Germany’s WWII Story1919-1945

Treaty of Versailles

Treaty of Versailles

• Territorial

• The following land was taken away from Germany :

• Alsace-Lorraine (given to France)

• Eupen and Malmedy (given to Belgium)

• Northern Schleswig (given to Denmark)

• Hultschin (given to Czechoslovakia)

• West Prussia, Posen and Upper Silesia (given to Poland)

• The Saar, Danzig and Memel were put under the control of the League of Nations and the people of these regions would be allowed to vote to stay in Germany or not in a future referendum.

• The League of Nations also took control of Germany's overseas colonies.

• Germany had to return to Russia land taken in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Some of this land was made into new states : Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. An enlarged Poland also received some of this land

Treaty of Versailles

• Military

• Germany’s army was reduced to 100,000 men; the army was not allowed tanks

• Germany was not allowed to have an air force

• Germany was allowed only 6 capital naval ships and no submarines

• The Rhineland was made into a demilitarized zone (DMZ)

• No German soldier or weapon was allowed into this zone

• The Allies were to keep an army of occupation on the west bank of the Rhine for 15 years

Treaty of Versailles

• Financial

• The loss of vital industrial territory would be a severe blow to Germany’s economy• Coal from the Saar and Upper Silesia in particular

• Germany had to pay $33 billion to the Allies(GB/France)

Treaty of Versailles

• General

• 1. Germany had to admit full responsibility for starting the war. This was Clause 231 - the infamous "War Guilt Clause".

• 2. Germany was forbidden to unite with Austria

• 3. A League of Nations was set up to keep world peace.

The German Reaction to the Treaty of Versailles

• There was anger throughout Germany when the terms were made public

• The Treaty was seen by many Germans as being forced on them and the Germans had no choice but to sign it

• Many in Germany did not want the Treaty signed

• German representatives in Paris knew that they had no choice as Germany was incapable of restarting the war again

• Many right wing groups such as the Nazis believed in the Dolchstoss Theory(Stab in the Back Theory)

• Blamed the “November Criminals”(the Weimer Republic) for accepting treaty

Weimar Republic

Hitler as a Baby in Austria

•Born in 1889

Führer

Swastika

Beer Hall Putsch-1923

Hitler’s Trial-1924

Hitler in Prison--Sentenced for 5 Years

-Served 9 Months-Good Behavior

Mein Kampf

Mein Kampf(My Struggle) Excerpts

• “If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men.”

• “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.”

• “Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.”

• “With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate. Just as he himself systematically ruins women and girls, he does not shrink back from pulling down the blood barriers for others, even on a large scale. It was and it is Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.”

Hitler Rise To Power

•Hitler is appointed Chancellor is 1933

•President Paul von Hindenburg dies shortly after and Hitler dissolves the Weimer Republic

• Early Actions of Hitler:•Drops out of the

League of Nations• Starts rearming

Germany•Rearms the German

Rhineland area

Anschluss with Austria-1938

Sudetenland Crisis-1938“Re-uniting German speaking peoples”

Sudetenland/Munich Conference-1938

Munich Conference

• Neville Chamberlain-Great Britain

• Adolf Hitler-Germany

• Benito Mussolini-Italy

• Edouard Daladier-France

Munich Conference--Chamberlain: “Peace for our time”

• Hitler was given the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia

• Hitler promised that he was done taking over territories

• Hitler wanted to re-unite all German speaking people

• Became know as the “Policy of Appeasement”

Winston Churchill-Opposed Appeasement

Hitler Takes Over all of Czechoslovakia-1939

Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact

German Ambassador von

Ribbentrop and Soviet dictator

Stalin laugh as Molotov signs

the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression

Pact on August 23, 1939

Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact

•Russia gave raw materials to Germany in exchange for money and weapons

•Both agreed to stay neutral if the other entered the war

• Secretly agreed to invade and split Poland. Germany would get the western half and USSR the eastern half

•Russia would get Finland, Estonia and Latvia and Germany would get Lithuania

How did the world react to this pact?

• Shock

• Poland was scared

• Hitler thought it would force Great Britain and France to back out of their promise to help Poland if attacked

German invasion of Poland-Blitzkrieg!

Blitzkrieg-Lightning War-Video1. Airforce attacks enemy front-line and rear positions, main roads, airfields and

communication centers. At the same time, infantry attacks on the entire frontline and engages enemy.

2. Tank(panzer) units breakthrough main lines of defense and advance deeper into enemy territory. While following, mechanized units pursue and engage defenders preventing them from establishing defensive positions. Infantry continues to engage enemy for the same reason.

3. Infantry attacks enemy flanks in order to link up with other groups to complete the attack and eventually encircle the enemy and/or capture strategic position.

4. Mechanized groups go deeper into the enemy territory outflanking the enemy positions and preventing withdrawing troops and defenders from establishing effective defensive positions.

