Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945

p. 383

During the 1930s Hitler’s aim in building up German arms, in rallying the German people, in defying other nations’ uneasiness over these things, was to expand German glory. Germany had been shamed at Versailles. Hitler understood that the only cure for shame was glory. All he needed was Lebensraum, living space, “into which a racially purified Germany could expand indefinitely.” Germany had been belittled; now it would grow huge. It had been shamed; now it would become glorious. To be a pure, essentially German nation, Germany would have to purge itself of “the Jewish incubus in its midst,” but also “sweep aside the ‘inferior’ Slavic peoples and the millions of additional Jews who dwelled to Germany’s east, claim new sod for the German plow, and create a greater Reich that would last a thousand years.”