The outbreak of the Second World War has been attributed to the Treaty of Versailles - and the humiliation of Germany after the defeat of the Great War - the Great Depression and nationalism. We could also add Adolf Hitler’s desire to expand German territories and his vision of the world. Adolf Hitler was born on April 20th 1889, in Braunau-am-Inn, Austria, a town near to the Austro-German border where his father, Alois Schickelgruber (who changed his family name to Hitler in 1876), worked as a customs officer. Among Hitler’s ancestry, there were mostly Austrians, and some people of Polish origins who were Christians. Hitler claims that he became anti-Semitic while living in Vienna, between 1909 and 1913. In Vienna, he came into contact with Vienna’s Jewish minority (which at the time consisted of about 10% of the population), and there, he witnessed the re-election of the Mayor, a man named Lueger, who was deeply anti-Semitic. During the Great War, although he was an Austrian, Hitler served with the German army. After the war, during the first years of the Weimar Republic (1919-1923), Hitler moved to Munich and became part of a plot to overthrow the government (Beer Hall Putsch of November 9, 1923). In the fall of 1920, Hitler founded the Ordnertruppen105 (the Storm Troopers or Brown Shirts); a body of ex-soldiers, and beer-hall brawlers in order to protect him from Communist disruptions while he was addressing the public during Nazi Party gatherings and they were part of the putsch. Only the putsch failed because Hitler didn’t have the support of the army or the police. While in prison (1923-1928), Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Then, once he was out of prison, between 1928 and 1929, Hitler reconstituted the Nazi party, and after the crash of the United States stock market in 1929, Hitler saw his chance to rise to power as the economy was in chaos and all political parties were sharply divided. On January 30, 1933, Hitler was named Chancellor (Prime Minister) of Germany. In 1934, Adolf Hitler became Führer (Leader) of Germany as the head of the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP), better known as the Nazi Party. Hitler’s first goal was to rebuild the German economy and the German military and to eliminate all those he considered to be “undesirables” as stated in the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. These laws led to questions about who was a Jew. A full Jew was identified as someone with three Jewish grandparents. Jews with fewer Jewish grandparents were designated as Mischlinge. Only, the Nuremberg laws were followed by additional decrees, which outlawed Jews entirely and deprived them of human rights. Eventually, his “nationalistic
105 “It originally functioned as a group of bodyguards to enforce order at Nazi gatherings. It was shortly changed to
Sportabteilung, a cover name meaning "Sports section," and came to be known by the initials SA. In late 1921, the name was changed to the final version: Sturmabteilung” or S.A. (Stormtroopers or Brown Shirts).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
The Hitler Youth was founded one year after the Sturmabteilung.
philosophy” and the madness of his co-leaders caused the murder of over 12 million people, including about 6 million Jews106. But Hitler was never tried for his crimes, as the Allied powers were reaching Berlin, on April 30th, 1945, Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker, with his wife Eva Braun, and the following day, Goebbels and his family also killed themselves. Heinrich Himmler committed suicide in Barnstedt. The Third Reich107 (third Empire) collapsed shortly after.
The Second World War was a global conflict that engulfed countries on every continent. First, Hitler started by linking with his native country. He announced the Anschluss (a union) with Austria on March 12, 1938. Then, Hitler began to attack the German and Austrian Jews. On November 9108 and 10, 1938, across Germany and Austria, Nazi storm troopers (Brown Shirts) vandalized and looted Jewish stores, destroying over 7000 Jewish businesses and burning down 101 synagogues. They attacked Jews, murdering at least 91 persons. 26,000 Jewish men and boys were arrested and sent to concentration camps109. In Mein Kamp, Hitler's philosophy had been made clear. After Kristallnacht (the night of the broken glass), it was evident that he intended to execute his plan and rid the world of those he considered undesirable110: Jews111, Jehovah’s Witnesses112, Communists113, Gypsies114, Poles115, Slavs, Black Africans, handicapped people, homosexuals and mentally ill persons116.
106 “Lucy Davidowicz used prewar census figures to estimate that 5.934 million Jews died. Using official census counts may
cause an underestimate since many births and deaths were not recorded in small towns and villages. Another reason some
consider her estimate too low is that many records were destroyed during the war. Her listing of deaths by country is available in the article about her book, The War Against the Jews.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Jehovah.27s_Witnesses
107 Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the control of the
National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as chancellor and head of state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Reich
108 This event is known as Kristallnacht.
109 http://www.geocities.com/nstix/holocaustii.html
110 This plan was called the "Final Solution."
111 Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
112 “Around 2,000 Jehovah's Witnesses perished in concentration camps.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Jehovah.27s_Witnesses
113 About 100.000 Communists were exterminated by the Nazis.
114 “About 220,000 Sinti and Roma died in the Holocaust (some estimates are as high as 800,000), between a quarter to a half of the European population.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
115 1.9 million Gentile Poles were killed. 3.5 million Polish Jews were exterminated.
