World War II

Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later, Great Britain and France officially declared war on Germany, which had violated its commitments as set out in the Treaty of Versailles. Japan and Italy did not immediately react. The German army, which was very strong, took only three weeks to conquer Poland. As planned, Poland’s territory was divided between Germany and the USSR.

The Allies stood their ground, defending important and strategic points and taking the time to rearm. Hitler started the war earlier than the Allies expected, so their armies weren’t as strong. However, they tried in vain to mount a blockade to force Germany to lay down its arms. In April 1940, the German armies occupied Norway and Denmark. On May 10, 1940, these armies invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The Germans also successfully broke through the French front. On May 14, the Netherlands laid down its arms. On May 28, British forces in Belgium were surrounded, and the Belgian army surrendered. French army leaders lacked cohesion; they reacted slowly and did not attack forcefully enough. Ultimately, France signed the armistice with Germany on June 22 and with Italy on June 24.

Great Britain stood alone against Germany. The German army wanted to land on British soil, so they launched numerous air attacks and bombed many cities. The morale of the British population was at its lowest. London was bombed every night between September 7, 1940, and January 1941, but the city resisted and the British army held back the German invasion.

The Italian armies were having trouble in the Mediterranean. German troops were sent to assist Italian troops in April 1940, leading to the invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia.

Unable to invade British territory, Germany set out to cut off supplies by controlling the Atlantic. This decision led to an initial agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States with the Lend-Lease Act. This Act allowed the United Kingdom to buy equipment on credit from the United States. The U.S. army was not yet actively involved in the war. On June 22, 1941, German troops broke the German-Soviet pact by invading the USSR. The Nazi party launched this invasion to attack the communists, expand eastward and bring down the only ally Britain could turn to.

On December 3, 1941, German troops reached Moscow, but the USSR still did not fall. The Germans were slowed down by mud, cold and the many Russian supporters who attacked the troops from the rear.

Japan was still focused on expansionism and continued its territorial advances. The United States responded to these advances by banning oil exports in August 1941. Faced with this new threat, Japan tried to eliminate the United States from the conflict. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese air force destroyed a large part of the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.

This marked the moment the United States officially entered the war, wanting to end Japan’s dominance in the Pacific. Japan controlled several archipelagos in the Pacific Ocean and was increasingly threatening Australian territory.

In November of 1942, German troops were surrounded by Russian troops in Stalingrad. Despite his soldiers’ vulnerable position, Hitler insisted that they remain in place. German troops surrendered on February 2, 1943, marking the first major defeat for the Axis since the war began. This defeat weakened the Axis powers, but also the troops' confidence in Hitler. The Axis situation worsened during 1942 when troops were driven out of Egypt and were forced to surrender in North Africa by British-American troops. At the beginning of 1943, the Axis was in a defensive position throughout its territory. German troops made their last offensive move in July 1943.

The arrival of U.S. troops and their military equipment strengthened the Allied forces. By 1942, the Allied troops were better organized and the Allied navy was stronger than the Axis navy. The Allies also benefited from a new detection device called “a radar.” Meanwhile, the United States continued fighting in the Pacific to slow down Japanese expansion and US forces took advantage of a new type of warship called an “aircraft carrier.”

On July 10, 1943, the Allies arrived in Sicily, leading to Mussolini being overthrown and killed. An armistice was being negotiated when Germany launched a campaign and took control of Italy in September 1943.

After the victory in Stalingrad, the Soviet troops defeated the German forces and continued their advance towards Berlin and beyond. The Germans withdrew and Berlin fell to the Soviets. In 1944, the Russians entered Poland.

The year 1942 marked the peak of the Third Reich with Germany having conquered several territories

According to Nazi principles, the conquered territories became a place where Germans could live. The Germanization of these territories involved pushing out the conquered people and colonizing the territory. This policy was enforced in Poland, Alsace, Slovenia and Luxembourg.

In Nazi ideology, populations were ranked according to their perceived value and purity. This classification influenced the way soldiers treated the conquered peoples, including the German, Latin, Slavic, Scandinavian, Luxembourger and Dutch populations. In pursuit of creating a pure Aryan race, groups considered to be impure, such as Jewish people, were targeted to be eliminated.

