The End of Germany

1942-45

Key Themes• Operation Barbarossa

overstretches the Wehrmacht.

• Battle of Stalingrad is turning point: Germany never recovers.

• Allies grow stronger due to American manufacturing

• D-Day: Germany has to fight on two fronts.

• Germany squeezed by Russia to the East and Britain/America to the West.

• Allied bombing reduces Germany to rubble.

• German Reich is utterly annihilated.

Hitler’s Final Gamble• Hitler’s intention all along had

been to invade and occupy Russia.

• It was to be used as a vast industrial/agricultural zone for slave labor and resettlement.

• In the Fall of 1941, three million German soldiers surged into Russia

German forces wait for the order to invade Russia

German Possessions 1942

Early Successes wiped out by the winter

• Germany had stunning successes early on similar to the triumphs in France, Poland and elsewhere.

• But the Russian winter proved to be the undoing on the German army…

Winter in Russia

• The Germans thought they would defeat Russia easily, so did not bother to take winter clothes. Tanks and other equipment did not work at such low temperatures (-50f)

• More Germans died of cold and starvation than in battle.

Stalingrad

• Stalingrad became Hitler’s main objective when the campaign renewed in the fall of 1942. But the Russians set a trap, and destroyed the entire German 6th Army.

• Of the 750,000 German men who attacked Stalingrad, less that 10,000 ever made it back to Germany alive.

Stalingrad (Winter 1942/43)

Aftermath of Stalingrad

• German army was so weakened by battle that it began retreating toward Germany.

• Russian Army grew in size and strength.

• German defeat became inevitable, only a matter of time.

• Then…

D-Day

Allies open second front in France

• As Allies pour men and equipment into France, Germany is forced to fight a battle of two fronts.

• Germany now is in full retreat everywhere…

Terror Bombing

• Allied planes begin around the clock bombing of German civilian centers, industrial centers and other key sites.

• The idea is to weaken Germany and demoralize the German people

Terror Bombing• Hundreds of thousands of

German civilians areKilled.

• Allied pilots received

worse casualties than any other branch of allied forces in entire war…

• Victims of the “Fire storm” in Dresden, killed, all burned alive. City was filled with refugees, some say 300,000 died in one night.

May 1945

• Germany is wrecked, smashed beyond recognition.

• German army is completely annihilated

• Hitler is hiding in his bunker.

• Russian soldiers commit atrocities on Germans in payback for Nazi cruelty.

• Final phase of the war is a barbaric and inhuman struggle for Berlin. 500,000 die…

Battle of Berlin

The End of Hitler

• In the last days of the war Hitler ordered boys as young as 12 into battle against the Russians.

• He surrounded himself with his closest friends, and hid in the bunker.

The End of Hitler

• On April 30th 1945, Hitler married his long time partner, Eva Braun.

• Then, they ate a last meal, took poison, and Hitler then shot her, before turning the gun on himself.

• Above the bunker, guards burned their corpses to prevent the same sort of mutilation that Mussolini had suffered.

• On May 8th, Germany surrendered.