Transcript The End of Germany

The End of
Germany
1942-45
Key Themes
• Operation Barbarossa
overstretches the Wehrmacht.
• Battle of Stalingrad is turning
point: Germany never
recovers.
• Allies grow stronger due to
American manufacturing
• D-Day: Germany has to fight
on two fronts.
• Germany squeezed by
Russia to the East and
Britain/America to the
West.
• Allied bombing reduces
Germany to rubble.
• German Reich is utterly
annihilated.
Hitler’s Final Gamble
• Hitler’s intention all along had
been to invade and occupy
Russia.
• It was to be used as a vast
industrial/agricultural zone for
slave labor and resettlement.
• In the Fall of 1941, three million
German soldiers surged into
Russia
German forces wait for the order to invade Russia
German Possessions 1942
Early Successes wiped out by the
winter
• Germany had stunning
successes early on
similar to the triumphs
in France, Poland and
elsewhere.
• But the Russian winter
proved to be the
undoing on the German
army…
Winter in Russia
• The Germans thought they would defeat Russia easily, so did not
bother to take winter clothes. Tanks and other equipment did not
work at such low temperatures (-50f)
• More Germans died of cold and starvation than in battle.
Stalingrad
• Stalingrad became Hitler’s main objective
when the campaign renewed in the fall of
1942. But the Russians set a trap, and
destroyed the entire German 6th Army.
• Of the 750,000 German men who attacked
Stalingrad, less that 10,000 ever made it back
to Germany alive.
Stalingrad (Winter 1942/43)
Aftermath of Stalingrad
• German army was so weakened by battle that
it began retreating toward Germany.
• Russian Army grew in size and strength.
• German defeat became inevitable, only a
matter of time.
• Then…
D-Day
Allies open second front in France
• As Allies pour men and
equipment into France,
Germany is forced to
fight a battle of two
fronts.
• Germany now is in full
retreat everywhere…
Terror Bombing
• Allied planes begin
around the clock
bombing of German
civilian centers,
industrial centers and
other key sites.
• The idea is to weaken
Germany and
demoralize the German
people
Terror Bombing
• Hundreds of thousands of
German civilians are
Killed.
• Allied pilots received
worse casualties than any
other branch of allied
forces in entire war…
• Victims of the “Fire storm” in
Dresden, killed, all burned alive.
City was filled with refugees,
some say 300,000 died in one
night.
May 1945
• Germany is wrecked,
smashed beyond
recognition.
• German army is
completely annihilated
• Hitler is hiding in his
bunker.
• Russian soldiers commit
atrocities on Germans
in payback for Nazi
cruelty.
• Final phase of the war is
a barbaric and inhuman
struggle for Berlin.
500,000 die…
Battle of Berlin
The End of Hitler
• In the last days of the
war Hitler ordered boys
as young as 12 into
battle against the
Russians.
• He surrounded himself
with his closest friends,
and hid in the bunker.
The End of Hitler
• On April 30th 1945,
Hitler married his long
time partner, Eva Braun.
• Then, they ate a last
meal, took poison, and
Hitler then shot her,
before turning the gun
on himself.
• Above the bunker,
guards burned their
corpses to prevent the
same sort of mutilation
that Mussolini had
suffered.
• On May 8th, Germany
surrendered.