History of germany

Fighting on four fronts: 1944

Since 1941 Stalinhas in vain urged the Allies to open up a new front in the west to relieve German pressure on Russia. Now finally, by 1944, he is supported on two other fronts - both of them directly threatening the Nazi heartlands of Germany and Austria.

From November 1943 the Allies are pushing north in an Italynow hostile to Germany, though it is nine months before they reach Florence and not until the spring of 1945 that they make any further progress. More effective by far is the second front, the one which Stalin always had in mind - an attack through France and Belgium aimed directly at Germany's industrial base in the Ruhr. 

The British and Americanlandings in Normandy take place in June 1944. Initial progress is slow, but Paris is liberated in August and Brussels in September. Thereafter there is another long delay caused by an Allied failure to cross the Rhine (atArnhem) and a German counter-attack (battle of the Bulge).

Meanwhile the Russians have been making rapid progress on the original front, in the east. They advance steadily from January 1944, and by early 1945 Russian forces are in control of Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria. And on a fourth front, at home, German cities have been suffering the Blitz previously inflicted on Britain. Berlin is bombed almost nightly from November 1943.Dresden is flattened in February 1945. 

The noose tightens: 1945

During the spring of 1945 the collapse of Germany comes, after so long, with surprising speed. German commanders in the field, no longer feeling any enthusiasm for a fight which is clearly lost, begin to disregard the stream of hysterical instructions from Hitler to stand firm whatever the cost. To the armies defending the Rhine his order includes the statement that the battle shall be conducted 'without consideration for our own population'.

A scorched earth policy within Germany is now the order of the day. All public utilities in the path of the Allies (water, gas, electricity) are to be destroyed. To protests from within his inner group, Hitler replies that if the war is lost, the German nation is lost. There is no need to consider the future requirements of a vanquished people. 

In this situation, and with Hitler's final reserves sent to the eastern front, the Allies meet little opposition when they cross the Rhine at various points on March 22-4 (first the Third US Army led by George Patton in the south, followed by the British and Canadians in the north). Both groups, pressing on east, reach the Elbe in mid-April. On the way they discover the horrors which bring home to the west, more powerfully than ever before, the true nature of the Nazi regime.

On April 10 the Americans reach the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Five days later the British come across Belsen, where there are 35,000 unburied bodies and as many emaciated prisoners still just alive. And these are not even thedeath camps - merely places where prisoners are subjected to hard work, little food and Nazi indifference. 

Meanwhile the Russians, pushing westwards, have entered Vienna on April 6. Within three weeks, by April 25, they reach and encircle Berlin, where Hitler is at last beginning to recognize that there can be no miraculous outcome.

News of the death of Roosevelt, on April 12, has been enough to make him hope for a sudden reversal of fortune. But on April 29, against his specific orders, the German army in Italy surrenders to the Allies. Hitler also knows that Himmler, his trusted SS commander, has been making peace overtures behind his back. Livid with anger at this betrayal, he now recognizes the end and prepares to meet it. In the elaborate bunker beneath the Chancellery he puts his affairs in order. 

The traitor Himmler is formally expelled from the party. Admiral Dönitz is appointed as Hitler's successor and the names of his cabinet are selected. Hitler then retires for a while to dictate his last will and testament, a tract of self-justification in which the Jews are still blamed for the war and the Nazi party is urged to continue the necessary campaign against them.

On this same day, April 29, in the early hours of the morning, Hitler rewards a woman who has always been quietly faithful to him. He marries his mistress, Eva Braun, following the ceremony with a small champagne party at which Goebbels (the Nazi minister of propaganda) and Martin Bormann (Hitler's secretary and close adviser) are the principal guests. 

On April 30 Hitler holds his usual daily conference while the Russians, in the streets above, are only two blocks away from the Chancellery. Then Hitler and Eva Braun retire to their quarters. She takes poison, he shoots himself in the mouth. On the following day Goebbels orders SS men to give his six children lethal injections and to shoot his wife and himself.

Hitler was appalled that his nation had surrendered in World War I without a single foreign soldier setting foot on German soil. His own unbreakable resolve results in the opposite extreme. When he dies, the enemy is in the heart of Berlin. A week later, on May 7, the unconditional surrender of all the German forces is signed at General Eisenhower's headquarters. May 8 is celebrated by the Allies as V-E Day - victory in Europe. 

This History is as yet incomplete.

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