WW2 From the German Perspective (Full Documentary) | Animated History

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y demonstrated during the invasion of Poland in 1939.

In planning the invasion, one of the main concerns of Hitler and the German Okw High Command was the imminent threat of France in its western territory. Dividing their forces and engaging in a two-front war was out of the question, so German planners concluded that they could only hope to win by destroying the Polish army as quickly as possible before turning all their attention to the West to achieve this. Building on the Prussian strategy of decisive maneuver which aimed at rapid surprise attacks followed by encirclement of retreating enemies, this proven tactic was supported by new ideas on mechanized warfare developed during the interwar period, most importantly the concept of the Panzer Division, While most armies at the time employed tanks primarily to support their infantry, Vermont concentrated its armored units into separate divisions and placed them front and center of its operations.

The doctrines surrounding the use of these Panzer divisions as fast-moving armored spearheads would later form the strategy we now call Blitzkrieg. but at the time it was less a distinct idea and more a continuation of a tried and true Prussian doctrine, while armored units were very effective during the invasion of Poland, breaking through enemy lines with the help of infantry and dive bombers of the Luftwaffe, their presence was Far from being the decisive factor in the success of the campaign, of the 53 divisions of the German invasion force, only six were Panzer divisions, while another four were motorized.

The vast majority of fighting in Poland was carried out by conventional infantry, with horses playing an important role rather than widespread mechanization or brilliant tactics. Vermont's greatest advantage in its first campaign was possibly the strategic weakness of the Polish army. Diplomatic meddling and false promises from his Western allies had interfered with his mobilization, leaving Polish forces deployed in a thin line too close to their long border. with Germany and Slovakia, this left the Poles especially vulnerable to flanking and encirclement and when the Soviets invaded from the east, Poland's fate was sealed. In less than a month, the Polish army had been crushed between the armies of Germany and the sovietic Union. and the government had been forced into exile in April of the following year, the Germans set their sights on Denmark and Norway to deny the British access to the Baltic, secure their supply of iron ore from neutral Sweden, and gain access to the Norwegian heavy water facilities.

The invasion of Denmark met with almost no resistance and was over in less than six hours, making it by far the fastest campaign Germany would ever complete. Norway did not fare much better, while Panzer divisions played a relatively minor role in a Polish campaign. Norway would see these new armor tactics take on a very different role, specifically a non-existent one, as the campaign did not involve any armored units, instead the conquest of Norway was achieved by an amphibious assault using Naval Air ground and airborne forces in a coordination. A well-timed surprise attack to minimize their disadvantages against the Royal Navy, the Germans planned the operation during April, when the harsh weather in the North Sea would hamper enemy ships and reduce visibility, giving their invasion forces better opportunity to safely achieve your goals as the Kriegs marina.

They held off the Royal Navy in Sea's infantry units captured several key ports while paratroopers were deployed to Sea's key airfields. This sudden and decisive attack caught the Norwegians and their allies off guard, although two months would pass. before the Norwegian army capitulated the nation's capital and most of its major cities fell to the German amphibious invasion within the first 24 hours. The invasion of Norway was not the only important role that the marine Kriegs played during the first two years of the war, although Germany was blockaded immediately after the war began. They also simultaneously began their convoy assault campaign.

U30, for example, sank the British liner SS Athena just hours after the declaration of war. The British soon adopted the convoy system and formed carrier-based anti-submarine hunting groups. This would soon backfire, as HMS Arc Royal, the modern British aircraft carrier, was nearly sunk two weeks after the declaration of war and another British aircraft carrier, HMS Courageous, would be sunk three days later. German U-boats would even infiltrate the British base at Scapa Flow and sink a battleship, HMS Royal Oak, adopting wolf pack tactics, the U-boat fleet was immensely successful in sinking millions of tons of ships, including Surface raiders such as Admiral Hipper and Admiral Shearer were successful in attacking British convoys.

This period of initial success would be dubbed The Happy Time by German sailors a month later. Invasion of Norway The Germans finally ended the eight-month bogus war by launching their Western offensive into Benelux and France. The German plan relied heavily on fast-moving armored and motorized units to exploit the weakness of the Allied defenses. On May 10, the German army launched a surprise attack against the neutral Benelux countries, an overwhelming force combined with daring airborne assaults quickly managed to break the back of the Dutch army while the Belgians, supported by both France and Great Britain, gave way to the German forces.

Hitler's best Panzer formations instead of attacking the The rapidly moving enemy German units from the front overwhelmed their Allied counterparts to cut their supply lines and disrupt reinforcements. It was these armored spearheads that passed through the Ardennes avoiding the Imagine line and encircling the British expeditionary forces around Dunkirk, from which the British were only spared. The disaster through a daring evacuation with close support from the Luftwaffe the invading forces were able to wreak havoc on Allied Logistics with devastating results. The Germans also took advantage of the fact that the French deployed their tanks evenly along the front line, which allowed them to mask their panzers in concentrated attacks a large number of the feared French Char B1 battle tanks, superior in many ways. to contemporary German tanks, they ended up abandoned on the battlefield after running out of fuel with their impressive armor barely scratched.

German logistics, on the other hand, worked very well. with a report from the Panzer kleist group stating that there was not a single supply crisis that their group was unable to resolve, this was largely due to France's infrastructure which included a large number of service stations, the constant supply of fuel it allowed the Panzer divisions to rush forward and attempt long-range encirclement. Maneuvers that would ultimately play a major role in the rapid destruction of the French army. The stable supply lines the Germans enjoyed during the Western Offensive were absolutely critical to continuing their rapid armored maneuvers without them.

The rapid German advances could not be sustained after Dunkirk. It only took three more weeks for the Germans to conquer the rest of France. The fall of France also had the added benefit of providing the Germans with naval bases in the Atlantic that would contribute to the success of their U. Meanwhile, fleets of ships the Germans would establish the Vichy French government in the south. The incredible success of the French campaign cemented a popular image of the Vermont as an unstoppable machine capable of overwhelming its enemies with overwhelming speed and force, even the German leadership was largely taken.

Mussolini feared being sidelined by Hitler and therefore had pushed his forces into the Battle of France which led to war with the British Empire. In 1940, the Italians failed spectacularly in the field, losing three ships at Toronto and swathes of Italian Libya to the British in February 1941. Added to these desert losses were Italian defeats in the Balkans, where the invasion The Duke's half-hearted attempt at Greece had become a failure. In a route of epic proportions in which the Greeks not only drove the Italians out of their country but followed them into Italian-occupied Albania, the British soon allied themselves with the rising Greeks and the Italians found themselves brutalized by the Tommys on one side and the Hellenes on the other.

Other attempts to conquer Italy had turned into a dumpster fire and Hitler feared the fire would spread. His concern exploded into absolute fury when Yugoslavia reluctantly joined the Axis powers only to implode in an anti-fascist coup that he feared took as a personal affront. With their sleeves and dragging the Italians and Hungarians with them, the Germans entered Yugoslavia in an explosive invasion that subjugated the rebel axis ally in less than a month, while other German troops trudged towards Greece rescuing the besieged Italians and conquering the whole country that the British sent. an expeditionary force to shore up the Greek defense, but even their combined force could not resist the Nazi counterattack and their Allied Italian pursuers retreated to Crete trying to make the island a fortress in the Mediterranean, but the false German Yeager broke the The defense of May 20, 1941 in a historic butyric victory, the German triumph in Crete, was a costly affair to the point that General Kurt's student, who commanded the Falsham Yeagers, would call Crete the cemetery of the German paratroopers .

