Ever heard about Junkers 390?
Hitler didn’t plan for a large war until much later than it actually happened. His assumption was that Poland would go undefended except by rhetoric. And why not? Everything else had, and Poland had little strategic value for Britain or France.
As to the OP, I seriously doubt that Hitler had any real desire to conquer America. But again, his grand strategy was pretty ad hoc, so if he’d won Europe who knows if he’d have gone after the U.S.
“I read in a book (think it was Beevor’s “Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege”) that Hitler hadn’t planned for WWII to start until 1945. Any confirmation?”
None. I understand Hitler had expected and even looked forward to war over the Sudetenland, then the later occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia.
However, the Navy (Kriegsmarine) brass had told Hitler that their fleet building plans wouldn’t be ready until 1945 or 46, and as he accepted that without substantial comment one could infer (if one had been in that Navy) that he had no war plans until '45 or '46. Or at least no war plans that involved a substantial role for the Navy.
I can’t claim to be an authority, but I, too, have read Shirer’s The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, as well as The House Hitler Built (S. H. Roberts, 1937). From both the pre-and post-war perspectives, I have the definite impression that Hitler counted on the passivity of the great powers; at every step, his generals seemed terrified that France would retaliate for their actions in central Europe, that England would come to the aid of Poland, and that he was going to turn all of Europe against Germany. Hitler replied, in effect, “Nah, they’re not gonna do anything.” He was right.
Is utter crock. Hitler wanted the war to start in 1938. When the Munich conference went ‘his way’ he threw several documented tantrums complaining that this would now delay the war. Regards his ‘Stuffen Plan’ it pretty much ran as follows on a thought timeline:
- Annex Austria
- Invade Poland and Czechia
- Annex the rest of Eastern Europe from Germany to USSR
4 a. Occupy Western Europe
4 b. Incapacitate and destroy France
4 c. Annex the smaller North European countries.
5 Take Russia
5 b. Finish exterminating the Jews and other “Internationalists” - End war
All the African business and sea wars and what not were bothersome necessities that he didn’t want to hear much about. Hence the reciprocal disdain between him and the admiralty and Rommel.
Britain and the US were not part of the plan at all and he was 100% certain that they would either just briefly enter and exit the war or just not bother at all.
Whatever plans came up during the evolution of the war is another question. For certain is that Hitler wasn’t very fond in changing his objectives and if it didn’t fit into the ‘Stuffen Plan’ they were doomed to not get much support from the little guy himself.
And BTW, he did not need to start the war to save the economy, that has been dealt with in several threads lately.
Read Schirer’s “The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich” carefully, its all in there. Read “Main Kampf”, he says it all himself, already in 1924.
Sparc