Adolf Hitler
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approved the Z Plan, a five-year naval expansion program which called for a Kriegsmarine of 10 battleships, four aircraft carriers, three battlecruisers, eight heavy cruisers, 44 light cruisers, 68 destroyers and 249 U-boats by 1944 that was intended to crush the Royal Navy. The importance of the Z Plan can be seen in Hitler's orders that henceforward the Kriegsmarine was to go from third to first in allotment of raw materials, money and skilled workers. In the spring of 1939, the Luftwaffe was ordered to start building a strategic bombing force that was meant to level British cities. Hitler's war plans against Britain called for a joint Kriegsmarine-Luftwaffe offensive that was to stage "rapid annihilating blows" against British cities and shipping with the expectation that "The moment England is cut off from her supplies she is forced to capitulate" as Hitler expected that the experience of living in a blockaded, famine-stricken, bombed-out island to be too much for the British public. In November 1938, in a secret speech to a group of German journalists, Hitler noted that he had been forced to speak of peace as the goal in order to attain the degree of rearmament "which were an essential prerequisite ... for the next step". In the same speech, Hitler complained that his peace propaganda of the last five years had been too successful, and it was time for the German people to be subjected to war propaganda. Hitler stated: "It is self-evident that such peace propaganda conducted for a decade has its risky aspect; because it can too easily induce people to come to the conclusion that the present government is identical with the decision and with the intention to keep peace under all
circumstances", and instead called for new journalism that "had to present certain foreign policy events in such a fashion that the inner voice of the people itself slowly begins to shout out for the use of force." Later in November 1938, Hitler expressed frustration with the more cautious advice he was receiving from some quarters. Hitler called the economic expert Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, General Ludwig Beck, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the diplomat Ulrich von Hassell, and the economist Rudolf Brinkmann "the overbred intellectual circles" who were trying to block him from fulfilling his mission by their appeals to caution, and but for the fact that he needed their skills "otherwise, perhaps we could someday exterminate them or do something of this kind to them". In December 1938, the Chancellery of the Führer headed by Philipp Bouhler received a letter concerning a severely physically and mentally disabled baby girl named Sofia Knauer living in Leipzig. At that time, there was a furious rivalry existing between Bouhler's office, the office of the Reich Chancellery led by Hans-Heinrich Lammers, the Presidential Chancellery of Otto Meissner, the office of Hitler's adjutant Wilhelm Brückner and the Deputy Führer's office which was effectively headed by Martin Bormann over control over access to Hitler. As part of a power play against his rivals, Bouhler presented the letter concerning the disabled girl to Hitler, who thanked Bouhler for bringing the matter to his attention and responded by ordering his personal physician Dr. Karl Brandt to kill Knauer. In January 1939, Hitler ordered Bouhler and Dr. Brandt to henceforward have all disabled