Causes of World War II
Overview
World War I and the Treaty of Versailles made World War II inevitable. Germany, which had been one of the Great Powers of Europe heading into WWI emerged from the war defeated, with a generation of its young men dead and untold material wealth spent. After the war, the victorious Allies saddled Germany with enormous reparation payments, which demanded that Germany claim ‘sole responsibility’ for starting the war and make payments to the Allies for the cost of the war. This left Germany broke and desperate.
Italy, Instability, Radicalism, and Fascism
Italy, nominally one of the Allies and a victor in the war, struggled after the war as well. Many Italians expected that victory in World War I would transform Italy into a Great Power, and allow them to seize large swaths of territory from the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire. However, Britain, France, and the United States instead divided Austria-Hungary into many smaller nations, frustrating many Italians who dreamed of empire.
Further, after the war, the Italian economy dipped into recession. With the war over, many workers were laid-off as there was no more need for weapons and war materials. Added to this was many soldiers coming back from the front, also seeking employment. In addition to this, the Italian economy was burdened with a large war debt, causing further difficulties.
Italian workers, frustrated by what they saw as the failures of capitalism, turned towards the example set by the Russian Revolution. Believing that socialism could solve their problems, many Italian unions went on strike, demanding large-scale reform or even revolution. Soon workers across all of Italy were on strike, beginning a General Strike, or a strike where all of the workers in a place go on strike.
While this was going on, Benito Mussolini was building his fascist movement. Mussolini was a veteran of WWI who was injured during the fighting. When sent back from the front due to his injuries, he started a newspaper by the name of Avanti!, which was vociferously pro-war. At this stage of the war, many Italians were wondering whether they should even be fighting, and so the British government (which feared losing their ally Italy) intervened, providing Mussolini with large sums of money to expand his newspaper.
After the war, Mussolini formed the ideology of fascism. Fascism was a right-wing militarist ideal, predicated on concepts of militarism, national greatness through violence, intolerance of dissent, the crushing of labor unions, and the strengthening of Big Business. Many Italian businessmen, nervous about the growing strike, turned to Mussolini and his supporters to break the strike, providing him with money and weapons.
Mussolini organized his Black Shirts, or followers of fascism, into paramilitary units who swore fealty to Mussolini directly. Many of these Black Shirts were veterans with military training and disillusioned about the future of Italy. Mussolini promised his followers that he would crush their enemies and restore the old Roman Empire.
Mussolini’s Black Shirts engaged in a terrorist campaign against Italy’s labor unions, beating and murdering many union leaders, intellectuals, socialists, liberals, communists, and others. As the strike continued, the fighting became more brutal: between 1919 and 1922 the Black Shirts may have murdered as many as 200,000 people.
Finally, the strike was broken and many of its leaders went underground to evade fascist violence. Mussolini, for his part in the campaign, was touted as a strong man who could lead Italy to greatness. As a result, King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy asked Mussolini to form a government, which he did in October of 1922.
Fascism in Action: The Conquest of Ethiopia
Mussolini quickly moved to crush all opposition to his rule. He outlawed opposing political parties, placed his followers into positions of authority, and integrated his Black Shirts into the Italian military. He had a state-run newspaper (overseen by his brother), from which he disseminated his views.
He had most universities purged of those with differing opinions and moved to empower his Big Business backers: minimum wage laws were reduced, labor unions outlawed, taxes lowered on the rich and raised on the poor, and many government services were privatized. The standard of living for most Italians began to fall under the boot of the fascists.
However, Mussolini looked outwards for glory. In 1935, Mussolini sent Italian forces into Ethiopia, seeking to expand his empire. When Ethiopian resistance proved stiffer than expected, Italian forces unleashed chlorine gas on Ethiopian soldiers and civilians alike, in defiance of international law, which had outlawed the use of chemical weapons, due to the horrors that they caused in World War I.
Ethiopia’s forces, however, were outnumbered and their weaponry was grossly inferior to the Italians’. Many were armed with bows and arrows; only a quarter of the entire army had modern rifles at all. Soon, Ethiopia was conquered and occupied by the Italian army. Italians hailed Mussolini as a powerful conqueror, who was restoring Italy to glory.
Mussolini would say of the invasion:
"At last Italy has her empire." And he then added: "The Italian people have created an empire with their blood. They will fertilize it with their work. They will defend it against anyone with their weapons. Will you be worthy of it?"
Weimar Germany and Fascism
Germany had been humiliated by its defeat in World War I and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The German economy in the 1920s was mired in hyperinflation and depression, causing terrible strain on working people. Most of the leftist movements had been broken during the 1919 Spartacist Uprising. The Spartacists were groups of German Socialists who tried to seize power after WWI and install a socialist government. They were narrowly defeated and many of them executed. As such, the German Right was particularly strong and unopposed.
A number of friekorps (free corps) movements began to expand. The friekorps were groups of angry, disaffected veterans of World War I, who often could not find work after the war. A myth began to spread amongst these groups that Germany was secretly betrayed by traitors within Germany, and that this betrayal was responsible for Germany’s defeat. This was known as the Backstabbing Myth. The ‘traitors’ identified by the myth-makers were usually liberals, leftists, socialists, or Jews.
Jews had traditionally been a convenient scapegoat for Europeans, especially for European societies entering a period of difficulty. Jews were often targets because, while they lived in the larger Christian communities, they also practiced their own religion and often spoke their own language. This allowed those who were seeking targets for their anger to claim that Jews were not true members of the community, but instead outsiders.
The on-going economic instability, largely brought about by the Treaty of Versailles, led to widespread instability, as well. Strikes were frequent and workers were angry and demanding an improvement in their standard of living. The German Business Community feared this upsurge in worker militancy: Businesses did not want to pay workers more, they worried that if they didn’t, it might lead German workers to undertake a revolution like had happened in Russia. And so, the German Business Community resorted to a new plan: violence.
Big Business began to hire the friekorps to act as strikebreakers, who would use violence and intimidation to force workers back to work. A terror campaign was carried out against labor unions and liberal/left political movements with the goal of breaking working peoples’ power.
One of these friekorps was led by a disillusioned World War I colonel by the name of Adolf Hitler. Hitler had been blinded in a gas attack during the last days of the war and spent six months in a hospital recovering his sight. While there, he heard about Germany’s defeats and request for an armistice. Hitler was furious and began to cultivate the Backstabbing Myth. He formed his own friekorps, commonly known as “The Brownshirts,” who served as street thugs to intimidate his enemies.
