A military hero during World War I , Petain was appointed vice premier of France in May to boost morale in a country crumbling under the force of the Nazi invasion. Instead, Petain arranged an armistice with the Nazis. The armistice, signed by the French on June 22, went into effect on June 25, and more than half of France was occupied by the Germans. The Vichy government under Petain collaborated with the Nazis, and French citizens suffered on both sides of the divided nation.
In , Pierre Laval, an opportunistic French fascist and dutiful Nazi collaborator, won the trust of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler , and the elderly Petain became merely a figurehead in the Vichy regime.
After the Normandy invasion in , Petain and Laval were forced to flee to German protection in the east. Both were eventually captured, found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to die. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! The massacre at a historic Black church deeply shook a nation already jaded by frequent gun In the early morning of June 17, , five men are arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate, an office-hotel-apartment complex in Washington, D.
In their possession were burglary tools, cameras and film, and three pen-size tear In the face of this opposition, the Nazis began to step up planning for Operation Sealion — the code name for the invasion of Britain. The Luftwaffe initiated the first attack as part of the Battle of Britain on 10 July For the first six weeks the Luftwaffe concentrated on bombing strategic targets, such as air strips, on the south coast.
After a series of battles, it became clear that the Nazis were not going to enjoy a swift and easy victory. This decision marked an active switch to bombing civilian targets. Whilst devastating for London, the bombing raids on the East End allowed the RAF crucial time to recover from the raids on their own runways and airports.
On 14 September , Hitler recognised that invading Britain was, at that moment, impossible. Operation Sealion was postponed indefinitely. The bombing of London, which became known as the Blitz, continued until 11 May The British, who had troops stationed in Egypt which was a colony at the time , responded four days later by capturing the Italian Fort Capuzzo in Egypt. A series of counter offensives followed. The situation reached a head in the Second Battle of El Alamein in October , which became a key turning point in the war.
The German and Italian troops were expecting an attack, and sheltered behind a minefield. The Allied invasion took place in two parts: an intense bombing campaign followed by infantry attack which then cleared the way for armoured divisions to break through the German defences.
The German and Italian troops were in a weak position, with their leader, Erwin Rommel, in hospital from 23 September onwards. They also had little fuel or transport. Rommel returned from hospital to retake command on the 25 October By 2 November , the defences were near breaking point.
Rommel withdrew his troops on 4 November By 11 November, the battle was over, leaving the Allied troops victorious. The battle marked a turning point in the North Africa campaign, reviving the morale of the Allied troops following the failure of the Battle of France. After a winter stalemate in , with both sides building up reinforcements, the Allied troops advanced and surrounded the Axis troops. On 13 May , the Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. All Axis territory was captured along with , experienced troops.
It represented a significant reduction of Axis power. By , the German Army had annexed or occupied large parts of Europe. This map shows these territories as well as the German advance into the Soviet Union.
This certificate was issued to thank German citizens for their donations of fur and winter clothes in response to a Christmas appeal for the troops on the Eastern Front. Following the failure of the Battle of Britain, the Nazis turned their focus towards their ideological enemy, the Soviet Union. Hitler had always envisioned that a successful war against the Soviet Union would be necessary to achieve two of the Nazis ideological aims: Lebensraum and the destruction of communism.
Hitler had anticipated the attack being similar, if not easier, than that of France, lasting four or five months at most. The Nazis viewed the Russian people as racially and ideologically inferior: no match for the German army. Hitler authorised preparations for the attack, known as Operation Barbarossa , on the 18 December The Nazis invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June This broke the Nazi-Soviet aggression pact which had been signed just two years prior.
The Nazis aimed their attacks at three key targets, the Ukraine in the south, Moscow in the middle, and Leningrad in the north.
The invasion took the Soviets by surprise. Initially, the Nazis managed to cover large territories and encircle masses of troops, who duly surrendered. By late September, the Nazis were on the edge of Leningrad, having covered hundreds of miles of Soviet territory. Despite these tactical achievements, Soviet resistance hardened and the country did not surrender. Although less well trained than their German counterparts, the Soviet Army was extremely large and they were more used to the difficult terrain than German troops.
Having expected a quick victory, the German troops became more and more exhausted and they were unprepared for a Russian winter after months of warfare. Supply chains were slow, leaving troops short of key materials. In late , the Soviets launched a counterattack on the German troops outside Moscow, pushing the Germans back into a defensive battle.
The mass murder of Soviet Jews by the Einsatzgruppen was an essential part of the planning that took place in the six months prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union. Their victims included, but were not limited to, Slavs, Jews, Roma and their political opponents. The Einsatzgruppen were made up approximately men.
They were assisted by the Germany Army and local collaborators. In contrast to the extermination camp system which was used widely for Jews in Germany, Austria and occupied Poland, the Einsatzgruppen murdered their victims where they lived or nearby to where they lived.
Typically, the Einsatzgruppen murdered their victims in mass shootings, however there were also cases of the Einsatzgruppen using mobile gas vans. Einsatzgruppe A covered Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Einsatzgruppe B covered eastern Poland from Warsaw east and Belorussia. Einsatzgruppe C covered southeastern Poland from Krakow east and western Ukraine. Einsatzgruppe D covered Romania, southern Ukraine and the Crimea.
The following day, the United States declared war on Japan. Until the end of , the United States of America had remained a neutral country, not involved in the War. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the most important naval base in America, on 7 December changed this. The USA were caught by surprise by the attack. Over people were killed, and more than people were injured. A large majority of the military vehicles present were destroyed or broken.
