Germany
during World War Two
Table O' Contents
The Revolution, the Treaty,
and the Weimar Republic (1918-1933)
Revolution
The
Treaty of Versailles
The
New German Constitution
Germany's
Post-War Economy
The
Weakness of the Weimar Republic
The
Nazi Rise to Power (1933) and World War Two (1939-1945)
Adolf
Hitler
Hitler
Comes to Power (1934)
Hitler
Prepares Germany for War
The
Annexation of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland
World
War Two Begins
Hitler
Decides Not to Try to Invade Great Britain
Successes
and Failures in the Mediterranean
The
Invasion of Russia: The Turning Point
German
Resistance to Hitler
The
Fall of the Third Reich
Hitler
Kicks Das Bucket
The
Holocaust
- Back
to the main page
The Revolution, the Treaty
and, the Weimar Republic (1918-1933)
Revolution
The internal struggles
of Germany began on October 28, 1918, when the German sailors mutinied
and raised the red flag over their ships. They believed that the
admiral was planning to make them do a suicide run on the British fleet-
a suspicion that was not without foundation and as a matter of fact was
correct. They seized the city of Kiel and put it under the authority
of the "sailor's council." Germany sent troops to put them down but
these too joined the revolution. Parliamentarians were sent to negotiate
and they succeeded with this group but not before the revolution could
spread outside of the city and into the rest of Germany.
In three days time
the revolution had spread all across Germany. A revolutionary, Richard
Muller, remarked that "Germany was a tinderbox waiting for a match."
The people were willing to revolt because of the lack of food caused by
the war and also the fact that a treaty was not yet in sight. Ironically,
the first group to revolt was the military, the people who formerly were
the largest supporters of the government. Parliamentary groups began
to pop up all over the country calling themselves "sailor's councils",
"workers councils" or "soldiers councils." The groups gained power
by seizing authorities and making them do their bidding. By November,
Berlin was in the hands of the revolutionaries. The workers rose
up in revolt and there was no one left willing to support the old regime.
Huge separatist movements were already active in Bavaria, Rhineland and
Silesia that could be compared to the death of Alexander the Great; it
caused the entire empire to split up into little states. The Social
Democrats set up their own government in Berlin and all of the different
revolutionary parties except the Spartacists took part in it.
Prince Max tried to
appease the revolutionaries by appointing their leader, Friedrich Ebert,
chancellor. (It seems like a bad idea to promote a person trying
to overturn your government to the highest position in that government,
doesn't it?) General Groener, the replacement for Ludendorff, offered
Ebert the aid of the army as long as he and the other military staff could
keep their rank. The Independent Socialists and Ebert’s party parted
ways. The Independents wanted to hold elections at a later date so
they could have time to depose Ebert. Ebert wanted an immediate election
because he was currently the most popular leader in Germany.
In mid-December the
congress met and decided to hold the elections on January 19th. Ebert’s
opponents made a proposition that industries should be socialized and that
the power of the military officer should be destroyed. The bill passes
and this naturally caused general Groener to be angry. Ebert pacified
him by telling him that the bill did not apply to generals. Due to
Ebert’s frequent correspondences with Groener, the Independents began to
suspect that he was making deals with the army. This lead to a group
of sailors invading the chancellery and seizing him on December 23rd.
Ebert called the army for help and they went to Berlin and began to shell
the chancellery building. The sailors accepted a truce but the soldiers
who were sent to Ebert’s aid joined the revolutionaries. As you can
see, this situation posed a bit of a problem to Ebert and his supporters,
as any use of military ended with the military joining the revolution.
The independents saw
Ebert’s actions as going against the ideals of the government and they
all resigned in order to start their own revolution. The Spartacists
left the Independent Socialists and formed the German Communist Party (KPD).
They then went on to publicly reject the elected officials and seize buildings
in Berlin. Due to their lack of planning, Ebert’s new army, "The
Freikorps", put the revolt down. The Freikorps was an anti-democratic
party consisting mostly of volunteer ex-soldiers.
On February 5th
1919 the Constituent Assembly was elected at Weimar. The Freikorps
backed up this newly "elected" parliament with force. Despite the
recent elections, the revolutions continued. In March 1919 a revolt
in Berlin was put down by force. Bremen and Brunswick established
dictatorships that were also put down by force. On April 19, another
council of workers and soldiers met despite the new government. Surprisingly,
they were not put down by force. The revolutions in Berlin
can be summed up with this:
"The revolution in Berlin left a confused
memory of groups of ragged men brandishing rifles…or riding on the tops
of armored cars through the streets whose baroque monuments were an ironic
reminder of past imperial splendors, of sailors enthusiastically plundering
the royal palace and getting drunk on the Kaiser’s Champaign: of red flags
fluttering hopefully from public buildings against a leaden sky: of improvised
barricades and bullet swept squares."1
The Social Revolution
was eventually contained, despite various public disorders and riots.
The new National Assembly that met at Weimar proclaimed a democratic Republic,
the Weimar Repubic, and elected Ebert as President of the Reich.
This Weimar Republic lasted from 1919 to 1933 when Hitler came to power,
and was constantly unstable throughout.
The Treaty of Versailles
The Allies were divided
about how to deal with the Germans. The Americans wanted to be lenient
and thought the most important thing was the formation of a new republic.
The French believed that no change of government would change the people
and the German people were already dangerous. A republic would make
them even more so. England had a large domestic movement called the
"Hang the Kaiser Campaign."
