World War II

World War II
Overview
Date	1939-1945
Location	Europe North and Eastern Africa Eastern Asia Pacific Ocean Atlantic Ocean
Combatants
Allies Great Britain French National Committee Soviet Union (from 1941) Republic of China United States (from 1941) Canada Australia New Zealand Yugoslavia Greece Italy (from 1943 to 1945)	Axis Nazi Germany Italy (until 1943) Japan Hungary (1941–45) Romania (1941–44) Bulgaria (1941–44) Manchuria
Commanders
Great Britain: Winston Churchill Soviet Union: Joseph Stalin China: Chiang Kai-shek United States: Franklin D. Roosevelt	Nazi Germany: Adolf Hitler Italy: Benito Mussolini Japan: Hirohito
Strength
Casualties
61,000,000 total	12,000,000 total

World War II, also known as The Great Patriotic War, was a global set of conflicts beginning in 1931 in Asia, 1935 in Africa, and 1939 in Europe, all lasting until 1945, in which the Allied powers, led after the Fall of France by the British Commonwealth, and including the United States, the Soviet Union, the Republic of China, among many other nations, completely defeated the Axis Powers, led by Nazi Germany, and including Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. Although Japan's war against China began in 1937, the main conflict started in September 1939 when Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland; Britain and France then declared war on Germany. France was quickly knocked out of the war and became divided betwen the collaborationist Vichy regime occupying the continent and the so-called "Free French" in exile in England and North Africa.

The conflict was the deadliest in human history with estimated deaths ranging from 50 million to over 70 million soldiers and civilians. It ended with the Soviet Union dominant in a part of Central Europe and all of Eastern Europe, and the U.S. and its allies dominant in Western Europe, a part of Central Europe and Scandinavia, setting the stage for the Cold War.

Causes

See: Causes of World War II

Italy in World War II

See also: Italy in World War II

Invasion of Poland

Joint victory parade of Nazi and Soviet armies, Brest-Litovsk, Poland, September 22, 1939. Courtesy Pauli Kruhse (Finland)

See also: Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and World War II: 1939

In the immediate run up to WWII, there were frequent reports of trespassing Polish troops. On August 31, 1939 German covert operatives staged a fake attack by Polish troops on a German radio station. WWII started on September 1, 1939, when German troops invaded Poland. Hitler justified this as a defensive act, pointing to the frequent border incidents, and said famously that from this moment on Germany would strike back.

The major tactical innovation of the war was the use of combined arms warfare, typified by the German doctrine of blitzkrieg. In this style of warfare armor, infantry, artillery and air power (see Luftwaffe) all coordinate to achieve overwhelming superiority at a point on the enemy lines. Armor and fast-moving infantry units then exploit the gap and penetrate deep behind enemy lines. The objective is to cause a widespread collapse of the enemy's ability to fight. It was particularly effective during the early stages of the war, before the Allies developed effective countermeasures. On September 17, 1939, Poland was invaded from the east by Hitler's ally, Stalin. Before the month was out, the Nazi and Soviet armies staged a joint victory parade through the streets of occupied Brest-Litovsk, Poland, where the Soviets handed over to the Gestapo some 600 prisoners, "most of them Jews."

In 1939-1940, eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Bessarabia were invaded and annexed by the Soviet Union.

Finland: The Winter War

The Soviet Union invaded Finland on November 30, 1939. This conflict came to be known as the "Winter War". Despite the overwhelming numbers of the Red Army, the Finnish resistance was strong and the battle was hard-fought before the Soviet army took control. Outside powers (including the U.S.) considered intervention to help Finland; only a little aid trickled in and Finland was forced to sue for peace. The peace treaty signed in March 1940 favored the Soviets, but they paid heavily for their victory with 200,000 dead. Finland lost 25,000 dead, and had to absorb 400,000 refugees from areas turned over to the Soviets. In 1941 Finland joined Germany in attacking the Soviets, in the Siege of Leningrad, but lost again.

An armistice in Sept. 1944 stabilized the border, using March 1940 lines; in addition Finland had to pay heavy reparations and had to remain neutral in the Cold War.

Fall of France, Denmark, and Norway

See also: Anti-Comintern Pact

German officers salute French soldiers who were allowed to carry arms in a surrender ceremony.

Once the invasion of Poland was complete, German forces regrouped while French and British forces remained on the defensive, leading US commentators to dub it the Phoney War. May 10, 1940 made clear that the war was real, as Germany invaded France, occupying neutral countries such as the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium in the process. Resistance by the British and French armies proved ineffective, and France was soon surrendered. British and French troops were routed and evacuated mainland Europe at Dunkirk. France was divided into the northern Occupied France and the collaborationist Vichy regime in the south of France, including Corsica. The United States granted full diplomatic recognition to the Vichy regime, whereas the United Kingdom granted recognition to the French National Committee led by Gen. Charles De Gaulle.

The collapse and occupation of France, together with Germany's non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, Germany's alliance with fascist Italy and an expansionist Japan, the benevolent neutrality of fascist Spain, and the fact that little of Europe was outside Axis control, led many to assume that Britain had been defeated. Indeed, it would appear that the seemingly foolish decision of the relatively weak Britain to continue the war took the Axis powers off guard. This decision ensured the remaining British Empire was still involved in the war, with Japan threatening many British possessions in Asia.

On the same day as the fall of the Third French Republic, colonial forces loyal to the Third Republic shot and killed 200 members of the Comintern at the Saigon airport in Vietnam.

In 1940 Denmark and Norway were invaded by German forces, to preempt a British occupation of Norway and occupy its coastline and ports to be used by the Kriegsmarine. Norway also contained a source of Heavy water, potentially crucial in the construction of an atomic weapon. The operation was successful, but losses were heavy, especially to the Kriegsmarine. This was soon followed by the British troops invited by Iceland and American occupation of Greenland. (The goal was to prevent any increase in the range of German air and submarine activity, brought about the occupation of these lands - and of the Azores at the request of the Portuguese Government.)

All these countries, France, the Low Countries, Denmark, and Norway, provided troops and manpower to the SS, and industrial capacity to the German war machine.

Battle of Britain

See also: Battle of Britain and World War II: 1940

With Britain the sole opposing European nation, the Battle of Britain commenced. The Luftwaffe attempted to achieve aerial dominance over the south of Britain, in order to allow a sea based invasion of the British Isles to proceed. From 10 July to the end of October the Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe fought for dominance; the resilience of the RAF, which counted in its ranks also Commonwealth personnel, US volunteers and Polish and Czech exiles, and the use of radar and its associated early warning systems, had forced a rethink of German tactics. It was the first significant setback for the Germans in the War. They now concentrated on the great population centers, especially London, hoping that huge civilian casualties would weaken morale and lead to a lessening of the war effort by the populace. The period that followed, popularly known as the Blitz, lasted into May 1941. Around 40,000 civilians and civil defense workers died; but the Germans failed to reach their objectives and their resources were soon diverted to the Eastern front as Hitler began concentrating on the impending invasion of the Soviet Union.

With the pressure off their air bases the RAF was now able to increase its nightly raids on industrial sites in Germany and occupied lands. Because of the inability to correctly target these sites, the raids soon turned into “area bombing”, and German civilian casualties rose. These raids were to reach further into Germany as the war progressed and were greatly increased when American bombers began their sorties.

Battle of the Atlantic

The aircraft carrier HMS Courageous was sunk by a German submarine on September 12, 1939, and the carrier Ark Royal narrowly missed a similar fate 2 days later. The Kriegsmarine scored an even greater victory in October, when U-47 penetrated the Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow and sank the WWI-era battleship Royal Oak.

During World War II, U-boats were primarily used to destroy Lend-Lease transport vessels supplying the United Kingdom with the aim of causing supply shortages and forcing Britain to surrender. At first this was highly successful, but the Allies later developed many countermeasures, such as properly organized escorts, the Magnetic Airborne Detector that detected the change in local magnetic field caused by the U-boats, the 'Huff-Duff' system that tracked U-boats by their radio transmissions, improvements in depth-charges and sonar.

The primary weapons of U-boats were torpedoes.

Lend Lease

See also: Lend Lease

Lend-lease routes during World War II.

The official Soviet position and that of its Comintern allies prior to June 22, 1941 was in direct and vocal opposition to Lend-Lease. Once the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler violated the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, opposition ceased.

As the war progressed the Soviet Union became locked in a struggle with the invading German Wehrmacht and greatly benefited from the US war materials; they were delivered via Arctic seaports of Archangel and Murmansk, through the Persian Gulf then over land across Iran (Persia) due to Iraq being an active combat zone, and in the Far East via Vladivostok. While Soviets historians downplayed the importance of the aid, recent scholarship has discovered how essential it was to the Soviet war effort.

Aerial bombing

See also: World War II in the Air#Goals and Achievements of Strategic Bombing

Michael Tracey writes:

"Those keen to maintain an ability to say that US entry to World War II was justified, even if certain methods or tactics were not justified, often point to a few high-profile examples of bombing raids which they think may have crossed a line. These commonly include the firebombing of Dresden, the firebombing of Tokyo, and the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — all of which deliberately targeted civilians for mass destruction. But less commonly understood is that these attacks were not aberrational. Deliberate targeting of civilians was always a foundational tenet of the Allied (and US) aerial warfare strategy. According to a review published in 2006 by Air University Press, and conveniently available on the Defense Department’s website, US perpetration of so-called “area raids” in the European theater was officially authorized and systematic. The first “city bombing attack” conducted by British forces was in Mannheim, Germany on December 16, 1940 — crews were ordered to “drop incendiaries on the center of town,” reports the Air Force review. “The attack had the clear intention of burning out the city center.” By September 27, 1943, the US officially institutionalized this tactic. In a raid on the German city of Emden, the command headquarters of the Eighth Air Force “ordered the attacking aircraft to aim for the center of the city, not specific industrial or transportation targets.” As the 2006 Air Force review specifies, “by definition an area raid on a city requires a large percentage of incendiaries.” From that point onward, the Eighth Air Force conducted at least one “area raid” per week until the end of the war. Previously raids which deliberately targeted civilian populations had occurred on a more ad hoc basis, such as on August 12, 1943, when 106 US bombers “visually attacked the city of Bonn as a target of opportunity with 243 tons of bombs.” In January 1945, General George McDonald pointed out that in its large-scale adoption of this tactic, the US Air Force was “unequivocally into the business of area bombardment of congested civil populations,” causing “indiscriminate homicide and destruction.” In certain Air Force records, deliberate bombings of cities were concealed and falsely classified as attacks on “military targets.” But this was not some rogue activity; in a joint directive issued on January 24, 1943, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill ordered their respective air forces to “undermine the morale of the German people.” The prevailing theory was that this could be accomplished by deliberately fire-bombing civilian population centers to instill “generalized fear,” as Sir Charles Portal, Chief of the Air Staff, explained. In early 1942, the British forces had adopted “an almost exclusive focus on city centers.” As early as July 9, 1941, months before formal US entry to the war, Roosevelt had directed his military chiefs to develop operational principles for the forthcoming aerial bombardment campaign. The chiefs concluded that a central aim should be the “undermining of German morale by air attack of civil concentrations… heavy and sustained bombing of cities may crash that morale entirely.” Even US aerial attacks in which civilians may not have been deliberately targeted are difficult to distinguish from US aerial attacks in which civilians were deliberately targeted. As Tami Davis Biddle, professor at the United States Army War College, wrote in 2005: In order to maintain a reasonable operating tempo, the Americans had taken to mounting frequent attacks on railway marshaling yards — large, visible targets either within or on the outskirts of major cities. Though such raids were designated and recorded as attacks on “communications” or “transportation” targets, they were often — in their effects — hard to distinguish from less discriminate “area” raids. The Americans typically included incendiary bombs, which were not particularly efficient against marshaling yards but could cause widespread collateral damage. Years after the civilian-targeting policy had been systematically implemented, in February 1945, Secretary of War Stimson declared: “We will continue to bomb military targets and… there has been no change in the policy against conducting ‘terror bombings’ against civilian populations.” There had only been “no change” insofar as deliberate targeting of civilians had long been the policy. This official deception continued for some time, such as on July 23, 1945, when — repeating as fact the claims made by US Air Force General James Bevans — the New York Times reported: “During the entire European war, the American air forces concentrated on precision bombing.” “The leaders of the USAAF knew exactly what they were doing, and civilian casualties were one of the explicit objectives of area incendiary bombing approved by both the USAAF and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” concluded Thomas Searle in the Journal of Military History (2002). According to records referenced by Alex J. Bellamy (University of Queensland) in Massacres and Morality: Mass Atrocities in an Age of Civilian Immunity (2012), the US aerial bombardment campaign in Japan was designed by Air Force planners who “used three criteria to select targets. In order of importance, they were: (1) ‘congestion/inflammability’ of the city; (2) incidence of war industry; (3) incidence of transportation facilities.” Bellamy writes, “Despite public claims to the contrary, therefore, the planners clearly chose cities themselves as targets and primarily on the basis of the likely destruction that could be wrought, with the presence of war industries a secondary consideration to the potential for destroying cities congested with civilians. The presence of military facilities was apparently not a major factor in target selection.”

