The history of war in Europe spans thousands of years. 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 among these countries, a complex set of entanglements had formed by the late 1880s.

By the 1890s, tensions between countries had set the stage for almost any skirmish to escalate into 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.

Fighting in World War I was brutal. New technology included airplanes, long-range aerial surveillance, improved radio communications, long-range artillery, fast-moving armored tanks, and a variety of repeating weapons. Lethal gases and trench warfare took the lives of millions of soldiers on 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 advancing ground troops east and west. In the East, German troops under Paul von Hindenburg fought Russian forces 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 the Marne. Both sides maneuvered strategically, taking advantage of the other's weaknesses. Coordinated French and British counteroffensives prevented the fall of Paris, forcing the Germans to retreat.

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

By the end of November 1914, tens of thousands of lives had been lost on both sides. As winter arrived, temperatures dropped, and conditions worsened for the fighting soldiers. Water a foot deep pooled 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 to climb in and out of trenches and to crawl across snow-covered ground. At times, making progress in attempts to push back enemy lines was impossible. The bodies of those brave enough to obey the command “Charge!” littered stretches of land between trenches. The strongest and most physically equipped managed best under the harsh demands of trench warfare. But physical fitness didn’t guarantee survival; nor did it deflect the psychological strain of bombardments and hand-to-hand killing.

During trench warfare, a notable event occurred late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve 1914. Fighting between enemy soldiers in nearby trenches slowed. As darkness fell over the battlefield, German soldiers began singing Christmas carols. Soon, English soldiers responded, singing their own Christmas songs. The singing grew loud enough for each side to hear the other. As German soldiers began singing “Silent Night,” British soldiers in nearby trenches joined in unison. Soon, soldiers on both sides laid 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, hoping their spontaneous Christmas Eve truce, begun with Christmas carols, might end the fighting. At dawn, German and British military commanders heard about the event. They immediately ended the impromptu truce. Shooting resumed, and the silent night became a memory for the soldiers. “The war to end all wars” continued for 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, ended the war. On November 11, 1918, Germany signed an armistice. On June 28, 1919, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles with France and Great Britain. The war caused massive casualties on all sides – an estimated twenty million civilian and military deaths, with another twenty million wounded.

Within a few years, the German economy felt the impact of the Treaty of Versailles' harsh terms. The reparations debt was substantial, creating strong resentment among German citizens. As resentment rose in the early 1920s, a young man named Adolf Hitler aligned himself with the emerging Nazi Party, which was beginning to fan 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 left sixteen Nazi Party members and four police officers dead. Adolf Hitler, wounded in 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 widely publicized insurrection captured German attention and generated front-page headlines in newspapers across Europe and around the world. A twenty-four-day trial allowed Hitler to express his strong nationalist sentiments. He was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in prison, but political connections led to his release 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 that it achieve political power through propaganda and non-combative methods. Hitler continued to gain popular support by speaking against the Treaty of Versailles’ prohibition on Germany’s rearmament and its 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 nationalist ideas.

The American stock market crash of 1929 caused financial difficulties for Germany when calls on international loans to help it 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 won 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 through 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, the Gestapo, was set up by Hermann Göring in eastern 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.

In 1932, Paul von Hindenburg, president of the German Republic, struggled to manage the brewing political storm as the Nazi Party continued to call for radical changes. To many's surprise, the Nazi Party lost 34 seats while the Communist Party gained 11 seats in the Reichstag in the November 1932 elections. Despite the changes, no party could form a majority or a 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 to curb 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, granting Hitler broad powers to enact new laws that transformed 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 Britain and France had imposed on Germany. Hitler also believed that Aryans were a superior race who should control all of Germany and beyond. He wanted to expand German territory westward toward France, northeast into Poland, southeast into Czechoslovakia, and eventually east toward Russia. These lands had 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 first breached the Treaty 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 1935, Hitler openly announced that he would rearm 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 that 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 intended to maintain a controlling alliance with Germany. The unintended consequence: it allowed Germany to become a naval power as it built battleships and hundreds of submarines.

