German Expansion Timeline

By Autumn.Finegan

  • Adolf Hitler Leadership began

  • Maginot Line

    The Maginot Line, named after the French Minister of War André Maginot, was a line of concrete fortifications, obstacles, and weapon installations built by France in the 1930s to deter invasion by Germany and force them to move around the fortifications

  • Journal of Foreign Correspondent Appeasement

    Giving up principles to pacify on aggressors

  • FDR speech

    “I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”

  • Chamberlain takes Position as Prime Minister

    His premiership was dominated by the question of policy towards an increasingly aggressive Germany, and his actions at Munich were widely popular among the British at the time. When Hitler continued his aggression, Chamberlain pledged Britain to defend Poland's independence if the latter were attacked, an alliance that brought his country into war when Germany invaded Poland in 1939.

  • Hitlers Secret Meeting

    Hitler met secretly with his top military advisers to discuss how Germany needed the lad of their neighbors.

  • German March in Australia

    In the face of rioting by the small, but virulent, Austrian Nazi Party and ever-expanding German demands on Austria, Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg called a referendum (plebiscite) on the issue, to be held on 13 March.

  • Signed Munich Agreement

    Munich Agreement was signed and then turned the Sudetenland over to Germany

  • Hitler Protecting Germans

    Hitler began his familiar routine charging that Germans in Poland were mistreated by the poles and needed his protection

  • Soviets declare nutrality

  • Blitzkrieg/ Lightning War

    A German term for “lightning war,” blitzkrieg is a military tactic designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower. Its successful execution results in short military campaigns, which preserves human lives and limits the expenditure of artillery.

  • Neutrality Act

    The Neutrality Acts were passed by the United States Congress in the 1930s, in response to the growing turmoil in Europe and Asia that eventually led to World War II.

  • German troops attack Czechoslovakia

    German troops pored into what remained of Czechoslovakia and Hitler exclaimed, " They seize to exist"

  • Cash and Carry

    Cash and carry was a policy requested by US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a special session of the United States Congress on September 21, 1939, subsequent to the outbreak of war in Europe. It replaced the Neutrality Acts of 1936.

  • Soviets ram bush into Finland

    The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union (USSR) and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty

  • Soviets invade Poland

    On 17 September 1939, early in the morning, the Soviet Union invaded Poland. Poland was already in the state of war with Nazi Germany that had started on 1 September 1939. The Soviet invasion of Poland was a direct result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, signed between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on 23 August.

  • Nonaggression pact introduced

    A non-aggression pact or neutrality pact is a national treaty between two or more states/countries where the signatories promise not to engage in military action against each other.

  • Stages a attack

    Nazi operatives had posed as Polish military officers to stage an attack on the radio station in the Silesian city of Gleiwitz. Germany used the event as the pretext for its invasion of Poland.

  • Germany roars over Poland

    German air forces roared over Poland raining bombs at the same time German tanks raced across polish countryside spreading terror

  • France declared war on Germany

  • Phoney War

    The Phoney War was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there was only one limited military land operation on the Western Front, when French troops invaded Germany's Saar district.

  • Arsenal of Democracy

    ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY. Arsenal of Democracy was a phrase used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) to describe the United States as he tried to arouse popular support for sending military aid to nations fighting against the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan, among others) during World War II (1939–1942).

  • Moscow Peace Treaty

    The Moscow Peace Treaty was signed by Finland and the Soviet Union on 12 March 1940, and the ratifications were exchanged on 21 March. It marked the end of the 105-day Winter War. Finland had to cede border areas to the Soviet Union

  • Hitlers Invasion of Denmark and Norway

    In the early morning of 9 April 1940 (Wesertag, "Weser Day"), Germany invaded Denmark and Norway, ostensibly as a preventive manoeuvre against a planned, and openly discussed, Franco-British occupation of Norway known as Plan R 4.

  • Adolf Hitlers leadership ended