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THE BEGINNING The Second World War was truly a world war. It stretched from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from Norway to Brazil, and from Alaska to New Zealand. Most people don’t realize that the war didn’t start in 1941 or let alone September 1, 1939. One of the main reasons it did start was the Treaty of Versailles in 1918. The Treaty made the Germans feel inferior and like they were not given a fair trial. And they were probably right. With Wilson’s plan, the Fourteen Points, that would have let the Germans even a little breathing room. However, he was probably the only one to have some remorse for these people. The French and the British were leading the Treaty and let the hammer down on the German people, making them feel like dirt. The Germans were to destroy most of their Army, Navy, and Air Force. The Allies forced them to pay 33 billion dollars, something nearly impossible to do with the state of Germany at the time. The Treaty also took away the oil fields near the Belgian-Franco border. The Germans wanted to feel like human beings again, they wanted to feel on top of the world. Well, only one guy could have done that, Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler became the fuel of the fire whenever he was elected Chancellor in 1933. 1933 is when World War Two began. When the German Army swore allegiance to him, it made him known as Der Führer. Another fatal burning log to this fire of war is the Japanese invasion of China. This altogether was the beginning of World War Two for the Chinese. After the Chinese Civil War, the country was torn to pieces and the Japanese thought this would be the perfect time, when everything is in total chaos and disarray. With the invasion of Manchuria in 1933, it seemed all over. Then everything went from bad to worse. Nanking was protected by an attempted naval blockade by the US and British forces. This blockade was fired upon by the Japanese and had to get out. Then, on December 14, 1937, Nanking fell to the Japanese. Over the next six weeks, the atrocities were unimaginable; torching buildings looting, torturing, and killing civilians, and raping young women. The Chinese estimated some 300,000 people were murdered. For the many years before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Carl Marx’s book of Communism influenced many revolutionists, such as Vladimir Lennon and Josef Stalin. When the revolution finally came in 1917, it forced the Russians out of World War I and Communism was established in Russia. The new installment of Communism called them the United Soviet Socialist Republic or the USSR or Soviet Union. They existed for 74 years until their defeat in 1991. That was one of the many fires that caused the war. Now that Hitler in Chancellor of Germany, he is prepared to get “his land” back. In March of 1935 to March 1939, Hitler annexed a lot of land. In March of 1936 the Rhineland Demilitarized Zone was re-occupied by German troops. This land was taken from them in the Treaty of Versailles. In March of 1938 Hitler paid a visit to his home country, Austria. Austria was happy to accept the annex and be a part of Hitler conquest. In October 1938 Hitler took the Sudetland. Of course Hitler assured the nations that that Sudetland would be the “last territorial demand in Europe,” the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced that the agreement would mean “peace for our time.” He was obviously wrong. In March of 1939, Memelland was annexed north of East Prussia. On March 1939 as well, the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia or Czechoslovakia was “annexed” by German troops. Finally an official start to the war was on September 1, 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland. However, he was only to get 2/3 of the country with the Russo-German Non-Aggression Pact of 1939. You will find out later that the pact will fail on Operation Barbarossa. The USSR also got Estonia Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland. The Finns repelled the Russian attack and forced them into retreat. From 1939 to 1941 was called the Phoney War. It is called that because there is little to no fighting or resistance to Hitler during these 2 years. The invasion of Holland, Belgium, France, Norway, and Slovakia was done so quickly because of this new tactic, Blitzkrieg. France was known for having the largest and powerful armies in the world. However, this new tactic was the fall of many countries including France. Blitzkrieg means “lightning war,” and means exactly what it