Events of World War II

The following is a documentation of World War II, beginning with the rise of Führer Adolf Hitler in 1933 to the conclusion of the war in 1946. Approved by by the Reich Ministry of State Education.

## The Legacy of Versailles

The legacy of Versailles was terrible. The famine-ridden country fell to a complete anarchy, and money and stocks lost their value. The Communists initiated a revolution trying to emulate the events of Bolshevik Russia, and their Red Guards terrorized the population. The nation descended into a civil war. The country was taken over by corruption, chaos and rotten defeatism. Decadence and anarchy reigned and everyone seemed to be at war with one another. In addition the state was under a constant threat, being unarmed and unsafe while the threat of Bolshevism grew in the East. This was the situation when the National Socialists began their struggle. In the German Civil War of 1919 the communist Red Guards were opposed by different volunteer units and armed political detachments. The later-famous SS was originally just one of the descendants of these struggles, and initially it was merely the small bodyguard unit of the National Socialist party. It´s volunteer members protected the Party members of left-wing terror in public meetings. Later on this organization evolved to a racial-spiritual brotherhood and became the guardian of the security of the whole state.

The National Socialists were early to realize whose advantage it was to keep the Nordic race shattered and divided. Like the Grand Admiral von Tirpitz wrote in his memoirs: ”Germany falls with Europe – and Europe with her.” The enemy tried to split the German society to internally and externally fragmented pieces, seeking once again to use an old trick it had successfully used earlier in the downfall of the Holy Roman Empire. When the German people raised Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist party to lead them, strong and determined measures were thus immediately initiated to restore national unity and pride. Already in fall 1930 Hitler made speeches where he promised to erase unemployment, to get a sense of security back to the whole nation and to restore the German state to international arena as an equal with other major powers.

In the beginning the National Socialists had to struggle with the communists and the major capitalistic parties. After a long fight at 1933 they had finally secured a 43,9% of the votes, and together with his allies Hitler held an absolute majority in the Reichstag. His party declared that Germany would return to it´s position as the leading power of Europe. When he was became the new Reichskanzler, the country was finally reorganized under National Socialist principles with overwhelming support of the German people.

In a short period of time Hitler managed to raise his country from the status of a wrecked ruin and transform it to a major European power. This would not have been possible without great sacrifices and determined, strong state leadership. The welfare created by the National Socialists even made many former communists to change their opinions and turn to supporters of NSDAP. Hitler´s early major achievements were the total removal of unemployment and the creation of a unified German state that ended the earlier situation where Reich had been composed of various self-governing provinces that had wasted their time with petty arguments and corruption. As a part of the state-level reorganization the new government honored the promises it had made to the working class: working times and minimum wages were set, and a new social security system was created. The well-being of the working class was improved with all means available: with free vacation travels, cruises and the general improvement of working conditions. The corrupted economic system was reformed with the idea of national self-sustenance in mind.

By 1933 the German gold reserves had dropped to zero, and the the country was living by foreign imports. Hitler balanced this situation by supporting national research and production. Synthetic replacements were developed for such materials that weren't present in national soil. These included buna, the synthetic rubber and synthetic fuel converted from charcoal. Hitler´s foreign policy was to unite all the Germanic nations and to create a unified European front against the aggressive Soviet-Bolshevism of Russia. The early days of Hitler´s career were filled with political triumphs. Saar, Memel, Austria and the Sudetenland joined the Reich one by one between the 1936-1938. The reactionary Western powers tried to stem this course of development, but were forced to accept that the era of dictating policy was now long since gone.

The political solution to the Sudetenland crisis was the last bloodless victory of Hitler. The treaty signed in München enabled the majority of the 3,2 million Sudeten Germans to join to the Greater Germany, and huge crowds of cheering people greeted the Wehrmacht units that entered to the Sudetenland after the agreement had ceded these territories to the Reich. This crisis was soon followed with the total collapse of the Czechoslovakian state, proving the artificial nature of this creation of Versailles. Slovakia declared independence and after the Slovakian President Tiso requested assistance from Hitler, the German troops secured the areas of Bohemia and Moravia and the two regions joined to Reich as autonomic protectorates. This operation was absolutely necessary and in reality it prevented a new civil war in the territories of the former Czechoslovakia, but in the Western propaganda it was purposely misinterpreted as a sign of Hitler´s foul intentions. When the political siege-system, the ”little Entente” created by France and England was thus neutralized, the reactionary Western governments were now seriously considering the use of military force in order to stop Germany. The new National Socialist state was facing the threat of being strangled to death to it´s cradle.

