[imported_Fluffy_Bunny]

The economy etc was natural German recovery & also down to his chiefs of staff. Where Hitler really excelled was bullsh&t diplomacy.

He managed to take over large swathes of central Europe without even firing a shot. He managed to take Czechosovakia, Austria, the Rhineland & the Sudetenland all because of appeasement.

He lied about his abilities to try & scare people into beliving his power. When Winston Churchill was speaking in the House of Parliament about the threat of Hitler, & then stated that Hitler was building an airforce, Hitler stated that the Luftwaffe was probably equal in size to, if not bigger than the RAF. When, infact, he did not have an airforce at all at this time. Why did he do this? To scare the politicians into giving him parts of Europe to avoid a war. eek:
The French were scared to sh&t of Hitler, & he took great delight in mocking them biggrin: When the French were speaking to Hitler about re-armament & troop sizes Hitler stated that he would only be satisfied with armed forces of equal strength or stronger than the French. biggrin: This made the French outraged & scared out their wits to know that Germany was re-arming, but, of course, at this time Hitler didn't have jack schmack. German re-armament was largely a myth until 1936 when Hitler had to start re-arming again because everyone else had.

What did he achieve? He was an outstanding statesman, he knew damn well that if he started a large ww2 he would lose, what he wanted to do was take over as much of Europe through diplomatic means & possibly fight a small war with Poland.

I strongly recommend Origins of the Second World War, A.J.P Taylor