Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945) was wired for destruction but was spared by a disobedient general, who surrendered it to the Force Franỗaise de lIntộrieur (FFI) and the Western Allies In the end, Hitler displayed the same moral indifference to Germans that he showed to millions of non-German victims As early as January 1942, when it looked as though the Wehrmacht might replicate the defeat of the French Army in the snows before Moscow in 1812, he said to his closest confidants: “If the German people were no longer inclined to give itself [sic] body and soul to survive then the German people would have nothing to but disappear.” On March 19, 1945, he tried to implement that contempt for failure in the struggle for the “survival of the fittest” peoples: he ordered wholesale desolation of Germany and smashing of all means of survival left to any postwar Germans At long last he was disobeyed by a handful of members of a political party, government, and national military who had followed him to physical and moral ruination Hitler’s Long-Term Aims Did Hitler seek world conquest? The verdict is not entirely clear, but the evidence strongly suggests that he did, at least in some vague and distant sense Hitler had once envisaged a two-phase strategy His “Stufenplan” originally aimed at alliance with Britain, or at least to keep Britain neutral while he crushed France and the Soviet Union and created a Nazi superstate in control of Eurasia That phase was to be completed by 1943–1945 Next, Hitler would implement his Z-Plan, framed in January 1939, which detailed a naval shipbuilding program for super battleships, aircraft carriers, and other blue water ships capable of defeating the Royal Navy A critical point is that on July 11, 1940, he ordered work on a blue water navy theoretically capable of matching the U.S Navy At that moment he believed that the European war he started in Poland in 1939 was already won by Germany: he had wiped Poland off the map, then defeated the Western Allies The fact that Britain would not quit did not affect his judgment: it was on its knees at the time, being pounded by his Luftwaffe Further evidence of a long-term plan of world dominion was his insistence on acquiring naval bases in Morocco and the Canary Islands from Spain, a request made of Franco in June 1940 Hitler apparently believed that, in alliance with Japan, the Kriegsmarine should be capable of defeating the Royal Navy and carrying the fight to the United States by 1948 His subsequent forays into North Africa and failed cajoling of Spain to provide his navy with Atlantic bases may therefore have aimed at more than just support of his Italian ally, or a temporary tactical advantage against Britain Hitler may have intended to keep parts of North and West Africa within a German overseas empire as bases from which to invade South America and to support a prospective anti-American alliance with Mexico Franklin Roosevelt said about as much at the time and may actually have believed and even feared the possibility It is hard to know Hitler’s real long-term plans, as he indulged innumerable fantasies that had little basis in reality For instance, he admired the “jihadist” or holy war spirit of Islam, even speculating that had Germans converted to Islam rather than Christianity in the early Middle Ages they would have conquered the 524