World War Two, How the World Changed Forever

World War Two: How the World Changed Forever (I Want to Know Now!)

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Table of Contents Introduction CHAPTER 1: Roots CHAPTER 2: Phase One CHAPTER 3: “Phony War” CHAPTER 4: Germany Shocks The World CHAPTER 5: Southeast Europe And Africa CHAPTER 6: Men Become Animals CHAPTER 7: Holocaust CHAPTER 8: The End In Europe CHAPTER 9: The Pacific Conclusion and Consequences Further Reading

“I Want to Know Now”: About the Series Knowledge is power. But time is precious. We all want to know more about the world we live in. But usually to learn something interesting we have to wade through a lot we don’t care about. What if we could get our knowledge and have our time too, learning about the world while not spending too many hours doing so? Now, with a new series, I Want to Know Now, we can. Each volume covers a specific topic. Author Steven Vern has invested his time in finding the most important information on every topic so we don’t have to. In clear, straightforward terms, the book translates the complexity of any topic into the essential facts we need to know. All volumes are fast to read, but all of them are comprehensive, easy to understand guides that anyone can learn from.

From the same series: World War Two, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern World War Two, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern Hitler, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern The Nazi Party, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern The Atomic Bomb, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern

We Need You! Do you wish to be part of our restricted club and receive free advanced reading copies (ARC) of any future book in the series? Full details at the end of this book!

Thank you to Matthew Gaskill for his cooperation. You can find Matthew's kindle book “The German Army and Stormtroops of World War One: Tactics of Terror” on Amazon now.

INTRODUCTION Thank you for downloading this book, World War Two: I Want to Know Now!. In the last few years in Russia and the Ukraine, Father Patrick Desbois has been working with a team of archaeologists and historians to uncover the sites of previously unknown mass shootings of Jews in the former Soviet Union. He has discovered hundreds of previously unknown or forgotten sites with untold thousands of victims buried in mass graves throughout the region. In the vicinity of Volgograd (previously and more famously known as Stalingrad), a team of young volunteers made up of students and offduty military men have searched the area for the bodies of both German and Soviet soldiers and civilians killed as a result of the battles in the area or atrocities committed by both sides. They have found many completely unknown mass graves, some of them tens of meters long and deep, containing hundreds of bodies – POWs killed by both sides during and after the battle. The best estimates of those killed during the war, both civilian and military, is near 60 million. 60 million people of all ages, all of their experiences, memories, hopes, and dreams coming to a horrible end. Today, the generation of men and women who either fought in WWII, or remember it, is passing on. In the last few years, men and women have served their countries and died to combat the scourge of terrorism. Their sacrifice is not, and should not, be forgotten, but although we rightly are upset by the loss of even one soldier on the battlefield today, we should remember that there was a time when thousands of soldiers and civilians were being killed every minute of every day for 5 ½ years. That is what the WWII generation endured.

German bodies 2015. The bones were interred at a nearby German military cemetery

CHAPTER 1: ROOTS Ask an American, and they will tell you that WWII began on December 7th, 1941. Ask a Pole, and the answer will be September 1st, 1939. Ask a German, Brit, or Frenchman, and they will say September 3rd, 1939. For those in the Soviet Union, WWII began on June 22nd, 1941. Those in China will tell you that for them, WWII lasted longer than for any other nation; depending on who you ask, the war began in Asia in 1931 or 1936. And although many in Japan will mention those dates, Japan became involved in the global conflict on (according to Tokyo time) December 8th, 1941. But World War II truly began almost as soon as World War I ended on November 11th, 1918. Historians sometimes glibly refer to World War II as “World War 1.2”, for it was in the end of WWI that the roots of the Second World War are firmly established. Almost more important than the war itself is how it began, and it didn't begin with an invasion. It began long before. When WWI ended in 1918, the Central Powers of Germany, AustriaHungary, and the Ottoman Empire were defeated kingdoms. As a matter of fact, the war and the agreements signed at the end of it dissolved both the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman Empires completely. Out of a vast empire encompassing many peoples, the AustroHungarian Empire was divided into the many nations of central and southeast Europe today, and its core, Austria, left as a small mountainous and remote nation stripped of its hereditary monarch. The Ottoman Empire, whose ruling classes comprised mostly Turks (along with various Arab tribal chieftains under their control), was divided among the victorious British and French, who either directly governed or oversaw the various Arab territories of the former empire. Turkey itself became a secular republic with much smaller borders.

Germany Of the Central Powers, the only nation to survive the war intact was Germany, the richest nation in central Europe and the key to European stability. Germany's emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941), went into exile in Holland and a republic based in the city of Weimar came into power, at least in name. Because it was the only one of the Central Powers to survive intact and also because it was by far the richest, most powerful, and had done the most damage during the war, Germany was held responsible for both starting the war and for most of the damage incurred during the conflict. As you can read in more detail in my book on WWI (World War One, How the World Changed Forever (I Want to Know Now!) at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013VPCZUI? *Version*=1&*entries*=0), historians now point the finger clearly at the Habsburg rulers of Austria-Hungary and a cabal inside the Serbian military for starting World War I. However, Austria's more powerful ally, Germany, was accused of encouraging the Austrians to attack Serbia by assuring them of Germany's whole-hearted support. At the peace table in 1919, this was enough reason to pin the blame for the war on the Germans – that, and revenge. When the war ended, Germany itself had not been invaded. As a matter of fact, the German Empire spanned from northern France and Belgium to the Ukraine (which had been ceded to Germany by the new government of the Soviet Union as the price for ending the war in the east). If you were a German (especially a young male German who was not yet quite old enough to fight in combat but was dying to do his “bit” in the fight) looking at a map in the fall of 1918, and read only statecensored newspapers, you might believe that Germany was winning the war. But if you were a German with any kind of sense, you knew the war had been lost in the spring/summer 1918, with the failure of the great German offensives and the arrival of millions of fresh and well-equipped American troops. Even if that was not enough to convince you that the war was lost, the widespread hunger in the nation brought on by the

British naval blockade might have done so. The two military commanders who were effectively running Germany in 1918 (Field Marshals Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg) realized that if terms were not reached with the Allies, Germany itself would soon be invaded and their nation would be forced to accept whatever terms the Allies imposed on them. On November 11th, 1918 (today's “Veterans Day” in the U.S., but known for many years as Armistice Day), the German offer of a cease-fire went into effect. This is key in understanding the roots of World War II. The Germans hoped that they could negotiate favorable terms to the end of the war, but when the peace conference at Versailles in France met in 1919, it was eminently clear that Germany was going to have abide by whatever terms the Allies decided upon. The German negotiating team at Versailles was made up of men from the Social Democratic Party who had filled the void left by the departure of the Kaiser. Though the political situation in Germany in 1919 was extremely volatile, the Social Democrats controlled most of the nation. What's more, the leading military men were happy to let these socialist politicians take the lead at the peace conference, for by spring of 1919, they knew that nothing positive for Germany was going to come out of Versailles, and they were more than happy to let the politicians take the blame. The haggling at the Versailles Conference did not take place between the Allies and the Germans. No, the Germans, though they attempted at times to resist, had no choice in what was coming to them. The main arguments at Versailles were between the victorious nations. Thousands upon thousands of books have been written about the peace conference and the Versailles Treaty that came out of it, and the intrigue and politics of the treaty conference alone can fill hundreds of pages. For our purposed here, let's see if we can summarize... Both France and Britain wanted Germany to pay for what had happened during the war – compensation for the dead and for the economic damage caused. The smaller powers of Europe, such as Belgium (which had been conquered by Germany), Italy (which had also

fought against the Central Powers), and others, also wanted compensation. Britain and France wanted to ensure Germany did not have the power to start another war (France had gone to war with Germany a number of times since 1800, and Germany not always being the aggressor). They were therefore committed to limiting the size of Germany's military. The British and the French (along with the Italians) were also determined to take control of much of the former Ottoman Empire – this would give them control of both the oil fields of the Middle East (which were just being developed) and the land and sea routes to Asia. The one nation that could possibly prevent the British, French, and Italians from getting everything they wanted was the United States, which had not entered the war until 1917, and had not experienced anything like the losses of its allies. American president Woodrow Wilson was an idealist whose nation had not been long at war and was spared the ravages of battle and occupation. American casualties were heavy for the short time in which U.S. troops were involved, but in comparison with the losses of its allies, were minor. Therefore, Wilson believed that he would be able to see through the problems of post-war Europe with a relatively unprejudiced eye and come up with a solution that might satisfy the Allies and yet not be too harsh on their enemies – he believed that he might make “the world safe for democracy” and that WWI might just be “The War to end all Wars”, if only the Europeans would follow his lead. They had no intention of doing this, at least completely. Though they agreed with many of Wilson's stipulations about “self-determination of peoples”, which would allow former minorities within the AustroHungarian Empire to govern themselves (along with Poland, which had been ruled by Russia, Germany, and Austria), the Great Powers of France, Britain, and Italy were determined not only to make Germany pay (both economically and morally) for the war, but to also collect as much territory from the old Ottoman Empire for themselves as they could. Additionally, Britain and France (along with most of the rest of the

nations of the world) agreed on the foundation of a new world body, the League of Nations, which, in theory, would prevent war with the threat of collective punishment to any nation that began one. Ironically, the United States Senate never ratified the Treaty of Versailles, and the U.S. never became a member of the League – the conception of an American. As far as Germany was concerned, strict penalties were applied, despite Wilson's pleas for leniency. Germany would have to agree that it was they who began WWI. The Germans would have to pay an exorbitant amount of reparations (money used to “repair” the damage wrought by the war), which they did not have. Germany would also be forced to give up the territory of Alsace-Lorraine (a small but rich territory on the French border that had been fought over for centuries), a chunk of East Prussia to Poland, allow France to occupy another part of Germany (the Saar) for 20 years as insurance that the Germans would pay the money owed, and keep the militarily important Rhineland free of all German troops. But that wasn't all. Germany would not be allowed to keep an armed force larger than 100,000 men. Many historians place the exorbitant reparations placed on Germany as the primary cause of German resentment toward the Versailles Treaty, and this may be so, but many overlook the emotional importance that limiting the German armed forces had on the nation. Though the states of Germany had a long history, it was not until 1871 that these states united to become a nation. This was done under the leadership of the largest and most powerful German state, Prussia, and Prussian society was based squarely on a military tradition. When Germany became a united nation, it immediately became the strongest nation in mainland Europe, with the strongest economy and the strongest and most effective military. All German boys were subject to conscription, and many of them aspired to a military career, whether it be a non-commissioned officer (a sergeant, etc.), or as an officer. The greatest dream was to secure a position on the German General Staff. It is no exaggeration to say that many young German men looked to the military as a career. The military provided security for both individual and the nation;

and in Germany, a career military man (especially an officer) was considered much like a star athlete or musician today. This is not an exaggeration – the military was at the pinnacle of German society. And in 1919, the hopes and dreams of hundreds of thousands of German men was taken away by the Allies. No air force, a small coastal navy, and an army just large enough to keep the peace inside the country, but not large enough to mount an offensive war. To say that the terms of the Versailles Treaty caused resentment in Germany is to put it very mildly. Still, before you start feeling completely sorry for the Germans, you should know that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which German forced upon the Soviet Union in 1917, was more draconian than the Versailles Treaty by far. All the Treaty of Versailles did was cause more resentment and hatred between nations than there had been and made the outbreak of a second world war in Europe all the more likely. For the United States, which had come out of WWI as a global power, the Treaty of Versailles, the resentment it caused, and the power/territory grabbing of Great Britain, France, and Italy in the early 1920s completely soured most Americans on getting involved in European affairs ever again. By 1922 or even earlier, most Americans believed that U.S. involvement in WWI had been a ghastly mistake never to be repeated. As you may know, it was in the 1920s that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party began their slow rise to power, but before I tell you of the important developments in Germany and Europe that led to the outbreak of war there, let me tell you a little bit about Japan.

