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Germany launched the first true Blitzkrieg on September 1st, 1939, when it invaded Poland. Britain and France, who had guaranteed Poland's frontiers, declared war on Germany after Hitler had refused the allied ultimatum. The campaign in Poland was over in three weeks resulting in the combined Russian-German conquest of this new country. The Allies did nothing to aid Poland and had adopted a strong defensve attitude towards war, resulting from the never-before-seen bloodshed of the last war with Germany, in 1914. This attitude ultimately resulted in the Germans taking Denmark and Norway. In May 1940, Hitler attacked Luxembourg, Belguim, the Netherlands, and France. Everybody, even Hitler's General Staff had expected at best a long stalemate in Northern France, at worst a bloody war that would destroy Germany as a country. But this was not the case. The Allies had expected a German attack to come at France through Belgium, on the German right, and had put the bulk of their forces on the Fraco-Belium border to confront the Germans on Belgium if not German soil. Hitler went against all the rules when he allowed a few German Generals to take the main German forces not on the right, but in the center, through the Ardennes, a virtually undefended forest area in Luxenbourg and Belgium. The German panzer divisions smashed through this area, and swung north to the English Channel. At the same time German forces took Holland in a week and were soon in Belgium. The British and French forces, some 400,000 men were soon trapped in the Frech city of Dunkirk. Hitler was asked by Goering, the head of the Luftwaffe, to divert the land forces to an offfensive in Southern France, and allow the German bombers to prevent an evacuation of the Allied army to Britian. Hitler (This is the point of divergence from the actual time line of World War II)dismissed this suggestion and ordered his panzers to attack Dunkirk immediately, before an evacutaion attempt could be made. Every one of the 400,000 allied soldiers was killed or captured. Hitlter ordered church bells to be rung in Germany for three days to comemorate what he called,"The greatest German victory ever." The next week, the Germans launched a new offensive that led them to capture all of Northern France. An armistice was signed on June 25th, 1940. The Germans occupied all of the French Atlantic Coast and all of the major industrial areas. A puppet state out of the French town of Vichy was established to manage Southern France and all of the French Colonial territoy overseas. Hitler now wanted to make peace with Britain. He sent settlement after settlement to Britain offering terms that would allow the British to retain their empire, but would hand the Germans virtually total conrol of Europe. The British refused and Hitler imposed a blockade of all goods to Britain. This he did with minimal sucess as the Americans, recognizing the vulnerability of the British Isles to invasion, began escorting their convoys with warships and shipping American weapons and volunteers to offer some protection from Hitler, who they thought would invade at any moment. Hitler was reluctant to invade Britain. He didn't see the British people as an enemy, and wanted to eventually forge an alliance with them to fight the Soviet Union. In July 1940 he was urged by one of the heroes of the Battle of France, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, to invade Britain. Rommel pleaded, "America will join the war sooner or later, and if they have to come across the Atlantic they won't be able to fight effectively when they get here. But if they have Britain as a bridgehead, we will be as hare and foxes amongst dogs and wolves." The fact that Rommel could say this directly to Hitler shows that the Field Marshal held great influence over the Fuerher.