"World War II" Study Notes

Hitler meant to go far beyond Germany's 1914 boundaries, which were the limit of the vision of his predecessors. He meant to bring the entire German people - the Volk - understood as a racial group, together into a single nation. The new Germany would include all the Germanic parts of the old Habsburg Empire, including Austria. The new Germany would be "purified" by the removal of the Jews, another inferior race in Nazi theory. The plans required the conquest of Poland and Ukraine as the primary areas for the settlement of Germans and for the provision of badly needed food. All of this was…