Previously, on 'a history thread'... Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the prince of Austria-Hungary, is shot and killed by Gavrilo Princip, a Yugoslavian nationalist! Austria-Hungary and the German Empire declare war on Serbia! Russia and France declare war on Austria-Hungary and the German Empire to defend Serbia! The German Empire forcefully storms through Belgium, committing atrocity after atrocity along the way, in an effort to reach Paris early! The United Kingdom is enraged that the Germans have done such a thing to Belgium, even after agreeing Belgium was a neutral country not to be interfered with! THE WORLD IS AT WAR! STALEMATE FOR FOUR YEARS. GERMANY BECOMES OVERSTRETCHED AND OVERWORKED. AMERICA JOINS IN REALLY LATE. AMERICA ANNOYS THE ALLIES A BIT. THE WAR IS OVER! Germany is harshly punished, the Ottoman Empire is dismantled between the British and French, America runs away back into isolation after establishing the League of Nations, which they didn't join. And now, the road to the second world war! And the second world war... eventually!
Part I: Weimar Germany - Part I The German Republic, officially known as the Deutsches Reich, was born in late November after the November revolution. Socialists revolted and forced the Kaiser into hiding in the Netherlands, establishing a German republic who had its first constitutional assembly in the town of Weimar, as communists had revolted in the capital of Berlin. They were led by the Social Democratic Party. Germany emerged from the revolution as the most democratic country in the world, while the United Kingdom still only allowed rich men and women over 30 to vote and the United States was beginning to lag behind in some areas. The new constitution guaranteed that every citizen had the right to free speech, freedom of expression, and equality under law; all men and women aged 20 and over were allowed to vote; the president (head of state) replaced the role of the Kaiser and was democratically elected; the Chancellor (head of government) was now democratically elected and was not picked from the Reichstag by the Kaiser; the Reichstag had proportional representation (people vote for a party, the party is then allocated their percentage of the vote as a percentage of seats in the Reichstag). Article 48 of the constitution said that in the event of emergency, the president could issue decrees without consulting the Reichstag, although it did not define what an 'emergency' was. The new Germany faced immense amounts of turmoil. The Spartacist Revolt took place in Berlin when the Communist Party wanted to structure Germany similarly to what would become the Soviet Union, but the Social Democratic Party wanted democracy. The right-wing paramilitary group, the Freikorps, who had been killing people in Eastern Germany with 'Bolshevik sympathies' (basically meaning they were Polish or Russian - they wanted to exterminate Slavs), were called in by the government to put down the revolt - they succeeded. Then came the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty gave all of Germany's colonial empire to the United Kingdom and France; their military was reduced to a level that would barely allow them to defend themselves in case of invasion; were blamed for starting the war; forced to pay reparations to the allies; had Alsace-Lorraine taken from them and given to France, also lost much of its eastern territory to the newly-formed state of Poland, and the city of Danzig became independent. The German government were not allowed to negotiate, and were told if they didn't sign the treaty the Great War would continue - the Germans signed it, coming home to a population now incredibly angry at them, as the German people didn't believe they had actually lost the war, and the surrender was a Jewish conspiracy - a myth propagated by the German right-wing parties. Meanwhile, France continued to express their anger at the Treaty of Versailles, claiming it wasn't at all harsh enough. Meanwhile, the allied food blockade was still taking its toll. Millions of Germans were starving, and only low level food imports that the people of Germany couldn't afford were permitted after the war, keeping the starvation in place - they would keep the blockade until 1920. Industrial output was also now extremely low. The German government was printing money to keep ahead of their debt. The country