Germany at War (1939–45)

The outbreak of war (1 September 1939). On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland — using the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939 to secure the eastern flank. Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, beginning the Second World War.

The invasion of Poland was the first demonstration of Blitzkrieg ('lightning war') — fast-moving armoured columns supported by Stuka dive-bombers, designed to defeat enemies quickly and avoid the trench warfare that had ruined Germany in WWI. Poland fell in five weeks.

Public reaction in Germany. Most Germans dreaded the outbreak of war in 1939. They remembered WWI — the catastrophic defeat, the hunger, the lost generation. The SD Reports show the popular mood as anxious and reluctant, not enthusiastic like the 'spirit of 1914'. Hitler had successfully extended German power through bloodless coups (Rhineland, Anschluss, Munich) and many Germans had hoped for more of the same. But once war began and Polish surrender came quickly, the mood shifted — relief, then qualified pride at the speed of victory.

The Phoney War (October 1939 - April 1940). Britain and France had declared war but were not yet ready to fight. The winter of 1939-40 brought the Phoney War (Sitzkrieg) — months of inaction on the Western Front while Germany consolidated in Poland and prepared for the next campaign. Civilian life in Germany continued nearly normally; some rationing was introduced but the impact was modest.

The Blitzkrieg victories of 1940. In April-June 1940 Germany struck:

• 9 April 1940: invasion of Denmark (occupied without fighting) and Norway (taken after a month-long campaign, defeating British landings at Narvik). Secured iron-ore supplies from Sweden.
• 10 May 1940: invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Belgium and Netherlands collapsed quickly; the French defeat in six weeks stunned the world. Paris fell on 14 June 1940. France surrendered on 22 June 1940 in the railway carriage at Compiègne — the same carriage in which Germany had surrendered in 1918, deliberately chosen by Hitler for revenge symbolism.
• British Expeditionary Force evacuated from Dunkirk (26 May - 4 June 1940).

The fall of France was a stunning Nazi triumph. Hitler's popularity in Germany reached its absolute peak. The Versailles Treaty had effectively been undone: Germany was now the dominant European power.

The Battle of Britain and Blitz (July 1940 - May 1941). But the war did not end with France. Britain fought on under Winston Churchill (Prime Minister from 10 May 1940). The Luftwaffe attempted to bomb Britain into surrender:

• Battle of Britain (July-October 1940): RAF Fighter Command repelled German fighters; Germany lost air superiority over the Channel.
• The Blitz (September 1940 - May 1941): German bombing of British cities, especially London. About 43,000 British civilians killed but Britain did not surrender.

By spring 1941 the air war over Britain was a German strategic failure. Germany had lost its first major campaign.

The Balkans campaign (April 1941). In April 1941 Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece to support Italy's failing campaigns there. Both were defeated within weeks. Crete was captured in May 1941 by airborne assault.

The early war's effects on Germany.

1. Looted goods. Conquered territories were systematically looted: French wine, Belgian coal, Polish food, Norwegian fish, Greek olive oil all flowed to Germany. Food rationing, which had begun in modest form, was supplemented by imports from occupied territories. Germans in 1940-41 actually ate better than they had in 1939 thanks to looted resources.

2. Foreign forced labour begins. Polish prisoners and forced labourers were brought to Germany from late 1939. About 1 million Polish workers were in Germany by 1940. They were classified as racial inferiors (Untermenschen) and forbidden to enter German shops, theatres or churches; were forced to wear identifying badges; and faced summary punishment for any infraction.

3. The Hitler myth at its peak. Hitler's popularity soared to its highest level. The fall of France was attributed personally to him; he was the 'greatest warlord of all time' (grösster Feldherr aller Zeiten — GröFaZ), a phrase coined later in mocking irony but originally sincere. The SD Reports show extraordinary public approval.

4. Public confidence in the regime. The early victories vindicated the regime's claims: military strength was real; Hitler's leadership delivered; Germany's place in Europe had been restored. The propaganda machinery celebrated each victory.

5. The Holocaust begins (mainly in occupied Poland). Less visibly to ordinary Germans, the war began the escalation of Nazi racial policy: Polish Jews were forced into ghettos (Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków); German territories were ethnically reorganised; mass killings of Polish elites and Jews began. The Holocaust as systematic extermination was not yet under way, but the foundations were being laid.

