re: #256 Targetpractice

The country with the most powerful fighting force in 1938? France.
The country with the most tanks of any type in-service in 1938? Soviet Union.
The country with the largest naval forces in 1938? United Kingdom.

The country with the most successful bullshit artist as its Minister of Propaganda? Nazi Germany.

Germany’s early successes were as much political as military. Hitler conquered Austria and Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. He signed a non-aggression pact with his biggest ideological foe, Russia, in order to invade Poland.

And in the West, he knew that the Allies would be divided. Belgium, desperate to remain neutral, refused any military alliance or cooperation with France and Germany and did not even allow allied forces into Belgium until the Germans invaded first.

They handed him the initiative and he used it. But both Poland and France were matters of only a few weeks. The strain did not begin to show until Germany got involved in campaigns that lasted longer.