5. Main force links up with other units encircling and cutting off the enemy.

6. Goal was to achieve victory as quickly as possible

Sitzkrieg-The Phony War

Tripartite Pact is signed--Axis Powers-1940

Axis Powers

• Main Powers: Germany, Italy Japan

• Other Powers: Albania, Bulgaria, Finland, Romania, Thailand, Hungary

The “Phony War” Ends:Spring, 1940

French and German Plans forthe Battle of France 1940

France’s “Impenetrable” Maginot Line

Miracle of Dunkirk

Dunkirk EvacuatedJune 4, 1940

German Advances until the Armistice-Battle of France: June 4-22, 1940

France SurrendersJune, 1940

A Divided France

Henri Petain

The French Resistance

The Free French

General Charles DeGaulle

The Maquis

Axis Invasion of the Balkans(Yugoslavia)-1941

Now Britain Is All Alone!

Winston Churchill

"What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that

the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the

survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life and

the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and

might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us now. Hitler knows

that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand

up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move

forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world,

including the United States, including all that we have known and cared

for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and

perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us

therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the

British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will

say, "This was their finest hour."

Winston Churchill

Nazi Goals

1. Destroy the Royal Air Force(before invasion was possible-hopefully by 9-15)

2. Attack and destroy the British Navy

3. Attack British troops

4. Once air control was gained, the invasion of Great Britain would begin

**Germany never succeeded in achieving #1

**German bombers did so poorly against the RAF that they started bombing at night only

**Great Britain was aided heavily by the radar and Ultra

Battle of Britain

Royal Air Force

Luftwaffe

• Messerschmitt Bf 109 • Herman Goering

Air Raid Shelters During the Blitz

German Invasion of USSR-June, 1941

• Final Plan for Operation Barbarossa

Scorched Earth Policy

• Stalin demanded this of the Soviet troops as they retreated

• What is this?

Battle for Moscow

• The Soviet Winter CounteroffensiveDecember 6, 1941 -April 30, 1942

• The Russian winter sets in and make is a huge turning point in the war

Battle of Stalingrad:Winter of 1942-1943

German Army Russian Army

1,011,500 men 1,000,500 men

10,290 artillery guns 13,541 artillery guns

675 tanks 894 tanks

1,216 planes 1,115 planes

• Around two million total casualties

Siege of Leningrad• On August 30th 1941, the Germans took over Leningrad's railroads,

cutting them off from the rest of Russia and the world.

• Unlike the Battle of Stalingrad, the Germans surrounded the city to starve the city into submission

• Between November 1941 and October 1942, 641,000 people died of starvation

• People resorted to eating rats, wallpaper paste and some resorted to cannibalism

• Finally, a successful Russian counter-offensive at Stalingrad, drained necessary resources the Germans needed to continue the blockade, and eventually, it failed

• The Germans never took Leningrad, but it was one of the most costly conflicts Russia had ever faced-over one million died

The North Africa Campaign: The Battle of El Alamein, 1942

Gen. Ernst Rommel,The “Desert Fox”

Gen. Bernard Law

Montgomery(“Monty”)

The Italian Campaign [“Operation Torch”] :

Europe’s “Soft Underbelly”

Allies plan assault on weakest Axis area -North Africa - Nov. 1942-May 1943

George S. Patton leads American troops

Germans trapped in Tunisia - surrender over 275,000 troops.

The Battle for Sicily:June, 1943

General George S. Patton

The Battle of Monte Casino:February, 1944

The Allies Liberate Rome:June 5, 1944

The Atlantic Wall

Gen. Eisenhower Gives the Orders for D-Day [“Operation Overlord”]

D-Day (June 6, 1944)

Normandy Landing (June 6, 1944)

Higgins Landing Crafts

German Prisoners

July 20, 1944 Assassination Plot

Major Claus vonStauffenberg

July 20, 1944 Assassination Plot

1. Adolf Hitler2. Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel3. Gen Alfred von Jodl4. Gen Walter Warlimont5. Franz von Sonnleithner6. Maj Herbert Buchs7. Stenographer Heinz Buchholz8. Lt Gen Hermann Fegelein9. Col Nikolaus von Below10. Rear Adm Hans-Erich Voss11. Otto Gunsche, Hitler's adjutant12. Gen Walter Scherff (injured)13. Gen Ernst John von Freyend14. Capt Heinz Assman (injured)

The Liberation of Paris:August 25, 1944

De Gaulle in Triumph!

The Battle of the Bulge:Hitler’s Last Offensive

Dec. 16, 1944to

Jan. 28, 1945

US & Russian Soldiers Meet at the Elbe River(in Germany): April 25, 1945

Hitler Commits Suicide April 30, 1945

The Führer’s Bunker

Cyanide & Pistols

Mr. & Mrs. Hitler

V-E Day (May 8, 1945)

General Keitel

Nazi Propaganda

• "All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it... Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise."

