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COLLEGE - LIMASSOL BUSINESS STUDIES European History Lecture 11 Topics The Second World War : Origins of World War II. Two years of the Axis Triumph. The United States enters the War. The Turning point: Victories at the Russian and Western Fronts. Europe after 1945. The Origins of the War The German-speaking populations in Czechoslovakia and Poland began to clamor for protection. 3.25 million Germans lived in the Sudetenland. Rising tensions in Czechoslovakia made some dramatic German gain there. British and France followed the policy of ‘appeasement’. The appeasers of Hitler in Britain and France were sympathetic to Hitler’s ideas and methods. The Origins of the War Appeasement was Chamberlain’s energetic and calculated effort to locate the sources of Germany’s frustrations. Appeasement rested on domestic considerations of internal order. The appeasers assumed that a new war would lead to another round of revolutions like those of 1917. Neville Chamberlain Munich Settlement September 29, 1938 It was agreed to buy Hitler off with immediate transfer of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to Germany. Chamberlain believed that the border adjustment could prevent war. Hitler himself broke the agreement six months later. German troops moved into Prague on March 15, 1939. The Czech areas became the ‘Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia’, and the Slovak areas were set up as an independent nation. Munich Settlement September 29, 1938 The Polish Crisis, 1939 Danzig, a free city under the League of Nations supervision, was mostly German in population. Poland controlled German minorities in rich Silesia. In the spring of 1939, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop demanded that Poland return Danzig to Germany and permit a road-rail route across the corridor. In exchange Germany would offer some form of common defense against the Soviet Union. German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop The Polish Crisis, 1939 The decisive change came from England and France. Angered and alarmed by German propaganda attacks on Poland, Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of England, announced publicly in the House of Commons on March 31 that England and France would bring Poland ‘all the support in their power’ if Poland independence were ‘clearly threatened’. The British government had extended to Poland the guarantee denied the more easily defended Czechoslovakia a year earlier. Neville Chamberlain abandoned appeasement. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact An agreement signed between the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop. Officially titled as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union. It was signed in Moscow in 23 August 1939. It was a non-aggression pact under which the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany each guaranteed to remain neutral in the event that either nation were attacked by a third party. Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The treaty included a secret protocol dividing Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Germany and the Soviet Union invaded, on September 1 and 17 respectively, their respective sides of Poland, and they divided the country between them. This Treaty remained in effect until 22 June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Two years of the Axis Triumph. Nazi Europe, 1939 -1940: Poland and the Fall of France 1939 Germany invaded Poland Luftwaffe:German Air force. Blitzkrieg : "lightning war". Blitzkrieg was first used by the Germans in World War II and was a tactic based on speed and surprise and needed a military force to be based around light tank units supported by planes and infantry (foot soldiers). Two years of the Axis Triumph. The tactic was developed in Germany by an army officer called Hans Guderian. Hans Guderian had written a military pamphlet called "Achtung Panzer" which got into the hands of Hitler. As a result Poland was under German control within a month. USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) moved into the eastern half of Poland. Baltic states. Hans Guderian Luftwaffe Panzer Two years of the Axis Triumph. Finland was invaded. Combined resistance of Finns, French, and British helped Finland maintain its independence April 1940: Germans invaded Norway and Denmark. Interest in Swedish steel and access to the Atlantic May 1940: Germany invaded Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. They sent their main forces through the Ardennes forest. Two years of the Axis Triumph. Out flanked the Maginot line to the north and entered France. Belgium surrendered. Large part of the French army surrendered Heroic effort was made to extract the British army with some of the French army. By 6/1940 France sued for peace and Germany was in control of France. Free French movement begins to organize under General Charles de Gaulle. Resistance movement began to form within France. General Charles de Gaulle. Two years of the Axis Triumph. Vichy Government Marshal Petain: Following the German invasion of France in 1940, Pétain was recalled to active military service as adviser to the minister of war. He asked the Germans for an armistice, which was concluded on June 22. On July 2, with the collaboration of the Germans, he established his government in Vichy in central France. He ruled with dictatorial powers over that portion of France not directly under German control. Marshal Petain Two years of the Axis Triumph. Pierre Laval was the Prime Minister of Vischy Government. Liberty Equality Fraternity was banned. French fascist groups move into control. Collaborted with the Nazis to integrate Vichy France into the new order. Sent French workers as slaves to Germany. Sent French Jews to Germany. Two years of the Axis Triumph. The Vichy government ruled with Germany's approval, appointing all government officials, controlling the press, and practicing arbitrary arrests. Two years of the Axis Triumph. Italy attacked France in the south when it was clear Hitler was in control of the north. Turned on Greece. Moved against the British in Africa The Axis powers control as much of Europe as Napoleon did Continental system. POW (Prisoner of war) camps as slave labor. Many European citizens were aligned with the ideals of Nazi Germany. When Germany invaded USSR 500,000 non-Germans fought in the army. Two years of the Axis Triumph. The Battle of Britain and