Germany had truly saved Italy's panchetta, but even as the dust of the battle settled, there were some in Germany who questioned the wisdom of coming to Mussolini's rescue. Lenny Riefenstahl, the influential Nazi propagandist filmmaker and close friend of Hitler, recalled that the Führer worried about the possibility that if the Italians had not attacked Greece and needed our help the war would have taken a different turn, we could have anticipated the cold. Russian for weeks and having conquered Leningrad and Moscow there could have been no Stalingrad Hitler's assessment of Operation Barbarossa is questioned by modern historians Richard Hooker Jr, a US military analyst maintains that the delay in the schedule did not prevent the troops They advanced towards Moscow between late June and mid-August, especially given that their morale was at an all-time high following victories in Yugoslavia and Greece.

David takes a look at military

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. The professor believes that Germany's campaign in the Balkans actually helped Barbarossa. Debunking Soviet intelligence reports of an imminent invasion, however, the popular belief is that Germany's support for Italy hindered Barbarossa, resulting in the first of many defeats for the Third Reich. The answer to this eternal question may never be lost in the fog of History. Operation Barbarossa Initially fulfilled his promise. The joint invasion of Nazi Germany and Italy with the support of Romania. Hungary and Finland saw how the axis achieved itsTypical rapid advances and seizing much of the territory even as Hitler constantly changed his strategic objectives, but the invasion hit a major obstacle at the First Battle of Smolensk that left the triumphant Army Group Center severely weakened.

The high command chose to order the center to resist and diverted other forces to reinforce the advance towards Ukraine and against Leningrad. kyiv would soon fall and the Axis spent the next few months fighting its way through. to victory throughout the USSR, except for the sieges of Leningrad and Sevastopol, buoyed by its success, the Axis rushed towards Moscow only to stop on the outskirts of the capital's suburbs, burned by its rapid advance, bloodied by the tenacious Soviet resistance and with these The Soviets were preparing for a counteroffensive. The Axis could do nothing but wait for the communists' response, a response that would drive the Germans back from Moscow even as they maintained their other conquests, but as the Germans licked their wounds, a new enemy appeared.

As the war began, the bombing of Pearl Harbor caused the United States to declare war on the Empire of Japan and fulfill its treaty obligations. Nazi Germany declared war on the United States shortly afterward. Germany was being pushed further and further to the limit due to logistical problems. problems mainly lack of oil the Germans could only concentrate on one group of armies for their 1942 offensive Hitler and his generals began planning the next phase of their offensive against the Soviet Union aiming south with a view to seizing the red oil fields during A planning session Hitler grimly informed the commanders of Army Group South that if he did not get the oil from my police and Grozny then he must end this war.

The USSR had really stretched the Germans at that time and the Nazi offensive summer, including the Battle of Stalingrad, represented a desperate Hail Mary. If the Nazis could capture the Soviet oil fields, they could retain the initiative and grind the hated communists into dust, but desperation bred under preparation and the soldiers who marched to capture the oil were neither ready for the mountainous terrain nor equipped. for the winter. Soviet fighting proved tenacious as ever, especially at Stalingrad, leading to the Germans being surrounded by a Soviet counterattack that wiped out the Sixth Army. The South group was eventually forced back to Ukraine by the Soviets and the Germans in the Caucasus barely escaped during Operation Barbarossa.

The failure led to accusations with General Franz Halder, Chief of the General Staff, blaming the diversion of troops to Ukraine for the failure to capture Moscow, however Halder's argument neglected the fact that Napoleon was able to occupy Moscow during his own invasion. of Russia and history may have repeated itself if Vermont had come to town, yet this was not a Napoleonic War of Conquest but a war of annihilation of these Soviets. They had to be exterminated, their lands and resources claimed for Nazi Germany. Hitler in many ways chose the worst possible fight, he chose to throw his men against a cornered animal with incredible reserves of manpower and industrial capacity and his men were maimed in February 1943.

Cracks are beginning to appear on the front Oriental. The Battle of Stalingrad ends with the Soviets and Nazis defeated, but the Soviets are able to withstand the blow. The withdrawal is draining Germany's oil. The Soviets are draining Germany's labor force. And the deprivations of war are draining Germany's hopes. Yosef. gerbils The infamous propaganda minister and the man who convinced a nation that millions of innocents simply had to die takes the podium to sell the German people his words emblazoned on the banners overhead totala Krieg Total War s foreigner foreigner it's okay if Whether or not the people were willing to follow a higher Krieg would not save the Third Reich.

The failure of Operation Fallblau or Case Blue was a major contributor to the eventual defeat of the Axis on the Eastern Front, although many will argue that the invasion of The Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa was doomed from the beginning, launched in June 1942, the blue case was an attempt to simultaneously cut off Soviet access to the Black Sea replenishment and capture the oil fields located in the Caucasus, the Baku oil wells were of utmost importance since Germany had exhausted its resources. pre-war oil reserves, but, ironically, the operation designed to address this shortage only exacerbated it as the marathon to Caucasia and the burning Defense of the Earth by Soviet forces stretched already fragile fuel lines leaving their offensives in the East almost dead in the water.

It culminated in the Battle of Stalingrad, which marked the deepest penetration of Nazi troops into the Soviet Union, but although they inflicted heavy losses on the Red Army, the offensive was ultimately repulsed along with virtually all momentum on the Eastern Front. Germany entered the Caucasus. for oil and Triunfo, but they were left with empty tanks and full cemeteries, no matter how bad the situation was. Nazi officials had reason to be confident that the Allied attack on Diap, France, in August 1942, was an embarrassing failure and a windfall for the German Propaganda Ministry, indicating that the Allies lacked the experience necessary to launch an amphibious invasion of Europe.

The Luftwaffe also regularly inflicted heavy casualties on Allied bomber raids, giving hope that they could still win the war in the air in the long term. This optimism was strengthened by the knowledge that next-generation fighters like the Me-262 could enter production within a year, but these dreams became increasingly implausible as Germany's response to its logistical challenges was the creation of increasingly complex wunderwaffe or Wonder Weapons that created more of the same challenges, V2 rocket systems to reign in. Terror against the petulant stg-44 Londoners that would influence modern assault rifles, mouse tanks to reduce the Judeo-Bolsheviks to dust and other incredible inventions that were largely too expensive, ineffective or impractical.

Fuel was a constant concern with gasoline and synthetic gas supplies. To fuel their desperate operations in far more sinister ways, the Germans relied on the slave labor of concentration camp prisoners who suffered as much from the malice of their oppressors as from industrial accidents. All these issues were seen by Albert Speer's Armaments Minister Hitler and the man with his hands on the ground. The levers of German industry play an increasingly difficult game: the floor is lava. Economic edition Fritz Reinhardt, the state secretary of the German Ministry of Finance, would have said that the contributions intended for the payment of interest and the principle of the national debt must henceforth be covered by the current income obtained from the economic exploitation of the territories oriental.

