The conference of 5 November 1937 had been called in response to complaints from Admiral Raeder that the navy was receiving insufficient allocations of steel and other raw materials and that its entire building programme was in danger of collapse.
[1] In Hitler's view, the economy of Nazi Germany had reached such a state of crisis that the only way of stopping a drastic fall in living standards was to embark on a policy of aggression sooner, rather than later, to provide Lebensraum by seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia.
[2] A striking change noted in the Hossbach Memorandum is Hitler's new evaluation of Britain: from a prospective ally in 1928 in the Zweites Buch to a "hate-inspired antagonist" in 1937 that was unwilling and unable to accept a strong Germany.
The only remedy, and one which might appear to us as visionary, lay in the acquisition of greater living space – a quest which has at all times been the origin of the formation of states and of the migration of peoples.The second part of the document detailed three 'contingencies' that Hitler would take if certain situations prevailed in Europe, purportedly to ensure the security of the Reich.
Beyond that, Hitler claimed that two "hate-inspired antagonists" (Britain and France) were blocking German foreign policy goals at every turn and that sometime in the next five years or so, Germany would have to achieve autarky by seizing Eastern Europe to prepare for a possible war with the British and the French.
After the conference, three of the attendees (Blomberg, Fritsch, and Neurath) all argued that the foreign policy Hitler had outlined was too risky, as Germany needed more time to rearm.
Some historians, such as Sir John Wheeler-Bennett and William L. Shirer, believed that Blomberg, Fritsch, and Neurath were removed because of their opposition to the plans expressed in the Hossbach memorandum.
Taylor drew attention to one thing that the memorandum can be used to prove: "Goering, Raeder and Neurath had sat by and approved of Hitler's aggressive plans."
Taylor also stipulated that the meeting was most likely a piece of internal politics, and he pointed out that Hitler could have been trying to encourage the gathering's members to put pressure on the Reich Minister of Economics and President of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht, to release more funding for rearmament.
However, functionalist historians such as Timothy Mason, Hans Mommsen, and Ian Kershaw argue that the document shows no such plans, but the memorandum was an improvised ad hoc response by Hitler to the growing crisis in the German economy in the late 1930s.