Answer:
he war did not come as a surprise. Hitler was not secretive about his aggressive expansion policies.
But again and again, says Klaus Hesse from the Topography of Terror Documentation Center in Berliner, he maintained publicly that he was taking the peaceful route.
"Everything Hitler did was geared toward war ever since he came to power in 1933. From the very beginning, his aim was to revise the post-war order ordained in the Treaty of Versailles - to regain hegemony in Europe through an enlarged Germany. Everything was aimed at creating a large-scale economy that would allow Germany to wage a vast and long-term war in Europe."
Domestic war
The Treaty of Versailles in 1919 forced Germany and its allies to accept sole responsibility for causing the First World War and committed it to making territorial concessions, disarming and paying reparations. As Hitler saw it, this was a great humiliation, and he made it his mission to rectify it.
The so-called "stab-in-the-back" conspiracy theory was particularly convenient for Hitler's plans. And it wasn't very difficult to convince the public that the Social Democrats and the Jews had "stabbed the Reich in the back." And so a new war began within the country's own boundaries.
Deutschland Geschichte Bildergalerie Juden in Berlin SA Hetze 1938Deutschland Geschichte Bildergalerie Juden in Berlin SA Hetze 1938
The extent of Nazi brutality became obvious after the progrom of 1938Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Just a few days after he gained power, Hitler called for a country-wide boycott of Jewish shops on April 1, 1933. After that he passed the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service," which forced all non-"Aryans" and those not loyal to the National Socialist (NS) Party to retire from civil service.
From the very beginning, it was also about securing the financial means to wage war. Before the Nazis created a legal framework to regulate the pillaging of Jewish property and possessions, Jewish businesspeople were put under pressure to make profits off others fleeing the country. Emigrants had to pay 25 percent of their taxable assets to the German government, which in the first two years of NS rule alone earned the government 153 million reichsmark. On all bank transfers abroad, there was a fee that had to be paid to a state banking institution, the "Deutsche Golddiskontbank."
By September 1939, that fee had risen to 96 percent of the transfer sum.
Berlin 1936 - Olympic Games and war plans
Up to 1939, the majority of Germans saw Hitler as someone who could fix the country. His dictatorship brought about a positive change in the economic situation for many people. Unemployment sank, consumerism increased.
"So in this sense, Hitler was quite a populist - he knew you had to give the people butter along with guns," Hesse told DW.
But weapons were, in fact, more important for the government.
While Berlin was hosting the Olympic Games, Hitler was busy solidifying his war plans. In four years, the Nazi armed forces, the Wehrmacht, were to be fit to carry out the war in the east. Hitler's plan as noted in his classified "Four-Year Plan" was to make Germany self-sufficient in many areas so it could isolate itself from the world market and invest all its resources in arms and military buildup. Soon, half of the state's expenditures were going towards weapons.
The same year, the Wehrmacht occupied the demilitarized Rheinland in the west of the country - in clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In November 1937, Hitler told his secret plans to a select circle of the Wehrmacht's top generals: Germany needs more space, or "Lebensraum," for the "preservation and growth of the German people."
Explanation: Sorry For Long Answer