Operation Barbarossa

See also: Operation Barbarossa

1941 marked the major turning point in the war in Europe, when the Germans broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact and undertook Operation Barbarossa - the invasion of the Soviet Union. Stalin was repeatedly informed by his own spies and anti-German countries that Germany was about to attack; he rejected the accurate reports and paid dearly for the blunder. The Great Purge of the 1938 also had decimated the Red Army's military leadership.

In June—behind schedule because of diversions in the Balkans—the Germans launched their massive war against the Soviet Union (known as the "Great Patriotic War" in Russia). It was by far the largest, bloodiest, and most decisive phase of World War II. Outside observers in the first few months figured that Germany would win easily. But the Nazi armies were split three ways, logistics became worse and worse as distances grew, and none met their objective by the time the extreme Russian winter of 1941-42 set in. Blitzkrieg had failed against the Soviets, and the Germans lacked the resources to fight a long war against a country with such vast areas and so many more people. The Luftwaffe, which promised to overcome the slowness of ground travel, failed to provide adequate support and was soon matched and outnumbered by the Soviet air force.

Einsatzgruppen squads began to carry out mass shootings during the last week of June 1941.

Ukrainian nationalists welcome Nazis, 1941 with banners saying "Heil Hitler".

The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division (1st Galician) was a German military formation made up predominantly of military volunteers with a Ukrainian ethnic background from the area of Polish Galicia, later also with some Slovaks and Czechs. Formed in 1943, it was largely destroyed in the battle of Brody, reformed, and saw action in Slovakia, Yugoslavia and Austria before being renamed the first division of the Ukrainian National Army and surrendering to the Western Allies by 10 May 1945. Volodymyr Kubiyovych (Ukrainian Father Jewish Mother) founded this Division in order for Ukrainians to aid the Ukrainian Insurgent Army with weapons.

The Nachtigall Battalion under Roman Shukhevych, also known as the Ukrainian Nightingale Battalion Group, or officially as Special Group Nachtigall, was the subunit under command of the German Abwehr (Military Intelligence) special operations unit "Brandenburg". Along with the Roland Battalion it was one of two military units formed February 25, 1941 by head of the Abwehr Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, which sanctioned the creation of the "Ukrainian Legion" under German command. It was composed of volunteer "Ukrainian nationalists," Ukrainians operating under Stephan Bandera's OUN orders.

At three villages of the Vinnytsia region "all Jews which were met" were shot.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center contends that between June 30 and July 3, 1941, in the days that the Battalion was in Lviv the Nachtigall soldiers together with the German army and the local Ukrainians participated in the killings of Jews in the city. The pretext for the pogrom was a rumor that the Jews were responsible for the execution of prisoners by the Soviets before the 1941 Soviet withdrawal from Lviv. The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust states that some 4,000 Jews were kidnapped and killed at that time. It further states that the unit was removed from Lviv on July 7 and sent to the Eastern Front.

The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) arose out of separate militant formations of the OUN-Bandera faction (the OUNb). The political leadership belonged to the OUNb. It was the primary perpetrator of the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.

Its official date of creation is 14 October 1942, The Ukrainian People's Revolutionary Army at the period from December 1941 till July 1943 has the same name (Ukrainian Insurgent Army or UPA).

The OUN's stated immediate goal was the re-establishment of a united, quasi-independent Nazi-aligned, mono-ethnic nation state on the territory that would include parts of modern day Russia, Poland, and Belarus. Violence was accepted as a political tool against foreign as well as domestic enemies of their cause, which was to be achieved by a national revolution led by a dictatorship that would drive out what they considered to be occupying powers and set up a government representing all regions and social classes.

Battle of Kharkov

As the Germans advanced on Moscow in the summer of 1941, and against the advice of the German High Command, Hitler suddenly detoured the center line of advance south, creating a huge traffic jam as the central column had to cross the southern advance. This slowed the advance on Moscow to which they did not arrive until October 16, 1941, as the snowy season set in.

Ukrainians welcome Germans as liberators from Soviet communism.

The army group sent south engaged the ill-prepared, ill-equipped Red Army forces at Kharkov. 600,000 Red Army troops were quickly encircled and taken prisoner without much of a fight. Hitler declared it, "the greatest military victory of all time."

Most of the Russian POWs became slave laborers digging tank traps for Soviet T-34s; some Ukrainian POWs were recruited into German fighting units in both eastern Europe, where they committed atrocities against the civilian population, and the Western Front to guard the Atlantic Wall in advance of, and during, the Normandy Invasion.

Second Battle of Kharkov

On 17 May, 1942 the German 3rd Panzer Corps and XXXXIV Army Corps under the command of Fedor von Bock, supported by aircraft, arrived, enabling the Germans to launch Operation Fridericus, pushing back the Soviet Barvenkovo bridgehead to the south. On 18 May, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko requested permission to fall back, but Stalin rejected the request. On 19 May, Gen. Paulus launched a general offensive to the north as Bock's troops advanced in the south, thus attempting to surround the Soviets in the Izium salient. Realizing the risk of having entire armies surrounded, Stalin authorized the withdraw, but by that time the Soviet forces were already started to be closed in. On 20 May, the nearly surrounded Soviet forces mounted counteroffensives, but none of the attempts were successful in breaking through the German lines. The Soviets achieved some small victories on 21 and 22 May, but by 24 May, they were surrounded near Kharkov.

The Second Battle of Kharkov resulted in an extremely costly loss to the Soviets, which saw 207,000 men killed, wounded, or captured; some estimates put the number as high as 240,000. Over 1,000 Soviet tanks were destroyed during this battle, as well as the loss of 57,000 horses. German losses were much smaller than the Soviets, with over 20,000 killed, wounded, or captured. Soviet General Georgy Zhukov later blamed this major defeat on Stalin, who underestimated German strength in the region and failed to prepare an adequate reserve force to counter the arrival of the German reinforcement that turned the tide.

Siege of Leningrad

See also: Siege of Leningrad

The Siege of Leningrad began in September 1941 when the armies of Nazi Germany and Finland surrounded the Russian city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). During the winter of 1941-42 people in Leningrad began to die in large numbers because the Germans and Finns would not allow food into the city.

In the words of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler “intended to have cities like Moscow and St Petersburg wiped out.” This was “necessary,” he wrote in July 1941, “because if we want to divide Russia into its individual parts,” it should “no longer have a spiritual, political or economic centre.”

Many civilians were also killed by bombing.

The Red Army finally broke the siege on January 27, 1944. During the siege 1.2 million people died of starvation because of Finland and Germany. The Siege of Leningrad killed more civilians than the bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Siege of Moscow

American Lend Lease tanks provided approximately 30% of the tank force in the defense of Moscow.

Battle of Stalingrad

See also: Battle of Stalingrad

In the third year of war Germany began to suffer from a lack of important resources such as oil. Hitler therefore ordered the German army to take the city of Stalingrad and the oil fields of Baku in South Russia. The operation failed after the 6th German army and parts of the 4th Panzer army were encircled in Stalingrad and completely annihilated. The Battle of Stalingrad marked a turning point in the war and the Soviet Union started launching their own offensives.

It is generally recognized that by the time of the defeat at Stalingrad, the Germans had “lost” the war, and so the battles and campaigns that occurred in the closing phase of the war (in particular 1944 and 1945) do not enjoy significant name recognition in Western histories of the war. The inevitability of German defeat was certainly a reality, but the war was anything but over. In fact, 1944 and 1945 formed the bloodiest and most cataclysmic years of the war by far. The Wehrmacht was losing the war, but it still maintained millions of men in the field, and it increasingly propped itself up by mobilizing volunteers from all nations of Europe. There was not a single soldier on the continent who could be certain that he would personally survive, and in that sense the world still hung in the balance for every man. In its dying death rage the Wehrmacht would both kill and die in astonishing numbers.

Africa campaign

See also: Battle of El Alamein and Italy in World_War II#North_Africa

The Battle of El Alamein took place in the North African desert in Egypt in October–November 1942. British and Commonwealth forces led by General B. L. Montgomery ('Monty' to the troops) attacked and overwhelmed a German–Italian force led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Following the victorious outcome of the battle, the Allied forces chased the Germans westwards across North Africa to Tunisia, where, in concert with an American army which had landed in North Africa in Operation Torch, the Axis forces were driven out of Africa.

Alamein was also significant in raising morale in Britain, as it was the first significant land victory over German forces by the British Army. Churchill remarked that "before Alamein, we never had a victory; after Alamein, we never had a defeat." This was not entirely accurate, but did pinpoint the battle as a turning point in British conduct of the war, which had hitherto seen a series of defeats against Germany (Dunkirk, Greece, Crete, the Desert).

The Battle also cemented the reputation of Montgomery as a victorious general. He was a cautious commander, and carefully built up a great superiority in arms, equipment and men, before launching his attack. Criticized by some for over‐caution in action, and over‐exuberance, not to say arrogance, in his dealings with other generals and politicians, his care for the welfare of his men made him a popular leader.

Middle East

Overview

"German anti-Semitism was a natural ally to the Arabs of Palestine..."

The Middle East was a front in the Nazi war machine's scheme that developed gradually.

Hitler, the Nazis relied on Arabs, especially Palestine linked - to help him, as its leader, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem rushed to seek out the Nazis within 2 months of Hitler's ascend to power promising to help against democracies. Indeed, he propagated to the Arab world 1941-1945 to kill all Jews and to go on a Jihad against the Allies.

At first the Nazis rejected the Mufti's urge to establish an Arab Nazi Party.

In June 1939, Saudis' Al-Hud al-Gargani [Qarqani] met Hitler to talk about arms to Palestine. The Mufti would recall that the Hitler expressed admiration for the Palestine Arabs. Al-Hud told him they share the hatred of Jews and linked it to his religion.

