What was Germanys Plan for Invading Other Countries?

Just what plans did Germany have in regards to occupying other countries if the war had gone their way?

Did they plan to stop at Moscow or head all the way to the Pacific?

Did they plan to control only northern Africa so as to control the Mediterranean or did they have the entire continent in mind?

South America?

They certainly wanted as much of the Soviet Union as possible. Whether they would have gone that far is another question. Conquering and controlling the European areas of the Soviet Union would have been hard enough. Carving out a German empire in Eastern Europe was Hitler's goal from the start.

The Germans weren't particularly interested in North Africa in the first place. Their involvement came about because Mussolini managed to make such a mess of his attempt to conquer the region.

The Germans were never in a position to attack South America. Even commando raids would have been an iffy proposition. Controlling their European possessions was enough of an effort without considering seizing territory across the Atlantic.

tim gueguen 101867

It seems to me that all three Axis powers were opportunistic. Perhaps this was especially true of Japan, which seized its desired perimeter by the middle of May 1942, and continued (into China from Burma, threatening Australia from New Guinea, occupying Aluetian islands and trying to take Midway) more because they could than for any thought-out reason. The moves on Alaska and Midway, for example, seem to have been a reaction to the Doolittle raids on the Homeland, and not considered beforehand.

Similarly, Germany moved east in large part because it was foiled in moving west

I would like to add one thought to the excellent replies already posted.

The Nazi leadership combined an increasingly psychotic head of state (Hitler), with a ragtag band of opportunists, each out more for himself than to serve some particular national ideal, much less a coherent foreign policy or plan.

I personally believe that many of the Nazi leaders would have loved nothing more than to carve out fiefdoms for themselves in whatever territory they could command. This is what in fact happened in conquered territories. Had the Nazis beaten the Soviet Union and somehow made peace with Britain and the U.S., I can imagine individual Nazi leaders on the periphery of the empire constantly stirring up trouble on their borders in order to try to aggrandize their own personal fiefdoms. Although this is less likely, I can even imagine local military revolts and Nazi vs. Nazi conflicts aimed at seizing local or empire wide power.

Perhaps the best models for all this are not found so much in modern nation states as in the Alexandrian Empire, the Roman Empire, medieval Europe and the middle east, the Crusader state in Palestine, and so on.

Maybe the modern machinery of totalitarianism was too strong for such a devolution of the empire. Maybe after Hitler's death the Nazis would have reconstituted a new central leadership and held to a coherent plan. But the events in the former Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia show that, even in modern times, devolution of modern and unpopular multi-national empires can happen.

Alan

According to the Oxford Comapanion to World War II, Germany's 'Z' plan of 1938 planned to have 4 aircraft carriers by 1948 and finally a total total of 8. Two were being worked on when the war started. Goering was never a big fan of the idea of giving the Kriegsmarine its own air force. However, we see that, at least in the 1930's, Hitler and the Germans were planning to project their air power to places far away from Europe. This could either have been to help attack other continents, or it could have been used in a way like their submarine fleet, i.e. in order to attack Britain's maritime supply lines.

It is difficult to see what the 'Z' plan was about, other than the desire to have a powerful navy. The Z-plan navy could not have successfully challenged the British, who would have built to oppose it.

I think we're attributing a little too much rationality here. I don't see that Hitler had an actual role for the fleet, any more than Kaiser Wilhelm had in the twenty years before WWI.

The first requirement of a German fleet (as opposed to a collection of raiders) is to be able to get past Britain, which means it has to be able to beat the British, who can be expected to concentrate their main fleet against it.

The Z-plan envisaged something like eight battleships by the middle 1940s, which is clearly inadequate. The British were building five at the start of the war, although they proved disappointing as they were built to satisfy treaties nobody else followed (the US originally designed the North Carolina class to those treaties, but, since the US battleships were a bit later, was able to redesign), but the four they ordered a bit later would have been much better. This gives Britain nine modern battleships to eight, and ignores the large number of earlier and slower battleships the Germans would have to deal with, as well as possible reinforcement from France and the US.

Germany was in much the same position, navally, in 1935 and 1895: Germany was superior industrially to Britain, but couldn't concentrate on building a large fleet to the same extent.

There is also the fact that the Z-plan was old thinking. It concentrated on surface combatants and somewhat neglected aircraft carriers. The British, although hampered by the RAF in much the same way that the Kriegsmarine carriers would have been hampered by the Luftwaffe, at least knew that large numbers of carriers would be vital.