says. The panzer divisions supported by the Luftwaffe would come in first and take the brunt, if any, of the opposition. Next, the lighter tanks and infantry would move in taking out the spots that the tanks and airplanes missed. One of the worlds well known plane widely used by the Nazi’s during the Blitzkrieg and the bombing of London was the Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber. Partially what made this plane so well known and feared was the wailing siren used while bombing. The allies were caught off guard by this new tactic and were forced to retreat to the shores of France and Belgium. One “miracle evacuation” as Winston Churchill put it was the Dunkirk Evacuation. On May 27, British ships started evacuating British and French troops back to England. This lasted until June 4, when all 340,000 men were pulled out of the European mainland and sent back to England. By the Operation Torch landings, things were getting into full swing in Africa. With Operation Barbarossa, things for the Russians weren’t doing well.
THE EASTERN FRONT On 3:30 AM June 22, 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler broke the non-aggression pact and invaded the Soviet occupied Poland codenamed, Operation Barbarossa. It had more than three million German Hungarian and Rumanian soldiers with 3,350 tanks and 2,270 planes leading the largest military force ever assembled yet. This massive operation included the invasions of USSR, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine. During this operation, on September 8, the siege of Leningrad begins and doesn’t stop until January of 1944. The Germans had the huge operation over a 1,000 mile front and by the beginning of December, had covered over 800 miles. However, the largeness of Russia has begun to set in. Entering the winter months about 15 miles south of Moscow, the Germans had conquered only a fraction of the great expanse of the country. One by one, the villages, towns, and cities fall to the Wehrmacht, panzer divisions, and Luftwaffe: Minsk, Kiev, Novgorod, Leningrad, Tarnopol, Sevastopol, Kerch, Kursk, Orel, Kharkov, and many more. Finally, on December 5th Hitler orders his troops on the defensive. On December 6, a Soviet counteroffensive in front of Moscow begins, ending Operation Barbarossa and beginning the offensive to take Moscow and win. The German advance to Moscow somewhat short lived. The Russian winter this year happened to be the coldest in 140 years. With no or little winter clothing or provisions, they couldn’t continue onto Moscow or else the army would freeze to death. The exhausted troops were to pull back as from General Von Rundstedt, the commander of the southern sector of troops. Hitler didn’t like that, so he fired him; he also fired the commander-in-chief of the German Army, two of the three army group commanders, and two of the three top tank leaders all fired before the winter went away. Now all orders were from the Führer himself. The day of the Soviet counteroffensive and attack against the forces surrounding Moscow from the north and south are successful. In the south, Soviet troops begin attack north of Livny; and Germans 2nd begins withdrawal from the area. On December 15, Soviets take back Kiln. Back in the south, the Germans capture the outer ring of forts around Sevastopol, yet on the 29, Soviet troops land in Feodosiya in Crimea and capture Kerch. There were 918,000 Axis casualties in the year of 1941 alone which was almost one third of the original strength of three million troops. On January 1, 1942, the Soviet Army launches an attack south of Kharkov. January 7, the offensive to relieve blockade of Leningrad is launched. 18th: Germans take back Feodosiya. The Soviet advance from Donets River that was crossed on the 24th is finally stopped by the Germans. On February 8, 90,000 German troops are surrounded and cut off by Soviet forces at Demyansk. Jumping to May 8, the Germans launch an offensive in the Crimea. May 16, the German Army gains control of Kerch Peninsula in preparation for the offensive in the Caucasus. Two days later, they recapture Kerch. The Germans could be gaining an upper hand in this conflict when on May 29; Soviet forces are defeated at Kharkov. Going into June, 28, the German 2nd Army attacks in the Kursk area while on the 30th German 6th Army launches attack on the Soviet Southwestern Front. Finally on July 4, Sevastopol is taken by the Germans after being besieged for eight months. The Germans 2nd Army occupies Voronezh in the first stage of Operation Blue. Operation Blue main objective is to ignore Moscow and continue