Why did he invade Poland? It was unnecessary

>you only have to think it was necessary from the perspective in 1939
>"you sound like you're from 1939"

yeah i fucked up
i guess i was thinking of it in terms of "was lebensraum a good idea?" and not "why did hitler choose to do this?" i got sidetracked

My question is why did Hitler go for living space in the east instead of the west? Like what I would have done is go westwards and instead of attacking Poland, just attack France and take all the land I need, then try and get an alliance with the Soviets so I can think of a plan to invade the British.

Hitler was absolutely convinced that the Western Allies wouldn't intervene, his face when hearing of their declaration of war must have been priceless

Well firstly France is much more densely populated than Eastern Europe. It's also got a lot of high elevations so there's not a lot of land to support the massive agricultural endeavors that the NSDAP had planned. Then of course once you get through France, there's nowhere left to go. Italy was friendly, and so was Spain, and it was also agriculturally useless considering the amount of arid land.

Secondly Hitler never actually wanted war with the Western powers. He'd anticipated that they would join him in a coalition to weaken the Soviet Union and prevent their traction of power in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately for him they backed out at the invasion of Poland, and it was only then when he actually had to prepare for an all-out war in France itself.

Poland had a really powerful military and people were pretty shocked at how quickly and thoroughly it was btfo. Poland was always flexing with the knowledge/hope that Britain and France could guarantee its existence. I believe they should had tried befriend Germany against the communists but that just my personal opinion and probably wasn't practical.

Hitler was a map-painting autist who was compelled to unite all territory containing ethnic Germans or land that had once been part of the former Reich. He couldn't do this without invading Poland.

It was stupid, but Hitler actually believed his own bullshit. He wanted to conquer the East and to do so he needed the Romanian oil fields. It made a certain amount of sense given his goals, but we know how that turned out.

The western allies were his biggest threat he should have focused on them. After all in World War 1 it was them and not Russia that caused Germany to lose and fucked over their economy. They should have made common cause with the Soviets who also were in a bad place after the first world war. Also I'm pretty sure if you turned all of France into farm land it would be enough to feed the German people. Hell he could even do a Morganthou plan on France and deindustrialize it.

>They should have made common cause with the Soviets who also were in a bad place after the first world war.

Hitler trusted Stalin as far as he could throw him. They were allies of convenience in Poland, but he'd never count on the soviets as an ally against France and Britain. He'd much rather the reverse.

Poland was a far more practical target than France, and if it had gone as he'd planned he wouldn't have been embroiled in a war with France and Britain either.
Besides, you need to consider the geopolitics of "If I don't annex Poland, Russia probably will." Do you want your neighbor in your hands, or that of your ideological arch-enemy?

Eastern Europe is the "breadbasket" and contains huge swathes of land capable of feeding the rest of the continent. It's also populated by Slavic peoples whom the Nazis regarded as subhuman and had no qualms over cleansing.

I don't get why Hitler did not like Stalin and Slavs. Like honestly they are much less threatening to the west. The west is actively hostile to anything thats not like them, and wants to spread democracy and freedom. Stalin isn't against dictatorship and oppression. Heck what Hitler should have done with Stalin instead of Molotov Ribbentop is a secret alliance, basically tell the Soviets that they should take half of Poland for themselves, and the Germans will enter Poland from the west however instead of conquring Poland we make a few attacks on each other, and we pretend that Germany managed to stop the Soviets from taking the entire country of Poland but were only able to save half of it. That way Germany will have a buffer state between them and the Soviets which can make them feel safer, and they get good PR to the world to show that they are helping a small country not get invaded. And the Soviet Union gets half of a country. It's a win win.

An extremely important factor that hasn't been mentioned is the face that Prussia was a big part of Poland and it is essential to the old german identity.

Actually, from my impression of the readings of him, he thought that Poland would cave like Austria and Czechoslovakia.

However, they figured they could beat the Germans with British and French backing.

But that didn't work out for them.

Short term, Hitler was fine going to war with them. He beat France as well out the deal.

Going to war with Soviet Russia on the other hand... Maybe not the greatest idea.

If he'd allied with Poland and attacked the USSR instead, he'd probably still be alive today.

Yeah but Hitler was probably more anal than an EU4 player about bore gore.

He wanted a continuous German border from Berlin to Kiev.

He could have easily incorporated Poland into the Third Reich over time, especially with the German army maintaining a perpetual presence there. All he needed was a little patience.

Because Poland had a huge Jewish population.

To be fair, most Polish at the time were highly anti-Semitic.

That's putting it mildly.

There's a reason they're referred to as "Polish Death Camps".

Germans were being killed in Poland.

Lebensraum

Also most of the Jews in Europe, which to Hitler were a necessity to destory. Why not invade Poland?

Not more so than the rest of Europe. A lot of Poles stopped short of "exterminate the Jews" though.

To also be fair, the Germans considered the Poles to be a step above the Jews. Its not an exagerration to say that they wanted to turn the Poles into slaves when Lebensraum actually started happening.

Read about Occupied Poland. Pretty brutal shit.

petty ambition

Parts of East Germany had been given to Poland in the Treaty of Versailles. Ethnic Germans remained in Poland and were being oppressed there - beaten, killed, violence on a large scale. Hitler was trying to protect them.