was staring into the barrel of economic crisis. In April 1919, communists and anarchists took control of the Bavarian government, a worker's council-led Bavarian Socialist State. Bavaria had previously operated as the 'People's State of Bavaria' and functioned within the Weimar Republic, but now Bavaria was independent. Less than a month later, a weak German Army and a load of the Freikorps defeated it and brought Bavaria back into the government. The Freikorps were led by a man named Wolfgang Kapp, an East Prussian nationalist who worked as a journalist. Conservative, nationalist, and monarchist sections of the German army instigated a coup in March 1920, placing Wolfgang Kapp as their leader. Other prominent figures of the coup were Erich Ludendorff, a German WWI general and future Nazi - in fact, there were quite a few future Nazis in the Freikorps, including Heinrich Himmler (future head of the SS), Ernst Rohm (future head of the SA), and Rudolf Höß (he would go on to oversee the Auschwitz concentration camp and order the deaths of over 1 million people). Adolf Hitler himself, wanting to join in with the coup, was also flown into Berlin by the army but landed in the wrong place by mistake and had to hide from protesters who were against the coup. A brigade, sporting swastikas on their helmets and vehicles, drove into Berlin and violently forced the German government to flee the city. Kapp was installed as Chancellor. The Prussian navy and military supported the coup - in Bavaria, the Social Democrat state government was toppled and replaced with a Freikorps puppet. The government, however, supported by the communists and socialists, ordered a general strike across Germany before the Freikorps could gather more support, and it was immensely successful - Berlin's gas, water, and electricity supply were stopped, over 12 million Germans joined the strike, and the country grinded to a halt. The Freikorps lost, and the legitimate German government was reinstalled in Berlin. You might think the people would now be happy that the Weimar government had withstood a harsh test and proved their legitimacy? Weellll... the strike ended up resulting in the Ruhr Uprising. Socialists and communists in the Ruhr were now calling for a dictatorship of the proletariat. 50,000 Germans, all members of the left-wing German political parties including the Social Democrats, joined the Red Ruhr Army. The German government sent in the army and the remainder of the Freikorps to fight them. The army and Freikorps were extremely brutal, and would execute anyone they deemed to be hostile, that definition basically being 'anyone carrying anything that could be used as a weapon'. Over 1,000 people were killed. The Red Ruhr army fled into the nearby French-occupied lands, which the German army chased them into - they only stopped when the British informed the government they were violating the Treaty of Versailles, and if they continued to move into occupied land, they would be punished by having more of their land taken off them. In 1922, Germany discovered how far inflation/printing more money would get them, as a result of wartime suspension of the gold standard. They were unable to make reparations payments as a result of their currency now valuing nothing. It was agreed that the reparations would be paid in material such as coal and steel. In January 1923, France and Belgium, to the protest of the United Kingdom, occupied the Ruhr to ensure that they would get their payments. This aggravated the workers, who went on a general strike, thus worsening inflation even more. By that November, $1 USD was worth 4.2 million German papiermarks. Gustav Stresemann was appointed chancellor of a grand coalition government in August. The president of the Reichsbank died in November 1923, being replaced by Hjalmar Schacht. Schacht introduced the Rentenmark in November, a new currency. The Dawes Plan backed this new currency with an American loan worth $200 million in 1924. This fixed hyperinflation at the cost of having to pay a large loan that would take decades to pay back, and also surrendered control of German banks and railways to American companies, but also got the French and Belgians out of the Ruhr and made the reparation payments easier for Germany. With its economic crisis solved and the political situation resolved, the Weimar Government would now enter its golden era.
