Main articles: andGermany was defeated in, and the placed punitive conditions on the country, including significant financial, the loss of territory (some only temporarily), war guilt, military weakening and limitation, and economic weakening. Germany was humiliated in front of the world and had to pay very large war reparations. Many Germans blamed their country's post-war economic collapse and on the treaty's conditions. These resentments contributed to the political instability which made it possible for and his to come to power, with Hitler's appointment as in 1933.After took Germany out of the, of and Hitler formed the Rome-Berlin axis, under a treaty known as the. Later, the, under the government of, would also join as an.
Japan and Germany had already signed the in 1939, to counter the perceived threat of the of the. Other smaller powers also later joined the Axis throughout the war.Outbreak of war in Europe. Main article:and the were sworn enemies, but following the, which effectively handed over (a French and Soviet ally, and the only remaining presidential democracy in ) to Germany, political realities allowed the Soviet Union to sign a (the ) including a secret clause partitioning, the and between the two spheres of influence.Full-scale war in Europe began at dawn on 1 September 1939, when Germany used her newly formed tactics and military strength to, to which both the United Kingdom and France had pledged protection and independence guarantees.
On 3 September 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany and British troops were sent to France, however neither French nor British troops during the entire invasion, and the German–French border, excepting the, remained mostly calm, this period of the war is commonly known as the.On 17 September the, although remaining with respect to Western powers. The Polish government evacuated the country for Romania.
Poland fell within five weeks, with its last large operational units surrendering on 5 October after the. As the Polish September Campaign ended, Hitler offered to Britain and France peace on the basis of recognition of German European continental dominance. On 12 October the United Kingdom formally refused.Despite the quick campaign in the east, along the Franco-German frontier the war settled into a quiet period. This relatively non-confrontational and mostly non-fighting period between the major powers lasted until 10 May 1940, and was known as the.Germany and the USSR partition Northern Europe. Finnish soldiers during theSeveral other countries, however, were drawn into the conflict at this time.
By 28 September 1939, the three felt they had no choice but to permit Soviet bases and troops on their territory. The by the Soviet army in June 1940, and finally annexed to the Soviet Union in August 1940.The Soviet Union wanted to annex and offered a union agreement, but Finland rejected it, which caused the Soviet Union to attack Finland on 30 November. This began the. After five months of hard fighting, Finns were only pushed from a strip of land bordering, in spite of Soviet numerical superiority, the Soviet Union gave up attempts to subdue the whole country. In the of 12 March 1940, Finland ceded 10% of her territory (, and ).
The Finns were embittered over having lost more land in the peace than on the battlefields, and over the perceived lack of world sympathy.Meanwhile, in western, Germany in April 1940, and in response, Britain (a Danish territory) and and (a sovereign nation with the King of Denmark as its monarch).Sweden.War comes to the West. German troops in Paris after theOn 10 May the ended with a sweeping German invasion of the neutral Low Countries of, the, and, and into bypassing the French fortifications of the along the border with Germany. After overrunning the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Germany turned against France, entering the country through the on 13 May—the French had left this area less well defended, believing its terrain to be impassable for tanks and other vehicles. Most Allied forces were in, anticipating a re-run of the, and were cut off from the French mainland. As a result of this, and also the superior German communications and tactics, the was shorter than virtually all pre-war Allied thought could have conceived.
It lasted only six weeks. On 10 June declared war on both France and the, but did not gain any significant success in this campaign. The French government fled Paris, and soon, France surrendered on 22 June. In order to further the humiliation of the French people and the country itself, Hitler arranged for the surrender document to be signed in the, in the same railway coach where the German surrender had been.
The surrender divided France into two major parts; the northern part under German control, and a southern part under French control, based at and referred to as, a rump state friendly to Germany. Many French soldiers, as well as those of other occupied countries, escaped to Britain.
