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

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 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 distance 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 lover 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.