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13 Ge bi (Fb) WWII 1 The Second World War Framework of Events: 1939 September: German invasion of Poland. Britain and France declare war on Germany November: Beginning of ‘Winter War’ between USSR and Finland 1940 Russian annexation of Baltic states April: German invasion of Norway and Denmark May: German invasion of Holland, Belgium and France June: Dunkirk evacuation and fall of France July-September: Battle of Britain 1941 March: ‘Lend-Lease’ agreement between Britain and USA June: Germany launches ‘Operation Barbarossa’, the invasion of the USSR September: Britain and USA sign ‘Atlantic Charter’ December: Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbour. American entry into war 1942 August: German assault on Stalingrad October: German defeat in North Africa at El Alamein 1943 January: German defeat at Stalingrad July: German defeat at Kursk. Allied invasion of Italy. Mussolini falls from power 1944 June: British and American forces launch D-Day landings in Normandy. Fall of Rome to Allied forces 1945 January: Fall of Warsaw to Soviet troops February: Allied conference at Yalta. Allied forces cross the Rhine April: Russian forces enter Berlin May: Unconditional surrender of German forces August: Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki September: Unconditional surrender of Japanese forces. Allied conference at Potsdam Overview: 5 10 15 20 Although the Second World War was different in many respects from the war of 1914-1918, it too began with a misconception. Hitler did not anticipate a global conflict of long duration, but had planned a series of limited rapid campaigns that would achieve strictly defined objectives in a manner that would not stretch German economic resources. The first of these crushed Poland in a matter of weeks (September 1939) and another, the following year, destroyed French resistance almost as rapidly. Subsequently, however, Hitler’s calculations began to go wrong. Britain did not immediately give in once its French ally had been defeated, nor did Hitler’s third Blitzkrieg, launched from the air, succeed in bringing it to its knees. Instead, Britain gained material assistance from the United States of America and, within a year, could count the USA as a direct ally after Japanese aggression had brought them into the war. Nevertheless, Hitler’s political and racial beliefs led him to believe that his next projected offensive, against the Soviet Union, must also succeed. Germany owed its impressive successes in 1939-41 to the fact that its military commanders had perfected this art of Blitzkrieg. They had appreciated before any of their contemporaries the impact of large tank forces, supported from the air by superior forces of rapid fighter planes and divebombers. When this strategy failed a second time, however, and the Soviet Union survived the massive blow struck against it, it became clear that the Second World War would actually be decided in the same manner as the first. It would be won by those who possessed the greatest industrial resources and who could bring them most effectively to bear. By 1942 Hitler and his allies were involved in a great struggle that stretched from one end of Europe to the other, from the Channel coast to the Caspian See. It was linked with another struggle on the other side of the globe, for Japan’s leaders had also miscalculated, underestimating America’s aerial and naval power, failing similarly to achieve a quick ‘knock-out’ blow, and becoming locked in a desperate battle for survival 13 Ge bi (Fb) 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 WWII 2 in the Pacific. Britain’s colonial interests in Canada, Australasia, South Africa and India drew those regions, too, into what was now a truly global war. In effect, by the end of 1942, this was a war that Germany and its allies could not win. Germany in particular, however, adapted its war effort impressively in an attempt to stave off defeat. This involved the mobilisation of Germany’s domestic economy to meet the demands of ‘total war’, and only from 1942 did the Nazis realise the country’s potential for making war. It also meant the most ruthless exploitation of the sources available to Germany in the territories that it had occupied. Enormous efforts were made to seize material resources and to mobilise foreign labour to work in German industry, either by force or by more subtle inducements. One of the most remarkable features of this stage of the war was the willingness with which some elements within the occupied states, especially in western Europe, co-operated and collaborated with the invaders. This ruthless exploitation also stimulated resistance to the Germans, and in eastern Europe in particular, this put further obstacles in the path of Germany’s war effort. At the same time, the Nazi leadership placed additional obstacles in its own path by judging that the time was now ripe for a ‘final solution’ to the ‘problem’ of Europe’s Jewish population. Even as the war was being lost, human resources, transport and the like were being used for ferrying Jews to the concentration camps where genocide was to take place. Great though the scope of the war was by 1942, its focus was the German campaign against the Soviet Union, and the decisive battles of the whole world war were those fought around Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad. There, once the invaders had lost the element of surprise, their forces were steadily ground down by geography and climate of the region, and by the vast resources that the Soviet Union could mobilise. In the meantime, the American economy attained the highest levels of industrial production that the world had ever witnessed, and its military resources were steadily concentrated in Britain and in North Africa. In the course of 1944 Germany found itself fighting on three fronts. Whereas the First World War ended without a single foreign soldier on German soil, the Second World War drew to a close with the wholesale destruction of German cities, with Soviet troops in the heart of Berlin, and with the arrest and condemnation of many of Germany’s political leaders. The year 1945 marked the most comprehensive military and political defeat that any modern state had ever experienced. Six years of bitter conflict had serious implications for the political and economic balance of Europe and of the world at large. To say that they brought about the destruction of the German state, the downfall of the political regimes of several other European states, the end of Europe’s international supremacy, and a new political balance between two world superpowers, is only to list some of the war’s results. Some historians argue that the two world wars must be viewed together, the second completing some of the unfinished business of the first. Looked at it in this way it might be possible to conclude that the extreme nationalist movements of the 1920s and the 1930s were only makeshift expedients to fill the gaps left by the collapse of the aristocratic empires pf pre-1914 Europe. The defeat of such movements left supremacy in Europe to be disputed between the liberal democracies that were already well developed by 1914, and the vast socialist power of the Soviet Union that had achieved such apparent permanency under the rule of Joseph Stalin. (from: Derrick Murphy, Terry Morris (eds.): International Relations 1879-2004. London (Collins Flagship History) 2008, pp.82-83.) Annotations: l.23: Australasia: the islands of the southern Pacific Ocean, including Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea; l.26: to stave off: to fend off; l.59: makeshift expedient: substitute, temporary means to an end Before your presentations, please refer to the respective timeframe and to the lines in the text you are going to enlarge upon (if possible).