[antod]

You're mixing up the unintended consequences with the intended consequences. Persecuting jews (and others) was an intended consequence and started a lot earlier than WW2. Hitler wanted war, but just to the east - not a world war with the west. He was convinced the French, British and Americans wouldn't care enough to resist him. WW2 was an unintended consequence.

[littlestymaar]

This explanation fails to describe what happened in 1940: when Hitler invaded Poland, UK and France declared war, but they stayed in France and Belgium so if Hitler only wanted war on the East, he could very much have it due to the reluctance of the colonial powers to attack. He deliberately chose to invade France.

(And it was an overwhelming success by the way, his demise came from the betrayal of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (and the even stupider move by the Japanese to attack the US at Pearl Harbor): had the conflict settled, or at least stick to a stalemate, in the positions of May 1940, WWII would have ended as a complete German and Japanese success.)