of a group of German historians - comprising Klaus Hildebrand, Gunter Moltman and J. Henke - who argued that, far from being haphazard, Hitler possessed and attempted to execute a coherent and detailed foreign-policy programme aiming at nothing less than world conquest. Hillgruber stated that Hitler's foreign policy: "geographically was designed to span the globe; ideologically, too, the doctrine of universal anti-Semitism and Social Darwinism, fundamental to his programme, were intended to embrace the whole of mankind". According to Hillgruber, the conquest of the Soviet Union and the intended alliance with Britain were the most important stages of Hitler's Stufenplan. Hillgruber claimed that though the Fuhrer was highly flexible in ways of realizing his "programme", Hitler was consistent throughout his political career in trying to achieve the "programme" he worked out in the 1920s. Hillgruber claimed that the outbreak of a world war in 1939 which Hitler had caused (but had not planned) with the invasion of Poland brought forward the timing of his "programme". Hillgruber used as examples to support his theory the Z Plan of January 1939 and Hitler's plans in June 1940 for annexing much of Africa together with key strategic points in the Atlantic; these Hillgruber submitted as evidence that Hitler was moving forward drastically the timing of his planned ultimate show-down with the United States. According to this argument: The first stage of Hitler's plan consisted of the military build-up of German strength and the achievement of the Weimar Republic's traditional foreign policy goals. The second stage was to be a series of swift regional wars to destroy such states as Poland, Czechoslovakia and France. The third stage envisaged a war to liquidate the Soviet Union and what Hitler regarded as its "Judaeo-Bolshevik" regime. The fourth stage involved a war against the United States by the now Greater Germany in alliance with the British Empire and Japan. Hillgruber argued that after the conquest of the Soviet Union, Hitler wanted to seize most of Africa, to build a huge navy, and (in alliance with both the Japanese and the British) to engage the United States in a "War of the Continents" for world domination. As Hillgruber described it: After the creation of a European continental empire buttressed by the conquest of Russia, a second stage of imperial expansion was to follow with the acquisition of complementary territory in Central Africa and a system of bases to