east from the south for the oilfields of the Caucuses. On August 19, 1942, the bloodiest battle in history is about to begin, Stalingrad. Operation Blue was to take the Russian Caucasus oilfields in the Ukraine. Little did Hitler know how bad the death and destruction would be for the operation. High ranking German officers saw Stalingrad as a strategic place of importance. It was right on the Volga River and if you cut off oil flow from the river, the Red Army can’t fuel tanks and vehicles. Hitler's officers assured him that Stalingrad would be taken by September. They were wrong. General Paulus, commander of the Sixth Army, launched the attack of the town of Stalingrad on August 19, 1942 after the town was bombarded with bombs dropped by aircraft and shells with artillery fire. However, the barrage made it easier for the Soviet defenders to prepare for the arrival of the German adversary. So, the Germans moved to tanks. The tank was not fit for this type of warfare, and so it mechanically failed because of the cold and other reasons. Lastly, it came to the burden of the infantry to wipe out the Soviet Force in Stalingrad. On September 13, Zhukov, now the Deputy Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Soviet Armed Forces, brought a plan to Stalin that would change the fate of the battle. He would create a wide encirclement of the axis forces on the Lower Volga and the destruction of the Sixth Army in Stalingrad. The tactic of Blitzkrieg that worked so well earlier that year had been replaced with a war of attrition. And by mid-November, it wasn’t looking so good for the Germans. They were completely beat up on the west bank of the Volga River and the battle was becoming a struggle whose cost far exceeded its strategic or tactical value, remorselessly sucking in units that were essential for sustaining the dwindling hopes of a breakthrough in the Caucasus. Operation Uranus was a devised by Zhukov to completely wipe out the German forces. Over one million men would be involved in this large charge against the German enemy. The losses by the Germans were substantial. Finally, almost nearing the 200th day of battle, General Paulus, despite Hitler’s complaint, surrendered on January 31, on the 199th day. The casualties had estimated around 2 MILLION casualties to the Russian and Axis forces as well as over 100,000 Germans surrendering. As an officer of the German 24th Panzer division of October 1942 puts it, “Stalingrad is no longer a town… it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke.” In December of 1943 in Tehran, the “Big Three”, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, decided that the “Unconditional Surrender of Nazi Germany” was the only way to end the war. It’s mid-1943 and Hitler is about to launch Operation Citadel. Operation Citadel was to destroy the bulge surrounding the industrial city of Kursk. The plan was to flank the Red Army on the north and south of the bulge and push in and crush the remaining troops in the Kursk area. However, some captured Germans revealed the plans to the Soviets and so they built up their defenses around the area. One million anti-tank and anti-personnel mines the Soviets lay along the front at Kursk, more that 3,000 mines per 1,000 yards of front. Erich Von Manstein, one of Hitler’s commanders, persisted that the offensive should be in March. Hitler refused and said they should wait out the Russian thaw in the spring. That was a horrible mistake. At the crack of dawn at 5:30 AM on July 5, the 2nd and 4th Panzer Armies and Army Group Centre, 9th Army, and Army Group South launched Operation Citadel. Almost immediately the largest tank battle ever assembled began with fierce resistance of artillery, anti-tank guns, and T-34’s. As the battle raged for days in the north and the south, it wasn’t working like Hitler had intended it to do. With the fierce resistance by the Red Army, in the south the German forces gained 20 miles where in the north there were only gains of barely 7 miles. By July 10, only five days after the offensive began, the German advance had come to a standstill. Three days later Hitler calls off the operation for failure to reach Kursk of gain any sort of ground. Now the Soviets, confident that they could defeat the Germans, are on the offensive. With Operation Kutuzov, the Soviets could throw back the Germans and send them into retreat. Operation Kutuzov was launched on July 12, 1943; the Red Army would attack the northern and eastern faces of the Orel salient held by the Second Panzer Army. After the operation becomes a success, they don’t let the Germans