Responsibility is a portmanteau word covering
many different meanings. All the nations in a
complex international society are to some degree
involved with each other and in that sense share
‘responsibility’ for the most important inter-
national events such as war. In that sense, too, it
is both true and misleading to conclude that
Hitler’s Germany was not alone responsible for
the outbreak of war in 1939 – misleading when
responsibility is equated with blame, and blame,
like responsibility, is considered something to be
shared out between all the nations involved. Such
an analysis of responsibility for the outbreak of
the second great war in Europe, confuses more
than it illuminates.
Hitler, in September 1939, posed before the
German people as the injured party, as acting in
defence of Germans persecuted by Poles, and in
response to actual Polish attacks across the fron-
tier (in fact, secretly organised by the Gestapo).
Since coming to power he had built up the armed
forces of the Reich, not simply to gain his ends
by the bluff of overawing Germany’s weaker
neighbours: the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were
fighting instruments prepared for real use.
Although not precisely certain of the right timing,
Hitler intended all along to pass from a policy of
piecemeal territorial acquisition by blackmail to
actual wars of conquest. In September 1938, he
was frustrated when he could not make war on
Czechoslovakia. A year later he was not again
deterred. On 23 November 1939, a few weeks
after war began, he summoned the chiefs of the
armed services and explained that he had not
been sure whether to attack first in the East or in
the West (it should be noted that it was only a
question of either/or); but Polish resistance to his
demands had decided the issue:One will blame me [for engaging in] war and
more war. I regard such struggle as the fate of
all being. No one can avoid the fight if he does
not wish to be the inferior. The growth of
population requires a larger living space. My
aim was to bring about a sensible relationship
between population size and living space. This
is where the military struggle has to begin. No
people can evade the solution of this task
unless it renounces and gradually succumbs.
That is the lesson of history...While Hitler remained in power he intended
passing from the phase of preparation for war to
actual wars of conquest, and the purpose of these
conquests was the aggrandisement of Germany
itself, and the reduction of the conquered nations
who would retain a separate existence only as
satellites. The dominated people would all have
to conform to Hitler’s racialist plan for the New
Order of Europe. This racialist basis of Nazi
policy meant not that Hitler aimed at a
Wilhelmine German domination of Europe, but
that he planned a European revolution entailing
mass population movements in the East, murderChapter 21
THE OUTBREAK OF WAR IN EUROPE,
1937–9