Mr. Hill study set 6 2024-2025 (WWII in Germany & Great Britain)

Aftermath of The Munich Confrence

Appeasement, however, was unable to preserve the fragile European peace, and appeasement was seen as a failure by great Britain and France to contain Hitler’s lust for conquest. On March 16, 1939, German troops invaded Czechoslovakia and divided the country; finally, European leaders now knew that Hitler could not be trusted. (Hitler berated the Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia to the point where he fainted, when he came to he gave him control) Nazi Germany took control of the western part of the country and Czech lands became part of the Third Reich. The eastern part, Slovakia, became a German puppet state. German troops seized all military equipment, weapons factories, raw materials, and the gold reserves of the former Czechoslovakia. During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, approximately 300,000 citizens were murdered and 350,000 Czech people including children were forced to become slave laborers.

Hitler Demands Danzig (but wants war and Poland)

Then, days later in October 1938, in another bid to dismantle the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler demanded the Polish city of Danzig be returned to Germany. Danzig was more than 90% German and had been taken from germany by the Versailles Treaty and given to Poland in 1919. Hitelr also demanded a highway across the Polish Corridor (a strip of land created by the Treaty of Versailles which gave Poland access to the Baltic Sea) to link East Prussia to the rest of Germany-but these demands were a pretext for his war for lebensraum. After the German annexation of Czechoslovakia on March 16, 1939, and Hitler’s demands fro Danzig on March 21, 1939,Great Britain-now convinced that war was inevitable with Hitler-announced on March 31, 1939 that if Poland went to defend its territory, Britain and France would come to its aid. In May 1939, Hitler ordered the German army to prepare invasion plans for Poland (attack September 1). Hitler ordered his obsequious foreign minister, Baron Joachim von Ribbentrop, to begin secret negotiations with the Soviet Union to ensure Soviet neutrality in case of war.

Nazi-Soviet Talks

Stalin believe that Hitler’s desire for “living space” would eventually lead the German dictator to move into rich agricultural areas of eastern Europe. Because he doubted that the West would come to his country’s aid if Germany threatened the USSR since the Soviet Union was an international pariah, Stalin began secret talks with the Germans.German foreign minister von Ribbentrop, met with Soviet officials in secret to propose a non-aggression treaty between the two countries agreeing not to attack one another. Hitler was concerned about Germany again fighting a two-front war (as they had done in World War I) and did not want to fight the Soviet Union if war erupted between Germany and France and Great Britain after the planned invasion of Poland. Stalin was concerned that the Red Army was unprepared for a possible German invasion because during the Great Purge of the mid-1930s many Soviet generals and high-ranking officers had been removed or executed.

Nazi-Soviet Pact

On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. (Hitler had told his generals prior to the agreement that he was going to attack Poland on September 1) According to the agreement, Germany and the Soviet union pledged that they would never attack each other. Moreover, each would remain neutral if the other became involved in a war. However, the leaders of Great Britain and France did not know that the treaty secretly called for the division of Poland between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. (They would learn of September first with the invasion of Poland) The Soviet Union would also regain territories that it had lost after the revolution-Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Germany would occupy the western part of Poland, while the Soviets would rule over the eastern part.

WWII Begins

Hitler saw the part as a means of securing Germany's eastern border and it removed the last obstacle to war with Poland-Stalin's pledge of neutrality freed him to pursue his military objectives in Poland. Moreover, after his recent foreign policy success in which he politically out maneuvered Germany’s rivals, France and Great Britain, Hitler was over-confident that the West would do nothing he moved against Poland. “The men of Munich will not take the risk,” Hitler declared. Moreover, the pact was a ploy because Hitler still planned to attack his mortal enemy in the future; he declared the deal was a ”pact with Stan to drive out the devil.” One week later, on September 1, 1939, Hitler sent his armies across the Polish frontier. However he had gravely misjudged what the Western leaders would do; two days later, on September 3, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. World War II had begun.