Some territories that were directly governed by Germany, including Poland and Russia, were subjected to ruthless looting and exploitation of raw materials. Other territories were annexed and governed by German leaders. This kind of administration was established when local collaborators could not be found. This is how northern France, Norway and the Netherlands were administered. Finally, some countries maintained their national administration with their own government, provided that the government cooperated with the Nazi regime. The rest of France, as well as Serbia and Slovakia, had their own governments during the German occupation.

In addition to local governments, several collaborators promoted the rise of Nazism and Germany’s strength. Germany benefited from its many economic and industrial collaborators as several companies supported the German army, and many of them bought out Jewish businesses. Nazi conquests also helped Swiss and Swedish banks grow, as gold and wealth confiscated from Jewish citizens were stored in the banks of these neutral countries.

The political context and German power meant that anyone who did business for the Nazi party amassed fortunes during the war. The Nazis also benefited from the scientific research of their collaborators, including the creation of a petrol substitute and the manufacture of the atomic bomb. Several writers collaborated with the Nazi party, which facilitated the propaganda of their ideologies

The conquered countries had to pay the costs of maintaining the army. Nazi leaders exploited raw materials and food supplies. The workforce was employed in local factories, which were supervised and controlled, or sent to Germany to work in factories. Prisoners and camp inmates were subjected to forced labour for German companies. This systematic plundering made Germany ever stronger, despite the great expense involved since the beginning of the war.

When Germany began to run out of male labour since all the men were fighting at the front, it turned to imported labour from prisoners, volunteers and requisitions. At the height of the war, 12 to 14 million foreigners were working in Germany.

In the conquered countries, the armies stopped fighting and the Germans took over the administration. However, the people didn’t give up, and many took part in the resistance. This resistance was organized through London where certain governments, including Norway, Belgium and Poland, had taken refuge. In France, the resistance was led by Charles de Gaulle and numbered 70 000 men by the autumn of 1941. Several resistance groups were forming at the same time in German-occupied France.

On May 27, 1943, the first meeting of the National Council of the Resistance was held in Paris. This council aimed to unite the resistance movements to better organize their actions. The still-undefeated British supported the underground press, facilitated communication between resistance fighters and parachuted weapons and equipment. In 1944, they were heavily involved in preparing the Normandy landings.

Meanwhile, communist resistance groups received their orders from Moscow and participated in acts of sabotage, escape plans and counterpropaganda. For security reasons, resistance fighters frequently changed their names and where they lived. To avoid threats to their families, they had to leave them. Each resistance fighter only knew a few members in the network. This way, if they were imprisoned or tortured, the network would still be able to operate. People from the general population participated effectively in these movements by hiding Jewish people and providing equipment, plans and information obtained by working with the Germans. Several of them also sabotaged Nazi communications and transport.

The resistance was well organized in occupied countries, but was non-existent in Germany. Any resistance was quickly repressed, with many people arrested and executed. German resistance was expressed mainly through jazz music, which was banned by the Nazi party. Resistance fighters ran a very high risk of being discovered by the Gestapo. This military police, formed in the 1930s, was mainly active in occupied countries. The Gestapo hunted, arrested and tortured Jewish citizens and resistance fighters before sending them to the camps, inspiring terror throughout the conquered countries.

When the Gestapo discovered opponents of the regime, they did not hesitate to execute them in the public square. Repression and terror were used to deter resistance. Several villages were destroyed and their residents massacred. Despite everything, the resistance continued to fight. On July 20, 1944, an assassination attempt was made on Hitler. However the bombing did not go as planned and Hitler was only wounded.

As soon as Hitler came to power, Jewish citizens faced persecution by discriminatory laws. The Nazi regime directly repressed Jewish citizens and encouraged them to emigrate outside of Germany. This emigration policy forced 150 000 Jewish persons to leave Germany. Several racist and antisemitic ideologies were popular before the war began. Antisemitic discrimination was widespread in several countries and these racist ideologies were supported by several pseudo-scientific theories. The fact that these racist ideas were common in other countries may partly explain why few leaders reacted to the Nazi party’s discriminatory measures.

