In his effort to conquer all of Europe Hitler next advanced toward Eastern Europe. In his opening chapters of this volume, THE GATHERING STORM Churchill describes how things stood at the close of World War One in 1919 before Adolf Hitler came to full power in 1933. Shortly thereafter Hitler’s armies conquered Spain and Austria. Then Germany attacked and conquered Poland and the Scandinavia countries, especially Finland because of its proximity to Russia. In 1940 Germany attacked Norway. Both of these Scandinavian countries fought valiantly but finally succumbed to the Nazi attacks. Finland was in a particular difficult position because she had to deal with both the German attacks from the South and her century-long conflicts with Russia in the East. She had to play the two against each other in developing her strategy. In the long run Finland gambled to go along with Germany in the short run, fighting against Russia in the long run. Even so, she ended up on the side of the Western powers in the end achieving a temporary stand-off with Russia which was not resolved until the end of the World War Two with the beginning of the so-called “cold war” and the dividing up of Europe into East and West.     

            But before all that Germany had to be defeated and Britain saved. In the end it was the United States’ partnership with England and then the other Western powers that put a stop to Hitler’s effort to conquer the World. More specifically, it was the friendship and on-going co-operation between Churchill and the US President Franklin Roosevelt that swung the tide against Hitler’s Germany. It took the United States several years to allow itself to enter the war, partly or perhaps largely because of the rising threat of Japan as a power in the Pacific arena.