The Treaty was presented
on May 7, 1919. The German people viewed the conditions as extremely
harsh. By the terms of the Treaty, Germany lost the territories of
Alsace-Lorraine, North Schleiswig and Posen. Prussia became separated
from Germany by a strip of land called the "Polish Corridor", causing them
to lose 12% of its population, 13% of its territory as well as ¾
of its iron industry and 1/5 of its coal. The union of Austria and
Germany was forbidden. Germany was forced to acknowledge its war
guilt and some of the military leaders were to be tried for war crimes.
Germany had to pay an unspecified amount of money the amount of which would
be determined by how much they could pay. There had to be massive
disarmament of all the German military and also Germany was not allowed
into the League of Nations for the time being. War materials were
to be handed over to the Allies, and the manufacture of munitions was almost
completely halted. The German Army was limited to 100,000 officers
and men, the navy was reduced, and no military aircraft were allowed.
To ensure the execution of the Treaty's terms, Allied troops would occupy
the left bank of the Rhine for 15 years.
The Treaty's terms
were so harsh that some of the German leaders went as far as refusing to
sign the Treaty. The Allies were swamped with complaints from the
German people concerning the Treaty. German Prime Minister Scheidemann
said, referring to the Treaty of Versailles, "The hand that signs that
document…would wither."2
This was prophetic of the Weimar Republic’s downfall. Scheidemann
refused to sign this document and resigned, and with him resigned the whole
Democratic Party. Ebert decided that it must be signed, because if
it was not, war would break out again and the terms would be imposed
on
Germany rather than offered. Ebert signed the Treaty on June 28,
1919.
The Germans hated the
Treaty of Versailles for many reasons. One reason was that the treaty
was imposed and non-negotiable. It also contradicted Wilson’s twelve
points, which were supposed to be to basis for the treaty. There
was a ban on union with Austria and their economy would be destroyed, and
now the majority of the Germans were being punished for the actions of
their fathers and previous rulers.
"There was hardly a trace of the wisdom
and long sightedness which a hundred years before the authors of the Vienna
peace settlement had shown."3
Instead of being lenient
and making the Germans glad that they had signed the peace treaty, the
authors of the Treaty of Versailles caused the whole German country to
be angry and want to do away with the treaty. This humiliation was
part of the reason the German people were eager to accept Hitler's policies
when the Nazi Party came to power later on.
The New German Constitution
The conclusion of the revolutions
and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles led the German government to
the writing of a new constitution. It was approved by the constituent
assembly five weeks after the signing of the Treaty. There were seven
key points for this new government:
1. The central government wielded more
power than before. The separate states were not in charge of their
own army or finance any more.
2. Prussia lost its power because the Bundesrat
was abolished. The Prussians had had a majority in the Bundesrat
and hence every vote went their way.
3. The Junkers lost their power and the
people gained it.
4. The Reichstag had the most power and
was elected by the whole populace.
5. A legislative house representing the
states called the Reichsrat replaced the Bundesrat.
6. The voters elected the president.
He was in charge of the army and could dissolve the Reichstag. In
the case of an emergency, he could suspend civil rights. These powers
were exploited by Hitler later on.
7. Basic rights were established for the
people.
There were clauses calling
for the socialization of industries that pleased the Socialists.
The Independent socialists, however, all voted against the constitution.
There were quite a few problems with this constitution that caused its
later downfall. The first was that officials were elected from a
list provided by the parties. The electors had no relationship with
the people they were voting for. The new government promoted the
party system and a divided parliament. The German people had always been
under a king and therefore had trouble adapting to any other form of government.
As a parliamentarian named Preuss said, "Democracy did not suit the German
people."4
Germany's Post-War
Economy
In 1920 Germany was only
producing ¾ of its old coal production and ½ of its steel.
The agriculture began to fail because all the animals were eaten in the
war. This caused a lack of fertilizer and hence bad crops of food.
The government’s spending never dropped below twice their income between
1920 and 1923. In May 1921 the reparations for World War One were
set at a huge 132 billion Gold Marks. The Germans had no motivation
to work because any money they made had to go to the Allies. By 1922
the Mark was worth 1/100th of its 1914 value. By 1922, the value
of the Mark fell from 162 to the American dollar to 7000 Marks to the dollar.
By November of 1923, it had fallen all the way to 4,200,000,000,000 Marks
to the dollar.
Late 1923 brought about
the first move to stimulate the economy. The general consensus was
that the only way to improve the economy was to stabilize the Mark.
They changed the Mark to be based on gold instead of industrial assets.
They were then able to pay the reparations in Marks instead of gold, which
would devalue the Mark. Under the Dawes Plan Germany received a loan
from America of 800 million dollars that was intended to go towards rebuilding
their economy. Using the new funds, the government installed modern
tools into their factories and industries. The coal and iron production
soon doubled and exports began to rise. By 1928 the total exports
exceeded the pre war economy's. They paid off their war debts by
borrowing money from other countries. In October 1929 the Allies
stopped this borrowing by putting forth a new reparation plan. Part
of this plan gave Germany a free economy that was no longer under the control
of the Allies. The reparations that were required started getting
more and more opposition as the people that were responsible for them died.
Nationalist groups began to pop up, speaking out against the Allies for
instituting the reparations and the German government for paying them.
While the economy was
recovering from the setbacks it experienced from the Treaty of Versailles,
the German army was also developing under the power of a new commander
named Seeckt who reformed the whole army structure. He began to train
the army until it was considered the best in Europe. These trainees
became the leaders during World War Two. During this time Germany
found ways of getting around the Treaty of Versailles by getting Sweden,
Spain, and others to build war materials for them. Seeckt also reintroduced
the thought of quick strikes that had been lost in the previous war.