Part II: Weimar Germany - Part II With a new and stable currency, newfound foreign confidence in the nation, the French and Belgians out of the Ruhr, and issues at home laid to rest, the German Empire was ready to get back out into the world stage by 1925. Back in 1922, the German government had established diplomatic relations with the Russian Soviet, secretly agreeing to military cooperation, and agreeing to basically annul the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In 1925, a supplementary agreement, the Treaty of Berlin, extended this to the Soviet Union in 1926. They also signed the Locarno Treaties in 1925, recognising Germany's borders with France and Belgium; they agreed that any territorial disputes would be taken to an international court. The German Empire was allowed to join the League of Nations in 1926, giving it a voice and vote in international affairs and giving it legitimacy on the world stage it had lost in 1918. International trade rose at an unprecedented level for Germany - it had regained its position as the second largest economy in the world in 1929, only being outpaced by the United States. Meanwhile, for the people, unemployment dropped significantly. The welfare state was overhauled, and homelessness fell by 60% by 1928. Wages increased, with German workers being the best paid in Europe. War veterans got a multitude of benefits given to them and their families. German women were labelled as 'Americanised' by the German upper class and conservatives, and started smoking, wearing non-traditional clothing and hairstyles, and makeup; theatre, film, art, architecture, and literature also underwent an explosion, becoming staples of German culture. Prominent German figures in the intellectual sphere called for the destruction of capitalism and expressed that through their scientific and artistic works. The German middle class, the Mittelstand, however, was left entirely unimpressed by the golden age. During hyperinflation, they had lost their wealth and life's savings. They were not able to access a significant portion of the welfare state. By 1928, the working class was also earning as much or sometimes more than them. This caused them to resent the Social Democratic Party, feeling that they were forcing socialism through little by little - however, they did not feel like any political party represented them, a feeling that was capitalised on by the National Socialists (Nazis). German farmers were similar to the Mittelstand - government policies and the Great War had devastated their land and caused a massive slump in their produce. Food imports were cheaper for the German state to buy and cheaper for the German people to buy, causing the agricultural sector to become more and more useless. There was also a global grain surplus starting in 1925, causing grain prices to become extremely low, and farmers felt that they weren't being paid enough. They began to initiate small riots across the country, and right-wing parties attempted to win support from them - like they had with the Mittelstand, the Nazis eventually tapped into this voter base and constantly claimed that farmers were the heart of the German nation, and the farmers were also extremely easy to turn against the Jews. Eventually, at the end of 1929, the Wall Street crash happened over in the United States. The US recalled their foreign loans - the German Empire, with their economy backed by an American loan, was forced to pay money they didn't have back. It was quite possibly the country hit the hardest by the Great Depression besides America itself. The golden age of Weimar Germany was over.
Jesus, and the treaty of Versailles was the USA holding the French back. If the French had their way, either Germany would have risen up in a humanitarian catastrophe, or Germany as we know it would not exist.
Probably uneducated, but I want to know, why did Hitler do his thing during WWII? Why didn't he do it as soon as he rose to power in Germany? (Remember, uneducated...)
Yep. France wanted to destroy all of Germany's factories and revert it back into a pre-industrial agricultural economy. The UK and US basically told them to shut up and met them... not even halfway. Depends what 'do his thing' means. If you're referring to going to war and taking land - he needed to build up his power. The German army had been reduced to just 100,000 men from its previous size of 4.5 million, and they couldn't really build any ships. The Rhineland had been demilitarised and remilitarisation too quick too soon would have startled the allies more than it did IRL and he didn't want that either. If you're referring to killing jews: he didn't actually want to kill them. Hitler was a mouthpiece for the Nazis - he spent his days living in the mountains, sleeping until noon and relaxing in his garden for hours while surrounded by friends and family. His original plan was to deport (would have killed thousands on the boats) German jews to Madagascar (would have killed most of them in the heat), Antarctica (would have killed most of them in the cold) or British-occupied Israel and as Germany expanded, he would keep on deporting the more he got at a sustainable rate and keep them as second class citizens. However, he turned Germany into a war machine - that is, a nation that could not function without war. He nabbed Poland and was suddenly left with more jews than he could deport. Heinrich Himmler, who was in charge of the Schutzstaffel, suggested concentration camps - the British used them in Africa and got off scot-free, the Jewish/political rival/Slavic people occupants provided free labour, and kept them out of sight. Hitler signed off on it. Himmler gradually morphed it into 'gas showers and firing squads' and Hitler kept signing off on his ever-increasingly extreme measures because he didn't really read/understand/care what he was approving, and also because Himmler could have ousted Hitler from power (it's very likely that Nazi Germany would have descended into civil war with Himmler's faction and Hitler's eventually, had they won WW2). There's also the idea that the top-ranking Nazis all wanted Hitler's approval and turned into mega-extremists in the process, with Himmler cooking up the death camps as his offering. At least, that's my interpretation from what knowledge I got from my history textbooks regarding Hitler's political backroom.
