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March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria unopposed. A day later, Germany announced that its Anschluss with Austria was complete.
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French premier Daladier and British prime minister Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement, which turned the Sudetenland over to Germany.
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In October of 1938, Sudetenland was relegated to Germany because of the Munich Pact.
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In March, 1939, German troops poured into what remained of Czechoslovakia.
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In August, 1939, Stalin signed the Pact with Hitler. Facist Germany and Communist Russian now committed never to attack each other.
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In September, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. This invasion was the first test of Germany's newest military strategy, the blitzkrieg.
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The sitzkrieg. French and British troops on the Maginot Line waiting for German troops on Siegfried Line to act.
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An evacuation of British and French soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, France. More than 800 vessels in all ferried about 330,000 British, French, and Belgian troops to safety across the Channel.
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In June, 1940, at Compiegne, Hitler handed French officers his terms of surrender. Germans would occupy the nothern part of France, and a Nazi-controlled puppet government, headed by Marshal Philippe Petain, would be set up at Vichy, in southern France.
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In July, 1940, Germans began to assemble an invasion fleet along the French coast. Germany launched an air war to Britain.