The army was made loyal to the state and not the government. This
caused the nationalists to be able to win the army over due to their lack
of loyalty to the government. Parties had their own personal armies that
they could do with as they would. The Nazi soldiers were an example
of one such army.
These were the conditions
leading up to the appearance of Hitler and the Nazi party. Overall
the country was in a position that was favorable for a nationalist takeover.
There was a strengthened economy, an elite army not loyal to the government,
nationalist thought rising because of the reparations, and a disunited
government through the party system. Under these conditions the Weimar
Republic began to break down.
"There could be no doubt that the course
of events might have been a different one if one group of people had been
in command."5
The Weakness of the Weimar Republic
The parties were divided
by strong beliefs and were not willing to agree on anything. The
only united party left standing was the Social Democratic Party, but they
had no power. The conditions were causing the people to begin to
vote for the conservative parties. Right wing groups began to prosper
from the peoples discontent and gain their support. The middle class
also began to vote conservative, blaming the Social Democrats for the treaty
of Versailles.
For the German people,
this period was much like the period the French went through after Napoleon
was exiled. They were at the peak of their power, Europe was at their
mercy, but they could not hold on to it. Furthermore, a treaty had
been imposed upon the populace that was deemed so unfair that it is now
looked upon as one of the causes for World War Two. The people lost
their nationalism and began to revolt against the government, and before
they knew it there was a new government in charge. This new system
was nothing better than a dictatorship where Ebert reigned with his Freikorps
and added on to that were the millions of Marks of debt that the reparations
had imposed upon the country. The new German government was anything
but effective as the party system split it up into dozens of little factions
warring between themselves. Overall this was a period in which the
people were slowly working into a boil and all that was needed was a leader
who could tap into this growing tide of discontent and make use of that
for his own ends.
The Nazi Rise to Power (1933)
and World War Two (1939-1945)
As support for the Weimar Republic weakened, support
for the Nazi and Communist Parties rose. Adolf Hitler, leader of
the Nazi Party, used a variety of skillful political tactics to win the
Nazis seats in the Reichstag. Eventually, Hitler was able to get
himself elected chancellor, and after some manipulation of the German people's
weaknesses he became leader of Germany, the führer.
Adolf Hitler
In order to understand
the actions of people of this time, one must understand Hitler’s background
and some of what caused him to be the way he was. Adolf Hitler was
born in 1889 and eighteen years later his parents died, forcing him to
move to Vienna and join the working class as an artist. As he spent
time with the poor people of Vienna, his contempt for them began to grow,
and he turned to reading literature by Richard Wagner and Liebenfels, two
very anti-Semitic authors. He especially liked the works of
Liebenfels, who promoted a form of "Social Darwinism" called "Theozoology."
Hitler joined the army
in 1914 because he loved the idea of a world united by the Germans.
After only four years, he was wounded by a poisonous gas attack on the
western front. While he was hospitalized, he decided to pursue politics
as a new career, rightly thinking it was more safe and indeed more influential
than the military. After his release, he was quickly appointed to
his first political position as a propagandist to boost the soldier’s morale.
In September of 1919 he was sent to investigate a 20-25-member party called
the German Workers Party. This party appealed to Hitler because it
presented the opportunity to quickly attain a leadership position.
On February 24, 1920, the first mass meeting of the party was held in the
Hofbrauhaus in Munich, attended by 2000 people. There, Hitler announced
the beginning of their new party, the National Socialist German Worker’s
Party (the "Nazis").
Hitler's Nazis soon
gained much support, partly from volunteers from the army and also from
mass propaganda and terror tactics. In November 1923, Hitler was
sentenced to five years in prison, where he wrote Mein Kampf (My
Conflict). The basic book explained that invaders and invadees had
polluted Germany, and that Germany should take over the world and then
cleanse it of the "lesser races", referring to almost any race but the
Nordic and Aryan. In his book he "derided the stupidity of the bourgeoisie
and the old upper class for being derided by humanitarian scruples."6
The practice of anti-Semitism was to be instituted because "in order to
arouse hatred among the people, it was essential to personify the enemy."7
Hitler's book explicitly explained his plan for world domination, including
his plan to make and later break a treaty with Russia, the Russian-German
Non-aggression Pact. Perhaps if anyone had read Mein Kampf
and taken it seriously, things would not have gone the way they did.
"people do not have the natural herd
instinct…only fear of an authority commanding and using force can create
a community." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.
Hitler Comes to Power (1934)
As Adolf Hitler began to
rise in power, the Weimar republic was also prospering and becoming more
and more accepted by the people. Hitler found it harder to convert
the people to his side with propaganda. Luckily for him, the World
Depression began in 1929, sending the German economy into an extreme "slump".
The people immediately began to blame the government for the state of affairs
and they become willing to buy into any political party that promised change,
especially the extremist parties. The Nazis proposed to the German
people that they would disband the parliament and the multi-party system
and expand into other countries to create the "Lebensraum" (living room)
for the German people. Hitler publicly blamed the current problems
on the Jews as well as the current government, exactly as he had planned
out in Mein Kampf.