Part III: Mussolini's Italy As a benefit of joining the war on the allied side and betraying their alliance with the German Empire, Italy was promised big territorial gains by the United Kingdom. At the Treaty of Versailles, Italy, alongside Japan, was largely sidelined. Italy's promised territory went to newly formed independent states, and Serbia took the Balkan land it was promised and formed Yugoslavia. Italy gained, pretty much, nothing, and were infuriated. Benito Mussolini, in his youth, had been an avid socialist, much like his father. He worked as a teacher, despite disliking authority, and moved to Switzerland to promote his beliefs in 1902. He wrote for socialist newspapers, worked with trade unions, and advocated for violent revolution across Europe. He got deported two years later for doing so. Upon his return to Italy, he became the editor of a socialist newspaper and gained a large following among Italian socialists. He opposed colonialism, and was even arrested for opposing the Italian occupation of Libya in 1910. When Italy entered the Great War, Mussolini opposed the move; however, he quickly became infatuated with the idea that his country could expand its influence through the Great War, and that socialism could spread in the climate it could create. His socialist following rejected him and his views. He joined the Italian army, climbing the ranks to the position of corporal before he was discharged from the military for wounds he sustained in the fighting. The Great War ended. Mussolini started banging on about uniting the Mediterranean into one nation. Basically, his goal was to reform the Roman Empire. He united multiple Italian right-wing parties into one, with him as leader. He rejected socialism and decided to start his own philosophy: fascism. When, during the peace negotiations of the Great War, the land Italy was promised by the British was given to Serbia (they formed Yugoslavia with it), and Italy was sidelined alongside Japan, the Italian people felt utterly cheated. Mussolini gained a following amongst the Italian peoples, thanks his criticisms of the Italian government for allowing themselves to be pushed around at Versailles. He started a paramilitary wing of his Fascist Party, who were known as the 'Black Shirts' - they attacked his political opponents and intimidated people into voting for him. Eventually, as Italy descended into political chaos, he promised he would fix it all - after the March on Rome, a march of 30,000 Italian fascists led by Mussolini on Rome (who'd have known), and the threat of a fascist coup against him, King Victor Emmanuel appointed Mussolini Prime Minister of Italy in 1922 with a minority government. As Prime Minister, Mussolini immediately began work on passing the Acerbo Law through parliament. This forced the Fascist Party into having a majority of deputies within the parliament by eradicating proportional representation. If a party had over 25% of the vote, they would get two-thirds of the seats in parliament. It was used in the 1924 general election - in order to make sure he won, Mussolini formed a parliamentary alliance with nationalist liberals and conservatives called the National List, who also intimidated voters at polling stations and terrorised their political opponents. They received 4.6 million votes, against the second largest party's meagre 600,000. After the election, the Socialist Party leader, Giacomo Matteoti, stood in front of the Italian parliament and delivered a speech; he alleged that Benito Mussolini and his party won the election through fraud and violent intimidation tactics. He was kidnapped days later by Fascist Party members, bundled into the back of a car, and stabbed multiple times, before being left to die. A general strike was threatened in retaliation, and anti-fascist members of the parliament refused to work with fascists and retired, hoping to weaken Mussolini and collapse his government - it didn't work. Members of his own party quit and those who opposed him in leadership positions of his party told him they would depose him - he delivered a speech, declaring himself the leader of fascism and the cause of stability in Italy, and that anyone opposing him was basically an enemy of Italy. Italy was now a dictatorship.
