If the Nazis were "nationalists" why didn't they stay within their boarders?

[George S]

Ironically (the world and its history are full of ironies) the Nazis adopted Jews' type of "Hebrew nation" chauvinism. According to Torah Moses created a Hebrew nation from Semitic Canaanite tribes descended from "Israel" (Jacob). HIs Mosaic laws formed one of the earlier civilizations whose ethics are foundations of modern western civilization.

Hitler and Himmler through the National Socialist German Workers' Party enhanced (I believe) Bismarck's mystique of a German nation formed from a looser Confederation of German States (older principalities). The irony is they wanted to form, and did, the kind of national spirit Moses had initiated among his Hebrew tribes thousands of years before.

Once that national spirit was instilled in the Germanic principalities the economic destruction from nearly universal overpopulation gave a good excuse, even reason, to evict all "non-Germans" from German territories. Again ironically, the Jewish nation typically keeping itself isolated from its host nations, was better assimilated in Germany than other places in Europe.

That didn't save them from being high on the list for eviction from German territory. When the Nazis found they couldn't get rid of all of them by intimidation they enslaved them and ultimately slaughtered them along with a similar number of other "inferior" (according to Nazis) people.

What began as an again necessary -- as it had been necessary around the world many times when populations began to exceed their lands' ability to support them at contemporary technology levels -- conquest for land and resources took on its own life. Like so many times before -- with the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, French, and British -- once advanced weapons and tactics easily conquered immediate objectives the victors said: "That was so easy lets take everything we can!"

So arrogantly failing to learn from Napoleon's blunders, Hitler repeated them almost exactly.

PS: "Nation" here means the true nation of related people, not the modern inaccurate use as a substitute for "country."