Here again, acquiring new supplies of fuel to replenish Germany's dwindling stocks was the imperative. But Soviet generals had begun to learn how to co-ordinate tanks, infantry and air power and to avoid encirclement by tactical withdrawals.
German losses mounted. The German forces were already dangerously short of reserves and supplies when they reached the city of Stalingrad on the river Volga, in August Three months later, they had still not taken the city. Stalingrad became the object of a titanic struggle between the Germans and the Soviets, less because of its strategic importance than because of its name.
When the Germans moved their best troops into the city, leaving the rear to be guarded by weaker Romanian and Italian forces, the Soviet generals saw their chance, broke through the rearguard and surrounded the besieging forces. Short of fuel and ammunition, the Germans under General Paulus were unable to break out.
As one airfield after another was captured by the Red Army, supplies ran out and the German troops began to starve to death. On 31 January , refusing the invitation to commit suicide that came with Hitler's gift of a field marshal's baton, Paulus surrendered.
Some , German and allied troops were captured; more than , had been killed. It was the turning point of the war. From this moment on, the German armies were more or less continuously in retreat on the eastern front. The Red Army around Stalingrad was threatening to cut off the German forces in the Caucasus, so they were forced to withdraw, abandoning their attempt to secure the region's oil reserves.
In early July came the last great German counter-attack, at Kursk. This was the greatest land battle in history, involving more than four million troops, 13, tanks and self-propelled guns, and 12, combat aircraft. Warned of the attack in advance, the Red Army had prepared defences in depth, which the Germans only managed partially to penetrate.
A tragi-comic incident happened when an advancing Soviet tank force fell into its own side's defensive ditches; nearly tanks were wrecked, or destroyed by the incredulous Waffen-SS forces waiting for them on the other side. The local party commissar, Nikita Khrushchev, covered up this disaster by persuading Stalin that they had been destroyed in a huge battle that had eliminated more than German tanks and won a heroic victory.
The legend of "the greatest tank battle in history" was born. In fact it was nothing of the kind. So enormous were the Russian reserves that the loss of the tanks made little difference in the end, as fresh troops and armour were moved in to rescue the situation.
More than one million soldiers, 3, tanks and self-propelled guns, and nearly 4, combat aircraft entered the fray on the Soviet side and began a series of successful counter-offensives. The Germans were forced to retreat. The missing German tanks had not been destroyed; they had been pulled out by Hitler to deal with a rapidly deteriorating situation in Italy.
After the war, German generals claimed bitterly they could have won at Kursk had Hitler not stopped the action. In reality, however, the Soviet superiority in men and resources was overwhelming. And the tanks really were needed in Italy. Following their victory in north Africa, the allies had landed in Sicily on 10 July to be greeted in Palermo by Italian citizens waving white flags.
A fortnight later, reflecting the evaporation of Italy's will to fight on, the Fascist Grand Coalition deposed Mussolini and began to sue for peace. On 3 September an armistice was signed, and allied forces landed on the Italian mainland.
However, the quest for ever heavier tanks instead of concentrating on the mass production of the good designs like the Panther tank left the Germans with a wide array of tanks, each requiring different spare parts and expertise. Also, the reliance on forced labor meant that quality control was a big issue, causing more frequent breakdowns which required more spares, etc.
On December 11, , Germany declared war on the United States, in response to what was claimed to be a series of provocations by the United States when they were still neutral. This occurred 4 days after December 7, when the Empire of Japan launched its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. According to the terms of the Anti-Comintern Pact signed with Japan, Germany was obligated to come to the aid of Japan if a third country attacked Japan, but not if Japan was the aggressor. Nevertheless, the German government Hitler chose to declare war on the United States.
This proved to be a godsend for both Churchill and Roosevelt who soon agreed on a Germany First strategy which meant the destruction of Germany took precedent over Japan. In December when the attack on Moscow stalled, the Soviets launched a massive counterattack which threatened to rout the Germans bringing them to the brink of disaster. Hitler did not wish to accept the facts, and he began removing officers from their command for not obeying orders or when they proposed to withdraw.
He would compose the strategies, and the officers would dance to his tune. The Nazis invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June This broke the Nazi-Soviet aggression pact which had been signed just two years prior. The Nazis aimed their attacks at three key targets, the Ukraine in the south, Moscow in the middle, and Leningrad in the north.