Japan Japan entered World War I on the side of the Allies. This was not done because the Japanese agreed with cause of the British and French (and later the Italians and Americans) nor because they had a problem with Germany. Japan entered WWI on the side of the Allies because it was to its advantage to do so. Japan, like Germany, only became a united nation after a prolonged period of civil war in the mid to late 1800s. Aware that the neighboring

empire of China had been weakened and divided by the European powers, the Japanese skillfully played the Europeans against each other. Japan's navy? Advised by Britain, but equipped with French and British (and some German) ships. The army? Trained by various Western powers including the United States. Its weapons? Sold to them by competing European and American governments and companies. Japan presented itself as a lucrative market for Western goods and skillfully maneuvered the Western powers against each other. By 1896, Japan had engineered the most miraculous modernization program history has ever seen. From a backward feudal culture and economy in 1868 (when the Emperor Meiji took power from the warlords) to 1896, the Japanese military and economy had become the most modern in Asia and would soon rival the great powers of Europe. The year 1896 marks the year in which Japan went to war with China over influence in Korea and in parts of coastal China. Though China had been weakened by the European nations in the 1800s, it was expected that it would soundly defeat a much smaller Japan in any war. Exactly the opposite happened – China was soundly defeated and was forced to relinquish control of much of Korea to Japan and allow the Japanese to establish self-governing Japanese trading posts in China. Though many in Europe were surprised, or even shocked, that Japan had defeated China, the racism and Euro-centrism of the time attributed the victory of Japan over China to a battle of second rate Asian powers. Everyone knew that Japan would not be a threat to any European army or navy. The problem was, the Europeans could not convince the Japanese of this. In 1904, war broke out between Japan and Russia in the Far East. The issue was influence in the north of Korea, parts of China, and various small islands in the Sea of Japan. First, the Japanese defeated the Russian Far East Fleet, and defeated the Russians in a number of land battles in Korea and Manchuria (northern China). A few months later, the Russians sent their European Fleet to teach the Japanese a lesson – it, too, was soundly defeated. At the peace table in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, American president Theodore Roosevelt negotiated a treaty between the two

nations, winning himself a Nobel Peace Prize. Japan was now firmly a power to be reckoned with. When WWI broke out, Japan saw an opportunity. Realizing that the armies of both France and Britain would be engaged for the most part in Europe, but also realizing that both nations had far more powerful navies in the Pacific than Japan yet had, the Japanese offered to defend British and French interests in the Far East from Germany, which had colonies and a number of troops and ships in the Pacific area. In return for defending British and French interests, the Japanese would be given German colonies in the Far East (mostly island outposts in the Pacific) when the war ended. This is exactly what happened. The British and the French were able to transfer a number of their ships and troops to Europe and the Japanese quickly defeated the isolated German outposts in Asia. At the end of the war, Japan had won for itself a number of islands that it could use as naval and refueling stations for its navy, and allow its navy a much greater area of operations. This put Japan in competition with another rising Pacific power, the United States, which had colonies (the Philippines, Guam, and Samoa), and had considerable economic interests in China. In the naval conference rooms of both nations, strategists planned for what many saw as an inevitable conflict between the two countries. After the victories over China, Russia, and World War I, nationalism in Japan grew rapidly and rabidly. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the armed forces gradually took power and enforced a uniquely Japanese fascism on the country, based on the worship of the emperor and a twisted interpretation on the samurai warrior code of Bushido. Though most people have heard of the Gestapo, the German secret police, many have not heard of the Kempeitai, its Japanese equivalent. One of the translations of the name is “thought police”, and the Kempeitai was tasked with making sure that all of Japan was of the same opinion, thought, and action (at least in theory). They were extraordinarily effective in a national culture that had valued obedience to one's superiors as a national virtue. Japan was (and is) roughly the size of California. Today, and in 1931,

Japan had roughly four times the population of that American state. Unlike California, however, Japan is poor in natural resources, especially minerals. To make matters worse, only about 10-12% of the Japanese mainland is arable (able to be farmed). In the minds of the leading men of the Japanese military, Japan needed to expand or die. In 1931, the Japanese military launched an expedition to seize the resource rich nation (created after WWI) of Manchuria. When the League of Nations protested (but did nothing – after all, what nation was going to send their sons to fight in Manchuria, and for what?), the Japanese simply walked out of the organization. So much for collective security. 5 years later, the Japanese military provoked an incident on the Manchurian/Chinese border and used this as an excuse to launch a fullscale invasion of China. By 1938, many of China's coastal cities were under Japanese control. By 1940, a large segment coastal part of the nation was under Japanese control, as were millions of Chinese civilians, who suffered absolutely appalling atrocities at the hands of the Japanese. By the end of WWII, only the Soviet Union had suffered more losses than China. Watching these Japanese actions, the United States attempted to stop them through diplomatic and economic means. In 1941, the diplomacy would stop.

Hitler When WWI ended in 1918, a young Austrian corporal in the German Army lay in a German military hospital with his blind eyes bandaged after being exposed to poison gas on the battlefield. A few years later, this corporal, Adolf Hitler, wrote that when word of the armistice hit him, he underwent what could only be described as a spiritual experience. His vision returned to him and it dawned on him that his mission in life was to become a politician and lead Germany out of defeat into a new “Golden Age”. Throughout history, there are numerous accounts of people going through extreme emotional experiences in times of great distress – there is no reason to disbelieve Hitler's account. He almost immediately got

involved in politics and for a time, it seemed (at least to many Germans) that he had led them into the very “Golden Age” he had dreamt about. Hitler remained in the pay of the army when the war ended, and returned to the Bavarian capital of Munich, where he had lived before the war. His army superiors asked him to investigate the rising numbers of fringe political parties then coming to life in Munich, as they feared a challenge to their authority and/or hoped to make allies of those they deemed effective. In 1919, Hitler sat in on a meeting of the German Worker's Party, which, despite its communist sounding name, was a far-right nationalist party that loathed communism and the communists who seemed to be growing in influence in post-war German cities. The pro-German, anti-communism, and anti-Versailles stance of the party appealed to Hitler, and while ostensibly reporting on the party for the army, he became more and more involved in its activities. By late 1919, the economic situation in Germany was horrible. Reparations demanded virtually all of its cash reserves and no money existed for infrastructure and governance. Low level, but extremely violent civil wars took place in various German states and cities between the political parties of the far-left and those of the far-right (backed by the military). For many everyday Germans, this chaos was the fault of those who had “stabbed Germany in the back”, which was the men who had signed the Versailles Treaty (mostly from the Social Democratic Party, the moderate party in power), the communists (who it was believed had worked behind the scenes to bring Germany down throughout the war), and finally, the Jews. Anti-Semitism in Germany had a long history, and exactly how antiSemitism feeling in many (but surely not all) of the post-WWI population grew from simple prejudice to extermination could, and has, filled thousands, if not millions, of books. Let's see if we can make this brief. Why was there anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe? Firstly, they were a minority. Minorities are easy targets and often singled out for the problems within a society. Second, as a minority, and one that practiced a different set of

religious beliefs from most of the population, Jews had, for the most part, either chose to or were forced to (by political or economic means) live separately from the rest of the population. Although Jews in Germany were more assimilated into the dominant culture than they were elsewhere, and even considered themselves Germans first and Jews second, many of them led separate lives from their German counterparts to one degree or another. This, too, contributed to the idea of the Jews as “outsiders”. Even though most of Germany's approximately 700,000 Jews (out of a total population of 70 million) lived a lower or lower middle class existence, a significant portion of Jews in the cities of Germany prospered. Many of these families were involved with banking (which, for reasons of history, had been relatively off-limits to Christian Germans, and other Europeans, for centuries), the entertainment business, the arts, and in large merchant concerns, like the new department stores. Thousands of Jewish Germans had fought and died in WWI, yet many Germans believed (from the seeming success of Jewish business in Germany) the Jews were not doing enough to help win the war. If that was not bad enough, in the years after the war, Germany saw a number of communist uprisings (some that included exclusively German naval units). The founder of communism, Karl Marx, was a German Jew. So were many of the leading communists of the day, such as the very public Rosa Luxembourg. In the Soviet Union, many of the top communists, like Trotsky, were of Jewish heritage. (Of course, it is no wonder that a persecuted minority would get involved in an ideology that preached brotherhood among classes and people; though, in practice. it was far different.) For these and other reasons, mostly having to do with religious prejudice that “blamed” the Jews for the death of Christ, Jews became one of the reasons that Germany lost World War I. They had worked behind the scenes with both the international bankers capitalists (their brothers overseas), or the communists, or both, even though the two systems are the exact opposite of the other and hostile to each other. In the minds of German nationalists like Hitler, the German Army had not been defeated on the battlefield, it had been defeated at home.

Add to all this a doctrine of German racial superiority that had begun in the mid/late 1800s, and trained and aggressive veterans, and you have a political party on the far-right (actually, there were many of them) just waiting for a leader. One of Hitler's gifts was the power of oratory. He was a born public speaker, though he did not know this until he gave his first speech to the German Worker’s Party and a small number of spectators in 1919. With much practice, he became a speaker of mesmerizing power, and the word spread of this former corporal who seemed to possess a hypnotic power and the desire to restore Germany to its proper place in the world. By 1921/22, Hitler had become the leader (“Führer”) of the party and its name was changed to the “National Socialist German Worker's Party” (the first syllable of the first word being pronounced “nazi-oh-nal”, which was shortened to “Nazi” in popular usage.

"In the Beginning was the Word" Nazi poster (courtesy U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum) In 1922/23, Germany suffered a massive hyperinflation that wiped out the savings of millions of Germans. The Nazis gained more followers and Hitler felt strong enough, at least in Bavaria, to attempt to copy Italian dictator Mussolini's tactics, and stage an uprising and march on Berlin. Unlike Mussolini, however, Hitler's coup failed and he was put in jail for a little under a year.

