WWII Overview

World War Two was the most destructive and violent war in human history. Fifty-four countries were involved in the war by its end. 110 million people were mobilized for military service. Between 50 – 60 million people (2.5% of the world population) were killed (more civilians were killed than soldiers). In addition, millions more were physically or psychologically wounded by the war, or lost homes, families and friends. The exact numbers of the human cost of the war is incalculable because of the massive numbers of people involved and because many nations’ records were destroyed in the war. The estimated cost of the war was 1.5 trillion dollars or $1,500,000,000,000!

The origin of World War Two was the flawed peace treaty, the Versailles Treaty, which ended World War One. The Germans were that they treaty forced Germany to take responsibility for starting World War One and to pay $33 billion in reparations to France and England for war damages. Many Germans blamed the democratic German government for the Versailles Treaty. Then millions of Germans lost their jobs and were forced to live in poverty because of the world-wide economic crisis called the Great Depression which began in 1929. Many people in Germany lost faith in democracy as a good form of government and began to look at other ideas that promised to rebuild Germany as a strong and powerful country.

Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party used this popular anger over the Depression and the Versailles Treaty to take over Germany in 1932. Hitler wanted to create a racially pure Germany in which the only people who were part of the German "race" would be allowed to live in Germany. Hitler said that everyone who was not racially “German” would be thrown out of the country, made into slaves or killed. Hitler and Nazis focused most of their hatred on Jewish people. They irrationally blamed all of Germany’s problems on the Jews. Hitler and Nazis won the German elections in 1932. Once he came to power, Hitler made himself a dictator and ruled with the support of a secret police force called the Gestapo who would imprison torture and kill anyone who opposed him. As the leader of Germany, Hitler began build up the German army with the goal of fighting a war to take over large parts of Europe and building a German empire. Once he had rebuilt the German army, Hitler began to take over neighboring countries. England and France did not try to stop Hitler from doing this because they waned to avoid another war. They were haunted by the loss of a generation of young men in World War One. In 1938, Nazi Germany took over Austria. Two months after taking over Austria, Hitler demanded that the western part of the country of Czechoslovakia be given to Germany. Britain and France agreed to give the land to Nazi Germany if Hitler promised not to take any more land. However, less than a year later, in March 1939, Hitler took over all of Czechoslovakia. After this, Britain and France said they would go to war to stop Hitler if he tried take over anymore countries.

World War Two in Europe began in September 1939, when Hitler ordered the German army to attack the country of Poland. The German army used a new military tactic called Blitzkrieg or “lightening war” in the attack on Poland. Blitzkrieg involves using airplanes and tanks to quickly attack country. Blitzkrieg was a form of mobile warfare which would defeat an enemy before they could organize a defense. The German army used Blitzkrieg tactics to avoid trench warfare that existed in World War One. It took only a few weeks for the Germans to capture Poland. The British and French did nothing to help Poland when it was attacked by Germany. Then, after defeating Poland, in the spring of 1940, Hitler ordered the German army to attack France. Again, the German army used Blitzkrieg tactics to defeat both the French and British armies in a few weeks. France was forced to surrender to Germany. However, the British were able to rescue their army from France before it was totally destroyed by the Germans. After the defeat of France, Britain was alone in its war against Nazi Germany. Winston Churchill, the new leader of Britain described this period as the country's "darkest hour". However, Churchill was opposed to surrendering to Nazi Germany and he rallied the British people to fight against Hitler’s Germany. Hitler was determined to defeat Britain and ordered the German air force to attack Britain in daily bombing raids to prepare for an invasion of Britain. The bombing raids were devastating and some parts of London, the British capital, were reduced to ruins. In the fall of 1940, the British air force fought back in the Battle of Britain and was able defeat the larger German air force. British victory in the Battle of Britain caused Hitler to give up his plans to invade Britain, and was the first major defeat for the Germans in the war. After this defeat, Hitler tried to defeat Britain by using German submarines to sink ships carrying war supplies and food to Britain.

