Countdown to War: How Nazi Germany Prepared for World War II

It was April 1933, and Berlin was on the precipice. President Paul von Hindenburg’s health was failing, the Reichstag had been shuttered, and the Nazi Party was now the only legally recognized political party in all of Germany. The Enabling Act, passed just weeks prior, had granted Chancellor Adolf Hitler emergency powers, and with its passage, the Weimar Republic was no more.

Around the world, other nations watched with a wide range of emotions for what came next, and though there were undoubtedly those within Germany itself that feared where Hitler’s course may lead, their voices were drowned out. The fervor for this new regime, for Hitler’s grand plan, was greater than ever. It seemed more and more likely every day that Germany would be transformed into something nearly unrecognizable, but nobody seemed to mind.

With the benefit of hindsight, the destination was clear — the devastation and horror the Nazi regime would bring not just to its own people, but to the whole of Europe and much of the world. But for the German public of the time, and even for their leaders, it was not yet clear how exactly Hitler would go about bringing his vision to life. After all, Germany in that time was still recovering from the devastation of the Great War.

The Treaty of Versailles and the Weimar Republic’s Fragile Foundation

Covert rearmament efforts had been well on their way from the early 1920s, but even still, the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles kept the nation far short of the power it would need for outward expansion. For any of the Nazi Party’s promises to come true, German society itself would have to reorganize toward a single goal: war, and victory, at any cost. The end of the First World War and the subsequent signing of the Treaty of Versailles saw Germany utterly humiliated.

Between being forced to relinquish many of its holdings and territories around the world, and agreeing to terms that would keep its military hamstrung for the foreseeable future, Germany had found itself in a hole that, under the best of circumstances, would take decades to dig out of. The nation would be forced to disarm, and then demilitarize, essentially relinquishing its status as a major power in Europe. And perhaps worst of all, by signing the treaty, Germany agreed to accept full guilt and responsibility for the damages of war, and make reparations of a scale that would cripple its economy for many, many years to come.

Although the amount of money demanded of the German nation — $33 billion in 1921 — was seen as an exorbitant sum even by the economists of the day, the victorious Allied powers insisted that their losses be paid back. Measures included within the treaty defined the retaliatory actions the Allies would take if Germany missed its payments, and with no substantial capacity to fight back, the Germans had no choice but to agree. The German people, as well as their political leaders at the time, were deeply resentful of the conditions forced upon them, and overwhelmed by the degree of reconstruction and economic reformation it would take to meet their new quotas.

The treaty was, in many ways, deeply hypocritical given the founding principles of the League of Nations, and although the German nation was essentially held at gunpoint to agree to the Allied terms, their leaders knew as they did so that Germany probably would not be able to pay it all. Part of Germany’s incentive to expand its territory before and during World War I had been to gain a greater degree of autarky — economic independence — and now, any attempts Germany made to restructure their economy would be done with less autarkic freedom than ever before. In many ways, the Treaty of Versailles was a treaty doomed to fail, or perhaps even one written to force failure on the part of the Germans.

But like it or not, this was the new way, and Germany would have to make things work. At this time, the nation was ruled by the Weimar Republic, a parliamentary government that was liberal for its time.

Hyperinflation, the Ruhr Crisis, and the Rise of Extremism

With constitutional provisions for freedom of speech, freedom of religious practice, and equal voting rights for women, the Republic was a far cry from the Nazi regime that would supersede it. However, it was also deeply unwelcome in many parts of Germany, as an extension of the same terms Germans had been compelled by the Allies to accept. Unemployment was high, especially among war veterans, and many parts of the country were low on food or starving entirely.

With the boot of the Allies planted firmly on Germany’s chest, a popular myth began to circulate among the German people: that the nation had been “stabbed in the back” by the communists, the socialists, and the Jews, who had ensured Germany’s defeat and humiliation. It was a rampant conspiracy theory, and one that took hold almost as quickly as the Weimar Republic’s biggest Achilles’ heel: hyperinflation. There were a lot of reasons that the value of the German Papiermark had begun to spiral out of control, with the aforementioned Treaty of Versailles playing a significant part.