Invasion of Poland

World War II began on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland for lebensraum, living space in the east. The German air force, the Luftwaffe, roared toward its targets in Poland, spreading confusion with its aerial assault. At the same time, armored tank division known as panzers followed closely by the infantry in motorized vehicles swept across the Polish border in enormous sweeping maneuvers in order to encircle Polish forces. This was a new type of warfare, called blitzkrieg or “lightning war”- a tactic aimed at talking the enemy by surprise. Blitzkrieg used massed tanks, combined with waves of aircraft and paratroopers, to quickly break through and encircle enemy positions. The German Army attacked Poland with 1.;5 million men, 1,500 tanks, and 1,200 airplanes. Blitzkrieg worked with speed and efficiency, devastating Poland in a matter of weeks. The Polish Army was no match for the modern tactics and weapons of the Wehrmacht; in fact, the first day of war saw the last use of mounted cavalry in modern warfare by the Poles. By the end of the campaign, Germany had captured 700,000 Polish POWs.

The Soviet Union Invades Poland

Meanwhile, on September 17, 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland from the east with 450,000 men and 4,700 tanks. The Red Army quickly occupied the eastern half of the nation. Within four weeks on October 6, 1939, Poland surrendered, and Germany and the USSR divided Poland between themselves.

Stalin take the Baltic States

The Red Army then invaded Finland in November, and after a heroic struggle in the Winter War, the Finns were ultimately forced to surrender in March 1940. In July 1940, Stalin annexed the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, incorporating the nations promised to him in the secret treaty. Consequently, the Soviet Union moved their frontier 70 miles to the west, making the city of Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg) less vulnerable to German attacks.

Civilians and Refuges

During the invasion, the Germany military and the Red Army attacked civilian targets: 7,000 Polish civilians died during the bombing of Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Between 150,000 to 200,000 polish civilians died in the invasion, in addition to 70,000 Polish soldiers. Following the invasion, hundreds of thousands of refugees fled their homes to avoid the German and Red Armies. The Nazis began to deport one million civilians out of western Poland to make room for German settlements; over one million Poles were deported to Soviet labor camps. Although Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, both countries were unprepared and could not move fast enough to send troops to war-torn Poland.

Hitler’s War of Extermination

In the aftermath of the invasions of Poland, Hitler’s brutal racist and ethnic policies were quickly realized in his homicidal war of extermination of Jews and Poles. (Hitler told the millitary he would not punish them for war crimes.) In Mein Kampf, Hitler declared that Poles and Jews were inferior subhuman races who should be wiped out. The first mass murders of polish and Jewish civilians and burning of whole villages began in early September. Heinrich Himmler, commander of the SS, and his loyal lieutenant, Reinhard Heydrich, unleashed terror on the population. Three thousand members of the SS, the paramilitary branch of the Nazi Party and Hitler’s most fanatical followers, formed death squads to ethnically cleanse the Reich of Jews and Poles. Within three months, 40,000 Poles were murdered, including 7,000 Jews; tens of thousands were sent to forced labor camps. The Nazi administrator of Poland declared of the Jews: “The more that die, the better”: he also proclaimed, “The Poles will become slaves of a Greater German world empire.” Hitler’s willing and eager executioners in Poland laid the foundation for the Holocaust and the extermination of Jews and Slavs in all territories conquered in the east by the Wehrmacht.

Invasion of Scandinavia

All through the winter and spring of 1949-1940, the western front was quiet; the Germans called this period the “sit-down war,” of Sitzkreig, while the west dubbed it the “phony war.” Then on April 9, 1940, German troops invaded Scandinavia, and the Germans quickly took control of Denmark and Norway in order to preserve access their access to their raw materials that were invaluable to the Nazi war effort. Moreover, Hitler wanted the outlet to the Atlantic that he needed to ensure that the German navy would not be bottled up in the Baltic like it had in World War I as well as securing a possible launching point for an invasion of Great Britain.

