WORLD WAR TWO

History in an Hour

Rupert Colley

About History in an Hour

History in an Hour is a series of ebooks to help the reader learn the basic facts of a given subject area. Everything you need to know is presented in a straightforward narrative and in chronological order. No embedded links to divert your attention, nor a daunting book of 600 pages with a 35-page introduction. Just straight in, to the point, sixty minutes, done. Then, having absorbed the basics, you may feel inspired to explore further.

Give yourself sixty minutes and see what you can learn ...

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

About History in an Hour

Introduction

Germany Invades Poland: ‘This is how I deal with any European city’

The Finnish–Soviet War: The ‘Winter War’

The Norwegian Campaign: ‘Missed the bus’

The Fall of France: ‘France has lost a battle but France has not lost the war’

The Battle of Britain and the Blitz: ‘It can only end in annihilation for one of us’

The Mediterranean: ‘One moment on a battlefield is worth a thousand years of peace’

North Africa: ‘A great general’

Germany’s Invasion of the Soviet Union: ‘The whole rotten structure will come crashing down’

War in the Far East: ‘Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars’

The Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk: The new field marshal

The Holocaust: ‘The man with an iron heart’

The Battle of the Atlantic: ‘The U-boat peril’

The Big Three

Italy Falls: ‘You are the most hated man in Italy’

The Bomber Offensive: ‘My name is Meyer’

The Normandy Invasion: D-Day

France Free: ‘Liberated by her own people’

Approach from the East: ‘For the good have fallen’

The End of the War in Europe: The Death of a Corporal

The End of the War in Japan: ‘Complete and utter destruction’

Appendix 1: Key Players

Appendix 2: Timeline of World War Two

Copyright

Got Another Hour?

About the Publisher

Introduction

Lasting six years and a day (until the formal surrender of Japan), the Second World War saw the civilian, both young and old, fighting on the front line. Civilian deaths accounted for 5 per cent of those killed during the First World War; but during the Second, of the 50 million-plus killed, they made up over 66 per cent. During the 2,194 days of the conflict, a thousand people died for each and every hour it lasted. With eighty-one of the world’s nations involved, compared to twenty-eight during the First World War, this was a world war in the truest sense.

Germany Invades Poland: ‘This is how I deal with any European city’

The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, signed on 23 August 1939, allowed Hitler to pursue his ambitions in the east without fear of Russian interference; ambitions that included the destruction of Poland and the subjugation of its people. The attack on Poland began at 4.45 on the morning of Friday, 1 September 1939.

Hitler inspects German troops invading Poland, September 1939

Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S55480 / CC-BY-SA

The Germans, not intending to be bogged down again in a war of trenches and stalemate, swept aside all resistance in a lightning war of blitzkrieg, using technological military advances, co-ordinated attacks and abrasive speed. Following up the rapid advances, German forces engaged in brutality, executions and merciless aggression against the civilian population.

Neville Chamberlain, who had been Britain’s Conservative prime minister since 1937, and who five months earlier had guaranteed the Poles assistance if attacked, dutifully declared war on Germany on 3 September followed, six hours later, by the French. The British contribution to the Polish cause was not with arms, nor soldiers, nor aid, but with leaflets – by the million, dropped by plane over Germany, urging the population to stand up against Hitler and the war.

On 17 September, as the German war machine advanced its way towards Warsaw, the Soviet Union as secretly agreed in the Non-Aggression Pact, attacked from the east. Crushed between two totalitarian heavyweights, Poland crumbled, and on the twenty-seventh, Warsaw surrendered. Agreeing on the partition of Poland, the Germans and Russians then set about the total subjugation of the defeated population. Villages were razed, inhabitants massacred, the Polish identity eradicated; and in towns, such as Lodz, Jews were herded into ghettos before eventual transportation to the death camps. With his first objective achieved, Hitler visited Warsaw on 5 October, and casting a satisfied eye over the devastated capital, declared: ‘this is how I deal with any European city’.

The Finnish–Soviet War: The ‘Winter War’

Stalin, knowing that his country’s pact with Germany would not last indefinitely, sought a buffer zone against any future German attack. By June 1940, he had bullied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania into co-operation, swiftly followed by full annexation. Finland, however, resisted, preferring to fight than submit to Soviet demands. The 105-day ‘Winter War’ started with Russia’s attack on Finland on 30 November 1939. Russia, expecting an easy victory as the Germans had had over the Poles, was soon disabused, underestimating Finnish bravery, tenacity and expertize at guerrilla warfare.

