by Vern, Steven
This is exactly what occurred. Though there were significant British and French counter-attacks (one led by a forward thinking, and as yet unknown French general named de Gaulle, who would become the leader of the French Resistance), the Germans had the Allies beat almost before the fighting even began.
On May 10, 1940, two important events occurred. The Germans invaded Western Europe, and in Britain, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister. By the end of May, the Germans had almost the entire BEF and some of the French trapped on the northern French coast at Dunkirk.
To this day, historians debate exactly why Hitler told his tanks and troops to halt outside of Dunkirk. Some say it was because he wanted to give his troops time to regroup. Others say that he wanted to offer the British a peace overture of sorts, the thinking being that if the British people realized that Hitler could have destroyed the BEF and did not, they might force their government to come to terms with Germany. Other historians believe that Hitler, believing that the British were a Germanic people, never wanted to wage war against England in the first place, and was reluctant to destroy the troops at Dunkirk. Still others say that the German Air Force (“Luftwaffe”) chief, Field Marshal Hermann Goering (Hitler's second-in-command), wanted to have the chance to destroy the British himself and talked Hitler into letting him try. Some say Hitler was reluctant to expose his troops to the direct fire of the Royal Navy.
Each of these groups of historians have valid points to make, but we may never know exactly why Hitler did not order his troops into the Dunkirk bridgehead. We just know that he did not, and because of this, and because of the heroism of the British army, navy, and people, over 300,000 BEF soldiers and many Frenchmen were rescued from the beaches and brought back to England to fight another day. Some of these soldiers were taken off the beaches and/or back home by small privately owned fishing and sailing vessels, all eager to do their part.
The “Miracle at Dunkirk” was made out in the British press to be a small victory in the midst of a large defeat, but in a speech to Parliament, British Prime Minister Churchill warned the rest of the nation and the free world in one of the most famous speeches in human history:
“... Nevertheless, our thankfulness at the escape of our Army and so many men, whose loved ones have passed through an agonizing week, must not blind us to the fact that what has happened in France and Belgium is a colossal military disaster...Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
The world was stunned at the German victory that came in just 6 short weeks. France had a larger army (and better tanks) than the Germans, but they were fighting like it was 1914 when it was 1940.
In Great Britain, people prepared for a German invasion, which Hitler promised would come roaring across the English Channel at them after they rejected any notion of surrender. Churchill told the world that the British were waiting for “the long promised invasion – so are the fishes”, and the British steeled themselves to fight or die.
Over the summer and early fall of 1940, the Battle of Britain was fought over the skies of England. During the course of the battle, tens of thousands of people were injured, made homeless, and tens of thousands were killed, especially in the London area, but the Royal Air Force managed to keep control of the skies above their nation. They did this with fortitude, skill, daring, excellent fighter planes (the Hawker Hurricane and the amazing Spitfire), and a new development, radar, which helped them spot German attacks before they got over England. The fact that they were flying over their home country, could land, re-fuel, and fight again in short order also gave them an advantage over the Germans.
Now ruling over much of Western Europe and Poland, but frustrated in his attempt to bring the British to their knees, Hitler focused on other plans. His main objective was to take the war into the Soviet Union, but his ally, Mussolini, kept interfering with Hitler's timetable.
CHAPTER 5:
SOUTHEAST EUROPE
AND AFRICA
Benito Mussolini had come to power in Italy in the early 1920's, when Hitler and his party were meeting in basements in Munich. For some time, Hitler idolized the Italian leader, and copied much of the Duce's (the Italian for “Leader”) style, but by 1940, Mussolini and Italy were a distant second in power to Germany. This bothered the Italian leader in the extreme and he wanted to do something about it – desperately.
Italy declared war on France almost as the German invasion was ending and managed to grab for itself a chunk of French territory on the Italian border, the Riviera, a great place for overrated Italian officers to vacation.
Churchill, President Roosevelt in the United States, and other leaders called Mussolini a “jackal” for letting the Germans do the dirty work, then falling upon France as she died to rip off a piece of her corpse. Even their German allies were not impressed.
All of this rankled Mussolini, who wanted glory of his own. In September 1940, as the Germans tried to bomb England into surrender, the Italians attacked the British protectorate of Egypt from their colony of Libya. They also tried to push north into Egypt from Somalia and conquer the British colony of Kenya. In all of these endeavors, they failed – miserably.
The main battles took place in the deserts of Egypt and Libya. Here, nearly 150,000 Italian troops faced 30,000 British and Commonwealth (Australians, New Zealanders, Indians) soldiers, and were soundly defeated. Actually, as the Italians moved into Egypt, they were attacked and defeated by the smaller British Imperial force, whose spirit is captured in this famous photo of Australians on the attack:
Italian reinforcements could not stop the British (who were better led, equipped, and motivated), and Mussolini was forced to ask Hitler for help. He sent a general who had helped to spearhead the drive across the France and had been a hero in WWI: Erwin Rommel, soon to be named “The Desert Fox” by the British in grudging respect.
