Hitler's WWII Ambitions

Following the Nazi rise to power, Adolf Hitler's government immediately began preparing for the war he planned to wage to conquer ______ in Poland and the Soviet Union.

In Hitler’s vision, Germans would populate this area, the “inferior” Slavic population would be enslaved or driven out, and Jews would disappear entirely from all German-dominated ______.

The tasks of German foreign policy in preparing for the coming war were to: undo the military restrictions and reverse the territorial losses imposed by the Treaty of ______;

Take over neighboring lands with ethnic German ______.

Arrange pacts that would enable Germany to advance its ______ plans.

Build alliances that would help Germany achieve its ______ goals.

After the war began, German foreign policy aimed to strengthen existing ______.

Build new ______.

Obtain the cooperation of its allies and of the nations it conquered not only in Germany’s war effort but also in its racial policies, especially the ______ of the Jews.

From 1933–1938, Konstantin von Neurath, a conservative career diplomat, served as German foreign ______.

During Neurath’s term, Germany withdrew from the League of ______; signed a nonaggression pact with Poland; reacquired the Saar territory through a plebiscite; reinstituted the draft and openly rearmed; signed a naval pact with Great Britain; remilitarized the Rhineland; militarily assisted the supporters of Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War; formed the “Rome-Berlin Axis” coalition with Italy and concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan.

In February 1938, Hitler replaced Neurath with Joachim von Ribbentrop, a Nazi Party member and former ambassador to Great Britain who advocated a more aggressive German ______ policy.

Germany then moved to acquire new territories using the threat of ______.

In February, Hitler pressured Austrian chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg into signing the German-Austrian agreement (Berchtesgaden Diktat), which brought Nazis into the Austrian ______.

In March 1938, Germany carried out the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria, after ensuring that Italy would not ______.

Hitler then demanded that Czechoslovakia surrender the Sudetenland, a region bordering Germany with an ethnic German ______.

On September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French Premier Edouard Daladier, Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and Hitler signed the Munich agreement, which ceded the ______ to Germany.

In March 1939, Germany occupied and dismembered the rest of Czechoslovakia, establishing a German “protectorate” over the Czech lands and permitting the formation of Slovakia as a sovereign state with a pro-German ______.

Hitler then began planning to attack Poland, recognizing that this could lead to war with France and Great ______.

In May 1939, Hitler and Mussolini signed the “Pact of Steel,” a formal military ______.