The German Business Community found Hitler to be a compelling figure and often hired his goons for their strikebreaking activities. In addition to this, Hitler was an excellent public speaker and he found a population that was eager for someone to make them feel strong again. Further, Hitler’s Brownshirts were effective at suppressing labor unions and breaking strikes, making them valuable to German businessmen.
Hitler, eager for power, decided to attempt to overthrow the German government. In 1923, in what became known as the Beerhall Putsch, Hitler led his Brownshirts to a confrontation with authorities in the German city of Munich. The attempt was defeated and Hitler was arrested and charged with treason.
While in prison, Hitler wrote his famous book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) which detailed his vision of a resurgent Germany. So taken were people by Hitler’s charisma that he gained many followers across Germany while in prison. Mein Kampf would soon become a bestseller and Hitler’s political career was on the rise. Eventually he was pardoned by the Bavarian Supreme Court after having served little over a year in prison.
Despite his treason, Hitler was soon a leading political figure in Germany. The Business Community supported him wholeheartedly, making sure that his burgeoning Nazi Party always had plenty of funds for its activities. Business leaders saw Hitler as an important bulwark against socialism or radical labor unions. He traveled across Germany in a private plane provided for him by business leaders and he gave furious speeches to angry crowds.
But it was not until the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929 that the German people became desperate enough to truly embrace Hitler. In the 1932 German Presidential Elections, Hitler was narrowly beaten by the World War I hero Paul von Hindenburg. Despite his defeat, Hitler was elevated to top-tier political leader. In fact, so powerful had Hitler become, that the German Business Community was able to force a reluctant Hindenburg to appoint Hitler Chancellor of Germany that same year.
In 1933, the Reichstag (the German Parliamentary building) burned down. There is some evidence that this might have been secretly done by the Nazis themselves, but they blamed Germany’s Communists/Socialists for the attack. Hitler was able to get the Enabling Act passed, which effectively granted the government enormous powers to suppress anyone that it did not like.
The next year, Hindenburg died at the age of 86. Rather than have an election, Hitler appointed himself President. He then fused the office of President and Chancellor together into the single title of Furher, or Leader. Germany had quickly descended into authoritarianism, or rule by an unquestioned leader.
Austria, Czechoslovakia, and the Non-Aggression Pact
Hitler set about rebuilding the German Empire that had been dismantled as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. First, Hitler moved to form a ‘political union,’ with Austria, which absorbed the country into Germany. Hitler argued that Germany and Austria’s shared language and close history meant that they were actually “One People.” This was achieved through a national vote in Austria, however there is evidence of widespread fraud and violence in the election. Regardless, in 1938, Austria was joined with Germany.
Next followed the Sudetenland. The Sudetenland was a part of Czechoslovakia with a large, German-speaking population. Hitler demanded that the territory be turned over to Germany. However, the Czech government was wary of doing this: during the 1920s, they had built a series of powerful fortifications in the territory which were meant to protect the country in the case of war with Germany. Turning over the Sudetenland meant putting those fortifications in German hands.
Czechoslovakia, however, was allied with Britain and France. Secure with her fortifications and armed with powerful allies, the Czech government was confident that it could protect itself.
The Soviet Union, fearful of Hitler’s ambitious and wary of fascism in general, took notice. The Soviet government contacted Britain and France and offered to provide assistance in defending Czechoslovakia from fascist aggression. Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, offered more than one million troops to the cause.
The British and French, however, were nervous of war with Germany. Mired in the Great Depression, the people of France and Britain had no desire for another world war. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain instead travelled to Germany to sign the Munich Agreement: in it, Chamberlain agreed that they would not assist the Czechs in defending their country (and, in fact, seized Czech gold reserves which were invested in the London Stock market) and in exchange, Hitler agreed to only take the Sudetenland.
The Czechs were shocked by this betrayal. Alarmed, the Soviets stood by their agreement to protect the Czechs. However, Poland stood between the USSR and Czechoslovakia. Poland (partially at the insistence of its French and British allies) refused to allow Soviet troops to pass through their territory to assist the Czechs. In fact, Chamberlain made public statements indicating that he believed that the fascists could be useful in containing Soviet-style Communism from spreading across Europe.
Seeing no hope, the Czech government allowed Hitler to take the Sudenteland. Six months later, Hitler would order German forces to conquer the whole of Czechoslovakia; without their fortifications and bereft of allies, Czech resistance quickly collapsed. Britain and France reacted with outrage and informed Hitler that if he made any more conquests in Europe, they would declare war on Germany.
The Soviets were very worried. The failure of the British and French to stand up to Germany over Czechoslovakia, coupled with Chamberlain’s public statements about the useful of fascist states set off considerable alarm in Moscow. Stalin realized that he could not rely on the British and French to help contain the threat of fascism. Alone, the Soviets did not believe that they had the military capability to defeat the Nazis: they needed time to build-up their forces.
The Soviets therefor sought a non-aggression pact with Germany. Known as the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, the treaty required that neither the Soviets nor the Germans would attack one another for ten years. Once the pact was signed, Stalin began a frantic military build-up: he didn’t trust Hitler and believed that it was only a matter of time before the Nazis attacked the Soviet Union and he wanted to be prepared.
Poland
On September 1st, 1939, Hitler ordered German troops to invade neighboring Poland. Claiming that Poland was secretly preparing for an invasion of Germany, Hitler claimed to be acting to defend Germany from Polish aggression. Two weeks later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. The Soviet Union, who had recently agreed to a Non-Aggression Pact with the Germans, remained on the sidelines.
World War II had begun.
The Early Days of World War II
Tactics
The German High Command knew that it could not possibly win another war defined by trench warfare. In World War I, Germany was slowly ground down by the global power of the British, French, and American empires and its leaders were well aware of this. After the Versailles Peace Treaty, Germany was stripped of its colonies and some of its territory in Europe, making it even weaker going into World War II than it was at the beginning of World War II.
So the German High Command set about designing a new strategy to overcome the problems of trench warfare. German General Hans Guderien designed the concept of blitzkrieg.
Blitzkrieg, a German word meaning ‘lightning war’ is a combined arms approach to fighting that is based on maintaining battlefield mobility and relying on swift, savage strikes to overcome the enemy. Advances in military technology in the 1920s and 1930s improved to the point where tank and aircraft were much more useful weapons than they had been in World War I.
