European Events Leading up to World War II 1938–1939

Austrian-born German dictator Adolf Hitler with GenMaj Erwin Rommel - Sept 1939

German and Soviet Pavilions oppose each other at the Paris Exposition of 1937

Annexation of Austria - March 1938

Annexation of Sudetenland - October 1938

Poland campaign - September 1939

Invasion and partitioning of Poland - September 1939

By 1937 Europe was beset by political crises and the Paris International Exposition is recalled for its political connotations. Two of the most notable pavilions were those of the National Socialist Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. The organization of the world exhibition had placed the German and the Soviet pavilions directly across from each other. Nothing in any previous universal exhibition had ever matched this dramatic architectural confrontation. Adolf Hitler's chief architect Albert Speer later revealed that he had designed the German pavilion to represent a bulwark against Communism. The conquering exhibitors of forty-four nations politely applauded each other during the closing ceremonies on November 2 1937. The ritual of Peace and Progress was over and the ultimate confrontation was at hand. Image: Credit: Olga Shirnina. Public domain. Annexation of Austria: Following the end of World War I, the newly formed Republic of German-Austria attempted to form a union with Germany, but the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain explicitly prohibited the political inclusion of Austria in the German state, both treaties signed in 1919. Prior to the Anschluss, there had been strong support from people of all backgrounds – not just Nazis – in both Austria and Germany for a union of the two countries and to bring ethnic Germans outside Germany into Greater Germany. On the morning of March 12 1938, the German Wehrmacht crossed the border into Austria. The troops were greeted by cheering Austrians with Nazi salutes, Nazi flags, and flowers. That afternoon, Adolf Hitler crossed the border at his birthplace, Braunau am Inn. In the evening, he arrived at Linz and was given an enthusiastic almost hysterical welcome. Two days later Hitler gave a speech at the Vienna Hofburg in front of a jubilant crowd of 250,000 people. For decades after the war Austria regarded itself as the first victim of Nazism, despite its complicity in war crimes and the jubilation with which Hitler was received some 80 years ago. Image: Austrians welcoming German troops during Anschluss Österreichs. Image: photo taken by Hitler's personal color photographer Hugo Jäger. LIFE photo archive. Fair use. Annexation of Sudetenland: The German occupation of Czechoslovakia began with the annexation of Sudetenland on October 1 1938 as outlined by the Munich Agreement. This region had long been settled by ethnic Germans. These Sudeten Germans lived as their German neighbors across the border and spoke German. Hitler said in his speech at the NSDAP Congress 1938: I am asking neither that Germany be allowed to oppress three and a half million Frenchmen, nor am I asking that three and a half million Englishmen be placed at our mercy. Rather I am simply demanding that the oppression of three and a half million Germans in Czechoslovakia cease and that the inalienable right to self-determination take its place. In early November 1938, under the First Vienna Award, which was a result of the Munich agreement, Czechoslovakia was forced by Germany and Italy to cede southern Slovakia to Hungary, while Poland invaded Zaolzie territory shortly after. As a result, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia lost about 38 percent of their combined area to Germany, with some 3.2 million German and 750,000 Czech inhabitants. Image: German staff cars entering Sudetenland to receive an enthusiastic reception on October 9 1938. People of the Sudetenland saw the German forces as liberators. LIFE photo archive. Fair use. Invasion and partitioning of Poland: The creation of the Polish Corridor after World War I aroused great resentment in Germany, and all post-war German Weimar governments refused to recognize the eastern borders agreed at Versailles with respect to its eastern borders. Institutions in Weimar Germany supported and encouraged German minority organizations in Poland, in part radicalized by the Polish policy towards them. Poland in 1931 declared her commitment to peace, but pointed out that any attempt to revise its borders would mean war. Polish delegate Tytus Filipowicz noted that any continued provocations by Germany could tempt the Polish side to invade, in order to settle the issue once and for all. By 1937, Germany began to increase its demands for the primarily German-speaking seaport of Danzig, while proposing that an extraterritorial roadway, part of the Reichsautobahn system, be built in order to connect East Prussia with Germany proper, running through the Polish Corridor. Poland rejected this proposal. In 1939, Germany made another attempt to renegotiate the status of Danzig; Poland was to retain a permanent right to use the seaport if the route through the Polish Corridor was to be constructed. During this period, the Germans learned that France and Britain had failed to secure an alliance with the Soviet Union against Germany, and that Soviet was interested in an alliance with Germany against Poland. On September 1 1939, one week after Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact, German troops along with 50,000 Slovakian soldiers invaded Poland. Two weeks later, Russian troops attacked Poland from the east. After years of vague rumblings and explicit threats in Europe, the World War II had begun. Credit: Wikipedia inter alia. Bottom image: German and Soviet soldiers fraternizing east of Brześć Litewski after a visit by Soviet Commander Semyon Krivoshein to German Commander Heinz Guderian during the joint invasion of Poland. Photo by German press photographer Max Ehlert on September 22 1939. Credit: Mikołaj Kaczmarek and Mirek Szponar. Commons: Bundesarchiv.