Unable to conquer Britain, Hitler next turned to attack the Soviet Union (Russia). Hitler wanted to turn the area of Russia into German “living space” and make the people of Russia in German slaves. Hitler used the racist term “sub-human” to the Russians. In the summer of 1941, Hitler ordered the Germany army to invade the Soviet Union. The German army did very well In the first few months of the war and the Soviet army was unable to stop its attack. The Soviets used a “scorched-earth” policy of destroying everything before they retreated. This turned large parts of Russia into a wasteland. By the winter of 1941, the German army had reached Moscow, the Soviet capital. However, the German army was unprepared for a winter war and could not keep ups its attack in the deep snow. During the brutal winter, the Soviet arm launched counter attack and, for the first time, the German army was forced to retreat. However, when the winter ended, German army was able to attack again was able to reach the city of Stalingrad (named for the Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin). The war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was a brutally vicious war in which both sides killed prisoners of war and civilians. It is estimated that the Soviet Union lost 20 million people in the war – it lost 1.5 million people in the Battle of Leningrad (which is more people than the United States has lost in all of its wars combined).

It was during the war against the Soviet Union that Nazi Germany began the Holocaust, one of the worst genocides. Hitler and the Nazis wanted to kill all of the Jewish people in Europe. Hitler and the Nazis believed carrying out the Holocaust an important part of winning the war because their main goal was to create a racially pure society. As the German army conquered Europe, Hitler ordered that the Jewish people and anyone else he thought to be racially “undesirable” to be sent to concentration camps to be used as slave labor. Then in 1942, the Nazis held the Wannsee Conference where the Nazis decided to kill all of the Jewish people at specially built extermination camps, like Auschwitz. During the war, the Nazis killed six million Jews and four million other people they considered “sub-human”.

At the end of 1941, Japan attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor. At this point, Hitler declared war on the United States. United States had joined Britain and the Soviet Union in a group called the Allies. The United States used its strong economy to build the weapons and the British and Soviet armies used to fight against the Germans. This is the reason the United States was called “The Great Arsenal of Democracy”. World War Two was a “total war” and the countries involved in war had to put the full weight of their industry and population into the war. The United States and the Soviet Union converted their factories to make weapons and put women to work in the factories to replace the men who went into the army (the Soviet Union also put women in the army to fly planes and drive tanks). The Allied side was able to win the war because the United States, Soviet Union and Britain had more men and equipment than the Germans. The Allies coordinated their war against Nazi Germany at a series of conferences during the war. The Allies largest problem was that the United States was far away from Europe. In order to win the war, the United States needed to move its powerful army to Europe to fight Germany. The first major battle for the United States was the Battle of the Atlantic. In this battle, the United States and British navies had to destroy the German fleets of submarines that sank American ships bring war materials to Britain. The Allies were able to defeat the Germany submarines through a combination of building ships faster than German submarines could sink them and using airplanes to hunt for German submarines. By 1943, the German submarine force had been broken. After this, the United States could move its army to Britain to prepare for the invasion of Europe.

Hitler and the Nazis were not interested in negotiating an end to the war. In July 1944, members of the German army tried to assassinate Hitler as a way of ending the war. Unfortunately, they failed. After this, Hitler and the Nazis became more brutal. They sped up the Holocaust against the Jews. Hitler ordered the Germany army to fight to the death against the Soviet army that destroyed many cities in eastern Europe and to use its last reserves to attack the American army in the Battle of the Bulge. Some of the worst battles of the war happened in the last year of the war. The war in Europe ended in the spring of 1945, when the Allied armies invaded Germany. In April, 1945, Soviet army captured the German capital of Berlin and Hitler committed suicide. After this, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. The Nazi leadership who survived the war were put on trial for “waging an war of aggression” and “crimes against humanity” at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial – most were found guilty and were executed or sentenced to life in prison.

After World War Two, Germany was divided into two countries, East Germany and West Germany, and became a focal point in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. West Germany was rebuilt by the United States to be a democratic country. East Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union, which forced it to become a communist country. Because democratic West Germany was freer and more prosperous than communist East Germany, many people in East Germany tried to flee into West Germany. The East Germany government built the Berlin Wall to keep people trapped in East Germany. The Berlin Wall became a symbol of the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The weakening of the Soviet Union in the 1980's and Gorbachev's policy of perestroika, or "openness", resulted in more freedom in East Germany and ultimately in the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. After that, the two parts of Germany were allowed to reunite into a single country in 1990.