World War 2
On November 5, 1937, Hitler met with his most trusted military advisors for a top-secret briefing. The third Reich's future, he told them, depended on solving the need for lebensraum. Where would new living space come from? Not from overseas colonies, he declared, but from those nations nearest Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. When someone protested that annexing those countries could provoke war, Hitler replied, "Germany's problems can be solved only by means of force, and this is never without risk." In fact, the risk turned out to be less than Hitler's advisors feared. The following February, Hitler invited Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg to meet with him at his villa at Berchtesgaden, high in sation about the view and the lovely day, Hitler snapped, "We did not gather here to speak of the fine view or the weather." Then the storm broke. For the next few hours, Hitler pounded the table and bombarded the Austrian leader with accusations. Even worse, Schuschnigg, normally a chain smoker, had to do without cigarettes because Hitler could not stand smoking. By the end of the day, Schuschnigg had been bullied into signing an agreement to bring Austrian Nazis into his government.
Declared that the Sudetenland would be his "last territorial demand." In their eagerness to avoid war, Daladier and Chamberlain chose to believe him. On September 30, 1938, they signed the Munich Pact, which turned the Sudetenland over to Germany without a shot being fired. The blitzkrieg tactics worked perfectly, however. The fighting was over in three weeks, long before France, Britain, and their allies could respond. In the last week of fighting, the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east, grabbing some of its territory. The portion Germany annexed contained almost two-thirds of Poland's population. By the end of the month, Poland had ceased to exist-and World War II had begun. Contrary to his promise at Munich, Hitler was not finished expanding the Third Reich. As dawn broke on March 15, 1939, 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 Germany's eastern neighbor, Poland. Hitler then turned to Czechoslovakia. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up at the end of World War I, the Sudtenland, a mountainous region inhabited by 3 million German-speaking people, had been joined to Czechoslovakia. In the spring of 1938, Hitler charge that the Czechs were abusing the Sudeten Germans, and he began massing troops on the Czechs border. American correspondent William Shirer, then stationed in Berlin, wrote
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1002
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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