The Jews in Palestine offered their service immediately as the war began. The British refused unless they drag Arabs with them. The Jews paid Arabs to join. At the end, only 9,000 Arabs joined - while they were in the majority of the population, yet, many were from outside of Palestine and many actually deserted with the weapon. VS some 40,000 Jews from Eretz Israel - Mandatory Palestine who served heroically in the British military, including 5,500 who served in the Jewish Brigade, against the Nazis.

The first attempt was the April 1941 Rashid Ali al-Gaylani coup in Iraq. Also helped by the aforementioned Mufti and his entourage (pro-Nazi Arabs, such as Akram Zuaiter, Darwish Al-Miqdadi) seeking refuge from the Brits hunting them down.

Nazi use of Palestine for attack of Egypt predicted Apr-1941

See Fritz Grobba.

By end of April 1941, "Nazi use of Palestine for attack of Egypt predicted."

The failed coup triggered also the Farhoud Arab-Nazi pogrom on Shavuot. For 2 days the Arab mob, added by some police, initiated first by the fascist Al-Muthana's Hitler-Youth modeled Futuwwa. Jewish businesses were marked with red Hamsa ahead of pogrom. There were mass rape, children were thrown into water in front of parents. It came also after Younis Bahri incited on Nazi radio.

The breakthrough for the Nazis came after conquering Tobruk in June 1942.

Indeed the Arabs, especially in Palestine were overjoyed.

British Admit Fifth Colum In Egypt Is Serious Near East 'Rearguard' Threat' July-1942. As Rommel was pushing into Egypt, noted journalist Paul Manning, wrote for the Newspaper Enterprise Agency (NEA), in July 1942.

For 200 days - termed the 200 days of dread, the Jews in Israel/Palestine were living in total fear. And Jewish organization in the US (chairman of the executive board of the Committee for a Jewish Army) urged to let 200,000 Palestine Jews be armed as they are ready-to-wear fight.

Researched documents revealed the extent of Nazi extermination plan in Palestine. "A special unit was assembled and trained in Greece in the spring of 1942" by SD officer, originator of the gassing van experiments in Poland and the Soviet Union. "They were to operate behind the lines with the help of those in the region who were eager to join the task force."

Free Arabian Legion

The Free Arab Legion made up of Arabs of Syria, Palestine and other, was also aided by the aforementioned Mufti.

Of finding published in 1946:

There were a number of strong pre-war Arab-Nazi organizations — the Iron Shirts (led by Fakhri al-Barudi of the National Bloc, member of the Syrian Parliament to this day); the League for National Action (headed by Abu al-Huda al-Yafi, Dr. Zaki al-Jabi and others); the An-Nadi al-Arabi Club of Damascus (headed by Dr. Said Abd al-Fattah al-Imam); the “Councils for the Defence of Arab Palestine” (headed by well - known pro-Nazi leaders, such as Nabih al-Azma, Adil Arslan and others); the “Syrian National Party” (led by the Fascist Anton Saada, who escaped during the war to the Germans and was sent by them to the Argentine). The National Bloc, the principal party in Syria, and more particularly the Istiqlal group (headed by Shukri al-Kuwatli, now President of the Syrian Republic) had for many years been openly pro-Nazi. Before the war, Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitlerjugend, visited Syria on a special mission and established close contact with these circles and with the Arab youth organisation.

Historian, author of 'A history of fascism' describes:

At least seven different Arab nationalist groups had developed shirt movements by 1939 (white, gray, and iron in Syria; blue and green in Egypt; tan in Lebanon; white in a Iraq)... The three most directly influenced by European fascism would seem to have been the Syrian People's Party (PPS, also sometimes known as the Syrian National Socialist Party), the Iraqi Futuwwa youth movement. And the Young Egypt movement (also known as the Green Shirts) [Misr al-Fatat]. All three were nonrationalist, anti-intellectual, and highly emotional, and all three were territorially expansionist, with Sami Shawkat, the Futuwa ideologue, envisioning the "Arab nation" as eventually covering half the globe (though by conversion and leadership, not military ...

King Farouk of Egypt, collaborated with the Nazis during the war.

General Rommel was stopped at Second Battle of El Alamein (Oct 23, 1942 – Nov 11, 1942).

Unlile in Arab Palestine pro-Nazism was very deep and widespread, in Egypt the field was still divided, though the Muslim Brotherhood and others were definitely for Hitler. In 1942, first: "zealous students of El Azhar University, which teaches Moslem religious subjects, staged demonstrations In the streets of the capital, yelling, "Long live Rommel." Berlin had assured their gullible rector that if Egypt supported Hitler Its king would be crowned caliph of the faithful and would rule the spiritual affairs of the more than 300,000,000 Mohammedans in the world," then, by the beginning of 1943 "conditions are calm in Cairo because British diplomacy and American spending power have reversed the attitude of the fellahin."

After WW2, in the 1950s', Egypt and Syria became a haven for Nazi war criminals.

Operations - Highlights

Iraq:

1941 - Anglo-Iraqi War and Farhud

The Grand Mufti and Iraq Prime Minister Rashid Ali.

Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 30 on May 23, 1940 in support of Arab nationalists in Iraq.

On April 1, 1941, Rashid Ali and members of the 'Golden Square' led a coup d'état in Iraq. During the time leading up to the coup, Rashid Ali's supporters had been informed that Germany was willing to recognize the independence of Iraq. There had also been discussions on matériel being sent to support the Iraqis and other Arab factions.

The coup was an attempt by Arab nationalist officers of the "Golden Square" and politicians around Rashid Ali al-Gailani to overthrow the government of the Kingdom of Iraq and the underage King Faisal II and to end British influence. After the putschists seized power, fighting broke out with British troops at the end of April. During the course of May, the British troops succeeded in defeating the Iraqi army and ending the coup.

Before the coup:

When Italy entered the war the Iraqi government did not break off diplomatic relations, as they had done with Germany. The Italian Legation in Baghdad became the centre for Axis propaganda and for fomenting anti-British feeling. In this they were aided by Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the British appointee as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who had fled from the British Mandate of Palestine shortly before the outbreak of war and later received asylum in Baghdad. Rashid Ali's supporters had been informed that Germany would recognise the independence of Iraq from the British Empire. There had also been discussions on war material being sent to support the Iraqis and other Arab factions in fighting the British.

After the coup:

After the capture of Baghdad, the Farhud, brutal anti-Jewish pogroms took place in the poorly secured outskirts on June 1 and 2 -- led by al-Muthanna's hitler-youth type Futuwwa assisted by some police -- during which more than a hundred people died and a much larger number were injured. As a result of the violence, most Iraqi Jews emigrated in the following years, thus marking the end of the Jewish community in the country.

On June 1, 1941, a delegation of Iraqi Jews, sent to meet the Regent Abdul Illah arriving at Baghdad airport , was attacked by a mob as they crossed Al Khurr Bridge. Violence quickly spread to the Al Rusafa and Abu Sifyan districts and got worse the next day, when Iraqi policemen joined in on the attacks on the Jewish community ... Iraq. On that June 1 day, frenzied mobs murdered Jews openly on the streets. Women were raped as their horrified families looked on. Infants were killed in front of their parents. Home and stores were emptied and then burned. Gunshots and screams electrified the city for hours upon hours. Beheadings, torsos sliced open, babies dismembered, horrid tortures, and mutilations were widespread. Severed limbs were waved here and there as trophies. One man  remembered, “The mutilation of the bodies ... had distorted the victims' bodies and faces beyond recognition.”

Syria–Lebanon:

Operation Exporter: Syria–Lebanon campaign Jun 8, 1941 – Jul 14, 1941 The Syrian-Lebanese campaign, also known as Operation Exporter, was an offensive against Vichy French-controlled territory of Syria and Lebanon during World War II, carried out by British forces and the Forces for a Free France (Forces fr. libres) (FFL).

In Operation Exporter, Australian, Free French, British and Indian units invaded Syria and Lebanon from Palestine in the south on 8 June 1941. Strong resistance was met from the Vichy French but superior Allied infantry equipment and numbers overwhelmed the defenders. Further attacks were launched at the end of June and early July from Iraq into northern and central Syria, by Iraqforce. By 8 July, north-east Syria had been captured and elements of Iraqforce had advanced up the river Euphrates towards Aleppo, the rear of the Vichy forces defending Beirut from the advance from the south. Negotiations for an armistice began on 11 July and surrender terms signed on 14 July.

Iran:

Operation Countenance The Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran: Aug 25, 1941 – Sep 17, 1941 The British-Soviet invasion of Iran took place during the Second World War when the forces of the British Army and the forces of the Red Army of the Soviet Union invaded the territory of Iran in order to prevent it from standing in the war alongside the Axis countries.

Mandatory Palestine

Operation Atlas was a failed operation by a force from the special commando unit of the Nazi Waffen SS, which began in Israel on October 6, 1944. The force numbered five people, three from the Templars of Palestine and two Arabs- Palestinians supporters of Mufti Amin al-Husseini, who were parachuted in the Jericho area near Wadi Kelt. Four of them were captured without causing any damage and the fifth Hasan Salama, who escaped, was killed in the 1948 Israel's War of Independence. Some hold, the plan included poisoning the Tel Aviv water system with arsenic --which could have killed around a quarter million people-- destroying the Naharayim hydroelectric plant and blowing up the oil pipeline running from Iraq to Haifa.

Crematoria plot - 1942:

Among the Grand Mufti's plots, was also the plan to set up crematoria in the Dotan Valley for the Jews in the Middle East, modeled on Auschwitz, "to build a huge Auschwitzlike crematorium in the Dothan Valley, near Nablus, where Jews from Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and North Africa would be imprisoned and exterminated, just like the death camps in Europe."

Iraqi Kurdistan

Operation Mammoth

Operation Mammoth (Mammut is the Germanized form of Mahmud, after Mahmud Barzandschi) was the code name of a German military operation for a German commando operation in 1943 by the Abwehr II (sabotage and decomposition) department of the Wehrmacht's Foreign Office/Defence during the Second World War. A small team of German agents parachuted into Iraqi Kurdistan with the goal of covertly sabotaging Kirkuk oil fields and create a Kurdish uprising against the British with assistance from local Kurds who were seeking to create an independent Kurdistan. Further reinforcements of Nazis with weapons was supposed to be sent but the mission failed within days as the Nazi commandos landed 300 km away from their target destination and lost their weapons. They were soon arrested by the British and faced execution as spies, however they were released several years after World War II ended.

Egypt

The first' Battle of Al-Alamein is the accepted name for a series of battles, held between July 1 and July 27, 1942, as part of the campaign in the Western Desert in World War II. The campaign was conducted between the forces of the Axis powers under the command of Erwin Rommel, and the Eighth Army of the British Army under the command of Claude Auchinleck. During the battle, the Eighth Army managed to stop the continued advance of the Axis forces into Egyptian territory at the fortified El Alamein line, about 100 kilometers from Alexandria, while inflicting heavy losses on Rommel's forces. On the other hand, the Allied forces were unable to defeat the Axis forces and force them to retreat from the El Alamein line, even though they enjoyed a significant numerical and qualitative advantage over Rommel's forces, and they also suffered heavy losses.