This economic exploitation, one of many plans designed to remedy Germany's excessive spending, paradoxically worsened Germany's economic condition largely because the plan was falsely based on rapid and decisive military conquest, but Hitler and his advisors hardly cared about it. these practical considerations: they had a Nazi ideology that elevated the war to an apocalyptic struggle between the master Aryan race and the untermench who stood between them and the domination of Europe. Early successes in Poland and France had taught the Nazi party that deficiencies in strategy or logistics could be overcome by crude Germanic skill that encouraged blind belief in Nazi supremacy and downplayed objective analysis of defeats or strategic errors;

After all, as Hitler said regarding Operation Barbarossa, all the Germans had to do was kick in the door and the entire structure. Hitler attempted to keep the army in an offensive position, but his plans were constantly postponed as Soviet winter counteroffensives advanced against the Nazis. controlled territory forming a salient around the city of Kursk with Summer approaching Hitler authorized Operation Citadel a massive attack on this salient by Army Group Center and Army Group South. What followed is often considered one of the largest tank battles in history: the Luftwaffe and Panzer divisions. exhausting themselves trying to breach the Soviet defenses and envelop the salient, but this salient would ultimately hold and Operation Citadel represented everything wrong with the German war effort; it was a reactionary movement based on vague strategic objectives that, even if successful, would simply delay the inevitable later.

Following the failure at Kursk, the German disposition would shift permanently to the defensive, yet German morale withstood the disaster at Kursk and the Vermacht remained an effective fighting force throughout 1943. This was mainly due to the efforts of men such as Walter Modal and Albert Kesselring, who effectively transitioned the German army to a defensive posture. Hopes rested on a series of fortifications built along the Dinap River, sometimes known as the OST wall. Despite throwing up to 3 million Soviet soldiers against the OST wall, in August the Red Army was unable to cross the OST wall for Meanwhile, almost three months in the west the Allied invasion of Italy came to a halt at the Gustav Line in December when winter came Hitler hoped Germany could hold out until the unholy alliance between the Western capitalist allies and the communist USSR collapsed under its own ideological weight unfortunately for Germany reality finally knocked on Hitler's door in June 1944.

It's my time of food. The foreigners did not take the Germans completely by surprise; On the contrary, the highest levels of German command were well aware that an invasion was imminent. Imminent and of the least possible threat, the furor was confident that the Atlantic Wall extending from the border of Spain to Norway would not only repel any Allied landings but would cause so many American and Commonwealth casualties that the Western Allies would lose their ability to continue the war. For his line of buyers, a senior adviser to Irwin Rommel in Africa and later commander of the Panzer Lair division in Normandy held up the application debacle as incontrovertible proof that the Allies could not manage an amphibious assault that the series of amphibious landings successful allies in Italy gave.

However, even Hitler paused and put Rommel in charge of shoring up the defenses along the English Channel. Rommel's task was inevitable; In particular, it was a scarce commodity, as most of Germany's supply went to the construction of reinforced submarine shelters according to Hitler's direct instructions. orders: French workers and Italian prisoners of war were recruited to improve defenses. The turrets of captured French tanks were converted into makeshift emplacements named Brooks after a reinforced, jury-rigged firing pit that Italian soldiers had built from cement pipes buried in North Africa and such. extensive minefields were once laid. Rommel's most ingenious inventions were the Rommel spargle or Rommel's asparagus nets made of metal wire strung along fields of short poles intended to destroy gliders as they attempted to land next to anti-ship mines placed on beaches on angled poles. stuck in the sand, but static defenses were only part of Rommel Hitler's strategy and the high command was convinced that the Allies would land on the easily accessible podik.

Lay agents confirmed this loudly and often believing in the Allied deception operation Operation Fortress. Rommel, for his part, began to shift his vision toward an Allied strategy. Upon landing in Normandy, the beaches were similar to the Italian coast and the Allies would want to maximize their chances of success by attacking on familiar ground, regardless of where the Allies came from. Rommel argued that the only way to repel them was through defensive actions on the beaches. Meeting the Allies as they landed and denying them the opportunity to take even an inch of ground given the equality of troops defending Normandy, this was much easier to plan than to execute.

Normandy was the responsibility of the Seventh Army, whose units in the area were to put it in. Promising recruits of slightly mixed quality were diverted by SS Falshem Yeager or Panzer recruiters, leaving a contingent of unfit or unremarkable men. Among the defenders of Normandy were the so-called ear and stomach battalions, composed of soldiers convalescing from combat wounds to the abdomen or who The auxiliariesForeigners from conquered lands were forced to fight for the Reich, including many Soviet prisoners of war, naturally, most proved very ineffective and many deserted to join the French Resistance or surrendered to the Allies at the first opportunity.

The few capable soldiers suffered from hearing loss and hearing loss. Endemic fatalism like Captain Eberhard Vigamon of the 21st Panzer Division, who commented that we were well aware that neither our men nor our tanks were good enough or almost fanatically prepared to face their enemies. This attitude was generally convinced by the younger SS troops. Thanks as June 5th became June 6th, Kriegs Marina withdrew English Channel patrols. German meteorologists had declared that the weather was not conducive to an invasion until June 10; scientifically speaking, there was no chance of landing. Rommel took these assurances as an opportunity to take a leave of absence and return to Germany.

He would celebrate his wife's birthday and arrange an audience with Hitler to request additional tanks along the wall. Friedrich Dolman, commander of the Seventh Army, ordered a command post drill for his officers on June 6. The night was shaping up to be a quiet affair and the Germans. He began to prepare for the next day's routine until the Allied bombs began to fall. This in itself was not unusual as the Allies had launched almost continuous attacks against the Germans for some time, but this raid was an overture to Operation Overlord when centuries of fighting against the dream gliders began to fall silent.

The landings while the officers climbed into beds, the paratroopers began to descend to Earth, bewildered, the German commanders found enemies literally raining on their heads and frantically called on their superiors or assembled ad hoc resistance cells. Lieutenant General Joseph Reichert, commander of the 711th Infantry Division, recalled a night of drinking in the officers' mess that ended in combat, the drunken officer, pistol in hand, stumbling out into the night to find British paratroopers falling on the command post 711. Riker and his men were able to defend themselves from the assault and, still drunk, the general desperately called his superiors to announce the beginning of the Allied invasion of the American landing zones.

Lieutenant General Wilhelm Foley, commander of the 91st 2nd Luftwanda Division, was ambushed and killed by the 82nd Airborne Division just behind its headquarters near Soulman Igle, other Germans were less willing to give battle. Reiner Hartmatz A soldier serving near Normandy ran to his command post and found his officers in shock from the battle. Two men were simply catatonic, while Reiner's company commander lay, drunk, in a trench. Every time a messenger brought news from the front line, the commander idly threatened to execute anyone. Returning to the scene of the action as dawn began to illuminate the Normandy coast, the Germans were surprised to see an Allied navy advancing towards them with no naval forces to challenge them, the Allied landing craft and their escorts took up their positions on the English countryside.

Channel and that's when the shells began to land, thank you, the initial bombardment of Omaha Beach caught the German Shore batteries in the middle of Ford Gunnery's practice preparation, turning what should have been a morning of sailing in the Atlantic in a fight for survival. Static 716th Infantry Division, a notoriously low-quality unit composed of decrepit or juvenile recruits and poorly motivated OST troops. The division was denied the usual allocation of personnel artillery and heavy vehicles that its peers in the Army enjoyed relying on a hodgepodge of German weaponry and foreign heavy weapons, but the 716th was not alone in Omaha as other areas were defended by the much more powerful 352nd Infantry Division as the battle raged on the beach and the American military rushed for cover.