Mussolini joined to the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1937, when Germany and Italy had been able to solve their mutual disagreements caused mostly by the Austrian question. In the Austrian Civil War of 1934 Mussolini had supported Dollfuss and his Austrofascists while NSDAP had supported the National Socialists. This new connection with Italy was absolutely necessary for the future of Europe, but unfortunately it complicated the Führer's sincere goal of forging an alliance with Britain, since Italy and the UK had different goals in the Mediterranean region. The Rome-Berlin Axis was the first step towards a New Europe where friendly and progressive governments would together solve their disputes peacefully and diplomatically, but sadly the old powers of Europe were unwilling to accept such a future. Their insane fears and blood-lust ultimately doomed the German diplomatic efforts to fail and drove the world into a new war.

## When Diplomacy Fails

The political mistakes of the Western powers led to the point where the alliance formed by France and Great Britain declared war to Germany in 1st of September 1939. Before this happened these two belligerent governments had done everything in their power to prevent peaceful negotiations that Hitler wanted in order to correct the most insane creation of the Versailles Treaty – the artificial ”Polish corridor” that separated the historical German core territories of Eastern Prussia from the rest of the Reich. Germany now rightfully requested this strip of land to be returned in exchange of German compensations. The French alliance system set up on Eastern Europe had by now collapsed under the masterful diplomatic maneuvers of Führer, and only Poland and Soviet Union remained as potential allies of the Entente in 1939. To prevent a disastrous two-front war the Führer had been forced to forge a temporary truce with the Soviet Union, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The lies spread by the French lured the Poles to be unforgivably stubborn in the negotiations about the fate of Danzig and the ”corridor”, and they were simultaneously encouraged to result to violence if necessary. The guarantees made by the French and the British indeed encouraged the Polish authorities to commit more and more anti-German atrocities in the occupied territories. When the news of these events reached Berlin the Führer gave the order to prepare a massive strike that would begin as soon as Polish military would violate the national territory of Reich itself. This operation, code-named Fall Weiss, began at 1st of September 1939 when a Polish sabotage patrol was stopped in the border-zone when it was sneaking back to Poland. When it became clear that Germany would not allow this insult to her national sovereignty to pass, the governments of France and Britain showed their true colors and declared war. But this time Germany was ready, and much to the surprise and shock of the Western warmongers and the whole world it quickly became apparent that the Polish Army was no match for Germany´s modern and well-trained troops.

Poland was forced to surrender after a mere eighteen days of warfare. But the bitter lessons of the Great War were still vividly remembered by the Germans. Despite her fast recovery from the slumber of Weimar years, Germany was not prepared for a new major war since both her economy and armed forces were still far from ready. The Z-Plan that aimed to rearm the new Kriegsmarine had only recently begun, and in the numbers of other offensive weapons such as submarines, airplanes and tanks Germany was also seriously outclassed by her foes. After the fall of Poland the Allies didn't take their chances of breaching the German defenses of ”Westwall." Instead they once again initiated a ruthless war of attrition by starting a new naval blockade. The Western powers sought to isolate Germany from her sources of raw materials and consumer goods and deny her access to the Atlantic.

The western powers sought to isolate Germany from her sources of raw materials and consumer goods and deny her access to the Atlantic. The Royal Navy mined the routes used to ship iron ore from Sweden, and a joint French-English military expedition was planned to invade and occupy Norway. Denmark was also heavily pressured. In these circumstances it was just natural that Germany dispatched her own troops to defend the freedom of the Nordic countries. Hitler´s strategic insight made it possible to Germans to reach Norway just barely before the Allied invaders, and thus the Anglo-French offensive was repulsed. By now it was clear that time was running out - once the vast resources of Western colonial empires could be fully brought to bear, Germany would be doomed. Firmly aware of this the Führer once again risked everything for the freedom of Germany, and started a general offensive in the West. Once again the Western warmongers met a bitter setback. Despite the numerically superior enemy troops the German offensive led to spectacular success. The excellent training and the overall superiority of German operational strategy and tactics more than made up the flaws of the early German tanks and airplanes.

