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Hitler met secretly with top military advisers. The plan was to absorb Austria and Czechoslovakia into the Third Reich.
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German troops marched into Austria unopposed. One day later, they announced its Anschluss(union) with Austria was complete and no other country in the world took action when hearing this news.
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Hitler then planned to annex Czechoslovakia. France and Great Britain promised to protect Czechoslovakia.The British and Germany signed the Munich Agreement, turning Sudetenland over to Germany without a single shot fired.
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German troops took over the rest of Czechoslovakia and then Hitler began to think about taking land from Poland too, its Eastern neighbor.
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Hitler charged that Germans in Czechoslovakia were being mistreated by the Poles and needed protection. He said this to make getting their land easier.
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Germany and Russia committed to never attack each other. They signed a second secret pact, dividing Poland between them. Hilter did not have to worry about a two-front war again.
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German Air Force bombed Poland and invaded. This was called the 'blitzkreig', a strategy used by performing air strikes to obtain their land.
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Poland, Great Britain, and France declared war on Germany. At the end of this month, WWI begun.
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Hitler launched a surprise invasion of Denmark and Norway.
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Hitler turned against Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg which were overrun by the end of May.
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Germans began to assemble and invasion fleet along the French coast. They could not compete with the naval power of Britain so they launched an air war.
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Hitler handed French officers his terms of surrender. Germany would now occupy the northern part of France.
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The RAF shot down over 185 German planes. Six weeks later, Hitler called off the invasion of Britain indefinitely.