The British Mark IV, probably the highest quality tank of WWI, had a top speed of 9 mph, was relatively lightly armored, and prone to breaking down regularly. By the late-1930s, however, new German tanks had a top speed of 25-30 mph and carried much heavier weapons. Further improvements in reliability and speed of production meant that tanks were an important new weapon on the battlefield.
Airpower also underwent vast changes. The inaccurate and vulnerable Zepplins of World War I gave way to twin- and four-engine bombers capable of carrying much larger payloads over greater distances. Further, new and nimble dive-bombers became available which were accurate and capable of dropping 500 pound bombs very precisely.
Tactics
The German High Command knew that it could not possibly win another war defined by trench warfare. In World War I, Germany was slowly ground down by the global power of the British, French, and American empires and its leaders were well aware of this. After the Versailles Peace Treaty, Germany was stripped of its colonies and some of its territory in Europe, making it even weaker going into World War II than it was at the beginning of World War II.
So the German High Command set about designing a new strategy to overcome the problems of trench warfare. German General Hans Guderien designed the concept of blitzkrieg.
Blitzkrieg, a German word meaning ‘lightning war’ is a combined arms approach to fighting that is based on maintaining battlefield mobility and relying on swift, savage strikes to overcome the enemy. Advances in military technology in the 1920s and 1930s improved to the point where tank and aircraft were much more useful weapons than they had been in World War I.
The British Mark IV, probably the highest quality tank of WWI, had a top speed of 9 mph, was relatively lightly armored, and prone to breaking down regularly. By the late-1930s, however, new German tanks had a top speed of 25-30 mph and carried much heavier weapons. Further improvements in reliability and speed of production meant that tanks were an important new weapon on the battlefield.
Airpower also underwent vast changes. The inaccurate and vulnerable Zepplins of World War I gave way to twin- and four-engine bombers capable of carrying much larger payloads over greater distances. Further, new and nimble dive-bombers became available which were accurate and capable of dropping 500 pound bombs very precisely.
It was around these new weapons that the tactics of blitzkrieg were designed. It is divided into three primary phases:
Phase One: Aircraft are used to attack the enemy’s troops, destroying communication lines, if possible.
Phase Two: Tanks and other armored fighting vehicles are massed and launched at a single area of the enemy’s front. The resulting thrust is meant to push through the enemy’s line and allow the tanks to get behind the enemy’s lines and wreak havoc.
Phase Three: Infantry are to pour through the hole created in the enemy’s lines by the tanks and begin encircling the enemy’s forces. Once the enemy is encircled, they can be cut off from their supplies and forced to surrender without heavy fighting.
The purpose of these tactics was to make sure that the superior numbers of the British and French armies could not be used to grind down the smaller German army, as they had in WWI. Further, the shorter nature of these battles meant that the economic and social strain placed on Germany was dramatically reduced, as well. Instead of long years of toil and huge causalities, relatively short battles would cause less damage to morale.
In short, the Germans knew that they could not win a protracted war of the sort that they had fought in 1914-1918 and set out to make sure they wouldn’t have to.
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The Maginot Line
The Maginot Line was a series of fortifications built along the French-German border during the 1920s and 1930s. The French military, determined to make sure that its border with Germany was secure in the future, had invested heavily in building a vast system of fortresses, underground tunnels, heavy artillery emplacements, and other defensive works.
The line was designed to be able to protect its soldiers from enemy gas attacks, poor weather, and enemy artillery while providing the soldiers some comforts. Some sections of the Maginot Line were even air conditioned and soldiers were provided with phones to call home, comfortable beds, and impressive medical facilities. Overall, the focus was on making sure that the types of deprivations that soldiers in World War I suffered from would not be the case in World War II.
The French invested heavily in new technology, improving their artillery considerably. Once the war broke out, British and French High Command were confident that these fortifications would guarantee that the Germans could not possibly invade France.
The Phony War
After Germany invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war on September 3, 1939. The British and French called up their armies and sent them to the German border, where they began to dig trenches and prepare for a repeat of World War I.
In London and Paris, Allies leaders continued to reach out to the German government in the hopes of ending the crisis peacefully and possibly convincing Hitler to go to war against the USSR. The German government did not respond these requests. Instead, the German army spent five weeks conquering Poland, while Britain and France did little, other than defend the Maginot Line.
After the conquest of Poland, Germany began to shift its armies to the western front in preparation for actual fighting with the British and French. All told, this period (known to historians as ‘The Phony War’ lasted an impressive eight months.
The Battle of France
The confidence that the Allies placed in the Maginot Line was not appropriate. While the Maginot Line did block the French-German border, France did not extend the line to cover the French-Belgian border. As such, German commanders determined that rather than attack the Maginot Line directly, they would attack through Belgium and into France- behind the enemy’s fortifications.
On May 10, 1940 the German army swept through Belgium and Luxembourg in a large, sweeping movement. The French and British did not anticipate the attack through Belgium nor the swiftness with which it was launched.
Abandoning the Maginot Line, the Allies tried to form a line of trenches in northern France to hold back the Germans, but it was too little, too late. Using hard-hitting blitzkrieg tactics, German forces dealt a series of crushing blows to the Allies while encircling and capturing/destroying huge numbers of enemy soldiers.
Over the course of the next six weeks, the German army was able to do what it had not been able to accomplish in the four years of World War I: conquer France.
Dunkirk
The British military, realizing that the situation in France was hopeless, determined that they needed to get their forces back to the British Isles. Driven back by the furious German assault, the British Army retreated to the French fishing village of Dunkirk on the English Channel.
Despite regular bombing by the German Air Force, the British Navy and civilian volunteers managed to evacuate 340,000 British soldiers and 140,000 French and Belgian soldiers across the English Channel. The evacuation at Dunkirk was a success that saved many lives. Further, hundreds of thousands of veteran soldiers were able to return to Britain, where their experience would be invaluable.
However, much of the army’s equipment was lost. Tanks, artillery, and other pieces of heavy equipment had to be abandoned during the escape across the Channel, leaving it in German hands.
The British had been completely ejected from mainland Europe, forced out of France in a stunning opening engagement. Germany had achieved in weeks what it had been unable to do in four years of World War I.
Surrender of France and the Resistance
The French government abandoned Paris in the face of the German attack. Huge numbers of French soldiers had been killed or captured and the British army had fled across the English Channel. As such, the French government chose to surrender, rather than face further death and destruction.