Laws and deportation of Jewish citizens from Germany:

• On April 7, 1933, all Jewish citizens were excluded from the civil service.
• On May 10, 1933, the Nazi party held a ceremony during which tens of thousands of books by Jewish writers were burned in front of the Berlin Opera House.
• On September 15, 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were enforced.
• In September 1937, Aryanization began. Aryanization involved selling property owned by Jewish citizens at a low price, so that all goods and property would belong to the perceived pure race. Jewish people were forced to sell their property.
• On January 1, 1939, a new law was passed to ensure that all newborn Jewish citizens had names from a sanctioned list: Israel for boys and Sarah for girls.
• When Austria was annexed in 1938, the Nazis began deporting the 200 000 Jewish citizens living there.
• On January 24, 1939, Hitler ordered all Jewish citizens to leave Germany.
• On July 20, 1939, Western countries intervened for the first time. Britain ordered that the mass deportation of Jewish people to Palestine be halted immediately.

With the beginning of their expansionist policy, the Nazis aimed to expand the territories where Germans could live. This is why the German army invaded the USSR. Nazi authorities were unhappy with the presence of Jewish citizens.

The Nazis initially created ghettos in which Jewish residents of the region were forced to live. These ghettos did not have drinking water and people were crammed into them where they lived under degrading conditions: humiliation by the SS, repression, curfews, lack of sanitary facilities, etc. Jewish families were confined to the ghettos before eventually being deported to the camps.

The decision was made to stop the forced emigration of Jewish citizens when there was nowhere left to send them. At this point, the Nazi’s extermination policy began because emigration attempts had failed: they considered extermination the only way to achieve their pursuit of more territories where Germans could live. The first intervention groups were formed to eliminate all Jewish people in the area reserved for Germans within the USSR. These intervention groups were responsible for the deaths of 750 000 Jewish citizens.

The methods used by the military leaders showed their hatred towards the Jewish people: prisoners were forced to dig ditches and were then shot and buried in the ditches they had dug. This brutal method was considered too distressing for the soldiers who had to shoot their victims, so leaders began to develop more “efficient” methods. With the collaboration of some scientists, the Nazis developed gas chambers.

The decision to perpetrate extermination was made at the Wannsee Conference on January 20th 1942. The final solution was set in motion during this meeting. The leaders who were present developed a hidden extermination plan. All Jewish persons who were able to work would be sent to labour camps, where the living and working conditions would leave no chance for the prisoners. The camp authorities sent the people who were unable to work to the gas chambers. These labour camps served to keep  the extermination campaign hidden. Even the documents and orders issued among the leaders never directly stated the truth.

Starting in 1942, several extermination camps were built. Men and women unfit for work, as well as children, were sent directly to the gas chambers. The Final Solution aimed to systematically exterminate all Jewish people in Europe.

As early as January 1933, the Nazi party opened small prison camps that held up to 1000 prisoners. They detained anyone who opposed Nazism, including communists and socialists. In October 1933, these camps detained 27 000 prisoners. The conditions of detention were kept secret to create terror among the population and the opponents of the Nazi party. 

On February 28, 1933, the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State, also called the Reichstag Fire Decree, gave the Gestapo the right to arrest and detain people for security purposes. The Gestapo arrested Jehovah’s Witnesses who refused to do their mandatory military service. In 1934, the Gestapo suggested that these camps should be state-run so they could be better managed and organized. It decided to model the camps after Dachau, a labour camp opened in 1933.

The Nazi party then began to open new camps to which prisoners were transferred. Special SS troops controlled these new camps. They were instructed to fight and destroy their enemies. At that time there were three camps, one of which was reserved for women. In addition to the political prisoners, there were criminals, homeless people, persons presumed to be homosexual, Romas (“gypsies”) as well as Jewish people.

After 1939, the population in the camps increased due to the large number of deportees sent from conquered countries. About 90% of camp prisoners were now foreigners. The constant increase in the number of prisoners forced the Nazis to open several new camps and add annexes to existing ones. All prisoners were given tasks to perform upon arriving at the camp.

