Did Hitler even need to invade Poland?

[Leucosticte]

Seems like his justification was, the Germans needed to attack eastward in order to get some lebensraum. Maybe they needed more farmland or something.

Why, though? Why not just trade for whatever they needed? Did trade barriers get in the way? Germany's a pretty big country, so I don't really see why they needed a whole lot more space in which to live; it's not like they're Luxembourg.

I guess one justification for the invasion was that Germans were being mistreated in Poland, but why couldn't they have just come home to Germany? Was there some historical case to be made for why that territory should belong to Germany?

 

[Admin]

There are multiple reasons why Hitler decided to invade poland, of course none of these reasons were particularly good

The issue is that they later ended up losing in the second world war, if they had won the invasion would have been easier to justify, part of the reason so many countries turned against nazi germany is due to the fact that he invaded poland, that made it more difficult to form alliances with other countries.

 

[Leucosticte]

There are multiple reasons why Hitler decided to invade poland, of course none of these reasons were particularly good

The issue is that they later ended up losing in the second world war, if they had won the invasion would have been easier to justify, part of the reason so many countries turned against nazi germany is due to the fact that he invaded poland, that made it more difficult to form alliances with other countries.

Yeah, even when I heard his side of the story, it wasn't all that convincing. https://www.impartialtruth.com/adolf-hitler-germany-invaded-poland/

Sounds like it was another fight like what the Falklands War was for Britain, where it was basically their dignity and prestige at stake.