THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II IN EUROPE
Although Germany and the Soviet Union were sworn enemies, on August 23, 1939, the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop signed a non-aggression treaty known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Only a week later, on September 1, Germany invaded Poland, marking the outbreak of World War II. On September 3, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany and British troops were sent to France. However, neither French nor British troops gave any significant assistance to the Poles during the invasion, and the German–French border, excepting the Saar Offensive, remained mostly calm. On September 17, the Soviet forces attacked Poland from the East but they remained neutral with respect to Western powers. Poland fell within five weeks and Hitler offered peace to Britain and France on the basis of recognition of German European continental dominance. On October 12, the United Kingdom formally refused.
1940 IN WESTERN EUROPE
Not until May of 1940, when Germany attacked neutral Low Countries and France, did massive military operations involving Western European powers continue (the period between the fall of Poland and the German invasion of Low Countries and France is know as "the Phoney War"). However, several critical developments occurred before May 10. By the end of September of 1939, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia succumbed to the pressure and permitted Soviet bases and troops on their territory. The Baltic Republics were eventually occupied by the Soviet army in June 1940 and annexed to the Soviet Union in August 1940. In November 1939, the Soviets attacked Finland in the Winter War. While the Soviet Union failed to annex Finland, it took over part of its territory and drew substantial benefits from the Finnish economy.
In April, Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway. The Allied troops assembled to support Finns were redirected to Norway but in June, the Allies evacuated, ceding Norway to Germany in response to the German invasion of France. In May 1940, Germany occupied Luxembourg, followed, within days, by the Netherlands and Belgium. On June 22, France signed an armistice agreement. As its result, Germany occupied northern France and the Atlantic coastline, while southern France remained under the control of a Nazi-controlled French government with capital in Vichy.
The fall of France left Britain alone among formally non-neutral states in Europe. The British rejected several covert German attempts to negotiate a peace. Germany massed their air force in northern German-occupied France to prepare the way for a possible invasion, deeming that air superiority was essential for the invasion. The operations of the Luftwaffe against the Royal Air Force became known as the Battle of Britain (according to British historians: July 10 - October 31, 1940). In July 1940, the air and sea blockade began with the Luftwaffe mainly targeting coastal shipping convoys, ports, and shipping centers. In August, the Luftwaffe shifted the attacks to RAF airfields and infrastructure. As the battle progressed, the Luftwaffe also targeted factories involved in World War II aircraft production and strategic infrastructure and, eventually, it employed terror bombing on areas of political significance and civilians.
By preventing the Luftwaffe's air superiority over UK, the British forced Adolf Hitler to postpone and eventually cancel Operation Sea Lion, a provisionally proposed amphibious and airborne invasion of Britain. However, Nazi Germany continued bombing operations on Britain, known as the Blitz. During the Blitz, all of Britain's major industrial, political, and cultural centers were heavily bombed.
Italy began operations in the European region of the Mediterranean by initiating a siege of Malta in June 1940. In October 1940, Mussolini started the Greco-Italian War driven by his jealousy of Hitler's success but within days was repulsed and pushed back into Albania (Italian protectorate since 1939). The UK responded to Greek requests for assistance by sending troops to Crete and providing air support to Greece. By late March 1941, following Bulgaria's signing of the Tripartite Pact, the Germans were in position to intervene in Greece. Plans were changed, however, because of developments in neighboring Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav government had signed the Tripartite Pact, only to be overthrown two days later by a British-encouraged coup. Hitler viewed the new regime as hostile and immediately decided to eliminate it. On April 6, Germany simultaneously invaded both Yugoslavia and Greece, making rapid progress and forcing both nations to surrender within the month. The British were driven from the Balkans after Germany conquered the Greek island of Crete by the end of May.
OPERATION BARBAROSSA
On June 22, 1941, Germany, supported by Italy and Romania, invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. They were joined shortly by Finland and Hungary. The primary targets of this surprise offensive were the Baltic region, Moscow and Ukraine, with the ultimate goal of ending the 1941 campaign near the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, from the Caspian to the White Seas. Hitler's objectives were to eliminate the Soviet Union as a military power, exterminate Communism, generate Lebensraum ("living space") by dispossessing the native population and guarantee access to the strategic resources needed to defeat Germany's remaining rivals.
Operation Barbarossa was the largest military operation in human history. Despite initial successes, the German offensive stalled on the outskirts of Moscow and was subsequently pushed back by a Soviet counteroffensive. The failure of the operation opened up the Eastern Front, to which more forces were committed than in any other theater of war in world history. The Eastern Front became the site of some of the largest battles, most horrific atrocities, and highest casualties for Soviets and Germans alike, all of which influenced the course of both World War II and the subsequent history of the 20th century.