The Second Battle of Al Alamein was a decisive battle that took place between October 23 and November 4, 1942 as part of the North African Campaign in World War II. The battle was the third in a series of military confrontations, which took place in the Al-Almain region of Egypt, beginning in July 1942. It was preceded by the first Al-Almain battle and the Alam Hala battle. During the battle, which lasted 12 days, the Eighth Army of the British Commonwealth under the command of Bernard Montgomery defeated the Panzer Afrika, which included German and Italian forces under the command of Erwin Rommel, and forced the Axis forces to begin a long retreat westward along the coast of North Africa, which ended with the surrender of the German and Italian forces in Tunisia in early May 1943. The Allied victory in the battle finally removed the German threat over Egypt and the Suez Canal, and put an end to the grandiose German plan to take control of the Middle East through a great pincer movement of Rommel's forces from the south and the German forces in the Caucasus from the north.

The Free Officers (Arabic: حركة الضباط الأحرار - a group of revolutionary Egyptian nationalist officers), in El Alamein, they took aerial photographs of British positions and sent this intelligence along with a letter offering allegiance to the Axis in a British warplane headed to Rommel .

However, the plan was stifled when the Germans failed to recognize the sign of friendship and shot down the British warplane, a Gloster Gladiator, killing the pilot.

Yet, the Free Officers continued to try to contact the Germans, and found a pair of German spies who gave Sadat a broken German radio transmitter. But Sadat, the German spies, and other Free Officers were caught by the British and imprisoned for treason.

Sadat would later write that there were strong pro-German sentiments among the population: "The general feeling in Egypt was against the British and, naturally, in favor of their enemies, he recalled, adding: "They demonstrated in the streets , chanting slogans like 'Advance Rommel!' as they saw in a British defeat the only way of British reports give a more nuanced assessment of the local mood, suggesting that political attitudes were not static but continuously changing during the war years.

Nazism at Arab Palestine

Note: The Holocaust was a European crime. However, this section is about what has happened among the Arabs linked to the land of Eretz Israel—Palestine.

What is 'unique' about the following, is, the vast Hitler admiration and Nazism virus at a place which was not under Nazi occupation.

As early as Nov. 1933, it was reported, a direct contact between the German Nazis and the Palestinian Arabs, Arab Riot Leaders, revealed by Nazis. And that "Eissa el Bendak, newly appointed members of the Arab Executive's administrative bureau, will direct a propaganda in Palestine in the interests of the Nazi party."

Arab-Nazi collaboration took place on the ideological plane as well as the political and military planes. On a visit to Berlin in 1937, Mufti's emissary, Dr Sa`id `Abdel-Fattah Iman of the Damascus Arab Club proposed, inter alia, to promote National Socialist ideology among the Arabs and Muslims generally. [10]

It was not Just The Mufti - the real extension of the Palestinian-Nazi collaboration was much further.

On the field, Nazi-Arab/Islamist Alliance prepared for battle. [11]

A few highlights:

• Historian review on major Arab newspapers in Palestine supporting [12] Hitler; Falastin since 1932/3 - 1933 "Noble (sic) Hitler says Falastin" is an example).

• Author - (on el-Carmel stating in 1932 its fascists' inspiration and) “All parties were dragged along by the extremists of the Istiqlal, whose newspaper al-Difa'a became a Nazi propaganda pamphlet.” [13]

• Kamel Mrowa ([كامل مروّه] Kaamel Mruwweh, Kamil Muruwa), as the editor of the Beirut paper An-Nida, wrote to Von Ribbentrop the German foreign minister in Berlin: "The whole Arab youth is enthused by Adolf Hitler." (1933). (In neighboring Levant - a blanket statement about Arabs in the area). [14]

• The editor of 'Al-Jami'a al-Islamiyya' [الجماعة الإسلامية] wrote on May 22, 1933: "When Hitlerism appeared, the Arabs cheered and rejoiced, saying: A blow from heaven in the hands of others..."[15]

• The Templars' Die Warte des Tempels wrote on March 15, 1935, that many Arabs saw Hitler as the most important man of the 20th century and almost every Arab knew his name. Fascism and National Socialism with its anti-Jewish attitude were accepted positively by many Arabs.

• Nuremberg (Nazi events) effect in rousing Arabs of Palestine: The great momentum of Nazi propaganda in the Middle East occurred in September 1935. When the "Nuremberg Laws" against the Jews were discovered and published, Hitler received greetings from all Arab countries and Islam. The largest number came from Palestine.[16]

• 1936-8: "Nazi flags and pictures of Hitler were prominently displayed in store windows. Booklets explaining Nazi methods of forcing Jews from the Reich were distributed freely... The shout of 'Heil Hitler' became a catchword which rang insolently over all Palestine." (1938 book).[17][18]

• The NYT May 1937, how 'All' of Palestine celebrated Muhammad's birthday with flying Nazi swastika and pictures of Hitler.[19]

Arabs' newspapers, urging the pupils to disobey Government Education Department issued orders prohibiting Arab pupils to participate in the May 1937 demonstrations.[20]

• 1937, Walter Doehle, German consul in Jerusalem: "Palestinian Arabs in all social strata have great sympathies for the new Germany and its Führer…" [21]Unveiled documents of Nazi official in Palestine writing to Berlin in 1937:[22]

‘Arabs admire our Fuhrer’ - “The Palestinian Arabs show on all levels a great sympathy for the new Germany and its Fuhrer, a sympathy whose value is particularly high as it is based on a purely ideological foundation,” a Nazi official in Palestine wrote in a letter to Berlin in 1937. He added: “Most important for the sympathies which Arabs now feel towards Germany is their admiration for our Fuhrer, especially during the unrests, I often had an opportunity to see how far these sympathies extend. When faced with a dangerous behaviour of an Arab mass, when one said that one was German, this was already generally a free pass.”

• Awni Abd al-Hadi (leader of the Istiqlal Arab Independence Party and member of the Arab High Committee [AHC] in Palestine, Ahmad Shukeiri’s employer), Jan 1937 general statement: 'Arabs Like Nazis'; bragging he read Mein Kampf.[23]

• Journalist John Gunther in 1939: "The greatest contemporary Arab hero is — Adolf Hitler." (Elaborating on the Palestine link about it).[24] [25]

• Ahmad [Shukairy] Shukeiri's testimony in his 1969 book (pages 199-201) about 1940, on all - sympathizing with the Nazis.[26] [27]

• Noted in 1937: "leaders of the Arab youth who seem to be more extreme in their nationalism than the older generation. Educated in schools which are, in spite of government ownership, hotbeds of chauvinism and anti-Jewish propaganda, these youths are also greatly influenced by fascist and anti- Semitic tendencies in present-day Europe. Hitler is for many of them the glorious hero and teacher."[28]

• Some 88% in Feb. 1941 poll (by Sari Sakakini) - favoring the Axis: Arab-Palestine.[29][30]

• We Arabs supported Hitler during WWII because he hated the Jews, recalled in a 2019 interview, former Jordanian health minister Dr. Zaid Hamzeh who was nine years old at the 1941 Rashid Ali coup days. (A general statement on Arabs, especially by witness in the very area).[31] [32]

• That the pro-Nazi Mufti represented the consensus of Palestine Arabs and had major backing of parties there. [Per (anti-Israel author) Edward Said's concession.[33] And Time Magazine in 1946 [34]: 'The 53-year-old Mufti... is revered as a spiritual leader by Palestine's Arabs.'

• Jaffa Arab activist, in telling the story of his childhood, as a matter of fact, during the war: "most of the Arabs in Israel were in favor of Nazi Germany." [35] [Referring to Arabs in the land of Israel - Mandatory Palestine].

• 1940, in an American popular magazine, it was simply put, that "Palestine's Arabs admire Hitler for his Jew-baiting."[36] [37]

• Historian on the Arabs in the land, referring on the WW2 period - atmosphere: "anticipation of the results of the war and wishes of the majority of Arabs that Britain would emerge defeated in it."[38]

• Author, journalist historian: The Arab street, which had been trained for decades to hate the British and harass the Jews, now found in Hitler, after his first victories, with the beginning of the war, the one who fulfills his wishes... The relationship between Hitler and Haj Amin determines the mood in the Arab street... The land of Israel was indeed a home front country and lived in relative peace, but the Arab street did not hide its admiration for Hitler and the Third Reich. Hitler was portrayed in the minds of the Arabs as the greatest friend of the Arab nation. They admired him for his hatred of the Jews and for the fact that he despised them and decided to exterminate them from the face of the earth. Hitler symbolized bravery and wisdom, leadership ability and certain victory.[39]

• A founder of the League for Arab-Jewish Friendship, after consulting with all her Jewish friends who have been in contact with Arabs for many years, and with all her Arab friends, in May 1942: "The vast majority of Arabs in Palestine and throughout the Middle East believe that Hitler will conquer the whole world. The current Arab leaders, who all support Hitler, believe he will win because they want him to win. The Arab masses also believe that Hitler is the most powerful force in the entire world, and therefore he is obliged to come out with the upper hand.

However, there are a number of Arab intellectuals, merchants, workers, and farmers who are not sure of Hitler's victory..."[40]

• In June 1942, as the British bastion 'Tobruk' fell to the Nazis, Palestinian Arabs (as well as other Arabs), rejoiced.[41]

• CIA August 1942 report: majority of the Arabs in Palestine Palestinian Arabs are fiercely 'anti-Jewish'… the radicals, who form a majority, see in the approach of Rommel an ideal opportunity to murder all Jews their seize their property.[42] [43]

• Dec 21, 1942 letter, representatives of the Reich and the NSDAP in Palestine described the Arabs' hope for a great Arab state: "Arabs in Palestine were waiting for Hitler to come to Palestine and expel all the Jews. They hoped for a German intervention to solve their conflict with consideration of their needs. Rommel was their legendary hero. Many Arabs truly believed in the Germans' victory. Some of them even listened to the short-wave German broadcast, the Kurzwellensender."[Letter and special report, Chef der Sicherheitspolizei to Reichsführer SS, 21 Dec. 1942, BArch,. NS 19/186.]

• Nazis' planned 'extermination of the Jews in Palestine,' (stopped by Desert Rats - elaborated book), relied on help that they awaited from many local Arabs ready to serve as willing accomplices of the Germans in the Middle East.[44]

• An Egyptian, who visited the country in the days after the conquest of Berlin wrote: "The people cry in the morning and sob in the evening. And blow to their cheek between morning and evening."[45]

• Reaction of most Arabs that heard of the fate of the Jews in Europe, summer-1942 - 'open joy.'[46]

• Author recalls: "My father ... knew that most of the Palestine Arab leaders supported the Nazis.[47]

• Naturally, Arab-Palestinian Leader Farouq Qaddoumi stated (2013): We Supported The Nazis In WWII - as a general description - because of common anti-Zionists.[48][49]

• Arab "Palestinian" leader, in Jerusalem (then under Jordanian rule), in spring of 1967: "We Arabs supported Hitler to get the British out of Palestine and to keep the Jews from taking it over - and that was our big mistake..."[50]

• Prof. / author:

The vast majority of the Palestinian (and all-Arab) national movement identified, whether openly or tacitly, with the position of their Mufti al-Husseini World War II leader, a loyal partner of Hitler, Himmler and Eichmann in the decision to physically eliminate the Jewish people.[51]

• As it was put in 1949 [52]:

There is hardly a single Arab leader today who in those days was not an ally of Nazi Germany. The Nazi-Arab partnership flourished at a time when the war was close to the gates of our country, and names such as Rashid Ali, Amin al-Husseini, etc. still symbolize the "glorious" period of this idyll. The ending, as recalled, was not so glorious.

• From a 1962 book: "German anti-Semitism was a natural ally to the Arabs of Palestine. Few of these Arabs stopped to think..."

Nazism in the 1947-1949 Arab-Israeli War

It didn't end with WW2 ending: "Nazism in the 1947-1949 Arab-Israeli War".

