Transcript Hitler`s Lightning War – Western Front

War in Europe
How do other nations respond
to Hitler’s “lightning war”?
Blitzkrieg
• 1933-38: Hitler invades Rhineland, Austria & Czechoslovakia, Britain
& France choose Appeasement
• 1939: Hitler & Stalin sign a pact, Germany uses a “blitzkrieg” or in
Poland, Stalin takes E Poland and Baltic State, GB, France dec. war
• Spring 1940: Hitler attacks Denmark, Norway, Neth., Belgium & Lux.
Fall of France
• May 1940: Germans get by France’s line of defense (Maignot) and
trap them at Dunkirk – British must rescue them
• Mussolini who invaded Ethiopia & Albania joins forces with Hitler to
attack rest of France – France falls in June 1940
Rescue at Dunkirk
Battle of Britain
•August 1940: Hitler must take out the British Airforce (RAF)
•German Luftwaffe (Airforce) begins bombing Britain (“the blitz”), New
PM Winston Churchill brings hope
•Oct 1940: Radar & a German code breaking machine named Enigma,
help British win the battle
US Remains Neutral
•US signed Kellogg-Briand act saying it
won’t be national policy to make war
•Anti-war sentiment in US causes Congress
to pass Neutrality Acts, no sale of weapons
or money to countries in war
•But FDR selling weapons to China – states
no formal declaration of war there!
Great Britain stops Nazis
but only Allied Nation left
We Shall
Never
Surrender!
Winston Churchill