http://www4.wittenberg.edu/academics/hist/crom/civ2001/ww2.htm
Appeasement and World War II
The Munich Agreement and Appeasement 
In September 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Prime Minister Daladier of France returned home after signing the Munich in which Britain and France agreed to give Hitler a large part of Czechoslovakia in return for peace. Chamberlain was greeted by large and jubilant crowds in London, while in Paris, Prime Minister Eduard Daladier was given an unusual rousing welcome by a large throng at the airport. They were popular heroes for saving the peace. The public was happy to sacrifice Czechoslovakia and a certain amount of pride to avoid war. But in both Britain and France, critics complained that appeasement would be a dangerous failure. When these warnings proved right and the war came anyway, Chamberlain and Daladier were forced to resign. Since the war, the term "appeasement" has been used in a derogatory way to refer to a policy of concessions and weakness that eventually encourages belligerent countries to war. Whether this understanding of 1938 is entirely fair is a matter for us to debate. 
Hitler's War 
It is odd that World War II, the most horrible event in human history, captures our imagination as no other historical event does. Part of this is no doubt the equivalent of chasing the fire trucks, and gawking at disasters. Another part of it is the sense of satisfaction Americans have in their historic role. But finally, I believe, the reason it captures our imagination is that the war was itself an act of fantasy, and the master dreamer was Adolf Hitler. Here was a man smart enough, immoral enough and foolish enough to make his fantasy real. The German people were dreamers too, smart enough, immoral enough and foolish enough to follow Hitler. They were prepared for Hitler's vast and destructive dream by a strong tradition of Romantic Nationalism, the triumphant conservatism of Bismarck, the Darwinistic racism of anti-Semitism, the Nihilist philosophy of Nietzsche and others, and finally the suffering and fear of the first World War and its aftermath. 
Germans were prepared and enthusiastic about the idea of genius-leader, a sort of Hegelian World-Historical figure like Napoleon or Bismarck who as the child of destiny had the unique power to understand and direct events. They embraced with wild hope the idea that an entirely new era was dawning for Germany. Hitler spoke of a German destiny of greatness, of Lebensraum (space for living)-- of a German empire spanning across Eastern Europe. Their present was certainly dreary and seemingly hopeless. Hitler fulfilled his promise. An entirely new era did dawn for Germany, but only after Germany and most of Europe was reduced to rubble and 40 million people were killed. 
World War II 
The war may be conveniently divided into three stages: German victory from September 1939 to October 1942; Reversal of German victories from October 1942 to June 1944; and the collapse of Germany between June 1944 to May 1945. In the first phase, Hitler was involved in much of the decision making about weapons and strategy, and took more that his share of credit for quick German victories. Hitler took Norway to protect iron ore supplies from Sweden and establish U-boat (submarine) bases there Following the general plan of World War I, Hitler struck west into France to neutralize France and Britain. Unlike World War I, the Germans scored a rapid and complete victory, although for various reasons allowed a large army of surrounded French and British troops to escape to England across the channel from Dunkirk. Hitler then prepared his next logical step: the invasion of Britain. 
In the summer of 1940, Germany launched a huge bombing campaign in Britain, to soften and demoralize its defenses. This attack proved a failure for Germany. The Luftwaffe (German air force) lost hundreds of planes without doing much damage to Britain or its morale, while at the same time American sympathy and support Britain grew rapidly. Hitler realized that he could not defeat Britain, and so convinced himself that if he could defeat Russia, Britain would eventually surrender. In Hitler's mind, the dream of German destiny in the East overcame military judgment. In the summer of 1941, Germany attacked Russia with a huge army, and they had what was always in German military thinking a huge mistake: a war on two fronts. 
The War in the East and the Holocaust 
The war of tactics and strategy against the Western powers was replaced by a vast war of destruction against Russia and smaller East European nations. It was a war of destruction because these were territories to be cleared for German settlement. "Russia is our Africa," Hitler once said, "and the Russians are our negroes." Heinrich Himmler, the commander of the SS, Hitler's elite force, announced to his officers early in 1941 that they planned to annihilate 30 million Slavs to make room for Germans. When the German forces swept east into eastern Poland and then Russia, special SS death squads followed in their wake rounding up Jews and others for mass executions. Russian troops that were captured were deliberately maltreated; 3.7 million Russian soldiers died in German camps. 
When the Germans first attacked western Poland in 1939, Polish Jews were resettled in a special section of the country. Then, in middle of 1941, as the attack on the Soviet Union was launched, Hitler announced the Final Solution, the systematic destruction of the Jewish people. SS operatives had already completed experiments on mass execution by gassing during the previous year when they carried out Hitler's order to kill 70,000 mentally ill Germans. Even as the German Reich was collapsing in 1945, the pace of mass exterminations increased, as if the German officers were determined to complete their assigned task before the inevitable fall of Germany itself. 
The Germans stormed east in an apparently unstoppable march deep into Russia. Then the harsh Russian winter stopped the German victories. But in the summer of 1942, the Germans advanced again to very edges of the major Russian cities. But as winter closed in again, the Russians struck back, surrounding an entire German army near Stalingrad. At this point, Hitler no longer paid any attention to tactical or strategic realities. This was a war of destiny not of strategy. He ordered is troops to fight to the death rather than retreat, thus contemning hundreds of thousands of his own troops to their deaths. He seemed to care nothing at all for the suffering or death of his people, either on the front or at home under the mounting British and American bombing raids. The dream of destiny was all that mattered. Human beings did not. 
The collapse of Germany 
The failure of German forces to contain the Allied landings in France in June 1944 spelled the end for Hitler's dreams. He realized this before he died, but was determined at all costs not to repeat the humiliation of World War I and surrender. He would never surrender, and he did not. The Soviets took Berlin as the Americans and British occupied Western Germany. The dream of German destiny was dead for good. The world was now in the hands of the primary victors, the United States and the Soviet Union