Five years after Hitler took power, the German leader gave a speech to the Reichstag. He announced the “peaceful” acquisition (“Anschluss”) of Austria, his homeland, during March of 1938. The party faithful gave him a standing ovation, and Austria - annexed and renamed “Ostmark” - became a Third-Reich province.
Soon thereafter, the Nazis also “acquired” a German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, known as the Sudetenland. Tears and grimaces - from women and men - were typical reactions there.
During the
Night of Broken Glass - known as Kristallnacht in German - Jewish synagogues were destroyed on November 9-10 (1938), including this one in Berlin. For millions of people, much more heartache would soon follow. Franklin Roosevelt would later say:
I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth century civilization.
When Germany
took over Poland, in 1939, a world war
erupted. Hitler’s conquests continued, further carving up European territories. A Frenchman, dismayed when German soldiers marched into Paris on the 14th of June, 1940, wept as France fell.
As Nazi tyranny worsened on the continent - which its leaders called “The New Europe” - propaganda posters kept coming:
By late April of 1945, however, Hitler’s
battles were finished, his will was gone and his goal was to die by his own hand. The
terror of war had moved to Berlin, where the Nazi leader was living in a bunker. Victory would not be his - at any price - as Soviet forces moved into the city.