We used to have War departments. Now we have defense departments. It's a giant white-wash. If it really was defense then nobody would ever cross their borders in a uniform.

Sorry to correct you, the Nazis claimed they were "defending" themselves from the Jewish threat. So no exception even for them.

You must have missed the 'lebensraum' bit.

True, I was focusing on the Jewish persecution.

However, even the lebensraum concept has undertones of defense against a threat rather than pure conquest: the term itself refers to space as a necessity for life rather than the object of simple greed. The lebensraum was considered by Nazi ideology "necessary for the survival" of the German race, against the threat of "inferior and decaying races". As far as I can understand it, the whole Nazi ideology is informed by a vision of history as a zero sum game and by a "triumph or perish" attitude- so that every aggression can be justified as a necessary and ultimately defensive move.