• -- Adolf Hitler

The Holocaust

• The genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II

• A program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany throughout Nazi-occupied territory

• Approximately two-thirds of the population of nine million Jews who had lived in Europe before the Holocaust died

• Some say that the definition of the Holocaust should also include the Nazis' killing of millions of people in other groups from Germany and other occupied territory

• By this definition, the total number of Holocaust victims would be between 11 million and 17 million people

Who was inferior according to Hitler?

1. Jews(6 million dead)

2. Gypsies(500,000 to 1.5 million)

3. mentally/physically handicapped people(75,000 to 250,000)

4. Soviet Slavs/POW’s/Troops-(16.5 million)The Russian Academy of Science in 1995 reported civilian victims in the USSR, including Jews, at German hands totaled 13.7 million dead including 7.4 million victims of Nazi genocide, 2.2 million deaths of persons deported to Germany for forced labor; and 4.1 million famine and disease deaths in occupied territory. German captors killed an estimated 2.8 million Soviet POWs through starvation, exposure, and execution

5. Poles(2.5 million dead)

6. Homosexuals(5-15 thousand dead)

7. communists/socialists(many but number not confirmed)

8. dark skinned people(death and forced sterilization)

9. mixed races-"The mulatto children came about through rape or the white mother was a whore," Adolf Hitler

10. Jehovah’s Witnesses(2,500-5,000)

What is the Aryan Race?

•Nazis used term to refer to a so-called master race that originated around Germany

•Perfect Aryan was blonde, blue-eyed, tall and muscular

•The original term refers to a people speaking a Indo-European dialect

Lebensborn-Fount of Life

• The program aimed to promote the growth of "superior" Aryan populations by providing excellent health care and living conditions to women and by restricting access to those deemed “fit”

• Houses were set up throughout Germany and many occupied territories

• Many Lebensborn children were born to unwed mothers which helped lead to many rumors of rape.

• Contrary to widespread rumors, women were not forced to have relations with Aryan Germans

Hitler’s Jewish Question-1933

•Nazis "temporarily" suspend civil liberties for all citizens in 1933-Never restored.

• The Nazis set up the first concentration camp at Dachau in 1933. The first inmates are 200 Communists.

• Jews are prohibited from working as civil servants, doctors in the National Health Service, and teachers in public high schools. All but few Jewish students are banned from public high schools and colleges.

Nuremburg Laws 1935

1. Took away German citizenship from Jews thus making Jews second class citizens by removing their basic civil rights.

2. Established membership in the Jewish race as being anyone who either considered themselves Jewish or had three or four Jewish grandparents. People with one or two Jewish grandparents were considered to be mixed race.

- eventually anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent was at risk in Nazi Germany

3. Jews could only marry Jews

4. No sexual relations between non-Jewish Germans and Jews

1936

•Nazis boycott Jewish-owned businesses

Kristallnacht-1938“Night of the Broken Glass”

•On the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938, the Nazis roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues and looting. • In all, 101 synagogues were destroyed and almost 7,500

Jewish businesses were destroyed. •26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration

camps.• Jews were physically attacked and beaten and 91 died in

the attack.

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht

1938-Cont.

•All Jewish children are expelled from public schools in Germany and Austria.

•Nazis take control of Jewish-owned businesses.

1939

•Hitler orders the systematic murder of the mentally and physically disabled in Germany and Austria

• Jews are required to wear armbands or yellow stars

1940

•Nazis begin deporting German Jews to Poland

• Jews are forced into ghettos

•Nazis begin the first mass murder of Jews in Poland

Auschwitz

Nazi Death Camps

1941

• Jews throughout Eastern Europe are forced into ghettos

• In two days, German units shoot 33,771 Ukrainian Jews at BabiYar- the largest single massacre of the Holocaust

• The death camp at Chelmno in Poland begins murdering Jews

1942

• Nazi officials announce "Final Solution"- their plan to kill all European Jews

• Five death camps begin operation in Poland: Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec, and Auschwitz-Birkenau

• Ghettos of Eastern Europe are being emptied as thousands of Jews are shipped to death camps.

• The United States, Great Britian, and the Soviet Union acknowledge that Germans are exterminating the Jews of Europe.

1943

• Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto resist as the Nazis begin new rounds of deportations. These Jews hold out for nearly a month before the Nazis put down the uprising.

1944

•Hitler takes over Hungary and begins deporting 12,000 Hungarian Jews each day to Auschwitz where they are murdered

1945

•Hitler is defeated and World War II ends in Europe.

• The Holocaust is over and the death camps are found emptied.

•Many survivors are placed in displaced persons camps until they find a country willing to accept them.

1947

• The United Nations establishes a Jewish homeland in British- controlled Palestine, which becomes the State of Israel in 1948.