After a mere month of fierce fighting Germany was able to defeat the best forces of the French Army and their British allies in Benelux-countries and Northern France, and the rotten structure of the French Republic collapsed entirely as France surrendered on 25th of June 1940. After the war the new French Head of State, Marshall Pétain, often reminded his people that the German military could have easily occupied the whole country in this situation, but Germany didn't do this because it did not seek to destroy France, but instead wanted her valuable and necessary help in the task of creating a New Order in Europe. This goal could not be met with destruction and devastation, and therefore the war was strictly limited to the defeat of the enemy armed forces. This happened – like in Belgium and Holland – so quickly and efficiently that the defeated enemies of the Reich were simply amazed of the outcome. As a soldier himself, Pétain had quite correctly understood that it was necessary to make peace after he had witnessed the situation in the front. The old marshall had realized that he had to find a way to stop the hostilities between the strongest powers of continental Europe once and for all, so that Germany and France could finally find a common ground and thus stop the vicious circle of future wars where the European nations would again tore one another apart and thus permanently render themselves as mere puppets of foreign powers.

The British ground forces hastily withdrew back to their island from their encirclement in Dunkirk, and now the island nation led by Winston Churchill alone stood against Hitler. The survival of the Nordic race demanded brotherhood and alliance between the British Empire and the Reich, but Churchill rejected all suggestions of peace that could have guaranteed the survival of the British Empire and the unification of Europe. Churchill put his hope on warmongering circles in the government and business life of the United States of America, a country that was already in this point openly hostile towards Germany and actively supported both Britain and Soviet Union with weapons and financial aid. As diplomatic solution was once again rejected due the hostile attitude of Western leaders, the Führer had no other options but to continue the war and try to force the British to accept peace by military means. The hope of peace in the Western Europe faded away.

The German economical miracle of the 1930's had allowed her to start an ambitious re-armament program that was necessary to counter the growing threat of Bolshevism. The political miscalculations of Western corrupted politicians however lead to the sad fact that Germany was forced to use these weapons against France and Britain first. But while Germany had by now proven the might of her military by swiftly and decisively defeating all obstacles set to her path, the war was far from over.

## Operation Barbarossa

After Winston Churchill had stubbornly kept the British Empire at war against the Axis, the war soon escalated through the globe. In February 1941 Erwin Rommel, a commander who had already proven his worth during the Battle of France, was sent to command the German-Italian Axis forces that were tasked to tie down the British colonial troops deployed in Egypt and the Middle East. During the same year the war escalated in the Far East as well. Here the Japanese Empire was forced to launch a highly successful offensive against the Anglo-American imperialism after the Americans had imposed a lethal economic blockade that left the Japanese leaders with no other options but to go to war in order to obtain the resources necessary for the survival of Japanese economy.

While Germany and Entente clashed in the West, the rising threat of the Soviet Union made the countries of Eastern Europe and Balkans to join the Axis one by one in the beginning of the year 1941. In Yugoslavia anti-German factions staged a coup soon after the country had signed a pact of cooperation with the Reich, and the Axis countries were forced to send their troops in to secure peace and legal order within the country and in neighboring Greece, where British troops had landed in yet another attempt to set up a secondary front in European continent to tie down Axis troops. But while Germany and Entente fought, the Soviet Union had been preparing for war without delay. The Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov blackmailed Berlin with more and more demands that should be met in order to preserve peace.

After the occupation of Lithuania Molotov declared in summer 1940 that Soviet Union wanted to annex Finland. This was something that Hitler could no longer accept. The German intelligence reported that the main forces of the Red Army had been deployed to the German border, and that they would be ready to attack in fall 1941 or spring 1942. The scale of the Red Army preparations and the strength of the Soviet armed forces were growing by the day, and Europe was running out of time. And while some used the outcome of the Finno-Soviet border war fought in winter 1939 as a proof of the weakness of the Soviet military, these optimists completely ignored the huge re-organization of the Red Army that had been ongoing for two years in 1941. The wide economical support that the United States secretly gave to their Communist allies must also be taken into consideration when measuring the strength of the Bolshevik military. Being once again driven into corner by the aggressive schemes of international warmongers, Hitler once again made a bold decision and decided to strike first.

The Crusade against Bolshevism began in 22nd of June 1941, and Germany now had Finland, Italy, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria as her allies. In addition volunteers arrived all over from Europe: from the occupied Baltic countries, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Norway, Denmark, Croatia and France. The offensive formations of the Red Army were crushed to the border regions, and Axis armored spearheads rushed forth towards their objectives deep in European Russia. During the late summer and early fall the Soviets suffered enormous defeats and losses in a series of huge encirclement battles fought in all parts of the wide Eastern Front.

