History of Germany during World War II

Foreword

When in 1933 Hitler gained power, no one could have predicted the scope, intensity, and duration of the armed conflict that would follow in just a few short years. When conditions reached their climax and the Second World War came in 1939, the Western democracies were shocked at the speed at which Poland fell, given that they had seen the Polish army defeat the vast Soviet Union less than a generation before at the Battle of Warsaw (1920). The democracies were even more shocked some months later when France also fell despite its superior tanks and its Maginot Line. Many of the Nazi German army tactics and techniques were untried but the office corps and the general staff were vigilant and speedy in their adaptations. The officers and men were young and full of enthusiasm, with considerable numbers of veterans of World War I beside them to supply experience and wisdom. However, after over five and a half years of conflict, the Nazi German Army was a shadow of its former self. Overwhelmed on all sides and suffering from severe shortages, the casualty had grown tremendously. In the final years of the war, the Nazi forces had to resort to old men, boys, disabled, and unreliable foreigners.
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Start of the War

In September 1, 1939 Nazi Germany invaded to Poland (see Polish September Campaign). The invasion led the United Kingdom and France to declare war on Nazi Germany, accordingly to the agreement that they had with Poland. Following the United Kingdom Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa also declared war on Nazi Germany. After the end of the campaign in Poland the war entered a period of relative inactivity known as the Phony War. This ended when Nazi Germany invaded Denmark and Norway in April of 1940 (see Operation Weserubung) and the Netherlands, Belgium and France in May (see Battle of France). All of the invaded countries swiftly capitulated and the forces of the United Kingdom and its allies suffered a humiliating defeat in Norway (see British campaign in Norway) and a near-disastrous retreat from France (see Battle of Dunkirk). The United Kingdom was threatened with an amphibious invasion (see Operation Sealion) but during the Battle of Britain the Luftwaffe failed to achieve air superiority and the invasion was postponed indefinitely.

North Africa

After Italy's declaration of War on the United Kingdom and France in June of 1940 Italian forces in Libya came under punitive attack from the British in Egypt. The Italian forces soon took the initiative by occupying British Somaliland in August and invading Egypt in September. The British and Commonwealth forces, despite being outnumbered by 500,000 available troops to 35,000 (of whom 17,000 were non-combatants), made a fighting withdrawal and after reinforcements were sent to the region in December, counterattacked, dealing out several humiliating defeats to the Italians and capturing over 130,000 prisoners in a two-month campaign. In February of 1941 the Afrika Korps were sent to the Libya to reinforce their Italian allies and a hard fought campaign ensued. This theatre of war is known as the North African Campaign.

South Eastern Europe

The Italian invasion of Greece in December of 1940 was a disaster and Italian forces were driven back into Albania which Italy had occupied in 1939. Nazi Germany attacked Yugoslavia and Greece in May of 1941 to assist their allies and prevent any possibility of disruption to the production of oil from their oilfields by hostile forces.

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union had in 1939 invaded Poland together with Nazi Germany in accordance with the secret part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Sources made available after the collapse of the Soviet Union reveals the Kremlin strategy to provoke Europe's capitalist powers into war against each other to facilitate Communist revolutions by their war-ravaged proletarians. Stalin counted on Hitler to avoid a two-front war. As long as the war with the British Empire wasn't concluded, Stalin was in no hurry to make defensive preparations, and was rather preparing his army for offensive to take over the wrecked Europe.

For the Nazis, however, the war in the West was seen as only the overture to the great operations against Communist Russia. The successful campaigns against Poland, Scandinavia and France, and the bad standing of the Red Army after the Great Purge in the 1930s, as indicated by the fiasco of the Winter War, made Hitler believe the power relations between Nazi Germany and Russia would not again become as favorable. The crusade against Bolshevism, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, was to be launched sooner rather than later. It was planned to unite Western Europe behind Nazi Germany's strong leadership for the common goal to fight Communism.

The Nazi German campaigns in Greece and North Africa delayed the planned invasion by several weeks, and a great deal of the good summer weather was already lost by the time the invasion was launched on June 22, 1941. The massive attack still turned out to be a success, conquering whole areas of the Soviet Union's western region. Their only significant strategic failure was the advance on Moscow, which was halted by stiff resistance and a very harsh winter. The following years, however, were less successful on the Eastern Front.

The first major defeats

Germany declared war on the United States immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. This has been considered a disastrous blunder since the USA had been supplying and offering increasing non-combative support to the Allies since the outbreak of the war and now, the war declaration gave US President Franklin D. Roosevelt complete license to bring the full force of the American military and immense war production capability to bear in the conflict against Germany. The first major defeats were in North Africa at the hands of the British at the battles of Gazala and the second Battle of El Alamein in 1942. Around about the same time the tide was turning for the Germans in Russia. The defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad shocked many in the German High Command and the realisation that the German forces were not invincible began to permeate through the minds of the German people.