Part IV: Interwar Britain Following the end of the Great War, the incumbent Liberal government wanted to create a 'home fit for heroes'. They expanded the voting franchise to include all men aged twenty-one and upwards, and women were made able to vote if they were aged over thirty and owned land - the voting population in the United Kingdom increased from a meagre 5 million to 21.4 million. The unemployed were granted weekly pay instalments that would just about tide them over until they got a job, and housing was rapidly expanded, if at a less-than-optimal standard. In 1922, Prime Minister David Lloyd George's government completely collapsed. After having heavily relied on the Conservative Party for support since 1918, the Liberal Party finally succumbed to their infighting and corruption scandals. Bonar Law, the Conservative Party leader, became Prime Minister. He resigned a year later due to his ill health, being replaced by his Conservative peer Stanley Baldwin. Baldwin mixed Conservative Party and Liberal Party policy, dominating the elections until 1929. Ramsey MacDonald, leader of the Labour Party, formed a minority government and became the first Labour Party and socialist Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - the Great Depression hit, public confidence was lost, and he was hit with a falsified document accusing him of being a communist sympathiser in contact with Soviet Union officials. The economy was largely stagnant throughout the 1920s. General strikes were popular and trade unions grew at an unprecedented rate, emboldened by the growth of the Labour Party. Due to this lack of boom or bust within the United Kingdom, the Great Depression was not as severe as it was in places like Germany and the United States, who were both experiencing a 'roaring 20s'. However, it was demanded that the government produce a balanced budget, but the Labour Party refused to attack the welfare state - the King forced MacDonald into forming a National Government with the Liberal and Conservative parties, but Labour refused and attacked their leader for signing onto it, branding him a traitor. The 1931 election left the Labour Party practically destroyed, and MacDonald resigned to Stanley Baldwin. The UK's world trade was cut in half, industrial output fell by a third, and unemployment spiked - Northern England, Wales, and Scotland were hit especially hard, with unemployment reaching 30% in some places. The government tried to trade only with the British Empire and the British Commonwealth, raising tariffs on American and French imports. Many on the left, including the Labour Party, decided that capitalism was dead. The British economy never really properly recovered as an industrial one, besides a brief blip during the world war.
Part V: Hitler's Germany - Part I German unemployment climbed to 15% from 8% over the winter of 1929 - 1930. Many of those still working were forced to go part-time, suffered drastic drops in their wages, and continued employment was not guaranteed. Indeed, it continued to climb, reaching 30% of the German workforce by 1932. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist Worker's Party, had predicted economic collapse in 1928 and was proven correct - he now campaigned on a promise that he could fix the economy, and people listened. In the July 1932 election, the NSDAP gained 37.3% of the popular vote, winning 232 seats in the Reichstag and becoming the largest German party, not even closely followed by the second largest party's, the SPD's, meagre 21% of the vote. Hitler also ran for President, losing in second place to the conservative monarchist Paul von Hindenburg with six million votes between them. By the November 1932 election, the NSDAP's share of the vote had begun to decline - the economy also started to improve. The Communist Party also began to gain votes and became increasingly violent, with Germany once again being on the brink of civil war. Franz von Papen, the Chancellor of Germany, was sacked from his position by Hindenburg and replaced by Kurt von Shleicher. Papen began to negotiate with the NSDAP, wanting to get back into power. Schleicher also asked Hindenburg to become a dictator - Hindenburg declined. Shleicher was then forced to resign in January 1933 thanks to his ill health, and recommended that Hitler become his successor. Franz von Papen and the NSDAP presented an ultimatum to President Hindenburg: Hitler would be Chancellor, with the Nazis and Hitler kept in control by Papen. Hindenburg accepted, and Hitler was made the Chancellor of Germany. A month later, the