The reaction to the sheer devastation caused was immediate. Hitler supported the Japanese attack, and shortly after, on 11 December , declared war on the USA. The USA immediately retaliated, and returned the declaration. The bombing of Pearl Harbour, which brought the United States into the war on the side of the Allies, had a huge impact on the final outcome of the war.
Stalingrad was one of the largest and most brutal battles of the Second World War. Here, German troops run through a trench in the north of Stalingrad during battle. This pamphlet was published in July It circulated the details of a meeting of German resistance in , shortly after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad.
The pamphlet helps to evidence the small but growing discontent from some groups against the Nazis in Germany by this stage in the war. However, this discontent and resistance was typically from small, uncoordinated, groups rather than a united national movement. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in , fighting on the eastern front was continuous. The Germans, who had been close to capturing the capital of Moscow in late , were pushed back over miles to west to the town of Rzhev.
This attack was problematic for German morale but, by February , German troops had reorganised. They counterattacked and destroyed several Soviet divisions. This counterattack was soon met with further counterattacks from the Soviets and then the Germans. On the 23 August , the Germans launched an offensive to seize the city of Stalingrad in south-west Russia. The battle was one of the largest and most brutal in history. It was also one of the only battles of the Second World War to feature hand-to-hand combat.
The Germans first attempted to bomb Stalingrad into submission. The city was reduced to rubble with air attacks by the Luftwaffe. German tanks followed the planes, reaching the outskirts of the city quickly. The German troops entered Stalingrad on the 12 September , advanced quickly and occupied two thirds of the city by the 30 September.
Their rapid advance once again fooled them into thinking that the battle would be quick. The Soviets put up a strong resistance. Having experienced losses against the Germans almost continuously for the previous year, the Soviet Army saw Stalingrad as an ideological and moral battle as well as a tactical one.
In addition to continuous air bombing, fighting in the rubble of the city was characterised by hand-to-hand combat with daggers and bayonets, as each side ambushed the other under the cover of darkness.
By November , Marshal Georgy Zhukov , the Soviet general, had gathered over a million men with several tank armies. Zhukov encircled Axis troops in the north-west of the city. On 19 November , the Russians overwhelmed Romanian armies who were supporting the Germans in the north west of the city. The Germans reacted slowly, and quickly became encircled. Despite General Paulus repeatedly requesting permission to surrender or retreat from Hitler, this was denied.
The , German soldiers that were surrounded by the Soviet Army quickly ran out of ammunition and food in the midst of the Russian winter. Of the 91, German troops that surrendered, just eventually returned to Germany. Most died from illness, starvation or exhaustion. It was a series of four offensives carried out by Allied troops in central Italy who was a key ally of Germany in an attempt to breakthrough the Winter Line and occupy Rome. This time they were going to remain on the defensive in western Europe, while mobilising their military forces and industrial base to fight a total war.
They planned to take the offensive some two to three years after the start of hostilities. The 'Maginot Line' replaced the crude trenches in which so much of the war was fought. It consisted of a sophisticated series of fortifications, which were confidently expected to protect France's frontier with Germany, although crucially the line did not cover the Franco-Belgian frontier.
In general, the slow-tempo, attritional fighting of World War One heavily influenced French military doctrine at the outbreak of World War Two. Hitler was eager to follow up his victory over Poland in by attacking in the west, but bad weather forced the planned offensive to be postponed.
Then, in January , a German plane crashed in neutral Belgium, with a copy of the attack orders on board. Hitler was forced to rethink, believing the plan compromised he turned for advice to General Erich von Manstein, who argued for a daring campaign. In effect, Manstein recognised that the Maginot Line was too formidable for a direct attack from Germany.
Instead, he proposed a subsidiary attack through neutral Holland and Belgium, with the main blow against France to be launched a little later through the Ardennes. This was a hilly and heavily forested area on the German-Belgian-French border, where the Allies would be unlikely to expect an attack. The plan was to rely heavily on surprise blitzkrieg 'lightning war' techniques. Contrary to a generally held belief, the Germans had fewer tanks than the Allies 2, against 3, at this point.
However, the tanks were concentrated into Panzer armoured formations. The French had some equivalent formations that were of good quality, but they were dispersed rather than concentrated in the German fashion. Manstein's plan envisaged these Panzer divisions in a semi-independent role, striking ahead of the main body of the army, to disrupt and disorientate the Allies.
This was a very risky plan - much more ambitious than the strategy used in Poland - and was opposed by the more conservative-minded generals. Hitler, however, although not without some misgivings, gave his approval. The attack began on 10 May , with German air raids on Belgium and Holland, followed by parachute drops and attacks by ground forces. The two beleaguered nations were hastily added to the anti-German ad-hoc coalition that included France and Britain, but this only served to further complicate Allied command and control arrangements.
The Germans seized the initiative, capturing the key Belgian fort of Eban Emael with a daring airborne operation. The speed of the German advance and the brutality of the air raids gave them a huge psychological advantage, and on 14 May the Dutch surrendered.
The British and French had responded to the original attack by putting into operation a plan to advance to the River Dyle, in Belgium. The Allies pushed their best forces, including the British, into Belgium. Although the initial stages went reasonably well, a French force advancing towards Breda, in Holland, was pushed back. It soon became clear that by advancing into the Low Countries the Allies were dancing to Hitler's tune. In a two-day battle, the Panzers crossed the river, despite some surprisingly stiff resistance from the second-class French defenders, and near-suicidal attacks by Allied aircraft.
Under the dynamic command of General Heinz Guderian, a pioneer of armoured warfare known euphemistically as 'Hurry-up Heinz', the German Panzers broke out of their bridgehead.
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