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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.
[[File:Rethondes_Wagon_21_June_1940_one_day_before_the_signing_of_the_armistice_of_June_1940.jpg|thumbnail|300px|left|The day before the Armistice is signed, Hitler chats with high-ranking Nazis and officers near the Compiègne Wagon.]]
Germany sought to reverse the terms of Versailles. Many, including the annexation of Austria and remilitarization had been were accomplished by at 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., <i>[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198205996/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0198205996&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=3c03031789269530c940917e41ba1671 'War and Economy of the Third Reich]</i>. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) Pg. 266-268.</ref>
The Nazi National Socialist Party had a clear racial component to many of its goals before and during the war. As the conflict started against Russia in June 1941, the picture became more convoluted. The invasion of Russia with its large Jewish population led directly to the Holocaust. Furthermore, millions of prisoners or war and other Slavs were worked to death in German camps. While some in Eastern Europe welcomed German forces due to Stalin's oppression, their initial warm feelings were not reciprocated. Germany actively sought to exterminate or resettle the population of the Soviet Union and Poland to be replaced with German settlers. Millions of civilians and prisoners became slave labor for the Nazi regime. These German states would revolve around an enlarged Germany and largely based around agriculture. Some portions of the Soviet Union would become German resorts or key military bases, including the Crimean Peninsula. Towards the end of the war Germany hoped that the Western Allies could be convinced to work with Germany against the advancing Soviet armies. These hopes were all in vain as the Allies all demanded an unconditional surrender with no separate peace.
===Italy===