As soon as they arrived at the camp, the prisoners lost their identity. They were stripped of their personal belongings, disinfected, their hair was shaved, they were issued a uniform and they were given a number that replaced their name. A coloured triangle was sewn onto the uniform. Based on the colour of the triangle, the SS could distinguish between the different categories of prisoners.  Political prisoners wore a red triangle, criminals wore a green triangle, the Roma (gypsies) wore a black triangle, people presumed to be homosexuals wore a pink triangle, Jehovah's Witnesses wore a purple triangle and Jewish people wore a yellow star.

Prisoners were sent to overcrowded barracks with no running water. They were woken up at 3 a.m. for roll call, which could last several hours. They were malnourished but still had to do hard work in the camp, in companies or in factories. The SS delegated the supervision of the blocks to “kapos,” German common law prisoners who had a higher status than other prisoners. They enjoyed certain privileges and often abused their power. The mortality rate in the labour camps varied between 25 and 55%.

Until 1942, Jewish prisoners were locked up in the same concentration camps as other prisoners. This changed after the Final Solution was implemented. The first camps to enforce the Final Solution were in the USSR. In addition to the mass murdering of Jewish people, the SS executed anyone who the Nazis determined to be unworthy of life, including people suffering from physical or mental disabilities.

The first euthanasia centres for prisoners unfit for work were opened in the USSR. After the Wannsee Conference, the leaders organized the transportation and mass murder of the Jewish people. They opened three death camps where Jewish nationals were gassed as soon as they arrived: Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. All three death camps were destroyed during the war. Belzec was destroyed by the prisoners themselves by order of the SS. Sobibor was destroyed during a prisoner uprising and a mass escape led to the closure of Treblinka.

The living conditions were appalling and included long days of hard work, malnutrition, no running water, a single piece of clothing, one pair of ill-fitting worn-out shoes, a complex hierarchy, illogical orders that had to be obeyed, violence, hatred, the constant threat of the gas chamber, random executions, contagious diseases, filth and overcrowding.

By the end of 1941, the Auschwitz camp was the assembly point for all Jewish citizens in Germany. This was the largest death camp and had three separate sections.

The railroad led directly to the camp and prisoners were triaged on a platform, based on their ability to work. Anyone unfit for work was sent to the gas chamber after being stripped of all their possessions. About 1.3 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, not counting all those who died from exhaustion, injury, disease or medical experiments by German doctors. In November 1944, when the German armies were losing, Germany gave the order to stop operating gas chambers in the death camps and to erase all traces of it.

In 1942, the Allied countries received word about the massacres of the Jewish people and the gas chambers. In April 1944, escapees from Auschwitz described what they had seen and experienced there. Authorities decided to wait until after they won the war to take action. The aim was to concentrate on military objectives before attempting anything else.

It was only at the end of the war, when the Allies liberated the camps and the survivors told of their experiences, that the world really understood what had happened in the camps. Authorities were aware that there had been massacres, but didn’t realize how extensive they were. The Nazis’ actions during the war led to the creation of a new category of crime called “crimes against humanity,” which was one of the charges at the Nuremberg trials.

The British Prime Minister wanted to put a definitive end to the German invasion and was convinced that the attack should happen on French soil. The British government was prepared to organize a military action that would allow entry into France. To do this, Britain had to ensure that Germany would no longer attempt to invade England. It needed to form a new army and take advantage of U.S. loans.

To test the German defences on the Atlantic, a raid was organized on Dieppe on August 19, 1942. This test proved that Germany’s Atlantic Wall was strong and it cost the lives of 1500 soldiers, some of whom came from Canada.

The Germans were aware of the risk of the Allies invading French territory from the Atlantic. For this reason, they built a wall preventing any sea or air landings that included fortifications, minefields, barbed wire, cannons, etc. The wall was constantly guarded by soldiers armed with machine guns, flamethrowers and rockets. The most fragile points were more heavily guarded and protected, such as the Pas-de-Calais, which was close to the British coast.

In January 1944, the Germans feared a landing in northern France. They increased their protective measures: flooding of meadows, setting up explosive barriers, coastal artillery, installing radars and listening stations.

At the Tehran Conference, between November 28 and December 1st ,1943, the British (Churchill), U.S. (Roosevelt) and Russian (Stalin) leaders met to make joint military decisions.