Finnish soldiers during the Soviet–Finnish War, February 1940

Coupled with the Soviet Union’s lack of military proficiency, following Stalin’s military purge of the 1930s, and poor equipment that froze in the plummeting temperatures, the Soviets learnt a hard but useful lesson, eventually subduing the Finns in March 1940 by sheer weight of numbers.

The Norwegian Campaign: ‘Missed the bus’

The supply of iron ore from Sweden to Germany via the northern Norwegian port of Narvik was essential to the German war machine. Both the Germans and British decided to take Narvik, the former to protect its supply route, the latter to disrupt it. When, on 8 April 1940, British ships started laying mines off the Norwegian coast, Chamberlain crowed that Hitler had ‘missed the bus’.

But the Germans advanced swiftly into Scandinavia, forcing Denmark into a rapid surrender and compelling neutral Norway to take up arms as, one by one, her ports fell to the Germans. The British response, although fast, was dogged with inefficiency and disruption, with troops landing in snowy Norway without skis and provided only with tourist maps. When, on 10 May, Germany attacked Holland and Belgium, British forces in Norway were evacuated to the Low Countries, leaving Norway to fall under German control and to be ruled by the Norwegian Nazi, Vidkun Quisling.

Winston Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, took responsibility for the Norwegian debacle, but it was Chamberlain, as prime minister, who fell. Unable to form a coalition government, he was forced to resign amidst shouts in the House of Commons of ‘Go, go, go!’. He was replaced, ironically, by Churchill. The date, 10 May, was the day that Hitler unleashed blitzkrieg south of the Channel. Six months later, Chamberlain was dead.

The Fall of France: ‘France has lost a battle but France has not lost the war’

The period from the beginning of the war to 10 May 1940 was known in Britain as the ‘phoney war’, when the conflict still seemed far away. Children were evacuated to the countryside, rationing was introduced, as were evening blackouts and the carrying of gas masks.

Belgium, overwhelmed by the German advance, appealed to the Allies for assistance. The British and French responded by moving into Belgium to counter the German attack. Along the Franco-German border the French fielded a weaker force, putting faith in the Maginot Line, a defensive 280-mile-long fortification, built in the early 1930s as protection against the Germans. The Germans rendered it obsolete within a morning in May 1940 by merely skirting around the north of it, through the Ardennes forest, which, because of its rugged terrain, the French considered impassable. Reaching the town of Sedan on the French side of the Ardennes on 14 May and brushing aside French resistance, the Germans pushed, not towards Paris as expected, but north, towards the English Channel, forcing the Allies further and further back. In 1916, the Germans had failed to take Verdun despite ten months of trench warfare; in May 1940, it took them one day.

In Holland, Rotterdam was heavily bombed and, on 15 May, the Dutch, fearing further losses, capitulated. On 28 May Belgium also surrendered. Allied forces, with their backs to the sea in the French coastal town of Dunkirk, were trapped. But the Germans, poised to annihilate the whole British Expeditionary Force, were inexplicably ordered by Hitler to halt outside the town. Between 26 May and 3 June, over 1,000 military and civilian vessels rescued and brought back to Britain 338,226 Allied soldiers. This was not achieved without scenes of panic, broken discipline and soldiers shot by their officers for losing self-control. Meanwhile, Hitler’s generals watched, puzzled and rueing an opportunity missed.

Allied troops awaiting evacuation from Dunkirk to England, May 1940

On 4 June in the House of Commons, Churchill was careful not to call the ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ a victory but merely a ‘deliverance’. He continued to deliver his famous ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ speech, concluding with the immortal words, ‘We shall never surrender’. However, the French saw it somewhat differently – with the Germans closing in on Paris, they considered the Dunkirk evacuation a huge betrayal.

On 10 June, Italy declared war on the Allies. Four days later, Hitler’s forces entered a largely deserted Paris, over 2 million Parisians having fled south. Soon the swastika was flying from the Arc de Triomphe.

On 16 June, the French general, Charles de Gaulle (pictured below), escaped France to begin his life of exile in London. He was later sentenced to death – in absentia by the Vichy government. From London, de Gaulle broadcast a declaration, asserting that: ‘France has lost a battle but France has not lost the war … The flame of French resistance must not and shall not die.’ His words became the battle cry of the Free French movement.

