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Hitler secretly met with his top military advisers to talk about taking land from neighboring countries.
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German forces march into Austria unopposed because the majority of the people who wanted to unify with Germany. The rest of the world did nothing. This Anschluss, or union, with Austria was Hitler testing his boundaries with how much he could get away with.
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French premier Edouard Daladier and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain sign the Munich Agreement which turned the Sudetenland over to Germany peacefully. This is known as appeasement, giving up principles to pacify an aggressor.
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Germany invaded what remained of Czechoslovakia.
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Stalin and Hitler agreed to never attack each other and also secretly divided Poland between them.
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The Blitzkrieg or lightning war was Germany's newest military strategy. It involved fast tanks and powerful aircraft taking the enemy by surprise and then crushing all opposition. This was used to take over Poland in just three weeks.
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After Germany invaded Poland Britain and France declared war on Germany.
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Hitler launched a surprise invasion of Denmark and Norway claiming that he was trying to protect their freedom and independence. He really just wanted to build bases along the coast to strike at Great Britain.
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Italy had entered the war on the side of Hitler and helped him capture France. Hitler then handed France officers his terms of surrender which included Germans occupying the northern part of France and a Nazi-controlled puppet government would be set up in southern France.
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Germany launches a naval and aerial assault on Great Britain. The air force bombed the city of London for months to try and force a surrender.
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The Royal Air Force, RAF, used new technology called radar which allowed the pilots to track German aircraft and plot their flight paths even in darkness. After losing 185 German planes Hitler called off the invasion.
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Hitler took more land from neighboring countries to expand Germany's power.