The elections began
in 1933 and Hitler began to terrorize his opponents using his own little
private army. He had already begun to confine political "dissidents"
to concentration camps and by 1933 there were over 100,000 inside over
50 concentration camps. On February 27 1933 Hitler pulled the last
little trick that got him elected. The Reichstag building caught
fire and immediately afterward blame was placed on Hitler’s biggest opponents,
the Communist Party. Using information and terror tactics, he rallied
a stunning 43.9% of the vote in the 1934 elections. This is when he declared
himself the "Führer", which literally translated means "leader".
Hitler, before becoming
the leader of Germany, passed the Enabling Act, which allowed the government
to issue decrees independent of the Reichstag and the President.
He used this to help himself become führer and continued to take advantage
of the Enabling Act throughout his dictatorship of the Third Reich.
Soon after Hitler came to power, Germany turned in to a totalitarian police
state. The Nazi police force, the SA (Sturmabteilung), began to override
the power of the regular police force. Hitler soon created the SS
(Schutzstaffel), his personal body guards, which eventually turned in to
the "elite troops" of Hitler's army, receiving all of the best equipment
and training.
Hitler Prepares
Germany for War
In the 1930’s Germany was
already looking towards a war, and Hitler had already developed his goals
for entering the war that would break out years later. First, he
planned the destruction of the Treaty of Versailles and the incorporation
of all German speaking countries into the Reich. Hitler then planned
the conquest of enough land to grant the Germans "living room" and the
purification of the Aryan race. In order to achieve these goals he
wanted to be able to first conquer France and Russia while maintaining
an alliance with Italy and Britain. Mussolini, the dictator of Italy,
would come over easily to his side later and even Britain almost made an
alliance with him until he began the annihilation of the Jews.
The early and mid 30’s
instigated the beginning of Hitler’s political maneuvering. He did
not want to begin a war just yet due to the relatively disarmed state of
his military at the time. The ideal start of warfare for Hitler was
in 1944, but this was not to be. Hitler's first movement was in May
of 1933, when he signed a peace treaty with Russia, the German-Soviet Nonaggression
Pact that "guaranteed" that the two countries would not attack each other.
On May 17, Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations, and announced
to the world that he would be building up his military and began his massive
youth training program that would later be so prominent in propaganda films.
He also began to send out foreign branches of the SS to lobby for support
from the 27 million German speaking people outside of Germany. These
branches instigated nationalist movements in Saar, Danzig and Austria that
usually ended with the Nazi party seizing the parliament or beginning some
sort of violent action against the government. In January of 1934
Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Poland in order to enhance the
"blitzkrieg" effect (attacking quickly and effectively) when the war actually
began.
In 1935, the massive rearmament of Germany began.
German spending on armaments rose from under 2 billion reichsmarks in 1933
to 16 billion reichsmarks in 1938-39. By 1939, Hitler finally had
control of both the army and the foreign service, allowing him to do with
them as a pleased.
The Annexation of Austria, Czechoslovakia,
and Poland
After the early political
movements, Germany began to actually take over other countries. Hitler's
main targets were the German speaking countries that surrounded Germany
proper, namely Austria, Saar, the Rhineland, and Czechoslovakia.
His first move towards establishing German predominance in Europe was to
annex Austria, which was not truly a military move but another subversive
campaign like the one he had completed in his own country. At the
time, Austria was still in ruins due to the fall of the Hapsburg line,
and there was a huge split between the Catholics and the Socialists.
The Nazis went to Germany in order to exploit this gap. The conflict
came to a head in 1934 when Dollfuss, the Catholic leader, started a dictatorship
by force. He was soon killed in a coup that was started by the Nazis.
The Germans would have had Austria, had Italy not interceded on their behalf.
When Italy expressed its disapproval of the attempted takeover, Hitler
immediately denied any previous knowledge of the movements and stopped
his efforts for a time.
Six weeks after the
attempt in Austria, Hitler decided that he needed a success in order to
spark further nationalism in the country. He decided to make an attempt
on Saar. He ran a campaign for the Nazi party and by the January
1935 elections in Saar, there was an overwhelming vote to join Germany.
With this takeover Germany got back many of the important mines and industry
that they would need for a protracted war.
Hitler, feeling more
audacious from his recent victory in the Saar, decided to take a chance
and send soldiers into the French occupied Rhineland, a direct violation
of the Treaty of Versailles. Both sides had previous orders not to
start a fight. The French did not want to mobilize troops and the
Germans did not want to start a war just yet. This action was a major
breach in the treaty of Versailles, (which, after all, Hitler had denounced),
but it was also a violation of a recent treaty called the Treaty of Locarno
between Germany and France. The League verbally condemned the move
but Hitler pacified them by giving them a 25-year peace treaty. This
conflict showed what Hitler considered the weakness of the rest of Europe.
"behind the speeches and high flown
phrases... guilt, pacifism, wishful thinking and lethargy…made them incapable
of action."8
At the end of 1936 the
Olympic Games were held in Berlin. Anti-Semitic signs were temporarily
taken down even though Jews already had no citizenship or rights.
Civil war broke out in Spain distracting Europe from Hitler’s actions even
though he was on France’s side. Belgium canceled their treaty with
France, giving Germany an advantage that they had lost in the previous
war: Germany would not have to go through Belgium to get to France.
Italy proclaimed the Rome-Berlin axis in November of 1936 and Japan signed
a treaty with Germany as they prepared to invade China. This caused
Russia to have to worry about a two front war between Germany and Japan.
