Hitler pursued an aggressive foreign policy from 1933-1938 with the goals of expanding German territory, acquiring lebensraum in Eastern Europe, and establishing German dominance. He reoccupied the Rhineland, annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, and was increasingly viewed as a threat by other European powers. Hitler outlined plans for further expansion at the Hossbach Conference in 1937.

1. Hitler’s Foreign Policy 1933-1938

5. Hossbach Memorandum (1937) details a meeting where Hitler outlined his foreign policy: “ The aim of German policy was to make secure and to preserve the racial community [ Volksmasse ] and to enlarge it. It was therefore a question of space.”

7. German Empire, 1914

8. Weimar Republic (1919-1933)

10. Signing of the Reichskonkordat (July 20, 1933): Franz von Papen, Vice-Chancellor, Germany (seated at left) and Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli (center)

12. Rome-Berlin Axis was announced October 25, 1936

18. Josef Stalin: under Stalinist rule, one might simply disappear---both literally and officially; Commissar Nikolai Yezhov to Stalin’s right in this photo from the 1930s was shot in 1940 and airbrushed out of history by Soviet censors

23. Anti-war painting by Pablo Picasso, Guernica (1937) Based on German terror bombing of Guernica, Spain.

27. Munich Agreement 1938

28. Hitler was hailed by many Sudeten Germans as a liberator

32. Conclusion : With regards to the Nazi regime, the general contours of dictatorship and the overall trajectory of totalitarianism was clear to the nations of the world by 1938. Yet, in 1938 Western powers engaged Hitler with a policy of appeasement or created distance from Germany through isolationism. Hitler’s main objective---world domination---was apparent before 1938.

33. BBC