The Rise of Hitler: A Four Coin (Mini Album). On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. While this was the event that formally started the Second World War, it was not the first act of aggression by Adolf Hitler. In 1936, Nazi forces occupied the Rhineland, the German industrial center that had been a demilitarized zone since the end of the Great War. A year later, the Luftwaffe’s Condor Legion participated in the bombing of Guernica, Spain, to help the Fascist General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Germany annexed Austria in 1938, and in 1939, occupied Czechoslovakia, establishing the Protectorate of Bohemia & Moravia. --This set contains coins that circulated in those four areas during the 1930s.