6. The seeds of overstretch. But the early victories contained the seeds of disaster:

• Britain remained undefeated — keeping the Western Front open.
• Long supply lines to Norway, Greece and (later) the USSR.
• Italian failures in Greece and North Africa required German rescue operations.
• Resource shortages were managed but not solved.
• The economy was geared for short victorious wars, not for a prolonged conflict.

The decision to invade the Soviet Union in 1941 would over-extend Germany decisively.

The German public mood (1939-41). Public mood in Germany during the early war:

• Initial reluctance (1939) → growing confidence (1940 victories) → near-elation after fall of France (1940) → slight uncertainty at the Battle of Britain failure (1940-41) → renewed expectation of victory by 1941.
• Rationing was modest — about 2,400 calories/day for ordinary workers (compared with ~3,000 in peacetime; ~1,000 for Jews under Nazi rule).
• Casualties were limited — German military deaths 1939-41 were about 100,000, much less than WWI rates.
• The home front was largely undisturbed — bombing of German cities was rare and limited until 1942.

For most Germans, the early war years felt like a series of triumphs at limited cost — exactly what the regime had promised. The catastrophe was still to come.

Operation Barbarossa (22 June 1941). On 22 June 1941 Germany launched Operation Barbarossa — the invasion of the Soviet Union — breaking the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939. The largest military operation in history at that point: 3 million German and Axis troops along a 2,900 km front from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

Hitler's reasoning. Hitler had always intended to attack the USSR. The reasons combined ideology and strategy:

• Lebensraum: the Nazi vision of German racial empire required eastern expansion.
• Anti-Bolshevism: Hitler considered Soviet Communism the ultimate enemy.
• Resources: Soviet grain (Ukraine), oil (Caucasus), industrial capacity.
• Strategic logic: Hitler believed Britain would surrender once its 'last hope' (the USSR) had been defeated.
• Racial supremacy: Hitler considered Slavs racially inferior and assumed quick victory.

This combination produced one of the most catastrophic strategic decisions of modern military history.

The early successes (June-November 1941). Initial Blitzkrieg gains were spectacular:

• Soviet front-line forces shattered in opening weeks.
• 3 million Soviet POWs captured by autumn 1941.
• German forces reached the outskirts of Moscow by December 1941.
• Ukraine occupied; Leningrad besieged.
• Wide territories under German control.

The Hunger Plan. A particularly grim aspect of German rule in occupied Soviet territory was the Hunger Plan (Hungerplan) developed by Herbert Backe in 1941. The plan calculated that the German Wehrmacht and home front could be fed only by starving large parts of the Soviet population — perhaps 30 million Soviet civilians were to die. Implementation was partial but devastating:

• ~3 million Soviet POWs starved in German captivity (mostly 1941-42).
• Mass starvation in Soviet cities under German control.
• Leningrad siege: ~1 million civilian deaths from starvation 1941-44.
• Kharkov, Kiev and other Ukrainian cities suffered mass food seizures.

The Hunger Plan was a major war crime of the Eastern campaign.

The Holocaust escalates. The invasion of the USSR was also the trigger for systematic mass murder of Jews:

• Einsatzgruppen (Special Operations Groups) of SS, police and local collaborators followed the Wehrmacht east.
• ~1.5 million Jews were murdered by shooting in occupied Soviet territory 1941-42.
• Babi Yar massacre near Kiev (29-30 September 1941): 33,771 Jews shot in two days.
• The shift to systematic extermination in death camps was decided over the following months; the Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942 coordinated the 'Final Solution'.

The German setback at Moscow (December 1941). The German advance stalled in the autumn mud (Rasputitsa) and froze in early winter — German troops had no winter equipment because Hitler had expected victory by autumn. On 5-6 December 1941 the Soviet counter-offensive under Marshal Zhukov pushed the Germans back from Moscow. The Blitzkrieg had failed to deliver the quick victory Hitler had expected.

The Wehrmacht and the war crimes. The Wehrmacht — the regular German army, not just the SS — was directly involved in war crimes on the Eastern Front:

• The 'Commissar Order' (June 1941) authorised the shooting of captured Soviet political officers.
• Mass executions of Jews and Soviet POWs by Wehrmacht units (not just Einsatzgruppen).
• Reprisals against civilians for partisan activity.
• Cooperation with the Hunger Plan.

