A Look at Germany During World War II
British Prime Minister Chamberlain tried to forestall German aggression at the Munich conference in 1938, but Germany continued its expansion. Germany had already begun to be a little aggressive. They had already moved troops into lands that they weren’t supposed to occupy at all. Prime Minister Chamberlain said, “Okay, let’s call everyone together and try to talk this out and come to a peaceful understanding.” He favored diplomacy over war.
Even though Hitler attended the Munich conference, it didn’t stop his aggression. Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, and during the same year Hitler signed a secret agreement with Stalin, pledging not to attack Russia so long as Russia stayed out of German affairs. Russia was kind of a big country in the middle of things, but Germany said, “Okay, we’ll sign an agreement with you, Russia. As long as you don’t try to interfere in what we’re doing, we won’t attack you.”
Basically, if they just kind of kept their eyes closed and didn’t pay attention to Germany taking over all of their neighboring countries, then Russia wouldn’t be attacked. Hitler then declared war on and conquered Poland. Hitler has taken over Czechoslovakia, taken over Poland, and signed an agreement with Russia, saying, “You’re not going to interfere with this.” At this step, Great Britain and France were finally forced to declare war on Germany.
Britain and France had also been taking a “we’re not really going to pay attention and hope this goes away” kind of attitude to the situation. Prime Minister Chamberlain had brought the Munich conference together, but after diplomacy didn’t do any good, Great Britain and France still didn’t try to step in militarily and stop anything that Hitler was doing. However, Britain had told Poland that if Hitler invaded or Poland’s independence was threatened, Great Britain would stick up for Poland.
When Poland was conquered, Great Britain and France were finally forced to declare war on Germany and actually try to stop the problem. By this time, Germany was a dominating military adversary. At this time, Germany had already built up a lot of forces, conquered a lot of land, and Germany was very strong by the time that Britain and France finally declared war on Germany. New advances in motorized military vehicles made it possible for Germany to conquer large areas of land very quickly and a new form of warfare called Blitzkrieg, or lightning war.
The reason it was called this is because it happened so quickly. German forces would usually come in behind an enemy and make advances into the enemy line, then quickly make it to their center and then kind of surround them. The enemy could never reform its front very well, because the motorized military vehicles moved in so quickly. They had weapons on them. They came with people on foot that were also armed. Often, they were accompanied by aircraft that also were weaponized.
All of this happened very quickly all at once, and it pushed forward quickly and would surround an enemy, or at least break up the front so much so that the enemy was overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do. Germany was able to conquer large areas of land very quickly this way, instead of it being a slow process. The Axis powers, which was the alliance that Germany was a part of, conquered almost the entire European continent, including France, over the course of 1940.
You also had Italy and Japan that were taking over places that they shouldn’t be taking over. They were trying to take territory that had not previously belonged to them, according to the peaceful settlement that was made after World War I. It may have been something they owned in the past, but it wasn’t something they were supposed to own based on the boundaries that were decided after peace agreements after World War I.
The Axis powers were these three countries (Germany, Italy, and Japan primarily) that were invading and taking over other countries. In Europe, Germany was the biggest one that was doing all this. They’re the ones that get the most focus. Germany gets the most focus, because Germany was doing the most damage in taking over the most area. Only Great Britain remained in opposition at this point.
Over the course of 1940, when even France was taken over, in Europe Great Britain was pretty much the only opposition left to tell Germany, “Hey, you can’t take over all of Europe.” The Nazis undertook a ferocious aerial assault on the British. They tried to drop bombs and shoot from planes. They didn’t try to come in on land. At this time, the British were led by Winston Churchill. There was a changeover in the government there.
Prime Minister Chamberlain wanted Britain to be united at this time. If they were going to war, he wanted all parties behind the government. All political parties at this time were not in agreement and would not follow Chamberlain, but they would follow Winston Churchill. Chamberlain resigned and Churchill stepped up as Prime Minister. Chamberlain did still head up part of Churchill’s war cabinet, his group of advisers that helped him decide what he should do at different points along the path in the war.
He did die about six months after he resigned. It was good that they did have a smooth changeover of government, or things might have gone differently. At this point, when Great Britain is the only country left in Europe that isn’t taken over by Germany and is the only opposition, Winston Churchill is in power. However, they, Germany, failed to do enough damage to make an invasion practical. This is because Britain is an island nation.
That’s why they’re practicing all this aerial assault on Britain. They couldn’t just come in from the land. They would have to come in off the water onto land. Getting to a shore where you could easily get onto land was going to be hard, because any areas like that were going to be heavily guarded. If you’re trying to come in on a ship, you don’t have as much advantage as someone who’s on land already, especially if you have the higher ground.
It was not practical for Germany to invade on land. The aerial assault failed, and Hitler was a little discouraged. Instead, he turned east and decided to violate his truce with Stalin. Germany invaded Russia in 1941. He said, “Okay, can’t go anymore to the West. Britain has been too much of a problem. Haven’t been able to conquer it. Too much trouble to try to go by land in takeover, so I’m just going to go the other direction and I’m going to invade Russia.”