The invasion took the Soviets by surprise. Initially, the Nazis managed to cover large territories and encircle masses of troops, who duly surrendered. By late September, the Nazis were on the edge of Leningrad, having covered hundreds of miles of Soviet territory. Despite these tactical achievements, Soviet resistance hardened and the country did not surrender.
Although less well trained than their German counterparts, the Soviet Army was extremely large and they were more used to the difficult terrain than German troops. Having expected a quick victory, the German troops became more and more exhausted and they were unprepared for a Russian winter after months of warfare.
Supply chains were slow, leaving troops short of key materials. In late , the Soviets launched a counterattack on the German troops outside Moscow, pushing the Germans back into a defensive battle.
The mass murder of Soviet Jews by the Einsatzgruppen was an essential part of the planning that took place in the six months prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union. Their victims included, but were not limited to, Slavs, Jews, Roma and their political opponents.
The Einsatzgruppen were made up approximately men. They were assisted by the Germany Army and local collaborators. In contrast to the extermination camp system which was used widely for Jews in Germany, Austria and occupied Poland, the Einsatzgruppen murdered their victims where they lived or nearby to where they lived. Typically, the Einsatzgruppen murdered their victims in mass shootings, however there were also cases of the Einsatzgruppen using mobile gas vans.
Einsatzgruppe A covered Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Einsatzgruppe B covered eastern Poland from Warsaw east and Belorussia. Einsatzgruppe C covered southeastern Poland from Krakow east and western Ukraine. Einsatzgruppe D covered Romania, southern Ukraine and the Crimea. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan.
Until the end of , the United States of America had remained a neutral country, not involved in the War. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the most important naval base in America, on 7 December changed this. The USA were caught by surprise by the attack. Over people were killed, and more than people were injured. A large majority of the military vehicles present were destroyed or broken. The reaction to the sheer devastation caused was immediate.
Hitler supported the Japanese attack, and shortly after, on 11 December , declared war on the USA. The USA immediately retaliated, and returned the declaration. The bombing of Pearl Harbour, which brought the United States into the war on the side of the Allies, had a huge impact on the final outcome of the war.
Stalingrad was one of the largest and most brutal battles of the Second World War. Here, German troops run through a trench in the north of Stalingrad during battle. This pamphlet was published in July It circulated the details of a meeting of German resistance in , shortly after the end of the Battle of Stalingrad. The pamphlet helps to evidence the small but growing discontent from some groups against the Nazis in Germany by this stage in the war.
However, this discontent and resistance was typically from small, uncoordinated, groups rather than a united national movement. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in , fighting on the eastern front was continuous. The Germans, who had been close to capturing the capital of Moscow in late , were pushed back over miles to west to the town of Rzhev. This attack was problematic for German morale but, by February , German troops had reorganised.
They counterattacked and destroyed several Soviet divisions. This counterattack was soon met with further counterattacks from the Soviets and then the Germans. On the 23 August , the Germans launched an offensive to seize the city of Stalingrad in south-west Russia. The battle was one of the largest and most brutal in history.
It was also one of the only battles of the Second World War to feature hand-to-hand combat. The Germans first attempted to bomb Stalingrad into submission.
The city was reduced to rubble with air attacks by the Luftwaffe. German tanks followed the planes, reaching the outskirts of the city quickly. The German troops entered Stalingrad on the 12 September , advanced quickly and occupied two thirds of the city by the 30 September.
Their rapid advance once again fooled them into thinking that the battle would be quick. The Soviets put up a strong resistance. Having experienced losses against the Germans almost continuously for the previous year, the Soviet Army saw Stalingrad as an ideological and moral battle as well as a tactical one.
In addition to continuous air bombing, fighting in the rubble of the city was characterised by hand-to-hand combat with daggers and bayonets, as each side ambushed the other under the cover of darkness. By November , Marshal Georgy Zhukov , the Soviet general, had gathered over a million men with several tank armies. Zhukov encircled Axis troops in the north-west of the city. On 19 November , the Russians overwhelmed Romanian armies who were supporting the Germans in the north west of the city.
