HIST 1084 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Munich Agreement, Maginot Line, Lebensraum
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World War II: The War in Europe
• Lebensraum
• Blitzkrieg
• D-Day
• Appeasement
• Nazi-Soviet Pact
• Battle of Stalingrad
Hitler’s Quest for Lebensraum
• Aryans deserved more high quality land
• Darwinian view of the world : survival of the fittest
• Could only happen with Eastward movement
Austrian Anschluss (1938)
• Hitler and Nazis march into Austria
• No resistance
• Could have been a turning point
Why did the Allied Powers allow Hitler to go unpunished?
• Desire to avoid another war on the scale of WWI
• Key disagreements among allies
• GB: believes that peace could be maintained by satisfying the reasonable
demands of dissatisfied powers (appeasement), they also see Hitler as bulwark
against communism
• France: unwilling to take Germany without GB
• US: retreated into isolationist stance
Sudetenland, October 1938
• Demands land over border
• Allies divided, chose appeasement
• Munich agreement
• Czechs not invited
• Invade October 1938
Appeasement: The Munich Agreement, 1938
• Peace in our time
• Got Sudetenland
Czechoslovakia, March 1939
• More land
• Hitler does not have the military
• Any more expansion there will be a war
• Invade Poland 1939, triggers war
Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact 1939
• Germany and USSR promise not to enter the war if the other is engaged in a continental
war
• Also had agreed to carve up Poland and Eastern Europe
• Hitler has confidence
• Blitzkrieg: lightning war, thunder and lightning
France’s Maginot Line
• New defensive line from Swiss border to Luxembourg/Belgium border
• Germans attacked 1940 and took Paris
• Consolidation of territory
• Democracy’s do not have stamina for a fight according to Hitler
• Thought about GB
France Surrenders June 1940
• Looked with cowardice
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