i) Leaving the League and the disarmament conference
(ii) Non-aggression pact with Poland
(iii) Recovery of the Saar
(iv) Naval treaty with Britain
(v) Occupation of the Rhineland
(vi) Deals with Italy and Japan
(vii) Union with Austria
(viii) Sudeten Crisis and Munich
(ix) Danzig, Poland and the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
2. The Impact of foreign Policy in Germany
This involves considering:
(i) Its effects on employment and the economy in terms of conscription and
rearmament
(ii) Effects on popular acceptance of the Nazi regime and its methods
(iii) Its effects on the Army’s attitudes to Hitler
(iv) Its effects on Hitler’s personal standing.
Issue to debate
The historian Tim Mason has argued that Hitler was ‘worried by the fear that if the
period of peace and relative prosperity of the late 1930s were to continue for too
long, the German people would lose what he imagined to be their sense of aggressive
discipline, militarism and ideological fervour.’
From ‘Re-evaluating the Third Reich’ ed T Childers and J Caplan, 1993,
Holmes and Meier
What can be said for and against this view of Hitler’s aggressive foreign policy?
History: Germany: Versailles to the Outbreak of World War II - 1918-1939 (AH) 38