What Adolf Hitler Said About Great Britain
“This is a war of extermination.” - Adolf Hitler
Note that ‘Britain’ and ‘England’ are often interchanged, much in the same way that “the Netherlands’ and ‘Holland’ are in English.
Hitler’s obsession with establishing friendship between Germany and the United Kingdom is an often overlooked fact of history. It was probably one of his major goals as far as foreign policy was concerned, and many big decisions during the war were based on his hope that one day Churchill would be replaced with a different leader who would realise the threat of the Soviet Union and ally himself with Germany.
The Western Front was never something Hitler desired, and one he didn’t start. The peace offers made after France fell are either overlooked or seen in the wrong light, because they were quite generous. At the time most of the world believed Britain was about to get steamrolled, even many in Britain. Churchill spoke about fighting the Germans on land, in Britain, because that was seen as what the future might bring. Any other politician would likely have accepted the peace offer, which was the only way for Britain to keep its empire.
Sources used, in order:
– Mein Kampf – chapter 13, German foreign policy after the war, July 18, 1925
– Speech to the Reichstag, July 19, 1940
– Winterhelp opening speech, October 3, 1941
– Speech to the NSDAP’s oldest members, München
“Mr. Churchill with this war has started the greatest military nonsense for which any statesman or warlord has ever been responsible"! (Adolf Hitler)
Hitler never visited Britain or any part of the British Empire. He knew essentially no English, though this did not stop him holding the opinions that “the English language lacks the ability to express thoughts that surpass the order of concrete things”, and that English spelling was hopelessly unphonetic. According to a Swedish businessman, Birger Dahlerus, who worked with Göring in an effort to prevent the Second World War, Hitler was “a man whose real knowledge of Britain was nil.” In Mein Kampf, he says that, as a young boy, he thought that, in the international world of the future, “the English could supply the merchants, the Germans the administrative officials, and the Jews would [be] the owners”. As mentioned above, he followed the Boer War, which took place from his tenth to his thirteenth years, and played games with his friends based on the exploits of the Boers. The first time that that he felt he had to decide whether to support the British Empire or not, he supported its enemies, though this is hardly surprising, as most of the German-speaking press and public were viciously Anglophobic throughout the conflict.
When the First World War broke out, Hitler volunteered to serve in the Bavarian army. From the start, he seems to have regarded Britain as Germany’s main enemy, though this could have been because his regiment spent most of the war facing British and Imperial troops, rather than the French and Belgians. On 20 October 1914, the young Private Hitler wrote to his landlady in Munich. “Tonight, the 20th, we are going on a 4 day train journey, probably to Belgium. I am tremendously excited. … I hope we shall get to England.” On 5 February 1915, during a heavy battle, Hitler wrote to an acquaintance in Munich, describing how he looked forward to an attack on the British lines, “… tomorrow we attack the English. At last! All of us rejoiced.” Later in the letter, he described with obvious relish how he was amongst “dead and wounded Englishmen… Again and again one of our shells landed in the English trench. They poured out like ants from an ant heap, and then we attacked…Many came out with their hands up. Those who did not surrender were mowed down.” Hitler fought mostly against the British during the First World War. His position as a Meldegänger, or dispatch runner, was relatively privileged, though it was not free from danger. His job was to carry messages from the regimental headquarters to the front line. He was, therefore, attached to regimental headquarters, which means he was spared the worst of the mud and squalor of the trenches. As a dispatch runner in his regiment, he was also much more likely to survive the war. According to Thomas Weber, one in four of those who served in his regiment were killed, and 80 per cent were casualties, while all of the dispatch runners at regimental HQ survived the war.
Hitler was not, however, out of danger entirely. He was involved in four of the critical battles of the First World War, each time fighting mostly against British or Imperial forces. He was seriously wounded twice, both times by the British army. On the first occasion, in October 1916, a shell burst in his dugout and injured him in the left thigh. He spent two months in a Red Cross hospital in Berlin as…
https://www.bennionkearny.com/hitler-views-on-britain-and-british-empire/