It was at this meeting that they chose Normandy as the location for the landing. There were several reasons for this choice: the location was less heavily protected than others, the current was not too strong, the land was not flooded too close to the beach, and the beaches of Normandy were sandy or covered with pebbles, which made sea landings easier. An Allied organization then had to determine the exact location of the landing, gather as much information as possible on naval military operations and plan troop transport.

The training site was in Great Britain, on beaches with similar conditions to the chosen beaches in Normandy. Several air operations were launched to gather intelligence on German defences or bomb them. However it was difficult to gather so many troops and equipment without Germany noticing. The Allies used a ruse to make their operation work. They created a dummy army out of inflatable structures near Pas-de-Calais to make the Nazis think that the landing would take place there.

French resistance fighters were kept informed through the BBC, which communicated coded messages to them using a poem by Verlaine. The on-air reading of the first three lines signalled that the landing was happening the next week. When the next three lines were read, it meant that the landing would follow within the next 48 hours. This signal told resistance fighters when to take action to sabotage the railroads and telephones lines. Cutting off transportation routes and communications would prevent German reinforcements from reaching the battlefield in time

The departure was initially scheduled for June 4, but was delayed by 24 hours due to a storm in the English Channel. The first operation was an air attack: 1800 paratroopers landed in Normandy on the night of June 6, 1944. Half of these paratroopers were killed. Those who survived were responsible for taking control of the roads, slowing down the counter-attack. Despite the low survival rate, the operation successfully cut off communications. The second attack was by sea: 5000 warships and transport ships crossed the Channel, carrying troops and equipment. Only one of these ships was sunk before the landing.

After a nighttime bombing, the attack took place at dawn, on five separate beaches. By 8:00 a.m., all the troops had landed. All the beaches were conquered except one, Omaha Beach, where 2500 soldiers were killed, taken prisoner or disappeared. This beach was secured in the early afternoon. Including the Omaha Beach casualties, the Normandy landings resulted in 3000 Allied casualties. Within five days, the Normandy landings brought 620 000 men to the beaches of France.

After the sea landing, the Allied troops had to take a stand and defend what they had gained. The French assisted the Allies as soon as they arrived, by providing supplies and carrying out sabotage. The Allied forces took advantage of the Germans’ surprise. The German forces, convinced that another landing was coming in Pas-de-Calais, left 150 000 men on the beach, which made the Allies’ job easier. Demanding reinforcements, the Germans abandoned the eastern front, allowing the Russian armies to continue their advance. The Allies needed a deep-water port to bring reinforcements and equipment onto French soil, leading the troops to fight for the port of Cherbourg, which set in motion the  liberation of France was underway.

Paris was liberated in August 1944. The Allied forces advanced rapidly to the east, and in March 1945, U.S. troops reached Germany. In April, they liberated Austria and Nuremberg. The Allies and Russia joined forces, which led to the fall of Berlin.

On April 30, 1945, sensing his imminent defeat, Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. On May 2, 1945, German troops surrendered in Italy, the Netherlands and northern Germany. On May 4, Denmark was liberated. The German provisional government surrendered unconditionally on May 7 and 8, 1945, ending the war in Europe.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops were still fighting to stop Japanese expansion. The United States, New Zealand and Australia were pushing Japan back, one archipelago at a time. The war was based solely on the strength of equipment and weapons. The Allied troops only took the strategic points of the archipelagos.

Japan was constantly bombed, resulting in numerous defeats and deaths, but it refused to surrender and wanted to reconquer its lost territories. The new U.S. president, Harry S. Truman, decided to use a new weapon to convince Japan to surrender. The first atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

In addition to forcing the Japanese to end the war, U.S. leaders decided to drop atomic bombs to demonstrate the power of these weapons and to send a message to other countries that the United States possessed the atomic bomb and had used it. When Japan still refused to surrender, the United States dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. The two bombs killed 150 000 people when they exploded.

On August 8, 1945, the USSR also declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria on August 9. On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced his surrender. Japan surrendered unconditionally on September 2, 1945, bringing World War II to a definitive  end.