Charles de Gaulle, 1942

Also on 16 June, the French prime minister Paul Reynaud resigned, to be replaced by 84-year-old Marshal Philippe Pétain, hero of the 1916 Battle of Verdun. Pétain’s first acts were to seek an armistice with the Germans and order Reynaud’s arrest. On 22 June, fifty miles north-east of Paris, the French officially surrendered, the ceremony taking place in the same spot and in the same railway carriage where the Germans had surrendered in 1918. Straight afterwards, on Hitler’s orders, the railway carriage and the monuments commemorating the 1918 signing were destroyed. The following day Hitler visited Paris, his only visit to the capital, for a whistle-stop sightseeing tour of the city. On visiting Napoleon’s tomb, he said: ‘That was the greatest and finest moment of my life.’ Before departing, he ordered the demolition of two First World War monuments, including the memorial of Edith Cavell, the British nurse shot by the Germans in Brussels in October 1915.

Hitler visits Paris following France’s defeat in June 1940

Pétain and his puppet government ruled from the spa town of Vichy in central France. The Vichy government actively did the Nazis’ dirty work: conducting a vicious civil war against the French Resistance, implementing numerous anti-Jewish laws, and sending tens of thousands of Jews to the death camps.

In July 1940, Churchill established the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to help resistance groups in France and elsewhere in Europe in the work of sabotage and subversion. In October 1940, Pétain met Hitler, and although Pétain opposed Hitler’s demands that France should participate in the attack on Britain, photographs of the two men shaking hands were soon seen across the world – evidence of Vichy’s complicity with the Nazis.

In July 1940, Churchill issued an ultimatum to the admiral of the French fleet docked in Mers-el-Kebir, Algeria – to hand the ships over to the British or scuttle them to prevent them from being used by the Kriegsmarine, the German navy. When the admiral refused to comply, Churchill ordered the Royal Navy to open fire, killing 1,297 French sailors. The incident served to sever relations between Vichy and Britain.

The Channel Islands were occupied by a German garrison from 30 June 1940 until the German surrender in May 1945. The only part of Great Britain to be occupied by the Germans throughout the war, there was almost one German for every two islanders. The islands were not of any strategic importance, but occupation of British territory was considered symbolically important to the Germans. Food supplies, delivered from France, were severely curtailed after the Normandy invasion of June 1944, and although the occasional Red Cross ship got through, by the time of liberation both the Germans and the islanders were on the point of starvation.

The Battle of Britain and the Blitz: ‘It can only end in annihilation for one of us’

With Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland and France under Nazi control, Britain now faced the German onslaught alone. Operation Sea Lion, Germany’s codename for the invasion of Britain, was quietly announced on 16 July. Hitler decreed that, as a prelude to a full-blown invasion, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, would destroy the RAF’s air superiority over Britain. The following day, Hitler issued Britain a peace offering, his ‘last appeal to reason’: ‘It can only end in annihilation for one of us. Mr Churchill thinks it will be Germany. I know it will be Britain.’ Many in Parliament were tempted; Churchill was not.

The main thrust of Hitler’s air assault, the commencement of the Battle of Britain, began on 13 August, the ‘Day of the Eagle’, when 1,485 German aircraft attacked Britain’s coastal airfields. During the next month, the RAF and the Luftwaffe fought above the fields of south-east England in a series of dogfights where the average life expectancy of a British pilot was four to five weeks. But the RAF enjoyed certain advantages of flying over home ground: if a British pilot had to bail out, he at least parachuted on to British soil and could return to the fight, unlike his German counterpart who, on landing, was whisked off into captivity. And, unlike the Luftwaffe, the RAF pilot was not subject to anti-aircraft fire; the British, by this stage, were using radar (still a comparatively new invention), and had learnt, through the team at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, to decrypt Germany’s Enigma codes. Bletchley Park knew, for example, of Operation Sea Lion before many of Hitler’s generals did.

German Heinkels during the Battle of Britain, 1940

On 23 August, as they were returning from a sortie over Britain, a Luftwaffe patrol got lost and mistakenly bombed Croydon on the outskirts of London. The RAF bombed Berlin on 25 August. The damage was insignificant but Hitler, enraged, ordered the bombing of London. Between 7 September 1940 and 16 May 1941, the people of London and many other British cities as far north as Glasgow, endured the Blitz, a sustained campaign of bombing.

