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Hitler secretly met with his top military advisers, and declared that in order to grow and prosper, Germany needed the land of its neighbors. He planned to absorb Austria and Czechoslovakia into the Third Reich. After one of the advisers protested that Annexing those countries would start a war, Hitler replied the "'The German Question' can be solved only by means of force, and this is never without risk."
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German troops marched into Austria unopposed.
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Germany announced that its union with Austria was complete. The US and the rest of the world did nothing.
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Daladier and Chamberlain chose to sign the Munich Agreement, which turned the Sudetenland over to Germany without a single shot being fired.
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As the dawn broke, German troops poured into what remained of Czechoslovakia. At nightfall, Hitler gloated, "Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist." After that, the German dictator turned his land-hungry gaze toward Poland.
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Hitler began to charge that Germans in Poland were mistreated by the Poles and needed his protection. People thought that Hitler was joking, since the attack would provoke a declaration of war from France and Britain-both of whom had promised military aid to Poland.
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Hitler launched surprise invasion of Denmark and Norway in order "to protect [those countries'] freedom and independence." But really, Hitler planned to build bases along the coasts to strike at Great Britain.
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As tensions began to rise over Poland, Stalin shocked everyone and signed a nonaggression pact with Hitler. Once bitter enemies, fascist Germany and communist Russia committed to never attack each other.
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The German air force rained bombs on military bases, airfields, railroads, and cities in Poland. This spread terror and confusion. This was the first test of Germany's newest military strategy, called the blitzkrieg or lightning war.
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Stalin sent his Soviet army into Finland. After three months of fighting, the outnumbered Finns surrendered.
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Hitler then turned against the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg which were overrun. The Phony war ended.
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At Compiègne, as William Shirer and the rest of the world watched, Hitler handed French officers his terms of surrender. Germans were to occupy the northern part of France, and a Nazi-controlled puppet government, headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, would be set up at Vichy, in southern France.
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Charles de Gaulle fled to England where he claims defiantly, "France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war." That summer, Germans began to assemble an invasion fleet along the French Coast.
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The RAF (Britain's Royal Air Force) shot down over 185 German planes; at the same time they lost only 26 aircraft.
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Hitler called off the invasion of Britain indefinitely. "Never in the field of human conflict," said Churchill in praise of RAF pilots, "was so much owed by so many to so few."
