When World War 2 had begun, people might have thought why would the Germans vote for a dictator to become their leader? I am sure many of us still think about such questions sometimes. After World War 1 had ended, Germany was extremely suppressed by the treaty of Versailles. The treaty stated that Germany had to demilitarise the Rhineland, they had to reduce its army to just 100,000 soldiers. They also could not have an airforce and had to pay the allies a very large amount of debt which it did not have because the war had itself cost them a huge sum of money. With a bad economy and the struggling conditions of the Germans, it meant that if a man came along promising to restore Germany to its former glory they would not hesitate to follow him. Hitler, while being born an Austrian, was crazy patriotic to Germany. Hence, the leadership of Hitler was accepted by the Germans.
When Hitler came into power he started scavenging for friendly allies. Japan was one of the first allies of Hitler, it had just taken over northern China. Japan before waging wars was very low on resources that it needed. So, it invaded Korea which it took over very easily, and also took advantage of weakened China to take over its northern part. However, when Russia asked Japan to leave China so that it could take power over China instead, Japan shocked everyone by declaring war against Russia and actually winning China from the Russian army. Seeing the power and courage of the Japanese forces, Hitler was ready to undo the treaty. Hitler first broke the agreement by militarising Rhineland again, building an air force, and stopping paying the allies any of the debt back. Allies did nothing to stop this or intervene since they wanted to maintain their peace and diplomatic relations with other countries.
In 1938 Hitler’s army marched into Austria and took power without any resistance. He now wanted to invade Sudetenland. The allies held a meeting with Hitler in Munich and told him that they were ready to give Hitler Sudetenland as long as he promises to not invade any more of Czechoslovakia. He broke that promise nearly instantly and took over Czechoslovakia in 1939. After this, Italy and Germany also made their allyship official by signing the Pact of Steel. Then Hitler turned his eyes to Poland and towards the hated Polish Corridor that had split Germany into two halves. He knew that if he invaded Poland, being battled by both sides would be hard so he allied with Russia and agreed to equally split Poland between them. Hitler would betray Germany but not so soon.
Norway was importing iron ore to Germany but France and Britain wanted to stop it. When Norway rejected the allies and kept exporting, the Allies then launched an attack on Norway to secure the supply of Iron ore but Hitler also was not so clueless. The allies fought hard but had to retreat since Germany had won the air superiority and was no match for it. After this failure, Chamberlin, Prime minister of the UK, resigned and was replaced with Winston Churchhill who had decided to take a different approach to deal with Hitler and his army.
Now Hitler was ready to invade France. He marched through Belgium and the forces met head-on. Hitler sent thousands of refugees toward the side of the Allies which heavily slowed them down and left France and left the area of Ardennes unprotected. This area was thought to be naturally impenetrable, an area full of forests and hills. Germans penetrated Ardennes with everything they had and cornered the best of the allied forces. The Germans squeezed them from all sides knocking out France’s best armies and a lot of British armies but in the end, thousands of Civilian boats from the UK had taken the perilous journey to France to bring their young men back home which saved innumerable lives of the British soldiers. Germany, who could not take over France in world war 1 and lost, had finally won. However, the United Kingdom was not ready to give up against Hitler so soon and so Germany played mind games to force the army into submission by giving France back its titles to make it seem like even France was on their side and the United Kingdom was all alone and cornered. Hitler then decided to attack the United Kingdom. Its air bombers had bombed many coastal defenses and many Royal Air force bases, crippling its ability to defend the United Kingdom. It looked like Britain was about to fall. But then Churchill ordered a very small insignificant bombing over Berlin which did not do much but infuriated Hitler. This made him make many bad decisions out of pure anger which finally led to the loss of the United Kingdom. Hitler however now invaded Russia and did win a lot of territories but when winter came, Russia being great at winter wars had extremely high experience and war preparations in the snow and low temperatures made Hitler’s army eventually lose. After which in the end they also lost the Second World War.
Bibliography:
OverSimplified. "WW2 - OverSimplified (Part 1)" YouTube. 16 Mar, 2018. Video. 13 Dec, 2022. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uk_6vfqwTA>
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