This contradicts the post-war myth of a 'clean Wehrmacht' separate from SS atrocities. Modern historians (Christopher Browning, Wolfram Wette) have shown that the Wehrmacht was deeply complicit in mass murder.

1942: the over-extension. By 1942 Germany was fighting on multiple fronts:

• Eastern Front: USSR.
• North Africa: Rommel's Afrika Korps supporting Italian operations.
• Atlantic: U-boat campaign against British shipping.
• Air: defending the Reich against intensifying Allied bombing.

This was beyond German military and economic capacity. Hitler ordered offensives in 1942 (towards the Caucasus oil fields and Stalingrad) that further over-extended the army.

Stalingrad (August 1942 - February 1943). The catastrophic turning point was the Battle of Stalingrad:

• August 1942: German Sixth Army under General Friedrich Paulus began the assault on Stalingrad on the Volga.
• September-November 1942: brutal urban fighting; Soviet defenders resisted in ruins.
• 19 November 1942: Soviet Operation Uranus — pincer attack encircling the Sixth Army.
• 23 November 1942: Sixth Army surrounded; ~300,000 troops trapped.
• December 1942 - January 1943: Hitler refused to allow Paulus to break out or surrender; promises of relief by Manstein failed; the Luftwaffe could not adequately supply the trapped army.
• 31 January 1943: Paulus surrendered (promoted to Field Marshal the day before — Hitler hoped he would commit suicide rather than surrender).
• 2 February 1943: final Sixth Army surrender.

Stalingrad results:

• ~150,000 German troops killed in the encirclement.
• ~91,000 captured (most died in Soviet captivity; only ~5,000 returned to Germany after 1945).
• Total German losses: ~300,000.
• First major German army surrender in the war.

Stalingrad's significance. Stalingrad was the turning point of the Eastern Front and the war:

• Military: the Wehrmacht lost a full army; strategic initiative passed to the Soviets.
• Psychological: German invincibility was shattered.
• Diplomatic: Italy, Romania, Hungary and other Axis allies began to look for ways out.
• Domestic German morale: SD Reports showed deep shock and falling support.
• Goebbels' 'total war' speech (18 February 1943): the regime's response — mobilising everyone for total war.

After Stalingrad, the war was unwinnable for Germany. The regime could fight on (and would, until 1945) but could not win.

Goebbels' Sportpalast speech (18 February 1943). On 18 February 1943, Goebbels delivered the most famous Nazi wartime speech at the Sportpalast in Berlin. He worked the audience into a frenzy with a series of rhetorical questions ending with: 'Do you want total war? Do you want it, if necessary, more total and more radical than we can even imagine today?' The prearranged crowd shouted 'Yes!' at each question.

The speech and the subsequent policies (total mobilisation of women aged 17-45 into the workforce, closure of consumer industries, intensification of forced labour) marked the regime's recognition that the war had become a struggle for survival, not for victory.

But Goebbels' speech was also propaganda: many Germans privately knew the war was being lost, but the 'total war' rhetoric provided a way to keep going. The Hitler myth eroded but did not collapse.

The first wartime years (1939-42). For most German civilians, the early war years were not catastrophic. Rationing was modest; conscription removed some workers but unemployment had ended; looted goods from occupied territories supplemented domestic supply; bombing was rare and limited. The Hitler myth held; foreign-policy successes were celebrated. Many Germans in 1940-41 saw the war as a series of distant triumphs at modest personal cost.

But behind the propaganda triumphs, the foundations of catastrophe were being laid:

• Foreign forced labour built up: ~1 million Polish workers by 1940; later expanded to ~7 million by 1944.
• Concentration camp populations grew from ~25,000 (1939) to over 700,000 by 1945.
• The Holocaust intensified from 1941.
• Casualties mounted on the Eastern Front from June 1941.

The total-war turn (after February 1943). After Stalingrad (Feb 1943) and Goebbels' 'total war' speech (18 February 1943), wartime mobilisation transformed civilian life:

1. Women mobilised into industry.

• Women aged 17-45 had to register for work from 1943.
• Many entered armaments factories, replacing conscripted men.
• BDM girls were sent to anti-aircraft batteries from 1943 (operating searchlights and ground equipment); many killed by Allied bombing.
• The motherhood ideology of 1933-39 (Topic 10.2) was substantially abandoned in practice.

