BLITZKRIEG REVISITED: A NEW LOOK AT NAZI WAR AND EXTERMINATION PLANNING

Abstract

Historians have generally accepted the notion that Hitler's war against France was planned and conducted as a Blitzkrieg from the very beginning. Recent research, however, has shown the fallacy of this assumption by firmly establishing that Hitler and his generals expected the war in the West to become a re-enactment of the First World War. This review puts the new findings in military history in the context of other recent studies on Nazi plans to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ after the surprisingly fast victory over France. It links Nazi war and extermination planning with Hitler's underlying ideology and strategy and looks more closely at the still controversial Madagascar plan. One of the questions discussed is why there were no plans to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ under the cover of the war against France, a war expected to last for years.