One would think this was a bad thing, but for Hitler and the Nazis, his trial and imprisonment turned out to be a boon. Sympathetic judges at the trial let Hitler speak much more than was warranted and he gained national attention. His imprisonment allowed him to write his “autobiography” and political testament, Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), which elaborated on his and his party’s main beliefs. As such, he was reaching a wider audience, though most in Germany still believed Hitler and the Nazis to be nothing but a fringe party made up of thugs and morons. Even though most Germans believed the Nazis were nothing but a passing fancy, Hitler and those around him put together a national organization, which included a private army, the “Storm Detachments”; in German, the “Sturmabteilung”, or “SA”. By 1929, when the Great Depression struck Germany and Europe, conditions in the nation were dire. There had been French occupations of the border provinces when reparations could not be paid. U.S. loans to pay German debts to England and France (which were, in turn, paid back to the U.S. in an endless cycle of debt and repayment that took billions out of the world economy). Now, with the collapse of Wall Street and the shrinking of the international economy, Germany suffered yet again. Unemployment reached over 33% at one point. Hunger gripped the country. Mainstream politicians seemed powerless to do anything to solve the problem. More and more people turned to the parties of the extreme right and left in search of a solution. And, of course, the Nazis and other right wing parties found a ready scapegoat in the Jews, who (as the Nazis never got tired of screaming) controlled both “international finance capital” and “communism”. By 1932, the Nazis were the biggest party in Germany. In January 1933, President (former Field Marshal) Paul Von Hindenburg agreed to name Hitler chancellor of Germany. In February, the German parliament or “Reichstag” caught fire. The fire was blamed on German communists and Hitler was given dictatorial powers to deal with his enemies. By the late summer of 1933, the Nazis had succeeded in bringing virtually all of the main cultural, political, legal and economic features of German life under their control. In 1934, Hindenburg (a much respected

figure and the only person who might have stopped Hitler's excesses) died. When he did, Hitler merged the office of president with that of chancellor. He was now the “Führer”. One of the first things he did was to make the army swear a loyalty oath to him, not Germany. This was done immediately after he put down a perceived threat from within his own party. The SA, which had helped him to power and terrorized the Nazis' enemies into submission, was seen by the army as a threat to their position, and many within the SA wanted to put themselves in the army's place. At this point in time, Hitler was not strong enough to oppose the army, and was concerned that the SA would cause the army to remove the Nazis by force. So on June 30th, 1934, Hitler had many of the SA leadership eliminated. Many other Nazi enemies were “dealt with” at the same time. In place of the SA, another even more fanatical and disciplined paramilitary moved in to protect the Nazi government and Hitler: the SS. Now secure in his position, Hitler immediately put the plan he had been working on for some time into action. He removed Germany from the League of Nations, repudiated the Versailles Treaty, and began a tremendous military build-up (some of it secretly, some of it openly). When the great powers of Britain, France, and the United States did nothing to prevent his moves, Hitler knew that if he was careful, Germany would soon rival the other powers of Europe. His first overt move was to organize a vote in the Saarland that reattached that territory formally to Germany (1935). In 1936, Hitler gambled against the advice of his generals and ordered German troops to re-occupy the Rhineland. When France did nothing to stop them, Hitler knew that he would likely succeed in his next steps. For the powers and people of Europe, decimated by the war and looking back at the Versailles Treaty, Hitler's moves seemed aggressive, but at the same time, were aimed at historically German territory, and so they shrugged their shoulders and moved on. With each success, Hitler's power and popularity grew, despite the police state that had been erected throughout the country and the concentration camps that now housed tens of thousands of political enemies. The economy was improving (through massive public works

and re-armament) and Germany was becoming a respected world power again. Some within Germany were disturbed by the anti-Semitic excesses organized by the Nazis, but many Germans felt that the Jews held a more prominent place in German society. Many Germans took part in antiSemitic parades and rallies, but most did not and even the most dedicated Nazi could not envision what was to come, though a careful look at Hitler's book and speeches would have given a strong clue. So Hitler and the Nazis gained in popularity and power. There were few within France and Britain who recognized that Hitler and Germany were a growing threat, most notably British politician, Winston Churchill, who had played a large role in the defeat of Germany in WWI, but most people chose to look the other way and hope Hitler would be satisfied. He was not. Hitler's inner dream was a Europe populated and ruled by Germans and the Germanic peoples of Western Europe and Scandinavia. He believed Germans were the “Master Race” and that they were destined to rule the globe. The ultimate goal was to conquer the western portion of the Soviet Union for use as a German colonial empire, but to do this, he first needed to neutralize the powers of the West. His first step eastward took place in 1938. After years of working to subvert the Austrian government from within, and sustaining a rapidly growing Nazi Party in Austria, Hitler threatened the Austrian government with violent invasion and reprisal should they resist his intention to annex the country and unify it with Germany, which had been a dream of many Germans and Austrians for years. In March 1938, Hitler did just that. The powers of Europe, knowing that many Austrians were pro-Hitler and not willing to go to war over what many saw as an inter-German matter, did nothing. His second step eastward took place shortly thereafter. The old Austro-Hungarian Empire had been divided into a number of nations. Hitler's homeland of Austria itself was populated almost exclusively by ethnic Germans. The neighboring (and new) country of Czechoslovakia, however, was not, but included a sizable German minority in the mountainous regions along the south German border (called the “Sudetenland”). In 1937 and '38, Hitler and the Nazis began making

claims that the Germans in Czechoslovakia were being persecuted and demanded that the Sudetenland be turned over to Germany. The defense of Czechoslovakia depended on the mountain passes of the Sudetenland. The Czech Army was powerful and well-armed, but would be helpless without their mountain defenses. Despite the odds, the Czechs let it be known that they intended to fight the Germans for every inch, but they depended on the aid of their allies, Great Britain and France. Great Britain and France had experienced the tremendous losses of WWI and were just now beginning to slowly recover from the worst effects of the Depression. The thought of another European war was horrific, and so their leaders were determined to seek another solution. At Munich in late September 1938, the leaders of France (Edouard Daladier) and Great Britain (Neville Chamberlain) met with Hitler and his Italian ally, Mussolini. The long and short of the talks was that Hitler got exactly what he wanted (while promising to make no more demands in Europe), and the Czechs lost their allies and were forced to cede the Sudetenland to Germany. When the conference was over, Hitler told his closest allies and advisers that they had met the enemy and that “they were worms.” British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to England a hero (for a moment) and proclaimed that he had reached an understanding with “Herr Hitler” and that there would be “Peace for our time”. War had been averted, but Winston Churchill, who had been issuing warnings about Hitler for 5 years now, proclaimed the Munich Conference a shameful defeat, and expected that Hitler would soon have more demands to present to the world. He was right. Behind the scenes, Hitler organized pro-Nazi parties in Slovakia (Czechoslovakia being made up of two federal states, one peopled mostly by the richer and more populous Czechs, and another by the Slovaks), and in March 1939, Slovakia seceded from the nation. Because of the events of the next few months and the outbreak of war in 1939, most people forget that it was not just Hitler who profited from the division of Czechoslovakia. Hungary was awarded part of the nation, as was Poland, and in mid-March, the Germans moved into the rest of

the nation and annexed it into the growing German Reich (Empire). Hitler not only gained power, but he also gained tremendous resources, the most important of which were the great arms factories of Czechoslovakia. His actions were also being viewed by another powerful nation, the Soviet Union (also known as the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”, or “U.S.S.R.”). In the Soviet Union, dictator Joseph Stalin had actually intended to defend Czechoslovakia from Hitler, provided that Britain and France do the same. When he saw those nations back away from war, he realized that should Hitler begin to make demands on the U.S.S.R. or threaten Soviet interests, the Western powers (which were highly suspicious of Stalin and communist Russia and had been for a long time) would not come to his aid. Therefore, he determined that at least for the time being, he needed to come to an agreement with the Nazis. In Great Britain and France, the mood of relief that had followed the “success” of the Munich Agreements in September was followed by renewed pessimism when Hitler moved into Czechoslovakia. Though both nations had slowly been re-arming since 1936, they now accelerated the process. Even this was criticized as not enough by Winston Churchill and his now growing group of supporters. In England, people began to call for the resignation of Chamberlain and the election of Churchill as Prime Minister. In 1939, he was put in charge of the Royal Navy as First Lord of the Admiralty, the same position he had held at the outbreak of WWI. Almost immediately after his takeover of Czechoslovakia, Hitler began to make noises against, and demands of, another neighbor, Poland. At the Paris Peace Conference ending WWI, the Poles had been given their own nation, which they had not had for centuries. Parts of that nation were carved out of territory traditionally belonging to Germany, which now included many ethnic Germans. Hitler had railed against the Poles for years; he believed it to be an artificial country created at the expense of Germany and peopled by “sub-human” Slavic Poles. After the weakness shown by the other European powers in 1938, he determined that his next target would be Poland. Hitler began to demand that Poland return a slice of land to Germany

that divided the nation in two: the mass of Germany in the west, and the state of East Prussia in the east. The Poles, stubborn, newly independent, and having been ruled by Germany (or as it was known before 1871, Prussia), Austria-Hungary, and Russia for centuries, had no intention at all of giving into Hitler's demands. They were also assured by their allies, Britain and France, that should Hitler declare war on Poland, they would declare war on Germany. Though Hitler did not believe this would happen, the governments of France and England, by this time, while not enthusiastic for war, had had enough of Hitler's demands and threats. Poland also had another “ace up their sleeve”, so to speak. Though the Poles and the Soviets hated each other vehemently, the Poles believed that it was in the interest of the Soviet Union not to allow Hitler's armies to sit on the Soviet border, and that should Hitler invade Poland, the U.S.S.R. might very well come to their aid. Wrong. For months, Hitler and Stalin (whose ideologies were exceedingly hostile towards each other) had been dancing around the idea of a nonaggression agreement with each other. In late August, to the surprise of the entire world, Hitler and Stalin reached an agreement not to go to war with one another. Two nations who had publicly declared the other the “enemy of humanity” were now partners. And what's more, the agreement they signed included secret protocols that the world would be made aware of shortly. After months of German threats, and months of Polish refusals to give in to them, Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. 2 days later, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. World War II had begun.