The General proclaimed himself the legitimate leader of and vowed to continue to fight. Following the unexpected swift victory, Hitler promoted 12 to the rank of during the., the Foreign Policy Minister of the, which was tied with, congratulated the Germans: 'We hand over the most cordial congratulations by the Soviet government on the occasion of splendid success of German Wehrmacht. 's tanks broke through to the sea near, powered by Soviet fuel, the German bombs, that razed to the ground, were filled with Soviet, and bullet cases, which hit the British soldiers, were cast of Soviet alloy.'
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Later, on 24 April 1941, the USSR gave full diplomatic recognition to the Vichy government situated in the non-occupied zone in France.Thus, the Fall of France left Britain and to stand alone. The British Prime Minister, resigned during the battle and was replaced.
Much of Britain's army from the northern French port of Dunkirk, where hundreds (if not thousands) of tiny civilian boats were used to ferry troops from the beaches to the waiting warships. There is much debate over whether German Panzer divisions could have defeated these soldiers alone if they had pressed forward, since the tank divisions were overextended and would require extensive refitting; in any case, Hitler elected to follow the advice of the leader of German air forces and allow the alone to attack the Allied forces until German infantry was able to advance, giving the British a window for the evacuation. Later, many of the evacuated troops would form an important part and the center of the army that landed at on.The British rejected several covert German attempts to negotiate a peace. Germany massed their air force in northern German-occupied France to prepare the way for a possible invasion, codenamed ('Sea Lion'), deeming that was essential for the invasion. The operations of the Luftwaffe against the became known as the.
Initially the Luftwaffe concentrated on destroying the RAF on the ground and in the air. They later switched to bombing major and large industrial British cities in, in an attempt to draw RAF fighters out and defeat them completely. Neither approach was successful in reducing the RAF to the point where air superiority could be obtained, and plans for an invasion were suspended by September 1940.During the Blitz, all of Britain's major industrial, cathedral, and political cites were heavily bombed.
London suffered particularly, being bombed each night for several months. Other targets included and, and strategically important cities, such as the naval base at and the port of.
With no land forces in direct conflict in Europe, the war in the air attracted worldwide attention even as sea units fought the and a number of British raids hit targets in occupied Europe. Churchill famously said of the RAF personnel who fought in the battle: 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few'.Air war. The RAF, used extensively during theThe air war in the European theatre commenced in 1939.Pre-war doctrine had held that waves of bombers hitting enemy cities would cause mass panic and the rapid collapse of the enemy. As a result, the had built up a large strategic bomber force. By way of contrast, Nazi German air force doctrine was almost totally dedicated to supporting the army. Therefore, German bombers were smaller than their British equivalents, and Germany never developed a fully successful equivalent to the or, with only the similarly sized A placed into production and made operational for such duties with the Luftwaffe in the later war years.The main concentration of German raids on British cities was from 7 September 1940 until 10 May 1941 in the most famous air battle of all time, known as the. Facing odds of four against one the RAF held off the, forcing to withdraw his forces and more importantly indefinitely postpone invasion plans.
This proved the first major turning point of the War. After that most of the strength of the Luftwaffe was diverted to the war against the Soviet Union leaving German cities vulnerable to British and later American air bombings.
As a result of the victory, Great Britain was used by U.S and other Allied forces as a base from which to begin the D-Day landings in June 1944 and the liberation of Nazi-occupied Western Europe. Nevertheless, German raids continued on British cities albeit on a smaller and less destructive scale for the rest of the war, and later the and ballistic missile were both used against Britain. However, the balance of bomb tonnage being dropped shifted greatly in favour of the RAF as gained in strength. By 1942, Bomber Command could put 1,000 bombers over one German city.During the beginning raids of the wiped out the majority of the air forces. The Soviets would only regain their air wing later in the war with the help of the United States.From 1942 onwards, the efforts of Bomber Command were supplemented by the of the, U.S. Army Air Forces units being deployed to England to join the assault on mainland Europe on 4 July 1942. Bomber Command raided by night and the US forces by day.