Reichstag building was set on fire, with the Dutchman Marinus van der Lubbe, a communist, found near the building. The Nazis used it as evidence that the communists were planning to overthrow the German government. Under the influence of Hitler, Hindenburg passed the Reichstag fire decree: this eroded many of the civil rights of German citizens, including the restriction of the free press and the ability to imprison anyone opposed to the Nazis - being a communist was labelled as treason and rightful grounds for imprisonment. An election was also called in March, in which the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi Party's paramilitary wing, attacked Communist Party members in the streets, raided their offices and homes, and attacked trade unions. SPD Party members were then also attacked, with their speakers left brutally beaten and their newspapers refused to circulate lest their delivery workers be attacked. The Catholic Centre Party was also mistreated, due to their criticism of Hitler's government, and their meetings were harassed and violently attacked. Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the Communist Party, was imprisoned alongside 4,000 other communists - he was held in solitary confinement in a concentration camp for a decade before being shot to death on the personal orders of Hitler. On election day, members of the Schutzstaffel (SS), Sturmabteilung (SA), and Stahlhelm (the paramilitary of the German conservatives) 'supervised' voters. Unsurprisingly, Hitler's share of the vote rose to 43%, while the SPD and Communist Party's popularity only declined - however, Hitler had expected to do well, and regarded the election result as an extreme disappointment. The next step was to pass the Enabling Act through the Reichstag. The Communist Party was now completely banned and its representation was imprisoned, and multiple Reichstag members of the SPD were barred from entering under the terms of the Reichstag Fire Decree. Hitler then negotiated the Reichskonkordat with the Holy See/the Pope, promising to uphold the rights of the Roman Catholic Church within Germany - since Hitler had the Pope's approval and is regarding as Nazi Germany's first ally, the Catholic Centre Party agreed to vote for the Enabling Act. With only the SPD opposing him, with the other parties either supporting or being scared for their lives of the SA and SS soldiers all around the room, Adolf Hitler was allowed to do as he pleased without the approval of the Reichstag. Otto Wels, the leader of the SPD, had his citizenship removed, and he fled to the Saar Basin, which was under League of Nations control - he continued to run the SPD while in exile, building up its membership in Prague and Paris before dying six years later. The Nazis celebrated the passing of the Enabling Act with a victory parade, waving the Nazi flag and marching their paramilitary members down the streets of Berlin. In June 1934, Hermann Gohring and Heinrich Himmler, two of Hitler's closest advisors and prominent members of the NSDAP urged Hitler to destroy his opponents. This was called the Night Of The Long Knives; Ernst Rohm, a prominent Strasserist - the actual socialist Nazis - and the leader of the Sturmabteilung - who the German army feared as their replacement, was painted as a coup plotter and was executed. Anti-nazi conservatives and others were also killed, including former chancellor Kurt von Shleicher. Up to 1,000 political opponents and Hitler's personal enemies (for example, the leader of Bavaria who ordered an end to Hitler's revolt in Munich in 1923) were murdered and many were imprisoned. The German courts shrugged the killings off. Two months later, Hindenburg died and Hitler merged the offices of Chancellor and President into one - the Fuhrer.
They all did back then, at least the more extreme ones, all across the west. Especially in Germany, which was formed by Prussia, the 'army with a country', and especially after they had their military dwarfed with all those angry soldiers left with nothing to do and even being employed by the government. Hell, seventy years later, in the UK the party currently keeping the Conservative Party in power has what is essentially an unofficial paramilitary wing that they use to beat up and previously bombed Irish people in Northern Ireland with. A year ago, when they formed the government, just a week before this same paramilitary - officially a terrorist organisation but because they're pro-British it's okay I guess - shot a man to death outside a supermarket in front of his three year old son.
