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Concept
Hossbach Memorandum
Summary
The Hossbach Memorandum is a summary of a meeting in Berlin on 5 November 1937 attended by German dictator Adolf Hitler and his military and foreign policy leadership in which Hitler outlined his expansionist policies. The meeting marked the beginning of Hitler's foreign policies becoming radicalized.
According to the memorandum, Hitler did not want war with Britain and France in 1939. Instead, he favoured small wars of plunder to support Germany's struggling economy. Army adjutant Colonel Friedrich Hossbach took minutes at the meeting. Also in attendance were the Reich Foreign Minister, Baron Konstantin von Neurath; the Reich War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg; the Army Commander, General Werner von Fritsch; the Kriegsmarine Commander, Admiral Erich Raeder; and the Luftwaffe Commander, Hermann Göring.
The conference of 5 November 1937 had been called in response to complaints from Admiral Raeder that the navy (Kriegsmarine) was receiving insufficient allocations of steel and other raw materials and that its entire building programme was in danger of collapse. Neither the air force (Luftwaffe) nor the army (Heer) was willing to reduce its steel allocations. As the conference had been called in response to resolve the dispute, Hitler took the opportunity to provide a summary of his assessment of foreign policy.
He stated that if he died, the contents of the conference were to be regarded as his "political testament". In Hitler's view, the economy of Nazi Germany had reached such a state of crisis that the only way of stopping a drastic fall in living standards was to embark on a policy of aggression sooner, rather than later, to provide Lebensraum by seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia. Hitler also announced that it was imperative to act in the next five or six years before "two hate-inspired antagonists", Britain and France, closed the gap in the arms race in which, Hitler noted, Germany was already falling behind.
Official source
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