Faced with dire economic struggles, the Weimar Republic resorted to printing more money. This did not go well, and by 1922, inflation was so far out of control that Germany alerted the former Allied powers that it would be unable to pay its next several years’ reparations. France, sensing a bluff from the Germans, insisted that Germany keep its end of the bargain, and when Germany could not do so, a joint expedition by sixty thousand French and Belgian troops occupied Germany’s Ruhr region to extract reparations themselves.

The German government ordered a policy of passive civilian resistance, and as France took control of industrial and resource centers, it also blockaded the Ruhr and its surrounding regions from Germany. Now without a key economic zone, this blockade crippled the German economy even further. German sabotage and guerrilla warfare in the Ruhr were met with deportations and arrests, and the value of German marks fell to over four trillion to meet the value of one US dollar.

This gutted the German middle class, caused food riots, and brought Germany to the brink of civil war. But no socioeconomic death spiral is complete without a few people looking to use the whole situation to their own advantage, and Germany was no different. Communists and socialists planned coups and uprisings, and Adolf Hitler, the leader of the then-fringe Nazi Party, attempted to march on Munich in what is now known as the Beer Hall Putsch.

Hitler’s coup attempt was a disaster. After his arrest and a shockingly lenient trial, Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison. It was during the small portion of this sentence that he served that he would write Mein Kampf.

Stabilization, Hindenburg’s Presidency, and the Great Depression’s Blow

The national and international pressure on the leading government was just too much, and after mass resignations, a new coalition came to power within the Republic. These leaders took a far firmer approach to Germany’s problems, and enacted a state of emergency through which they could deal with their domestic social unrest. In the occupied Ruhr, passive resistance was replaced by a policy of appeasement, and reparation payments began to make their way to France and the former Allies again.

A new and tightly controlled currency, called the Rentenmark, was passed and then stabilized. The new coalition received no thanks for averting civil war, as their leader was forced to resign for his trouble, but the following leader brought the crisis to its official end. At this time, the French were still running amok through a good part of Germany, but a combination of short-term foreign loans, British and American mediation, and a slightly more forgiving repayment plan was enough to convince France to bring its troops home.

The Rentenmark was then discontinued, as the national bank was made independent, and the Reichsmark became the national currency for the foreseeable future. It was around this time that Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was elected president of Germany after the death of his predecessor. A war hero, a conservative, a monarchist, and a beloved figure across most of Germany, Hindenburg was a largely unifying figure who spent the following five years improving Germany’s domestic and international situation.

This period saw Germany enter into the League of Nations, while also allaying the fears of the uneasy Soviet Union, and Allied military control over Germany was withdrawn. Germany became far more industrialized, unemployment fell, its economy lurched back to life, and its politics swung sharply leftward. It was a time accompanied by significant social change, a meaningful expansion of individual rights, and overall, a sentiment that Germany seemed to finally be on track again. 1929 saw two major shifts to the status quo.

The first was a renegotiation of Germany’s reparations schedule, one that generated significant resistance from the Nationalist and Nazi Parties. This was the Nazi Party’s introduction to national political relevance, after a surge to popularity in rural areas that had come on the back of virulent antisemitism. Although their attempts to push back on financial negotiations were fruitless, the moment was far more significant for having given them a seat at the negotiating table — one that they were not about to let go.

The second shift of 1929 was the Great Depression, and when it hit Germany, it hit with devastating force. The major caveat to Germany’s economic recovery so far had been its continued dependence on foreign loans, and the Depression dried those up very quickly. The results were devastating to the German people.

The Collapse of the Weimar Republic and Hitler’s Rise to Chancellor

Unemployment went back through the roof, wages fell, businesses shut down, and the middle class, just regaining its footing, was suddenly ruined again. All the progress of the last few years was undone, and the public was not forgiving. Without the Depression, it is impossible to say what would or would not have happened in Germany, or whether those changes might have reshaped the course of modern history.

But once it hit, the coalition government of the time shattered apart. President Hindenburg appointed a new chancellor, Heinrich Bruning, who was forced to use emergency powers to push legislation past a staunch opposition coalition. This was a highly controversial move that worked out extremely poorly, and led to a new set of elections to determine control of the Reichstag.

These elections coincided with an atmosphere of significant public discontent, one that was inflamed by the Nazi and Communist Parties and their members’ violence in their communities. The tensions of the moment had driven interest in fringe and extremist ideologies, and membership in their respective political parties, through the roof. The Nazi Party especially benefited from the chaos, and became a persistent thorn in Chancellor Bruning’s side.

