Those who want to fight, let them fight... and those who do not want to fight... do not deserve to live.

Germany needed to fight, Hitler explained, because it had been cheated out of territory by the Treaty of Versailles.

Lands where German people lived were no longer under the German flag, and that was, he said, "a vicious, brutal crime". Hitler had other reasons why Germany needed to expand her borders, and the most important was the notion of Lebensraum, or 'living space'.

The idea sounded logical enough, simply put that every group of people needs ample space to be self sufficient. A nation of people, known to Hitler as the Volk, needed enough land to grow its own food and to gather the raw materials needed for a decent life. And because the Volk in this case were a superior race of Aryans - a superrace, as Hitler called them, they needed plenty of Lebensraum in which to expand.

Hitler had definite ideas, too, about where this living space should be. While some nations looked overseas to expand their empires, Germany, he felt, needed only to look east, to Poland and Russia. This huge territory, with its vast resources, would be perfect for the expanding Aryan people. Besides, he thought, the Slavs who lived there were an inferior race and deserved to be conquered.

But lands could not be conquered without armies and weapons, and the Treaty of Versailles had very firmly limited Germany's military. With its allotted force of no more than 100,000 men, and tight controls on weapons, Germany was in no position to expand its borders.