Göring was certainly an ardent Nazi and utterly loyal to Hitler. But his preferences in foreign policy were different. The German diplomatic historian
Klaus Hildebrand in his study of German foreign policy in the Nazi era noted that besides for Hitler's foreign policy programme that there existed three other rival foreign programmes held by factions in the Nazi Party, whom Hildebrand dubbed the agrarians, the revolutionary socialists and the Wilhelmine Imperialists
[30]. Göring was the most prominent of the "Wilhelmine Imperialist" group in the Nazi regime. This group wanted to restore the German frontiers of 1914, regain the pre-1914 overseas empire, and make
Eastern Europe Germany's exclusive sphere of influence. This was a much more limited set of goals than Hitler's dream of
Lebensraum seized in merciless racial wars. By contrast, Göring and the "Wilhelmine Imperialist" fraction were more guided by traditional
Machtpolitik in their foreign policy conceptions.
[31].
Furthermore, the "Wilhelmine Imperialists" expected to achieve their goals within the established international order. While not rejecting war as an option, they preferred diplomacy, and sought political domination in eastern Europe rather than the military conquests envisioned by Hitler. And they rejected Hitler's mystical vision of war as a necessary ordeal for the nation, and of perpetual war as desirable. Göring himself feared that a major war might interfere with his luxurious lifestyle.
Göring's advocacy of this policy led to his temporary exclusion by Hitler for a time in 1938–39 from foreign policy decisions. Göring's unwillingess to offer a major challenge to Hitler prevented him from offering any serious resistance to Hitler's policies, and the "Wilhelmine Imperialists" had no real influence.
[32][33][34] In the summer of 1939, Göring (who had some private doubts about the wisdom of Hitler’s policies attacking Poland, which he felt would cause a world war, and was anxious to see a compromise solution) and the rest of the "Wilhelmine Imperialists" made a last ditch effort to assert their foreign policy programme. This was especially the case as Göring's
Forschungsamt (research office), which functioned as Göring's private intelligence agency had broken the codes which the British Embassy in Berlin used to communicate with London. As the
Forschungsamt revealed,
Neville Chamberlain was most serious about going to war if Germany invaded Poland in 1939, and directly contradicted the advice given to Hitler by the Foreign Minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop (a man whom Göring loathed at the best of times) that Chamberlain would dishonour the “guarantee” he had given Poland in March 1939 if Germany attacked that country.
Göring was involved in the desperate attempts to avert a war in the summer of 1939 by using various amateur diplomats such as his deputy Helmuth Wohltat at the Four Year Plan organization, the British civil servant Sir
Horace Wilson, the newspaper proprietor
Lord Kemsley, together with would be peace-makers like the Swedish businessmen
Axel Wenner-Gren and
Birger Dahlerus, who served as couriers between Göring and various British officials
[35]. All of these efforts came to naught because Hitler (who much preferred Ribbentrop’s assessment of Britain to Göring's) would not be deterred from attacking Poland in 1939 together with the unwillingness and inability of the "Wilhelmine Imperialists" to challenge Hitler despite their reservations about his foreign policy.