Axis initiative and Allied reaction The outbreak of war By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to...
As their forces approached the bunker where Hitler and the last vestiges of his government were holed up, Hitler killed himself. Just a day earlier he had married his longtime mistress Eva Braun. Hitler's corpse was taken to Moscow and later shown to Allied Army Commanders and diplomats. ...
Until Speer took charge in February 1942, Germany had no coherent armaments policy. Hitler changed priorities frequently based on a combination of shifting military realities and his own preference for offensive over defensive weapons. One area of agreement among Speer, Hitler, and many other Nazi m...
I think this documentary is very convincing. In the past, we all thought that the goal of Germany was to dominate the whole of Europe, but it was not. The reason for the outbreak of the war came from irreconcilable conflicts. In World War II, the most ambitious was Soviet Russia, not...
In June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941, German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe and North Africa. These gains were gradually reversed after 1941, and in 1945 the Allied armies defeated the German army. In the final days...
Within a few months of the successfulAllied invasion of Normandyin June 1944, the Allies had begun liberating cities across Europe. That December, Hitler attempted to direct another offensive through the Ardennes, trying to split British and American forces. ...
On June 6, 1944, on what would come to be known as D-Day, the Western Allied armies landed in northern France. As a result of these significant setbacks, many German officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that Hitler's continued rule would result in the destruction of the count...
Even as the Germans plodded forward at Kursk, Allied forces were landing at Sicily. That they were able to make relatively short work of the island’s defenses and follow up with a rapid invasion of the Italian mainland can be attributed to another of Hitler’s blunders. Since early 1941,...
“The first few months we didn’t quite know what had happened.” But Queen Wilhelmina reached out to her subjects across the North Sea via newsreels andBBCradio broadcasts, revitalizing Dutch hope for Allied liberation, and condemning German aggression. She urged them to resist themoffen(Germa...
On June 6th, 1944, on what would come to be known as D-Day, the Western-allied armies landed in northern France. As a result of these major setbacks, many German officers came to the conclusion that defeat was inevitable and if Hitler continued it would result in the destruction of the...