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The Nazis' Road to War: Hitler Prepares to Strike (Part 1)

With Hitler hungry for war, will Chamberlain manage to appease him?

Throughout the course of the 1930s, Adolf Hitler鈥檚 Nazi party has overwhelmingly, terrifyingly seized power in Germany. Now, Hitler鈥檚 vile ambitions have turned to Czechoslovakia. On the 12th of September 1938 at the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, he rabidly defended the supposed interests of the German speaking minority in Czechoslovakia, claiming that they had been ravaged and tortured by their cruel Czech overlords, but not so. In reality, Hitler is preparing the ground for the invasion and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia - what he sees as a crucial step towards the creation of a new German dominion in central and eastern Europe. In so doing, he is setting Europe upon the road to an increasingly imminent Second World War. With Nazism driven above all by the shattering experience of the First World War, a hunger for war burns at the very centre of the Nazi鈥檚 ambitions. For Hitler, it is personal - the German economy is in meltdown and with it, his frayed mental and physical state. Was it possible, then, that at this crucial juncture in 1938, the outcome of war could be prevented? Certainly, Britain鈥檚 Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, was determined to make it so鈥�

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58 minutes