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Perhaps no power's war goals have been so thoroughly researched than that of Nazi Germany. Before his National Socialist Party came to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler wrote his political manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which became a bestseller in the 1920s and 1930s. Hitler laid out a revised 19th Century idea of Lebensraum, or "living space." Germany's population was the second-largest in Europe and expanding. The Nazis sought to expand into Eastern Europe to create a series of colonies around a Greater Germany. Nazi racial ideology believed that the Slavic, Roma, and Jewish populations of Eastern Europe were all inferior to the fair skinned Aryan Germanic races. Many of these racist policies were combined with Germany's belligerent stance and blaming the country's Jewish population for the loss of World War I, the infamous "stab in the back" theory.

Germany sought to reverse the terms of Versailles. Many, including the annexation of Austria and remilitarization had been accomplished by the start of the war in September 1939. Hitler demanded that France be humiliated due to its role in the First World War. When France surrendered to Germany Hitler forced the French delegation to sign the peace terms in the same railway car that Germany signed the armistice in 1918. Germany also extended its domination into Scandinavia, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe. Many of the Eastern European states were forced into satellite status around Germany. Resources of the continent, including allied states, neutral countries, and occupied territory were all funneled towards Germany's war effort. However, up until late in the war the Nazi regime would attempt to restrict rationing, remembering the heavy toll on the civilian population in World War I. Late in the conflict the German government instituted a total war stance bringing the entire population and industry into desperate measures to win the war. <ref>Overy, R.J., ''War and Economy of the Third Reich''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Page 266-268.</ref>