The history of war in Europe is thousands of years old. By the 1800s, several kingdoms were in their final chapters, and several royal families had already been ousted. Small city-states began to join hands and form countries. As alliances and treaties developed between and among these various countries, a complex set of entanglements formed by the late 1880s.

Eventually during the 1890s, tensions between countries set the stage where almost any skirmish could lead to regional battles or even a broader war between alliances. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914 ignited World War I, as country after country honored treaties and commitments.

The fighting in World War I was harsh. New technology included airplanes, long-range aerial surveillance, improved radio communications, long-range artillery, fast-moving armored tanks and a variety of repeating weaponry. The use of lethal gases and trench warfare took the lives of millions of soldiers from all sides. As is so often the case, rulers and political leaders used men and war machines as mere pieces in the game of war. World War I, “the war to end all wars” was no exception.

In August 1914, Germany began pushing ground troops east and west. In the East, German troops commanded by Paul von Hindenburg fought Russian troops in the Battle of Tannenberg. Aerial reconnaissance and intercepted radio messages helped Germans capture 125,000 Russian troops after only five days of fighting. On the Western front, Germans engaged the French and British Expeditionary Forces in the Battle of Marne. Both sides made strategic maneuvers, taking advantage of opponents’ weaknesses. Coordinated counteroffensives by the French and English prevented the fall of Paris, causing the Germans to retreat.

German forces re-engaged in the Battle of Aisne in Alsace-Lorraine, in eastern France. Intense fighting along battle lines raged for weeks, while neither side gained ground. Soldiers from both sides dug ditches miles long to fight from and “trench warfare” began. Trenches stretched from Alsace-Lorraine north, almost reaching Belgium and the North Sea. In many places, enemy soldiers positioned themselves only yards away from each other, and fought face to face using bayonets in hand-to-hand combat.

By the end of November 1914, tens of thousands of lives were lost on both sides. As winter arrived, temperatures dropped, and conditions worsened for the fighting soldiers. Water a foot deep sat at the bottom of some trenches, leaving clothing, shoes and socks constantly drenched. Soldiers’ extremities were often too numb to walk or pull a trigger. Soldiers struggled climbing in and out of trenches and crawling across snow-covered ground. Making progress attempting to push back enemy lines was impossible at times. Dead bodies of those brave enough to obey commands of “Charge!” littered stretches of land between trenches. The strongest and most physically equipped to deal with the harsh struggles of trench warfare managed best. But physical fitness didn’t guarantee survival; nor did it deflect the psychological strain of bombardments and the hand-to-hand killing.

During the trench warfare, a notable event occurred late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve 1914. Fighting between enemy soldiers facing each other in nearby trenches slowed. As darkness covered the battlefield, German soldiers began singing Christmas carols. Soon English soldiers responded, singing their own Christmas songs. The singing became loud enough allowing each side to hear the other. As German soldiers began singing “Silent Night,” British soldiers in nearby trenches began singing the same tune in unison. Soon, soldiers on both sides lay down their rifles, left their trenches and approached each other on the battlefield. Soldiers on both sides were amazed at what was happening. Eventually, thousands of German and British soldiers were greeting each other, hopeful their spontaneous Christmas Eve truce, commenced by the singing of Christmas carols, might end the fighting. At dawn, German and England military commanders heard about the event. They immediately ended the impromptu truce. Shooting resumed, and the silent night became a memory to the soldiers. “The war to end all wars” continued almost four more years.

In September 1918, the German military had lost its will to fight. Germany’s ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm, with guidance from his commanders, put an end to the war. On November 11, 1918, Germany signed an armistice agreement. On June 28, 1919, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles with France and Great Britain. The war caused massive casualties on all sides – estimated at twenty million civilian and military deaths, with another twenty million civilians and military wounded.

Within a few years, the German economy experienced the impact of the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Indebtedness to repay reparations was substantial, imposing a strong, negative feeling among Germany citizens. As resentment rose in the early 1920s, a young man named Adolf Hitler associated himself with the emerging Nazi Party, as it began fanning the flames of right-wing German nationalism.

In early November 1923, the Nazi Party challenged the German government when two thousand members marched in protest to the center of Munich. Confronted by local police, the scuffle resulted in the deaths of sixteen Nazi Party members and four police officers. Adolf Hitler, wounded during the clash, escaped to the countryside. Two days later, he was found, arrested and charged with treason. The “Munich Putsch”, a milestone in the Nazi party’s growth, had failed due to poor planning and misjudgment. However, the broadly publicized insurrection grabbed the attention of German citizens and generated front-page headlines in newspapers across Europe and around the world. A twenty-four-day trial allowed Hitler to present his strong nationalist sentiments. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in prison, but through political connections, he was released in December 1924. While in jail, Hitler dictated his thoughts to fellow prisoner Rudolf Hess. The notes became the basis for his book, Mein Kampf.