Attempts at economic resuscitation failed one after another, and in July of 1931, Germany was rocked by an acute financial crisis that forced the closure of the National Bank and other major institutions. Unemployment ticked higher and higher, and in the following year, it became increasingly clear that the Chancellor’s rule would not stand. The last thing that would help this level of chaos was a presidential election cycle, but that is precisely what the German public got.

Paul von Hindenburg was still fairly popular, but in a five-way election that also featured Adolf Hitler, Hindenburg fell just short of an absolute majority. Hitler came in second place, and in the runoff, the two went head-to-head. In a straight contest, Hindenburg won in a landslide, with the German people largely uniting around a defense of constitutional rule.

But even a second-place loss was far better than the Nazi Party, and Adolf Hitler personally, would ever have dreamed of a decade prior, and it indicated a major sea change in German society. The next of the Weimar Republic’s death knells came out of Prussia, Germany’s largest state. A bastion for the Centre and Social Democratic Parties, Prussia represented a slap in the face to the Nazi party, but also a target that, if it were to fall, would likely bring the whole of Germany down with it.

Riding a wave of discontent, the Nazis surged to a plurality in the Prussian state parliament, partially due to a diplomatic stonewall by the French on yet another round of negotiations about the prospect of German rearmament. But the final nail in the coffin for the Weimar Republic came from President Hindenburg himself. Chancellor Bruning had expended much of his political capital to see Hindenburg re-elected, and as thanks, Hindenburg took no time casting him aside.

Bruning’s growing list of wealthy enemies made it clear to Hindenburg that the Chancellor had outlived his usefulness, and Hindenburg needed a better ally. The correct choice was not a Nazi, but to receive Nazi backing, German leaders agreed to lift the ban against the party’s Stormtroopers. A new, nominally nonpartisan government was able to get by on the support of Hindenburg and the military, and was even able to secure a major victory for the country by reaching a settlement to end Versailles reparation payments.

Yet as this all took place, so did elections to the Reichstag, and in July 1932, the Nazis took 230 of the parliament’s 608 seats. With them came Adolf Hitler, and the prospect of a Hitler chancellorship. The sitting Chancellor, Franz von Papen, attempted to hold onto power via emergency decree, but after significant backlash, including his own resignation, the Nazis were able to lock down the Chancellorship once and for all.

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany via peaceful means, and with his rise, the Weimar Republic was no more.

Consolidation of Power: Dachau, the Reichstag Fire, and the Enabling Act

Once Hitler had achieved power, the next step was to consolidate his gains, and he did so with a running start toward some of the worst atrocities in history. In February 1933, the Dachau concentration camp opened, where it would remain until the end of World War II in 1945. Overseen by Nazi stormtroopers and police loyalists, Dachau was initially meant to hold communists, social democrats, and other perceived threats to Hitler’s rule, although this would not remain the case.

Across society, Nazi rule meant the abolition of trade unions, and a policy of forced homogenization in which political parties and state and municipal governments were compelled to conform to the Party’s standards and expectations. This had the practical effect of turning the Reichstag, the German executive infrastructure, and large parts of civil society into extensions of Hitler’s will, making it far easier to conduct the cultural redefinition of Germany that the Nazis were eager to carry out. Nazi stormtroopers under Ernst Rohm carried out a violent campaign across Germany, to enforce Nazi political power in the cities and countryside.

In February 1933 came the Reichstag Fire, an event that helped to swing the remaining skeptics in German society toward Nazi favor. Historians tend to agree that the fire was started by a Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe. Whether van der Lubbe acted alone, or the fire was a Nazi invention meant to scapegoat the Communist Party and consolidate power, is a subject of continued debate.

What is not disputable, though, is the degree to which Hitler took advantage of the incident to serve his own goals. Within a day, the Nazis had enacted a decree that removed constitutional protections for personal, political, and property rights for all citizens, ostensibly for the purposes of guaranteeing security across the Reich. In the following month, this was supplemented by the Enabling Act, which placed the Reichstag’s legislative powers in the hands of the Reich Cabinet.

With the passage of the Enabling Act, the legislature could no longer threaten Hitler or the Nazis, and their power became all but absolute. From here, the Nazis swept over what remained of Germany’s separation of powers. Elected state governors were replaced by Nazi governors, and soon afterward, the states themselves were stripped of their independent authority.