2. Foreign forced labour expansion. By 1944 about 7 million foreign workers (Polish, Soviet, French, Belgian, Czech, Dutch) had been brought to Germany:

• 'Ostarbeiter' (Eastern workers) — Polish and Soviet — treated as racial inferiors with badges, restrictions, and brutal conditions.
• Western workers (French, Belgian) had slightly better conditions.
• Concentration camp slave labour: IG Farben at Auschwitz, Krupp at various camps.
• Many died from malnutrition, disease, abuse.

By 1944 foreign forced labour was about 25% of the German workforce.

3. Closure of consumer industries. After 'total war' was declared, many consumer industries were closed or converted to military production:

• Luxury goods banned.
• Many small shops closed (the Mittelstand suffered).
• Hairdressers, restaurants and entertainment reduced.
• Public transport restricted.

4. Rationing tightened. Food and consumer rationing had begun gradually in 1939; by 1944-45 it was severe:

• Bread, meat, fats, sugar, vegetables all rationed by weight per week.
• Soap, clothing, textiles, fuel also rationed.
• Eggs, butter, coffee became luxuries.
• Black market spread: foreign workers, soldiers and refugees exchanged goods illegally.

By 1944 average German civilian rations were approximately 1,700-2,000 calories/day (down from ~2,400 in 1940-41). Foreign forced labourers received much less; Jews and concentration-camp prisoners received starvation rations.

5. Refugees and evacuation. As Allied bombing intensified and the Eastern Front collapsed:

• Children evacuated from cities through Kinderlandverschickung ('Sending children to the countryside'): ~2.5 million children evacuated.
• Eastern refugees fled Soviet advances from late 1944: estimated 12 million Germans fled westward from Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia.
• Bombing refugees from devastated cities sought shelter in rural areas.

The mass displacement of Germans in 1944-45 was on a scale not seen since the Thirty Years' War.

6. Volkssturm (October 1944). On 18 October 1944 Hitler ordered the creation of the Volkssturm ('People's Storm') — a last-ditch militia of all men aged 16-60 not already in military service. Members included teenage Hitler Youth boys and old men — poorly trained, badly equipped, given a few weeks' training and sent to fight Soviet and Allied forces. Many were killed; some surrendered; some deserted. The Volkssturm exemplified the regime's willingness to sacrifice anyone for its survival.

Strategic bombing of German cities. The most dramatic transformation of wartime civilian life was the Allied strategic bombing:

• 1939-41: limited; mainly British night raids.
• 1942-43: intensified; ‘Operation Gomorrah' on Hamburg (24 July - 3 August 1943) — RAF and USAAF combined bombing produced a firestorm killing ~40,000 civilians and destroying half the city.
• 1943-44: sustained heavy bombing of Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich.
• February 1945: the bombing of Dresden (13-15 February 1945) by RAF and USAAF — firestorm killed ~25,000 civilians (some estimates higher); controversial because Dresden had limited military value.
• Total: about 600,000 German civilians killed by Allied bombing; 3.6 million homes destroyed.

The bombing did not break German morale (as Allied strategists had hoped) but it devastated German cities and civilians.

Wartime morale. German civilian morale eroded after Stalingrad but did not collapse:

• Hitler myth weakened but persisted in some quarters.
• SD Reports show grumbling about food, casualties, regime corruption, specific officials — combined with persistent personal loyalty to Hitler.
• 'Wonder weapons' (Wunderwaffen) rhetoric — V-1 and V-2 rockets, jet aircraft, U-boats — gave some Germans false hope of last-minute reversal.
• Bombing trauma dominated daily life in major cities; air-raid shelters became a way of life.
• News of the East gradually leaked: German atrocities, Soviet retaliation, the scale of casualties.

The Hitler myth survives. Despite everything, the Hitler myth survived to the end among many Germans:

• Many believed Hitler would deliver victory.
• Some believed the war could not be lost despite all evidence.
• Others believed they had no choice but to fight on.
• The post-war public mood would later be shocked to discover the full extent of regime crimes (Holocaust, atrocities), suggesting many Germans had not known or had not believed.