The Rise of Winston Churchill

News of the fall of Norway and Denmark caused the collapse of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government. On May 10, 1940, King George VI summoned Winston Churchill to Buckingham Palace to form a new government. Churchill declared: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us. You ask what is our aim? It is victory.”

Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill (1874-1964) is considered one of the most significant leader of the twentieth century, shepherding Great Britain through World war Ii, and one of the most electrifying orator of the modern age whose words echo through time. His rousing rhetoric and inspirational leadership during the Second World War sustained Great Britain when it was the only nation resisting Hitler’s Third Reich in 1940. Churchill is one of the great men of history. Churchill’s life and experience prepared him to be the Prime Minister of Great Britain during its “finest hour”-Churchill’s own words to describe Great Britain’s victorious struggle against Nazi Germany.

Winston Churchill - Youth

Churchill was born in 1974 in his family’s ancestral home, Blenheim Palace, and he had roots on both sides of the Atlantic; a British politician described him as “Half English aristocrat and half American gambler.” His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a member of a wealthy, aristocratic family and was a prominent politician who many believed would be prime minister one day, but his career was cut short by a rare brain disease: Lord Randolph was a unloving, stern, and distant parent, yet his son adored him. His mother, the beautiful American socialite Jennie Jerome Churchill, was from an affluent New York family; she was self-absorbed and spent little time with Winston due to her overly active social life; he would later write, ‘I love her dearly - but at a distance.”

Winston Churchill - Early Years

Churchill was sent to an elite boarding school at the age of seven; he was a voracious reader with a photographic memory and throughout his life, he could quote from memory prodigious lines of poetry, scene from Shakespeare, or passages from historical texts. Wanting to become a soldier due to a lifelong interest in the military, he attended the Royal Military Academy-but being in the army was only a stepping stone toward his greater ambition of following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a statesman like him. While earning thirty-seven decorations in the cavalry, Churchill periodically worked as a war correspondent to make his own money. Throughout his life he supplemented his salary by writing and he was an exceptional writer, penning forty-three books and winning a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Winston Churchill - Early Career

After serving with the British army in India, he was hired as a war correspondent covering the Boer War, becoming an international celebrity for his sensational article about his daring 300-mile escape from a prisoner of war camp. In 1900, he followed his father into politics, winning his first political election and soon he held a succession of important political positions. Energetic, intelligent, and ambitious, Churchill always seemed to be “a young man in a hurry” to fulfill his dreams of becoming a man of destiny. In 1908 Churchill married Clementine Hozier, a beautiful, intelligent, and strong-willed twenty-three-year-old daughter of an aristocratic friend of Jennie Jerome; he remained smitten with Clementine for the next fifty-six years and she was his confidant and advisor as well as a stalwart defender when he suffered political failures. Although he had a reputation of being a drinker, he was rarely drunk; he was a connoisseur of champagne, brandy, and cigars.

Winston Churchill - Rise to Power

In 1908, the thirty-three year old Churchill was appointed to a cabinet position, becoming the youngest cabinet minister in over four decades. Three years later, he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty (similar to Secretary of Navy) and put in charge of the most powerful navy in the world when World War I broke out, he was in a unique position to steer the war aims of the nation. Churchill was a unflinching champion of the monarchy, the empire, and nobleness oblige-the belief that the aristocracy had a responsibility to serve the nation, help those who were less fortunate, and dedicate one’s life to governments service. Churchill was profoundly gifted intellectually, supremely self-confident, and aristocratic by nature; people marveled at his sharp wit and dry sense of humor; his personality allowed him to rise from the ashes of his failures to one day become the leader of his nation.