The German signed a treaty with France which allowed them to occupy Northern France, while a nominally free French government (known as the Vichy Government) would control southern France. The Vichy Government was organized under Marshal Philippe Petain, whose collaboration with the Nazis would mark him a traitor to his countrymen. The Vichy government collaborated with Nazi Germany, including in continued military operations and, later, in its crimes against civilians.
Those French forces which escaped to Britain refused to surrender, instead declaring themselves the Free French Forces, who fought on under the command of General Charles DeGaulle.
In France itself, a dedicated French Resistance movement sprang up, bound to fight the Nazi occupation and the Vichy Government as well.
The French Resistance
The Resistance began almost immediately after the French government’s surrender. Thousands went “underground,” to form paramilitary and intelligence groups, which carried out acts of assassination, sabotage, or information-gathering.
The German government, ever obsessed with race, forced the new Vichy government to begin implementing anti-Jewish laws in French territory, including deporting Jews to Germany itself. This further inflamed the Resistance, leading many more Frenchmen to join up. Throughout the war, the Resistance would provide invaluable intelligence to those nations still fighting Nazi Germany.
The Battle of Britain
While Germany’s forces had crushed the British on land, the British Navy remained a powerful deterrent, preventing the Germans from crossing the English Channel. The Germans therefore decided to make use of their formidable air force: the Luftwaffe.
Between July and October of 1940, the Luftwaffe would engage in regular bombing of Britain, bombing London and other cities across southern England. The Royal Air Force would contest the skies above Britain, leading to what historians regard as the first all-aerial battle ever fought.
The belief among the German commanders was that regular bombing would cause the British people to lose the will to fight, recognize that they could not win, and be willing to seek peace. However, the bombing had the opposite effect, stiffening British resolve. Though the campaign was destructive, it was a loss for the Germans.
Operation Barbarossa and the Eastern Front
Lebensraum and the Nazi Ideal
In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his vision for a “Greater Germany.” Hitler dreamed of acquiring Lebensraum, or “Living Space” for the German people. Hitler believed that the racial superiority of the German people meant that they needed to continue to expand. As a result, Hitler declared that Eastern Europe would provide the lebensraum that the German people needed to achieve their glory.
Hitler believed that once those lands in Eastern Europe were conquered, Germany would be able to remove the people that already lived there, because they were ‘racially inferior’ and that this land could be transformed into ‘Greater Germany.’
Turn to the East
Germany had quickly overrun France, drive British forces from the continent, and subdued Poland: Hitler determined it was now time to strike eastward.
Though Nazi Germany and the USSR had signed a Nonaggression Pact in 1939, Hitler did not feel bound to honor it. Hitler regarded Slavs (the most prominent ethnic group of the people of Eastern Europe) as an inferior people who stood in the way of German greatness.
Soviet leaders also didn’t trust the Nazi government. Stalin, the USSR’s leader, believed that Nazi Germany was planning to attack the Soviet Union. Stalin signed the nonaggression pact in the hope of buying the Soviet Union enough time to properly prepare for the German invasion.
The Soviets had spent those years frantically trying to build up its industrial/military capabilities.
Operation Barbarossa
On June 22nd, 1941, three million German soldiers launched a sneak attack across the border into the Soviet Union, in an undertaking that German High Command called Operation Barbarossa. The Soviets were caught completely off-guard; Stalin had not anticipated a German sneak-attack until 1946 at the earliest. German forces quickly overran Soviet border guards and began to push deep into Soviet territory.
The German advance was enormously successful. Soviet forces were in complete disarray and Soviet High Command struggled to reorganize their forces and move troops from across their huge country to meet the enemy advance.
German Problems
But the Germans soon began to run into problems. The German army was very dependent on trains to move their troops to the front. However, German military planners had not realized that Soviet railroad tracks were of a different gauge, or size, than standard European rails. This meant that German trains could not ride on Soviet tracks, meaning that troops and supplies had to be moved by much slower trucks and horse-drawn cart.
But this led to other problems. While the Soviets had been engaged in a massive infrastructure building program in the 1930s, many of the roads in the Western Soviet Union were in poor condition. German trucks and troops had to cross these roads, leading to a slower pace.
On top of this, desperate Soviet forces engaged in a fighting withdrawal, being pushed back by the ferociousness of the attack. Many soldiers and civilians were trapped behind the German lines and organized themselves as partisan troops, or guerilla forces who launched hit-and-run raids on the Germans.
And so the German offensive began to slow down, hampered by partisans, poor transportation, and the vastness of the Soviet Union itself. German High Command had planned to capture Moscow in six weeks, before the brutal Russian Winter set in. Instead, German forces found themselves preparing a hard winter, deep in enemy territory.
Battle of Moscow
German forces pushed deep into the Soviet Union, but were being slowed by the heavy Russian winter and partisan attacks. Slowly, Soviet High Command began to re-gain control and put together a plan to defend Moscow (the capital) from the German attack.
Hitler had told his commanders that “We only have to kick in the door and whole rotten structure (the Soviet government/military) will come crashing down.” At Moscow, that would be put to the test.
The Soviet defenders began to fight tremendous determination and increasingly clever tactics. At Mtsensk, Soviet commanders hid their tanks in a nearby forest, while German tanks attacked Soviet infantry. The infantry were slowly being pushed back, when the Soviets unleashed their tanks, savaging the German forces and further delaying the German advance on Moscow.
At Vyazma, Soviet forces were completely encircled by the Germans and being hammered by German aircraft. The Germans were shocked when the Soviet forces refused to surrender and continued to fight and die in huge numbers.
By the time German forces reached Moscow, the Soviets had prepared formidable defenses. 250,000 women and teenagers had dug trenches and other fortifications all around the city. Soviet soldiers poured into the city and were manning their posts.
German forces entered the city’s suburbs to heavy fighting. German officers could see the Kremlin (which housed the Soviet government) through their field glasses. In the city, workers would build tanks, put down their tools, pick up weapons, and drive the tanks straight into battle, many of them were not even painted.
The fighting was extremely bloody and winter continued to deepen. The Winter of 1941-1942 was the coldest European winter of the 20th century, with temperatures dropping to -44 degrees. Exposed soldiers, especially German troops who lacked cold-weather clothing and were not used to such temperatures, suffered badly from exposure and disease.