CHAPTER 2: PHASE ONE When Hitler decided to invade Poland, he needed to make sure that the giant U.S.S.R. remained on the sidelines. To do this, he entered into secret talks with Stalin, which were broadcast to a shocked world at the end of August 1939. The secret protocol that made the entire deal work was an agreement between the two dictators to divide Poland between them. Additionally, Stalin received German assurances that Hitler would not interfere when Stalin invaded the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which Russia had controlled until 1917. Stalin would also be assured of German neutrality when he claimed and moved against both Romania and Finland, for slices of their country that he coveted. In exchange, Germany was assured of Russian neutrality when it attacked the more populous and economically wealthy western part of Poland and its capital, Warsaw. Hitler did not truly believe that France and Britain would declare war on Germany over Poland. They had shown themselves to be weak over the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Why would Poland be any different? So on September 1, 1939, the German Army (“Wehrmacht”) attacked Poland, and used tactics that were to define WWII and influence warfare to the present day. This is known as the “Blitzkrieg”, German for “lightning war”. For years, the German Army had been developing new ideas, incorporating the use of the tank and the plane (both of which had played a role in WWI, but had not been used to their full potential) in tandem with the infantry. The basic idea behind blitzkrieg tactics called for the infantry and artillery to probe for a weak point in the enemies' lines (This could also be done before hand through the use of intelligence gathering). The infantry and artillery would mass at that point, and blow a hole through

the front lines of the enemy. At the same time, German planes would be flying towards enemy airfields to eliminate the threat of enemy air attack. Close on the heels of the infantry, and sometimes in tandem with them, would be formations of tanks. In WWI and in the years since, various nations experimented with tank tactics, but none more than the Germans, who realized that the best use of tanks was not to scatter their armored strength by mixing them in with infantry units, but to use them together, as an “armored fist”, massing their firepower and harnessing their mobility. Once the tanks had broken through enemy lines, they were to drive to a pre-assigned objective, whether a river, bridge, enemy position, city, etc. Some in the German Army believed that if formations of tanks spearheaded a way through enemy lines, they would then be in danger of being surrounded and/or outflanked themselves. The key for the Germans was to keep the tanks moving as fast as possible and using them to disrupt enemy communications, sow panic behind the lines, and to envelop the enemy front line positions from the rear. Another key for the Germans was that if things went according to plan, and the Poles were defeated quickly, then Germany could send their troops westward to defend their western borders from the British and French. However, Hitler gambled that the British and French, even if they declared war, would not move on Germany, but would wait behind their defensive positions in France. This is almost exactly what happened. A couple of facts about the German war in Poland that most people do not know. Firstly, though the Germans advanced rapidly and defeated the Poles (who were attacked from the east by the Soviet Union on September 17), the conflict was still a war by two populated European states and casualties for the Germans, while low considering what was to come, amounted to nearly 17,000 killed and 30,000 wounded. The Poles suffered much more, with 60,000 dead, and more than 100,000 wounded. This was a campaign that lasted 4 weeks. To put the war in Poland in a modern context: the United States lost 55,000 men in the 10 years of the Vietnam War. The war in Poland, although “easy” compared to what came later, was hardly bloodless as many history books make you think.

Secondly, because the Germans unleashed a new type of warfare in Poland, and because it was so successful, many believe that the German army was absolutely overflowing with tanks. It was not. As a matter of fact, most of the German Army and its supplies moved on foot or by horse-drawn cart. It was the manner in which they used their tanks that made the difference. That, and the fact that Poland had virtually no tanks at all, and an air force that was outdated and destroyed on the ground in the first days of the battle. On September 3rd, 2 days after the battle for Poland began, the British and their French allies declared war on Germany. World War II had started – sort of. Although there was an initial movement of French troops about 5-10 miles into one small area of Germany, the allies did nothing. They hoped that the Germans would attack them, and that the defensive fortifications (and the French army, the largest in Europe) that the French had built along the German border would crush and destroy the Nazis and end the war. For Poland, the end of the fighting was just the beginning. No other country, as a percentage of its total population, was to see more death than Poland. Even worse, people from around Europe were transported into Poland to be killed in the extermination camps built in the country to carry out Hitler's vision of a Europe without Jews. And the fighting in Poland was to continue. Polish and Jewish underground units fought the Germans on occasion, with the two most notable occasions happening in Warsaw in 1943 and 1944. In 1944, the Soviet Red Army broke into Poland and months of vicious fighting then took place between them and the retreating Nazis. In the years 1939-45, Poland was an absolute slaughterhouse.

CHAPTER 3: “PHONY WAR” On September 3, 1939, shortly after the British declared war on Germany, air raid sirens went off all over London. People flocked to subway stations and bomb shelters, and prepared for the beginning of what they were sure would be a long and costly war. Except, it was a false alarm. While the Germans were busy in Poland, the British, the French, and their friends in Belgium and Holland called up conscripts and prepared their defenses for a German attack. In the 1930s, as it became clear that the French were more concerned with developments in their own country (mostly because of the Depression), they became less and less interested in taking an active role in Germany, as they had in the 1920s. French politics was a jumble of conflicting parties and after the tremendous cost of WWI, very few in France had the stomach for another war. This was doubly so for an offensive war. France had lost approximately 2 million men during the war, and most of these occurred during pointless and fruitless attacks against fortified positions. Therefore, the French believed that in the next war, they would let the Germans batter themselves on French defenses until they could not fight any longer. There were a number of problems with this strategy. First, WWI was the last war, not the next one. The development of the plane and the tank were to change war forever in 1939, but the French High Command refused to see this. Second, the main line of French fortifications, the Maginot Line (named after the French Minister of War in power when construction began in the early '30s), while formidable in the extreme, had a major problem – it was not long enough (stories about the guns of the Maginot Line cannons not being able to fire to the rear are largely untrue). The

line covered France's border with Germany, but not France's border with Belgium (an ally). If the French built a defensive line on the Belgian border, the Belgians might start to believe that the French had prepared to abandon them to the Germans before a war even started, and might very well seek an agreement with Hitler. Therefore, the Franco-Belgian border, especially at the Ardennes Forest, was left free of strong defensive positions. This was noted by Hitler. In Britain, troops were called up, and troops in the British colonies and Dominion put on their uniforms. A “British Expeditionary Force” (“BEF”) sailed to France, and with the French Army, prepared to move into Belgium to meet the anticipated German attack. By late 1938, the British, who, since the end of WWI, had done all it could to avoid another European war, were beginning to understand the fact that they were going to eventually have to fight Hitler. To this end, they began a massive re-armament program, especially as it pertained to the Royal Air Force (“RAF”), but many believed that it might be a case of “too little, too late.” What happened between October 1939 (when the Polish campaign ended) and April 1940 has been called the “Phony War”. This gives the impression that nothing happened. That is not so, but for the most part, the giant land armies of France (augmented by the BEF) and Germany stood across the border from each other, and went about minding their own business. In some isolated cases, there was a brisk trade in cigarettes and other goods between men of the French and German armies. No one, however, believed the “peace” would last. It wasn't really a peace, anyway. The British mined German ports, and the Germans sent their submarines (“U-Boats”) out to sink British naval vessels and Britain-bound merchant ships. On October 14, a daring German sub commander made his way into the main port of the British Home Fleet and sank the battleship “Royal Oak”, with the loss of over 800 British sailors. As the war went on, the submarines continued to take a mounting toll, until adequate defensive measures were adopted. Meanwhile, in northern Russia/southern Finland, the war was anything but “phony”. In late November, after making a series of demands on Finland that were rejected, Stalin's Red Army attacked the

former Russian colony. He got more than he bargained for, as the Finns fought the Russians to a near standstill and took a tremendous toll on the Red Army in the forests of Finland during one of the worst winters on record. The Finns, who were outnumbered sometimes 10 to 1, illustrated to the world, and especially Hitler, that the Red Army was weaker than expected. During the 1930's, Stalin had eliminated much of the Red Army officer corps out of paranoia and his endless hunger for more power, and many of those left were nothing but “yes men”, who were terrified to take independent action, lest they displease the Soviet dictator. Eventually, however, the Finns had to come to the negotiating table with Stalin – the numbers were dramatically against them. Finland agreed to give up lands and islands near their borders and on their coast that Stalin had coveted. The war forced Finland to look for a powerful European ally, and the closest one was Germany. Germany and Britain were eyeing the far north of Europe as well. Their focus was on the long coast of Norway, which, in German hands, could threaten the eastern coasts of England and Scotland. Just as the Allies were finishing talks with the Norwegians that would allow them to post troops at key positions throughout the country, the Germans acted. Using paratroops, and naval and air transport, the Germans took the Norwegian capital of Oslo after brief fighting. On the same day, they conquered their small neighbor, Denmark, without a fight. Then troops were sent northward with a German naval escort as British ships carrying British and French troops made their way to northern Norwegian sea ports. Though the British navy made a gallant stand and took a heavy toll of German destroyers and other vessels, after heavy fighting in the northern cities of Trondheim and Narvik, the Allies were forced to withdraw from Norway. They did not have the manpower to adequately defend enough of Norway to make a difference, and the Germans controlled the air over the country. Furthermore, the British and French anticipated that when the weather improved, the Germans would be making their move in mainland Europe and they would need every man they had to defend themselves there.

CHAPTER 4: GERMANY SHOCKS THE WORLD In 1914-1918, millions of German soldiers attempted to conquer France. In their initial attack, the Germans poured through the neutral nation of Belgium and attempted to swing around behind the French and their defenses along the German border. Only the swift reaction of the French and British prevented them from capturing Paris in the late summer/early fall of 1914. Though they controlled a portion of northern France until the war ended, the Germans could never find a way to breakthrough and defeat the French and British for good. When the Americans joined the war in 1917, everyone but the most deluded knew that Germany had lost the war. Behind the massive fortifications of the Maginot Line, the French felt safe. They and the British had also planned that should the Germans attack into Belgium again, they would quickly move their forces into that country to prevent it (and northern France) from being invaded once again. Great plan. Truly. With one small problem. Or rather, two. First, the Germans anticipated the Allied plan. Second, the Allies overlooked a gap in their defenses. Actually, they did not overlook this gap at all – they believed there weren't any gaps, for the hole in their defenses that the Germans meant to exploit was a route that the Allies though impassable. The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests and rough terrain, primarily located in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into Germany and France. Even today, parts of the Ardennes are only traversed by narrow roads that run through dense pine forests. In 1940, many, if not most, of the roads were dirt, narrow, and thought to be impassable to a large modern army. Therefore, the French and Belgians

left it lightly defended, which is exactly what the Germans had been hoping for.

As you can see from the map above, the German armies were divided into three “Army Groups”. It was the task of Army Group C to make the French believe the main German assault would come in the area of the strongest Maginot Line defenses and force them to hold their forces along the German border. Meanwhile, the other two Army Groups would attack westward, with the most important stroke coming through the Ardennes Forest. As the British and French moved into Belgium to defend that country, the Germans (it was hoped by Hitler) would have already gotten behind them and cut them off. This is exactly what occurred. Though there were significant British and French counter-attacks (one led by a forward thinking, and as yet unknown French general named de Gaulle, who would become the leader of the French Resistance), the Germans had the Allies beat almost before the fighting even began. On May 10, 1940, two important events occurred. The Germans

invaded Western Europe, and in Britain, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. By the end of May, the Germans had almost the entire BEF and some of the French trapped on the northern French coast at Dunkirk. To this day, historians debate exactly why Hitler told his tanks and troops to halt outside of Dunkirk. Some say it was because he wanted to give his troops time to regroup. Others say that he wanted to offer the British a peace overture of sorts, the thinking being that if the British people realized that Hitler could have destroyed the BEF and did not, they might force their government to come to terms with Germany. Other historians believe that Hitler, believing that the British were a Germanic people, never wanted to wage war against England in the first place, and was reluctant to destroy the troops at Dunkirk. Still others say that the German Air Force (“Luftwaffe”) chief, Field Marshal Hermann Goering (Hitler's second-in-command), wanted to have the chance to destroy the British himself and talked Hitler into letting him try. Some say Hitler was reluctant to expose his troops to the direct fire of the Royal Navy. Each of these groups of historians have valid points to make, but we may never know exactly why Hitler did not order his troops into the Dunkirk bridgehead. We just know that he did not, and because of this, and because of the heroism of the British army, navy, and people, over 300,000 BEF soldiers and many Frenchmen were rescued from the beaches and brought back to England to fight another day. Some of these soldiers were taken off the beaches and/or back home by small privately owned fishing and sailing vessels, all eager to do their part. The “Miracle at Dunkirk” was made out in the British press to be a small victory in the midst of a large defeat, but in a speech to Parliament, British Prime Minister Churchill warned the rest of the nation and the free world in one of the most famous speeches in human history: “... Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men, whose loved ones have passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster...Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire

beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

The world was stunned at the German victory that came in just 6 short weeks. France had a larger army (and better tanks) than the Germans, but they were fighting like it was 1914 when it was 1940. In Great Britain, people prepared for a German invasion, which Hitler promised would come roaring across the English Channel at them after they rejected any notion of surrender. Churchill told the world that the British were waiting for “the long promised invasion – so are the fishes”, and the British steeled themselves to fight or die. Over the summer and early fall of 1940, the Battle of Britain was fought over the skies of England. During the course of the battle, tens of thousands of people were injured, made homeless, and tens of thousands were killed, especially in the London area, but the Royal Air Force managed to keep control of the skies above their nation. They did this with fortitude, skill, daring, excellent fighter planes (the Hawker Hurricane and the amazing Spitfire), and a new development, radar, which helped them spot German attacks before they got over England. The fact that they were flying over their home country, could land, refuel, and fight again in short order also gave them an advantage over the Germans. Now ruling over much of Western Europe and Poland, but frustrated in his attempt to bring the British to their knees, Hitler focused on other plans. His main objective was to take the war into the Soviet Union, but his ally, Mussolini, kept interfering with Hitler's timetable.