While Italian troops made a mess of things in the desert, they did the same in southern Europe. In the spring of 1939, Mussolini conquered Albania (many of whose troops fired muskets). In October 1940, the Italians presented neighboring Greece with an ultimatum to surrender. To this, the ruling general in Greece simply replied “No.” (To this day, October 28th is celebrated as “Ohi Day”, or “‘‘No’ Day” in Greece.)
The Italians invaded...and the Greeks pushed them back into Albania. Another humiliating loss for Mussolini. Privately, Hitler was fuming. Mussolini's failures were confusing things and Hitler could not afford to let one of his “powerful” allies be defeated. In the spring of 1941, Hitler invaded the Balkan nation of Yugoslavia in a brutal campaign, and attacked Greece, swiftly defeating the British and Greek troops there. It was a decisive German victory, but the campaign may have cost Germany the war, which will be explained in a coming chapter.
In the desert, Erwin Rommel drove the British back from the gains they had achieved against the Italians in 1940, despite being outnumbered by the now reinforced British. The enemies in Africa would fight along an over 1,000 mile long battlefield, with the Germans finally being pushed back into an ever smaller corner of Tunisia in 1943, sandwiched between the British under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery from the east and the Americans (who entered the war in late 1941 and landed
in North Africa in November 1942) from the west.
CHAPTER 6:
MEN BECOME ANIMALS
Every May in Russia, the Ukraine, and many of the other nations of the former Soviet Union, the end of WWII is celebrated. In Great Britain, America, and France, the end of the war is usually remarked upon in the news, with perhaps a small parade or two somewhere, an old veteran is spoken to, and then the news moves on with its next story. In the former Soviet Union, Victory Day is perhaps the biggest national occasion of the year. Gigantic military parades take place and the still surviving veterans (both men and women, for everyone fought in this war of survival) are given pride of place on the reviewing stand.
The “Great Patriotic War” as it is referred to in Russia and elsewhere in the former U.S.S.R., cost the lives of an estimated 20 million people. 20 million. Together, Great Britain, France, and the United States lost an estimated 1 million. The city of Leningrad experienced those losses alone.
This is not to say that the losses of the Western Allies and the other nations of Europe were any less tragic, but to put things in perspective.
When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941, he made no bones about why: to conquer western Russia and the Ukraine for German colonization. The people who lived there had a choice: flee east of the Ural Mountains, live as slaves in their own homeland, or die. Many retreated to fight again. Many stayed behind the lines and fought a guerrilla war, many of those captured died as slaves in the most gruesome ways possible. Those not captured fought on, and most never gave up hope.
For the Nazis, the war in the U.S.S.R. was a racial and ideological war. The U.S.S.R. was the home of communism, which preached (even if it didn't practice) the equality of all people. That was not what the Nazis were about. The Soviet Union was also home to millions of Jews, whom the Nazis believed were the mortal enemies of the German people. Lastly, the bulk of the Soviet population were Slavs, who the Nazis believed were little more than animals, fit only for labor or death.
In the summer and into the fall of 1941, the Nazis drove further and further into the U.S.S.R. In the Ukraine, they were at first welcomed as liberators, but that notion quickly faded away as the residents realized that the Germans had no intention of treating most of them as anything but forced labor.
For the first months of the war, hundreds of thousands, actually, millions of Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner. Over 500,000 were killed, many of them in the same camps as those designed for the elimination of the Jews.
Hitler and many of his staff believed that the Soviets would fall shortly; it was just a matter of time. But time was not on the Germans’ side. Remember the discussion about Greece and Yugoslavia and how Hitler came to Mussolini's aid? Now that figured in big time. Hitler had planned his attack on the U.S.S.R. for mid-spring, when the weather cleared up. This would also give his armies more time to advance before the next winter set in. By delaying his timetable, Mussolini may have cost Hitler the war.
Because in October and November, as the Germans were approaching the Soviet capital of Moscow, bad weather set in. Not Western European or American bad weather. Russian bad weather – the kind that destroyed the army of Napoleon in the 19th century.
The German Army, despite the warnings of some in the high command, were unprepared for the cold weather of the Russian winter. Men froze solid. Frostbite claimed noses, fingers, toes, feet, and hands. Guns froze and tank engines had to be kept running all night.
The Russian soldiers suffered, too, though they were more prepared for the cold than their enemy. And they had another benefit – there were more of them. Much more. And Hitler didn't know it, until too late.