Finally, the German offensive exhausted itself, within sight of the Kremlin itself.
Soon, Soviet forces were actually pushing the Germans back, forcing the German lines more than 150 miles east of the city. Both sides were exhausted by the fighting and each prepared for more fighting once winter broke. Ultimately, the Battle of Moscow was a victory for the Soviets.
Leningrad
Leningrad, one of the largest cities in the Soviet Union, found itself encircled by German forces early in the war. The defenders of the city, however, refused to surrender. For an incredible 872 days, Soviet defenders held the Germans at bay (September of 1941 until January of 1944) until late in the war, when Soviet forces would lift the siege.
The Battle of Stalingrad
The next year, the Germans decided to attempt a push further south. Germany was running into difficulties finding enough fuel for their armies and so Hitler ordered a general offensive aimed at capturing the Soviet Union’s oil fields.
The Soviets ordered their defenses to be arrayed around the city of Stalingrad. Stalingrad was a highly industrialized city, providing the Soviet Union with a large amount of its heavy equipment, machine tools, and vehicles. It also happened to lay in the path of the German advance towards the oil fields.
German bombers blasted the city, turning much of it into rubble, while German forces swept into the city. Soviet defenders bitterly fought the invaders, which quickly devolved into house-by-house fighting. Squads of German and Soviet forces would wage battles for every building in the city, fighting amidst the ruins in the bloodiest fighting of the Second World War. The heaviest fighting centered around the Red October Tractor Factory, which caused more causalities than the entire Battle of France. At one point, nearly 90% of the city was under the control of the German army. Both sides began to rush reinforcements into the city.
In November of 1942, the Soviets launched a daring attack named Operation Uranus. Two Soviet Army groups swept around the city, trapping 300,000 German soldiers. The Germans launched an offensive to try and break their troops out of the encirclement, but it was defeated. Soon, these forces would be compelled to surrender. The Battle of Stalingrad ended in a crushing German defeat and was the turning point of the war in Europe.
It was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
Soviet Counteroffensives
By 1943, Soviet forces were battered, but ready to go on the attack. The Germans had launched savage attacks against the Soviets, but there had failed. After Stalingrad, the Soviets began a general offensive that would last until the end of the war. These offensives took place over thousands of miles and involved millions of soldiers. More than 400,000 Soviet women would serve as front-line troops.
From 1943-1945, Hitler ordered that his soldiers not retreat a single inch. This meant that Soviet forces had to engage in a long and brutal slog across Eastern and Central Europe before defeating the Germans.
Regardless, the Germans were being pushed back. By late-1943, Soviet troops had entered Romania (a fascist state allied with Nazi Germany) and Occupied Poland. In 1944, Soviet forces finally entered eastern Germany itself, despite stiff resistance.
In the West, the United States, British, and Free French forces had launched the daring Operation Overlord (or D-Day), landing Allies troops in France for the first time since Dunkirk. Despite this landing, the Soviets were still facing off against more than 80% of the German army by themselves.
Soon, Soviet forces pressed in on Berlin itself. Nazi High Command, along with Adolf Hitler, had retreated to a bunker beneath the city from which to continue the war effort. Hitler promised that he had a secret plan to turn the war effort around and defeat the Soviets and their Western Allies.
By this point, there were too-few German men of military age left and many Hitler Youth (preteens and teens being trained in Nazi ideals) were armed and used to help defend the city.
On April 30th, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. Without Hitler, Nazi High Command finally accepted that there was no way for them to win the war. On May 1st, Berlin surrendered to the Soviets, effectively ending the war in Europe.
Lebensraum and the Nazi Ideal
In his book Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his vision for a “Greater Germany.” Hitler dreamed of acquiring Lebensraum, or “Living Space” for the German people. Hitler believed that the racial superiority of the German people meant that they needed to continue to expand. As a result, Hitler declared that Eastern Europe would provide the lebensraum that the German people needed to achieve their glory.
Hitler believed that once those lands in Eastern Europe were conquered, Germany would be able to remove the people that already lived there, because they were ‘racially inferior’ and that this land could be transformed into ‘Greater Germany.’
Turn to the East
Germany had quickly overrun France, drive British forces from the continent, and subdued Poland: Hitler determined it was now time to strike eastward.
Though Nazi Germany and the USSR had signed a Nonaggression Pact in 1939, Hitler did not feel bound to honor it. Hitler regarded Slavs (the most prominent ethnic group of the people of Eastern Europe) as an inferior people who stood in the way of German greatness.
Soviet leaders also didn’t trust the Nazi government. Stalin, the USSR’s leader, believed that Nazi Germany was planning to attack the Soviet Union. Stalin signed the nonaggression pact in the hope of buying the Soviet Union enough time to properly prepare for the German invasion.
The Soviets had spent those years frantically trying to build up its industrial/military capabilities.
Operation Barbarossa
On June 22nd, 1941, three million German soldiers launched a sneak attack across the border into the Soviet Union, in an undertaking that German High Command called Operation Barbarossa. The Soviets were caught completely off-guard; Stalin had not anticipated a German sneak-attack until 1946 at the earliest. German forces quickly overran Soviet border guards and began to push deep into Soviet territory.
The German advance was enormously successful. Soviet forces were in complete disarray and Soviet High Command struggled to reorganize their forces and move troops from across their huge country to meet the enemy advance.
German Problems
But the Germans soon began to run into problems. The German army was very dependent on trains to move their troops to the front. However, German military planners had not realized that Soviet railroad tracks were of a different gauge, or size, than standard European rails. This meant that German trains could not ride on Soviet tracks, meaning that troops and supplies had to be moved by much slower trucks and horse-drawn cart.
But this led to other problems. While the Soviets had been engaged in a massive infrastructure building program in the 1930s, many of the roads in the Western Soviet Union were in poor condition. German trucks and troops had to cross these roads, leading to a slower pace.
On top of this, desperate Soviet forces engaged in a fighting withdrawal, being pushed back by the ferociousness of the attack. Many soldiers and civilians were trapped behind the German lines and organized themselves as partisan troops, or guerilla forces who launched hit-and-run raids on the Germans.
And so the German offensive began to slow down, hampered by partisans, poor transportation, and the vastness of the Soviet Union itself. German High Command had planned to capture Moscow in six weeks, before the brutal Russian Winter set in. Instead, German forces found themselves preparing a hard winter, deep in enemy territory.
