Faustian Bargain

When Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, launching World War Two, its military might was literally overwhelming. The Luftwaffe bombed towns and cities across the country; fifty divisions of the Wehrmacht crossed the border. Yet only two decades earlier, at the end of World War One, Germany had been an utterly and abjectly defeated military power. Foreign troops occupied its industrial heartland and the Treaty of Versailles had reduced its vaunted army to a fraction of its size, banning it from developing new military technologies. When Hitler came to power in 1933, these…