Part VI: Hitler's Germany - Part II President Paul von Hindenburg's last will surfaced after Hitler merged the offices of Head of Government and Head of State into one. He wished for a return to the traditional monarchy upon his death, ceding the office of Head of State to Wilhelm Hohenzollern, the former Kaiser and King of Prussia, who currently lived in exile in the Netherlands. However, much of the German army who served in the Great War, including Adolf Hitler himself, despised Wilhelm II and saw him as complicit in the Treaty of Versailles as much as they blamed the Weimar government. However, Wilhelm was hopeful in a restoration of the monarchy and in the beginning was enthusiastic about the Nazi government. Hitler ordered a nationwide referendum on whether the Fuhrer office should exist. The vote was overwhelmingly a 'yes', without about 5% of voters saying no, although it was rigged by the Nazis. This offended Wilhelm, but he was still hopeful in Hitler - as the Nazis became extremely harsh towards German Jews and solidified their position as fascists, he quickly decided he despised Hitler, Nazis, and whoever was complicit in allowing Germany to descend to such standards, and felt ashamed to be a German. Later on, in in 1938, he slated Hitler as a lonely man, robbed of family and of God, acting like a gangster who could only build an army and not a nation. The German people, however, couldn't have cared less. To 1935, however! The Nazis began to crack down on groups they didn't like. Jehovah's Witness organisations were completely banned in May 1935, followed up immediately with the repeal of a law that banned the persecution of homosexual men. During this time, the first section of the Autobahn - a highway stretching across all of Germany, a scheme to create construction jobs, civilian transport, and military transport - was opened. Women were removed from the employment register, and girls were taught in school that their jobs were to be good mothers and housewives, and were also taught how to pick out Aryan men to fall in love with. While many senior Nazi figures didn't approve of couples having children outside of marriage, when in government they didn't care and even encouraged it so they could create a German baby boom. Boys were taught how to be soldiers, with an intense focus on physical education throughout school. Some activities even included jumping off roofs and being caught on a trampoline as a team-building exercise, and they were also taught to place deep trust in their fellow men. They were put in mandatory Hitler Youth clubs, which functioned as regular Boy Scouts clubs with a bit more focus on marching and how to survive in the wild, and girls were given similar tasks but far more orientated towards cooking and cleaning. Teachers were made to swear an oath of allegiance to the government, and if they did not teach the augmented Nazi version of history or rejected allegiance, they were not allowed to be teachers. Maths questions were reworded with a certain anti-Semitic tinge and a hatred towards the disabled, and English books told fun stories suitable for children... always with Jews as the bad guys. Meanwhile, with jobs, trade unions were completely abolished and giant Nazi-run ones were set up - obviously, the Nazis didn't actually care about workers or their rights. Hitler was bought with rich German industrialist money, and they loathed worker's rights as a hit to their profit margins - Hitler hated trade unions equally as much, even in his youth. The Strength Through Joy program aimed to eradicate leisure time and force Germans to work. Hjalmar Schacht, a director of the German National Bank and the man who organised a letter from prominent German business figures written to Hindenburg, persuading him to make Hitler Chancellor, was one of the industrialists behind this. Schacht also toured the United States throughout 1933, promising that Hitler would turn Germany into a democracy again one day, and even met with Franklin D. Roosevelt - Roosevelt hated him. Schacht returned home with a place in the Nazi government as the Minister of Economics. As Minister of Economics, Schacht drew heavily from Keynesian economics and Roosevelt's New Deal. The Autobahn was one of his schemes, and he made sure spending in public infrastructure was drastically increased. He masterminded the New Plan in 1935, negotiating a series of trade agreements designed to control everything that flowed into German borders - this included the signing of one such agreement with the Soviet Union. Although an anti-Semite, he opposed violent action against them and argued that they were German citizens who had also fought and died for Germany, and created a scheme that allowed them to pay 15,000 Reichsmarks for transport to the British Mandate of Palestine, where the British were recreating Israel at the drastic expense of the local Arabian population. 