Intensifying internal terror. As the regime weakened externally, internal terror intensified:

• Deserters executed: ~15,000 German soldiers shot by their own military justice for desertion 1939-45.
• Volkssturm members who surrendered were threatened with reprisals.
• People's Court death sentences accelerated: 5,000+ by 1945, most in 1943-45.
• Communications surveillance and informer networks intensified.
• Foreign forced labourers were treated with ever greater brutality.

The regime did not collapse internally because terror at home matched terror at the front.

The end of civilian life. By spring 1945, German civilian life was barely functional:

• Most major cities destroyed.
• Food shortages severe.
• Transport collapsing.
• Refugees pouring into surviving cities.
• Soviet armies advancing on Berlin.

The 'security for freedom' bargain of 1938 had collapsed into a struggle for bare survival.

The Holocaust as a wartime event. The Holocaust — the systematic murder of approximately 6 million Jews and 5 million others (Roma, Soviet POWs, Polish elites, disabled people, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses) — was a wartime event made possible by the war. Three changes were decisive:

1. End of emigration. Pre-war Nazi policy had pushed Jews to emigrate (Topic 9.3). With Britain at war and most of Europe under Nazi or German-allied control, Jews could no longer leave. The Jewish population trapped in the Reich and conquered territories had to be 'dealt with' inside Nazi Europe.

2. Vastly expanded Jewish populations. After Poland's defeat (Sept 1939), the Reich controlled about 2 million Polish Jews plus large communities elsewhere in Eastern Europe. After the invasion of the USSR (June 1941), millions more came under Nazi control. The numbers dwarfed the German Jewish population (~500,000 in 1933).

3. The cover of war. War provided cover for mass murder. International protest mattered less; civil unrest within Germany was suppressed; the regime could act with fewer constraints. Hitler had publicly threatened in his Reichstag speech of 30 January 1939 that another world war would mean 'the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe'.

Stages of mass murder.

1. Ghettos (1939-41). Polish Jews were forced into ghettos in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Lublin and elsewhere. Conditions were appalling: overcrowding, starvation, disease. Hundreds of thousands died in the ghettos themselves. The Warsaw Ghetto held ~400,000 people in a small area at its peak; ~92,000 died of starvation and disease before deportations began.

2. Einsatzgruppen mass shootings (June 1941-). With the invasion of the USSR (Barbarossa, 22 June 1941), four Einsatzgruppen (A, B, C, D) of SS, police and local collaborators systematically murdered Jews in occupied Soviet territory:

• About 1.5 million Jews killed by shooting between June 1941 and the end of 1942.
• The largest single massacre: Babi Yar near Kiev (29-30 September 1941) — 33,771 Jews murdered in two days.
• Other major killings: Riga ghetto, Vilnius, countless small towns and villages.
• Wehrmacht units participated alongside Einsatzgruppen.

3. The Wannsee Conference (20 January 1942). At Wannsee, a Berlin lakeside villa, 15 senior Nazi officials chaired by Reinhard Heydrich met to coordinate the 'Final Solution' (Endlösung) — the systematic extermination of European Jewry. The conference did not decide on mass murder (decisions had already been taken) but coordinated agencies and methodology — Wehrmacht, SS, RSHA, Foreign Ministry, Justice Ministry, occupied-territories administrations.

4. The death camps (1942-44). The decisive Nazi innovation was the death camp — a facility devoted entirely to mass murder. Six camps were built or expanded for this purpose:

• Chelmno (December 1941): first death camp, gas vans; ~320,000 murdered.
• Belzec (March 1942): ~600,000 murdered, mostly Polish Jews.
• Sobibór (May 1942): ~250,000 murdered.
• Treblinka (July 1942): ~870,000 murdered, mostly Polish Jews including Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants.
• Auschwitz-Birkenau (extermination function from spring 1942): the largest; about 1.1 million murdered, around 90% of them Jewish; also used Zyklon B gas chambers and slave labour for IG Farben.
• Majdanek (1941, extermination from 1942): ~80,000 murdered (mainly labour camp with extermination function).

The death camps used:

• Gas chambers (Zyklon B at Auschwitz; carbon monoxide elsewhere).
• Crematoria for mass disposal of bodies.
• Deception to keep victims compliant until the gas-chamber doors closed.
• Slave labour for those temporarily spared.