London during the Blitz, c. 1941

After May 1941, the Luftwaffe was diverted to the Soviet Union. In just one night, 14 November 1940, 440 German bombers dropping over 1,000 tons of explosives destroyed Coventry, killing 568 people and seriously injuring 863. Altogether, during the Blitz, over 40,000 were killed and almost 50,000 injured. But if the aim was to destroy resolve, it failed: the bombings merely strengthened it. For Londoners, the sight of Churchill, and on another occasion, the King and Queen stepping through the devastation and talking to the locals certainly helped boost morale. After Buckingham Palace had been hit, Queen Elizabeth said: ‘I’m glad we’ve been bombed – now I feel we can look the East End in the face.’

A second unintended consequence of Hitler’s decision to target civilians was to give the RAF time to regroup and prepare for the next onslaught. That attack came on 15 September, now known as Battle of Britain Day, when the Luftwaffe, believing that the RAF was on its knees, launched a concentrated attack on south-east England. The RAF doggedly fought them off and the Battle of Britain was effectively over. Two days later, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely. As Churchill stirringly said, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’

The Mediterranean: ‘One moment on a battlefield is worth a thousand years of peace’

Since coming to power in 1922, Benito Mussolini fancied himself as a modern-day Caesar and Italy his Roman Empire. In his bid to start building an empire worthy of his ancient predecessors, Italy grabbed for itself Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) in 1936 and Albania in 1939. On 16 May 1940, Churchill had pleaded with Mussolini not to declare war: ‘Is it too late to stop a river of blood from flowing between the British and Italian peoples?’ he asked. But just three weeks later, on 10 June, with France only days from capitulating, Mussolini declared war on the Allies, boasting, ‘One moment on a battlefield is worth a thousand years of peace’, and prompting Hitler to comment: ‘First they were too cowardly to take part. Now they are in a hurry so that they can share in the spoils.’ On 28 October, from their bases in Albania, Italy attacked Greece. Mussolini’s dreams of empire soon unravelled in humiliating fashion. With insufficient weapons, lack of winter clothing and supplies, the Italians faltered within fifty miles. The Greeks, with help from the British, pushed the Italian forces into a hasty retreat, carrying the fight into Albania. Having dealt with the Italians, the Greeks now faced the more daunting prospect of a German attack.

From 6 April 1941, the Germans poured into Greece, and by the twenty-third Greece had surrendered, their prime minister having shot himself while the swastika flew over the Acropolis. British forces in Greece withdrew to Crete, which in turn was also crushed by the Nazis, forcing another evacuation for the British. The Greeks were to suffer terribly under the Germans, enduring routine barbarism and murder (only 2 per cent of Greece’s Jewish population survived the war) and large-scale starvation.

Romania’s supply of petrol was vital to the German war machine, and in September 1940, Germany disposed of Romania’s king, and gave its support to a fascist government, who started on an enthusiastic campaign against the Jews. In November 1940, Romania joined the Axis, and in June 1941 they began their campaign against the Soviet Union.

In March 1941, Yugoslavia had signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany, Italy and Japan, but following massive public protest and a coup d’état in which Prince Paul was overthrown, rescinded the following day. Furious, Hitler ordered the destruction of Yugoslavia. Attacking on 6 April, Belgrade was flattened with nearly 4,000 civilians killed by 12 April. It took Axis forces only eleven days to force a surrender. The Germans gave Croatia their independence as a fascist republic and the collaborationist Croatian government hounded their Jews with brutal relish. In the remaining part of Yugoslavia, communist partisans, led by Josip Broz (‘Tito’), and Chetnik rebels fought the Germans and each other with equal intent.

North Africa: ‘A great general’

Mussolini’s adventures in North Africa were to prove as fruitless as in the Mediterranean. On 13 September 1940, from their bases in Libya, Italian forces invaded British-controlled Egypt. British and Commonwealth forces, vastly outnumbered, beat the Italians out of Egypt, back into Libya and, along the way, took a number of Libyan coastal towns, including Tobruk, which was to play a strategic and symbolic part in the North African campaign, changing hands several times between the advancing and retreating armies. The British were within striking distance of Libya’s capital, Tripoli, but with the Greeks now facing the Germans, Churchill diverted most of the advancing troops from Libya to help in Greece.

