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.

Music 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, as always, is Sean McIver.

In our last episode, you may recall this, we talked about Blitzkrieg, Sitzkrieg, in the Winter

War. We saw that Hitler continued to gobble up the nations around Germany, starting in that

episode, at least, with Poland.

And then we saw kind of a break in the fighting for a while, the so-called Sitchkrieg.

And we also, we then talked about the Winter War, which was actually a Soviet attack on Finland.

Then we saw the Germans taking Denmark and Norway.

Now we turn to further German attempts to

take countries around Germany, and particularly the big one, France, the age-old enemy, the

ancestral foe, if you will, that they had been fighting each other off and on for, I don't know

what,

1100 years or so.

So, let's talk about Hitler's plan, some of the strengths and some of the weaknesses.

Having conquered Poland and Denmark and having gained control of most of Norway, Hitler now turns

...