Italian Armistice

The Nazi German and Italian defeat in North Africa allowed the Allied forces to contemplate opening up a new theatre of war in the south. Sicily was invaded in July of 1943 leading to the overthrow and imprisonment of Mussolini. In September the Italian mainland was invaded. Shortly afterwards an armistice was signed and Italian troops found themselves arrested and imprisoned by the Nazi Germans. The Nazi Germans fought on in Italy and in October the new Italian government declared war on Nazi Germany. The campaign in Italy eventually bogged down as the focus of attention for the Western allied was drawn to opening up a new front.

Defeat in the East, the Invasion of Normandy and final defeat

In the east the Nazi Germans had been steadily withdrawing in the face of increasingly capable Red Army offensives. After the Battle of Kursk in July 1943 (an overwhelming victory for the Soviets) the Germans arsenal was depleted of much needed armoured vehicles and Germany was unable to launch another serious offensive in the east. By the time of D-Day invasion on 6 June 1944, German forces were stretched thinly on three fronts. By August, Soviet forces had crossed into eastern Germany. Allied forces crossed the Rhine a month later. In December of 1944 a last ditch effort to strike a blow to the western allies (the Ardennes Offensive) ground to a halt due to lack of supplies and bitter allied opposition. By the beginning of 1945 the regime was beginning to disintegrate, and a feared last-ditch defense from a "National Redoubt" never happened. In April, Hitler committed suicide and Germany finally surrendered in the first week of May.

History of Germany since 1945

Following Germany's defeat in World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, Germany was split for about 40 years, representing the focus of the two global blocks in the east and west. Only in 1990 Germany would be reunited.

The division of Germany

At the Potsdam Conference in August 1945, after Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945, the Allies divided Germany into four military occupation zones – French in the southwest, British in the northwest, United States in the south, and Soviet in the east. The territories east of the Oder-Neisse line (East Prussia, Eastern Pomerania and Silesia) were removed from Germany and put under Polish administration, effectively shifting Poland westward. A transfer of Germans from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary was agreed on, but the countries were urged to stop the transfers at that particular moment. The urging had however no effect on the ongoing Expulsion of Germans after World War II.

The intended governing body was called the Allied Control Council. The commanders-in-chief exercised supreme authority in their respective zones and acted in concert on questions affecting the whole country. Berlin, which lay in the Soviet sector, was also divided into four sectors with the Western sectors later becoming West Berlin and the Soviet sector becoming East Berlin, capital of East Germany.

A key item in the occupiers' agenda was denazification; toward this end, the swastika and other outward symbols of the Nazi regime were banned, and a Provisional Civil Ensign was established as a temporary German flag; the latter remained the "official" flag of the country (necessary for reasons of international law as German ships had to carry some sort of identifying marker) until East Germany and West Germany (see below) came into existence, separately, in 1949.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union had agreed at Potsdam to a broad program of decentralization, treating Germany as a single economic unit with some central administrative departments. These plans broke down in 1948 with the emergence of the Cold War.

The initial post surrender policy of the western powers was one of "salted earth"[1], in line with the Morgenthau Plan which albeit officialy discredited ended up greatly influencing policy[2][3]. One of the last effects of this policy was the removal of the ore rich Saar from Germany in 1947, a fate that came close to happening to the Ruhr Area[4] as well.

However, by 1948 with the emergency of increased rivalry between the eastern and the western powers and fears that the population might turn communist the western powers had a change of hearts. They became concerned about the deteriorating economic situation in their zones; the American Marshall Plan economic aid was extended to Western Germany and a currency reform introduced the Deutsche Mark and halted rampant inflation there. The Soviets had not agreed to this currency reform and withdrew in March 1948 from the four-power governing bodies and initiated the Berlin blockade in June 1948, blocking all ground transport routes between Western Germany and West Berlin. The Western Allies replied with a continuous airlift of supplies to the western half of the city. The Soviets ended the blockade after 10 months.

Two Germanies

On 23 May 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, Bundesrepublik Deutschland) was established on the territory of the Western occupied zones, with Bonn as its capital, and declared "fully sovereign" May 5, 1955. On 7 October 1949 the Soviet Zone was established as the German Democratic Republic (GDR, Deutsche Demokratische Republik), with East Berlin as its "provisional" capital. In English the two states were known informally as "West Germany" and "East Germany" respectively. In both cases the former occupying troops remained permanently stationed there. The former German capital, Berlin, was a special case, being divided into East Berlin and West Berlin, with West Berlin completely surrounded by East German territory. Though the German inhabitants of West Berlin were citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany, West Berlin was not legally incorporated into West Germany; it remained under the formal occupation of the western allies until 1990, although most day-to-day administration was conducted by an elected West Berlin government.

West Germany was allied with the United States of America, the UK and France. A western capitalist country with a "social market economy", the country enjoyed prolonged economic growth (Wirtschaftswunder) following the currency reform of June 1948 and US assistance through Marshall Plan aid (1948-1951).

East Germany was at first occupied by and later (May 1955) allied with the Soviet Union. An authoritarian country with a Soviet-style economy, East Germany soon became the richest, most advanced country in the Soviet bloc, but many of its citizens looked to the West for political freedoms and economic prosperity.