In 1937, Europe was
still in a deadlock over the revolution in Spain. Japan invaded China
and declared war with Russia. The people of Europe were probably
seeing the whole world plunge into war one country at a time and it was
only a matter of time before everyone was involved. Hitler held a
meeting, the Hossbach Conference, with his war staff in which he declared
that France and Britain were the only countries that could possibly stop
Germany. He also declared that Germany should not start a war until
1943-45 when they would be fully mobilized. However, the plans for
invading Czechoslovakia were put into place. Seven weeks later, Hitler’s
troops were standing ready on the French and Czech borders.
Hitler delayed his
action against the Czechs in early 1937 when the opportunity presented
itself for a takeover of Austria. Hitler accused the leader of Austria
of violating the German-Austrian agreements causing the aforesaid leader
to make an excellent career decision and resign. Elections were then
held for the vacated position and the standing president shunned all Nazi
authority, declaring that he would not allow a Nazi to be the chancellor
of Austria. The Nazi candidate declared himself chancellor anyway,
and German soldiers were allowed to cross the border into Austria.
Austria was under German control. Now, one might wonder why Italy
did not oppose this attempt like they had done the first time. The
reason was that the Italians had lost many of their trade routes and were
at that time reliant on German exports, making it difficult to oppose Germany
in any way.
The conquest of Austria
also moved Czechoslovakia to the top of Hitler’s "to do" list. The
Czechs, nervous about the recent conglomeration of German troops on their
borders, made a treaty with Russia. They then, in May 1938, went
on to mobilize all of their own soldiers. Naturally, Hitler was not
very pleased by this because he saw Czechoslovakia as a future Nazi air
base for attacks into Russia. He was in for further disappointment
when Britain and France declared that they too would defend the Czechs.
Hitler declared to
his military staff that he wanted Czechoslovakia under German power by
October 1st. He started making speeches to the Czech people that
incited them to revolt against their own government. The Czech leader
confronted Hitler and the latter demanded that the former give up all his
land. Surprisingly, he did sign the agreement but many other counties,
seeing that he was giving away land, made demands of their own and Czechoslovakia
fell apart, causing Hitler’s demands to be neglected. Hitler declared
that he would invade unless his demands were met by September 28.
In response, the Czechs again mobilized, as well as parts of France and
Britain. This outbreak of conflicts led to the four-power conference
that was held between Italy, Germany, France and Britain. It was
decided that Czech land that was over 50% German would be given to Germany.
It was called the Treaty of Munich after which Chamberlain declared "peace
for our time." His statement would only be correct if "our time" meant
"for less than a year from now." After receiving the land given to
him, Hitler proceeds to annex and occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia.
When Britain sees this bit of deceit, it decided to defend Poland later
on, when Hitler tries to take it. On August 23, 1939, in his last
movement before the war, Hitler signed a peace treaty with Stalin.
This peace treaty was not to last, though, as Hitler planned to invade
the whole of Russia after the land in the west was secured.
The war proper began
when the Germans invaded Poland. Due to their previous treaty, Poland
was taken completely by surprise and was overrun in four weeks. The
Germans attacked from three different directions: East Prussia, Promeriana
and Slovakia, taking the British and French by surprise, as they were expecting
the Poles to at least hold out until the winter. If they had not
been taken by surprise, the Allied forces would have been able to attack
Germany while they were preoccupied with Poland. On September 19,
1939, the Red Army also marched into Poland, also taking Poland by surprise
as the Poles originally thought they were a relief force. The day
after Russia entered Poland, Warsaw surrendered under massive bombardment.
At the same time, Germany and Russia signed a peace treaty allotting the
Polish land between them. With this attack, the Germans showed that
they had outgrown the tactic of trench warfare, but the Allies were still
maintaining that a Blitzkrieg such as the Germans used against Poland would
not work in the west. It also showed that France was not willing
to enter the war even when their Allies were being attacked.
After the takeover,
a Nazi, Governor Frank, was placed in charge of Poland. Hitler’s
instructions to him were as follows: "to assume the administration of conquered
territories with the special order ruthlessly to exploit this region as
a war zone and object of plunder, to reduce it…to a heap of rubble."9
This Governor then went on to start compulsory labor service for all Poles
between 14 and 60. The deportation of Jews, Poles, Upper Classmen and scholars
also began to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen.
World War Two Begins
With the invasion of Poland, the Allied forces declared
war on Germany and the Axis forces. Eventually, the main Allied forces
would consist of Great Britain, France, the United States, China, and after
Hitler broke his treaty, the Soviet Union. The Soviet forces ended
up inflicting over 80% of the casualties in Hitler's armies. The
main Axis forces consisted of Germany, Japan, and Italy, but Germany's
Allies at times became more of a hindrance than a help.
----------
The next stage of the
conflict was the fight for Norway. Britain was there because they
wanted to reestablish the blockade that had hurt the Germans in World War
One so much. To do this they had to stop the trading between the
Swedes and Germans. Unfortunately, Sweden was a neutral state, and
Britain could not simply attack it. Germany started the conflict
by torpedoing British ships in the channel. On April 9 1940 the German
attack began on Norway. Britain landed troops there but they were
forced out. The victory for Germany was only assured when the Allies
withdrew their forces to repel the invasion of France. The most important
thing about Norway was the same thing from World War One: a considerable
amount of German soldiers were tied up there instead of fighting against
the major Allied force.
After this sort of
"pre-war" action, Germany began the plans for its actual invasion of France
called "Operation Sickle Thrust", the final preparations for which were
being made during the conflict in Norway. The operation was organized
much like the Schlieffen Plan except for a few key points: there was no
surprise attack, there was not as much of a superiority in numbers, and
the French troops could not be expected to waste troops in useless offensives
again.10
On January 9 1940 a plane carrying the plans for the attack went down in
Belgium. The Belgians acquired the plans and gave them to the French.