Winston Churchill - The Gallipoli Disaster

As the First lord of the Admiralty, Churchill believed that there was an alternative to the stalemate of the Western Front to defeat the central Powers. He devised a campaign to open a new front in Türkiye along the straits of the Dardanelles on the peninsula of Gallipoli which would break the deadlock and lead the Allies to victory. The Gallipoli campaign ended in disaster and defeat for Britain forces; the ignominiously forced the resignation of Churchill as the First of Lord of the Admiralty. Despite the failure of Gallipoli, Churchill held a variety of important government post through the end of the First World War and the 1920s.

Winston Churchill - The wilderness years

However, Churchill’s political party lost the election of 1929, and a new government was in power. Churchill was out of office for the next ten years and this period of his life has been called the “wilderness years” because he had no political power. (One factor that contributed to his loss of power was that fact that he switched parties: Conservative, than Labor, and back). His wife, Clementine, was a great solace to him during these years when he was ostracized from power from 1929 - 1939. Nonetheless, he remained an influence voice in British politics. Churchill was one of the few politicians who had warned about the danger of Adolf Hitler in 1933 and he warned about the growing threat of the Luftwaffe. In 1938, Churchill also vehemently disagreed with the policy of appeasement and called instead for a mutual defense pact among European nations to oppose German expansionism. After the Munich Agreement was reached, he predicted that Czechoslovakia would be engulfed by Nazi Germany in a matter of months: “the partition of Czechoslovakia under pressure from England and France amounts to the complete surrender of the Western Democracies to the Nazi threat of force.” Churchill lambasted Chamberlain for appeasing Hitler: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

Winston Churchill - Prime Minster

After Great Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, Chamberlain appointed Churchill to his war cabinet as the first Lord of the Admiralty. After The collapse of Norway, Chamberlain lost support in Parliament; one member declared, “In the name of G-d, go!” On May 10, 1940, Chamberlain resigned and the sixty-five-year-old Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister of Great Britain, fulfilling his lifelong dream and goal. Churchill wrote years later, “I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”

The Maginot Line

On the same momentous date, May 10, 1940, World War II began on the western front. The Maginot Line was an impregnable series of concrete underground fortifications and bunkers that stretched three hundred miles between France and Germany built by France to deter invasion. It contained over three hundred artillery pieces and one thousand machine gun emplacements; the Maginot Line was manned by 20,000 elite troops. The Maginot Line was impressive but it had one major flaw-a 50-mile gap in the impassible Ardennes forest that the French believed was a sufficient barrier. A French tank commander, Colonel Charles de Gaulle, pleaded for more tanks and planes, but the French military leadership insisted that the Maginot Line was impenetrable.

The Innovation of the Low Countries

Before dawn on May 10, 1940, Hitler launched a new blitzkrieg. The Wehrmacht carried out a massive attack on the Low Countries-Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. German troops parachuted into the Netherlands-it was the first large-scale airborne attack in history of warfare and caught the Dutch by surprise. Five days after the start of the invasion, the Dutch capitulated. At the same time, unbeknownst to the Allies, German panzer tanks units were secretly maneuvering through the Ardennes to spring a trap on French and British forces.

France and Great Britain Respond

On the same day that Germany invaded the Netherlands, France and Belgium raced north into Belgium to fight alongside the Belgian army and fell into the German trap. French and British generals were fooled into believing that Germany would follow their same strategy that opened the First World War. But Hitler and General Erich von Manstein devised the daring “sickle cut” plan. German tank units would cut through what they French believed wa the impenetrable Ardennes Forest and then race behind the enemy toward the English Channel in a great sweeping maneuver, trapping the Allied forces between two German pincer.

Drive to the Channel

The attack into the Low countries was a diversion. The main attack was the surprise drive of panzer tank units and troops through the Ardennes Forest bypassing the Maginot Line that no one expected. German tanks then swept swiftly cross France from the Ardennes Forest to the English Channel behind the Allied armies, encircling the British and french forces in Belgium. German tanks rolled through undefended open country; they pushed westward at a feverish pace toward the English Channel, trapping Belgian, British, and French forces in the Northwest corner of France. The leader of the fastest moving tank column was Erwin Rommel, a sashing an charismatic general who would ho onto fame fighting in Africa, becoming known as the “Desert Fox.”

