decision-making in foreign policy. Mason argued that the Nazi leadership, deeply haunted by the November Revolution of 1918, was most unwilling to see any fall in working-class living-standards out of the fear that it might provoke another November Revolution. According to Mason, by 1939, the "overheating" of the German economy caused by rearmament, the failure of various rearmament plans produced by the shortages of skilled workers, industrial unrest caused by the breakdown of German social policies, and the sharp drop in living standards for the German working class forced Hitler into going to war at a time and place not of his choosing. Mason contended that, when faced with the deep socio-economic crisis, the Nazi leadership had decided to embark upon a ruthless "smash and grab" foreign policy of seizing territory in Eastern Europe which could be pitilessly plundered to support living-standards in Germany. In this way, Mason argued, the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 was caused by structural economic problems, a "flight into war" imposed by a domestic crisis, and not by some master plan for war on the part of Hitler. The Anglo-German historian H.W. Koch in a 1983 essay criticized Hillgruber's picture of Hitler following rigidly preconceived foreign policy he was alleged to have worked out in the 1920s. Koch wrote against Hillgruber that Hitler did not want a war with Poland, and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (in his view) was meant to pressure the Poles into making concessions instead of being (as Hillgruber claimed) a plan for partitioning Poland. The Hungarian-American historian John Lukacs criticized Hillgruber's portrayal of Hitler following a Stufenplan, arguing that there was much opportunism and contingency in Hitler's strategy, with little sign of a master plan. In Lukacs's opinion, Operation Barbarossa was primarily an anti-British move intended to force Britain to surrender by defeating the Soviet Union. Likewise, Lukacs argued that Hitler's statement to the League of Nations High Commissioner for Danzig, Carl Jacob Burckhardt, in August 1939, stating that "Everything I undertake is directed against Russia…", which Hillgruber cited as evidence of Hitler's ultimate anti-Soviet intentions, was merely an effort to intimidate Britain and France into abandoning Poland. In the same way, Lukacs took issue with Hillgruber's claim that the war against Britain was of only "secondary" importance to Hitler compared to the war against the Soviet Union. The Greek historian Aristotle Kallis wrote that there is "no conclusive