Machine Gunner Heinrich Zavalo of the 352nd could see the jets of water where my machine gun bursts hit, and as the small fountains approached the chalk, they jumped into the water and lay down in the shallow water. Many tried to reach the most of the beach obstacles forward to find some cover behind them I shot some more at the many dark foams in the water zavalo senior one Lieutenant Freerking pitied the Americans like poor pigs even when He called in more artillery strikes against the infantry staggering all over the beach. Zavalo could see the wounded moving on the watery, bloody silt, mostly crawling trying to reach the upper beach and find some shelter behind the pebble embankment.

One by one, they occasionally ran in a crouch as the day progressed, men like Xavolo and his heavy weaponry would make Omaha, the deadliest landing of D-Day, the 716th Division at Sword Beach was a sorry affair, the Germans overstretched They were severely lacking air support or completed fortifications and had failed to coordinate with coastal artillery in their sector, the area becoming associated with holiday homes and coastal homes. Settlements and guards for summoning emplacements in the sand dunes and a handful of beach obstacles were largely undeveloped. Individual soldiers were also of low quality and Lieutenant Carl Haida lamented the condition of the officers in his division.

Many had been seriously injured before some became unpleasant or socially inept. Because of their harsh early experiences in the war, I will not deny that some of them became drunk at times. Lieutenant Schoff of the 716th noticed that the base was overworked and poorly motivated, too busy laying wire and planting Rommel asparagus to have much time for training. In fact, the mix of Germans and Ostrupen who defended Sword Beach routinely led to a lack of care, as gunner Hans Glaub describes his fellow gunners. If they did not keep their pieces clean, Sword would prove to be a relatively calm landing, with the Germans ceding the beach to two British forces with a minimum. casualties, their attitude would change when they encountered the more professional soldiers of the 21st Panzer Division launching a counterattack on two fronts east and west of Sword;

However, Major Hans Von Luke, commander of the eastern advance, wrote in his Panzer Commander's Memoir of attempting to lead the 2nd Battalion of the 21st against Doug in British paratroopers only to be blocked by Allied aircraft and naval gunfire against the German defense at Utah Beach. was compromised by the outage of airborne operations; Armed with a strange mix of weapons, Polish German French, even Russian weaponry filled their supplies, but blessed with competent leadership, at least Lieutenant General Carl Wilhelm Graf Von Schleiben, commanding general of the 709th, would order an organized counterattack on the Royal Front. to the airborne assault and would arrange for the 100th Panzer Battalion to advance to meet the 82nd Airborne at Salmer Iglei and at its critical bridgehead over the Americas, the 100th would be repulsed by the 82nd in spectacular fashion when the obsolete French tanks who deployed against the Americans were annihilated with bazookas and Gammon grenades, but the 82nd were not the only paratroopers in the area: the 6th Parachute Regiment under the command of Major Fon der Haita, were expelled from Karata to reinforce their colleagues. ground forces when they encountered the American landing zones.

The Germans were surprised by the number of parachutes left behind. Yards and yards of silk covered the fields of France during the fall. A trembling anger would push towards the commune of Dumont, where Haita climbed the church steeple and saw the endless Armada in the canal. Thanks, things weren't much better for the Germans on the beach. Lieutenant Arthur Yanka commanded Fort W5, a network of bunkers and pillboxes built into the dunes above the beaches that were virtually destroyed by the morning's bombardment. Yanko recalled how the attacks destroyed his position. Avalanches of sand and concrete buried his men alive, forcing them to be dug up even as the assault on the beaches began to detect American landing craft.

Yanka ordered what men he could muster to dig in and ordered a Rider to the nearest artillery battery to bombard the beach. Bianca's Rider would be intercepted by American paratroopers. There was little Yanka and his men could do, as The Landings began on Ernst with men and floating tanks making their way through the surf and directly towards the ruins of W5, an explosion knocked Yonka off his feet and as his eyes struggled to focus and The ringing in his ears diminishing, he looked up through his crooked glasses to see an American infantryman. standing over him as the fighting intensified in Normandy and reports of paratroopers and an Allied fleet flooded into high command, the staff thought to themselves that this was all an elaborate ruse, the staff relayed this thought as Hitler slept the more and more Allied troops and heavy troops equipment began to arrive on the beaches.

Hitler finally got out of bed to be met with the news of the invasion of France. The Führer couldn't have been happier. Hitler again declared that the Atlantic Wall would push back the Allies and eagerly anticipated following the process. The inevitable failure of the Normandy Landings due to the V-1 bombs reigning in London, Western armies would be crushed in the Sands of France and the headquarters of their hated British enemies would be blown to pieces by superior German weaponry, but as the The day progressed and the allies began to gain ground. The First Line Commander's High Command was inundated with requests for support.

Requests to do something to prevent their positions from being invaded. The Normandy beacons were lit, but the High Command did not respond to the call for help. Hitler, the only man on Earth who could do it. freeing the panzers would still insist that the allies could and should be thrown back to shore. This thought had managed to seep into some of the defenders in Gold Beach. Friedrich Verster helped man a battery of four Czech guns captured at Marie Fonten, near the beach. Verster firmly agreed with his führer that the Atlantic Wall was impenetrable, an attitude he maintained until the British invaded his commander's observation position near the coast in the face of Allied superiority in men and material.

Verster and his companions silently surrendered further behind the lines. The Germans were hard at work trying to corral propaganda from the French civilian population. Vans drove around Kong ordering the population to stay indoors as German authorities began organizing the evacuation of key parts of the city at Von Roonshed's headquarters outside Paris. The telephones rang continuously and the tickers spit out seemingly endless messages. The fighting at Gold Beach began at Ernst when the first landing craft lowered their ramps just as the medal hit the surf. German machine guns and artillery opened up on the British troops who fought hard to clear the beach and sweep the fortified coastline. houses that the Germans had worked into their defenses, in fact the Germans fought fiercely for gold with elements of the 352nd Infantry reigning against the British from a cliff above Amel Beach, including devastating volleys from Aflac 88.

The British They were only able to overthrow the Germans at Amel with tank support, including one member armed with Hobart mortars. Elements of the 12th SS division were seen. The Invasion Fleet anchored off Juno Beach in the early hours of the morning. Lieutenant Peter Hansman of the 12th Division recalled being awakened by his NCO in charge shaking my shoulders, the invasion has begun Huntsman ran to a strategic point near Gold Beach looking through my binoculars I recognized the individual outlines of the ships at irregular intervals flashes of ships' artillery came from various places fast boats with high white foaming waves of the intestine were spitting brown groups of men on the beach the lieutenant counted more than 400 ships in the channel from his front row seat to the end of the Third Reich I wanted to shout to all the generals up to Adolf Hitler to come here quickly before it is too late, whoever can still fight, come here the most divisionsfast and powerful, send them here the luftwaffa, where is the kriegs marina?, where is it? must get here.

Grenadier Hans Weiner, who defended a position on Juno called wn-31, recalled seeing Tommy's first jump. In the sea, which was quite shallow, the bullets hit them and their ships with good results and I was a little surprised. see them fall. I don't know why Ner's position was finally destroyed by the tanks that came ashore with the Canadians who managed to drive. Inland, under the cannon of 88-millimeter cannons ready to destroy them when they emerged from the waves. 88-millimeter gunner Heinrich Zebel complained of not being able to see many tanks due to smoke and chaos, although his gun destroyed at least two Allied tanks before his block.

