Hitlers Foreign Policy :: essays research papers fc

Assignment: Give an account of Hitler’s foreign policy, using the following headings: (A) Defiance of the Versailles Treaty (B) Relations with Italy (C) Territorial Expansion Defiance of the Versailles Treaty After the First World War, Germany signed a peace treaty with France and Britain. Among the 440 Articles were: * Germany lost Posen, the Polish Corridor and part of Upper Silesia to Poland. * Germany lost the Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia * Germany lost Eupen and Malmedy to Belgium * Germany lost North Schleswig to Denmark * Germany lost Alsace Lorraine to France * Germany lost all its overseas colonies * Saarland was under LN control and after 15 years the people could vote if they wanted to belong to Germany or France * The Rhineland was to be demilitarised * The army was reduced to 100,000 * Germany could have no submarines, no airforce and no heavy artillery * Germany had to pay major Reparations. In percentages: Germany lost 10% of its land, 100% of its colonies, 12.5% of its population 16% of its coal fields and 50% of its iron and steel industry. The main terms of the Versailles treaty Hitler (like most Germans) hated the Versailles Treaty and he didn’t want to follow the rules made by it. In fact, step by step he broke the laws. The first step he took was to increase the German army. Germany was only allowed to have an army of 100,000 men, no airforce, no tanks and no submarines. But in an interview with the Daily Mail on March 9, 1935, Goering revealed that there was a German airforce. One weak later Germany also announced that it had an army of 500,000 men. France and England didn’t even object to this. In 1936 Germany signed a treaty with England saying that Germany was allowed a navy one third the size of the British navy. Germany was rearming fast. It wasn’t hard thanks to the good economic growth. But the rearmament was so expensive that in 1936 it was clear that Germany was soon to go into an economic crisis if nothing was done. There wasn’t a better time to test the Versailles Treaty because the international situation was very fortunate to Hitler. Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia proved that the League of Nation (LN) was worthless. It also focussed Anglo-French diplomacy on Italy. After some years, Italy became weak because of the economic sanctions from Britain and France and the public opinion in France and Britain was still very anti-war.