World War II: The War in
Europe
Germany Begins War in Europe
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April 1939 Hitler demanded the Polish corridor
Nonaggression pact with Russia on Aug. 23, 1939
Sept. 1, 1939 Germany attacked Poland
France and GB declared war on Germany on Sep.3
Blitzkrieg- fast planes and artillery, followed by infantry
Soviets take eastern half of Poland and other eastern
territories (Baltics)
 After period of calm, also called the phony war because
no one was fighting, Hitler attacked Denmark and
Norway on April 9, 1940- both fell to Hitler quickly
Battle for France and Great Britain
 May 1940 began attack on France through Holland, Belgium and
Luxembourg
 May 26, 1940 Belgium surrendered
 June 10- Mussolini joined Hitler and attacked France from the south
 June 14- Paris fell
 June 22- France surrendered
 Charles de Gaulle set up government in exile
 Summer 1940 Luftwaffe attacked Britain in Hitler’s Operation Sea
Lion
 Britain’s two secret weapons- radar system and the enigma
machine
 Battle of Britain- continued until May 10, 1941, when Hitler finally
decided to give up
Eastern Front and the Mediterranean
 Germany and Italy attacked North Africa partly to regain
 Tobruk- British and Germans fighting but ultimately Germans will
win under the leadership of Edwin Rommel, aka “the desert fox”.
This is a huge symbolic loss for the British
 Hitler began plan to attack the Soviet Union through the Balkans
 Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary join Germans while Yugoslavia and
Greece resisted
 June 22, 1941 Operation Barbarossa to invade Soviet Union
 Russians retreated and used scorched-earth policy (Napoleon)
 Sept. Hitler surrounded Leningrad but wouldn’t surrender, so Hitler
looked towards Moscow. Winter came and Germans couldn’t fight
anymore
The U.S. Aids its Allies
 Initially U.S. didn’t want to get involved
 1935-1937 neutrality acts
 1941 Lend-Lease Act allowed the president to
lend arms and other supplies to any country vital
to the U.S.
 Atlantic Charter (Churchill and Roosevelt)
upheld free trade and the right of people to
choose their own government
 Sept. 4 German U-boat fired on a U.S. destroyer
The Holocaust Begins
 Aryans- Germanic peoples
 1933- persecution becomes gov. policy
 1935 Nuremburg Laws denied them rights to
German citizenship- yellow star
 Kristallnacht- November 9, 1938 Nazi storm
troopers attack houses, kill Jews
 1939 many Jews left Germany
 Ghettos in Poland - sealed off
 Some resistance within the ghettos
Hitler’s Final Solution
Genocide program included other groups,
too- gypsies, Poles, Russians, disabled
1942 Final solution decided on and they
built first death camps in Poland
Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka
Cyanide gas poisoning, experiments
6 million Jews died in death camps and
Nazi massacres