CHAPTER 5: SOUTHEAST EUROPE AND AFRICA Benito Mussolini had come to power in Italy in the early 1920's, when Hitler and his party were meeting in basements in Munich. For some time, Hitler idolized the Italian leader, and copied much of the Duce's (the Italian for “Leader”) style, but by 1940, Mussolini and Italy were a distant second in power to Germany. This bothered the Italian leader in the extreme and he wanted to do something about it – desperately. Italy declared war on France almost as the German invasion was ending and managed to grab for itself a chunk of French territory on the Italian border, the Riviera, a great place for overrated Italian officers to vacation. Churchill, President Roosevelt in the United States, and other leaders called Mussolini a “jackal” for letting the Germans do the dirty work, then falling upon France as she died to rip off a piece of her corpse. Even their German allies were not impressed. All of this rankled Mussolini, who wanted glory of his own. In September 1940, as the Germans tried to bomb England into surrender, the Italians attacked the British protectorate of Egypt from their colony of Libya. They also tried to push north into Egypt from Somalia and conquer the British colony of Kenya. In all of these endeavors, they failed – miserably. The main battles took place in the deserts of Egypt and Libya. Here, nearly 150,000 Italian troops faced 30,000 British and Commonwealth (Australians, New Zealanders, Indians) soldiers, and were soundly defeated. Actually, as the Italians moved into Egypt, they were attacked and defeated by the smaller British Imperial force, whose spirit is captured in this famous photo of Australians on the attack:

Italian reinforcements could not stop the British (who were better led, equipped, and motivated), and Mussolini was forced to ask Hitler for help. He sent a general who had helped to spearhead the drive across the France and had been a hero in WWI: Erwin Rommel, soon to be named “The Desert Fox” by the British in grudging respect. While Italian troops made a mess of things in the desert, they did the same in southern Europe. In the spring of 1939, Mussolini conquered Albania (many of whose troops fired muskets). In October 1940, the Italians presented neighboring Greece with an ultimatum to surrender. To this, the ruling general in Greece simply replied “No.” (To this day, October 28th is celebrated as “Ohi Day”, or “‘‘No’ Day” in Greece.) The Italians invaded...and the Greeks pushed them back into Albania. Another humiliating loss for Mussolini. Privately, Hitler was fuming. Mussolini's failures were confusing things and Hitler could not afford to let one of his “powerful” allies be defeated. In the spring of 1941, Hitler invaded the Balkan nation of Yugoslavia in a brutal campaign, and attacked Greece, swiftly defeating the British and Greek troops there. It was a decisive German victory, but the campaign may have cost Germany the war, which will be explained in a coming chapter. In the desert, Erwin Rommel drove the British back from the gains they had achieved against the Italians in 1940, despite being

outnumbered by the now reinforced British. The enemies in Africa would fight along an over 1,000 mile long battlefield, with the Germans finally being pushed back into an ever smaller corner of Tunisia in 1943, sandwiched between the British under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery from the east and the Americans (who entered the war in late 1941 and landed in North Africa in November 1942) from the west.

CHAPTER 6: MEN BECOME ANIMALS Every May in Russia, the Ukraine, and many of the other nations of the former Soviet Union, the end of WWII is celebrated. In Great Britain, America, and France, the end of the war is usually remarked upon in the news, with perhaps a small parade or two somewhere, an old veteran is spoken to, and then the news moves on with its next story. In the former Soviet Union, Victory Day is perhaps the biggest national occasion of the year. Gigantic military parades take place and the still surviving veterans (both men and women, for everyone fought in this war of survival) are given pride of place on the reviewing stand. The “Great Patriotic War” as it is referred to in Russia and elsewhere in the former U.S.S.R., cost the lives of an estimated 20 million people. 20 million. Together, Great Britain, France, and the United States lost an estimated 1 million. The city of Leningrad experienced those losses alone. This is not to say that the losses of the Western Allies and the other nations of Europe were any less tragic, but to put things in perspective. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941, he made no bones about why: to conquer western Russia and the Ukraine for German colonization. The people who lived there had a choice: flee east of the Ural Mountains, live as slaves in their own homeland, or die. Many retreated to fight again. Many stayed behind the lines and fought a guerrilla war, many of those captured died as slaves in the most gruesome ways possible. Those not captured fought on, and most never gave up hope. For the Nazis, the war in the U.S.S.R. was a racial and ideological war. The U.S.S.R. was the home of communism, which preached (even if it didn't practice) the equality of all people. That was not what the Nazis were about. The Soviet Union was also home to millions of Jews, whom the Nazis believed were the mortal enemies of the German people. Lastly, the bulk of the Soviet population were Slavs, who the Nazis believed

were little more than animals, fit only for labor or death. In the summer and into the fall of 1941, the Nazis drove further and further into the U.S.S.R. In the Ukraine, they were at first welcomed as liberators, but that notion quickly faded away as the residents realized that the Germans had no intention of treating most of them as anything but forced labor. For the first months of the war, hundreds of thousands, actually, millions of Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner. Over 500,000 were killed, many of them in the same camps as those designed for the elimination of the Jews. Hitler and many of his staff believed that the Soviets would fall shortly; it was just a matter of time. But time was not on the Germans’ side. Remember the discussion about Greece and Yugoslavia and how Hitler came to Mussolini's aid? Now that figured in big time. Hitler had planned his attack on the U.S.S.R. for mid-spring, when the weather cleared up. This would also give his armies more time to advance before the next winter set in. By delaying his timetable, Mussolini may have cost Hitler the war. Because in October and November, as the Germans were approaching the Soviet capital of Moscow, bad weather set in. Not Western European or American bad weather. Russian bad weather – the kind that destroyed the army of Napoleon in the 19th century. The German Army, despite the warnings of some in the high command, were unprepared for the cold weather of the Russian winter. Men froze solid. Frostbite claimed noses, fingers, toes, feet, and hands. Guns froze and tank engines had to be kept running all night. The Russian soldiers suffered, too, though they were more prepared for the cold than their enemy. And they had another benefit – there were more of them. Much more. And Hitler didn't know it, until too late. In the 1930s, the Soviets and the Japanese fought a series of border battles in northern China/southern Siberia. The Japanese lost each one to a Soviet general named Zhukov. In 1941, the Soviets kept an entire army of hundreds of thousands of men in the Far East in case the Japanese wanted another go. They did not. A Soviet spy in Tokyo told the Red

Army High Command that the Japanese were going to attack eastward, against the United States (an equally large mistake), and not against Russia. Though Stalin doubted the word of his spy, his generals convinced him that the spy’s reports were believable and Stalin ordered the transfer of the Soviets’ Siberian armies to the west. When Pearl Harbor took place on December 7th, 1941, Stalin knew he did not have to worry about the Japanese. And so the Soviets counter-attacked in front of Moscow. Some German soldiers reported seeing the spires of the Kremlin just before hundreds of thousands of screaming Soviets and thousands of tanks came roaring out of the snow at them. That was the last time they would see Moscow. Of course, large numbers of Germans were taken prisoner and paraded through Moscow's streets – most of them were later shot or worked to death. Though the Soviets pushed the Germans back from Moscow, and inflicted a defeat that Hitler did not think possible, the Germans rallied and eventually stopped the Soviet advance. At this point in time, the Red Army was still made up of inexperienced conscripts and led by men who were more afraid of failing Stalin than they were of Hitler. That would change in the next year, but until then, the Germans would continue to besiege the second Soviet city, Leningrad, and in the spring, plan an offensive that would lead to the most important battle of the war. When spring time came and the weather warmed up, the Germans began an offensive in the south, in Ukraine and southern Russia. Their goal was two-fold: cut the Volga River (an important supply route) off at the city of Stalingrad, and seize the oil fields of the Caucasus. When they began their offensive, they advanced in the same way they had the previous summer. Miles upon miles per day. Many forgot about the defeats of the winter, chalking them up to the weather and vowing to defeat the Russians this summer. But the Germans began to notice something. At least the everyday fighting soldiers did. The Russians were learning to fight. They had always been tough – after they learned the fate of many of those taken prisoner by the Germans, many would die by their own hand before being taken prisoner by the Nazis, but not before they took as many

Germans with them as they could. They also learned to retreat in an orderly fashion, to fight another day. And the Soviets had tanks, and their tanks were much better than the Germans had initially believed. The main Soviet tank was the “T-34”. It was a simple design, but had sloping armor, which better protected it, a powerful 76mm gun, a rugged engine, and wide tracks to move through mud and snow better. When the war began, most German tanks were nowhere near as good. That did change, but the T-34 caused dread in the German Army, especially because the Soviets eventually made nearly 100,000 of them. German production of all tanks and self-propelled guns did not reach 70,000, and these were dispersed to all parts of Europe and North Africa. The German tankers and infantrymen were highly trained and efficient (and German tanks like the Panther (a German rendition of the T-34) and the Tiger took a very heavy toll on the Soviets) and inflicted tremendous casualties on the Red Army. The Soviets could afford it. The Germans could not. When they reached Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army and the Soviets engaged in one of the most brutal battles in the history of the world. Over 1 million people were killed in the city and its suburbs over the course of 5 months. Divide 1 million by 150 days. See what you get. In late November, the Soviets, who had secretly massed large numbers of troops and guns to the north and south of the city, opened their counter-offensive. Soon, the German forces inside Stalingrad were trapped. It was winter, sometimes -40° F, and all rescue attempts failed. Though they fought hard, the Germans inside Stalingrad had no chance. When they surrendered in January, 90,000 went into captivity. Only 5,000 made it back to Germany 10 years later. Stalingrad was the turning point of the war. There were other incredible and important battles, including D-Day, but after Stalingrad, Germany's fate was virtually sealed. The next spring, the Germans launched one final offensive in the East at Kursk, and fought the largest tank battle in history with the Soviets, but the loss there cemented their fate for sure. Though it took another 2 years of extraordinarily hard and brutal fighting for the Soviets to reach Berlin, and they did have massive

amounts of help to do it, especially in supply, the Germans never went on the offensive again.

