War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. your host, James Early. Hello and welcome to Key Battles of World War II in Europe, our 10,000-foot survey of the

Second World War in Europe and the areas around it. I'm your host, James Early, as always,

and my co-host, also as always, is Sean McIver.

In our last episode, we saw how Hitler was beginning to rearm and re-fortify and build up his armed forces,

and then he started taking pieces of other countries.

We saw how he took Austria.

He took part of Czechoslovakia. And he was looking

for a war, as we said, but the Western allies, named the Britain, France, would not stand up to him.

So he did not get his war. Will he get it this time? We're going to find out. We're going to see

that all hell is about to break loose, right, Sean? That's right.

Yeah, he's going to turn it up to 11 this episode.

So let's get right into it.

We, as I mentioned, he'd already taken, he reoccupied the Rhineland.

He took Austria.

Hitler took the Sudan land and eventually all of the Czech part of Czechoslovakia,

and his next target was Poland.

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