Hitler heard of this and canceled the offensive, deciding instead to launch
a new plan that would strike the Allies through the Ardenne Mountains.
The Allies were assuming the Germans would progress through Holland Belgium
as the Schlieffen Plan would suggest, and Hitler's new plan caught the
Allies off guard.
Hitler used the soldiers
from the original plan as a feint and set up most of his armor at the new
point of attack. There were reportedly so many armored divisions
that, if lined up, they would reach from Aachen to East Prussia.
The Germans had the disadvantage in soldiers: 2574 German tanks to 3254
Allied, 155 German divisions to 137 Allied and 4300 German planes to 2800
Allied. I believe that the allies made up for the disadvantage in
soldiers and planes by their huge superiority in armor.
On May 10th, 1940,
the invasion began. The Dutch surrendered in five days only causing
200 German casualties. Belgium, which was already mobilized, lasted
until the 28th. The Allies did exactly what Hitler wanted and moved
the bulk of their soldiers to the north, allowing Hitler to easily push
through the Ardennes sector of the Allied front. Six days after beginning
the attack, the German troops were already inside France and heading west
with virtually no opposition. On the tenth day, the German army had
already gone the 200 miles to the English Channel. The fact that
the German troops were overrunning the land caused the French government
to surrender and flee the country on June 10th, leaving the British alone
against the Germans. The British, noticing this fact, retreated to
Dunkirk where the German soldiers surrounded them. Hitler ordered
the attack to stop and let the British evacuate mainland Europe.
45,000 British soldiers escaped.
Hitler Decides Not to Try to Invade Great
Britain
Hitler waited a year in
order to plan his attack on Russia and to see if England would surrender.
He began to see that England would not surrender due to the unbalance
of power that it would create and their disagreement with the Nazi’s actions.
Hitler was faced with a number of problems with England, the first being
that in his book he stated that England was not one of the countries that
should be conquered. He also had never intended to incorporate Britain
into Germany, instead he was just hoping that they would remain neutral.
The third problem, the most important one, was that if Britain were taken,
they could continue the war from Canada. Despite all these reasons,
Hitler decides on trying out "Operation Sea Lion", an attack on Britain.
When they had retreated
from Dunkirk, the British soldiers had left most of their weapons behind
them. As a result, they only had enough weapons in England to outfit
14 divisions. The only problem with an invasion was keeping a supply
line open. On August 13, the Luftwaffe began its bombardment of England.
British defense and the invention of the radar caused Hitler to have to
turn to attacks on England’s cities. In the next two days of bombing,
the Germans made no headway except to train British pilots. The actual
land attack was postponed and inevitably canceled due to bad weather.
On August 17, Hitler announced his intentions to blockade England, a plan
that never really had a chance at working because the English had a better
navy than the Germans. Hitler also did not want a repeat of the Lusitania,
which would have been inevitable under the circumstances. In September
1940 the Germans signed a peace treaty with the Japanese in order to prevent
America from coming into the war. Unfortunately, the Japanese were
the ones that ended up bringing the Americans in to the war when Japan
bombed Pearl Harbor. (As stated before, Germany's Allies were perhaps
more of a hindrance than a help to Hitler).
Successes and Failures in the Mediterranean
Hitler, having no where
else to go, turned to the Mediterranean for his next attacks, intending
to cut off English supply routes through that area. Hitler tried
to institute a plan for accomplishing this by taking the rock of Gibraltar,
getting Spain to resist the English, having Italy harass English ships,
gaining the support of the Arabs by an anti-Zionist campaign, and gaining
lands in North Africa. What actually happened: Italy was completely
incompetent at everything that they did, Spain refused to give aid to Germany,
Egypt refused to ally with Germany, and Hitler put an attack on Russia
as the higher priority, so the affairs in the Mediterranean were neglected.
Italy, since its entrance into the war, managed only to be completely unsuccessful
at everything they tried to do, forcing the Germans to have to divert effort
in order to back the Italians up. (Italy was more of a hindrance
than a help!)
The conquered Spain
and France refused to take any part in any attack against England.
Italy was being quickly beaten in North Africa losing 130,000 out of 215,000
soldiers. The only reason North Africa was not completely lost to
Germany was that England had to send troops to help Greece. On March
25th Yugoslavia joined the Axis and German troops invaded Greece through
the newly gained territory. By May, Germany had taken all of Greece
as well as Crete. Hitler could have continued his victories in the
Mediterranean if he had not concentrated so much on Russia and viewed the
former as unnecessary.
Germany sent Rommel,
who had distinguished himself in the invasion of France, to act as a diversion
in Africa. He immediately launched an attack and advanced into Egyptian
lands. Japan’s entry into the war caused England to retreat from
most of North Africa, and Rommel was left almost completely unopposed.
In August 1941, Rommel began his offensive into Egypt, and met with heavy
resistance from the British who held out long enough to receive reinforcements
from England and America. By October 23 the Allies had had twice
as many soldiers in Africa as the Germans did. They launched an attack
and forced Rommel to retreat into Tunis where he was met by an Allied division
going in the opposite direction. Hitler made a mistake and sent three
more divisions as aid just as Rommel began to lose. By May 1943,
150,000 Germans had been taken captive and the campaign in Africa was over.