The Germans reacted slowly, and quickly became encircled. Despite General Paulus repeatedly requesting permission to surrender or retreat from Hitler, this was denied. The , German soldiers that were surrounded by the Soviet Army quickly ran out of ammunition and food in the midst of the Russian winter. Of the 91, German troops that surrendered, just eventually returned to Germany.
Most died from illness, starvation or exhaustion. It was a series of four offensives carried out by Allied troops in central Italy who was a key ally of Germany in an attempt to breakthrough the Winter Line and occupy Rome.
Monte Cassino was the mountain above the town of Cassino where the Germans had installed several defences in preparation for the Allied invasion. An Abbey sat on top of the mountain. One of the primary routes to Rome ran through the town of Cassino at the bottom of the mountain. Other routes to Rome had become impassable due to flooding and the difficult terrain made worse by the winter weather.
However, due to the German defences above, passing along the Monte Cassino route was impossible without first defeating the German troops on the mountain. Allied troops landed in southern Italy in September , but only had limited progress due to the harsh winter and Axis defences.
The first attack at Monte Cassino started on 17 January as British Empire, American and French troops fought uphill against the strategic German defences. The German defences were extremely well integrated into the mountainside, and, following large losses, the Allies pulled back on 11 February.
The Allies suspected that the Germans were using the Abbey which was situated at the top of a large hill and protected as neutral territory under the Concordat of as a military observation point. This image may contain graphic or objectionable content. The bodies of some of the seven American soldiers that had been shot in the face by an SS trooper are recovered from the snow, searched for identification and carried away on stretcher for burial on January 25, These German soldiers stand in the debris strewn street of Bastogne, Belgium, on January 9, , after they were captured by the U.
Refugees stand in a group in a street in La Gleize, Belgium on January 2, , waiting to be transported from the war-torn town after its recapture by American Forces during the German thrust in the Belgium-Luxembourg salient. A dead German soldier, killed during the German counter offensive in the Belgium-Luxembourg salient, is left behind on a street corner in Stavelot, Belgium, on January 2, , as fighting moves on during the Battle of the Bulge.
The three leaders were meeting to discuss the post-war reorganization of Europe, and the fate of post-war Germany. Soviet troops of the 3rd Ukrainian front in action amid the buildings of the Hungarian capital on February 5, Across the Channel, Britain was being struck by continual bombardment by thousands of V-1 and V-2 bombs launched from German-controlled territory. This photo, taken from a fleet street roof-top, shows a V-1 flying bomb "buzzbomb" plunging toward central London. The distinctive sky-line of London's law-courts clearly locates the scene of the incident.
Falling on a side road off Drury Lane, this bomb blasted several buildings, including the office of the Daily Herald. The last enemy action of British soil was a V-1 attack that struck Datchworth in Hertfordshire, on March 29 With more and more members of the Volkssturm Germany's National Militia being directed to the front line, German authorities were experiencing an ever-increasing strain on their stocks of army equipment and clothing.
In a desperate attempt to overcome this deficiency, street to street collection depots called the Volksopfer, meaning Sacrifice of the people, scoured the country, collecting uniforms, boots and equipment from German civilians, as seen here in Berlin on February 12, So that you're proud your Home Guard man can show himself in uniform - empty your wardrobe and bring its contents to us".
Three U. A party sets out to repair telephone lines on the main road in Kranenburg on February 22, , amid four-foot deep floods caused by the bursting of Dikes by the retreating Germans. During the floods, British troops further into Germany have had their supplies brought by amphibious vehicles. This combination of three photographs shows the reaction of a year old German soldier after he was captured by U.
Flak bursts through the vapor trails from B flying fortresses of the 15th air force during the attack on the rail yards at Graz, Austria, on March 3, A view taken from Dresden's town hall of the destroyed Old Town after the allied bombings between February 13 and 15, Some 3, aircraft dropped more than 3, tons of high-explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the German city.
The resulting firestorm destroyed 15 square miles of the city center, and killed more than 22, A large stack of corpses is cremated in Dresden, Germany, after the British-American air attack between February 13 and 15, The bombing of Dresden has been questioned in post-war years, with critics claiming the area bombing of the historic city center as opposed to the industrial suburbs was not justified militarily.
Soldiers of the 3rd U.
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