And its conquences linger on.

War in the West

Operation Overlord

See also: Operation Overlord

Situation in the East

It is fairly common to describe the Nazi-Soviet War as a three-phase affair, with the phases largely determined by the degree of strategic initiative. In the first phase (call it June 1941 to November 1942) Germany had dominant strategic initiative and launched major offensive operations in Barbarossa and Case Blue. In this period, virtually all of the Red Army’s attempts to go on the strategic offensive collapsed with heavy casualties, as at Kharkov and Rzhev. In the second phase (roughly from December 1942 to November 1943) the Red Army was able to attack with great success, but the Germans still retained the ability to organize operations of their own (most notably the Battle of Kursk). In the third and final phase (December 1943 to the end of the war), the Red Army held full-spectrum dominance and the Wehrmacht could do little more than desperately try and fail to hold its positions.

German tanks became the enduring symbol of Nazi oppression and atrocities in Russia for generations.

The closing months of 1943 marked a new phase in the war, but the men in the Wehrmacht eastern army hardly noticed. There was no operational pause, no obvious phase change, only a continuous and rolling wave of Red Army offensives - sequential operations in action. The Soviet autumn offensives put the Red Army on the attack everywhere, with Field Marshal Erich von Manstein's Army Group South falling back in a desperate state to get behind the Dnieper River.

The river, however, brought little solace, and would not offer a defensive buffer, simply because the Soviets were already across it in many places, and Marshall Zhukov threw everything at it to ensure that he had solid bridgeheads from the start. And so, despite another year of hard fighting weighing heavy upon them, Manstein and Army Group South had to turn and try to fight west of the Dnieper.

All of Manstein’s field armies were in a state of complete mauling after the hard fighting of the previous three years. This was after all a force that had just been defeated spectacularly east of the Dnieper and now had to fight again to the west of the river. By the end of 1943, Manstein’s Army Group had at most 330,000 men upright in the field along with perhaps 100,000 non-German volunteers and allies, and despite nominally having fourteen Panzer Divisions in the inventory, the entire batch could scrape together barely 200 reliably operable tanks. In contrast, the Soviet fronts were at nearly full strength (the Red Army could provide as many as 600,000 replacements more per month than the Wehrmacht). On average, each of the four Soviet fronts had some 550,000 men and thus outnumbered Army Group South individually.

The Dnieper forms an enormous “S” as it bends back and forth across Ukraine, the line of the river is significantly longer than a line directly north to south from the same points. Attempting to defend a line along the course of the river from just north of Kiev to the Black Sea committed Army Group South to some 560 miles of front, though the actual north-south dimensions of the space were less than 300 miles - and that was already more than enough for this overstretched force.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

See also: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Word spread of the German defeat at Stalingrad causing resistance movements to rise.

Beginning at 3 am on April 19, 1943, Nazi tanks and SS troops began assaulting a Jewish ghetto in Poland. Jewish resistance fighters, totaling 700 to 750, opposed 2000 heavily armed Germans. The Jewish resistance fighters had some weapons, but no more than three light machine guns.

Waffen SS soldiers and elements of the Sicherheitsdienst sought to clear the ghetto of 60,000 Jewish residents in only three days. But the resistance fighters held off the Nazis for nearly a month, marking the first time in World War II that there was an uprising against Nazis in territory under German control. Eventually, SS forces destroyed the ghetto and its synagogue.

Battle of Kursk

See also: Battle of Kursk and Cherkassy-Korsun Pocket

The Battle of Kursk in 1943 was the largest tank battle in history. German forces attempted to encircle Soviet forces in the Kursk Salient on the eastern front, but strong Soviet resistance defeated the German assault. Kursk was the last German offensive of any strategic significance in the east; henceforth, they would conduct a fighting retreat. Germany already suffered from a grave shortage of war resources, when Hitler ordered the offensive and lost a huge number of tanks such as the new Tigertank and the Panther.

According to Colonel General and military historian Grigoriy Krivosheev, total Soviet casualties for the Kursk Strategic Defensive Operation (July 5-23, 1943) amounted to 177,847 with KIAs and MIAs count being 70,330. After that, Strategic Offensive Operation Kutuzov started (July 23-August 18, 1943), with total casualties resulting in 429,890, with KIAs and MIAs count being 112,529. From July 5 to August 18, 1943 in the two operations combined, the Red Army sustained 607,737 casualties, with total of KIAs and MIAs being 182,859.

Balkans

Muslim members of the Waffen SS 13th division at prayer during their training at Neuhammer, Germany, in November 1943.

The 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian) was a mountain infantry division of the Waffen SS, an armed branch of the German Nazi Party that served alongside the Wehrmacht. From March to December 1944, the division fought a counter-insurgency campaign against Yugoslav anti-Nazi partisan resistance forces in Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state of Nazi Germany and Italy that encompassed almost all of modern-day Croatia, all of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of Serbia.

The division was named Handschar, after a local fighting knife or scimitar carried by Ottoman policemen during the centuries that the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. It was the first non-Germanic Waffen-SS division, and its formation marked the expansion of the Waffen-SS into a multi-ethnic military force. Composed mainly of Bosnian Muslims and mostly German Yugoslav Volksdeutsche officers and non-commissioned officers, the members of the division took an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and the Croatian Poglavnik Ante Pavelić.

The division earned a reputation for brutality and savagery, not only during combat operations but also for atrocities committed against Serb and Jewish civilians. Most of the members became prisoners of war of the British. Subsequently, 38 officers were extradited to communist Yugoslavia after the war to face criminal charges, and ten were executed. Hundreds of former members of the division fought in the 1947–48 jihad in Mandatory Palestine and against the 1948 Israeli War for Independence.

Operation Bagration and the Vistula front

See also: Vistula-Oder Operation

After a time of comparatively slow progress, the brilliant Soviet officer, Konstantin Rokossovsky, engineered "Operation Bagration", named-so after the Napoleonic Russian hero. The operation was extremely successful for the Soviets, leading to around 600,000 Soviet casualties and over 500,000 German casualties, including over 60,000 German vehicles and tanks. Furthermore, the German Army Group Center (Heeresgruppe Mitte) ceased to exist as an effective fighting force, due to its massive losses in men and material. Even the Germans' best officer, Erich von Manstein, couldn't turn the situation around.

The Vistula-Oder Operation took place on the Eastern Front between January 12 and February 2, 1945. Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler, who dreamed of being a combat leader but never had any combat training or duty, in charge of German operations on the Vistula front. Soviet troops, led by Marshals Georgi Zhukov and Ivan Konev, advanced from the Vistula river in Poland to the Oder river which was only 50 miles from Berlin. The extermination camp at Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945. The Wehrmacht suffered enormous losses as a result of the operation.

The Waffen-SS Division Charlemagne was formed in September 1944 from French collaborationists, many of whom were already serving in various other German units. Named after Charlemagne, the 9th-century Frankish emperor, it superseded the existing Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism formed in 1941 within the German Army and the SS-Volunteer Sturmbrigade France formed in July 1943. The division also included French recruits from other German military and paramilitary formations and Miliciens, who were created by the Vichy regime to help fight the French Resistance. The SS Division Charlemagne had 7,340 men at the time of its deployment to the Eastern Front in February 1945. It fought against Soviet forces in Pomerania where it was almost annihilated within a month.

Victory Day depiction of the Soviet flag raised over the Reichstag.

Battle of Berlin

Finally, in 1945, Soviet troops stormed Berlin, and forced Nazi Germany into capitulation. Around 300 members of the Waffen-SS Division Charlemagne participated in the Battle in Berlin in April–May 1945 and were among the last Axis forces to surrender.

Potsdam Agreement

See also: Potsdam conference

The UK, US and Russia reached an agreement at Potsdam called the Potsdam Agreement on 30 July 1945. The Allied Control Council was constituted in Berlin to execute the Allied resolutions known as “Four Ds":

• Denazification of the German society to eradicate Nazi influence
• Demilitarization of the former Wehrmacht forces and the German arms industry
• Democratization, including the formation of political parties and trade unions, freedom of speech, of the press and religion
• Decentralization resulting in German federalism, along with disassemblement as part of the industrial plans for Germany.

Far East and Pacific

For more detailed treatments, see Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Communist collaboration with Japanese war criminals.

After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese juggernaut seemed unstoppable. In the south, they conquered the Philippines, the oil-rich Dutch East Indies, Malaysia, and extended their reach as far as the Solomon Islands. In the west, they seized Burma and the vital port at Rangoon, and even attacked British forces at Ceylon. The Japanese empire now reached as far as Wake Island in the east and the Aleutian Islands to the north. Attacks on Japanese targets, including the Doolittle raid, boasted American morale, but did little material damage. In May 1942, Japanese forces were finally halted at the Battle of the Coral Sea, which cost the Americans a precious aircraft carrier, but saved southern New Guinea. At the Battle of Midway a month later, the Japanese lost four of their best carriers, suffering a blow to their sea power from which they never recovered.

Time Line of Pacific War

The Americans took the offensive in August with a landing on the island of Guadalcanal. The overall American offensive strategy was two-pronged. Forces in the south advanced up the Solomon island chain and New Guinea, while in the central Pacific, Marines took island after island, including Tarawa, Eniwetok, Saipan, and Guam. The two lines of attack came together at the Philippines.

Integral to the strategy was the policy of island hopping. Many Japanese strongholds were bypassed, allowing the American forces to concentrate on more strategically significant islands. For example, Truk and Rabaul were home to major Japanese air and naval bases, but once the bases were neutralized, there was no reason to take on the troops there. This policy not only saved thousands of American (and Japanese) lives, it shortened the war by at least several months.

The American invasion of the Philippines took place in late October 1944 when Marines landed on Leyte Island. A few days later, the US Navy shattered what was left of Japanese naval power in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Japanese fought hard, however, and Leyte took two months to secure. When the Americans landed on the other islands, they found the troops there equally unwilling to retreat, but with American superiority in almost every area, the outcome was never really in doubt. Manila was captured by March, and the American position had become solid enough that leaders could start preparing for the final stage: the invasion of Japan. The first step was taken when the island of Okinawa was captured in June after two months of heavy fighting. Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, was scheduled for November 1945, followed by Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu, in March 1946.

The Japanese, soldiers and civilians alike, were expected to put up a fierce defense. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall believed that Japan would fight to the last man, and insisted on preparing for a land invasion of Japan with an army of 2,000,000 men anticipating a tremendous number of casualties. Some analysts estimated the number of projected casualties from Operation Olympic alone at 250,000 dead and wounded. For this reason, Washington strongly requested the Soviets declare war on Japan. At the Potsdam conference in mid-July 1945, Stalin told President Truman the Soviets would declare war on Japan but would not give a firm timetable. (This was the last of the four "Allied" conferences, taking place in mid-July 1945; the other three were: the Tehran Conference from November 28 to December 1, 1943; the Cairo Conference from November 22 to November 26, 1943; the Yalta Conference from February 4 to February 11, 1945.)

Japanese capitulation

V-J Day an American sailor "kissing the war goodbye" published in The New York Times.

After the successful atom bomb test in the U.S., President Truman was left with the immense task of deciding what to do with the power of the atomic bomb. Truman assembled a committee to advise him. The committee recommended the bomb should be used on the Japanese Empire mainland to save American lives and produce maximum shock to try to convince the Japanese to surrender. Therefore, on August 6, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress, the "Enola Gay" piloted by Paul Tibbet, dropped an atomic bomb (now called a nuclear weapon) on Hiroshima. Japan's war council still insisted on its four conditions for surrender, refusing unconditional surrender. So on August 9, "Bockscar", a B-29 piloted by Frederick C. Bock dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The necessity of the second bombing at Nagasaki has been debated, as the Soviet Union had declared war upon Japan, and Japan was blockaded; however, the Japanese war council still refused unconditional surrender before the second bomb was dropped.