In the North the Finnish troops recaptured the territories they had lost in winter 1939-1940 and released large parts of East Karelia from the Red terror, while the Romanians were also able to liberate their enslaved countrymen and recapture Bessarabia. The only advantages that the Red Army now had left were the sheer size of the battlefield and their seemingly endless reserves of manpower and equipment. Yet the feared Russian winter didn't arrive in time to save Stalin and his cronies. Leningrad was besieged and German troops entrenched themselves to the suburbs of Moscow after they had successfully reached the Soviet capitol as part of the winter offensive of Operation Typhoon.

In order to drive the Axis forces out from their beloved capitol the Soviets sent in their Siberian reinforcements that were accustomed and trained for winter warfare. The battles fought during the cold winter of 1941-42 ensured that the frontlines of Europe pushed the battle-worn Axis troops to the very limits of their endurance, but ultimately the Soviet counterattack failed to dislodge Germans from Moscow.

The spring of year 1942 marked the beginning of the second German offensive in the East when an attack was launched towards Caucasus and Volga as soon as the muddy season had passed and the ruined remains of Moscow were finally firmly in Axis control. Asking no quarter and giving none, Heeresgruppe Süd was ultimately able to achieve the objectives of this operation by reaching the shores of Volga and advancing deep to the mountains of Caucasus, capturing Maikop and separating the oilfields of Baku from the rest of the Soviet Union. The Soviet leadership was firmly aware of the gravity of their overall strategic situation, and in winter 1942 the Red Army once again furiously counter-attacked by launching Operation Saturn, a surprise offensive aimed against the weak Axis forces defending Caucasus.

The poorly equipped Romanian, Italian, Hungarian and Ukrainian forces were unable to stop the heavy Soviet assault, and the situation in the south looked grim as large parts of Caucasus were lost and the southernmost Axis armies were on the verge of being cut off and encircled. After the Germans had moved the bulk of their strategic reserves south and defeated the Soviet attempt to split Heeresgruppe Süd on the steppes around Kotelnikovo, another major Soviet counteroffensive began in the Moscow region in spring 1943. The ambitious Operation Kutuzov aimed to encircle the Axis forces to Soviet capitol and then destroy them there.

The battles fought during the time between 1942-1943 in the Eastern Front decided the outcome of the war. By May 1943 the Red Army had decimated most of it´s well-trained reserves in huge, inconclusive counterattack operations and the following war of maneuver fought around Moscow, in the shores of Volga and steppes of upper Caucasus. The morale of Bolsheviks was staggeringly poor when Leningrad was finally forced to surrender and Germans managed to retain their control of of Moscow, stop the Soviet offensive in the south and ultimately push the tired Red Army units back to Volga. Now the overall situation became increasingly difficult for STAVKA due the fuel shortages caused by the loss of pipelines to Baku, while the Soviet railway network had lost its center in Moscow and was thus in a desperate need of extensive reconstruction to ease the difficult supply situation. But while the Germans seemed to be successful, the tired and depleted units that held the front-lines in late 1943 were a totally different army than the one that had marched towards East in 1941. Many post-war researches have later emphasized that without the successfully implemented occupational policies of Ostministerium and the following political events that took place place in Russia, the outcome of the war might well have been totally different should the war have continued longer than it did.

## The Western Allies versus the Reich

Despite their official neutrality, the United States of America had been actively participating to the WWII since 1940. American destroyers attacked German subs in Atlantic and the country supported both Britain and Soviet Union, supplying them with weapons and raw materials. The United States finally turned the war global when they initiated an oil embargo against Japan in 1941, Because Hirohito´s Empire had to import 2/3 of their necessary raw materials abroad, Japan was now effectively driven into a corner by this aggressive American economic move.

The Japanese felt humiliated and swore revenge. After they had surprised the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, the Japanese launched their advance through Asia, conquering themselves a whole empire without meeting effective resistance anywhere. The conquest of Philippines and Malaga were followed by capture of Singapore, Hong Kong, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, New Guinea, Thailand and Burma. But despite this remarkable early success Japan was woefully ill-prepared for a long war when compared to Germany. Her industrial capacity was only 1/10 of the American equivalent. As the initial knock-out blow against the US Navy had failed and the war prolonged, the outcome of the conflict became increasingly clear. Despite the formal declaration of war against Japan, Adolf Hitler was convinced at the last possible moment to not declare war on the United States, as his minister's pointed out Japan's disloyalty to the Axis and the Reich by not declaring war on the Soviet Union in tandem with Operation Barbarossa.

