 Although the officer ranks in the US Army did swell, in the German army the ratio of officers to total men remained steady.Inter-war Germany had as its main strategic goals the re-establishment of Germany as a European great power
and the complete annulment of the Versailles treaty of 1919.After Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party took power in 1933, Germany's political goals also included the accumulation of "Lebensraum" ("Living space") for the Germanic "race" and the elimination of Communism as a political rival to Nazism.