The scale of the Holocaust. By 1945 the Holocaust had killed approximately 6 million Jews — about two-thirds of European Jewry — plus:

• ~3 million Soviet POWs (starved or worked to death).
• ~220,000-500,000 Roma (Porrajmos).
• ~1.8 million Polish civilians (massacres, deportations, forced labour deaths).
• ~270,000 disabled Germans (T4 and 'wild euthanasia').
• ~12,000 homosexuals, ~1,000+ Jehovah's Witnesses, and many others.
• Total non-Jewish victims of the Nazi murder system: ~5 million.

The Holocaust was the largest genocide in modern history.

What ordinary Germans knew. A persistent post-war question: what did ordinary Germans know about the Holocaust? The evidence suggests:

• Many Germans knew something: returning soldiers spoke; some Germans witnessed deportations; rumours spread; the SD Reports show concern about 'what is happening to the Jews'.
• Most did not know the full extent: the death camps were located outside Germany (in Poland) deliberately to limit visibility; the regime kept the specifics secret.
• Many did not want to know: passive avoidance of uncomfortable information was widespread.
• Some actively participated: Wehrmacht in the East, civil servants, railwaymen, police, doctors.

The post-war claim that 'we did not know' was partially true and partially evasion. The Holocaust required mass complicity to operate at the scale it did, even if direct knowledge of details was limited.

Wartime resistance: an overview. As the war turned bad and atrocities became visible, wartime resistance grew, though it remained a minority phenomenon. Several major strands:

1. The White Rose (Munich, June 1942 - February 1943). The most famous student resistance (Topic 9.4 in detail). Hans and Sophie Scholl, Kurt Huber and others produced six anti-Nazi leaflets explicitly denouncing the murder of Jews and demanding non-violent resistance. The Scholls were arrested on 18 February 1943 and guillotined on 22 February 1943 by Freisler's People's Court. Their leaflets were later dropped over Germany by RAF planes.

2. The Confessing Church. Continued resistance from Protestant pastors (Niemöller in Sachsenhausen and Dachau; Bonhoeffer executed at Flossenbürg on 9 April 1945 for his role in the conspiracy and helping Jews escape).

3. Edelweiss Pirates. Working-class teen gangs in Rhineland cities continued to refuse Hitler Youth and brawl with HJ patrols; during the war some sheltered deserters and helped Allied airmen. 13 Cologne Pirates publicly hanged on 10 November 1944 by the Gestapo.

4. The conservative-military resistance and the 20 July 1944 plot. The most serious assault on the regime came from conservative German officers who had supported Hitler's early foreign policy but turned against him as the war became catastrophic.

Operation Valkyrie (20 July 1944).

• Led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a Wehrmacht staff officer who had lost an eye, an arm and two fingers in North Africa.
• Plan: assassinate Hitler at his Wolf's Lair (Wolfsschanze) headquarters in East Prussia using a briefcase bomb; then use the army's emergency 'Valkyrie' plan to seize Berlin and arrest the SS.
• Conspirators included Carl Goerdeler (intended post-Hitler Chancellor), Ludwig Beck (former army Chief of Staff), Henning von Tresckow, Erwin Rommel (peripheral), and many others.
• On 20 July 1944 Stauffenberg activated and placed the bomb under Hitler's conference table; the bomb exploded but Hitler survived — the briefcase had been moved behind a heavy oak table leg, deflecting the blast; four men died but Hitler emerged with minor injuries.
• The plot collapsed within hours: army commanders in Berlin hesitated; Hitler's survival was broadcast; the conspirators were arrested.
• Stauffenberg was shot the same night in the courtyard of the War Ministry.
• About 5,000 people were eventually executed in revenge, including Bonhoeffer, Goerdeler, and (forced suicide) Field Marshal Rommel.

5. Camp resistance. Even in concentration and death camps there were uprisings:

• Treblinka (2 August 1943): prisoners revolt, killed guards, ~200 escaped (most caught and killed).
• Sobibór (14 October 1943): prisoners killed SS guards in a planned uprising; ~50 of 600 survivors of the rising survived the war.
• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (19 April - 16 May 1943): Jewish resistance against final deportation; weeks of fighting until German forces destroyed the ghetto.
• Auschwitz Sonderkommando revolt (7 October 1944): prisoners working in crematoria attacked SS guards; destroyed Crematorium IV before being crushed.