The 'Operation Gomorrah' (24 July 1943 – 29 July 1943) caused a firestorm leading to massive destruction and loss of life.On 14 February 1945, a produced one of the most devastating fires in history. A firestorm was created in the city, and between 18,000 and 25,000 people were killed. Only the Hamburg attack, the 9–10 March 1945 and the nuclear attacks on (6 August 1945) and (9 August 1945) killed more people through a single attack.Mediterranean and other European countries. Liberated territory inThe was a major theatre of operations during the Second World War. The vast size of this theatre included the fighting between the Allies and Axis in, the, Southern Europe, Malta, North Africa and the Middle East.Prior to the war and officially annexed it. Mussolini's regime declared war on Britain and France on 10 June 1940, and on 28 October.
However, Italian forces were unable to match the Nazi successes in northwest Europe. Italy declared war on Greece and invaded the country, but it was not until that the country was overrun.
While the Greek campaign was underway, German forces, supported by the Italians, Hungarians and the Bulgarians simultaneously. After the mainland was conquered, Germany invaded Crete in what is known as the. With the Balkans secure, Germany and her allies attacked the Soviet Union in the largest land operation in history. The Balkans campaign delayed the invasionand subsequent resistance movements in, and tied up valuable Axis forces. This provided much needed and possibly decisive relief for the Soviets.Fighting in Southern Europe would not resume until Axis forces were defeated in North Africa. Following the Axis defeat in Africa, Allied forces invaded Italy and during a prolonged campaign fought their way north through Italy. The invasion of Italy resulted in the nation switching sides to the Allies and the ousting of Mussolini.
But, in spite of the coup, Fascists and occupying German forces retained. In northern part of Italy, the occupying Germans installed Mussolini as the head of new fascist republican government, the Italian Social Republic or RSI to show that the Axis was still in force. But Mussolini and his Fascists were now puppet rulers under their German patrons.Allied (and mostly pro-Soviet), which got some supplies and assistance from Western Allies, on the opposite side of the. In late 1944 it was joined with the advancing Soviet Army and proceeded to push remaining German forces out of the Balkans.By April 1945, German forces were retreating on all fronts in northern Italy and occupied Yugoslavia, following continuous Allied attacks. The campaign, and the fighting in the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre came to an end on 29 April.
On 2 May in Italy, Field Marshal, the commander-in-chief of all German forces in the country surrendered to Field Marshal, the supreme commander of all Allied forces in the Mediterranean area. Fighting would, however, continue in Greece where a had broke out and end on 1949 after Greek government troops aided by the US and Britain defeated the communist guerrillas supported by Marshall Tito and USSR.Eastern Front. The ' Allied leaders at the 1945.
From left to right: (UK), (US), and (USSR).On 22 June 1941, Germany launched the invasion of the Soviet Union, code-named. This invasion, the biggest in recorded history, started the bloodiest conflict in world history; the Axis–Soviet War, also known as the Eastern Front.It is generally accepted as being the most lethal conflict in human history, with over 30 million dead as a result. It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined.On the very night of the invasion Soviet troops received a directive undersigned by and that commanded: 'do not answer to any provocations' and 'do not undertake any actions without specific orders'. The early weeks of the invasion were devastating for the Soviet Army.
Enormous numbers of Soviet troops were encircled in pockets and fell into Nazi German hands. In addition to German troops, Italian, Hungarian and Romanian and Finnish troops were also involved in the campaign. Finland initially declared neutrality; however, with both German and Soviet troops on her soil, Finland was well prepared to join forces with Germany when the Soviet Union attacked on 25 June. The following conflict from 1941 to 1944 is sometimes referred to as the, as in the continuation of the.
Spain immediately offered military assistants to the Axis by sending volunteers to the Eastern front, known as the Blue division.Operation Barbarossa suffered from several fundamental flaws. The most serious of these was the logistical situation of the attack. The sheer vastness of the distances in the Soviet Union meant that Germany could only advance so far before outrunning their supply chains. By the time the German attack froze to a halt before Moscow on December 5, 1941, it literally could not go any further.