Battle of Moscow
German forces pushed deep into the Soviet Union, but were being slowed by the heavy Russian winter and partisan attacks. Slowly, Soviet High Command began to re-gain control and put together a plan to defend Moscow (the capital) from the German attack.
Hitler had told his commanders that “We only have to kick in the door and whole rotten structure (the Soviet government/military) will come crashing down.” At Moscow, that would be put to the test.
The Soviet defenders began to fight tremendous determination and increasingly clever tactics. At Mtsensk, Soviet commanders hid their tanks in a nearby forest, while German tanks attacked Soviet infantry. The infantry were slowly being pushed back, when the Soviets unleashed their tanks, savaging the German forces and further delaying the German advance on Moscow.
At Vyazma, Soviet forces were completely encircled by the Germans and being hammered by German aircraft. The Germans were shocked when the Soviet forces refused to surrender and continued to fight and die in huge numbers.
By the time German forces reached Moscow, the Soviets had prepared formidable defenses. 250,000 women and teenagers had dug trenches and other fortifications all around the city. Soviet soldiers poured into the city and were manning their posts.
German forces entered the city’s suburbs to heavy fighting. German officers could see the Kremlin (which housed the Soviet government) through their field glasses. In the city, workers would build tanks, put down their tools, pick up weapons, and drive the tanks straight into battle, many of them were not even painted.
The fighting was extremely bloody and winter continued to deepen. The Winter of 1941-1942 was the coldest European winter of the 20th century, with temperatures dropping to -44 degrees. Exposed soldiers, especially German troops who lacked cold-weather clothing and were not used to such temperatures, suffered badly from exposure and disease.
Finally, the German offensive exhausted itself, within sight of the Kremlin itself.
Soon, Soviet forces were actually pushing the Germans back, forcing the German lines more than 150 miles east of the city. Both sides were exhausted by the fighting and each prepared for more fighting once winter broke. Ultimately, the Battle of Moscow was a victory for the Soviets.
Leningrad
Leningrad, one of the largest cities in the Soviet Union, found itself encircled by German forces early in the war. The defenders of the city, however, refused to surrender. For an incredible 872 days, Soviet defenders held the Germans at bay (September of 1941 until January of 1944) until late in the war, when Soviet forces would lift the siege.
The Battle of Stalingrad
The next year, the Germans decided to attempt a push further south. Germany was running into difficulties finding enough fuel for their armies and so Hitler ordered a general offensive aimed at capturing the Soviet Union’s oil fields.
The Soviets ordered their defenses to be arrayed around the city of Stalingrad. Stalingrad was a highly industrialized city, providing the Soviet Union with a large amount of its heavy equipment, machine tools, and vehicles. It also happened to lay in the path of the German advance towards the oil fields.
German bombers blasted the city, turning much of it into rubble, while German forces swept into the city. Soviet defenders bitterly fought the invaders, which quickly devolved into house-by-house fighting. Squads of German and Soviet forces would wage battles for every building in the city, fighting amidst the ruins in the bloodiest fighting of the Second World War. The heaviest fighting centered around the Red October Tractor Factory, which caused more causalities than the entire Battle of France. At one point, nearly 90% of the city was under the control of the German army. Both sides began to rush reinforcements into the city.
In November of 1942, the Soviets launched a daring attack named Operation Uranus. Two Soviet Army groups swept around the city, trapping 300,000 German soldiers. The Germans launched an offensive to try and break their troops out of the encirclement, but it was defeated. Soon, these forces would be compelled to surrender. The Battle of Stalingrad ended in a crushing German defeat and was the turning point of the war in Europe.
It was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
Soviet Counteroffensives
By 1943, Soviet forces were battered, but ready to go on the attack. The Germans had launched savage attacks against the Soviets, but there had failed. After Stalingrad, the Soviets began a general offensive that would last until the end of the war. These offensives took place over thousands of miles and involved millions of soldiers. More than 400,000 Soviet women would serve as front-line troops.
From 1943-1945, Hitler ordered that his soldiers not retreat a single inch. This meant that Soviet forces had to engage in a long and brutal slog across Eastern and Central Europe before defeating the Germans.
Regardless, the Germans were being pushed back. By late-1943, Soviet troops had entered Romania (a fascist state allied with Nazi Germany) and Occupied Poland. In 1944, Soviet forces finally entered eastern Germany itself, despite stiff resistance.
In the West, the United States, British, and Free French forces had launched the daring Operation Overlord (or D-Day), landing Allies troops in France for the first time since Dunkirk. Despite this landing, the Soviets were still facing off against more than 80% of the German army by themselves.
Soon, Soviet forces pressed in on Berlin itself. Nazi High Command, along with Adolf Hitler, had retreated to a bunker beneath the city from which to continue the war effort. Hitler promised that he had a secret plan to turn the war effort around and defeat the Soviets and their Western Allies.
By this point, there were too-few German men of military age left and many Hitler Youth (preteens and teens being trained in Nazi ideals) were armed and used to help defend the city.
On April 30th, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. Without Hitler, Nazi High Command finally accepted that there was no way for them to win the war. On May 1st, Berlin surrendered to the Soviets, effectively ending the war in Europe.
World War II: The Pacific Theater
Imperialism in East Asia: From the 1700s through the 1930s, European empires (later including the United States) had conquered and established colonies in Asia and the Pacific. By the 1930s, The United States, Britain, France, and the Netherlands. These islands provided enormous wealth to Europe and the United States and required an enormous military presence. This presence worried the Japanese, who feared that they might be the next target for European/American imperialism.
The 1930s and the Great Depression
Japan initially entered the Great Depression in a surprisingly stable condition. While the Depression caused an economic downturn, Japan’s Finance Minister, Yakahashi Korekiyo, moved quickly to counter any potential problems. He introduced a fiscal stimulus which helped to keep unemployment relatively low. Further, Yakahashi also devalued the Japanese currency, which made it worth less than it was before the crisis. This made its goods cheaper and soon Japanese textiles began to displace British textiles on the world market.
Yakahashi, focused on restoring Japan’s fiscal situation, sought to reduce military spending with the goal of increasing industrial production. The military was viciously opposed to any potential cuts and a dissident group of military officers assassinated him in February of 1936. This had a crippling effect on democracy and civil government in Japan during the remainder of the decade. With the assassination of Yakahashi, the military began to slowly take over life in Japan, so that by 1940, there was no serious political force in Japan outside of the armed forces.