The Miracle of Dunkirk

German troops drove allied forces back toward the English Channel and surrounded them at the French port of Dunkirk. Nearly 400,000 Belgian, french, and English troops, were stranded on the shores of the North Sea. The only hope for the Allies was a evacuation by sea from Dunkirk. With German forces within sight of the coast, the rescue of the Allied soldier seemed impossible. Fearing an Allied counterattack, Hitler ordered his tanks and troops to stop for three days outside of Dunkirk, providing a delay that allowed Allied forces to evacuate (or withdraw). The British Admiralty began a desperate rescue operation, code-named Operation Dynamo, at Dunkirk on May 26. A ragtag armada of 859 vessels, ranging from destroyers and cruisers to trawlers, tugs, yachts, and fishing boats left English ports and set sail for Dunkirk. Civilians operated many of the smaller boats. Over the next nine days, under fierce air and ground attack, this hastily assembled fleet rescued the Allied armies. When the evacuation ended on June 4, 1940, an estimated 338,000 British and French troops had been rescued by a makeshift flotilla during the “Miracle of Dunkirk.”

The Aftermath of Dunkirk

The evacuation of Dunkirk was a stunning military achievement. However, between 30,00 to 40,000 French troops were left behind. Moreover, the British army was forced to abandon 64,000 vehicles, 2,500 guns, 76,000 tons of ammunition, and 400,000 tons of supplies.

“We Shall Never Surrender”

With the collapse of the British Army in France and the loss of significant military supplies, Great Britain faced the very real threat of an imminent German invasion. All that stood between Hitelr and German domination of western Europe was the conquest of England; some politicians in his own cabinet called fro peace talks with Germany. On June 4, 1940, a defiant Churchill rallies the worried nation and the divided Parliament “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, 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.”

France Surrenders

After Dunkirk, the German Army continues its rapid advance to Paris, which fell in early June because the French Army had been severely weakened by the Battle of Dunkirk. As the German Army advance toward Paris between six and eight million French refugees fled southward. On June 22, 1940, France surrendered to Germany.

Vichy France

Hitler humiliated the French by foreign French generals to sign the armistice in the same train car in which Germany surrender in 1918. France was divided into two with the occupied and western half of the country along the Atlantic coast line under direct Nazi rule-occupied France. To govern southern France, Germany established a puppet government at the town of Vichy and made Marshal Philippe Petain (a French World War I hero) the leader of Vichy France but gave him no real power. Petain and other Vichy officials collaborated with the Germans. The Vichy government quickly passed anti-Semitic laws similar to the Nuremberg Laws that banned French Jews from public life, including parks, cinemas, museums, cafes, libraries, restaurants, and swimming pools. Moreover, 75,000 French Jews were deported to Nazi concentration and death camps. Within Vichy, 30,000 French men and women were executed or massacres, spreading fear and intimidation throughout the population. French general Charles de Gaule-who refused to recognize the defeat of france-led the Free French resistance forces from France’s African colony Algiers. Additionally many French men and women joined the French Resistance, an underground movement that opposed and resisted the German occupation and the Vichy regime, conducting guerilla operations and spying for the Allies.

Operation Sea Lion

Although anxious to quickly attack England in the fall of 1939 after his brilliant success in France, Hitler was forced to continuously postpone Germany's planned invasion of Great Britain-code named Sea Lion-due to poor weather. During July 1940, Hitler ordered his generals to plan an amphibious invasion of Great Britain. Hitler and the German High command soon realized that this invasion depended on winning air supremacy (controlling the skies above a target) over England and destroying British airfield and vital aviation industries.