House 2 was destroyed, the Germans providing a much more difficult obstacle for their enemies at Tyville Castle, about a mile inland. Tyville was supposed to be the starting point for a second line of defensive works designed by Rommel before the invasion. When the Allied landings arrived, it was a well-built strongpoint with a complete command and communication complex and underground tunnels connecting it with Brook turrets armed with machine guns, cannons and mortars. The defenders managed to hold off the allies until almost 6 pm that day with their The final message before the position was taken said hand-to-hand fighting within the command post enclosed in a tightly confined area but still resisting Heil Hitler.

Not long after the fall of Tyville, the Canadians began advancing toward the Luftwaffe airfield in imitator one. of their key objectives, the airfield commander ordered an evacuation, sending his ground crews into panic. The Germans made a hasty attempt to destroy the plane before evacuating, but their haste proved fatal. Attempts to raise the airfield abandoned most of the runway's taxiing area. intact, the takeoff runway was damaged, but not enough to render it unusable, and the vast majority of the field's fuel reserves could be saved. In this case, haste ended up decreasing waste, while the Gratian operation in the East shattered precious German battle lines at the cost of around 400,000 men, with German forces being reduced to pulp by these Soviets, Romania and Bulgaria.

They defected in 1944 and the terrified Germans occupied Hungary to prevent their defection, even as the Hungarian Prime Minister pleaded with the Soviets for a separate peace, although German ferocity delayed the Allies. Advancing, they could not match their superiority in men, material and air power, with a hemorrhage of manpower and with hardly any supplies or economic strength remaining, the Germans had to be creative to replace their increasing losses, as well as forming 78 grenadier divisions Volks and moving existing regiments to create new armies on paper the Germans made a desperate attempt to increase their forces in the form of the volkster or popular storm on October 18, 1944 Hitler personally ordered that all civilian males between 16 and 60 The volksterm was not an organ of the vermasht that Hitler was beginning to consider weak and incompetent, but rather a paramilitary militia controlled by the Nazi party.

Allied intelligence at the time estimated that at full strength the volksterm could have mustered more than 13 million fighters to oppose it by marching on Berlin less than half that number could put up an honest fight. Initially, the Volksterm were given all the uniforms they could get their hands on, but as the logistical situation deteriorated, their only standard equipment became a black and red armband that identified them as members of the militia. leading to members fighting and everything from civilian suits to used Imperial German equipment from World War I, the volksterms were armed with a hodgepodge of civilian hunting rifles, weapons captured from Allied and Scandinavian countries, and weapons from Surprisingly clever breaking news.

An example of the latter category was the eintos Flamin verfer, a portable single-shot flamethrower. The eintos was essentially an oversized aerosol bottle designed to fire a single half-second burst before being discarded along the same lines as the single-shot Panzer Faust, as a weapon would have been as simple as point and fire, which would make it perfect for civilian users. Foreign resistance would not end at the front line; However, Joseph Goebbels launched a massive propaganda campaign centered on a vervolf partisan network that would, in theory, continue the war even in the event of a German defeat, people whom the foolish Allies would take to be friendly civilians would, in fact, be combatants.

Hardened with National Socialism burning in their hearts and ready to transform at any moment into a fighting force to sow discord and strife among the Allies, Nazi partisans would actually carry out or take credit for numerous assassinations and sabotage operations during the last years of the war, but the enormous organization that Goebbels wrote about was never a serious threat, with a wunderwaffa in hand, the Germans would win the war. Perhaps the Führer realized that only a major offensive could now conclude the war favorably for Germany. The question was where he had the greatest chance of success, since action against the Soviets or in Italy would bear little fruit.

However, there was one sector that had historically served the German army well. Hitler was certainly driven by a feeling. In 1940, Nostalgia ordered a massive armored attack through the lightly defended Arden region. Their goal was to reach Antwerp and isolate Commonwealth forces in Holland, removing them from the war and forcing Britain to go to another Dunkirk to save the soldiers who would remain, perhaps even triggering peace negotiations and freeing the troops. Germans to finally defeat the inferior Soviets in the East. Hitler was partly proven right. in his predictions when the offensive operation codenamed Vasht Amrein took the American defenders by complete surprise causing panic in their lines;

However, in a characteristic display of arrogance, Hitler and his high command had not only severely underestimated the combat prowess of the American army which after the initial shock continued to provide tenacious resistance at the Crossroads and key towns throughout Arden, but also They had managed to provide their army with enough fuel, depleted and undersupplied. The battered remnants were finally ordered to withdraw completely as a strong Allied counterattack broke through. its lines weakened Hitler's final gamble had completely failed and with it Germany's last military reserves that it so desperately needed to repel the imminent winter offensive on the Eastern Front had been depleted.

Germany's remaining defenders now had their work cut out for them. In January 1945, the Soviets built on the momentum of Operation Bagration to launch the Vistula Smell Offensive, a crushing advance into Poland that saw Germany lose its first conquest of In the war with renowned Field Marshal Yorgi Zhukov at the helm, the Soviets annihilated 45 divisions and claimed to have killed or captured 400,000 men. Stopping at the Odor River bordering the Fatherland, the Minister of Propaganda recorded a sense of absolute terror spreading through the Reich capital as the citizens of Berlin feared that the Soviets would have a clear path into the city.

There is nothing between us. There are no anti-tank weapons. With no anti-tank obstacles and not a single soldier, the eyes of the world now converged on Berlin as Stalin's army prepared for its final act of revenge that would eradicate Nazi Germany once and for all, even though the Allies had promised to leave Berlin to the Reds. . The ever-paranoid Stalin of the army still urged hastening the capture of the city. The final plan called for a three-pronged attack on the Berlin axis to surround and capture the city within 12 to 15 days and then advance to meet the Allies at the Elbow River.

Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front would be at the center of the attack, while Marshal Ivan Conniff's 1st Ukrainian Front to the south was prepared to attack across the Nice River in the direction of Potsdam and Dresden, finally Marshal Constantine's 2nd Belorussian Front Roccosovsky would tie down the German forces to the north in the sector to prevent them from reinforcing Berlin having become accustomed to fighting in open terrain, few members of the Red Army had much experience in large scale urban street fighting, it was up to the general's 8th Guards Army Vasili Choykov, veterans of the Battle of Stalingrad, distributed leaflets on urban warfare while forming combined arms special forces.

Red Army engineers, for their part, worked day and night to build hundreds of bridges and thousands of wooden assault ships to cross the Odor and Naiza rivers to achieve this. Soviet planners had to find a way to move 29 armies over hundreds of kilometers to create shock groups capable of penetrating the German line in areas only 2.5 to 10 kilometers or 1.5 to 6 miles wide. When all was said and done, the Red Army would advance towards Berlin with some 2.5 million men, 6,250 tanks and self-propelled guns, and 7,500 fighter aircraft, with the goal of making the invaders bleed for every inch of ground.

German, the Vermacht built a series of well-entrenched defensive lines that blocked the path to Berlin. Manning these positions were the remnants of Army Group Fistula and the Fourth Panzer Army, as well as the combined Berlin Garrison, this force was composed of 750,000 German soldiers supported by 1,519 tanks and assault guns, nine thousand three hundred three cannons and mortars. and 2,200 aircraft; However, these figures seemed more impressive. on paper than in reality, as virtually all of their formations had strength, although many units were led by battle-hardened veterans of the Eastern Front, their bases were often made up of a mix of wounded, unfit and inexperienced soldiers, and even children.