stop. On July 13, Soviet forces take Belgorod. On August 22, Kharkov is liberated. September 22, Soviet forces reach Dnieper River south of Dnepropetrovsk. On November 6, Kiev is liberated. On November 8, the Germans launch a counterattack south of Fastov forcing Soviet troops onto the defensive from Zhitomir to Dnieper River. December 24, Soviet operations to recover Ukraine west of the Dnieper begin. In 1944 January 8, Soviet forces take Kirovograd. On January 19, Soviet forces take Novgorod. Finally, on January 27, Leningrad is relived at the end of almost an 890-day siege. February 2, Soviet forces capture Rovno. February 12, Soviet forces capture Luga. March 1, Soviet forces reach the border of Estonia, marking the end of German threat to Leningrad and the northern region surrounding Leningrad. On March 15, Soviet forces reach the Bug River, the starting point for the Germans Operation Barbarossa of June 1941. On April 10, Soviet forces enter Rumania. On the 17, they occupy Tarnopol. 8 days earlier, on April 8, Soviet forces launch successful attack on the Crimea from the north and east. On May 9th after launching the attack on May 5, the Soviets finally take back and liberate Sevastopol. Finally, on May 12, 25,000 Germans surrender at Cape Khersonessky, near Kherson. Now the Germans are in full retreat back to whence the war started against the Russians and pushing them back to the Fatherland. When the Soviet offensive code-named Operation Bagration launched, it begins on a 450-mile front in Byelorussia on June 23. The main objective of the operation: completely annihilate and destroy the Army Group Centre, invade Rumania, and knock Finland out of the war. On July 26, the Red Army takes Vitebsk, one of the cities that Hitler has given orders to be held to the last man. Obviously, that didn’t work. July 3, Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia, is liberated by Soviet troops. As through these few dates, the Red Army has thrown itself into this operation to make sure that Germany loses control of every little piece of ground that they gained in Operation Barbarossa. On July 17, the Soviet forces advancing through the central part of the Eastern Front, reach the Bug River, the 1939 Polish border. On July 23, an extermination camp at Majdanek, east of Lublin, is liberated. On August 1, the Soviets take Kaunas, the capitol of Lithuania and while that is happening, the Poles begin the uprising in Warsaw. 20 days later on August 20, Soviet forces are at the mouth of the Danube River and are launching an attack into Rumania. August 30, Germans withdraw from Bulgaria, while nine days later, Soviet forces enter Bulgaria. The day after the Germans withdrew from Bulgaria, Soviet forces entered Bucharest. Three days before the Russians advanced into Bulgaria they signed an armistice with them. On September 14, the Red Army made it past their former lines drawn in 1939 to the suburbs of Warsaw. When on the 19, an armistice is signed with Finland as well. Finally the threat of German forces entering northern Soviet Union is gone with the Soviet occupation of the Estonian capital of Tallinn on September 22. Now on the first of October, Soviet forces cross from Rumania into Yugoslavia. October 11, the Hungarians sign armistice with the Soviet Union. To end the advance in the Baltic, Riga is captured and Germans retreat across Finnish border to Kirkenes in Norway. Belgrade falls to Soviet forces after a week-long to gain control of the city on the 20th. On the 29th, the Red Army begins the last stage of advance against Budapest crossing Tisza River. November 4th, 1944, Soviet forces reach southern and eastern suburbs of Budapest but fail to break through. Jumping to the beginning of December, specifically the 5, the Soviets Red Army launches a third attempt of capturing the city of Budapest, which Hitler orders to be defended to the last man. Finally, on December 26, the Soviets begin the siege of Budapest, in which two Hungarian and four German divisions have become trapped. Now begins the march through Warsaw and the rest of Poland to seize Germany. It is now 1945, and last summer, the allies opened up a second front that took some of the pressure off of Stalin and the Soviet Union. After the Battle of Kursk, the Germans are going downhill. They haven’t stopped retreated and haven’t had any major offensives since the Soviet major offensive. The two armies have reached the Fatherland and all hell breaks loose. Germany is being squashed in two as being overwhelmed with such force of the Allies determination and confidence that good will come out.