Hitler declared war on September 1, 1939:

"As a National Socialist and a German soldier, I enter upon this fight with a stout heart! I ask of every German what I myself am prepared to do at any moment: to be ready to lay down his life for his people and for his country. If anyone thinks that he can evade this national duty, he will perish."

Please read this paragraph carefully and abandon what you thought you knew. What Hitler said in this paragraph is quite clear, and the outcome of the Second World War is contained within Hitler's declaration of war. 

Hitler does not ask Germans to get ready to conquer the world or to embark on a project to obtain "living space in the East" (the cliche that most historians embrace).

He asks the German people, very simply, to "lay down their lives;" to die.

Of course, German leaders and the German people did not succumb easily to Hitler's death wish for them. Waging war frantically, brutally, hysterically--they were tried desperately to save their own lives: defend themselves against Hitler's wish that they to die for Germany.

The Second World War was a monumental detour. But Hitler's fundamental wish for his people, to die for Germany, submit absolutely to the German nation, could not be evaded. With Hitler leading the way, guiding them along, Germans succumbed to the god, Germany, that Hitler and the German people worshipped.

Hitler's manic project: "DIE FOR GERMANY, OR YOU WILL DIE." "DIE FOR GERMANY OR WE WILL KILL YOU." No escape; no way out.

The Second World War was a monumental detour: Hitler's defense against his wish to destroy the German people and to die himself.  

 What Hitler said he wanted to happen eventually, of course, did happen. Germans died for Germany and Hitler acted to bring about the death of anyone he imagined refused to die for Germany.

The Jew symbolized such people: who did not want to die--sacrifice their lives--for Germany. The Holocaust was a vehicle for compelling Jews to die for Germany, the other side of the coin of warfare (the requirement that the German people die for Germany).

Everything followed from Hitler's central ideological dictum, the meaning of Nazism: DIE FOR GERMANY, OR WE WILL KILL YOU. 

The climax of the Second World War, the final solution, was Hitler's suicide. He desperately tried to avoid his wish to die by killing others in monumental numbers. Finally, however, his wish for death reverted back to its source--himself.