The Soviet Union declared war on Japan at midnight August 8, 1945, in response to the American requests and in a last-minute grab for the spoils of war. It invaded Manchuria and Korea with 1.6 million troops; the Japanese army disintegrated. The Soviets captured 600,000 military and civilian prisoners of war; most of whom never returned home again. It was no longer possible for the Imperial Army to defend the emperor. On August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito by radio broadcast announced Japan would accept the terms of the Allies, unconditional surrender. By follow up message, the Japanese government stated they were surrendering with the understanding the Emperor would remain on the throne and would not be hung as a war criminal. Washington agreed, saying the authority of the emperor would be "subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." On September 2, 1945, the Japanese Emperor formally surrendered all Japanese forces to the Allies in a famous ceremony aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. This was the ending of World War II, after six years almost to the day.

Impact

Casualties

The war caused between 70 and 85 million deaths (3% of the world’s population) and untold numbers of seriously wounded. Soviet Union and China citizens accounted for half of deaths. The Chinese lost between 15-20 million, oe about 3-4% of its population. The Soviets lost 16-18 million civilians, and 9-11 million soldiers (14% of its population). A similar number were seriously wounded. The Soviet Union lost 70,000 villages, 1,710 towns and 4.7 million houses. Of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation lost 12.7% of its population: 14 million, just over half were civilians. Ukraine lost nearly seven million, over five million civilians; a total of 16.3% of its population. The U.S. lost just 12,000 civilians, 407,300 military or 1/3 of one percent of its population.

In Ukraine, there were so many more civilians killed than in other countries because Hitlerite Nazis and Banderist Ukrainian fascists went especially after civilian Jews, Poles and ethnic Russians. Stepan Bandera fought with German Nazis as leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Later, he separated from the Germans and continued killing Russians and Jews. Bandera remains a national hero of the Ukrainian fascist forces.

Collaborators vs operatives in rescue

Collaborators (European - overwhelmingly, or Arab) toward helping the Nazi machine are in contrast to those desperate to save lives by any means.

There is no doubt that the Nazis were very shrewd and skillful in duping, and lying to the desperate, as well as holding relatives of activists hostage. All that hindered rescue as well.

Effects of war on empires

• Iron Curtain

The Red army conquered much of eastern Europe and created an "Iron Curtain," destroying independent national governments and making them all subservient to Moscow. The US grudgingly tolerated this imperialism until 1947, when it was Greece's turn. Then the US drew the line and adopted a policy of containment. Because of the geography of war, Yugoslavia and Albania escaped the Red Army. They fell under the control of independent Communists--Yugoslavia received American support, and Albania turned to Red China for help against the Soviets.

• British Empire

The war effectively bankrupted Britain, which soon gave up India (which then included Pakistan and Ceylon) and many of its other colonies.

• French Empire

France saluted its overseas Empire as the savior of France, and wanted control back. That led to nasty large scale wars in Algeria and Vietnam, which France lost.

• the Netherlands and Indonesia

The Dutch returned to the Dutch East Indies to face an insurrection they could not handle. Dutch acknowledged in 1949 the sovereignty of Indonesia, a non-Communist state.

• Supremacy of the USA in the Western World

The war left the U.S. with a vastly stronger economy than anyone else. To save on budget deficits the military was demobilized, but the long-term strategy was in confusion after Roosevelt's death.

Sites on the Holocaust and more

• What was the Holocaust?
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• The Holocaust | Encyclopedia.com
• Auschwitz.org
• What is the Holocaust?
• The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

Timeline of Nazi Abuses

Source.

Introduction.

The Nazi reign of terror lasted from 1933 to 1945, a time when mounting affronts to Europe's Jews, Gypsies, and others gave way to the most unspeakable atrocities. Using well-documented facts and contemporary photographs, this timeline chronicles that tragic period in world history.

1933

January 30. President Paul von Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler Reichs Chancellor (Prime Minister).

February. Published since 1923 by Julius Streicher in Nuremberg as a local organ of the Nazi party, the weekly publication Der Stürmer, devoted primarily to anti-Semitic propaganda and promoting hatred against the Jews, becomes one of the official organs of the party in power. The motto of the paper is "The Jews are our misfortune."

February 27. Nazis burn Reichstag (Parliament) building to create crisis atmosphere. President Hindenburg grants Hitler emergency powers that limit civil rights.

March 5. During the last free election in pre-war Germany, the Nazi party wins nearly 44 percent of the popular vote, more than twice as many votes as the next closest political party, the Social Democrats, with 18 percent. In a coalition with another right-wing party, Hitler takes full control of Germany.

March 9. Members of the SA (Sturmabteilung, or "Stormtroops," originally established in 1921 by Hitler to defend Nazi meetings) and Stahlhelm (nationalist ex-servicemen's organization) instigate rioting against German Jews.

March 20. First concentration camp, Dachau, established north of Munich.

March 23. German government passes the Enabling Act, granting Hitler dictatorial powers.

April 1. SA instigates boycott of all Jewish shops in Germany. Action also directed against Jewish physicians and lawyers. Jewish students forbidden to attend schools and universities.

April 7. Law for "the re-creation of civil-service professionalism" passed. Removal of many Jewish civil-service employees, including teachers and judges. Exception made for front-line veterans of World War I.

April 11. Decree issued defining a non-Aryan as "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan ... especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith."

April 26. Formation of the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, or "Secret State Police"), transforming Prussian political police into an organ of the Nazi state.

May 10. Books written by Jews and opponents of Nazism burned.

July 14. Nazi party declared only party in Germany. Also, law pertaining to the revocation of naturalization and cancellation of German citizenship passed. Primarily aimed at Jews naturalized since 1918 from the formerly Eastern German territories.

September 22. Nazis establish Reich Chamber of Culture and exclude Jews from participating in the arts.

October 4. Editor Law passed: Jews prohibited from serving as newspaper editors.

October 14. Germany quits League of Nations.

October 24. Nazis pass a law against "Habitual and Dangerous Criminals" that justifies placing the homeless, beggars, unemployed, and alcoholics in concentration camps.

1934

January 24. Jews banned from the German Labor Front, a labor organization affiliated with the Nazi Party.

May 17. Jews no longer entitled to health insurance.

June 30. The "Night of the Long Knives" occurs as Hitler, Hermann Göring, and Heinrich Himmler conduct a purge of the SA leadership, murdering about 700 people, including opposition figures still in Germany.

August 2. President Hindenburg dies. Offices of President and Chancellor combined. Hitler becomes sole leader (Führer) and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.

1935

May 21. Defense Law passed: "Aryan heritage" becomes a prerequisite for military duty. During the summer, "Jews Not Wanted" posters start to appear on restaurants, shops, and on village entrance signs.

September 15 National Day of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party). Parliament passes, during a special session, the anti-Semitic "Nuremberg Laws," the "National Citizens Law," and the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor." These laws are the basis for the exclusion of Jews from all public business life and for the reclassification of the political rights of Jewish citizens.

November 14. First decree pertaining to the "National Citizens Law" issued: Jews denied voting rights and forbidden to hold public office. Discharge of all Jewish civil-service employees, including World War I front-line veterans. Definition of "Jew" written. First decree pertaining to the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor" issued: Prohibition against the marriage of Jews to non-Jews. Sexual relations between Jews and Aryans becomes a crime. Work possibilities for Jews narrowed to just a few professions. Jewish children prohibited from using the same playgrounds and locker rooms as other.

1936

February 10. The Gestapo placed above the law.

March. The SS (Shutzstaffeln, or "Protection Squad," originally set up in 1925 to provide personal protection to Nazi leadership) creates the Deaths Head division to guard concentration camps.

March 7. German troops occupy the Rhineland in western Germany.

June 17. Himmler appointed chief of German Police, with Reinhard Heydrich as his second in command.

August 1 Opening of the Olympic Games in Berlin. Anti-Semitic posters temporarily removed.

1937

June 12. SS Obergruppenführer (Lt. General) Reinhard Heydrich issues secret order pertaining to protective custody for Race Violators following the conclusion of the normal legal process.

July 16 Buchenwald concentration camp opens in central Germany.

Autumn. Systematic takeover of Jewish property begins.

November. Munich exhibition of "The Wandering Jew" depicting the Jew as financial exploiter

1938

Anschluss Reichstag members applaud Hitler following his annexation of Austria, March 13, 1938. 1938

March 13. "Annexation" (Anschluss) of Austria and start of persecution of Austrian Jews.

March 28. Law pertaining to the legal rights of Jewish cultural (ethnic) organizations passed. Jewish communities are no longer legal entities enjoying civil rights; instead, they can only be legally created associations.

April 22. Decree issued against the "camouflage of Jewish industrial enterprises." Decree announced requiring the declaration of all Jewish property greater than 5,000 Reichsmarks (approx. $1,190).

June 9. Destruction of the Munich Synagogue.

June 14. Decree issued requiring the registration and identification of Jewish industrial enterprises. Creation of lists of wealthy Jews at treasury offices and police districts.

June 15. "Asocial-Action": Arrest of all "previously convicted" Jews, including those prosecuted for traffic violations, and commitment to concentration camps (approx. 1,500 persons).

July 15. International conference held in Evian, France, and attended by delegates from 32 countries, including the United States, Great Britain, and France, to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees from Germany. Results in no effective help for Jewish refugees.

(More than a million children died in the Holocaust, including three of the Margules family children shown here, whom the Nazis deported from Paris and killed in 1942. Only the girl in the lower right survived the war).

July 21. Introduction of identity cards for Jews, to become effective January 1, 1939.

July 28. Decree announced for the cancellation of the medical certification of all Jewish physicians, effective September 30. Thereafter, Jewish physicians only allowed to function as nurses for Jewish patients.

August 10. Destruction of the synagogue in Nuremberg, south-central Germany.

August 17. Decree issued to carry out the law pertaining to the change of first and last names. Effective January 1, 1939, all Jews must add to their name either "Israel" or "Sara."

September 12. Jews forbidden to attend public cultural events.

September 27. Decree issued for the cancellation of licenses to practice for all Jewish lawyers, effective November 30. Thereafter, Jewish lawyers can only practice in special instances as "Jewish Consultants for Jews."

September 29. Munich Agreement: Britain and France accept German annexation of Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia.

October 5. Passport decree issued, resulting in the confiscation of passports held by Jews. Procedure for reissuance of passports made more complicated. Newly issued passports stamped "J," designating Jewish ownership.

October 15. German troops occupy the Sudetenland.

October 28. Expulsion from Germany of 15,000 to 17,000 Jews of Polish origin to Zbaszyn on Polish border.

November 7. Hershel Grynszpan, whose parents suffered in the aforementioned expulsion, assassinates German consular aide Ernst Vom Rath in Paris.

November 9-10. Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"): Government-organized pogrom against Jews in Germany. Destruction of synagogues, businesses, and homes. More than 26,000 Jewish men arrested and committed to Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. At least 91 Jews killed, 191 synagogues destroyed, and 7,500 shops looted.

November 12. Decrees issued for the "atonement payments" by German Jews in the amount of one billion marks; the elimination of German Jews from involvement in the economy; and the reconstruction of the facades of all Jewish shops. Jews have to pay for all damage caused during Kristallnacht. Jews prohibited from attending movies, concerts, and other cultural performances.

