ational program attracted workers and employees, and his foreign policy successes impressed the nation. He thus managed to mold the German people into the pliable tool he needed to establish German rule over europe and other parts of the world. Discreding the churches with charges of corruption and immortality, he imposed his own brutal moral code. He derided the concept of human equality and claimed racial superiority for the Germans. As the master race they had the right to dominate all nations they subjected. The increasingly ruthless persecution of the Jews was to inure the Germans to this task.Setting out on his empire-building mission, Hitler launched Germany's open rearmament in 1935 sending troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936, and annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia under German control. He also came to the aid of the Fascist rebels in Spain's civil war. Outmaneuvered and fearful of war, no one resisted.Hitler realized that any further moves might lead to a European conflict, and he unhesitatingly prepared for the struggle, which he believed would strengthen Germany's moral fiber. Having neutralized the Soviet Union with the promise of a partition of Poland after the latters defeat, he attacked Poland in September in 1939. The poles were quickly overpowered, and their allies, the British and French, who had declared war on Germany, would do nothing to help. In the spring of 1940 Hitler's forces overran routed the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The defeat of Britain was averted by the Royal Air Force, which fended off the German Luftwaffe.Driven by his ambitions and his hatred of communism, Hitler then turned on the Soviet Union. To protect his flank, he first subdued the Balkan Peninsula. The invasion of the USSR in June 1941 quickly carried the German armies to the gates of Moscow, but in December they were pushed back by the Russians, just as the U.S. entered the war. Hitler then realized that the w...