Germany was reluctant
to commit to Africa because it did not help against England. Most
of the western troops went to the navy in the Atlantic to oppose the British
naval superiority. Germany began to sink Allied ships, and by 1941
they had sunk over 1.75 million tons of metal. Germany lost a lot
of strength because they needed to commit some ships to the Mediterranean,
but that did not stop them from trying to blockade the Americans in 1941.
The Americans quickly stopped this attempt by sending ships in convoys
where it was virtually impossible for them to attacked. In May 1941
the German ship Bismarck was sunk off the coast of Iceland, and by early
1943 the German ships had to be withdrawn completely due to the futility
of the blockade and the superiority of the English.
The Invasion of Russia: The Turning Point
The Civil War had its Gettysburg,
the Peloponnesan War had its Sicily, and World War One had its Marne.
So too does World War Two have its turning point: Operation Barbarossa
and Stalingrad. The operation was ordered on December 18, 1940.
Hitler wanted to strike at Russia because it would have given Germany the
"space and resources" that the Germans needed. He also wanted to
strike before they made an alliance with England. Since July, Hitler
had been building up forces on the eastern front, and Romania and Finland
had joined Germany for the attack on Russia. The only problem for
the Germans was that Italy had already been taken and Germany was vulnerable
to attack from the south. Russia figured out what Germany was doing
and started to send them "gifts" and relaxed their grip on Finland and
Romania. Despite this, Hitler decided to commence the attack.
Hitler began his four-year
campaign against Russia, sending 7.2 million troops who caught the Russian
army off guard and were initially successful. By July 17 Germany
was less than two miles from Moscow, and by August the Russian casualties
exceeded three million. The attack was stopped in early winter, which
immobilized the tanks and made it difficult for troop movement in general.
The Russians, on the other hand, were adept at moving large bodies of soldiers
in the snow and started a counter attack that brought the Germans into
a retreat by the end of the year. One out of five German soldiers
were killed, totaling at 1.44 million casualties. Perhaps Hitler
should have quit earlier, while he was ahead.
The next summer, Germany
launched a new offensive with three main objectives: to capture Leningrad,
join the Flemish army, and cut off Moscow’s oil supplies by crossing the
Volga river. The attack made it across the Volga and soon reached
Stalingrad. By June, Hitler was prematurely telling his advisers
that "Russia is finished."11
Hitler made the biggest error of his life (I'm not counting suicide as
an error- in fact, it was one of his best) and decided to try to hold Stalingrad.
His army was quickly surrounded by five Russian armies and over 200,000
Germans were taken prisoner, the rest managing to escape back to Germany.
While in Russia, Hitler was so angered by their resistance that he ordered
the killing of all Russian Jews and anyone related to Communism and, seeing
that Russia was Communist, that meant all Russians. Germans
shot 50-100 Russians for every one of their soldiers killed. The
total Russian losses in the campaign exceeded 17 million as well as 1.7
million Jews.
German Resistance to Hitler
The first groups to oppose the Germans were
the Socialists and the Communists. Both were still in operation during
the Hitler regime despite his opposition to their very existence.
There were over 11,000 arrests of Socialists, who took a large part in
smuggling the Jews out of Germany and away from persecution. The
Communists were outlawed, but due to their acknowledgment of Hitler’s power,
they were not arrested.
There were also three
major resistance groups that were actually part of Hitler’s staff and government.
The first was the military staff. Even the Chief of Staff accused
Hitler of "leading Germany into a disastrous war"12,
though he didn't say this to his face. The military staff began to
make plans to imprison and execute Hitler. When the war started,
the resistance groups had more trouble, especially the military staff.
The Military Intelligence Department, headed by an anti-Nazi admiral, recruited
many anti-Nazi workers into its ranks. This group was responsible
for warning Britain of the impending attack on Poland. They even
went as far as to communicate plans for their capture of Hitler to the
Allies. Unfortunately, two of its members defected and as a result
most of the rest were arrested and executed. One Helmut Von Moltke,
the nephew of the World War One military leader, headed another group called
the "Kreisau". This group was made up mostly of anti-Nazi politicians
who desired the abolishment of the Nazi party and a "return to legality
and morality" in Germany. In 1942 they started "Operation Valkyrie",
an operation to do away with Hitler and establish a Socialist government.
Moltke stated: "Post war Europe is less a question of frontiers and soldiers…then
how the image of man can be reestablished in the hearts of our citizens."13
They, like the Socialists, were responsible for helping Jews in occupied
countries escape. They then joined with the remainder of the Socialists
and tried to organize an assassination of Hitler. By 1942 Hitler
never left his headquarters, which caused an assassination to be exceedingly
difficult. In March of 1943 these parties made two attempts on Hitler’s
life. In one attempt the bomb did not go off and in the other Hitler
had left the building already when explosion occurred. By 1944 Moltke
was in jail and most of the rest of his group were in hiding, but the remainder
of the resistance decided to make one last attempt on Hitler’s life.
On July 20, 1944, at a conference at Hitler's headquarters, a briefcase
containing a bomb was placed under the conference table. Fortunately
for Hitler, his desk shielded him from the blast and when the members of
the Kreisau group, thinking Hitler was dead, tried to seize power, they
were killed.
The Fall of the Third Reich
In 1942 the Allied bombings
of Germany had begun, and by 1943 the Allies were bombing German cities.
The industrial cities on the Rhine were the first to be attacked.