In order to save his own dictatorship from a threat of a new civil war, Stalin betrayed his allies and signed a separate armistice with the Axis powers in Kirovograd in 1943. After this tremendous Axis victory the Allied offensives in North Africa failed to repel Erwin Rommel's legendary DAK, which gained a huge wave of vehicles, men, equipment, and rations shortly after the war in the east concluded. By the later months of 1943, Germany and Italy had finally taken Egypt and reached the shores of the Red Sea, thus splitting the once mighty British Empire in two.

As resources began to run dry thanks to the Italo-German capture of Egypt and the introduction of revolutionary new U-Boat designs such as the Type XXI *Elektroboot* and new Jet Fighters such as the Messerschmitt ME 262 *Schwalbe", the United Kingdom's naval and air supremacy over the Axis began to wane, and threat of mass starvation and even invasion by Germany began to haunt the minds of British political figureheads, including the ever-stubborn Winston Churchill.*

## The Defeat of Japan and the road to peace

As the war dragged on, the extensive pre-war investments to German rocketry research finally bore fruit in the form of ”Vergeltungswaffen”, the V1 and V2 strategic rockets. The V-1 could be called the first primitive cruise missile, while the V-2 was a forerunner of modern ICBM:s. Especially the latter type proved efficient, since it was next to impossible to intercept with WWII-era anti-air weapons. The V-rockets were an important addition to the list of the German "Wunderwaffen" that already included "Wasserfall"-type anti-air missiles and jet fighters that finally allowed Luftwaffe to wrestle the air superiority above the Reich back to German hands. Determined German air defense in the skies of Europe finally met success when the British were forced to call of their bombing campaign and reorganize their strategic air forces due the heavy casualties in the spring of 1945. This victory in the air was largely won because of the efforts and work of Air Marshall Wolfgang Ritter who had strongly favored the development of jet fighters, rocketry and other promising futuristic designs from the beginning of his career.

Defeats in sea and air were now forcing the Allies to seriously reconsider their overall strategy. In Britain the scandalous failure to penetrate "Fortress Europe" contributed much to the electoral defeat of Churchill in the 1945 vote of no confidence. The new cabinet was formed by Lord Halifax, who publicly spoke for ”achieving an honorable peace with Germany.” In the United States President Roosevelt´s health quickly deteriorated and he died in April 12th 1945 as a sad and broken man. The new President Harry S. Truman focused his immediate efforts to the Pacific theater, where the defeat of Japan loomed in the horizon.

Here the war raged on merely because the Japanese fought on with fanatical determination and refused to comply with the American demand of unconditional surrender, holding true to their ancient religion and military code of honor. By 1945 the front-lines in Pacific had been pushed to the outskirts of Home Islands and Japan was already de facto defeated: her merchant fleet had been largely sunk, IJN was a mere shadow of its former strength and Japan was thus totally isolated from the rest of the world and couldn't no longer even effectively feed her starving population. The Americans used their nearby airbases and Carrier Groups to conduct a major strategic bombing campaign that followed the outlines of the bombing of Germany during the previous years.

But unlike Germany, Japan had no means to stop these attacks and her industrial capacity and infrastructure were soon devastated. Japan contacted the United States and asked for chances for a honorable surrender, but the request was denied. Determined to fight to the bitter end the Japanese thus prepared ”to defend their islands, whatever the cost may be.” Meanwhile the Allies were weary of sustaining huge numbers of casualties in an amphibious assault, and instead sought to end the war with different means. President Truman issued the order to use a new kind of weapon that the top-secret Manhattan Project had produced, and the world changed forever.

On 6th of August 1945 American bomber ”Enola Gay” dropped the first nuclear bomb used in war to the Japanese city of Hiroshima, and a second dropped to Nagasaki three days. Yet, Japan refused to surrender after the disintegration of these two major cities.

With seemingly no other option, president Truman reluctantly agreed to an "honorable peace" with Japan, as American officials estimated casualties in the millions should an invasion of the Japanese home islands be conducted. On the 9th of October, 1945, the Zürich Accords were signed by all participants of the Second World War. The allied nations accordingly recognized the German and Italian puppet states in Europe as legitimate, while Britain in particular was forced to cede colonial possessions in Africa to Italy and Germany. However, Japan was forced to dismantle it's puppet states and colonial governments in Asia, which was reluctantly accepted as the American government threatened "total nuclear annihilation of Japan" should they refuse such terms.

As the global conflict withered down to partisan warfare waged within the new borders of the German sphere of interest, the uneasy stalemate brought to being nuclear weapons became the new status quo, and diplomats soon began to call this new situation in international affairs with the term ”Cold War.”