Hitler: His rise to power 1930-1939 "I follow my course with the precision and security of a sleepwalker." Even at that time it struck the world as an unusual statement for the undisputed leader of 67,000,000 people to make at the time of an international crisis. Hitler meant it to be a form of' reassurance for his more wary followers who questioned the wisdom of his course. It seems, however, that it was a true confession …showed first 75 words of 1597 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1597 total…he Anschluss amalgamated Austria with the Reich. Hitler used the issue of persecuted Germans in Czechoslovakia to push through the Munich Pact, in which England, France, and Italy agreed German annexation of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia (1938). Hitler's army invaded Poland on September 1, 1939,  France and England decided to declare war on Germany. A Blitzkrieg (lightning war) of German tanks and invaded through most of Western Europe as nation after nation fell to the German war machine.