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Welcome to the second part of my series on World War II. In this article, I will be focusing on the “European theater” of World War II.
In 1940, Scandinavia was conquered with the help of Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian
traitor for the Nazis. He was appointed the head of the Nazi government in Scandinavia.
In the spring of 1940, a battle took place in Northern France. The results of this battle
trapped many British and French soldiers as the Germans began to conquer French territory.
The British Royal Air Force (RAF) held off the Nazi army while over 300,000 Allied soldiers
escaped on ships to the island of Great Britain. This evacuation took place at Dunkirk, a port in
Northern France. That Hitler paused the attack on France in order to attack the “Low Countries”
(the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg) was a factor that aided this evacuation. But
because the British and some French troops fled, the Nazis easily invaded France from the east
and the Italians begin their invasion of France from the south. Henri Pétain, a World War I hero
and the leader of the French government, surrendered to Germany on June 22, 1940. All of
France except for Vichy, a small region in southern France, were directly controlled by the
Nazis. Vichy, although under Pétain, acted alongside the Nazis. In Great Britain, General Charles
de Gaulle established the Free French Government with hopes that France might be recovered.
In my opinion, I accredit the fall of France to the League of Nations. The League of Nations
requested that all of its members reduce their weapons and military. While this may not be
necessarily a bad thing, the problem was that the League of Nations blindly turned its eyes from
Germany who was not following that procedure and rapidly making more weapons and drafting
more men. The League of Nations should have noticed Hitler’s transgressing of the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles. This issue might also be the cause of the size of Germany’s air force
compared to Great Britain’s air force.
Without France’s opposition, Hitler made plans for Operation Sea-Lion. This operation
would conquer Great Britain through the use of the Luftwaffe, Germany’s air force which was
about five times Great Britain’s air force. But Great Britain’s previous losses to the Germans
caused King George VI to appoint Winston Churchill as prime minister in place of Neville
Chamberlain who had resigned. This was certainly God’s doing because shortly after Churchill
became prime minister, the Battle of Britain began. Churchill shows his resolve in these lines:
“We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and
growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight
on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the
streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender (Combee and Thompson, 383).”
This resolve encouraged the British people during the Battle of Britain and the London
Blitz. Many children vacated their homes in the cities to stay in the countryside with relatives
and some even came to America. With a new invention called the radar, the RAF dealt heavy
losses to the Luftwaffe causing the Germans to retreat.
Another area where Germany outnumbered Great Britain was in its navy. Germany built
a large number of small ships in order to reconcile the size limitations of battleships stated in
the Treaty of Versailles. These “pocket battleships” made the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic
Ocean extremely dangerous. These ships blockaded Great Britain and Canada to hinder the
shipping of supplies.
Meanwhile, Italy had been having failure after failure in North Africa. Because Italy’s
army was very weak it took nearly a year to conquer the primitive Ethiopians who were still
using spears and swords. Upon receiving a distress call from Mussolini, Hitler sent Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps to North Africa.
Because most of Europe was under Nazi or Soviet control and the end of the war
seemed imminent, Hitler decide that it was time to attack the Soviet Union. Hitler encouraged
other enslaved nations to donate their men to attack Russia by reminding them of the land they
lost to Russia in World War I. Over three million soldiers began the invasion of the Soviet Union
on June 22, 1941. On June 22, 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte also began his invasion of Russia. We
will see the similarities in these attacks. The Nazi army faced “General Mud” and General
Winter,” the dreaded commanders of geography. Joseph Stalin employed the same tactic that
Czar Alexander I used against Napoleon: burning cities that were apt to be captured. As the
winter drew near, the Nazis had no shelter. After this attack, the Allies supplied the Soviet
Union with a mass amount of weapons and money. This would come back to hurt the free
world in the Cold War because although Russia was their ally, Russia was Communist.
In 1941, the United States entered the war due to the Pearl Harbor attack by Japan. I
will discuss the issues of the Pacific in my next article. After the defeat of the British and
Canadian forces at Dieppe, France, General Bernard Montgomery won a victory against the
Afrika Korps at El Alamein, Egypt. American generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S.
Patton led the successful Operation Torch in Northwest Africa. Following the invasion of Sicily,
Italy surrendered on September 18, 1943. The Italians did away with Benito Mussolini and
joined the Allied cause. The battle at Stalingrad, Russia marked the Nazis last great offensive in
the east, and the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium marked their last great
offensive in the West. Germany began losing its military power to the Allies.
Between these two offensives, D-Day took place. Although the planning of D-Day (the
code name for Operation Bodyguard which was the code name for Operation Overlord) began
many months earlier, the Allies needed to wait for the perfect time to attack. High tides, a full
moon, and the completion of tricking the German’s radar detectors were all essential to this
invasion. The fact that Erwin Rommel was celebrating his wife’s birthday alleviated the Allies’
mission. Eisenhower was placed in charge of this attack, and Patton debriefed the men before
the attack. Many of the men involved in this invasion didn’t know who they were attacking until
they finally spotted the French coastline. Many separate invasions of France occurred at
different locations. When all was over, the Allies had recovered France.
Believing that Hitler was becoming a lunatic, some of his officers unsuccessfully
attempted to assassinate him. Germany began to lose its trust in Der Fuhrer. By March 1945,
Berlin was close to capture. Hitler and his family committed suicide, and a new government was
established. On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered to the Allies, and Victory in Europe (V-E)
Day was celebrated the day after. But the war was far from over for America; Japan remained a
constant threat.
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- Triniti, Anna, and Jessica
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