Hitler’s Gamble

Did Hitler intend to provoke a general war over Poland in September 1939 or was it a serious miscalculation? Adam Tooze examines the views of leading historians before offering his own, new, interpretation of the decisions and events in Germany that ignited the Second World War.

Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the German Army, with Hitler in Warsaw, October 1939At 6am on a wintery March morning in 1939 Adolf Hitler shattered the fragile European peace brokered six months earlier at the Munich conference by sending the Wehrmacht across the border into what remained of Czechoslovakia.

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