Word: wehrmacht
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...dawn on March 7, 1936, Hitler made the first bold use of his growing Wehrmacht. Though his generals had warned him that the French would resist and that Germany was still too weak to fight, Hitler sent three battalions across the Rhine to occupy the supposedly demilitarized Rhineland. "We have no ) territorial demands to make in Europe," he proclaimed. "Germany will never break the peace!" It was all bluff. "If the French had then marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs," Hitler later said. "A retreat on our part would have...
Schuschnigg surrendered and returned home. But President Wilhelm Miklas, who had not experienced Hitler's persuasion, refused to accept the deal. When Hitler heard that, he ordered the Wehrmacht to mobilize, as publicly as possible. Schuschnigg tried to defend his regime by announcing a plebiscite in four days, on March 13, to decide whether Austrians wanted "a free, independent, social, Christian and united Austria." Hitler, apoplectic, ordered the Wehrmacht to invade Austria on March 12 unless Schuschnigg called off the plebiscite. Once again Schuschnigg surrendered, but Hitler kept increasing his demands. Now he insisted that Schuschnigg resign and be replaced...
...Nazi mobs had encircled the Chancellery, shrieking "Sieg Heil! Heil Hitler!" On the telephone from Berlin, Goring dictated a telegram to Seyss- Inquart in which "the provisional Austrian government" asked Germany to send troops to restore order. On March 12 the Wehrmacht came streaming across the border -- not only unopposed but warmly welcomed by thousands of Austrians who genuinely wanted union with Germany. Next day, Seyss-Inquart issued a decree that announced, "Austria is a province of the German Reich." Hitler returned in triumph to the Vienna where he had once lived as a virtual derelict. Papen described...
Coming out of World War II the United States, led by Harry Truman, reached a consensus shared by both Democrats and Republicans. Rather than forcefully knocking out a Soviet Russia tired and spent by Hitler's Wehrmacht, the U.S. instigated a policy of containment in response to the expansionist foreign policy pursued by the Soviet Union. The mutually exclusive nature of these stances led to the Cold War, which has been fought in Korea, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Nicaragua and Afghanistan...
...nearly two years questions have swirled around Kurt Waldheim and his World War II service with German army units that committed atrocities in Greece and Yugoslavia. Last week an international panel of historians delivered its report on the Austrian President's conduct as a Wehrmacht lieutenant from 1942 to 1945. While the government-commissioned study found no proof that Waldheim, 69, had committed war crimes, it said he was "excellently informed" about such acts and made no attempt to stop them. Waldheim had concealed his war record, it added, "until that was no longer possible" and even then made "untrustworthy...