The foreign relations of Third Reich were characterized by the territorial expansionist ambitions of Germany's dictator Adolf Hitler and the promotion of the ideologies of anti-communism and antisemitism within Germany and its conquered territories. The Nazi regime oversaw Germany's rise as a militarist world power from the state of humiliation and disempowerment it had experienced following its defeat in World War I. From the late 1930s to its defeat in 1945, Germany was the most formidable of the Axis powers - a military alliance between Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, and their allies and puppet states. Adolph Hitler made most of the major diplomatic policy decisions, while foreign minister Konstantin von Neurath handled routine business.^[1]

Following the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, Germany succumbed to a considerably weakened position in pan-European politics, losing all its colonial possessions, Alsace-Lorraine, Poland and part of Ukraine, and all its military and naval assets. It was committed to heavy reparations to the Allied Powers, especially Belgium and France. These concessions to the Allied Powers led to a great feeling of disillusionment within the newly established Weimar Republic which paved the way for the Nazi party, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler to seize power. Upon Hitler's taking power in January 1933, Germany began a program of industrialization and rearmament. It re-occupied the Rhineland and sought to dominate neighboring countries with significant German populations.^[2]

In 1933–1935 Hitler focused his attention on domestic policies and the control of the Nazi movement. Foreign policy was handled by the same men as in Weimar--the old landed elite. They shared the general German belief in being badly mistreated in the 1920s. Germany stopped all reparations payments in 1933, quit the League of Nations, and stepped up he secret rearmament program. It dealt cautiously with France and Poland.^[3]

The decisive change to an aggressive policy came in 1936, with the reoccupation of the Rhineland in explicit violation of the Versailles Treaty. Britain and France decided not to respond with force and Hitler immediately expanded his plans, turning to "lebensraum" -- or an expansion to the east.^[5] Hitler's new diplomatic strategy was to make seemingly reasonable demands, threatening war if they were not met. When opponents tried to appease him, he accepted the gains that were offered, then went to the next target. Germany remilitarized the Rhineland, formed an alliance with Mussolini's Italy, sent massive military aid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War, annexed Austria, took over Czechoslovakia after the British and French appeasement of the Munich Agreement, formed a peace pact with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, and finally invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany and World War II in Europe began.^[6][7]

Having established a "Rome-Berlin axis" with Benito Mussolini, and signing the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan – which was joined by Italy a year later in 1937 – Hitler felt able to take the offensive in foreign policy. On 12 March 1938, German troops marched into Austria, where an attempted Nazi coup had been unsuccessful in 1934. When Austrian-born Hitler entered Vienna, he was greeted by loud cheers and Austrians voted in favour of the annexation of their country. After Austria, Hitler turned to Czechoslovakia, where the Sudeten German minority was demanding equal rights and self-government. At the Munich Conference of September 1938, Hitler, Mussolini, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier agreed upon the cession of Sudeten territory to the German Reich by Czechoslovakia. Hitler thereupon declared that all of German Reich's territorial claims had been fulfilled. However, hardly six months after the Munich Agreement Hitler used the smoldering quarrel between Slovaks and Czechs as a pretext for taking over the rest of Czechoslovakia. He then secured the return of Memel from Lithuania to Germany. Chamberlain was forced to acknowledge that his policy of appeasement towards Hitler had failed. In August 1939 Hitler and Stalin stunned the world with a friendly agreement between two bitter foes. They secretly agreed to split control of Eastern Europe. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Britain and France declared war, but neither was prepared to invade Germany or give any help to Poland. The government of Poland collapsed (it did not go into exile), and the Soviets invaded eastern Poland. The war with Poland was over in a matter of days, and the war in the west went into the "phoney war" stage of very little fighting or movement on the ground. (There was action at sea.)^[8]

Germany's foreign policy during the war involved the creation of friendly governments under direct or indirect control from Berlin. A main goal was obtaining soldiers from the senior allies, such as Italy and Hungary, and millions of workers and ample food supplies from subservient allies such as Vichy France.^[9] By the fall of 1942, there were 24 divisions from Romania on the Eastern Front, 10 from Italy and 10 from Hungary.^[10] When a country was no longer dependable, Germany would assume full control, as it did with France in 1942, Italy in 1943, and Hungary in 1944. Full control allowed the Nazis to achieve their high priority of mass murdering all Jewish population. Although Japan was officially a powerful ally, the relationship was distant and there was little coordination or cooperation, such as Germany's refusal to share the secret formula for making synthetic oil from coal until late in the war.^[11]

DiNardo argues that in Europe Germany's foreign-policy was dysfunctional during the war, as Hitler treated each ally separately, and refused to create any sort of combined staff that would synchronize policies, armaments, and strategies. Italy, Finland, Romania, and Hungary each dealt with Berlin separately, and never coordinated their activities. Germany was reluctant to share its powerful weapons systems, or to train Axis officers. There were some exceptions, such as the close collaboration between the German and Italian forces in North Africa.^[12][13]

Hitler devoted most of his attention during the war to military and diplomatic affairs. He frequently met with foreign leaders, such as the January 10, 1943, he met with Romanian Premier Marshal Ion Antonescu at German field headquarters, with top-ranking generals on both sides. On 9 August 1943, Hitler summoned Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria to a stormy meeting at field headquarters, and demanded he declare war on Russia. The tsar refused, but did agree to declare war on far-away Britain. American news reports stated that Hitler tried to hit him and the tsar suffered a heart attack at the meeting; he died three weeks later.^[14]

The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps.^[15][16]

Nazi policy from 1933 was to force all Jews to leave Germany. The regime passed anti-Jewish laws, encouraged harassment, and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After invading Poland occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators.

Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse, exhaustion, or being used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments. The majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942. The killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and POWs; the term Holocaust is sometimes used to also refer to the persecution of these other groups.

Nazi Germany financed and supported political organizations that opposed the hostile policies of the United Kingdom, United States and France. German intelligence operations by Abwehr were poorly done. All the spies in the U.S. were quickly captured. All German spies in Britain were "turned" and were used to feed false information that misled Berlin into defending the wrong landing zones during the Allied invasion of June 1944.^[20]

Despite its pan-Germanic expansionism, the Nazi regime did not invade Switzerland or Sweden.

Hitler's speeches sometimes did mention return of the lost African colonies, as a bargaining point, but at all times his real target was Eastern Europe.^[35][36]

• Axis Powers
• The Holocaust
• Lebensraum