Editing Military strategy (section)

===World War II===

Interwar Germany had as its main strategic goals the reestablishment of Germany as a European great power<ref>{{cite book |title=Die Errichtung der Hegemonie auf dem europäischen Kontinent |trans-title=Constructing hegemony on the European continent |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DOhmAAAAMAAJ |series=Beiträge zur Militär- und Kriegsgeschichte: Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg |language=de |volume=2 |publisher=Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt |publication-date=1979 |isbn=9783421019356 |access-date=2017-01-31 |year=1979}}</ref> and the complete annulment of the [[Versailles treaty]] of 1919. After [[Adolf Hitler]] and the Nazi party  [[Machtergreifung|took power in 1933]], Germany's political goals also included the accumulation of ''[[Lebensraum]]'' ("Living space") for the Germanic "race" and the elimination of [[communism]] as a political rival to  [[National Socialism|Nazism]].  The destruction of European Jewry, while not strictly a strategic objective, was a political goal of the Nazi regime linked to the vision of a German-dominated Europe, and especially to the [[Generalplan Ost]] for a depopulated east<ref>{{cite book|last=Snyder|first=Timothy |title=Bloodlands&nbsp;— Europe between Hitler and Stalin |year=2010|publisher=Vintage Books|location=London|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BQ1HKmG9xZ8C |isbn=978-0-09-955179-9|pages=preface page ix–x|access-date=2017-01-31|quote=Hitler wanted not only to eradicate the Jews; he wanted also to destroy Poland and the Soviet Union as states, eliminate their ruling classes, and kill tens of millions of Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles). If the German war against the USSR had gone as planned, thirty million civilians would have been starved in the first winter, and tens of millions more expelled, killed, assimilated or enslaved thereafter.}}</ref> which Germany could colonize.