Web hosting Custom Email SiteBuilder

 

     Three major powers had been dissatisfied with the outcome of World War I.  These powers were Germany, Italy, and Japan.  Germany, the principle defeated nation, had bitter territorial losses and   a high rate of reparation payments from the Treaty of Versailles. In February 1933, Germany withdrew from the League of Nations, because they wanted to build up the armed forces.
     Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party officially declared himself in support of creating a German Empire and rebuilding Germany's strength.  Hitler had many Foreign Policy Goals......
                                  ~ Reuniting the Reich with territory lost in the treaty
                                  ~ A German empire that included all German speaking people
                                  ~ Lebensraum-(Living Space)
                                  ~ France as chief enemy to German expansion
     Around 1936 the Spanish Civil War (known as the "Last Pure War,"  "the Good Fight," and a dress rehearsal for the second world war) had been introduced.  Just three years before Hitler plunged the whole world into war, he and Mussolini bankrolled Generalissimo Francisco in a brutal military coup in Spain.  This war finally ended on April 1, 1939, with half a million Spanish casualties.
     Hitler launched his own expansionist drive, mainly supported by Mussolini, with the annexation of Austria in March 1938.  The world powers tolerated Hitler's expansion in Austria because there were German speaking people living in areas of Austria.  In 1938, Hitler demanded that Czechoslovakia turn over the Sudentenland to Germany, which threatened war because France had promised to protect Czechoslovakia in case of German aggression.
 At the Munich conference in September of 1938 Hitler threatened war to annex the western border of Czechoslovakia.  During the Munich Conference Germany annexed the Sudentenland, with Hitler's promise that this would be the last territorial claim he was to make in Europe.
     September 1, 1939, German armies marched into Poland.  On September 3rd, British and French armies surprised Hitler by declaring war on Germany.  This was the beginning of World War II.