Universities and the civil service became a target for Nazi purges, and the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, were established around this same time. By now, there was only one person left who could stop Hitler’s rise: the President, Paul von Hindenburg, now at the age of eighty-five and in poor health. Technically speaking, Hindenburg possessed the power to revoke Hitler’s chancellorship, an act that might have stood a chance at slowing or reversing his rise.

But Hindenburg did nothing to get in Hitler’s way, and when he died on August 2, 1934, Hitler took care to ignore Hindenburg’s will and give him a massive Nazi-style funeral. The Night of the Long Knives had just recently taken place, which purged many of Hitler’s potential enemies from power, and now the old man was gone. Hitler assumed the Presidency for himself.

With it, he took the title of Fuhrer, leader to all of Germany.

Reshaping German Society: Racial Policy, Rearmament, and the Four-Year Plan

A key part of Nazi ideology’s rotten core was its focus on expansion in service to the supposed “superior” German race, and from the Party’s grassroots rise to its eventual stranglehold on Germany, violent expansionism was a built-in expectation for what would come next. This, combined with eugenic pseudoscience, drove a wide variety of social programs designed to prepare Germany for its wars ahead. The Nazis instituted a marriage subsidy program that financially incentivized young German families to bear large numbers of children.

They also strongly discouraged women from working, and banned most foreign imports, in hopes of forcing German society to reform toward self-sufficiency. The Nazis engaged in the forced sterilization of over two million “unworthy” individuals, and they passed the Nurnburg Laws, which prohibited marriage and sexual relations between Jews and Germans, and formally established Jews as second-class citizens. The Nazi campaign against the Jews was far too expansive, and far too horrific, to fully discuss, but every step to build German power during this period would be accompanied by some of the most despicable acts of genocide in human history.

During this time, the Nazi Party’s focus was kept far from the suffering and horror they inflicted on the Jews, and was instead directed toward preparations for Germany’s eventual push outward. When Hitler took power, unemployment had been at an all-time high, around thirty percent. The Nazis instituted wage and price controls while sending military spending through the roof.

This gave Germany’s military-industrial complex an absolutely massive appetite, one that was enough to put almost the entire unemployed population to work. German rearmament was still technically prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles, but since the other European powers had shown such little will to enforce the treaty’s terms, the Nazis had no incentive to listen. For this same reason, Hitler and his cabinet took a quick look at the bit of the treaty that limited Germany’s military to a hundred thousand troops, and disregarded it entirely.

Hitler was very worried at the idea of war with the Soviets starting earlier than expected, and the Nazi war machine kicked into gear. The Luftwaffe was established as its own armed service, the navy drastically expanded in size, and the overall size of the military swelled to millions of personnel. This was all part of Hitler’s Four-Year Plan, which intended to make Germany self-sufficient and able to wage war in the East by 1940, and which eventually saw half of the German state’s annual spending go to war production.

The German economy was reshaped into a wartime posture, instilling Nazi national pride and bringing many of Hitler’s visions of a strong German state to life. To the regime, war was the essential spark that drove human progress, and if a country had any economy at all, it should be built to expand outward. However, this view meant that the German economy also guzzled down massive amounts of resources, increasing demand for new sources of supply.

This was another, more grounded reason for the heavy focus on expansionism within Nazi propaganda — after all, the nations around Germany were sitting on ore and oil that would serve the war machine well.

Preparations for Blitzkrieg: Appeasement, Annexation, and the Road to Poland

In what was essentially a dare to France and Britain in 1936, German forces marched into the demilitarized Rhineland in the west, seizing it with no meaningful opposition. They would do the same with Austria in 1938, after a sustained propaganda campaign helped establish a pretext to annex the country. The ultimate target lay eastward, in the resource-rich Ukrainian and Slavic territories, but these smaller gains would sustain the expansion needed to bring Germany’s true goals into reach.

As the Nazi war machine grew, the smaller nations around Germany must have begun to feel an acute sense of dread at what was coming, especially knowing that they lacked the ability to put up any meaningful resistance if the Wehrmacht decided to just march over them. But while the more powerful nations of France and Britain also saw the potential for a coming storm, their tactics to deal with it were perhaps not what those smaller nations would have wanted. Hitler had been careful to speak early and often for his wish that Germany peacefully accept its rightful place as continental Europe’s leader, providing just enough plausible deniability that the British and the French could continue their diplomatic approach.