Of the Hitler Youth, in addition, some sixty thousand defenders came from poorly trained and barely armed Volkster militia battalions. The Infantry could also not rely much on its armored and air assets, as the Germans lacked fuel reserves to maintain their otherwise considerable strength. of operational combat vehicles for an extended period of time, morale was also at its lowest point, most suffered from malnutrition and poor hygiene and were reserved for the most fanatical Nazis, few now believed in the promise of final victory, Even so, every effort was made. convince the men that the long-awaited wunderwaffen would still turn the tide of the war and that peace talks with the Western allies would soon bear fruit, but if these motivations were only marginally effective, the widespread fear of Soviet revenge and barbarism It encouraged even the most cynical to continue fighting.

On April 12, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra gave its last performance among the music that was heard was Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. Four days later, another type of orchestra began to play while thousands of Katyusha rocket launchers and field guns of the Zhukov front opened At the first German defensive line along Zelo Heights, miles away in the eastern suburbs of Berlin, houses began to shake as terrified citizens gathered On the street to hear the beginning of the approaching storm, an astonished Russian engineer described the spectacle that unfolded along the entire length of On the horizon, on the German side, it shone like daylight, everything was covered in smoke, the foundations of the Earth were thick and groups of masses were flying, huge flocks of frightened birds were flying through the sky, a constant hum, explosions of thunder, we had to cover our ears to avoid it. our eardrums shattered as the sound of artillery gradually faded, hundreds of men began shouting at Berlin as tank engines roared and elite assault elements began advancing towards the heights.

Many of the German defenders who were unlucky enough to have been caught in the previous attack had disappeared in the blink of an eye as the stunned and terrified survivors rushed back to the second defensive line. However, the impressive bombardment obscured serious problems in Zhukov's plan. The destruction caused by the bombardment had been so great in scope that it had seriously worsened the condition of the terrain. that his men now had to pass through searchlights meant to blind the enemy, instead they were reflected in the air filled withsmoke and obscured the vision of the advancing infantry;

In the resulting chaos, units lost contact with each other as Soviet artillery and aircraft began to attack friendly formations worse. Still, German intelligence had advance knowledge of the upcoming offensive, which meant that many of the frontline troops had been evacuated to the safety of the rear. What followed was nothing less than what one member of the thick Deutschland guard regiment described as a slaughterhouse of countless people. Soldiers were cut down as they struggled to advance across the floodplains and through German minefields in other sectors as well. The attackers were shot down and driven back as they tried to cross the disaster by smelling the smell and Zhukov, increasingly agitated, ordered his two tank armies to attack at once.

However, most of the artillery and infantry supply vehicles were still trying to reach the front, causing the tank armies to become hopelessly stuck in an endless traffic jam, even when the lead armor finally broke down. As they approached the heights, they found themselves ambushed by 88 hidden gun emplacements. Tiger 1 tanks and infantry armed with deadly Panzer attacks and recoilless anti-tank launchers, unsurprisingly, Zhukov's decimated men had made little progress by the end of the first day and it would take three more days and countless more dead before his armies They finally broke through. The final defensive line, naturally, Stalin was enraged, but he could rest easy knowing that Coneb's front to the south had been more successful by the end of April 18, his tank armies had crossed the Spray River and were rushing towards Berlin without enough reinforcements and ammunition, the surviving defenders in both sectors were forced into a hasty retreat with the German defensive lines in the south and center broken and with vital troops in the north still trapped in heavy fighting, the road to Berlin was open without supplies to maintain In the fighting, German morale visibly began to collapse.

Thousands of surrounded men surrendered as masses of stragglers, deserters and refugees made their way towards the doomed city, while an increasingly delirious Hitler continued to demand fanatical resistance until The Bitter End, April 20, the Führer's birthday. was abruptly interrupted by Soviet artillery bombardment on the northeastern suburbs of Berlin as its citizens fled to Sellers Zhukov and Konaf's tank armies began a frantic race towards the outskirts of this city; Meanwhile, many senior Nazi party officials engaged in a similar type of competition to be the first to gain permission to flee the city, soldiers on the ground did not enjoy such privileges and those who attempted to flee or showed signs of cowardice were summarily hung all over the city with messages like I was a coward or I was a deserter hanging from their chests.

The next morning, Soviet artillery fired a frantic bombardment into Berlin's city center as the remnants of the 56th Panzer Corps of General Helmut Vaidling's German Ninth Army made a desperate retreat across Berlin's motorway ring while They were machine-gunned mercilessly by Soviet planes. Other remnants of the German defense attempted in vain to prevent Zhukov's armies from advancing towards the city from the southwestern and northern flanks; However, his exhausted units could only delay the enemy and Zhukov and Konaf's forces reached the outskirts of the city that night believing themselves to be the next Frederick the Great Hitler remained confident. that a massive counterattack by the newly created Steiner Army Detachment and the Ninth Army against Zhukov's flanks would trap the invaders in the city in a stratagem similar to what had happened to the Germans at Stalingrad two years earlier, when it was left It became clear the next day that Schneider's Army Detachment lacked sufficient strength and ammunition to attack the Führer, he finally broke down and openly admitted for the first time that all was hopelessly lost with the Soviets storming into the city.

General Widling was appointed commander of the Berlin defense area, however, when Vidling took command. only about 45,000 Vermont and SS soldiers, just over 40,000 volksterm men, and a paltry 60 fuel-starved tanks were left standing to defend the city against around 1.5 million Soviet troops; Unsurprisingly, Zhukov's armies had managed to drive out the Eastern Defenders and Southeastern Suburbs by the end of the 23rd, while other fronts tightened their grip around the city's flanks with inevitable defeat looming on the horizon, many of the defenders began to lay down their arms, others, however, continued to resist fanatically at Templehof airport, a mixed group of SS.

The German defenders led by Hitler, including some 100 members of the Hitler Youth, wreaked havoc on the attacking Soviet tanks and infantry, who had to resort to massive aerial and artillery bombardments to finally capture the airport a day later, when the encirclement of Berlin had been completed, however, a manic Hitler. Weidling promised that another massive counteroffensive by General Vank's 12th Army in the southwest would surely come to the rescue of the beleaguered defenders. However, Venk had no intention of embarking on a futile suicide mission and instead moved to relieve the encircled German troops beyond. However, Hitler rejected the plan and reaffirmed his intention to fall at the head of his troops for the next three days.

The army strengthened its hold on Berlin as the advancing armies approached the inner defensive line protecting the government district; However, the lack of clear demarcation lines between the fronts led to several formations competing for space and becoming hopelessly confused in the following Quagmire after careful deliberation. It was decided that most of Konaf's frustrated men would be reassigned to Czechoslovakia, while Zhukov was to strike the final blow. By the end of the 29th, the 8th Guards Army had fought its way through the heavily defended Tiergarten sector, while the 3rd Shock Army had crossed the foam over the Maltika Bridge just to the north, in front of them stood the Supreme Prize. , the blackened walls of the reichstag, the former parliamentary building widely considered the symbolic heart of the Third Reich, capturing it would be nothing less than the culmination of the Throughout the Soviet war effort, the defense of the building and its surroundings was led by a determined group of SS fighters, mostly foreigners, with little less to lose.