Hitler was 36 years old when the first edition of Mein Kampf was published in 1925. In it, he refocused the Nazi Party, suggesting they achieve political power through propaganda and non-combative methods. Hitler continued to gain popular support speaking against the Treaty of Versailles’ prohibition against Germany’s redevelopment of its military, and requirement to pay large financial reparations. In 1927, a second volume of Mein Kampf followed, and it immediately became the bible of the German National Socialist Workers Party. An abridged edition called for all Germans to return to their homeland and offered aggressive nationalistic ideas.

The American stock market crash of 1929 caused financial difficulties for Germany, when calls on international loans helping it to recover from the war were made. Economic hyperinflation led to unrest among Germans and helped the Nazi Party gain more popular support. Meanwhile, updated Nazi propaganda promoting nationalism and anti-communism gained strength. Germans blamed the Treaty of Versailles for their weak economy more than ever. Suddenly, political maneuvering in the fledgling German congress, the Reichstag, became complicated as Germany tried to stabilize itself as a democratic government.

In 1930, Hitler’s increasingly robust and fiery speeches denounced communism and promoted anti-Semitism. The Nazi Party offered German citizens more reasons to support its growth. The Party soon took more seats in the German Reichstag. The Party also set up a paramilitary guard called the Storm Detachment or SA.  It provided protection for Nazi members at rallies and assemblies, and intimidated and disrupted meetings of opposing political parties. The SA also began to disrupt the lives of Jews with boycotts of Jewish businesses. The SA troops, referred to as “Brownshirts”, developed military titles for members, with ranks later adopted by other Nazi groups. Among the SA was a sub-group called the Schutzstaffel, commonly referred to as the SS. The SS was established with a more diabolical purpose. Another group called the Gestapo was set up by Hermann Göring in the eastern area of Germany known as Prussia, when the German state police and other political police forces were combined. At the same time in Italy, a group called “Blackshirts,” reporting to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, used similar destructive tactics against political rivals.

During 1932, Paul von Hindenburg, president of the German Republic, found it difficult to manage the brewing political storm as the Nazi Party continued to call for radical changes. To the surprise of many, the Nazi Party lost 34 seats while the Communist Party gained 11 seats in the Reichstag in the elections of November 1932. Despite the changes, no party could form a majority or political coalition to support a specific candidate for chancellor. Former chancellor Franz von Papen, a Catholic, and several other conservative leaders discussed the impasse. Papen then persuaded President von Hindenburg to consider appointing Adolf Hitler as the new German chancellor.

On January 30, 1933, von Hindenburg appointed Hitler in a move to hold off the Communist Party, but the decision had unintended consequences. Less than two months later, on March 23, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933, giving Hitler broad powers to make new laws transforming the young Weimar Republic into a “one-party dictatorship.” The totalitarian and autocratic ideology of German National Socialism was in place, and the German Reichstag almost never met again.

Once in power, Hitler countered what he saw as injustices placed on Germany by Britain and France. Hitler also believed Arian Germans were a superior race who should control all of Germany and beyond. He wanted to regrow German territory westward toward France, northeast into Poland, southeast to Czechoslovakia, and eventually east to Russia. These lands, historically belonged to Germany, but were given to other countries under the terms of the Treaty. Hitler also wanted to make Germany pure by eliminating Jews, Slovaks and others from Germany and any newly acquired territory.

Beginning in 1933, during Hitler’s first year in power, Germany experienced a rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression. Hitler ignored restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles and ordered steps to re-militarize the country. He breached the Treaty first by increasing the size of Germany’s armed forces. He ordered volunteer soldiers to drill in secret, using shovels instead of rifles. In 1933 he withdrew Germany from the League of Nations Disarmament Agreement, demanding equality of arms with France and Britain.

In March of 1935, Hitler openly announced he would re-arm Germany, in blatant violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Other nations, focused on a post-WWI global disarmament movement, ignored Germany’s activities. In June of the same year, Britain agreed to a naval agreement directly with Germany, accepting the premise Germany could have a navy 35 percent the size of Britain’s Navy. This separate agreement allowed Germany to have more than six battleships; it broke the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and disregarded France’s interests. Great Britain’s intent was to have keep a controlling alliance with Germany. The unintended consequence: it allowed Germany to become a naval power as it built battle ships and hundreds of submarines.