The Second Sino-Japanese War
In 1937, the Japanese military, emboldened by its growing power, returned to preying on China. Despite forcing a series of economic and political demands on China, war did not start until a fairly minor event in July of 1937 at the Marco Polo Bridge. It is unclearly exactly what started this incident, but Chinese and Japanese forces engaged in a confused and sporadic skirmish that ultimately led to full-scale war. The fighting would be marked with horrific atrocities (committed primarily by the Japanese against Chinese civilians), including the Rape of Nanking in which 300,000 civilians were killed.
The Second Sino-Japanese War would not end until 1945.
Western Imperialism and the New Japanese Empire
Europe and America had long held colonies in East Asia, during the Industrial Revolution. By the 1930s, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States had emerged as the predominant colonial powers in the region, save for Japan itself.
These colonies were enormously wealthy and the Japanese military government was very interested in acquiring them. However, there was no way that Japan could defeat the combined forces of these European powers, so plans were prepared so that if another war in Europe were to break out, Japan would take advantage of the chaos to seize these colonies. The Japanese military assumed that in the event of war in Europe, many of the troops that European powers used to control their colonies in Asia would be sent to fight in Europe, allowing the Japanese an opportunity to seize those colonies for themselves.
That only left the United States to contend with. The Japanese military did not want war with the United States, and was content to allow the Americans to maintain their own colonies in Asia rather than risk war. However, in the event that the Japanese military took the Dutch, British, and French colonies, how would the United States respond? The Japanese military had no idea how the Americans would react: would they come to the European Powers aid or ignore it altogether?
Further, the Japanese military knew that it could not with a long, drawn-out war with the United States, which had vastly more resources at its disposal. However, a plan was agreed to:
- In the event of a war in Europe, which would distract Europe’s colonial powers, the Japanese military would seize control of their colonies.
- American colonies in Asia would be seized and a vicious strike against the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor would also be launched. The goal was that if the U.S. fleet was destroyed, the Americans might be willing to negotiate a peace treaty, given that amount of time/wealth it would take to rebuild a navy from scratch.
Some Japanese military commanders were opposed to antagonizing the United States, given the unpredictability of the outcome. Pro-war leaders suggested that if they did not take the American colonies or quickly defeat the American forces in Asia, American forces would be on alert and able to crush the Japanese in a long-term struggle. In the end, pro-war leaders won out.
Japanese Offensive
The American military regarded a Japanese attack as unlikely. According to an American military report at the time, “because of their eye slits… the Japanese fighter pilots could not shoot straight, and Japanese naval officers could not see in the dark.” These racist assumptions about Japanese forces would prove to be disastrous to American forces.
On December 7, 1941 Japanese forces launched a vast, multi-pronged attack on Western colonial outposts across the Pacific. In a stunning sweep, Japanese forces conquered British, Dutch, French, and American colonies throughout Asia and the Pacific.
In an attempt to diminish the ability of the ability of US forces in the Pacific to respond to the attacks, a serious attack was launched on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. US naval forces were caught entirely by surprise, with most of their battleships lined up at dock, presenting easy targets for Japanese aircraft. The destruction was extensive and causalities were high.
Fortunately for the American war effort, all three of the US Navy’s aircraft carriers were not at Pearl Harbor during the attack. As a result, America’s ability to project airpower across the Pacific remained intact, while preventing the Japanese from destroying the entirety of the US fleet.
The Doolittle Raid
In a desperate attempt to rally American morale, the US military undertook a desperate air raid on Japan. Launching sixteen medium bombers from an aircraft carrier, the planes bombed Tokyo and other areas in Japan. After the raid, the pilots continued flying to China, where they linked up with their Chinese allies.
The raid, called the Doolittle Raid after its commander General Doolittle, caused very little damage, but did cause Americans to feel that they were striking back at the Japanese. In Japan, the raid was regarded with shock. The Japanese military had promised that they would be capable of preventing the bombing of Japan’s home lands.
Battle of Midway
Despite the military ineffectiveness of the Doolittle Raid, the Japanese military felt that it had to strike back as revenge. The US military base on the island of Midway was chosen as the target. Unfortunately for the Japanese, the US Navy had broken the Japanese military code and were able to determine where and when the attack would take place.
American reinforcements were rushed to Midway, where they prepared for the Japanese attack. The Japanese attack was ferocious and American forces, despite the preparations, were forced into a desperate defense. Due to a remarkable stroke of luck, a group of American dive bombers, who were lost and low on fuel, happened to encounter two Japanese aircraft carriers which were unprotected and preparing their fighters for launch. The Japanese planes were lined up on the aircraft carriers’ decks, fueling up and being loaded with ammo when the American dive bombers struck, destroying both of the aircraft carriers, with horrific losses for the Japanese.
Military historian John Keegan referred to the Battle of Midway as “the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare.” Despite long odds, the Americans had managed to win the battle and cripple Japan’s ability to carry out offensive operations throughout the Pacific due to the destruction of their aircraft carriers. Ultimately, Midway proved to be the turning point in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
The Battle of Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands and a British colony before the war, had been occupied by Japan in the opening days of the war. Allied reconnaissance had discovered that the Japanese were building an airfield on the island, with the goal of using it as a base to assault Australia. As a result, American forces were dispatched to prevent the building of the airfield and retake the island.
16,000 American marines landed on the island and began a long and laborious assault on the Japanese positions. The Japanese fought fiercely and causalities were high on both sides. Soon, both Japan and the Allies were pouring reinforcements onto the island, which had become a brutal slog.
The battle, which had begun over the fairly limited objective of seizing an airfield, quickly spiraled into a massive six-month long campaign, with tens of thousands of causalities on both sides. By February of 1943, the Japanese evacuated the island, leading to an important Allied victory against the Japanese.
The Island-Hopping Campaign
The Allies undertook a new campaign known as the Island-Hopping Campaign (sometimes referred to as the “Leapfrog Campaign”) to retake the Pacific from the Japanese. The goal was to by-pass and isolate certain islands occupied by the Japanese and prevent the Japanese military from re-supplying these bases. The goal was to make these bases effectively useless to the Japanese, by preventing them from being a threat to the Allied war effort and just ignoring them. Instead, Allied forces focused on less well-defended islands and use them as bases to assault Japan directly.