In the last week of July, Hamburg was torn apart by firestorms caused by
the bombings, killing 50,000. By 1944 the allied bombings were directed
against Normandy and targets in France, and by the summer of that year
the Allies were able to bomb Germany at will. In Dresden, 135,000
Germans died in a bombing raid, even more than the first impact of Hiroshima.
As we know, prior to
1944 Italy had already fallen and the Allies were preparing to launch an
attack on France. The date was set for June 1944. The invasion
was preceded by a massive bombardment. One of the key factors in
this invasion was that the German armor was placed far from Germany so
that they could strike any point in France at the same time. This
caused the Allies to get a beachhead before the Germans armor could get
there to push them back. On July 6, the Allies landed 135,000 soldiers
at Normandy. There were so many troops that the fortifications could
not stop them and, as pointed out, the armor could not get to them either.
In a matter of weeks
France was liberated, and by August 24, Paris had fallen. At the
same time, Belgium and Holland were invaded from the north. The German
troops were unable to regroup and were pressed back into Saar and Aachen
quickly. Eisenhower decided to concentrate his attack on the industrial
areas in northwest Germany, but they failed to due to the distance that
the paratroopers were dropped from their targets. In December, Hitler
made his last offensive, sending troops along the same areas as Operation
Sickle Thrust. This caused the German’s eastern front to collapse
due to lack of troops and also the Allied invasion was only delayed by
a couple of weeks.
Russia launched an
attack on the eastern front, and by 1943 they had already recaptured the
majority of their land. In the offensive of 1944 they pressed into
East Prussia. By February 1945 the Russian line was fifty miles from
Berlin and by the 14th Dresden was taken. By Febuary 11, Budapest
fell, and on April 6, so did Vienna. Despite these constant attacks,
Germany managed to stabilize their eastern front and it was up to the west
to make the next breakthrough. The Allies commenced their attack
in March and in a month's time they crossed the Ruhr and Rhine rivers.
Hitler ordered his troops to begin the scorched "earth policy" that had
been used often by Russia, destroying crops and resources in their own
lands.
On April 25, the Allied
and Russian armies joined at the Elba. By this time, most of the
Germans had given up and were concentrating more on which of the Allies
would control their part of the country than on the rest of the war.
As you would expect, no one wanted to be captured by the Russians, seeing
as how they held the biggest grudge. Any city that did not surrender
was immediately demolished by bombings. Not surprisingly, very few
cities refrained from surrendering.
Hitler Kicks Das Bucket
By the end of the war,
Adolf Hitler was, physically, basically dead. A medical report in
1942 stated that he was already suffering from paralyses that would effect
his mind, and his whole nervous system was disintegrating. When the
Russians had completely surrounded Berlin, Hitler decided to spend the
last of his days in the chancellery gardens. The Germans SS troops,
in one last act of brutality, blew up a dam and drowned thousands of German
citizens. On April 30, at 3:30, Hitler poisoned his wife and dog.
Apparantly after seeing the horrible death the poison caused, Hitler shot
himself. His body was burned and buried. It is rumored that
the Russians got the body and secreted it away into Russia. With
the death of Hitler, the Third Reich ended, and with it, World War Two.
The Holocaust
The actual anti-Semitism
of the war began with Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Concentration camps
began for political enemies of the new regime very quickly after the Nazi
rise to power. The actual violence against the Jews began with "Kristallnacht"
on November 9th, 1938, when the Nazis looted Jewish stores and
burned random synagogues. Jews were then moved to ghettos, small
parts of cities that were cordoned off especially for Jewish residence.
After the beginning of the war, many Jews were moved to concentration extermination
camps. The concentration camps were put into use primarily as a way
to make up for the lack of labor caused by the war. The extermination
camps were something different entirely. I personally believe that
as Hitler grew more and more desperate, he began to use the camps more
and more often. I believe that he did this in order to be able to
funnel more money into the war and not as much into keeping millions of
Jews in prisons. Hitler was truly a disturbed being. The concentration
camps consisted of many different parts; a concentration camp was not only
one large camp but many different camps in different places. Take
Auschwitz for instance; it actually consisted of three different camps
all called "Auschwitz" and all with their own populations. So when
you hear of atrocities performed in a camp, it actually refers to the horrible
happenings of multiple camps.
----------
As for the German people,
at the beginning of the war they were much like France after Napoleon.
They had just been at the peak of their power and then it was all taken
from them and, furthermore, a poorly drafted treaty caused the German people
to hate the Allies even more. When a person came to the Germans promising
that he would change everything, revive the economy, restore their old
power, and provide for the people, the Germans jumped at the chance to
follow him. Now it so happened that the person who was smart enough
to make these promises to the German people was named Adolf Hitler and
was NOT the best hope for the German people. The German people, riding
on this new feeling of nationalism, would have been willing to follow the
commands of any leader who would change the status quo. That is why
some people got caught up in the Holocaust: they were so proud of their
new country and government that they let that blind them, and they did
not consider their actions. So, if you were to ask me what it was
like during World War Two for the people, here it is: it was like being
in the utmost pit of despair and want and then being raised from that into
a country that, on the surface, was glorious and prosperous. It was
only until after people saw what the country actually was built on (hate
and pride) that they realized what a horrible place they had made Germany.
1.Ryder, 194-195
2.Ryder, 204
3.Ryder, 206
4.Ryder, 210
5.Holburn, 711
6.Holburn, 715
7.Holburn, 715
8.Ryder, 323
9.Ryder, 384-385
10.Ryder, 389
11.Ryder, 411
12.Ryder, 423
13.Ryder, 426
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