The crushing of resistance. All resistance was crushed at the moment of action. By 1944-45 the conservative-military, religious, student, communist and working-class resistance networks had been largely destroyed. Hitler survived all assassination attempts; the regime fought on until the final military collapse.

Resistance significance. Wartime resistance was rare and unsuccessful at the moment — but it matters because:

• It demonstrated that the regime never produced universal conformity.
• It preserved a moral memory that post-war Germany could draw on.
• The 20 July plot showed that even at the heart of the regime (the Wehrmacht) some refused complicity.
• The White Rose leaflets reached Britain and were dropped over Germany — bridging German conscience and Allied airpower.

The post-war German democratic state would honour these resisters as evidence that 'good Germans' had existed — though most resisters died before they could see their country freed.

1944: the war turns decisively against Germany. By 1944 Germany was fighting on three fronts and losing on all of them:

• Eastern Front: Soviet offensives (Operation Bagration June-August 1944) destroyed German Army Group Centre; ~400,000 German losses.
• Italian Front: Allied advance up Italy; Rome fell 4 June 1944.
• Western Front: D-Day landings (6 June 1944) on Normandy beaches by US, British and Canadian forces; ~160,000 Allied troops landed on day one; established the second front Hitler had feared.
• Strategic bombing: intensifying Allied raids on German cities and infrastructure.

The 20 July 1944 plot. On 20 July 1944, Stauffenberg's briefcase bomb failed to kill Hitler. The plot's failure had three consequences:

• Hitler tightened control: about 5,000 conspirators executed; remaining resistance crushed.
• Wehrmacht morale collapsed at the officer level: the army that had been the regime's strongest institution was now suspected, purged and demoralised.
• The Hitler salute became compulsory for the Wehrmacht (previously a military salute had sufficed) — symbolising the SS-isation of the army.

The disintegration in the east. Through autumn 1944 and winter 1944-45, the Soviet armies advanced westward:

• Poland: largely liberated by January 1945.
• East Prussia: invaded January 1945; Königsberg surrendered April 1945.
• Pomerania, Silesia, Bohemia: overrun in early 1945.
• ~12 million ethnic Germans fled westward in 1944-45 from eastern Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere — the largest population movement in European history.

Soviet vengeance. Soviet troops took vengeance for German atrocities in the USSR. Documented systematic violence:

• Mass rape of German women: estimates of ~1.4 million women raped in the eastern territories, including ~100,000 in Berlin alone during the fall of the city (April-May 1945).
• Looting and destruction of German property.
• Killings of civilians in some areas.

The Red Army's behaviour was driven by years of Wehrmacht and SS atrocities in the USSR (the Hunger Plan, Einsatzgruppen, mass POW deaths) — though it produced terrible suffering for German civilians, most of whom had not been direct perpetrators.

The Western front collapse. In the West:

• Battle of the Bulge (December 1944 - January 1945): Hitler's last offensive in the Ardennes failed.
• Allied crossings of the Rhine (March 1945).
• Western Allied advance through the Ruhr and into central Germany.

By April 1945, US, British and Canadian forces were deep in Germany.

The Volkssturm and the final defence. The Volkssturm ('People's Storm'), ordered by Hitler on 18 October 1944, mobilised all men aged 16-60 not already in military service. Members were:

• Teenage Hitler Youth boys (often 14-16).
• Old men (50-60).
• Poorly trained: a few weeks of basic instruction.
• Badly equipped: often only Panzerfaust anti-tank weapons.
• Used as cannon fodder against Soviet armour and Allied infantry.

Many Volkssturm members were killed in the final months; others surrendered or deserted. The Volkssturm was the regime's final demonstration of its willingness to sacrifice anyone — including children — for its survival.

The bombing of Dresden (13-15 February 1945). Among the most controversial Allied actions was the bombing of Dresden by RAF and USAAF on 13-15 February 1945. The firestorm killed approximately 25,000 civilians (some estimates higher); Dresden was a refugee city, swollen with people fleeing the East, and had limited military value. The bombing was justified by the Allies as part of the strategic bombing campaign and as supporting the Soviet advance; critics have argued it was excessive. Either way, it became a symbol of the war's destructive intensity.