Map of Europe at the height of German control in 1942
1942-1943
Despite considerable losses, in early 1942 Germany and its allies stopped a major Soviet offensive in central and southern Russia, keeping most territorial gains they had achieved during the previous year. By mid-November, the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad when the Soviets began their second winter counter-offensive, starting with an encirclement of German forces at Stalingrad and an assault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow, though the latter failed disastrously. By early February 1943, the German Army had taken tremendous losses. German troops at Stalingrad had been forced to surrender and the front-line had been pushed back beyond its position before the summer offensive.
Both the Germans and the Soviets spent the spring and early summer of 1943 preparing for large offensives in central Russia. On July 4, 1943, Germany attacked Soviet forces around the Kursk Bulge. Within a week, German forces had exhausted themselves against the Soviets' defenses and, for the first time in the war, Hitler cancelled the operation before it had achieved tactical or operational success. This decision was partially affected by the Western Allies' invasion of Sicily launched on July 9 which, combined with previous Italian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini later that month. Also, in July 1943 the British firebombed Hamburg killing over 40,000 people.
On July 12, 1943, the Soviets launched their own counter-offensives, thereby dispelling any chance of German victory or even stalemate in the east. The Soviet victory at Kursk marked the end of German superiority, giving the Soviet Union the initiative on the Eastern Front. On September 3, 1943, the Western Allies invaded the Italian mainland, following Italy's armistice with the Allies. Germany responded by disarming Italian forces, seizing military control of Italian areas, and creating a series of defensive lines. German special forces then rescued Mussolini, who then soon established a new client state in German occupied Italy named the Italian Social Republic, causing an Italian civil war. The Western Allies fought through several lines until reaching the main German defensive line in mid-November.
THE DEFEAT OF THE AXIS POWERS
On June 6, 1944 (known as D-Day), after three years of Soviet pressure, the Western Allies invaded France. The landings, known as Normandy landings, led to the defeat of the German Army units in France. Paris was liberated by the local resistance assisted by the Free French Forces in August and the Western Allies continued to push back German forces in western Europe.
On June 22, the Soviets launched a strategic offensive in Belarus ("Operation Bagration") that destroyed the German Army Group Center almost completely. Soon after that another Soviet strategic offensive forced German troops from Western Ukraine and Eastern Poland. The Soviet advance prompted resistance forces in Poland to initiate several uprisings against the German occupation. However, the largest of these in Warsaw where German soldiers massacred 200,000 civilians and a national uprising in Slovakia did not receive Soviet support and were subsequently suppressed by the Germans. The Red Army's strategic offensive in eastern Romania cut off and destroyed the considerable German troops there and triggered a successful coup d'état in Romania and in Bulgaria, followed by those countries' shift to the Allied side.
In September 1944, Soviet troops advanced into Yugoslavia and forced the rapid withdrawal of Germany in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia to rescue them from being cut off. In northern Serbia, the Red Army, with limited support from Bulgarian forces, assisted the Partisans in a joint liberation of the capital city of Belgrade in October. A few days later, the Soviets launched a massive assault against German-occupied Hungary that lasted until the fall of Budapest in February 1945. Unlike impressive Soviet victories in the Balkans, bitter Finnish resistance to the Soviet offensive in the Karelian Isthmus denied the Soviets occupation of Finland and led to a Soviet-Finnish armistice on relatively mild conditions, although Finland later shifted to the Allied side.
By January 1945, the final German attempt on the Western Front to launch a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes failed. In mid-January, the Soviets and Poles attacked in Poland, pushing from the Vistula to the Oder river in Germany, and overran East Prussia. On February 4, US, British, and Soviet leaders met for the Yalta Conference. They agreed on the occupation of post-war Germany, and on when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan. Also in February, the Soviets entered Silesia and Pomerania (today's Poland), while Western Allies entered western Germany and closed to the Rhine river. By March, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine north and south of the Ruhr while the Soviets advanced to Vienna. In early April, the Western Allies finally pushed forward in Italy and swept across western Germany, while Soviet and Polish forces stormed Berlin in late April. American and Soviet forces joined on Elbe river on April 25. On April 30 1945, the Reichstag was captured, signalling the military defeat of Nazi Germany.
German forces surrendered in Italy on April 29. Total and unconditional surrender was signed on May 7, to be effective by the end of May 8.
Destroyed Warsaw, the capital of Poland, January 1945.
Ruins of Warsaw in January 1945, after the deliberate destruction of the city by the occupying German forces.