15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
Under the Treaty of Versailles, the German army was limited to 100,000 men and Hitler ignored these limitations and expanded the military. He also began an ambitious rearmament program. This at first did not alarm other nations but as the German army and navy grew in numbers they became extremely worried. This was especially the case after the German army occupied the Rhineland, which was technically, under a de-militarized zone. Hitler was technically breaking international law but the western allies were reluctant to challenge Germany over their rearmament program. Rearmament was a key Nazi policy based upon its ideology of power and militarism. The growing might of Germany alarmed its neighbors and by 1939 there was a full blown arms race throughout Europe and various nations were readying for war.
Nazi ideology demanded that Germany seize the land it needed to become a powerful nation. It also required that all Germans be united in the Third Reich. This led the Nazi government to embark on a policy of expansion and this included recovering lands lost to the French, Czechs and Poles. Beginning in 1936 the German army had reoccupied the Rhineland in defiance of international law and the Versailles Treaty.<ref>Young, Robert (1996). ''France and the Origins of the Second World War'', New York : St. Martin's Press, p. 78.</ref> Nazi Germany then engineered a unification between it and Austria, in what was known as the Anschluss. Hitler and the Nazi’s then turned their attention to Czechoslovakia. There was a large ethnic German population in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia and the Nazi’s wanted them to re-join Germany. <ref>Young, p. 111.</ref> Hitler threatened war and Britain and France, who had adopted a policy of appeasement to prevent a war, encouraged the Czech’s to give up the Sudetenland. After occupying the Sudetenland, Hitler then occupied the rest of the country, despite the Munich agreement. This became known as the ‘Rape of Czechoslovakia’.<ref>Hillgruber, Andreas (1995). ''Germany and the Two World Wars'', translated by William C. Kirby, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, p. 67.</ref> The Nazi ideology meant that territorial expansion and disregard for international treaties was part of government policy. As a result, Hitler adopted an aggressive foreign policy that made war inevitable.
==Road to War==