November 15. Jewish children expelled from German schools.

November 28. Police decree pertaining to the appearance of Jews in public issued: Restrictions in the freedom of movement and travel, etc.

December 3. Confiscation of Jews' drivers licenses. Creation of a "Ban Against Jews" in Berlin. Decree announced pertaining to the forced disposal (Aryanization) of Jewish industrial enterprises and businesses.

December 14. Göring takes charge of resolving the "Jewish question."

1939

January 17. Decree issued pertaining to the expiration of permits for Jewish dentists, veterinarians, and pharmacists.

January 24. Establishment of a National Central Office for Jewish emigration, with central offices in Vienna and Prague. These offices lie under the SS's Intelligence Service, the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, headed by Reinhard Heydrich. Göring orders SS leader Heydrich to speed up emigration of Jews.

January 30. Hitler predicts in the parliament the "extermination of the Jewish race in Europe" in the event of war.

February 21. Nazis require Jews to relinquish all their gold and silver.

March 15. Occupation of Czechoslovakia, "Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia" created. Introduction of the anti-Semitic decrees that are already in force in Germany.

April 18. Anti-Jewish laws passed in Slovakia. Cancellation of eviction protection.

April 30. Law pertaining to rent agreements with Jews: Legal preparations for the combining of Jewish families into "Jewish Houses." Cancellation of eviction protection.

May 13. In Hamburg, 1,000 Jewish refugees board the SS St. Louis, a German ocean liner, for trip to Cuba, where they hope to find temporary refuge. Cuba and Miami turn them away.

May 15. Ravensbruck concentration camp for women established north of Berlin.

May 22. Nazis sign "Pact of Steel" with Italy.

June 16-20. SS St. Louis returns to Europe, where the passengers disembark.

July 26. Adolf Eichmann (deputy to Heydrich) placed in charge of the Prague branch of the emigration office. He becomes head of Section IVB4 of the S.D. under Reinhard Heydrich. Section IVB4 known first as the Jewish Bureau (later the Eichmann Bureau).

September 1. Germany attacks Poland. World War II begins. Numerous pogroms in Poland. Curfews for Jews in Germany (9 p.m. in the summer, 8 p.m. in the winter).

September 3. Britain and France declare war on Germany.

September 21. In occupied Poland, Heydrich authorizes the mobilization of Einsatzgruppen (killing squads), which see action beginning in the spring of 1941 after the invasion of Russia. Heydrich also authorizes the establishment of ghettos, each under a Judenrat (Jewish Council).

September 23. Confiscation of radios from Jews.

September 27. Establishment of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (National Central Security Department), which coordinates all political and criminal police in Germany under Heydrich. Warsaw surrenders.

September 29. Germans and Soviets divide Poland. More than two million Jews live in the German area and 1.3 million in the Soviet-controlled territory.

(Hartheim Institute, one of six hospitals and nursing facilities where the Nazis carried out their euthanasia program, killing children and adults by gassing, shooting, and lethal injection).

October. Nazis begin euthanasia, including murder by starvation, lethal injection, and carbon-monoxide poisoning, on sick and disabled in Germany.

October 8. First ghetto (unguarded and unfenced) established in Piotrkow, Poland.

October 12. First deportations from Austria and the "Protectorates" to Poland. Establishment of the Generalgouvernement (Government General) in the German-occupied territories of Poland.

October 18. Introduction of wearing of the Star of David in Wloclawek, Poland.

October 26. Forced labor for Jews in the Generalgouvernement.

November 8. Hans Frank appointed Governor of the Generalgouvernement (headquartered in Krakow). Assassination attempt on Hitler fails.

November 23. Introduction of the wearing of the Star of David in the entire Generalgouvernement (occupied Poland).

November 28. Frank issues directive to establish Judenrats in Generalgouvernement.

1940

January 25. The Polish town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) chosen as the site of a new Nazi concentration camp.

February 10-13. First deportations from Pomerania (Stettin, Stralsund, Schneidemuehl) to Lublin, Poland.

April 9. Germany invades Denmark and Norway.

April 20. High Command of the Armed Forces issues secret order: Discharge persons of mixed blood and husbands of Jewish women.

April 30. First guarded ghetto established in Lodz, Poland.

May 1. Rudolf Höss chosen as kommandant of Auschwitz.

May 10. Germany invades Holland, Belgium, and France.

June 14. The Nazis occupy Paris.

June 22. French army surrenders. Marshall Philippe Petain signs an armistice with Germany.

In July. Eichmann presents his Madagascar Plan, proposing to deport all European Jews to the island of Madagascar off Africa.

August 8. Anti-Jewish laws passed in Romania.

October 3. Vichy government in France passes anti-Jewish laws (Statut des Juifs) that go beyond German legislation at that time.

October 7. German troops enter Romania.

October 16. Nazis issue order for the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto.

October 22. "Aktion Burckel": Deportation of Jews from Alsace-Lorraine, Saarland, and Baden to southern France, then, in 1942, to Auschwitz.

November 15. Nazis seal off the Warsaw Ghetto.

November 20-24. Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia join the Axis powers.

1941

January 22-23. First massacre of Jews in Romania.

February-April. Deportation of 72,000 Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto.

February 22-23. Deportation of 400 Jewish hostages from Amsterdam to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

March 2. German troops occupy Bulgaria.

March 7. Induction of German Jews into forced labor.

April 6. Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.

May 14. Arrest of 3,600 Parisian Jews. Romania passes law condemning adult Jews to forced labor.

May 16. French Marshall Petain approves collaboration with Hitler in radio broadcast.

June. Vichy government revokes civil rights of French Jews in North Africa and decrees many restrictions against them. Nazi SS Einsatzgruppen begin mass murder.

June 22. Germany attacks the Soviet Union.

June-July. Mass shootings of Jews begin in Ponary Forest, the killing grounds near Vilna, Poland. By 1944, 70,000 to 100,000 perish there.

June-August. Numerous pogroms occur in occupied Russian territories.

July 2. Anti-racist riots in Lvov, Poland in which Ukrainian nationalists take part.

July 8. Introduction of the wearing of the Star of David in Baltic countries.

July 17. Alfred Rosenberg appointed Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories to administer territories seized from the Soviet Union.

July 31. Göring assigns Heydrich the task for "a complete solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe." Beginning of the "Final Solution."

August. Ghettos established in Bialystok and Lvov, Poland.

September. Janówska labor and extermination camp opens near Lvov in Ukraine.

September 1. Police order pertaining to the introduction of the Star of David in Germany, effective September 19 for all Jews age six and older.

September 3. First gassing tests in Auschwitz using Zyklon-B, a poisonous gas.

September 6. Vilna Ghetto created with population of 40,000 Jews.

September 19. German troops capture Kiev, Ukraine.

September 27. Heydrich declared "Protector of Bohemia and Moravia."

September 28-29. Mass murder of Jews at Babi Yar near Kiev (34,000 victims).

October 3. Forced labor for the Jews in the Reich.

October 10. Ghetto in Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, established.

October 12-13. Massacre of Jews at Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine (11,000 victims).

October 14. Orders issued for deportation of German Jews from Germany as defined by its 1933 borders.

October 16. Deportation of the Jews from the Reich begins.

October 23. Massacre of Jews in Odessa (34,000 victims). Prohibition against the emigration of Jews.

October-November. Einsatzgruppen mass killings of Jews all over southern Russia.

October 28. Massacre of Jews in Kiev (34,000 victims).

November 6. Massacre of Jews in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania (15,000 victims).

November 25. Declaration made pertaining to the collection of Jewish assets through deportations.

December. Massacre of Jews in Riga, Latvia; victims include the first transport of Jews from Germany (27,000 victims).

December 7. Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Hitler issues "Night and Fog" decree, policy under which underground agents and other opponents are made to vanish into the "night and fog."

December 8. The United States and Britain declare war on Japan. Chelmno extermination camp opens near Lodz, Poland. By April 1943, 360,000 Jews will have been murdered at Chelmno.

December 11. Germany declares war on the United States, which, in turn, declares war on Germany.

December 30. Massacre of Jews in Simferopol in the Crimea (10,000 victims).

1942

January 1. Allied nations sign declaration of the United Nations.

January 15. "Resettlements" from Lodz to the extermination camp Chelmno begin.

January 20. Wannsee Conference held to solidify plans for the deportation and extermination of European Jewry (Final Solution). Heydrich convened the meeting to transfer mass murders to the fixed death camps, with Eichmann in charge of transportation.

January 31. Einsatzgruppe A reports the liquidation of 229,052 Jews in the Baltic states. [Liquidation in this instance means to kill, while liquidation of ghettos usually refers to outright killing and/or deportation to death camps.]

End January. Deportation of Jews to Theresienstadt begins.

February-March. Mass murder of Jews in Charkow (Kharkov), Ukraine (14,000 victims).

March 1. Extermination of Jews begins at Sobibor, an extermination camp in Poland. By October 1943, 250,000 Jews will have been murdered there.

March 6. First conference on sterilization held: Definitions pertaining to sterilization of persons of mixed blood laid down.

March 16-17. Extermination camp Belzec established in Poland to murder Jews from Lublin, the Lublin district, and Galicia. By liberation (two survivors), 600,000 Jews had been murdered there.

Mid-March. Start of "Aktion Reinhard," code name for the operation that had as its objective the physical destruction of Jews in the interior of occupied Poland.

March 21. "Resettlement" of the ghetto in Lublin: 26,000 persons sent to extermination camps Belzec and Majdanek and other camps.

March 26. Public notices pertaining to the identification of Jewish homes in Germany. Deportation of 60,000 Slovakian Jews, some to Auschwitz, others to the extermination camp Majdanek, near Lublin, Poland.

Starting end of March. Arrival of initial transports of Jews at the concentration and extermination camps at Auschwitz (Auschwitz I & Auschwitz II).

April 24. Jews prohibited from using public transportation. Exception only for forced laborers, if their workplace lies farther than seven kilometers from their place of residence, though taking a seat in the conveyance not allowed.

May 27. Czech commandos mortally wound SS leader Heydrich.

June 1. Introduction of the Star of David in France and Holland. Treblinka extermination camp opened about 40 miles northeast of Warsaw.

June 2. Deportation of German Jews to Theresienstadt begins.

June 4. Heydrich dies of his wounds.

June 10. Germans liquidate Lidice, Czechoslovakia, in retaliation for Heydrich's death.

June 30. Jewish schools in Germany closed.

July 1. Massacres of Jews in Minsk, Lida, and Slonim, all in Belorussia.

July 2. Berlin Jews are sent to Theresienstadt.

July 4. Start of mass gassings at Auschwitz.

July 7. Himmler grants permission for sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.

July 15. First deportation from Holland to Auschwitz.

July 19. Himmler orders Operation Reinhard, the mass deportation of Jews in Poland to extermination camps.

"Resettlement" of the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto to the extermination camps at Belzec and Treblinka begins. By September 13, Nazis will have deported 300,000 Jews to Treblinka. Armed resistance during liquidation of Nieswiez ghetto, western Belorussia.

July 23. Mass exterminations by gassing started at Treblinka. By August 1943, Nazis will have murdered 700,000 Jews there.

August 4. First deportations from Belgium to Auschwitz.

August 9. Armed resistance during the liquidation of the Mir ghetto, western Belorussia.

August 10-22. "Resettlement" of the Lemberg (Lvov) ghetto in Ukraine. Forty thousand Jews deported to extermination camps.