On the morning of the next day, Soviet artillery opened fire as a few hundred assault troops rushed forward after a heavy attack. In the shootout, the men reached the main entrance and proceeded to clear the building in brutal hand-to-hand combat. After hours of bitter combat, the red banner was seen hanging from the second floor around 2:30 p.m. m., but it wouldn't be until late at night. Before the path to the roof was finally cleared, two sergeants identified as Mikayo Yagorov and Melaton Kantaria managed to reach the top and hoisted the hammer and sickle over the Reichstag, marking the symbolic end of Hitler's Third Reich while this historic moment was developing uniformly.

A more momentous event occurred barely a kilometer away, as Soviet troops converged on their bunker complex. The bitter Führer knew he had reached the end of the line: the German people had failed him and his vision of a Thousand Year Reich, after giving the go-ahead to attempt a late escape, the Führer said goodbye to his staff. remaining, he poisoned his dog Blondie and retreated to his study room to commit suicide along with his newlywed Ava Brown, but Hitler's death did not stop him. did not immediately end the fighting, new Chancellor Joseph Goebbels rejected Stalin's demand for an unconditional surrender of the garrison, leading the Red Army to destroy the remaining German positions until the defense was reduced to little more than a few isolated outbreaks, with the subsequent suicide of Gerbil.

Announced that night, the door to peace in Berlin could finally be opened at 6 a.m. on May 2. General Weidling officially ordered his remaining men to lay down their arms when the guns finally fell silent. In the afternoon, an eerie silence descended on the city of Troykov. He would later write the flame of the world war was extinguished there once it arose, although fighting in Europe continued until the unconditional surrender of Germany on May 8. The war had reached its climax in the Battle of Berlin and the capture of the capital. of Germany had cost the Red Army an estimated 78,000 men were killed in combat and more than 274,000 wounded.

The Germans had lost between 90 and 100,000 men killed in combat, as well as at least another 200,000 wounded during their advance into Germany. The vengeful Red Army had left a trail of It is said that, in Berlin alone, between 95,000 and 130,000 women were sexually assaulted, ten thousand of whom later committed suicide, but many Germans were relieved that the conflict was finally over and that a semblance of normal human life was slowly returning under shared Allied Soviet occupation; However, the alliance between the two victors would be short-lived and the star of the Cold War would usher in a new type of crisis in the city that had suffered so much during World War II that the Germans The soldier's shovel pierces the soft clay during the last year.

He has worked on a farm in the southern United States. He was transferred to a work detail after several months in a detention center. He and his companions have spent their time working in the fields watching American movies and thinking. about what they will do once the war is over, the Americans work hard with their pupils, but they feed them well and treat them better than the black sharecroppers who work alongside them, perhaps our soldier thinks he will have a new trade to practice when I returned home. German soldiers fight with shovels against the Frozen Earth for the last year he has worked in a cemetery in the Soviet Union transferred to a labor detail after several months in a detention center he and his companions have spent their time siphoning frozen corpses that languish In spartan barracks and fighting desperately to survive, the Soviets worked hard with their charges, but the deprivations of war mean that the communists can barely feed themselves let alone prisoners of war, perhaps our soldier thinks he will soon join his former comrades who stare at him from the Korean pit when VE Day was declared in 1945, the Allied powers held approximately 11 million German soldiers as prisoners of war, the vast majority of these around 8 million having been captured by the Western Allies, while the remaining 3 million were in the custody of the Soviet Union with Europe liberated.

After the Nazi aggression, the Allied powers were left with a critical question: what to do with their 11 million prisoners of war; The issue was, to say the least, divisive, since while the Western Allies were signatories to the Geneva Convention which very clearly called for the release of prisoners, by the time the war ended, the Soviets had notably abstained signing the international agreement, this meant that the fate of a captured German soldier was apparently decided in whose hands he fell, but war is a brutal business and sometimes even international law is just ink on a piece of paper.

During the war years, German soldiers were imprisoned in approximately 20 countries around the world, including the continental United States, while in the United States, many German prisoners were leased to farms or factories to serve as laborers. , providing additional labor to compensate for workers lost to recruitment. A hotbed of this leasing activity was the southern US, where German prisoners of war befriended American citizens and watched Hollywood movies during their free hours. In general, prisoners of war sent to the US were treated humanely and German deaths in American custody were few, 491. Things were different in the internment camps in Europe where American estimates of prisoners of war Those who died in custody put themselves at a few thousand, while German figures claim there are up to 40,000 deaths in American custody.

The early release of many prisoners by the Americans complicates obtaining an exact number, for its part, theBritish Empire managed the fate of up to 2.5 million German prisoners of war at the end of the war Germans held in Britain could be housed in anything from tents set up in a pastoral countryside to elegant stately homes repurposed as prisons surprisingly elegant, similar to their comrades in the United States German prisoners of war in Great Britain. They enjoyed a cordial relationship with British civilians who gave them money and food that they would not normally eat. Germans in Britain could also be placed on a labor detail for which they were paid a respectable two shillings per day of work (the number of German prisoners of war who died). in British custody was 1,254.

British and American soldiers were also reported to have tortured when interrogating Germans suspected of committing war crimes, often leading to confessions extracted under duress, but this was far from the worst thing a German captured on the Western Front could France is expected to be of dubious disgrace. German soldiers captured during the liberation of France, as well as several relocated there from American custody, faced appalling conditions and vengeful civilians. French citizens harassed or verbally assaulted German prisoners, stoning or beating them, sometimes to death, in some prisoner-of-war camps. It seemed designed for extermination rather than detention. A French camp at the SAT gave its inmates only 900 calories in rations per day.

In comparison, a Jew living in the early days of the Warsaw ghetto was assigned on paper to less just over 1,000 calories in servings. By the Nazis an average of 12 prisoners of war died daily at the SATA camp and shortly after VE Day the Red Cross reported that almost 200,000 German soldiers in French custody faced imminent famine. The United States was forced to suspend any further shipment of prisoners of war to France and demand its accession to the Geneva Convention and an act that in practice was largely symbolic the end of the war meant, under international law, the repatriation, but for the Western Allies the end of the war largely seemed to mean reparation: the United States and Britain leased approximately 1 million Germans on the continent to help with reconstruction by building roads or working in sawmills and quarries.

Some in France and the Netherlands were forced to clear minefields. 2,000 prisoners of war were killed or maimed every month. Recruiting the workers in this way was a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, but the Western Allies claimed that since the German government technically did not exist, their defendants were not prisoners of war and therefore had no right to the protections given to prisoners of war, thank you, the Soviets had suffered greatly in their war against fascism and they didn't want a pound of flesh for their troubles, they wanted tons. Soviet plans for postwar reconstruction included the use of German prisoners of war as forced labor from early in 1944.

Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the British Empire, called for the Germans to receive reparation payments to the Soviet Union for a long time. period that he finally defined as 10 years. Myski would refine his proposal for the Yalta Conference and provide Stalin with a full-fledged large-scale plan to get the USSR a supply of 5 million German prisoners of war to be used as forced labor for a decade after the Soviet Union was achieved. victory with this massive recruitment and the planned seizure of German lands and wealth that the Soviets hoped they could prevent from the German people.

Whenever the USSR was fought again, with the end of the war and the division of Germany into occupation zones, Soviet plans were put into practice. Soviet authorities began to identify their new charges with ethnic Germans on Soviet territory, investigated to determine whether they had served in the war or had served in the war. They had verifiable vermacht service They were ordered to Soviet prisoner of war camps to be prepared for forced labor The Soviets would organize their new workers into battalions of three to five thousand men divided into companies of one thousand men They were used primarily for construction and heavy industry with a laser focus on rebuilding the totally devastated Soviet Union, three million Germans would be recruited into these Soviet labor companies, a third would die there.