The culture in both nations, at that time, was one of appeasement. Their hope was that if Hitler got the territory he felt Germany was destined to have, he might avoid a much larger war on the continent. At home in Germany, much of the public shared similar reservations, aware that war was a possibility but eager to avoid it, if there was any way to do so.

It was clear that what Hitler talked about, the great promised future of the nation, would only come by force, and when Hitler set his sights on Czechoslovakia for invasion, it seemed as if the moment might have arrived. Britain and France brokered peace, though, and ceded the Sudetenland, a border region, to Germany. Hitler himself was frustrated by this arrangement, as his goal had been to instigate war there and then, but the peace deal and the territorial gain was received well by the public.

Germany’s generals were well aware that the country was not yet prepared for war by this time, in late 1938. There was no reason to push for a fight when the military could keep growing its arsenal, the government could plunder more wealth from the victims of the Holocaust, and the people could be worked up into a war frenzy that simply did not yet exist. But although there were some back-room plans for a coup, these never came to fruition, and the generals stayed the course as Hitler’s battle lust continued.

On March 15, 1939, Hitler attacked Czechoslovakia from the annexed Sudetenland and took over the nation. A week later, Wehrmacht troops carved a city out of Lithuania’s borders and brought it under German control. This boldness was too much for even Britain and France to stomach, and they promised armed support to Poland, which the world knew was Hitler’s next target.

It was essential territory for Germany to establish a bulwark before attacking the Soviets, and all parties involved were acutely aware that Poland could not defend itself on its own, but by entering into a deal with the Poles, Britain and France unwittingly played into Hitler’s own goals and accelerated war on the continent. In response to British and French support of Poland, Germany drew beside Italy in a treaty that would be dubbed the Pact of Steel. Then, Hitler courted Joseph Stalin, the very man whose Soviet territory Hitler had his eye on, with the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.

This essentially allowed Hitler to point his military westward to the Atlantic, and southward to the Mediterranean, with little fear of an attack to the rear. And on September 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler marched troops into Poland. Hell followed with him.

Expansion, Forced Labor, and the Collapse of the Nazi War Machine

It is important to discuss Hitler’s actions during this time for what they were: a long list of misguided, half-baked strategies that experts of the time, including his own generals, did not endorse. The Nazis had found a way to power in interwar Germany, they had found a way to wiggle out of the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, and they had found a way to convert German society to their side. They had gotten Soviet Russia, the United Kingdom, and France all to demonstrate their preference for peace, and they had made exponential military gains.

With no push to attack, no deadline for when a war for Germany’s survival might need to begin, Hitler and his cabinet could conceivably have continued to amass resources and military power until victory was all but assured. Instead, Hitler pulled the trigger early, and he was immediately rewarded with the kinds of territorial gains that most despots would only dream of. Poland fell within a month, Denmark and Norway were next, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands were all captured in short order.

France, too, was brought under Hitler’s command within a mere ten months of his explosion westward, and Yugoslavia soon after. In the short term, it is not unreasonable to see how Hitler may have interpreted these victories as a validation of his strategic decision-making, but it is much easier to take all that territory than it is to hold it. Even harder would be to start a new war effort while also consolidating those massive gains.

As young German men were drafted and sent to the front lines, millions of Polish workers were made to perform forced labor. Slavic peoples, like the Poles, were toward the very bottom of Hitler’s imagined racial hierarchy, and they were treated as such. Over a million Polish laborers were sent to Germany to assist in heavy industry and agriculture, and many more built Poland into the staging area Germany was looking for, in advance of their Soviet offensive.

When the Wehrmacht launched that invasion, in June 1941, territories like Ukraine and Belarus were swiftly brought under Nazi control. Their able-bodied workers suffered similar fates, working in extremely harsh conditions to transform urban landscapes and leverage the region’s incredible food production capacity for Germany’s gain. If Hitler had pressed forward more slowly, or taken time to consolidate his gains, this territorial expansion might have led to a self-perpetuating system.