CHAPTER 7: HOLOCAUST This book is being written for people who want to know more about WWII, starting with the bare minimum. Hundreds of millions of pages have been written about the Holocaust, and I encourage you to read them, perhaps starting with The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert. Still, I would not feel right if I did not write at least a couple of pages on this most terrible event in history. During the defeats that were taking place on battlefields in Africa, Russia, and France, Hitler and his regime devoted tremendous amounts of manpower, money, time, and resources to their one main goal, which was to destroy the Jews of Europe. Trains heading to the Eastern Front with men and supplies were sometimes halted or stalled for days while the tracks they used transported millions of Jews to their deaths in extermination camps. Many people forget that the Holocaust began long before Auschwitz was built. The first gas chambers of Auschwitz came into use in 1940 on a small scale, but the larger chambers were not fully utilized until 1942. And there were other camps (Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Belzec, and Majdanek) that were built and used before Auschwitz. These camps claimed over a million victims themselves. In the Soviet Union and in Poland in 1942, millions of Jews were killed, but not by gas. By bullets. The Nazis sent “special action squads” (“Einsatzgruppen”) into the Baltic States and the western Soviet Union to eliminate the Jews there. In the Baltic States and in the Ukraine, many locals helped. Others stood by and watched. At times, such as at Babi Yar in the Ukraine and Rumbula Forest in Latvia, more than 25,000 people were shot in 2 or 3 days. Even today, previously unknown mass graves are still being found in the Ukraine (for more on this, read Holocaust By Bullets, by Father Patrick Desbois).

The killing in the camps went on almost to the last moment before the Allies overran them. Many of those left behind in the camps died shortly after liberation; malnutrition and disease killed tens of thousands.

Survivors at the Ebensee camp, 1945

CHAPTER 8: THE END IN EUROPE From the summer of 1943 onward, the Germans were fighting a defensive battle. While the Battle of Kursk was at its height, the Western Allies invaded the Italian island of Sicily, and the Germans sent troops from east to west to counter them, which left them even weaker in Russia than they were. It was only a matter of time before Germany was defeated, but to do so would require tremendous effort and loss. Even with their back to the wall, the Germans fought on, and at times, it seemed, at least on the surface, that they might have a chance of prolonging the war for years, or perhaps forcing a negotiated peace. Only the most hardcore believed that Germany could still win the war. But they tried. After the Battle of Sicily, the Allies crossed over and invaded the Italian mainland. The government of Mussolini, exceedingly unpopular by this time, fell and was replaced by that of an army general, but only temporarily – the Germans moved in and took control of the nation. Then they made a fortress of it. In 1945, Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans and shot. When the Germans evacuated Sicily to Italy, the Allies missed a chance to destroy their troops as they crossed the narrow Straits of Messina. Now they would have to fight these same Germans again. The central part of Italy is nothing but rugged mountains, which the Allies knew were virtually impassable, especially considering the rain, mud, and poor roads of Italy. Therefore, they drove up the coasts and at times, attempted to outflank the Germans (such as at Salerno and Anzio). Sounds good – on paper. The Germans constructed a series of defensive lines across the Italian peninsula. The Winter Line, Gustav Line, Hitler Line, etc., each bristling with mines, machine guns, cannons, strong-points and pillboxes, and

some of the best troops in the German army. The Italian campaign, which Churchill (in error) believed would be a quick thrust into the “soft underbelly” of Europe, turned out to be an incredibly hard fought and difficult campaign. The German commander in Italy, “Smiling” Albert Kesselring (18851960), was one of the most skilled defensive commanders of the war and made the Allies pay for every inch of ground taken. It took the Allies nearly a year after landing Sicily to take the Italian capital of Rome – on June 4th, 1944. When the war ended in the spring of 1945, the Germans still controlled a significant portion of northern Italy. As the Allies clawed their way up Italy, plans were made for a crossChannel invasion of France. This had been called for by Stalin for years, in the hope that an Anglo-American invasion would take some of the pressure off the Red Army in the east, but each time he had asked (from 1942 onward), he had been told that the Allies were not yet ready. The Allies did not see it that way. They had been fighting in the desert, Sicily, and Italy. Their bombers had been wreaking havoc on German cities for 2 years, sustaining and inflicting terrible casualties, but in his paranoia, the Soviet dictator believed that Britain and American might actually be hoping that Germany and Russia would bleed themselves white so that they could move in, but as the fighting in Sicily and Italy showed, the Americans and British were not ready for a French invasion before 1944. America, and to a lesser degree, Britain, were fighting in both Europe and the Pacific, and though supplies, equipment, and more men were coming in all the time, the Allies were stretched thin until spring 1944. On top of that, though many American units had experienced combat, many were new and very green, and the Germans were not a pushover whatsoever. As the Americans and British fought in Italy and prepared for the invasion of France, and the Soviets moved ever westward, a costly and atrocious war was taking place in Yugoslavia. In that nation, which had been created after WWI out of ethnic groups that hated each other with a terrible passion, differing groups were for and against the Germans and each other. By the time the war was over, the resistance in Yugoslavia had tied down at least 200,000 German troops, but at a terrible price. Nearly a

million Yugoslavs on all sides died in a war that produced incredible atrocity, and which were to happen again when the nation fell apart in the 1990s. In France and other occupied nations, resistance movements from various political parties attempted to take the fight to the Germans and gather intelligence for the Allies. Commando raids by the British before the invasion also helped the Allies get ready for D-Day. When it came on June 6th, 1944, the invasion of Normandy was the largest sea-borne invasion in the history of the world. Though it seemed a close run thing early in the day, the invasion was a success, but in the days afterward, the Allies got stuck in the rough hedgerow country of Northern France. Overall Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), and his deputies, including Omar Bradley (1893-1981), George Patton (18851945), British Field Marshal Montgomery (1887-1976), and others, needed to break out from the invasion area and drive across France to Paris. This did not occur until July, but from mid-July to the end of August, the Allies raced across France and Belgium to the Dutch and near the German border, and there they stopped; fuel, re-organization, and other concerns halted them in September. Hopes for an early end of the war after an assassination attempt on Hitler in July amounted to nothing came to a halt as well. In the East, the Soviets launched a massive attack to coincide with the Normandy Invasion. “Operation Bagration”, named after a 19th century Russian military hero, included nearly 2 million men, 5,000 tanks, 30,000 guns, and almost 8,000 aircraft against a vastly outnumbered German force. This offensive, one of the largest in the history of war, pushed the Germans back completely out of Russia and into eastern Poland, to the gates of Warsaw. Warsaw had seen a heroic rebellion of Jews in the ghetto in 1943. In August 1944, the rest of the city was to rise up. The Soviets, on the eastern side of the Vistula River, watched as the Germans retaliated with ferocity, killing most of the rebellious Poles and then destroying over 90% of the city. Now the Soviets would not have to deal with the same

rebellious Poles (who were not fond of either Germans or Soviets) when they moved in. In the West, Eisenhower allowed Montgomery to move forward with a plan the British commander believed might end the war, and from September 17th-25th, Allied airborne and armored forces attempted to find a northern route inside Germany via Holland. For a variety of reasons, mostly poor intelligence and planning, the attack failed. In the fall of 1944, the fighting took place on a relatively static front. That doesn't mean it stopped. The Americans and Germans engaged in one of the bloodiest battles of U.S. Army history in the Hurtgen Forest, an unnecessary battle that cost over 10,000 American lives. During this time, the Germans began to launch their secret weapons, the V-1 and V-2 missiles, at London and other Allied targets. Though the V weapons would take a heavy toll on English and Belgian civilians, they were never a threat to end the war. More deadly was the last major German offensive in the West. In the late summer, Hitler had begun toying with the idea of a German offensive that would take the Allies by surprise, but through the fall, the movement and positioning of the Allies made this difficult. But in December, the British, Canadians, and Americans sat on the German border, gathering supplies for a spring offensive. Most of these supplies came through the Belgian port of Antwerp. Hitler now believed he had his chance. He would hoard troops and tanks behind his lines and then launch them in bad weather (to prevent Allied air attack) through the Ardennes Forest (the same point from which he trapped the French in 1940), split the Allied armies in two, seize Antwerp, force the Allies to make a separate peace, then shift all of his troops to the East to finally defeat the Soviets. Hitler and his most hardcore followers were the only ones who believed this could happen, and even they realized that everything had to go perfectly right for it to occur. Nothing in war ever goes perfectly right. So when the Germans launched the Ardennes Offensive of 1944, better known as the “Battle of the Bulge”, they inflicted heavy casualties

on the untrained American troops resting there. However, despite an initial panic, the Americans regrouped and pushed the Germans back to their starting positions, and then got ready for spring, when the Allies planned on finishing Hitler for good. The last phase of the war, which began in March 1945, saw the British and Americans mount a huge offensive to cross the Rhine River (the last major natural barrier to the rest of Germany), and capture the industrial heartland of Germany, the Ruhr. From the air, Allied bombers literally destroyed most every major German city. Very little was left standing anywhere.

Ruins of Hamburg. Every major city and many minor ones in Germany looked like this by 1945 In the East, the Russian spring offensive drove from Poland into Germany, where Soviet troops took a terrible vengeance for the losses and horrors visited upon them in the Soviet Union. Countless villagers and towns were destroyed, civilians killed, and women and girls by the thousands raped. This was to be even worse when the Red Army reached Berlin, and the Allies had agreed that the Soviets would be the ones to liberate the city. From mid-April through the first week of May, German and Soviet

troops fought in the rubble of the city. By this time, Hitler and his cronies were living in an underground bomb-proof bunker, ranting and raving about Jews and the unfairness of the world while giving commands to armies that only existed on paper. Day by day, the Soviets moved closer. Finally, a few days after his 56th birthday, Adolf Hitler killed himself. Days later, his designated successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891-1980), accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany. World War II in Europe was over.

CHAPTER 9: THE PACIFIC Today, there are great tensions between the nations of Japan and China. Most of this tension is caused by questions over the possession of a few deserted islands halfway between the two nations, but that is but the latest source of friction between the two powers of the Pacific. 70 years after the end of WWII, China and the nations of Asia remain angry at Japan for the damage and loss inflicted by that country upon them. Second only to the Soviet Union in losses, the number of Chinese killed during the war with Japan approached 15 million. Many of these were killed in battle, but many (millions) were killed in the slaughter of civilians such as what happened in Nanjing in December 1937-January 1938. The Chinese were also the subject of biological and chemical warfare carried out by a secret Japanese unit known as “Unit 731”. For all of this, the Chinese and others in Asia believe that Japan has never properly apologized or made reparations. Some Japanese leaders have issued statements that they may have intended as apologies, but for most people in Asia, they have not gone far enough. World War II lives on. As you have read, the Japanese invaded Manchuria (1931) and China (1936) long before most people consider WWII to have “officially” begun. In 1940, after France fell to Japan's ally, Germany, the Japanese moved into the French colony of Indo-China (today's Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). By the time WWII “began”, Japan was in control of a considerable portion of Asia. All of this did not go unnoticed, either by the British, who had considerable interests in Asia (from India to Australia and New Zealand, to Hong Kong and Singapore) or the United States, which had a colony in the Philippines, and control of many small islands in the Pacific such as Guam and Wake, and a future state, Hawaii.

