Then came the three years of the war—1939, 1940, 1941—when German armed might swung like a great scythe from north to south to east. Italy, Rumania, Hungary, and Bulgaria had become German allies. Norway and Denmark; the Low Countries; France; Tripoli and Egypt; Yugoslavia and Greece; the western part of the Soviet Union—all this territory was invaded and overrun.
In the period from the fall of Poland in October 1939 to the attack against the Soviet Union in June 1941, occurred the aggressive wars, in violation of treaties, against Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia, and Greece. But one thing is certain: neither the Nazis nor the generals thought during this period in terms of a series of violations of neutrality and treaties. They thought in terms of a war, a war for the conquest of Europe.
Six weeks after the outbreak of war, and upon the successful termination of the Polish campaign, on 9 October 1939, there was issued a “Memorandum and Directive for the Conduct of the War in the West.” (L-52). It is unsigned, was distributed only to the four service chiefs (Keitel, Brauchitsch, Goering, and Raeder) and gives every indication of having been issued by Hitler. The following are pertinent extracts:
“The aim of the Anglo-French conduct of war is to dissolve or disintegrate the 80 million state again so that in this manner the European equilibrium, in other words the balance of power, which serves their ends, may be restored. This battle therefore will have to be fought out by the German people one way or another. Nevertheless, the very great successes of the first month of war could serve, in the event of an immediate signing of peace to strengthen the Reich psychologically and materially to such an extent that from the German viewpoint there would be no objection to ending the war immediately, insofar as the present achievement with arms is not jeopardized by the peace-treaty.
“It is not the object of this memorandum to study the possibilities in this direction or even to take them into consideration. In this paper I shall confine myself exclusively to the other case; the necessity to continue the fight, the object of which, as already stressed, consists so far as the enemy is concerned in the dissolution or destruction of the German Reich. In opposition to this, the German war aim is the final military dispatch of the West, i.e. destruction of the power and ability of the Western Powers ever again to be able to oppose the state consolidation and further development of the German people in Europe.
“As far as the outside world is concerned, however, this internal aim will have to undergo various propaganda adjustments, necessary from a psychological point of view. This does not alter the war aim. It is and remains the destruction of our Western enemies.”
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“The successes of the Polish campaign have made possible first of all a war on a single front, awaited for past decades without any hope of realization, that is to say, Germany is able to enter the fight in the West with all her might, leaving only a few covering troops.
“The remaining European states are neutral either because they fear for their own fates, or lack interest in the conflict as such, or are interested in a certain outcome of the war, which prevents them from taking part at all or at any rate too soon.
“The following is to be firmly borne in mind * * *”