In the eyes of many
historians, the outcome of the Great War of 1914-1918 made another major
European war almost inevitable. The
refusal of many Germans to accept their country’s defeat, the instability of
the new nations created as a result of the peace settlement, the distrust
between the Soviet Union and the countries of the capitalist world, the
apparent weakness and demoralization of Britain and France, the major democratic
states of Europe, and the isolationist policy of the United States all made it
very difficult to achieve a stable consensus in European affairs.
When Adolf Hitler and his Nazi movement came to
power in 1933, the chances of war greatly increased. Hitler had promised to overturn the Versailles peace
settlement. He quickly embarked on a
policy of all-out rearmament. At
first, the western powers (Britain and France) tried to deal with Hitler
through a policy of appeasement or granting reasonable concessions, in
the hope that this would avert war.
Hitler treated each concession as an invitation to make new demands,
however. Slowly Britain and France
began their own programs of rearmament.
These were not popular at home, however, at a time when most people in
those countries still had bitter memories of the previous war and were
primarily concerned with seeing an end to the depression. Nor were either of these countries eager to
make major concessions to the Soviet Union to win its support against Hitler. As a result, Hitler and Stalin made their
own agreement, the Nazi-Soviet pact, in August 1939, and Hitler launched
the long-expected European war by invading Poland on 1 Sept. 1939.
The Second World War developed very differently from
its predecessor. The German generals
had studied the previous war carefully and come up with a military strategy to
avoid trench warfare. They combined
tanks, mobile infantry and aviation to wage what they called Blitzkrieg,
“lightning war,” aiming to break through enemy defenses quickly. This strategy succeeded in Poland and then
in France in May-June 1940: the French
army, which had stood up to the Germans for 4 years in 1914-18, was defeated in
just 6 weeks. Hitler and his Italian
ally now controlled all of western and central Europe, except Britain, and most
people expected the British to make peace with him.
Although Britain stood alone against
Hitler from June 1940 to June 1941, its government and people refused to give
in. A new prime minister, Winston
Churchill, took office; his eloquent speeches expressed a widespread
determination to stay in the war. When
an effort to bomb Britain into surrender (the “Battle of Britain”)
failed, Hitler decided to turn his attention to the Soviet Union instead. Gaining territory for Germany in eastern
Europe had always been his main ambition.
On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the
largest military campaign ever undertaken.
Knowing how unpopular Stalin’s Communist regime was with much of the
country’s population, the Germans expected a quick victory. In six months, they advanced all the way to
the suburbs of Moscow and Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg), but, despite
huge losses, the Soviet forces did not give up. The onset of winter forced the Germans to wait for the coming
year.
The invasion of Russia had also been
the signal for Hitler to initiate a policy of exterminating Europe’s Jewish
population. Now known as the Holocaust,
this campaign against unarmed civilian men, women and children has become a
symbol of the depths to which European civilization descended during the 20th
century. As the German armies advanced
in Russia, hundreds of thousands of Jews were shot. In occupied Poland, the Germans constructed extermination
camps, such as Auschwitz, where Primo Levi was held, where victims
were killed with poison gas. German
racial policies resulted in the killing of nearly 6 million Jews and some 5
million other civilians (Poles, Roma, etc.)
On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked
American and British strongholds in the Pacific, starting a new phase of the
war. Hitler declared war on the US,
knowing that US president Franklin Roosevelt was determined to come to
Britain’s aid against him. He still
hoped to win the war in Russia, but the German defeat at Stalingrad
(Nov. 42-Jan. 43) marked the definite turn of the tide. Together with the British victory against
Germany’s forces in North Africa at El Alamein and the American
landings in Morocco and Algeria (both in Nov. 1942), Stalingrad forced the
Germans on the defensive.
German resistance remained strong,
however, and Hitler imposed increasingly harsh policies on the occupied
countries of Europe to maintain control and obtain supplies for his army. This brutality undermined the efforts of
pro-German collaborators and inspired the growth of resistance movements
in occupied Europe, often led by Communists who fought both to liberate their
own countries and to aid the Soviet Union.
As the war neared its end, some feared and others hoped that Germany’s
defeat would lead to a Communist-dominated Europe.
The landing of American, British and
Canadian troops in France on D-Day, June 6, 1944 forced Germany to fight
a two-front war, but the heaviest fighting continued to be on the eastern
front, against Russia. After a setback
at the Battle of the Bulge (Dec. 44), the western allies forced their
way into Germany in early 1945, while the Russians reached Berlin. Hitler committed suicide on April 30,
1945. By this time, Allied bombing had
reduced most German cities to ruins.
The discovery of what had been done in the Nazi death camps made it seem
as though Europe was not only physically destroyed but morally bankrupt as
well.
I. The Road to War
A. Reasons for instability after WWI
B. Hitler’s policy of reversing the Versailles Treaty
1. German rearmament
2. Annexation of Austria and breakup of Czechoslovakia
3. threats to Poland and the Nazi-Soviet Pact
II. Germany’s Bid for Victory
A. the Blitzkrieg strategy
B. The fall of France (May-June 1940)
C. The ‘Battle of Britain’
D. The invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941)
E. The Holocaust
III. The Turn of the Tide
A. American entry into the war
B. Collaboration and Resistance
C. D-Day and the eastern front
D. Hitler’s defeat
IV. Postwar Prospects
A. Europe in Ashes
B. The Specter of Communism