Britain kept a sizable fleet in the Pacific, but it was much smaller than its Japanese counterpart. It was hoped that if Hong Kong could not hold out in the event of Japanese attack, at least well-fortified Singapore would. With Britain itself at risk in Europe and so many British and Imperial troops fighting in North Africa to keep Britain's shipping lanes free, Winston Churchill did not have enough troops to defend Britain's Pacific interests if Japan attacked them. In the event of Japanese attack, the British (and the Dutch in exile (who controlled Indonesia), the Australians, New Zealanders) hoped that the United States would come to her aid. By late 1941, Great Britain had been hoping for that in Europe for 2 long lonely years. What was the United States doing? Since 1939 (and before), President Franklin Roosevelt had been trying to wake Americans up to the threat of Hitler and Japan, but from powerful politicians in Washington to the man on the street, most Americans wanted to stay far out of the war. This sentiment, called “isolationism”, sprang from the view that the losses sustained by the United States in WWI went for nothing – Europeans were still fighting each other. Early in American history, President George Washington had warned his countrymen to stay out of European politics. America had not listened in 1917, but would not repeat the mistake twice. Unfortunately for America in 1939-41, the world did not operate according to their wishes and dreams. Hitler took most of Europe. Japan took China and much else. In the fall of 1941, no one seemed able to stop them. Roosevelt had successfully argued that the United States did need to help Great Britain in its fight against Germany, and from late 1939 onward, had slowly implemented agreements with that country – exchanging British ports in the Western Hemisphere for ships to be used by the British in its war with German submarines (which threatened to starve Great Britain into submission), and sending supplies, which slowly began to include weapons. This supply began to increase significantly as Americans saw the brave stand of the British in the Battle of Britain. By war's end, the supply was a torrent. In 1941, although most Americans still wanted the nation to stay out

of the war, many were beginning to see Hitler for exactly what he was: an aggressive tyrant who likely had the United States in his sights, too. Both Churchill and Roosevelt realized that the German attack on the U.S.S.R. was a grave development, and both nations sent supplies to the Russians to keep them from going under. When the Japanese took over Indochina, the United States became increasingly alarmed. Already having protested against the Japanese invasion of China, Roosevelt began to not just protest but to also threaten a trade embargo on Japan. Much of Japan's oil was bought from the United States, and much of its steel and iron was American as well (where there is war, there's profit). Japan depended on American resources to keep its navy moving, and being a resource poor island, having a navy was key to Japan. Aware Americans like Roosevelt knew that with the Japanese in control of almost the entire Asian Pacific coast, the islands of the Philippines were at risk, as were the resource rich islands of Indonesia, and perhaps even Australia. The Japanese had a perplexing problem. The more territory they took to acquire resources, the more resources they needed. The Pacific is vast: to control it requires a large navy (steel) with the ability to travel long distances (oil). In the end, the Japanese (who, like the Americans, had been planning for years to go to war) decided that it was more likely to get what it wanted through war than through negotiations (which were not bearing any fruit). When Roosevelt declared that because Japan was bent on keeping control of the territories it had won by aggressive war, he was placing a complete trade embargo on Japan by all U.S. business, and Japan knew it had a short window of opportunity to get what it wanted. No one in Japan except the most hardcore and deluded believed that it could conquer the United States itself. That was never the intent. The Japanese plan was to inflict such a blow on the United States’ navy that it would retreat back to its home waters and the U.S. government would sue for peace, leaving the Japanese in control of the Pacific. This was still a tall order, but it was theoretically possible, at least the military part. Without the complete defeat of the U.S., Japan would be hard pressed to

keep what it gained. But they would try – hard. On December 7th, 1941, Japanese admiral and admirer of America, Isoroku Yamamoto (1884-1943), launched his attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the home base for most of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. On the surface, the surprise attack was a complete success. Numerous battleships and other vessels were sunk or catastrophically damaged. Many U.S. planes were destroyed and over 2,000 sailors and Marines had been killed.

Below the surface, however, the Pearl Harbor attack was a failure, though very few realized it at the time. In many ways, Japanese naval doctrine was ahead of the Americans'. The Japanese realized years before most in the U.S. that the naval warfare of the future was going to depend to a large extent on the aircraft carrier. It was hoped that the attack on Pearl Harbor would destroy the 3 fleet carriers that the United States had in the Pacific, but on December 7th, the carriers were elsewhere. These carriers would form the nucleus of the U.S. Pacific Fleet that would, by war’s end, vastly outnumber not only the Japanese fleet, but also the combined fleets of all the other navies in the world.

Still, the victory at Pearl Harbor did stun the United States, and allow the Japanese to fortify their positions in the western Pacific. The Japanese did not just attack Hawaii, they staged an offensive in December and January that nearly encompassed half the globe. Hong Kong fell. The Philippines fell with great loss of life and atrocities on a mass scale against both Americans and Filipinos. Indonesia fell. Singapore fell in February. Guam and Wake were taken. Thailand was attacked and Australia bombed. All over the world in late 1941, the Axis Powers of Germany and Japan were victorious. Great Britain, the Soviet Union, or the United States were unwilling to call it quits. Far from it. When the word of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor reached Churchill (whose mother was American) in London, he was actually elated in a way. He knew that the unimaginably large resources and industries of the U.S. would turn the tide of war: “To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment, I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.”

“Powder” was pretty much right, but it would take a long time to do it. The United States had not been on a war footing before the Japanese attack, but it had ramped up its industrial output in both preparation and to help supply the British and the Soviets. In an age before intercontinental missiles, it took time to fully prepare, however. It would take 6 months or so before American industry began turning out weapons on a scale never seen in world history before or since. Until then, the U.S. needed to hold off any possible further Japanese moves in the Pacific, especially those that threatened Australia and/or its lifelines. The U.S. government also needed to show its people and the world that it was not going to simply lie down and react to what the Japanese did, it was going to take matters into its own hands. Firstly, in the aftermath and panic of the Pearl Harbor attack, President Roosevelt and the American Chiefs of Staff realized they needed a victory, even if it was just a moral one. In April 1942, Army Air Corps (there was no U.S. Air Force until 1947) B-25 bombers took off from the carrier, Hornet, and attacked Tokyo, which Japanese leaders told

their people could never happen. The raid did not do much physical damage (and some crews were shot down, taken prisoner – all of them died or were killed), but it lifted morale in the United States and dealt a small psychological blow to Japan. While America celebrated the raid, American citizens of Japanese descent were losing their civil rights, their homes, businesses, and their freedom. In the panic after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which forcibly interned Japanese-Americans in camps in America's interior. Interestingly enough, the JapaneseAmericans of Hawaii, who made up a substantial portion of the population and owned sizable and extremely efficient farms, were left relatively undisturbed. To this day, there has never been any evidence that any Japanese-American in the United States acted against their own country. On the contrary, many Japanese-Americans from both Hawaii and the mainland went into combat in the 442nd/100th Regimental Combat Team, which became the most highly decorated unit in American military history. On the oceans, the spring of 1942 saw a number of battles that slowly informed the Japanese that they had a fight on their hands, not a country that was going to negotiate a peace after being attacked. On their part, the Americans were about to learn that the Japanese were not the little men with glasses and buck teeth who couldn't fight that Hollywood propaganda made them out to be. In the air and on the sea, the Japanese were skillful opponents, and inflicted serious losses on American ships and planes. When the two nations began to fight again on the ground in August, both sides learned about each other. The Japanese learned that the Americans were not the soft, decadent men that their propaganda had made them out to be, and the Americans quickly learned that the Japanese were cunning opponents who would rather die than surrender. In April, the U.S. and Japanese fleets fought a stand-off at Coral Sea, but in June, the Japanese made a move against the U.S. Navy station at Midway, and the Americans (whose fleet and naval air force was outnumbered) knew they were coming. They had broken the Japanese naval code.

At the loss of one American carrier and 150 planes, the Japanese lost 4 carriers, a heavy cruiser, nearly 250 planes, and 3,000 men. Importantly, many of their best and most experienced pilots were killed. From this point on, the Japanese would be on the defensive. In August, American soldiers and Marines landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands to fight and defeat the Japanese in a 5 month campaign. In the U.S., many were surprised by the fight put up by the Japanese on both land and sea (heavy sea battles, costly to both sides were fought near Guadalcanal). They were going to learn that it was going to get much, much bloodier. The war in the Pacific was fought in much the same way as the war on the Eastern Front in Europe. The Japanese fought under a warped and extreme version of their old samurai code, which caused extreme brutality to be inflicted on their enemies, whether POWs, civilians, and soldiers on the battlefield. Racial hatred also played a factor on both sides. For the Americans, vengeance for Pearl Harbor, its subsequent defeats in the Philippines and elsewhere, and the treatment of its POWs were prime factors, and this only increased as time went by. The battles fought on the islands of the Pacific were battles of annihilation. Over the course of the next 3 years, the industrial output of the United States far outstripped any nation on earth, especially that of Japan. From hoping they could bring the United States to the peace table after Pearl Harbor and dictate terms, the Japanese began to hope that they could make the battles in the Pacific so bloody, the U.S. would come to some sort of agreement. This was never seriously considered by the American government or people. The American strategy, which accounted for sizable British Imperial forces fighting the Japanese in Burma and New Guinea, called for a two pronged attack across the Pacific. The most southern thrust, through New Guinea, the islands nearby and into the Philippines, would be a (mostly) Navy/Army effort commanded by General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964). The central Pacific would see another U.S. advance made by the Navy and the Marines. In command of this effort was Admiral Chester Nimitz (1885-1966). Though the battles on the islands of the