However, it should be noted that this may not have been the result of direct Soviet action or negligence. Theirs was a war of annihilation in which both the Germans and the Soviets gave no quarter and expected none, consequently, several of the men forced into these work companies were prisoners of war captured directly by the Soviets and, Due to the horrible conditions on the Eastern Front, they were left in Soviet custody malnourished, sick, completely exhausted, or some combination of the three, but it would not have been pragmatic for the Soviets to intentionally massacre their newly acquired manpower, so shortly after a war that devastated its working population between 1945 and 1946, many prisoners of war who were too ill to work were simply released by the Soviets instead.

A bad harvest, a bad harvest, and endemic corruption and mismanagement seemed to be behind the travails of German forestry workers in the early postwar years; However, as time went on, German workers began to present more problems than their Soviet masters thought were worth working at the UW. It was a surprisingly expensive undertaking and had to be constantly subsidized by the main Soviet economy, the Germans contributing approximately 5 of the total national income of the Soviet Union, a far cry from the great reparation imagined by Maisky and his 10 years of servitude in a movement surprisingly capitalist soviet. Industrial leaders began to view their German workers as unprofitable and began to skimp on their responsibilities to feed and care for them;

After all, why waste good money and material on what they considered fascist parasites when their industrial managers began to sour on the Soviet leaders' concept? began taking steps for repatriation in 1947, the foreign ministers of the Allied powers agreed that they would repatriate all German prisoners of war in 1948. The Soviet effort would last well into 1950, with approximately 26,000 German prisoners of war having been convicted of war crimes by Soviet courts no. sent back to Germany in 1956. In general, Germans in the Soviet Union after the war faced compulsory hard labor in difficult conditions, but most were repatriated long before the initial 10-year plan, but what happened to the German soldiers who had been discharged earlier?

At the end of the war or who had abandoned their fears of Crusade against the rest of the world or who had simply been far enough from the front lines not to be captured, those Germans who escaped capture and who were in the Western occupation zones were thrown adrift. In a new Germany, the Allies were keen to strip Germany of any martial will and, to this end, the militarism of any military-inclined organization or club, this meant that German veterans of the Second World War, unlike their former enemies, they had no support system to help them in the transition.

Returning to civilian life, these suddenly demobilized soldiers found themselves in a country gripped by denotification as the Western Allies sought to purge the influence of Hitler and Goebbel's propaganda machine and eliminate all traces of Nazi ideology and warmongering. He ordered the former soldiers to report. to the Allied courts for a summary trial originally conducted by the occupation forces before being handed over to the German authorities in 1946 these courts would take stock of the accused's military and civilian activities during the war the court would then classify the accused as a criminal major offender minor offender follower or give them a total exoneration across the board.

The rank-and-file members of the vermasht were categorized as petty criminals and sentenced to a three-year probation period. During this time they were prohibited from holding public office or running their own businesses as more and more. More defendants were found or presented, the court system began to buckle under an increasing number of cases, and judges began to find or make a multitude of exceptions to speed up the process. Disabled veterans were often exempt from trial along with those who could prove they were impoverished during the war years or were born after 1919, while this system managed to rationalize the former vermacht's personnel process, allowing those with true Nazi sympathies They will go unnoticed.

Denotification was abandoned in the 1950s when its inefficiencies became more evident and the German public began to reject the idea of ​​individual guilt; why count on your involvement in crimes against humanity when you can simply attribute it all to a painter? dead Austrian and moving on with his life abroad in one of history's ironic moments that many former Vermacht officials judged by the Allies for their service would soon find themselves back in uniform with the growing threat from the Soviets in the east the Allied powers realized that a militarized Germany would prove a keen ally should the world descend into another global conflict.

The Bundesvere was established in November 1955 and many former Vermont soldiers could be found in its ranks, sometimes wielding these same weapons they used to fight foreign allies. Nazi Germany's war criminals, from the highest levels of military and civilian leadership to rank-and-file guards, were indicted on charges. of crimes against humanity and prosecuted in a series of trials, most famously at Nuremberg, prosecutors from all the Allied nations presented a preponderance of evidence ranging from private diaries to concentration camp ledgers and military dispatches the point of The prosecution was clear that the military was equally responsible for Hitler's horrors as the SS and the civilian leaders there was no distinction to be drawn between the independent and politically minded SS and the SS.

The duly enlisted soldiers of Vermont, as they separated these two cogs. of Hitler's annihilation machine, often worked in sinister concert, Vermont would take over an area and the SS would purge it of undesirables. Military officers like Kaido and high ministers like Ribbentrop were hanged while others were sentenced to prison terms ranging from life to life in prison. Others like Hermann Goring took their own lives rather than face the executioner. There were even some women accused like the Auschwitzer Klasa's sadistic hyena was eventually hanged for her brutal treatment in the concentration camp. The inmates were unusual for a time when executing women was an absolute rarity, but these people were still allowed a defense and theirs was simple: We were simply following orders.

The central idea of ​​these arguments was that any Nazi officer or soldier minister accused of crimes against humanity was simply following a directive from a higher authority; some in fact forged orders to show that they had no choice in the matter by creating false paper trails. To justify its own malice and cruelty towards Jews, Roma, LGBTQ and others, the Nazi Party declared many of these false stories undesirable. They were pushed by the defendants' families who were tired of the war, tired of the reckoning, and just wanted their sons' daughters' husbands or wives to come home, whether they were a monster or not.

This attitude began to permeate the German public consciousness with unfortunate results. In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was founded, a new German state for a new German people. The first chancellor of this new Germany, Conrad Adenauer, began his term by announcing plans for a general amnesty for war criminals who had been condemned by the occupying powers the desire for Germany to be an ally against possible Soviet aggression triumphed over the desire for justice and in the spring of 1950 the Advisory Board on the pardon for criminals awarded for review leniency cases. In August 1950, 105 cases were brought to the Advisory Board, along with relatives and friends of convicted war criminals. while the representatives of the new German governmentThey presented all kinds of mitigating evidence, from medical history to the newborn myth of the clean vermacht, which emphatically stated that all Nazi crimes were the fault of the SS, and Hitler's Inner Circle defenders of the myth of the clean vermacht argued to this day. from today. that the common soldier of Nazi Germany was an honorable and chivalrous man who fought for a home and hearth untainted by the atrocities of his peers and the hateful rhetoric of his leaders. 84 of the 105 cases heard by the Advisory Board were dramatically reduced or outright commuted and the fairy myth of the acclaimed vermasht spread among the German population.

Generations of Germans believed in a stark divide between their ancestors who fought for Hitler and his crimes, eager to compartmentalize the shame of their nation's atrocities and their own family histories. The history of war is never simple nor clean. Germany's soldiers captured on the battlefield were rightly expected to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention and in many cases were until the wars ended pragmatic measures and Vengeful actions by the Allies to force German prisoners of war to rebuild Europe do not excuse the crimes of Nazi Germany any more than Nazi atrocities excuse Allied violations of the Geneva Convention, it is imperative that we remember that history is not entirely black and white, but rather shades of gray with defined areas of clear morality and humanity to simplify the story into West versus East. good versus evil or any dichotomy is ignoring the true lessons our history has to teach us and the deepest lessons are often learned in its darkest chapters, thank you.