Abstract This dissertation examines the role of diplomacy, economics and the military capabilities of the Third Reich in late 1938, and 1939. During the course of 1938-1939 it became increasingly clear to the leadership of Nazi Germany that its planned diplomatic offensive and economic consolidation had failed, and so too had its efforts at further rapid military and economic expansion. Rather than back down to these difficulties the Reich’s leadership chose to improvise a new strategy instead, one that would drive it to an early war. To explore these failures of policy and the subsequent realisation of a new policy, this dissertation analyses the available primary source material on the Reich’s diplomatic efforts, economy, its military preparedness and the attitudes of its leaders. This dissertation will assert that the structural constraints of the Third Reich’s position were the greatest impediment to the realisation of its long-term strategic and economic goals in 1939. This led to the outbreak of war far earlier than had been hoped for, but this was nonetheless accepted by the Nazi leadership as it was plain to them that the Reich had nothing to gain by waiting.
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