Germany might have been able to enter a cycle of seizing land, using its resources to enhance the war machine, and repeating, essentially leveling up the German military with each progressive expansion. But the Nazis pushed too far, too fast, in too many directions, without firmly establishing control before moving on. For that, Hitler and his war effort paid the price.

The Soviet advance stalled and collapsed, Great Britain held out, and foreign workers grew less and less likely to volunteer to work in Germany, as they learned about the living conditions they would find. Bullets, tanks, planes, and oil were being spent faster than they could be supplied to the front lines, and the Nazis converted to a labor policy that completely relied on slavery. Under so much stress, from so many vectors, the war effort began to stall, and since the Nazis had only had time and manpower to establish relatively weak municipal governments in the territories they conquered, these governments were often unable to send enough laborers to make up the difference.

German leaders in occupied territories became more and more willing to do whatever was needed to get their laborers, and Eastern Europe began to fall apart under the pressure. By then, Allied bombers had begun to hammer at German infrastructure, and over the course of the next several years, Hitler’s grand mobilization strategy would collapse inward upon itself.

The Inevitable Storm: Versailles, Ideology, and the Legacy of Interwar Germany

It is tempting to dismiss Germany’s build toward World War II as something so heavily circumstantial, such a terrible and perfect storm, that it simply resists understanding. And yet, it is equally tempting to examine the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles and the fallout from World War I, and find that it was almost inevitable that some ultranationalist popular movement would sweep across Germany eventually. Perhaps either are true, perhaps both are true at once, but the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

The Weimar Republic was, in many ways, doomed from the start, and a depraved man fed by a depraved ideology worked hard to bring it down. In the aftermath, that same man galvanized Germany into action, reformed its society from the ground up, in a way that can never be separated from his cult of personality, or from the horrific, almost apocalyptic cruelty that came with it. Make no mistake, in the interwar years Germany did the impossible.

To go from the level of destruction and economic liability it experienced in 1918, to the continent-crushing war power it was just twenty-one years later, was a level of growth that few nations have ever even remotely approached. That is even before factoring in the political upheaval, the near misses with complete destruction, and the genocide the Nazis inflicted on their own citizens. Hitler’s strategic missteps were massive, at times, as were the missteps of the various Weimar leaders that preceded him.

The legacy of this time is one of destruction, and pain, and rightly so. Millions of people were killed, more were enslaved, and an entire continent was brought to ruin. And it was all at the whim of a megalomaniacal leader who saw fit to reshape an entire nation, as the seconds counted down toward war.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did the Treaty of Versailles set Germany on a path toward war?

The Treaty of Versailles forced Germany to accept war guilt, pay $33 billion in reparations, relinquish territory, and maintain a military of only 100,000 troops. These conditions crippled the economy, gutted the middle class through hyperinflation, and bred deep resentment that extremist movements—including the Nazi Party—exploited to gain popular support.

How did the Great Depression enable Hitler’s rise to Chancellor?

Germany’s post-WWI economic recovery depended heavily on foreign loans, which the Depression dried up entirely, sending unemployment back through the roof and shattering the middle class a second time. The resulting public anger shattered coalition governments and drove voters toward fringe parties; the Nazis surged to 230 of 608 Reichstag seats in July 1932, and Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

What was the Enabling Act and why was it decisive?

Passed in March 1933, the Enabling Act placed the Reichstag’s legislative powers in the hands of the Reich Cabinet, effectively eliminating any parliamentary check on Hitler. Combined with the Reichstag Fire decree—which had already stripped constitutional protections for personal, political, and property rights—the Enabling Act gave Hitler all but absolute power within months of becoming Chancellor.

What was Hitler’s Four-Year Plan and what did it accomplish?

The Four-Year Plan directed half of all German state spending toward war production, with the goal of making Germany economically self-sufficient and militarily ready for war in the East by 1940. It swelled the military from the treaty-mandated 100,000 troops to millions, established the Luftwaffe as an independent armed service, and converted the entire German economy to a wartime posture.

How did Germany’s remilitarization and expansion go unchallenged before 1939?

Hitler tested Allied resolve incrementally: German forces remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936 and annexed Austria in 1938 without meaningful opposition from France or Britain, whose policy of appeasement hoped territorial concessions would prevent a larger war. Britain and France even brokered the Sudetenland handover to Germany at Munich in late 1938. It was only when Hitler seized all of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and then invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, that the Allies finally declared war.

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