Central Pacific are remembered more readily, extremely heavy fighting (accompanied by large scale atrocities carried out by the Japanese) took place in New Guinea, the Philippines, and elsewhere. Over the course of the next 2 ½ years, the Americans drove closer and closer to the Japanese home islands. Islands in the Pacific that Americans had never heard of before were the site of tough and brutal battles: Tarawa, Saipan, Peleliu, Kwajalein, Iwo Jima, Okinawa...and many others. As the Americans pushed closer and closer to Japan, the fighting became more extreme and the casualties on both sides grew. By the summer of 1945, the American navy had defeated every Japanese attempt to defeat it and ruled the Pacific. American submarines sank virtually everything Japanese that moved on the oceans' surface. In Japan, starvation was about to set in, and yet, the government and people of Japan had no intention of giving up. In the summer of 1939, renowned scientist and German-Jewish exile, Albert Einstein, wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, informing him of the possibility of an “atomic” bomb and the Nazis preliminary work on one. He urged Roosevelt to get the bomb for the United States first. Leading scientists in the United States and Britain believed an atomic bomb to be possible and urged Roosevelt to authorize a top-secret program code-named “Manhattan”. The Manhattan Project was (up to that time) the most expensive and secret program ever carried out. In conjunction with British and Canadian scientists and engineers, over the course of 5 years, the United States worked on developing nuclear weapons. The first atomic bomb was exploded near Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16th, 1945. By August 1945, the United States had two more bombs in its possession. The question was: “Should they be used?” Many believed an example explosion to which Japanese diplomats were witness would convince the Japanese to surrender. Many said that they would never be believed and might be thought traitors. Another idea was to starve the Japanese islands into submission, but a number of factors weighed in on this. First, it was likely that the war and the cost of war would go on for years. The American people, who had lost hundreds of thousands of their boys, were tired of the war, and

wanted to see Japan defeated once and for all, and decisively. Thirdly, it was thought that perhaps the Soviet Union might invade Japan itself, for the war in Europe had ended in May. The idea of a communist controlled Japan was not something America could stomach. The last alternative was the invasion of Japan itself, which was being planned to the last detail. Given the tremendous casualty rate of the fighting in the Pacific up to that point, U.S. estimates were 1 million U.S. casualties, and perhaps five or ten times that many Japanese. President Truman believed he had an easy choice – and what if the American people, suffering through the losses of a costly American invasion of Japan, found out that the military had a means to end the war virtually overnight? In the end, President Truman sent an ultimatum to the Japanese, ending with a warning: "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

The Japanese government did not reply. The United States dropped the first atomic weapon on the Japanese port city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Over 100,000 people were killed, many of them instantaneously. Over the years, many thousands more perished from radiation sickness. There was no reaction from Tokyo. Truman went on the radio and appeared on newsreels all over the country and warnings were sent to the Japanese that should they not surrender, the could “expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” On August 9, another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Nearly another 100,000 perished. Still no word from the Japanese government. It was not until the 12th that the Emperor informed the imperial family of his decision to surrender. Despite an abortive coup by hardcore members of the army who sought to continue the war at all costs, a recording of the Emperor's surrender speech was broadcast over the radio on August 15 (the first time the Emperor was heard on the radio by the Japanese people) indicating the unconditional surrender of Japan's military forces.

WWII was at an end. Some 60 to 80 million people had been killed.

CONCLUSION AND CONSEQUENCES At the end of WWII, the first nuclear weapons had been used. Shortly after the explosion at Hiroshima, President Truman announced that a weapon that harnessed the “basic power of the universe” had been unleashed against Japan, and it was the United States that had it. People soon realized that the development of nuclear weapons put civilization itself at risk of annihilation. To this date, the nuclear powers of the world have avoided going to war with each other directly, as all are aware that the consequences of such a war could mean the end of humankind. At the end of WWII, two “superpowers” emerged and one world power began a slow decline on the world stage. The United States and the Soviet Union dominated the globe. For the next 45 years, the “Cold War” that followed the end of WWII kept the world both on the brink of catastrophe and prevented it through the novel idea of “mutual assured destruction”, or “MAD”. The world was an entirely different place in 1945 than it had been in 1941. In 1941, the American army trained with broomsticks and cardboard tanks because of lack of funding. In 1945, it had the power to wipe out entire cities in the blink of an eye. It is hard to truly grasp the facts I am about to put before you, but try, because they're true. When the war ended, the USA was the only major power that had not been invaded or largely destroyed. Almost the world's largest economy when the war began, America emerged from WWII the richest and most powerful nation the world had ever seen. The wealth and production of the USA at the end of the war and into the 1950's was greater than every other nation in history – combined. And it had the Bomb. Despite this power, however, the U.S. was war weary and not prepared to contest every inch of the globe, especially right after the war ended, and as the decades went by, America was to learn that even the most powerful nation in history had its limits.

The Soviet Union ended the war a devastated nation. As you have read, some 20 million of its people had been killed, and untold millions wounded. Many believe that the tremendous economic damage caused by the war was only overcome in the mid-1990s or later. Tens of thousands of villages were destroyed, thousands of cities, infrastructure (where it existed), schools, farms...the list was endless. On the top of the Soviet list was making sure it never was invaded by Germany or any other nation in the West again. Therefore, despite promises about a free Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union soon dominated half the continent, with an army of millions that the United States was a) not willing to challenge on the ground without resorting to nuclear weapons, and b) soon faced with a Soviet Union that developed its own nuclear arsenal. The Soviets were also not going to let Germany or the Germans go unpunished. In the days of the leading up to the Battle of Berlin and into it, many Soviet soldiers embarked on a trail of destruction only rivaled by its former enemies. Thousands of Germans were killed or sent to Siberia, and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of German women were raped. The Soviets also virtually denuded eastern Germany of anything that could still be of any use whatsoever: train cars by the thousands, entire factories, natural resources by the tens of millions of tons, and much more. Hunger was rampant in eastern Germany for some time after the war ended. Germany was divided into two nations, East and West. Much of the world was divided as well: those controlled or influenced by the United States, and those controlled or influenced by the Soviet Union. The British Empire, though not completely disappearing after the war, shrunk tremendously in size, and out of it rose many new nations in Africa and Asia. And in these new nations, there were often bloody struggles for power – between ethnic groups, economic groups, and primarily between communists (backed by the Soviets) and anticommunists (backed by the United States). Many of these struggles, for instance, that of the Israeli and Arab nations around it, were born as a result of the events of WWII, and as we know, these conflicts continue to

this day.

TIMELINE September 18, 1931 - Japan invades Manchuria. October 2, 1935–May 1936 - Fascist Italy invades and annexes Ethiopia. October 25–November 1, 1936 - Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sign a treaty of cooperation on October 25. November 25, 1936 - Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan sign the AntiComintern Pact. July 7, 1937 - Japan invades China. March 11–13, 1938 - Germany incorporates Austria in the Anschluss. September 29, 1938 - Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement. March 14–15, 1939 - The Slovaks declare their independence and form a Slovak Republic. The Germans occupy the rump Czech lands in violation of the Munich agreement. April 7–15, 1939 - Fascist Italy invades and annexes Albania. August 23, 1939 - Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a nonaggression agreement. September 1, 1939 - Germany invades Poland. September 3, 1939 - Great Britain and France declare war on Germany. September 17, 1939 - The Soviet Union invades Poland from the east. September 27–29, 1939 - Poland surrenders. November 30, 1939–March 12, 1940 - The Soviet Union invades Finland. April 9, 1940–June 9, 1940 - Germany invades Denmark and Norway. May 10, 1940 - Germany occupies Luxembourg. May 14, 1940 - The Netherlands surrenders. May 28, 1940 - Belgium surrenders.

June 22, 1940 - France signs an armistice agreement; the Germans occupy the northern half of the country and the entire Atlantic coastline. The collaborationist Vichy regime is established in the Southern half. June 10, 1940 - Italy enters the war. June 21, 1940 - Italy invades southern France. June 28, 1940 - Romania cedes the eastern province of Bessarabia and the northern half of Bukovina to the Soviet Ukraine. June 14, 1940–August 6, 1940 - The Soviet Union occupies, then annexes the Baltic States. July 10, 1940–October 31, 1940 - The Battle of Britain ends. September 13, 1940 - The Italians invade British-controlled Egypt. September 27, 1940 - Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact. October 1940 - Italy invades Greece. November 1940 - Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania join the Axis. February 1941 - The Germans send the Afrika Korps to North Africa to help the Italians. March 1, 1941 - Bulgaria joins the Axis. April 17, 1940 - Yugoslavia surrenders. Early June, 1941 - Greece’s resistance ends. June 22, 1941–November 1941 - Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany and its Axis partners (except Bulgaria) invade the Soviet Union. December 6, 1941 - Chaotic German retreat from the Moscow. December 7, 1941 - Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. December 8, 1941 - The United States declares war on Japan, entering World War II. Japanese troops invade French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), British Singapore and the Philippines. December 11–13, 1941 - Nazi Germany and its Axis partners declare war on the United States. May 30, 1942 - Start of German cities bombing by the allies.

June 1942 - Midway navy battle. June 28, 1942–September 1942 - German offensive in the Soviet Union. August–November 1942 - Battle at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. October 23–24, 1942 - British troops defeat the Germans and Italians at El Alamein in Egypt. November 8, 1942 - US and British troops land in French North Africa (Algeria and Morocco in). November 11, 1942 - Germans start occupation of Southern France. November 23, 1942–February 2, 1943 - Soviet counterattack at Battle of Stalingrad. May 13, 1943 - End of North African campaign. July 10, 1943 - US and British troops land on Sicily. July 25, 1943 - Benito Mussolini deposed. New Italian government formed under Marshall Pietro Badoglio. September 8, 1943 - The Germans control Rome and Northern Italy, free Mussolini and establish a puppet Fascist regime under him. January 22, 1944 - Allied troops land near Anzio, south of Rome. March 19, 1944 - The Germans occupy Hungary. June 4, 1944 - Allied troops liberate Rome. June 6, 1944 - D-Day: Allied troops land on the Normandy beaches of France. June 22, 1944 - Launch of Soviet Offensive in Belarus and Poland. August 15, 1944 - Allied forces land in southern. August 20–25, 1944 - Allied troops reach Paris. On August 25, Free French forces, supported by Allied troops, liberate the French capital. By December, nearly all of France, most of Belgium, and part of the southern Netherlands are liberated. August 23, 1944 - Romanian opposition overthrow the Antonescu regime, concludes an armistice and switches sides in the war. Bulgaria surrender on September 8. The Germans evacuate Greece, Albania, and

southern Yugoslavia in October. September 12, 1944 - Finland signs an armistice with the Soviet Union. October 20, 1944 - US troops land in the Philippines. December 16, 1944 - Battle of the Bulge: German final offensive in Western Europe. January 12, 1945 - Soviet offensive in Eastern Europe; liberation of Warsaw and Krakow, invasion of Hungary, Slovakia, Austria. March 7, 1945 - US troops cross the Rhine River. April 16, 1945 - The Soviets reach Berlin. April 1945 - Partisan units, led by Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Tito, capture Zagreb and topple the Ustasa regime. April 30, 1945 - Hitler commits suicide. May 7, 1945 - Germany surrenders to the western Allies. May 9, 1945 - Germany surrenders to the Soviets. May 1945 - Allied troops conquer Okinawa, the last island stop before the Japanese islands. August 6, 1945 - The United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. August 8, 1945 - The Soviet Union declares war on Japan and invades Manchuria. August 9, 1945 - The United States drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. September 2, 1945 - Japan formally surrenders, ending World War II.

FURTHER READING This eBook is a simple summary of some of the main events of the World War II era. We hope that you now know some of the things you wanted to learn about when you purchased this book, and want to learn more. Here are a few books that go into more detail about various aspects of the war: World at Arms by Gerhard Weinberg Why the Allies Won by Richard Overy Retribution and Nemesis by Max Hastings The Oxford Companion to World War II, edited by M.R.D Foote The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert

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From the same series: World War Two, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern World War Two, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern Hitler, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern The Nazi Party, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern The Atomic Bomb, How the World Changed Forever by Steven Vern