There simply were not enough supplies reaching the front to conduct proper defensive operations, let alone a proper offense. The timetable that Barbarossa was planned to assume that the Soviets would collapse before the onset of winter.During their long retreat, the Soviets employed a policy. They burnt crops and destroyed utilities as they withdrew before Germany. That helped to contribute to the logistical problems that Germany experienced. More importantly for them, the Soviets also succeeded in a massive and unprecedented removal of their industry from the threatened war zone to protected areas in the East.The extension of the campaign beyond the length that Germany expected meant that the German Army suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties in winter conditions, and from the counterattacks of Soviet units.Even with their advance having ground to a halt due to a lack of supplies and the onset of winter, Germany had conquered a vast amount of territory, including two-fifths of the Soviet economy.
Dislodging them proved difficult and eventually cost the Soviet Union dearly.A few months after the invasion began, German troops came to southern approaches to and laid a to the city (known as the ), which was also blocked from the north by Finnish forces. Finland's C-in-C had halted at the and refrained from attacking the city. Hitler had ordered that the city of Leningrad must 'vanish from the surface of the earth', with its entire population exterminated. Rather than storming the city, the Wehrmacht was ordered to blockade Leningrad so as to starve the city to death, while attacking it with bombers and artillery. About one million civilians died in the Leningrad siege – 800,000 by starvation.
The siege lasted for 872 days. The only overland way into the city was possibly during the winter, across the frozen, between the German and Finnish lines.Summer campaign of 1942 and Stalingrad. Adolf Hitler with generals, and in Poltawa, German-occupied Ukraine, June 1942After enduring the winter of 1941–1942, the German army prepared for further offensive operations. One of the major problems faced by the Nazi war machine in World War II was a shortage of. For this reasonGermany decided to give up on Moscow for the time being, and the decided to focus on the war in the south, with the target being the oil fields of the. Meanwhile, the Soviets.Beginning of the campaign turned into a strategic disaster for Soviets whose Southern flank was nearly destroyed.
Surviving Soviet units were pushed hundreds kilometres to the east and the Wehrmacht advance went almost uncontested. But in a major blunder, Hitler split Army Group South into two subgroups, Army Group A which would attack the Caucasus and Army Group B which would advance towards the city of Stalingrad (now ).Indecision by Hitler, dissent among the higher-ranked Nazi German officers, and extended supply lines combined in a. Germany eventually occupied over 90% of the city, but in an attempt to defeat the remaining Soviet defenders almost all German soldiers in the area were funnelled into the ruins of the city. Months of bitter hand-to-hand combat in the ruins of the city depleted the German forces, leaving only and Hungarian forces to guard the flanks of the Stalingrad army group. In, the Soviets defeated these Axis forces as they performed a massive encirclement operation.
The Axis troops remaining in the city were trapped – cut off from their supply lines and starving, amidst a harsh winter, they were ordered by Hitler to fight to the last man.Starved of food, fuel, ammunition, and clothes, the pocket was gradually reduced, with the last portion surrendering on 2 February 1943. In a cynical attempt to prevent the surrender, Hitler promoted, commander of the 6th Army to, because no German of that rank had surrendered before.
Heavy losses affected both sides in the, one of the most costly battles in history. About 1.5 million people perished in this battle, including 100,000 civilians in the city.Battles after Stalingrad After Stalingrad, the initiative had passed from Germany but had not yet been seized by the Soviets.
A in the spring of 1943 by forces of Field Marshal temporarily halted the Soviet advance. The was the last major offensive by the German Army on the eastern front. The Soviets had intelligence of what was to come and prepared massive defenses in huge depth in the Kursk salient. They stopped the German armored assaults after a maximum penetration of just over 30 miles (48 km). After Kursk, the Red Army got the upper hand and generally was on the offensive for the rest of the war. The large scale of the Soviet Union allowed it to overcome high losses in manpower and equipment. Soviet success prompted a more active Allied involvement on the Western Front of Europe because Nazi Germany was bogged down in a costly defensive war on the East, defending its ever-shrinking occupied territory.
