Reconstruction of Germany by Hitler (1933), Hitler's aim of conquering Eastern Europe and second world war

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Hitler assigned the responsibility of economic recovery to the economist Hjalmar Schacht who aimed at full production and full employment through a state-funded work-creation programme. This project produced the famous German super highways and the peoples car, the Volkswagen.

The poster announces: Your volkswagen.Such posters suggested that owning a car was no longer just a dream for an ordinary worker.

In foreign policy also Hitler acquired quick successes. He pulled out of the League of Nations in 1933, reoccupied the Rhineland in1936, and integrated Austria and Germany in 1938 under the slogan ,One people, One empire, and One leader. He then went on to wrest German-speaking Sudentenland from Czechoslovakia, and gobbled up the entire country. In all of this he had the unspoken support of England, which had considered the Versailles verdict too harsh.These quick successes at home and abroad seemed to reverse the destiny of the country.

Hitler did not stop here. Schacht had advised Hitler against investing hugely in rearmament as the state still ran on deficit financing. Cautious people, however, had no place in Nazi Germany. Schachthad to leave. Hitler chose war as the way out of the approaching economic crisis.  Resources were to be accumulated through expansion of territory.  In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. This started a war with France and England. In September 1940, a Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy and Japan, strengthening Hitlers claim to international power. Puppet regimes, supportive of Nazi Germany, were installed in a large part of Europe. By the end of 1940, Hitler was at the pinnacle of his power.

Expansion of Nazi power: Europe 1942.

Hitler now moved to achieve his long-term aim of conquering Eastern Europe. He wanted to ensure food supplies and living space for Germans.  He attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. In this historic blunder Hitler exposed the German western front to British aerial bombing and the eastern front to the powerful Soviet armies. The Soviet Red Army inflicted a crushing and humiliating defeat on Germany at Stalingrad.  After this the Soviet Red Army hounded out the retreating German soldiers until they reached the heart of Berlin, establishing Soviet hegemony over the entire Eastern Europe for half a century thereafter.

Meanwhile, the USA had resisted involvement in the war. It was unwilling to once again face all the economic problems that the First World War had caused. But it could not stay out of the war for long. Japan was expanding its power in the east. It had occupied French Indo-China and was planning attacks on US naval bases in the Pacific. When Japan extended its support to Hitler and bombed the US base at Pearl Harbor, the US entered the Second World War. The war ended in May 1945 with Hitlers defeat and the US dropping of the atom bomb  on  Hiroshima in Japan.


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