Depression rather with any surge in anti-Semitism. Hillgruber argued that for most ordinary people in Germany who became anti-Semitic that it was a case of them becoming anti-Semitics after becoming National Socialists as opposed to anti-Semitics becoming National Socialists. Hillgruber maintained that Hitler had always intended to exterminate the Jews since the early 1920s, contending that for Hitler a "racial revolution" was needed to win a "global power" position, but that he at first needed to fulfill certain preconditions. Hillgruber contended that for Hitler the invasion of Poland in 1939 was meant to be both the beginning of both the "biological revolution" and to be only a local war, and that British and French declarations of war were an unpleasant surprise which interrupted the full execution of his plans. As such, in Hillgruber's view, Hitler had to put off the full execution of his plans that already began with the war against Poland until France was defeated. In the same way, Hillgruber maintained that the Action T4 programme was part of Hitler's attempts to build a national consensus for genocide and to enlist the support of the bureaucracy (most of whom had begun their careers during the German Empire or Weimar Republic) for his genocidal politics. Hillgruber argued that the limited public protests that took place in 1941 against the Action T4 killings against a backdrop of widespread public approval or indifference to the killings of fellow Germans who just happened to be mentally and/or physically disabled showed Hitler just how easy it was to create a genocidal national consensus, and that crucially the bureaucracy were not amongst those who protested. This was especially noteworthy as the Action T4 killings took place within Germany, and that victims of Action T4 were the amongst the most vulnerable, hapless and weakest elements in German society - people that Hillgruber argued that by all rights should have inspired compassion and kindness rather than a merciless drive to kill them all. This was especially the case as a great many of the physically/mentally challenged Germans killed as "life unworthy of life" in six killing centers thinly disguised as nursing homes were children. Hillgruber maintained that if the Action T4 killings of fellow Germans caused only limited protests in Germany, then Hitler could have reasonably expected that killings of Jews (the vast majority of whom were not German) outside of Germany in Eastern Europe would