Название: The Oxford History of the Third Reich, 2nd EditionАвтор: Robert Gellately
Издательство: Oxford University Press
Год: 2023
Страниц: 374
Язык: английский
Формат: epub (true)
Размер: 10.2 MB
In a confidential meeting in autumn 1937 Hitler established his war strategy: first of all Czechoslovakia was to be attacked, on the pretext of protecting the German minority there. That would lead to war with France, Czechoslovakia’s ally. In fact, however, the Italian leader Mussolini and the western powers intervened to prevent a war. Hitler now turned his attention to Poland, which he had selected to be his junior partner in the war against the Soviet Union and which was also to cede territory to the German Reich. The Polish government, however, which was trying to maintain a careful balance in its relations with Germany and the Soviet Union, was not amenable to blackmail, putting its trust in support from the west. Thus from May 1939 onwards Hitler prepared for a war against Poland. He pulled off a decisive coup in August 1939, when the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact neutralized the Soviet Union as a war enemy. In return Hitler offered to carve up eastern central Europe between himself and Stalin.