>being this stormfag

I have, and while I wouldn't call it anything but brutal, everything I've _heard_ is ridiculous compared to written fact. Short story is sate the enormously butthurt and anti-Semetic Poles with killing off their enormous (10%) Jewish population or appearing to do so while cracking down on city center populations to move in ethnic German administrators and businessmen and leave the countryside largely Polish. Lebensraum was probably better for Polish ethnics than Stalin.

Lebensraum's end goal was the Poles as a race of slaves for the German settlers. How is that better than what they got under Stalin?

Poland and Germany had disputes going back at the very least to 1918. The polish state was bitter (and I think understandably so) about the bad deal it had gotten over the past century and wanted to emerge powerfully. Unfortunately, Germany was a push over in 1918, but not so much by 1939. Border clashes had been common practice until the Freikorps and SA (some overlap) were put in place, as they were a motorized force that could respond to intrusions. By '39, Poland was being persuaded by the west to not negotiate with Germany. Meanwhile, Hitler wanted a small war with Poland to cement the new Germany he had created, though as to when he should fight this war was up to debate, as can be seen by the amount of diplomatic attempts surrounding Danzig and the corridor. However, Hitler ultimately decided on fighting his small war with Poland only to have Britain and France declare war on Germany (we can discuss the stupidity of this in another thread). Hitler did not intend to crush Poland initially, but stenographer records are clear that when hundreds of reports of torture and murder of ethnic Germans and German POWs reached him, he responded by saying
that there will never be another Polish state, and thus sought to have its national spirit suppressed.

130 years young.

>Hitler did not intend to crush Poland initially

I suppose the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was Jewish propaganda.

They had a good chunk of German land.

In Mein Kampf he seems to allude to Lebensraum as the land conquered by the Teutons.

The poles refused to allow a vote by the germans living in that land.

Are you doubting that German bio-engineers would have been able to pull that off if given the chance?

It wasn't German land. Prussia held it for a century, but Germans never became a majority there despite attempts at germanization and influx of German settlers.

junker pls go

Taking back German clay and protecting (or "protecting" depending on who you're talking to) was very important to his goals.

Glad you mentioned. It was a way to keep the Soviet Union at bay. Hitler had watched the Red Army grow exponentially, and had voiced his concerns over the threat they posed many times. His conversations with British and French diplomats echo the same concern, when they offered that germany downsize its army in exchange for African colonies. Hitler refused on grounds that Russia continues to build its forces, therefore Europe cannot afford for Germany to downsize its own. Granted, the non aggression pact did play a major role in the destruction of Poland, but its main purpose was quite clearly to hold back the Red Army.

I know what it was for. It's also proof Hitler had every intention of destroying Poland from the very beginning of the war.

>Prussia held it for a century
Germany held Upper Silesia and West Prussia for longer than a century.

Piece of shit stormfag

You should probably stop browsing /pol/ and I don't mean it in a shitposting kind of way. Poles were to be massacred and enslaved - how is that beneficial for them?

Prove it. Counter the points I've made. There is no doubt that the Germans had scores to settle with the Poles, but the decision as to what Germany would do with a defeated Poland, was not decided beforehand.

I put forward objective information and that's your response? Come on. You can do better.

Before asking anyone to refute your claims, you must prove yours. Start with:

> but stenographer records are clear that when hundreds of reports of torture and murder of ethnic Germans and German POWs reached him

Since this argument gets thrown around a lot by revisionists but never gets backed up. Let's see it.

Slightly longer, but not long enough to make them German in their entirety.

Fair enough. Let's skip ahead a moment. Conversation with Jodl, April 30th, 1940, as the Norway campaign drew to a close, Hitler had exclaimed great joy at the victory, but subsequently showed great admiration for the Norwegians who had fought honorably. May 9th, he gave an order to set all Norwegian prisoners free, as they had put up a noble fight. Hitler stated that their doctors tended to German wounded, while the Poles had gouged their eyes out. Norwegians fought in full uniform and openly, while the Poles had used cowardly guerilla tactics. Therefore, Norwegians had earned German respect where the Poles acted "sub-human".

These transcripts are referring to the reports of the Bromberg massacre, where Polish militia and regulars had slaughtered ethnic Germans. In retaliation, German units executed many Poles in the area, believed to be militia, but no doubt, there were innocents among them. Furthermore, Polish snipers behind the front lines waged a guerilla war against the Germans and the Polish civilian population paid the price for it.

it was literally his end goal to conquer eastern europe for the german people

And let's add this too while I'm at it, since I suspect you're missing a lot of the historical picture here (not your fault-the history of Europe 1918 to 1957 is very redacted or fabricated). Professor Broszat's "Nationalsozialistische Polenpolitik" is another source for seeing the reality that Hitler was unsure of what to do with Poland initially. His orders at the time of planning and declaring war on Poland had been to destroy its military. His decision to punish and subjugate the Poles only came after the reports of murdered POWs and ethnic Germans. As for the massacre itself and its reprisals, look up the diary of rear army command (General Braemer).

Danzig was rightful German clay

Hitler was interested in the USSR joining the Axis but relations deteriorated when Stalin pushed for Finland, Romania, and other eastern states to join the USSR. Eventually Axis believed Russian invasion was imminent.