American Aid US began to send arms and supplies to Britain German air raids were eventually repelled by the RAF (Royal Air Force). RADAR. Enigma (German machine code for sending messages) was discover by the British. Morale of the civilian population was not broken. Germany began to shift its attention to Russia. RAF Enigma Two years of the Axis Triumph. The Nazi Invasion of Russia: The Russian Front, June 22, 1941. USSR was expanding in the Baltic and the Balkans. Regaining territory lost in WWI Germany threw support into the Balkans and prevented USSR from expanding to the Mediterranean. Two years of the Axis Triumph June 22,1941. Germany invaded USSR. By the fall Germany stood outside the Gates. Leningrad. Sebastopol. Moscow. Two years of the Axis Triumph. Winter approached. Stalin launched a counter offensive. Military complex was located east of the Urals. Hitler refocused on the south. Sebastopole fell. Battle of Stalingrad. Albert Speer directed the war effort and tripled German war production. Ural Mountains Two years of the Axis Triumph. 1942, the Year of Dismay: Russia, North Africa, the Pacific. German advance into USSR was not producing needed resources. Scorched earth retreat of USSR army. Shift of military complex to east of Urals. Guerilla attacks by Soviet resistance forces. North African campaign Britain displaced Italian forces and controlled the Suez. Germany under Rommel was threatening to control the canal. General Erwin Rommel Two years of the Axis Triumph. Germany was making gains around the Mediterranean and through the Caucasus. Germany might have linked up with Japanese forced moving westward through China. Two years of the Axis Triumph. The Japanese attacked on Pearl Harbor (called Hawaii Operation). The Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941 (December 8 in Japan). The attack aimed to prevent action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions. Two years of the Axis Triumph 12/8/1941 U.S. declared war on Japan Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S. Japan expanded quickly and received significant support from anti-western factions in the territories they moved into. 1942 was the worst period of the war for the western countries. Japan and Germany seemed unstoppable. The United States enters the War. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, brought the United States into the war. Churchill went to Washington at one to begin military planning with Roosevelt. Their meeting in January 1942, codenamed Arcadia, was the first of a long series of their interests around a common strategy. American military planners joined their their British counterparts in the combined Chiefs of Staff Committee. The United States enters the War. ‘Europe first’ strategy: the Allied forces decided to concentrate on defeating Hitler before dealing with Japan. Twenty-four other nations (including the Soviet Union and China) joined the British and Americans in the United Nations declaration . The countries pledging their ‘full resources’’ to ‘complete victory over their enemies’ Soviet survival, 1941-1943 At Stalingrad at the end of 1942, the Soviets were able to turn the tide. In November, a German army advanced into the streets of Stalingrad, the principal city of the lower Volga River and gateway to the oil-rich Caucasus region. The Soviet troops clung to Stalingrad, street by street and house by house, while the Soviet command launched encircling counterattacks under the cover of oncoming winter. Soviet survival, 1941-1943 When Hitler refused to allow the surrounded German force in Stalingrad even the slightest strategic retreat, the entire sixth army was taken prisoner along with its commander, Field Marshal Frederich Paulus, on February, 2, 1943. It was the first time in history that a German field marshal had been captured in Battle. During the same weeks, at the northern end of the eastern front, on the Baltic sea, Soviet troops managed to open a precarious supply rout into Leningrad, which had been tightly ringed by German forces for 506 days Soviet survival, 1941-1943 The Germans pushed forward once again on several fronts in the spring of 1943, but the Soviets were able to gain their first summer victory in the great tank battle of Kursk-Orel in July 1943. From the summer of 1943 on, the Soviets began the relentless advance that brought them to the 1939 Polish frontier by February 1944. Soviet survival, 1941-1943 From there they entered central Europe just as the Western Allies were embarking on the French coast. With the elimination of Germany and Japan in 1945, for the first time no major powers stood across Soviet paths to the east and West. What had brought the Soviet Union to this position? How had it survived? Three basic Soviets achievements: Industrial reconstruction, mass public support, the emergence of new officer talent. Soviet survival seems to have been more a product of internal resources than of outside assistance in the form of Western aid and Nazi errors. Atomic weapons The Japan declared that they were determined to continue the war. The United States in order to stop them, they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima ( 6 August 1945) and on Nagasaki (9 August 1945), the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and the Japanese government surrendered to the United States and its allies. The nuclear age had begun with the first military use of atomic weapons. Atomic weapons Europe after 1945 Europe in 1945 was an even more desolate landscape than it had been in 1918. Although proportionally fewer soldiers had died in Europe during the faster moving Second War, civilians had suffered far more bitterly. Strategic bombing and the sweep of motorized armies made major battlefields of cities. More English civilians than soldiers were killed between June 1940 and September 1941 during the Battle of Britain. Europe after 1945 About 35,000 German perished in the firebombing of Dresden of February 13, 1945, the most civilians killed in any single action of the European war. The Soviet Union suffered the highest casualty rate of all the belligerents, perhaps 7 million civilians and 11 million soldiers killed. In all, 18 million European noncombatants died from bombing, shelling, disease, malnutrition, overwork, and outright genocide between 1939. Camp for "Displaced Persons" from Russia (1945-46) References Gombrich, E., H. A little history of the world. 2nd edition, 2008. Paxton, O.,R., 1997. Europe in the Twentieth Century.