In July 1936, Hitler sent air and armored units to Spain to assist General Francisco Franco and the Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. The war gave Hitler’s senior military officers the experience they needed for his future war plans. Hitler limited Germany’s military activity 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 to spend huge sums of money building war machinery, including tanks, armored vehicles, airplanes, ships, and submarines. He also invested in the nation’s railroad infrastructure and roadways. Hitler even supported research into a new type of engine that allowed airplanes to fly without propellers. Another development was the design of long-range rockets.

In the mid-1930s, Hitler claimed that a new treaty between France and Russia threatened Germany’s safety. In response, he began annexing adjacent territories. Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by moving German troops and equipment into the demilitarized Rhineland. German commanders were ordered 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. 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 Austro-Hungarian 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.

After the takeover of Austria, Hitler annexed more territory. He demanded the Sudetenland, threatening war with Czechoslovakia to gain the territory, but Britain and France again violated the Treaty of Versailles, ceding the 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 military 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 without worrying about a war with the Soviet Red Army. He didn’t trust Stalin but signed a non-aggression treaty with the Soviets to keep them in check. With the new alliance in place, Hitler launched a blitzkrieg, using Germany’s war machine to invade Poland in September 1939. Conquering Poland allowed Germany to expand, satisfying Hitler’s thirst for expansion and power. His dictatorship from 1933 to 1939 was seen as fruitful by many Germans. 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 fully developed German war machine 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 launched an invasion of Russia. The Germans launched an aggressive blitzkrieg-style attack eastward against Russia. Military experts consider Operation Barbarossa 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. On 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 supply 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 of the Soviet Union, held their lines and slowly pushed the Germans back. Germany was now fully engaged in battles, fighting on two fronts.

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese, emboldened by their success in the war against China, attacked the United States territory of Hawaii at Pearl Harbor, its 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 against Germany in Europe, and committed financial aid, troops, and equipment to its European allies. The United States took broad steps to gather raw materials and begin producing 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 German 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 toward Messina. During their retreat from Sicily, the Germans and Italians evacuated 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 defensive lines across the Italian peninsula, including the Gothic Line, Winter Line, Siegfried Line, Gustav Line, Bernhardt Line, and Hitler Line.

On August 1, 1943, the U.S. Army Air Forces launched Operation Tidal Wave, an aerial bombing raid. 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 U.S. aircrewmen 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 U.S. airmen were taken as prisoners by German ground forces. The raid initially caused a 40% loss of capacity and disrupted Germany’s fuel-supply chain. While Operation Tidal Wave was considered a strategic loss for the Allies, it marked the beginning of difficulties in the flow of fuel to the Wehrmacht’s mobile war machinery. Subsequent Allied bombing of strategic German rail lines, especially where German tank battles and mass troop movements were taking place, proved more effective.

During July and into August 1943, the German Wehrmacht launched its last major offensive, 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, in which the Germans used their newest tanks, Panthers and Tigers. Considered the largest tank battle of WW2, the battle saw the Germans field almost 800,000 troops and almost 3,000 tanks, while the Red Army brought over one million troops and 3,500 tanks. Men, long guns, and armored vehicles clashed for weeks, during which German soldiers used almost 500,000 tons of ammunition in just two months.

As the Red Army began pushing back German forces, Hitler redirected military forces originally headed to the Eastern Front to support the fight against the Allies in Italy, reinforcing their entrenchments in the Italian mountains just before U.S. and Allied forces landed at 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 the 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 then, Germany’s high-ranking generals and strategists realized they could not sustain the fight. They tried to persuade Hitler to end the war, but he refused. Frustration with Hitler’s constant demands and unpredictable decisions led several German military commanders to attempt to assassinate him. One such attempt occurred on July 20, 1944, when several senior German officers staged an unsuccessful assassination attempt on Hitler during a meeting at the Wolf’s Lair. Hitler escaped unharmed and continued to believe he was destined to win the war.

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

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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.