In fact, the Germans broke through the line with their tanks and planes and continued to the rear, rendering it useless. Three days later, Hitler’s troops crossed the Meuse River and struck French forces at Sedan, located at the northern end of the Maginot Line, an elaborate chain of fortifications constructed after World War I and considered an impenetrable defensive barrier.
On May 10, German forces swept through Belgium and the Netherlands in what became known as “blitzkrieg,” or lightning war. On April 9, 1940, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and occupied Denmark, and the war began in earnest. Among the estimated 45-60 million people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler’s diabolical “Final Solution,” now known as the Holocaust. Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war.
Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict-World War II-which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating.
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