This is the second in the ten-volume "Germany and the Second World War" series. Under the auspices of the Militargeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Research Institute for Military History), a team of historians has combined a full synthesis of existing material with the latest research to produce what they hope will be a definitive history of the Second World War. This volume surveys the first year of the war deliberately begun by Nazi Germany. The authors examine the train of interconnected political and military events, and set military operations against the background of Hitler's war policy and general aims, both immediate and long term. Their analysis, based on detailed scholarly research, is underpinned by a full apparatus of maps, diagrams and tables. The conflict took a course quite different from that which Hitler had intended, but nevertheless resulted in a series of conquests for the Third Reich. At the same time, the establishment of hegemony on the European continent confronted the aggressor with new problems. ;The work should appeal to scholars and students of 20th-century history, social, political, economic and military historians and those interested in the Second World