Germany. Hillgruber maintained that both Hitler and Ribbentrop believed in 1939 that Germany could destroy Poland in a short, limited war that would not cause a world war. Faced with clear signs that the British were attempting to create a "peace front" comprising Britain, France, Poland, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Romania, Greece and Turkey that was meant to "contain" Germany (Hillgruber argued), Hitler had - under Ribbentrop's influence - decided in August 1939 to do "a 180-degree tactical reversal" and to seek an alliance with the Soviet Union. Hillgruber argued that Hitler believed Ribbentrop's claim that if Britain were confronted by a Germany that had support of the Soviet Union (which could supply the Germans with all of the raw materials that would otherwise be cut off by a British blockade), then the British would abandon Poland, and thus Germany could destroy Poland without fear of causing a world war. At the same time, Hillgruber believed that in 1939 Stalin aimed to promote war between the capitalist West which would lead to the final collapse of the capitalist system, and would allow the Soviet Union to rule the world. Hillgruber used in support of this thesis Stalin's speech of 19 January 1925. If another world war would break out between the capitalist states (which Stalin saw as inevitable), Stalin stated: "We will enter the fray at the end, throwing our critical weight onto the scale, a weight that should prove to be decisive". However, Hillgruber believed that the initiative for the German-Soviet rapprochement of 1939 came from the German side, and that Stalin sought to play the Germans and the British off one another, to see who could offer the Soviet Union the most favorable deal. Hillgruber noted that in 1939, when war threatened over Poland, unlike in 1938 when war threatened to occur over Czechoslovakia, Hitler received overwhelming support from the Wehrmacht leadership. The reason for this difference, in Hillgruber's opinion, was the rampant anti-Polish feeling in the German Army. In support of this argument, Hillgruber quoted from a letter written by General Eduard Wagner, who was one of the officers involved in the abortive putsch of 1938, who wrote to his wife just before the invasion of Poland, "We believe we will make quick work of the Poles, and in truth, we are delighted at the prospect. That business must be cleared up" (emphasis in the original). Hillgruber