In July 1936, Hitler sent air and armored war machines to Spain to assist General Francisco Franco and Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. It gave Hitler’s senior military officers experience they needed for his future war plans. Hitler limited Germany’s military activity in the war and urged Mussolini to involve his Italian forces. The three-year Spanish war provided combat experience to over 12,000 German soldiers and officers using the latest air and mobile war machines.

In December 1936, Hitler told his first-line generals to prepare for war starting in three years. In 1937 Hitler began conscripting men into the military. He continued spending huge sums of money building war machinery, including tanks, armored vehicles, airplanes, ships and submarines. He also spent money on the nation’s railroad infrastructure and building roadways. Hitler even supported research into a new type of engines allowing airplanes to fly without propellers. Another development was the design of long-range rockets.

During the mid-1930s, Hitler claimed a new treaty between France and Russia threatened Germany’s safety. His response was to begin annexing adjacent territories. Hitler broke terms of the Treaty of Versailles, moving German troops and equipment into a demilitarized zone called the Rhineland. German commanders had orders to retreat if the French Army tried to stop them from invading the area. But to Germany’s surprise, France did nothing as 20,000 German soldiers and war machines moved to occupy the area. Following these bold land-grabbing moves, Hitler gained praise and more support from German citizens.

In Austria, an attempted Nazi Party putsch in 1934 failed. Then in March 1938, the Austrian Nazi Party and its SA organized riots while Hitler pressured the Austrian chancellor to declare a political and economic union with Germany. Austria balked and asked France and Britain for help. Sadly, politicians from both countries refused to get involved. Germany quickly invaded Austria, and more than 30,000 Austrians were immediately imprisoned. Shortly after the invasion, a referendum was held and 99 percent of Austrians voted “Yes” to Anschluss, the official act of being taken over by Germany. But they had no choice. Austrian men, women and military officers were upset. Many attempted to leave the country; some were immediately drafted into the German military. One Austrian Naval officer, Baron Georg Ludwig von Trapp, a highly decorated submarine captain in the Austrian-Hungary Imperial Navy during World War I, took his entire family mountain climbing days after the Anschluss. They all hiked far into the Italian Alps, where they hid until WWII ended, then the family moved to upstate New York.

Following the takeover of Austria, Hitler annexed more land. He demanded Sudetenland by threatening war with Czechoslovakia to gain the territory, but Britain and France again broke the Treaty of Versailles, ceding Sudetenland to Germany on September 30. What remained for German expansion was moving into Danzig and the Polish corridor. The Treaty of Versailles was now a useless document, as Britain and France allowed Hitler to act without militarily consequences.

Hitler’s next step in his long-term strategy, was to form an alliance with Communist Russia. Hitler’s war plan was to invade Poland but not worry about fighting against the Soviet Red Army. He didn’t trust Stalin but signed a non-aggression treaty with the Soviets to hold them in check. With the new alliance in place, Hitler continued aggressive actions in a blitzkrieg of Germany’s war machine across Poland in September 1939. Conquering Poland allowed Germany to grow, satisfying Hitler’s thirst for expansion and power. His dictatorship from 1933 to 1939 was deemed fruitful in the eyes of the German people. He now had the ability to eliminate even more Jews from Europe.

In May and June 1940, the Wehrmacht was on the move again. The German war machine, fully developed, continued its blitzkrieg style of warfare, racing into Belgium and France.

A year later, on June 22, 1941, feeling militarily emboldened, Hitler set aside his treaty with the Soviet Union, and made his move to invade Russia. The Germans launched an aggressive blitzkrieg style attack, eastward against Russia. Operation Barbarossa is considered by military experts as the largest land-based military attack in history. Almost three and a half million German soldiers, using more than 3,400 tanks and 2,700 airplanes, suddenly blitzed across the border and drove deep into the heart of Russia, knocking the Red Army on its heels. In the first day of the attack, the Soviet air force lost 1,200 planes. The German Luftwaffe secured air superiority immediately and severely damaged many Soviet supply lines. Within five weeks, over 600,000 Red Army soldiers were captured. As December brought winter’s cold and snowy conditions, Germany’s inability to provide supplies to the front eventually slowed the Wehrmacht’s progress. The Soviet Red Army successfully held its defensive line that winter, keeping the Germans from capturing Moscow. Red Army tanks and troops led by brilliant commanders from Russia, the Ukraine and other areas in the Soviet Union, held their lines and slowly pushed the German’s back. Germany was now fully engaged in battles, fighting on two fronts.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese, bolstered with success in their war against China, attacked the United States territory, Hawaii, at its Pearl Harbor naval base. Hitler, having met regularly with Japan’s ambassador to Germany, Hiroshi Oshima, immediately formed an alliance with Japan and declared war on the United States on December 11. The U.S. immediately positioned itself against Japan in the Pacific, and Germany in Europe, and committed to financial aid, military troops and equipment to its European allies. The United States took broad steps to gather raw materials, and to begin the nation’s production of ships, airplanes and mobile war machinery. It began to train soldiers for war in the European and Pacific theaters.

