Tag: world-war-ii
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History of Postwar Germany: 1947-1949.
The consolidation of Soviet controls in Eastern Europe continued, and this process culminated in the coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, which did not have a fully communist government before this time. Non-communist leaders in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania had been eliminated by terrorism, faked trials and political purges by the end…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. VII.
Troops from over twenty countries enlisted to serve in the German military, which numbered as many as a million international volunteers in various formations. The SS international volunteers joined the war effort to take action against the Soviet Union that had invaded their home countries and Soviet authorities ruthlessly established their control. Although German…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. VI.
American troops crossed the Elbe at Magdeburg on 12 April and occupied the city on 18 April and then Leipzig on 19 April, while Free French forces occupied Stuttgart on 20 April. German troops defending the economically vital Ruhr industrial region were surrounded during this time, and an American advance toward Hagen cut the Ruhr…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. V.
The advance through northwestern Germany thereafter by penetrating the defensive Siegfried Line. Further advances into northwestern Germany took place in the face of stiff resistance against Montgomery’s British Second Army, with Osnabrück falling on 4 April, prior to advancing to Bremen and then Lauenburg. The final British offensive culminated in the battle of Hamburg…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. IV.
Marshalling all available resources for Nazi Germany’s war effort was managed by Albert Speer, the chief architect of the NSDAP was responsible for overseeing war damage repairs caused by aerial bombing with conscripted forced labour composed of Jews and political prisoners from throughout Nazi-occupied Europe, and prisoners-of-war put to work in agriculture and industry.…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. III.
The excessively bitter street fighting at Stalingrad continued while the German forces’ supplies diminished, and the Soviets managed to launch a counteroffensive on 19 November, Operation Uranus, that trapped 220,000 German troops of the Sixth Army that occupied ninety percent of the city in what became a defensive cauldron, which Hitler refused to allow to…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. II.
Nazi Germany launched large-scale air attacks on Britain to defeat the Royal Air Force (RAF) beginning in August, before a seaborne invasion could be attempted, first against military targets, including air fields and radar station installations, and then against British cities to first secure air superiority, and also to weaken the British resolve to stay…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. I.
Nazi Germany continued pursuing an aggressive foreign policy of making territorial acquisitions, and British authorities advised Germany that Poland would receive their assistance in the event of an invasion to further revise the Treaty of Versailles to reclaim former German territory. Nevertheless, Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and forced a collapse in four…
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History of National Socialist Germany: 1936-1939.
It was apparent that the Stresa front was ineffective, which prompted Hitler to take an audacious risk on 7 March 1936 by advancing German troops into the Rhineland in the interest of re-establishing military control of sovereign German territory. This was a violation of the Treaty of Versailles that had designated this region as…
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History of National Socialist Germany: 1933-1936.
Hitler as a charismatic figure who was presented through propaganda as bringing hope for the future and his appointment as chancellor was initially supported with euphoric optimism among the German population as a result of the preceding fourteen years of nearly continuous political and economic crises. Generating support for the regime that pledged to…