In the 1930s, the Soviets and the Japanese fought a series of border battles in northern China/southern Siberia. The Japanese lost each one to a Soviet general named Zhukov. In 1941, the Soviets kept an entire army of hundreds of thousands of men in the Far East in case the Japanese wanted another go. They did not. A Soviet spy in Tokyo told the Red Army High Command that the Japanese were going to attack eastward, against the United States (an equally large mistake), and not against Russia. Though Stalin doubted the word of his spy, his generals convinced him that the spy’s reports were believable and Stalin ordered the transfer of the Soviets’ Siberian armies to the west. When Pearl Harbor took place on December 7th, 1941, Stalin knew he did not have to worry about the Japanese.
And so the Soviets counter-attacked in front of Moscow. Some German soldiers reported seeing the spires of the Kremlin just before hundreds of thousands of screaming Soviets and thousands of tanks came roaring out of the snow at them. That was the last time they would see Moscow. Of course, large numbers of Germans were taken prisoner and paraded through Moscow's streets – most of them were later shot or worked to death.
Though the Soviets pushed the Germans back from Moscow, and inflicted a defeat that Hitler did not think possible, the Germans rallied and eventually stopped the Soviet advance. At this point in time, the Red Army was still made up of inexperienced conscripts and led by men who were more afraid of failing Stalin than they were of Hitler. That would change in the next year, but until then, the Germans would continue to besiege the second Soviet city, Leningrad, and in the spring, plan an offensive that would lead to the most important battle of the war.
When spring time came and the weather warmed up, the Germans began an offensive in the south, in Ukraine and southern Russia. Their goal was two-fold: cut the Volga River (an important supply route) off at the city of Stalingrad, and seize the oil fields of the Caucasus.
When they began their offensive, they advanced in the same way they had the previous summer. Miles upon miles per day. Many forgot about the defeats of the winter, chalking them up to the weather and vowing to defeat the Russians this summer.
But the Germans began to notice something. At least the everyday fighting soldiers did. The Russians were learning to fight. They had always been tough – after they learned the fate of many of those taken prisoner by the Germans, many would die by their own hand before being taken prisoner by the Nazis, but not before they took as many Germans with them as they could. They also learned to retreat in an orderly fashion, to fight another day.
And the Soviets had tanks, and their tanks were much better than the Germans had initially believed. The main Soviet tank was the “T-34”. It was a simple design, but had sloping armor, which better protected it, a powerful 76mm gun, a rugged engine, and wide tracks to move through mud and snow better. When the war began, most German tanks were nowhere near as good. That did change, but the T-34 caused dread in the German Army, especially because the Soviets eventually made nearly 100,000 of them. German production of all tanks and self-propelled guns did not reach 70,000, and these were dispersed to all parts of Europe and North Africa.
The German tankers and infantrymen were highly trained and efficient (and German tanks like the Panther (a German rendition of the T-34) and the Tiger took a very heavy toll on the Soviets) and inflicted tremendous casualties on the Red Army. The Soviets could afford it. The Germans could not.
When they reached Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army and the Soviets engaged in one of the most brutal battles in the history of the world. Over 1 million people were killed in the city and its suburbs over the course of 5 months. Divide 1 million by 150 days. See what you get.
In late November, the Soviets, who had secretly massed large numbers of troops and guns to the north and south of the city, opened their counter-offensive. Soon, the German forces inside Stalingrad were trapped. It was winter, sometimes -40° F, and all rescue attempts failed. Though they fought hard, the Germans inside Stalingrad had no chance. When they surrendered in January, 90,000 went into captivity. Only 5,000 made it back to Germany 10 years later.
Stalingrad was the turning point of the war. There were other incredible and important battles, including D-Day, but after Stalingrad, Germany's fate was virtually sealed. The next spring, the Germans launched one final offensive in t
he East at Kursk, and fought the largest tank battle in history with the Soviets, but the loss there cemented their fate for sure. Though it took another 2 years of extraordinarily hard and brutal fighting for the Soviets to reach Berlin, and they did have massive amounts of help to do it, especially in supply, the Germans never went on the offensive again.
CHAPTER 7:
HOLOCAUST
This book is being written for people who want to know more about WWII, starting with the bare minimum. Hundreds of millions of pages have been written about the Holocaust, and I encourage you to read them, perhaps starting with The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert.
Still, I would not feel right if I did not write at least a couple of pages on this most terrible event in history.
During the defeats that were taking place on battlefields in Africa, Russia, and France, Hitler and his regime devoted tremendous amounts of manpower, money, time, and resources to their one main goal, which was to destroy the Jews of Europe. Trains heading to the Eastern Front with men and supplies were sometimes halted or stalled for days while the tracks they used transported millions of Jews to their deaths in extermination camps.
Many people forget that the Holocaust began long before Auschwitz was built. The first gas chambers of Auschwitz came into use in 1940 on a small scale, but the larger chambers were not fully utilized until 1942. And there were other camps (Sobibor, Treblinka, Chelmno, Belzec, and Majdanek) that were built and used before Auschwitz. These camps claimed over a million victims themselves.