In May 1942, the Royal Air Force began its air offensive against Germany with air raids on the continent. In July, American pilots began taking part in RAF raids and sorties flying from England across the English Channel into France and other countries. Meanwhile, a new radio tracking device called radar was being developed enabling England to anticipate Germain air raids.

A year later, forces from the U.S., Great Britain, Canada and Australia landed in Sicily. Under U.S. Army General George Patton and Britain’s Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the Allies pushed their way to Messina. The Germans and Italians in their retreat from Sicily, managed to evacuate over 60,000 troops, 14,000 vehicles, 47 tanks and over 1,000 tons of ammunition from Messina to the mainland before the Allies could stop them. The German command placed 12,000 troops in Calabria, and moved the remaining 48,000 men and virtually all the equipment north to reinforce their defensive line positions called the Gothic Line, Winter Line, Siegfried Line, Gustav Line, Bernhardt and Hitler Lines across the Italian peninsula.

On August 1, 1943, the American Army Air Force initiated an aerial bombing raid called Operation Tidal Wave. Beginning in Benghazi, Libya, 177 B-24s flew to Ploiesti, Romania where they heavily damaged Axis oil refineries and fuel sources, nicknamed Hitler’s Gas Station. In the raid, 53 B-24s and 440 US air crewmen were lost, and another 300 were wounded. Of the 125 remaining planes, 88 returned to Benghazi, and 33 B-24s were forced to land in Turkey, Cyprus and Romania where 108 US airmen were taken as prisoners by German ground forces. This effort initially caused a loss of 40% of capacity and caused interruptions in Germany’s fuel-supply chain. While Operation Tidal Wave was considered a strategic loss for the allies, it marked a point in time where difficulties began for the flow of fuel to the Wehrmacht’s mobile war machinery. Subsequent bombing of strategic German rail lines by the allies, especially where German tank battles and mass movements of troops were taking place proved to be more effective.

During July and into August 1943, the German Wehrmacht, launched its last major offensive attack called Operation Citadel against the Soviet Red Army. The second phase of Operation Citadel expanded its geographic reach, and became known as the Battle of Kursk, using their newest style tanks, Panthers and Tigers. Considered the largest tank battle in the WW2, the Germans had almost 800,000 troops and almost 3,000 tanks present, while the Red Army brought over one million troops and 3,500 tanks to the battle. Men, long guns and armored vehicles clashed for weeks, during which time, German soldiers used almost 500,000 tons of ammunition in just two months.

As the Red Army began pushing back the German forces, Hitler moved military forces originally headed to support the Eastern front, instead to support the fight against the Allies in Italy by reinforcing their entrenchments in the Italian mountains just before the U.S. and Allied forces landed in Anzio.

In the fall of 1943, the Allies began their battle to liberate Rome. At the same time, the U.S. continued its air attacks attempting to destroy rail lines the Wehrmacht needed on its multiple war fronts. The logistics of keeping their tanks, halftracks, airplanes and ships fueled became a serious issue recognized by Germany’s field generals, but Hitler refused to accept the bad news and advice.

The D-Day invasion of France by the U.S. and its allies in Normandy in June 1944 established yet another front where the German war machine would need to reinforce its fight to hold onto France.

By now, Germany’s high-ranking generals and strategists realized they would be unable to sustain the fight. They tried to convince Hitler to end the war, but he wouldn’t hear it. Frustration over Hitler’s constant demands and unpredictable decisions led to several attempts on his life by German military commanders. One attempt was on July 20, 1944, when several senior-level German officers staged an unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life during a meeting at the Wolf’s Lair. Hitler escaped harm and continued to believe he was destined to win the war.

By December 1944, American and allied forces were pushing the Germans from France and Italy. Finally, by the spring of 1945, American, British and Russian forces pushed Germans most of the way back to Berlin. In March and April 1945, as Red Army and American forces fought their way and advanced towards Berlin, American allies and Soviets began to free tens of thousands of prisoners from concentration and death camps.

_______________________________

Note: A list of historical characters is located at the rear of the book “Litany of Sorrows.

Credits to Wikipedia: References of events about World War I, World War II, specific facts about battles and events, references to events leading to each war, events regarding the failings of the Treaty of Versailles and the rise of the Nazi Party, and information about factual / historical people.