116 Several thousand ill persons were murdered. “Around 400.000 were sterilized”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
On October 1938, Hitler proceeded with the expansion of German territories. He annexed the Sudetenland117, because three million Germans lived in that part of Czechoslovakia. Hoping they could prevent a war, the Western powers asked the Czechs to comply with Germany. Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, met with Hitler in Berchtesgaden, on September 15, where they discussed the cession of the Sudetenland, and then in Godesberg on September 22 to confirm the agreements. The Munich Agreement approving the cession of the Sudetenland was signed by Edouard Daladier (the French president) Georges Bonnet (the French foreign minister), Neville Chamberlain and Benito Mussolini, on September 29. Forced to abide by the agreement, the Czechoslovak government capitulated on September 30. Reassured that the British and the French would not react militarily, Hitler felt encouraged and invaded Czechoslovakia on March 16th, 1939. Next, the Germans moved toward Poland on September 1st, 1939, which resulted on a declaration of war from France, England, Australia118 and New Zeeland. The United States proclaimed neutrality, but Canada119 declared war on Germany on September 10th, 1939. On September 17th, Soviet forces invaded Poland from the east.
Crushed, Warsaw surrendered two weeks later120. The Soviets attempted then to invade Finland but without success as winter was setting in. On March 12, 1940, the Germans invaded Denmark and Norway. Ensuing these invasions, thousands of civilians and soldiers fled to France and England and many fought on the side of the Allies, but in spite of this, later, at the Teheran Conference121, the British and Americans agreed that Russia would keep the Polish lands it had annexed, and at Yalta122, in February 1945, the Allies decided that Poland would be left within the Soviet Union. After the German invasion, the Poles formed a government-in-exile with Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz as President and General Wladyslaw Sikorski as Prime Minister. Following the German-Soviet Pact, Poland was split;
117 Sudetenland: It was the name used from 1938–45 for the region inhabited mostly by Sudeten Germans in areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and parts of Silesia. (Only part of the region included the Sudeten mountains). In 1918–38 and after 1945, the region belonged to Czechoslovakia (Now, since 1993 it is in the Czech Republic). In 1945, following the Benesˇ decrees (signed by president Edward Benesˇ), the Czech forced people of German ethnicity who lived in the Sudetenland to vacate their homes. These decrees were prepared by the government in exile in London.
118 Almost a million Australians, both men and women, served in the Second World War.
119 “Canada had enlisted more than one million men and women in her armed forces. Of these, more than 45,000 gave their lives in the cause of peace and freedom.”
http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=history/secondwar/canada2/epilogue
120 The History of Poland: The Second World War. http://www.kasprzyk.demon.co.uk/www/WW2.html
121 The Tehran Conference took place in Iran between November 28 and December 1, 1943. Joseph Stalin, Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill attended the conference.
122 The conference took place in Yalta, Crimea (USSR). It was attended by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.
the Soviets took the Eastern half of the country, which comprised Byelorussia and the West part of Ukraine, and the Germans absorbed Pomerania, Posnania and Silesia, therefore, only a small part of the country remained, a colony ruled from Krakow by Hans Frank, a Nazi. Polish Jews were transferred to ghettos and Poles of German ethnicity, the Volksdeutsche were conscripted into the German army. Two thousand camps were established in Poland, including the extermination camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz, where over four million people were murdered.
In June 1940, the Germans started their move to the west. In May 1940, German troops marched into the Netherlands123 and Belgium124. On June 14th, 1940, the Germans entered Paris and two days later, Maréchal Pétain became France’s Prime Minister with Laval as Minister of State, and Vichy became the provisional capital of the non-occupied zone. In exile in London, General Charles De Gaulle organizes a Free French Force in Britain and in the French colonies of North Africa. The Germans made a million and a half French prisoners of war. And, at that point, in France, a number of statutes were passed against Jews that were similar to the Nuremberg Racial Laws, as a result, for the “undesirable people” of fascist-led European countries finding a safe-heaven was becoming increasingly difficult, as visas were hard to obtain. Only one port in the world remained open to those who could reach it and this was Shanghai, in Japan occupied China. In fact, as Fascists were gaining ground in Europe, in the East, the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China on July 7th 1937 (marking the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War). In 1935, because of the Japanese invasion of China and believing that war was imminent in the Pacific, President Roosevelt asked Douglas MacArthur to mobilize defenses in the Philippines. The United States entered the Pacific War (1937-1945) after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
But as the United States were getting involved in the Pacific, in Europe, Hitler was making a tactical error. After the defeat of the French and British on French soil, instead of progressing across the Channel, Hitler switched his focus and invaded Russia on June 22, 1941. This was known as Operation
123 After the German invasion of the Netherlands, a civil administration was installed under SS control. Arthur Seyss-Inquart
was appointed Reich Commissar and an administration that supervised the Dutch civil service. This arrangement was to prove
dramatic for the Jews of the Netherlands. Many were sent to the extermination camps of Mathausen and Buchenwald.