In Europe and military situation in autumn 1944Pushing the enemy out of the Soviet territory in June 1944 by conducting the large-scale, the Soviet Army proceeded to dismantle the Eastern Axis powers — Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary — to liberate other neighboring countries from the German Army, and to impose Communist-led governments on the 'liberated' nations. Some of these nations joined the Allies and provided troops to fight Nazi Germany, which was effectively the only remaining Axis power in Europe by the end of 1944. Finland retained its independence the second time, but broke with the Axis, at the cost of and ceding more territory to the USSR.By February 1945, the Soviets. The end of the war in Europe left the Soviet Union in control over large areas of and Europe, in addition to its 1941 conquests in Eastern Europe.Effects of the Eastern Front. See also: andMore Soviet citizens died during World War II than those of all other countries combined. Nazi ideology considered Slavs to be ' and German forces committed ethnically targeted mass murder.
Civilians were rounded up and burned alive or shot in squads in many cities conquered by the Nazis, around 27 million civilians and military personal perished during the war8 million troops died facing the Germans and their allies in the Eastern Front. The Axis forces themselves had lost over 6 million troops, whether by combat or by wounds, disease, starvation or exposure; many others were seized as POWs and a substantial part of them died in Soviet captivity because of disease or shortage of supplies.supplies from the United Kingdom and the United States made very important impact for Soviet military forces. Supply convoys sailed to Soviet ports that were patrolled by Nazi U-boats. Allied activities before D-Day may have tied up only a few divisions in actual fighting, but many more were forced to guard lonely coasts against raids that never came or to man anti-aircraft guns throughout.Allied invasion of occupied France. from 1941.
from 1941. from 1942.
until. until. until. until. 1941-1944. from 1943. Vichy officially pursued a policy of and conducted military actions against armed incursions from both Axis and Allied belligerents.
The cease fire and pledging of allegiance to the Allies of the Vichy troops in French North Africa during convinced the Axis that Vichy could no longer be trusted to continue this policy, so they the French rump state in November 1942. Collaborationist units, such as the, continued to fight alongside German troops against until the liberation of France in 1944. from 1943. See:.References. unconditionally surrendered on 8 May 1945, however a German Wehrmacht column continued fighting until the end of the.
The would continue fighting until the end of the on 25 May 1945. December 27, 2005, at the. 2006-08-26 at the. Bojan Pancevski, 3 October 2008. Kate Connolly, 3 October 2008.
Landeshauptstadt Dresden (1 October 2008). Landeshauptstadt Dresden.
Retrieved 13 February 2010. Amnon Sella. 'Barbarossa': Surprise Attack and Communication. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 3, (Jul., 1978), pp. 555–583.Further reading Wikivoyage has a travel guide for. Churchill, Winston (1948–1953), The Second World War, 6 vols.
Theatre Of War 2 Kursk 1943 License Key Free Download
Keegan, John (1989). The Second World War, Hutchinson.
Murray, Williamson and Millett, Allan R. A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, Harvard University Press. Overy, Richard (1995). Why the Allies Won Pimlico. (2003).
Lightning War: Blitzkrieg in the West, 1940. John Wiley. (2008). Lightning War: Blitzkrieg in the West, 1940.
Book Sales, Inc. Smith, J.
Douglas and Richard Jensen. (2002) World War II on the Web: A Guide to the Very Best Sites.
Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge University Press.
Off-site search results for 'European Theater Map'. War see the Brief History of WWII e-text.' See also: Pacific Theater European Theater North Africa Sicily Italy D-Day Northern France Southern France Operation Market-Garden Battle of the Bulge Germany © 2001-2004 Interesting.(WW201.JPG - 79-AR-82 - 92K) (Address to Congress by President Roosevelt) (Statement of resolution being signed) The European Theater The Eastern Front The Southern Front The Western Front The pages of this site are always being tweaked.
Part 2 (December 1944 to May 1945) United States Army in World War II-European Theater of Operations: The Supreme Command Logistical Support of the Armies, Vol. I Logistical Support of the Armies, Vol. II History of United.