Mussolini had become a burden, and in February 1941, Hitler sent to North Africa his ablest soldier, Erwin Rommel, of whom Churchill said: ‘We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.’ Over the next two years the British and Commonwealth armies and the German and Italian forces fought a see-saw war, the Axis pushing the Allies back east into Egypt, then the Allies pushing the Axis back west into Libya. The further one army reached, the further their supply lines were stretched and the easier it became for the other to fight back. One constant thorn in the German side was the Mediterranean island of Malta, from where British forces continuously disrupted the German flow of supplies from Italy to Tripoli. Despite severe bombing, Hitler’s attempts to smash the island failed. Britain’s King George VI awarded the island, as a collective, the George Cross.

In June 1942, the British had entrenched themselves in the small Egyptian town of El Alamein, sixty miles west of Alexandria. Significantly for the Germans, they were 1,400 miles from Tripoli. The first battle of El Alamein, in July 1942, ended in stalemate. The second battle, with the Allies now led by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, or ‘Monty’, resulted in a Commonwealth triumph. Rommel, his tanks greatly outnumbered and supplies running thin, was, bit by bit, pushed back, the British retaking Tobruk on 13 November.

British infantry advancing during the battle of El Alamein, October 1942

Five days beforehand, fresh British and American forces had landed to the west in North Africa, in Morocco and Algeria, where they met limited resistance from the Vichy French, who, after only three days, surrendered. Hitler viewed their performance as treacherous and responded by occupying the Vichy-controlled part of France. Montgomery’s men eventually captured Tripoli in January 1943, and two months later had chased the Germans further westwards into Tunisia. On 9 March, Rommel was invalided back home, and soon after the Allies breached the fortified Tunisian–Libyan border, pushing the Germans into Tunis. Despite Hitler pouring more troops in, and their tenacious defence, the Germans finally surrendered on 13 May, 1943. The Allied victory in North Africa prompted Churchill to say: ‘This is not the end, nor is it even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’

Germany’s Invasion of the Soviet Union: ‘The whole rotten structure will come crashing down’

Despite the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, Hitler’s intention was always to invade the Soviet Union. It was, along with the destruction of the Jews, fundamental to his core objectives – lebensraum, or living-space, in the east and the subjugation of the Slavic race. This was meant to be a war of annihilation – Russia’s non-signing of the Geneva Convention legitimized, in Hitler’s view, the enforcement of ‘executive measures’ in occupied territories. Despite the vastness of Russian territory and manpower, Hitler anticipated a quick victory, hence the lack of provision for winter uniforms. ‘You have only to kick in the door,’ said Hitler confidently, ‘and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.’ Two tons of Iron Crosses were waiting in Germany for those involved with the capture of Moscow.

The Soviets’ dismal display against the Finns was proof to Hitler of their military weakness – but Hitler underestimated the Russian ability to learn by their mistakes. He believed that the Russian population would welcome his troops and in many places they did, but instead of harnessing this allegiance, the Germans’ brutal methods soon alienated these potential collaborators. He also underestimated the Russians’ determination and tenacity; determination that would have existed even without Stalin’s infamous ‘Not one step back’ directive of 28 July 1942, ordering execution for the slightest sign of defeatism. Behind the Soviet front lines roamed a second line ready to shoot any retreating cowards or ‘traitors of the Motherland’. As Georgi Zhukov, one of Stalin’s top generals, said: ‘In the Red Army it takes a very brave man to be a coward.’

Stalin’s spies had forewarned him time and again of the expected attack, but he refused to believe it. He strenuously forbade anything that might appear provocative to the Germans, even allowing the continuation of Soviet food and metal exports to the Germans, as agreed in the Tripartite Pact, and forbidding the evacuation of people living near the German border and the setting up of defences. So when, at 4 a.m. on 22 June 1941, Operation Barbarossa was launched with over 3 million Axis troops along a 900-mile front, progress was rapid. The date was significant: it was exactly 129 years since Napoleon’s ill-fated attack on Russia. Within the first day, one quarter of the Soviet Union’s air strength had been destroyed. By the end of October, Moscow was only sixty-five miles away, over 500,000 square miles of Soviet territory had been captured, and as well as huge numbers of Soviet troops and civilians killed, 3 million Red Army soldiers had been taken prisoner of war, and, unlike in the west, the rules of captivity held no meaning for the Germans. A large percentage of Soviet prisoners of war died of malnutrition, disease and brutality.

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