World War II: Battlefield Europe

Learning what Professor Stone sees as the turning point of World War II, the Battle of Moscow; at the start of the fight, Hitler stands on the verge of victory; by the end, a Soviet attack marks the beginning of the end for the Nazis.

Hitler's effort to kill Europe's Jews is key to how one thinks about Nazism and World War II; learning the evolution of anti-Semitism in Europe from a belief system rooted in religion to a new form of anti-Semitism that was racial and biological.

Learning the elements in the Treaty of Versailles that made it a priority for Hitler to destroy; exploring the factors that kept other powers from stopping Hitler's rise to power; studying what made the Spanish Civil War a symptom of World War II.

With Germany's land grab in 1939, Britain and France conclude that Hitler wants European domination; the story of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union; the rise of a new kind of German warfare called blitzkrieg.

Hitler launches a war that kills nearly 60 million people; learning what brings this murderous individual into power in Nazi Germany; Professor Stone puts the rise of Nazi Germany in the context of the European environment of the 1920s and 1930s.

Learning how Hitler achieves a rapid advance in World War II; studying Germany's campaigns in Denmark and Norway, the collapse of Neville Chamberlain's government, the French defeat in the Battle of the Meuse River and the rise of the Vichy regime.