Battle of Britain

Therefore, before Hitler could invade Great Britain, the German air force, the luftwaffe, had to destroy the British Royal Air Force (RAF). Under the leadership of Herman Göring (an art thief who was wounded at some point), the second most powerful in the Third Reich and the pompous and arrogant leader of the Luftwaffe, boasted to Hitler that his air force could destroy the RAF in a number of weeks. Göring’s plan was to first destroy the RAF’s fighter squadrons and that would then allow German bomber to destroy British civilian, economic, and military targets. Churchill once again rallied the nation in a speech on June 18, 1940, proclaiming “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and the Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say ‘This was their finest hour’. Only July 10, 1940, the Battle of Britain began when the Lufwaffe bombed Britain’s southern coast, damaged aircraft factories and RAF airfields. The RAF was able to effectively use a new technology, radar, to locate the Luftwaffe over the British Channel and coordinate attacks with fighter command. Moreover British intelligence had begun to decipher coded messages from the German Enigma encryption machine about German air formation. (Women worked on the Battle of Britten.) (At one point when Churchill visited he asked about reserves, that day the British army was at full force with no reserves.)

Battle of Britten -July 1940

Throughout the summer of 1940. The Luftwaffe battled the RAF in the skies above England during the Battle of Britain. The number of German planes outnumbered the British fighters: 1200 German fighters and 1400 bombers vs. 750 British fighters and 559 bombers. However, Britain’s use of radar gave it the advantage-advanced warning of where the Luftwaffe would attack which allowed the RAF to better coordinate their attacks on the Luftwaffe.(The RAF had the advantage due to fuel and parachuting pilots not becoming POWs) At first, the Luftwaffe targeted the RAF fighters and airfields. Some RAF squadrons used a new tactic proposed by Douglas Bader, a RAF pilot and double amputee, to attack the Luftwaffe using the legendary Spitfire and Hurricane fighters en masse (in a large group) to overwhelm the enemy.

Battle of Britten -August 1940

In mid-August, the Luftwaffe intensified their attacks, including massive daytime and nighttime bombing raids targeting London and other British cities. On August 24, 1940, London was bombed for the first time and in retaliation, the RAF bombed Berlin the next night (Hitler had claimed this would never happen); an infuriated Hitler proclaimed, “We’ll wipe out their cities!”. Göring started sending a thousand planes a day; within two weeks the RAF lost 466 fighters and 103 pilots, but the Germans lost more than 600 planes and pilots.

The Blitz

By September, realizing that Göring had failed to destroy the RAF and gain air superiority, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to change tactics and only concentrate on bombing London by day an night. September 7, 1940 marked the beginning of the Blitz, a nine-month campaign of ongoing bombing raids, targeting the civilian population of London. German bomber rained destruction on London and strategic targets in an attempt to knock out Great Britain’s defense and forced the British to surrender. On September 17, 1940, Hitler indefinitely postponed Operation Sea Lion (To some this was the end of the Battle of Britten).

The Blitz and London

From September 7 to November 3, Germans bombers pounded London-the first extensive bombing raids of a capital city in history; in one night alone, the Luftwaffe dropped 70,000 fire bombs, destroying whole neighborhoods. London was bombed nightly for the next 57 nights, at times creating a firestorm, a vast conflagration during which fires raged out of control in the British capital. Throughout the fall of 1940, despite the death and devastation, Churchill rallies the English people by walking through the debris of the bombing raids.

The Blitz - Results

The Blitz continued until May 1941, and German bombing raids eventually attacked many other cities, including Coventry. The devastation was enormous; nearly 40,000 civilians died during the Blitz and two million homes were damaged or destroyed. The Luftwaffe never did destroy the RAF or gain air superiority over Britain: while incurring heavy losses the RAF downed more than 1,700 German aircraft during the Battle of Britain, destroying Hitler’s dream of invading England.

Results of The Battle of Britten

The Battle of Britain was the first major military defeat of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, and the Blitz a failed to break the morale of the British people or force the British to surrender. Churchill praised the sacrifices of the RAF pilots who saved Great Britain, proclaiming “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”