Unlike a good many Germans, many of whom responded to the outbreak of war in 1939 with resignation, Hitler was quite animated by the Polish campaign. He would often leave his command train Amerika to tour various parts of the front by car. Hitler felt that the danger posed by the Poles was minimal and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact eliminated the danger of a Soviet intervention. On 22 and 25 of September, he did fly to the outskirts of Warsaw to personally observe the city's aerial bombardment.

This was to be among the last times Hitler directly witnessed the war until 1945. The fast moving nature of the war from 1940 onward meant he often had to command from specially constructed Führerhauptquartier (FHQ) behind the lines. In the course of 1941/42 The Germans did construct two FHQ, Bärenhöhle and Wasserburg, which would allow for the dictator to personally oversee the destruction of Moscow and Leningrad respectively. However, the failure of German arms on the front meant that the work on these FHQ were abandoned and Hitler never occupied them.