Throughout 1943-1944, this campaign was undertaken to great effect. Pockets of Japanese forces were cut-off from reinforcements and allowed to “whither on the vine,” according to General Douglas McArthur, commander of the Allied war effort in the Pacific. By 1944, Allied war planes were bombing the Japanese home islands routinely and the possibility of an Allied invasion of Japan itself become more and more likely.
The Holocaust
The Holocaust is perhaps history’s greatest crime: 12 million people would eventually be killed in the death camps created by the Nazi regime. The targeted peoples consisted of the mentally/physically handicapped, homosexuals, Jews, Romani Gypsies, Slavs, Political Opponents (notably Communists, Socialists, and Liberals) and Soviet POWs.
The Nazi Party’s views on race and ethnicity were hostile to all non-German peoples.
However, it took nearly a decade for the mass exterminations to begin. In 1933, the year in which the Nazis came to power in Germany, a law was passed called the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring.” This law created a number of Hereditary Health Courts, whose job was to look into the “racial purity” of the German people. If the court determined that a person was “racially inferior,” these people were forcibly sterilized, which meant that they were unable to have children. 400,000 people were sterilized under this policy.
Some of the first targets of the Nazi race laws were Afro-Germans: the children of German women and their African husbands. At the end of World War I, a number of French colonial soldiers from West Africa were stationed in Germany during the peace process. Many of these soldiers married local women and had children. Hitler referred to these children as a contamination of the white race “by Negro blood on the Rhine (western Germany) in the heart of Europe… Jews were responsible for bringing Negroes into the Rhineland with the ultimate idea of bastardising the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate.” Many of these people were forcibly sterilized. Further, Jazz was banned as “corrupt negro music” and romantic relationships/marriage between Africans and Germans were expressly forbidden. In 1935, the Nazi regime passed the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor.” This law prevented sexual relationships between Germans and Jews, “Gypsies, Negroes and their bastard offspring.”
New laws were introduced during the mid-to-late-1930s which banned Jews and other “racial undesirables” from holding a number of professional jobs in Germany, especially in education, politics, higher education, medicine, and industry. On November 9, 1938, German stormtroopers carried out what is referred to as “Kristallnacht” or The Night of Broken Glass.” This was a campaign of attacks on Jewish communities, which included the killing of 91 Jews, many more being injured, 30,000 arrested and shipped off to concentration camps. By the time the war began, Jewish populations in Germany and its conquered territories were forced into ghettos. Ghettos are segregated communities, often physically walled off from other neighborhoods.
In January of 1940, the Nazis chose the town of Auschwitz in Poland to establish their first death camp. Soon Jews and other “racial undesirables” from across conquered Europe would be being sent to the camp to be murdered. Many more camps were constructed, mostly in Poland. Most of these murders were the result of starvation or the use of gas. Zyklon-B, a cyanide-based pesticide that was invented in the 1920s, was used to murder millions in specially-constructed “gas chambers” at these camps. In total, more than 1.1 million people were killed at Auschwitz alone.
Dr. Josef Mengele, the head of the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene, oversaw the Nazi human experiments in the camps. These experiments included exposing victims to extreme cold, extreme heat, high pressures, and other terrible conditions to judge the durability of the human body. Due to his deliberate and inexcusable cruelty, Mengele did manage to learn a lot about the human body, much of which informs modern medicine today. Other experiments seemed to have no purpose other than human cruelty, including sewing a pair of twins together in an attempt to create conjoined twins, injecting various dyes into victim’s eyes to see if their eye color could be changed, binding the knees of women who were giving birth together to see how long until the child died, and other horrors. After World War II ended, Mengele’s son Rolf said that his father showed no remorse for his crimes.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union dramatically increased the number of victims being killed. Mobile groups of exterminators, known as SS Einsatzgruppen, followed behind advancing German armies, rounding up “racial undesirables” and exterminating them. They often burned the bodies to remove all evidence of their crimes. Mobile “gas vans” were built, which victims were forced into, gassed with zyklon b, their bodies removed and burned. Eventually members of the Einsatzgruppen had to be given regular breaks away from the front due to the high rate of suicides amongst its members.
After the war turned against Germany, Soviet forces began to advance westwards. The Auschwitz’s leader, Rudolf Hoss, frantically attempted to cover up the crimes they had committed, by destroying records of what was being done there. Even the crematories were blown up. January 27, 1945, Soviet troops captured the camp at Auschwitz, with Hoss escaping westward just ahead of Soviet soldiers. At first, Soviet troops didn’t actually know what the camp was, as it was clear that the victims were not POWs. Vasily Gromadsky, an officer in the 60th Red Army finally decided to open the camp. Gromadsky recalled:
“I realized that they were prisoners and not workers so I called out, ‘You are free, come out!’ They [the prisoners] began rushing towards us, in a big crowd. They were weeping, embracing us and kissing us. I felt a grievance on behalf of mankind that these fascists had made such a mockery of us. It roused me and all the soldiers to go and quickly destroy them [the Nazi guards] and send them to hell."
Eva Mozes, a 10 year old prisoner in Auschwitz who had been experimented on by Dr. Mengele, described being liberated by the Soviets:
“We ran up to them and they gave us hugs, cookies, and chocolate. Being so alone a hug meant more than anybody could imagine because that replaced the human worth that we were starving for. We were not only starved for food but we were starved for human kindness. And the Soviet Army did provide some of that.”
84 days later, with Soviet troops overrunning Berlin, the Adolf Hitler committed suicide in a bunker beneath the city. Rudolf Hoss was later arrested by British soldiers and forced to stand trial at Nuremburg with other Nazi criminals. One American prosecutor at the trials said of Hoss:
“He struck me as a normal person, that was the horrible thing about it. He was cool, objective, matter of fact. ‘This is my war duty. I did my war duty.’ It was like I had to go out and cut down so many trees. So I went out and took my saw and cut the trees down. He was just acting like a normal, unimportant individual. He simply answered the questions, and as far as I could tell, told what happened without emotion. Without emotion. Without a sense of guilt. Not in the slightest apologetic, not in the remotest degree was he apologetic. In a sense, I think he showed a certain pride in his accomplishment.”
Hoss was executed for his crimes.
Other high ranking Nazi officials were able to escape Germany. Many fled to South America, including Josef Mengele. Mengele would live until 1979, when he drowned while swimming off the coast of Brazil. Other Nazi officials were able to hide in Argentina and Brazil, eluding capture.