HST 504 Lecture Notes - Phoney War, East-Central Europe, Atlantic Charter
23 Sep 2012
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Document Summary
Victory through blitzkrieg: german conquests early in the war, 1939-1940. The second world war had begun on 1 september 1939, when germany invaded poland. More than two weeks later, the soviet union invaded from the east in order to grab its share of the pie as outlined in the nazi-soviet pact. By the end of the month, the polish republic was wiped from the european map by the two main revisionist great powers of the interwar period. The arrangement with hitler allowed stalin to reclaim vast territories that before 1917 belonged to the tsarist empire. In addition to eastern poland, moscow managed to get control over the baltic states (estonia, Latvia and lithuania), reclaimed bessarabia from romania, and was ready to declare war on. Yet, it was berlin that got the wolf"s share of victories at the onset of the second world war. By the end of september, hitler conquered most of poland.
