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

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Source E
A Social Democrat comments on the Anschluss with Austria in March 1938.
The atmosphere was similar to that on 30 th January 1933, when Hitler became Reich
Chancellor. Everyone was carried away by this atmosphere. Only gradually did
groups form here and there, and people began to discuss what had happened. You
could hear people saying that war was now on the way and they were going home to
pack and move out to the villages. But these were isolated voices. The general
opinion in the groups was: ‘Let’s face it, Hitler is a great man, he knows what he
wants and the world is scared of him.’ … Hitler’s prestige has risen enormously
again and he is practically idolised … The western powers simply daren’t do
anything against Germany, and even if they do, Germany is strong enough to get its
own way.
(from Inside Nazi Germany, D Peubert, Batsford, 1987)
Source F
On 22 August 1939 Hitler addresses his generals.
Colonel-General von Brauchitsch has promised me to bring the war against Poland
to a close with a few weeks. Had he reported to me that he needs two years or even
only one year, I should not have given the command to march and should have allied
myself temporarily with Britain instead of Russia for we cannot conduct a long war.
To be sure a new situation has arisen. I experienced those poor worms Daladier and
Chamberlain in Munich. They will be too cowardly to attack. They won’t go beyond
a blockade. Against that we have our autarchy and the Russian raw materials.
Poland will be depopulated and settled with Germans. My pact with the Poles was
merely conceived of as gaining of time. As for the rest, gentlemen, the fate of Russia
will be exactly the same as I am now going through with in the case of Poland. After
Stalin’s death - he is a very sick man - we will break the Soviet Union. Then there
will begin the dawn of the German rule of the earth.
Source G
Hitler threatens the Jews with annihilation in a Reichstag speech in January 1939.
Today I will once more be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and
outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations into a world war, then the
result will not be the bolshevisation of the earth and thus the victory of Jewry, but the
annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe !
History: Germany: Versailles to the Outbreak of World War II - 1918-1939 (AH) 87