aggressive intentions" was nurtured by every successful foreign policy move. In Mason's opinion, the decision to sign the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact and to attack Poland, and with it risking a war with Britain and France, was an abandonment by Hitler of his foreign-policy programme, outlined in Mein Kampf and Zweites Buch, and was forced on him by the need to seize and plunder territory abroad in order to prevent the collapse of the German economy. Mason's theory of World War II as an act of social imperialism and as a sudden "flight into war" into 1939 was to involve him in the 1980s in a debate with the British historian Richard Overy. See also Social fascism Soviet Empire References Citations Sources Avalone, Paul W. The Rise of Social Imperialism in the German Socialist Party, 1890-1914 University of Wisconsin 1975 Eley, Geoff "Defining Social Imperialism: Use and Abuse of An Idea" pages 269-290 from Social History, Volume 1, 1976. Eley, Geoff "Social Imperialism in Germany: Reformist Synthesis or Reactionary Sleight of Hand?" from From Unification to Nazism, London: Allen & Unwin, 1986. Eley, Geoff "Social Imperialism" pages 925-926 from Modern Germany Volume 2, New York, Garland Publishing, 1998. Mason, Timothy and Overy, Richard "Debate: Germany, `Domestic Crisis and War in 1939': Comment" pages 205-221 from Past and Present, Volume 122, 1989 reprinted as "Debate: Germany, `domestic crisis' and the War in 1939" from The Origins of The Second World War edited by Patrick Finney, Edward Arnold: London, United Kingdom, 1997, . Solty, Ingar "Social Imperialism as Trasformismo: A Political Economy Case Study on the Progressive Era, the Federal Reserve Act, and the U.S.'s Entry into World War One, 1890-1917", pages 91–121 from Bellicose Entanglements 1914: The Great War as a Global War edited by Maximilian Lakitsch et al., Zurich, LIT, 2015. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich Bismarck und der Imperialismus, Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1969. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich "Bismarck's Imperialism" pages 119-115 from Past and Present, Volume 48, 1970. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich "Industrial Growth and Early German Imperialism" from Studies in the Theory of Imperialism edited by Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, London: Longman, 1972. China–Soviet Union relations Communist terminology Foreign relations of China Foreign relations of the Soviet Union Imperialism studies Maoist terminology Political science terminology Socialism