August 14. Arrest of 7,000 "stateless" Jews in unoccupied France.

August-September. Deportations from Zagreb, Croatia, to Auschwitz. Gassings near Minsk of Jews deported from Theresienstadt.

September 3. Armed resistance during liquidation of Lahava ghetto, western Belorussia.

September 9. Massacre of Jews near Kislowodsk, Caucasus.

September 16. Conclusion of "resettlement" of the Lodz ghetto (55,000 victims).

September 23. Armed resistance during the liquidation of the Tutzin ghetto, western Ukraine.

September 30. Hitler publicly repeats his forecast of the destruction of Jewry.

October 4. Nazis order German concentration camps to be made "free of Jews": all Jewish inmates deported to Auschwitz.

October 18. The German Ministry of Justice transfers responsibility for Jews and citizens of German-occupied eastern countries to the Gestapo.

October 22. Nazis suppress revolt by Jews at Sachsenhausen assigned for deportation to Auschwitz.

October 27. Second conference pertaining to sterilization held.

October 29. Mass execution of Jews in Pinsk, Belorussia (16,000 victims).

November 25. First deportation of Jews from Norway to Auschwitz.

December 10. First transport of Jews from Germany arrives at Auschwitz.

December 17. Allies solemnly condemn the extermination of Jews and promise to punish the perpetrators.

1943

January 18. First armed resistance against deportation in Warsaw Ghetto.

January 20-26. Transports from the ghetto in Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.

January 29. Germans order all Gypsies arrested and sent to concentration camps.

January 30. Ernst Kaltenbrunner becomes head of RuSHA (Race and Settlement Office).

February 2. German Sixth Army surrenders at Stalingrad—an event that marks the turning point in the war.

February 15. First "resettlements" in Bialystok Ghetto in Poland, with 1,000 Jews killed on the spot and 10,000 deported to Treblinka.

February 18. Nazis arrest "White Rose" resistance leaders in Munich.

February 27. Deportation of Jewish armament workers from Berlin to Auschwitz.

March. Transports from Holland to Sobibor and from Prague, Vienna, Luxembourg, and Macedonia to Treblinka.

March 1. American Jews hold a mass rally at Madison Square Garden in New York to pressure the United States to aid European Jewry.

March 13. Disbandment of the ghetto in Krakow.

March 15. Deportations from Salonika and Thrace in Greece.

March 22. The first new crematorium in Auschwitz-Birkenau begins operation.

April 19. Bermuda Conference. Fruitless discussions by U.S. and British delegates on deliverance of Nazi victims.

April 19 to May 16. Revolt and destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto.

June 11. Himmler orders the liquidation of all Polish ghettos. Expanded to Soviet Union by the edict of June 21.

June 21-27. Liquidation of the ghetto in Lemberg (Lvov) (20,000 persons).

June 25. Revolt and destruction of the ghetto in Czestochowa, Poland.

July 1. Thirteenth order of the Reich's Civil Laws: Jews within Germany placed under police justice.

July 25-26. Mussolini arrested and Fascist government in Italy falls. Marshal Pietro Badoglio takes over and negotiates with Allies.

August 2. Revolts in Treblinka death camp and Krikov labor camp in the Lublin district.

August 16-23. Revolt and destruction of the ghetto in Bialystok.

September 11. Start of German raids against Jews in Nice, France.

September 11-14. Liquidation of ghettos in Minsk and Lida.

September 11-18. Transports of families from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.

September 23. Liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto.

September 25. Soviet troops recapture Smolensk, Russia. Liquidation of all ghettos in Belorussia.

October 2. Germans order expulsion of Danish Jews. Due to rescue operations by the Danish underground, some 7,000 Jews evacuated to Sweden. Germans capture only 475.

October 13. Italy declares war on Germany. Due to Allied headquarters' premature announcement of Italian move by Allied headquarters, Italian Jews are trapped before they can be evacuated to North Africa.

October 14. Revolt in Sobibor.

October 18. First transport of Jews from Rome to Auschwitz.

October 20. U.N. War Crimes Commission established.

November 3. Liquidation of the Riga Ghetto. Nazis murder remaining Jews in Majdanek (17,000 victims).

November 6. Soviet troops recapture Kiev.

November 28. Conference in Teheran; Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin meet.

December 15-19. First trial of German war criminals in Charkow (Kharkov), Ukraine.

1944

January 24. Roosevelt creates the War Refugee Board, transferring control from Cordell Hull and Breckenridge Long of the State Department to Henry Morgenthau of the Treasury Department.

March 19. Germany invades Hungary.

April 10. Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from Auschwitz and carry detailed information about the death camp to outside world.

April 14. First transport of Jews from Athens to Auschwitz.

May 15 to July 8. Deportation of 438,000 Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz.

June. Red Cross delegation visits Theresienstadt.

June 4. Allies enter Rome.

June 6. D-Day, start of the Allied invasion in Normandy.

June 14. Rosenberg orders the kidnapping of 40,000 Polish children ages 10-14 for slave labor in the Reich.

June 23. Start of the Soviet offensive.

Kidnapped children Some of the 40,000 children kidnapped from eastern Europe for "re-Germanization" in Germany await transport out of their temporary home at Auschwitz, July 1944.

July. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, Hungary and begins to issue diplomatic papers to save Hungarian Jews.

July 20. Soviet troops liberate concentration camp Majdanek. German assassination attempt on Hitler fails.

July 25. Ghetto in Kovno, Lithuania, evacuated.

August 4. Gestapo arrests Anne Frank's family in Amsterdam.

August 6. Deportation to Germany of 27,000 Jews from camps east of the Vistula River in Poland.

August 23. Holding camp Drancy (near Paris) liberated. Romania capitulates.

September 5. Lodz Ghetto evacuated.

September 11. British troops arrive in Holland.

September 13. Soviet troops reach the Slovakian border.

September. Transport of all Jews in Dutch camps to Germany. New deportations from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. Last transport from France to Auschwitz.

September 14. American troops reach the German border.

September 23. Massacre of Jews in the concentration camp in Kluga, Estonia. Resumption of deportations from Slovakia.

October 7. Escape attempts in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

October 15. Germany installs new puppet Hungarian government, which resumes deportation of Jews.

October 18. Hitler orders the establishment of the Volkssturms (mobilization of all men from 16 to 60).

October 23. Allied armies liberate Paris.

End October. Survivors of concentration camp Plaszow (Krakow) transported to Auschwitz.

October 31. Approximately 14,000 Jews transported from Slovakia to Auschwitz.

November. Trial of the leaders of the extermination camp Majdanek held in Lublin.

Auschwitz chamber door Door to an Auschwitz gas chamber. The sign reads, "Harmful gas! Entering endangers your life."

November 2. Gassings in Auschwitz terminated.

November 3-8. Soviet troops near Budapest.

November 18. Eichmann deports 38,000 Jews from Budapest to the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Ravensbruck and other camps.

November 26. Himmler orders destruction of the crematorium at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as Nazis try to hide evidence of the death camps.

December 17. Members of Waffen SS (an arm of the SS) murder 81 U.S. POWs at Malmedy.

1945

January 16. Soviet troops liberate 800 Jews at Czestochowa and 870 in Lodz.

January 17. Soviet troops liberate Warsaw. Liberation of 80,000 Jews in Budapest. Nazis evacuate Auschwitz and "Death March" of prisoners begins.

January 27. Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz.

March 3. American troops reach the Rhine River.

March 19. Hitler orders destruction of all German military, industrial, transportation, and communications facilities to prevent them from falling under enemy control.

April. Allies discover Nazi-stolen art and wealth hidden in salt mines.

April 6-10. Evacuation of 15,000 Jews from Buchenwald.

April 12. American troops liberate Buchenwald. President Roosevelt dies. Truman becomes President.

April 15. British troops liberate concentration camp Bergen-Belsen southeast of Hamburg.

April 20. American troops occupy Nuremberg.

April 23. Soviet troops near Berlin.

April 23-May 4. Evacuation of inmates from concentration camps Sachsenhausen and Ravensbruck. SS guards conduct last massacre of Jews.

April 25. Meeting of American and Soviet troops on the Elbe River in Germany.

April 28. Mussolini captured and hanged by Italian partisans.

April 29. American troops liberate Dachau.

April 30. Hitler commits suicide.

May 2. Berlin capitulates. Representatives of International Red Cross take over at Theresienstadt.

May 5. Liberation of Mauthausen.

May 7-9. Unconditional surrender of Germany: end of war in Europe.

May 8. V-E (Victory in Europe) Day.

May 9. U.S. troops capture Göring.

May 23. Himmler captured and commits suicide.

June 5. Allies divide up Germany and Berlin and take over government.

June 26. United Nations Charter signed in San Francisco.

August 6. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

August 15. Japan surrenders: end of World War II.

October 24. United Nations officially born.

November 22. Start of Nuremberg Trials. Trials end January 10, 1946, with 12 defendants sentenced to death, three to life imprisonment, four to various prison terms, and three acquitted.

Massive Polish guilt and some Wikipedians' propaganda

An estimated 200,000 Jewish victims died either at the hands of Poles or with Polish complicity. Wikipedia has permitted a few organized editors to basing their text on non reliabe-source mainly promoting one Polish writer with an agenda to minimize and rewrite facts. A "small group of actors hijacks Holocaust-related entries on online encyclopedia to whitewash role of Polish society in genocide and bolster stereotypes about Jews."

Essay uncovers the systematic, intentional distortion of Holocaust history on the English-language Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia. In the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia, one touted by right-wing Polish nationalists, which whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolsters stereotypes about Jews. Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews.

See also

Land war

Time Dec. 4, 1944

• Battle of the Bulge, Dec. 1944
• Battle of Halbe, Apr. 1945
• Battle of Okinawa, spring 1945
• Battle of Poznan, 1945
• Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–45
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, US general
• Omar Bradley, US general
• George S. Patton, Jr., US general

Air war

• Luftwaffe, German air force
• World War II in the Air
• Bombing of Japan
• Bombing of Germany

Naval

• Attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 1941
• Battle of Midway, June 1942
• Chester W. Nimitz, US Admiral

Homefronts

• Holocaust, killing the Jews

Leaders

• World War II Axis Leaders
• Charles de Gaulle, France
• Adolf Hitler, Germany
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, US
• Winston Churchill, Britain
• Joseph Stalin, Russia
• Chiang Kai-shek, China
• Benito Mussolini, Italy
• William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada
• John Curtin, Australia

Further reading

For a more detailed guide, see Bibliography of World War II

• Dear, I. C. B. and M. R. D. Foot, eds. Oxford Companion to World War II (in Britain titled Oxford Companion to the Second World War) (2005) (2nd ed. 2009). the best reference book; excerpt and text search
• Times Atlas of the Second World War (1995)
• Weinberg, Gerhard L. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, (1994) the best overall view of the war.
• Wheeler, Keith. The Fall of Japan (1983)

External links

• United States Department of the Navy/Navy Historical Center's Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz
• World War II
• "On the Brink of World War II: Justus Doenecke’s Storm on the Horizon," by Ralph Raico
• Kursk: The Turning Point on the Eastern Front in World War II, by Roberto R. Padilla II
• World War II - Encyc
• "Government and the Economy: The World Wars," by Robert Higgs
• "How War Amplified Federal Power in the Twentieth Century," by Robert Higgs
• Depression, War and Cold War, by Robert Higgs
• "Wartime Prosperity?", by Robert Higgs
• Pearl Harbor