“Germans and their Dutch collaborators deported 107,000 Jews, mostly to Auschwitz and Sobibor, where they were murdered.
Only 5,200 survived. In addition, 25,000-30,000 Jews went into hiding, assisted by the Dutch underground. Two-thirds of
Dutch Jews in hiding managed to survive.” http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005436
124 King Leopold III gave the order to surrender and refused to flee with officials to form a government-in-exile in England.
Barbarossa125 (1941-1945), and it turned into a failure for Germany because even if the countries in the East were poorly armed, the Red Army was one of the largest in the world, and Stalin had amassed large numbers of troops on his Western front in case Germany should attack. Hitler thought he would win easily against the Russians. His policy regarding the Slavs and the Soviet Union was to starve the people and to enslave them. He wanted to colonize the East and replace the existing population with Germans. Instead, the battles in the East were brutal. During the battle of Kiev alone, the Germans made 650.000 prisoners. As they had with Napoleon I, the Soviets – who wear fighting The Great Patriotic War - carried out a scorched earth policy. The Germans reached Leningrad by August 1941 and could not advance. And when part of the German armies reached Moscow, winter had set in, roads were impassable and the Germans had severely underestimated the Soviet defense.
Toward the summer of 1942, when it became evident to the Allies that the Germans would not cross the Channel, they decided to invade North Africa. This would allow The British, the Canadians and the Americans to enlist the help of the French colonies of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco and neutralize the Axis forces in Lybia that were threatening Egypt. The German and Italian Axis forces in North Afica were controlled by Marshal Erwin Rommel. The Germans and the Italians surrendered to the Allied forces on May 12, 1943, then, on July 10, 1943, the Allies, under the command of General Patton, invaded Sicily. The victory in Sicily brought Mussolini’s defeat, and the Allied troops moved into Italy on September 3, 1943. The Italian campaign lasted from 1943 until 1945. During that time, the Allies, under the command of General Dwight Eisenhower, were also planning and amphibious attack on the shores of Normandy, which took place on June 6, 1944 and is known as D-Day. As the German army was still fighting on the Eastern front, the Allied progressed rapidly toward the north of France. September 11, troops from the southern and northern Allied forces met near Dijon and continued their march toward Germany. In December 1944, Hitler ordered to halt the Allied advance, and both armies faced each other in The Battle of the Bulge. However, the German armies could not hold back the Allied troops and they crossed into Germany. In the East, the Soviets were also advancing and they reached Berlin in April 1945. In his bunker, Hitler chose to kill himself, and Germany fell a few days later. Mussolini also died in April 1945 while attempting to escape into Switzerland. As both Allied armies advanced into Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia, they reached various camps, including the extermination camps and uncovered horrors of unimaginable levels perpetrated by people who had been considered to belong to the most sophisticated and civilized nation in the world.
125 Named after Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire.
The war ended in Europe with the surrender of Germany on May 8t, 1945 and in Asia when Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945 after the bombings of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945). After the war, China became the People’s Republic of China (following the Communist takeover), and Japan became a democracy.
Over sixty million soldiers and civilians perished during the Second World War. Tens of thousands were maimed and ill and millions of people were displaced by the war and its aftermath.
Following the war, the world was partitioned into the Western sphere of influence and the Soviet Sphere of influence. Western Europe aligned as NATO, and Eastern Europe aligned as the countries of the Warsaw Pact. These alliances led to the Cold War and a separation of the Eastern Block from the Western Block.
(S.M.C. January 2006)
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External links:
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Air_Power/Russia/AP21.htm http://www.cia.gov/csi/studies/vol48no2/article12.html
Sujets de discussion
1. Quels événements mènent à la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale ? 2. Quels étaient les pays Alliés ?
3. Quels étaient les pays membres de l’Axe ? 4. Qui était au pouvoir en France en 1939 ?
5. A quels pays appartenaient les « trois grands » : Winston Churchill, Joseph Staline et Franklin D.
Roosevelt ?
6. Quels sont les pays que les Allemands envahissent en premier ?