The Berlin endgame (April 1945). The Battle of Berlin (16 April - 2 May 1945):

• Soviet armies surrounded the city by 25 April.
• Street fighting through the ruins.
• Volkssturm and Hitler Youth defenders alongside SS units.
• Civilian suffering: bombing, starvation, mass rape.
• About 80,000 Soviet, 100,000 German military, and tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

Hitler's last days. Hitler had moved into the Führerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery on 16 January 1945:

• Increasingly paranoid and detached from reality.
• Ordered impossible counter-attacks; punished officers for retreating.
• Married Eva Braun on 29 April 1945.
• Hitler shot himself on 30 April 1945 as Soviet troops fought through Berlin; Eva Braun took cyanide; their bodies were burned in the Chancellery garden.

The other suicides:

• Goebbels committed suicide with his wife Magda on 1 May 1945 in the Führerbunker; Magda had previously killed their six children with cyanide.
• Himmler committed suicide in British captivity on 23 May 1945.
• Hermann Göring was captured, tried at Nuremberg, and committed suicide before his execution (15 October 1946).
• Robert Ley committed suicide in Nuremberg prison (25 October 1945).

The leadership of the regime largely chose suicide over capture and trial.

Surrender. Karl Dönitz, named Hitler's successor as 'President', authorised surrender:

• 7 May 1945: General Jodl signed surrender at Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims (effective 8 May).
• 8 May 1945: VE (Victory in Europe) Day in the West.
• 8-9 May 1945: surrender repeated for the Soviets at Karlshorst, Berlin.

The Third Reich, intended to last a thousand years, had lasted twelve years.

The aftermath: Allied occupation. After the surrender:

• Germany was divided into four occupation zones (US, UK, France, USSR).
• Berlin was similarly divided despite being deep in the Soviet zone.
• Denazification programmes removed Nazi officials from public life; many former Nazis were 'denazified' (often perfunctorily) and re-employed in West Germany; East Germany's process was different.
• Nuremberg Trials (November 1945 - October 1946): 22 surviving Nazi leaders tried; 12 sentenced to death, others to prison.
• War crimes trials continued for years: doctors at Nuremberg, judges, businessmen at IG Farben and Krupp, the Race and Resettlement Office (RuSHA) for Lebensborn kidnappings.

The human cost. The Second World War in Europe ended with approximately:

• 40-60 million total deaths worldwide (estimates vary widely; some go to 75 million counting famine and disease).
• ~25 million Soviet deaths (military and civilian).
• ~6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
• ~5 million non-Jewish victims of Nazi murder.
• ~5 million German military deaths.
• ~1 million German civilian deaths (bombing, refugees, post-war violence).
• ~12 million Germans displaced from eastern territories.

The war Hitler had started in pursuit of Lebensraum and racial empire had ended with Germany devastated, divided, and morally responsible for the largest genocide in modern history.

The verdict on Nazi Germany at war. Nazi Germany 1939-45 illustrates several wider points:

• The war was driven by Nazi ideology — Lebensraum, racial supremacy, anti-Bolshevism, anti-Semitism — not by traditional German nationalism alone.
• Strategic over-reach (invading USSR while at war with Britain; declaring war on USA December 1941) doomed Germany militarily.
• The Holocaust was a wartime event made possible by the war's cover.
• Ordinary Germans experienced the war as a sequence: early triumphs (1940), uneasy expectation (1941), turning point (Stalingrad 1943), grinding catastrophe (1943-45), final disaster (1945).
• The regime's resilience under pressure was striking — fighting to total military collapse rather than internal overthrow.
• The cost was unprecedented: ~60 million dead, a continent in ruins, the moral catastrophe of the Holocaust.

The Third Reich had begun in fanfare on 30 January 1933 with Hitler's appointment as Chancellor. It ended in the rubble of Berlin twelve years later. Its mechanisms — terror, propaganda, racial ideology, mass complicity — had produced the most stable peacetime dictatorship and the most destructive wartime regime in modern European history. Hitler's vision had been realised in catastrophe rather than victory — and the legacy of that catastrophe shaped German and European history for the rest of the twentieth century.