He did this even though he’d promised not to in this earlier agreement as long as Russia didn’t interfere. Russia hadn’t interfered, but Germany was invading anyway. He overwhelmed much of the Soviet military and advanced deep into Russian territory in a huge surprise offensive. It was a surprise for Russia, because even though there may have been some rumors that Hitler was going to invade us one day, they really thought for the most part that they were safe.
The government, at least, was thinking, “Okay, we made this pact with Hitler. We’re not messing with them. We’re not trying to stop him from whatever he’s doing. Everything’s going to be okay.” They were very surprised and were completely overwhelmed whenever German troops did invade and Hitler was able to get pretty far into Russian territory before he was stopped. The tide turned against Hitler when the United States entered the war.
You have everyone over in Europe and Asia, but so far the United States hadn’t stepped in. When the United States entered the war, the tide started to turn for Germany. Things started to not go as well, because there were fresh troops, fresh supplies, and German troops had been fighting this whole time. German troops had been exhausting a lot of their supplies this whole time. In some war-torn areas, the areas that may have previously grown crops for food for people, the laborers who would have generally been making the weapons or the munition that you needed, they were all gone.
The crops might have been burned. The land wasn’t being tended by laborers. The factories weren’t being manned by laborers to make more guns or provide more ammunition. Germany was becoming a little exhausted, where the United States was coming in pretty fresh. The harsh Russian winter halted the German advance into Russia short of Moscow in 1941. They got pretty deep into Russia, but the winter was not what Germans were used to and it stopped them.
They didn’t want to go any further during this harsh winter. The Germans did make further gains in the summer of 1942 after that harsh winter, but they were decisively beaten at the Battle of Stalingrad and were slowly pushed out of Russia from then on. Once they were defeated at Stalingrad, it was pretty much a slow but steady effort of Russia to be pushing the Germans back into Germany. American and British troops landed in North Africa in 1942 and used that as a springboard to invade Italy in 1943.
Remember, Italy was one of the Axis powers, another country who was on Germany’s side, who was also taking a role in that didn’t belong to them. Not as much as Germany, but it was definitely an ally of Germany, so it was a country they were going to have to defeat in order to defeat all of the Axis powers. In 1944, the Americans and British opened yet another front with the massive invasion of Northern France and the D-Day landings.
D-Day is a military term used for the day the attack is going to happen, the day you’re going to land and make your attack. This D-Day just happens to be known so well as D-Day, because it is the most well-known D-Day in history. Even though the military may call other days D-Day, this particular day in history whenever they invaded Northern France at Normandy, was the most famous D-Day, because it made such a big impact in World War II in turning the tides.
At this point there were so many different fronts that the Germans were having to fight on. The American and British soldiers had invaded Italy, so they had a front there. They had invaded France. There was a front there. There was, of course, the natural borders of Britain. Anything nearby there was going to be in opposition to Britain if they were trying to come too close. You had a lot of different borders going on here that there was fighting at.
The German troops are having to be spread pretty thin. Fighting numerically superior forces- remember the American troops were coming in fresh. There were lots of people. The German troops have been fighting this whole time. A lot of them had already died, so they weren’t really having a way to replenish those troops. Fighting numerically superior forces along multiple fronts, lots of different places they had to spread their troops over.
The Germans steadily lost ground. The Allies, which was the group containing America and Britain, pushed into Germany from both east and west in 1945. Finally, instead of Germany encroaching on all these other countries, the troops finally invaded Germany from both the east and the west at the same time in 1945. Germany Was kind of pushed inward, where it had been rapidly expanding outward the troops had pushed and pushed and pushed until the German front was within the original German territory.
Surrounded and with the war lost- at this point, they knew the war was lost. The Germans knew we’re surrounded. We’ve lost all our new territory. A lot of us have died. We don’t have that much food left. We don’t have that many supplies left. Pretty much, we’re done for. Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin in April 1945. Hitler knew the war was lost. He didn’t want to face the consequences of being handed over to the other side, to the allies, and he didn’t want to face the shame of having lost.
He just committed suicide in his bunker when he knew the war was lost. The remaining German troops surrendered shortly afterward. They already knew that they had pretty much lost. Then, once their leader who had gotten them this far in the first place committed suicide, they decided they were done as well. There were other areas that were experiencing fighting at this time. Japan was invading different Asian countries.
This wasn’t the only place the fighting was going on in World War II, but Germany was at the center of the fighting in Europe. Germany had been growing during the 1930s, growing stronger and expanding, growing geographically. It grew stronger and stronger, taking over almost all of Europe with only Britain left in opposition at one point until the United States entered the war, helped supply fresh troops, fresh supplies, and slowly they took back the land that Germany had taken, pushing into the original German borders, letting Hitler know the war was lost. He committed suicide and the German troops surrendered. By the middle of 1945, the war was over for Germany.