THE EXPANSION OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE
- Hitler was determined to overturn the remaining military and territorial provisions of the treaty and include ethnic Germans in the Reich as a step toward the creation of a German empire in Europe.
- During the first three years of World War II, from September 1939 through November 1942, a series of military victories permitted German domination of the European continent.
- German then invaded poland in september 1939, within three weeks the polish surrendered.
- Between april and june 1940 germany attacked and conquered Denmark and Norway
- On May 10, 1940, German forces invaded western Europe.Luxembourg surrendered that day and was ultimately annexed to Germany. The Dutch army surrendered on May 15; the Belgians capitulated on May 28. The Netherlands was placed under a German realm Commissar
- In march 1941 germany invaded Greece and Yugoslavia as well as them help italy defend italian controlled libya.
- In June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. After driving Soviet forces out of eastern Poland.
- Between July and early December 1941, German troops conquered the Baltic states (Estonia,Latvia, and Lithuania), Belorussia, most of the Ukraine, and large tracts of Russian territory. By early December 1941, the Germans had laid siege to Leningrad in the north, reached the outskirts of Moscow in the center, and conquered Rostov.
- The German armed forces engaged in secret rearmament even before the Nazi takeover of power.
- Thereafter, the Nazis supported rearmament and rapidly expanded arms production. Military conscription was reintroduced on March 16, 1935, in open violation of the Treaty of Versailles. At the same time, Hitler announced the expansion of the German army to more than 500,000 men.
- In the 1925 Treaty of Locarno, Germany had recognized both the inviolability of its borders with France and Belgium and the demilitarization of the Rhineland. On March 7, 1936, however, Hitler repudiated this agreement and ordered the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) into the demilitarized Rhineland. Hitler's action brought condemnation from Britain and France, but neither nation intervened.
- After a prolonged period of intense propaganda inside Austria, German troops entered the country on March 12, 1938, receiving the enthusiastic support of most of the population. Austria was incorporated into Germany on the following day.
- In April, this German annexation was retroactively approved in a plebiscite that was manipulated to indicate that about 99 percent of the Austrian people wanted the union (known as the "Anschluss") with Germany. Neither Jews nor Roma (Gypsies) were permitted to vote in the plebiscite.