150,000+ German Jews, out of a population of 500,000, ponied up and took the offer. The Nuremburg Race Laws were passed in September 1935, completely segregating the Jewish population from the rest of German society - they were legally unable to marry or have relationships at all with Germans, among other things, and were stripped of German citizenship. If you had Jewish grandparents, you were also classed as a Jew under this law. The Wehrmacht, a unified military unit consisting of the Heer (land army), Kriegsmarine (Navy), and Luftwaffe (Air Force), was also founded, and had money pumped into it like there was no tomorrow. It was clear that this was not a defensive military, as the Treaty of Versailles and Locarno Treaties permitted, but one to be used for offensive actions. Conscription was also implemented. Towards the end of 1935, the Abyssinian Crisis erupted. Mussolini's Italy wished to annex Ethiopia, and went to war to do so. This drew an immense amount of protest from the League of Nations, who sanctioned Italy. Italy basically laughed and withdrew from the League of Nations. The British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, attempted to negotiate a halfway deal - Italy gets a good chunk of the region, but Ethiopia gets to still exist with a strip to the sea. The leader of the British Labour Party, Clement Attlee, slammed the deal, saying that Italy must be dealt with, militarily if need be, and receive no concessions, before they ally with Germany. The deal collapsed. Mussolini asked Adolf Hitler for help. Despite fearing the re-militarisation of the Rhineland in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, due to potential British and French reaction that he knew he couldn't win, Hitler obliged. The French, now scared of the fact that German troops were directly on their border for the first time since 1918, repealed their support and allowed Italy to take Ethiopia, fearing invasion from Italy and Germany at once, and did not wish to anger them. The United Kingdom was forced to follow in France's lead. However, when the UK and France called the League to a conference over the remilitarisation, no action was taken - the UK, in fact, said it supported Hitler's move, as they were just righting a wrong dealt to them at Versailles. As racial tensions mounted between ethnic Germans and Jews, the Olympic Games were hosted in Berlin. Nazi authorities covered up any tensions to outsiders, and German excellence was put on full display. Hermann Göring designed the Four Year Plan also in 1936. He aimed to turn Germany into an autarky, able to support itself industrially and agriculturally, prepared for war by 1940. Hjalmar Schacht opposed the drastic increase in military spending, arguing that Germany could not possibly support itself with such fiscal mismanagement. Hitler and Göring refused to listen to him and he resigned in 1937. The Spanish Civil War also broke out in 1936. The United Kingdom and France couldn't bring themselves to support either side, faced between a constitutional government of communists and a fascist rebellion; the Soviet Union and Germany, however, knew exactly which sides to support and used it to test out their new technology and war tactics. Germany's was a resounding success, with Nationalist Spain winning the war in 1939 and existing until the 1970s. With full awareness that the United Kingdom and France would do absolutely nothing, and with the popular support in Germany and Austria to do it, Hitler rolled the Wehrmacht into Fascist Austria in March 1938. He was met with crowds of Austrians celebrating the annexation. Greater Germany, something Prussia had planned to create throughout the 1860s, had finally been achieved. The racial tensions reached their boiling point. An uncountable number of German Jews attempted to flee their home country, spilling into France and Poland and everywhere around Germany. They needed permission to settle in these countries, however, and the Evian Conference was set up between 32 countries, including the UK, US, and France. None of them agreed to do anything at all, allowing the refugee crisis to fester. Meanwhile, in Germany, Jews with non-Jewish names were forced to adopt 'Israel' for boys, and 'Sara' for girls, into their names. Their passports were then invalidated, being stamped with 'J's to make them valid again, but with significant restrictions. The new British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, pursued a policy of appeasement - the British Conservative Party had split between supporters of Winston Churchill and Chamberlain, and the British Labour Party were more opposed to the policy than they had ever been. Chamberlain met with Hitler in Munich in September 1938. Here, they agreed that Germany was allowed to take the Sudetenland, a place in Czechoslovakia with a sizeable German population, and France would stay well away, destroying their alliance with Czechoslovakia. Italy demanded that France share their colonies with Italy - France told them no and started putting military displays in Italian waters, threatening them and abandoning the idea of keeping Italy friendly to them. Hitler threatened German retaliation if France continued. Chamberlain then went home and declared he had secured 'peace in our time' - Winston Churchill wrote that 'Britain has chosen between war and shame - she has chosen shame, and she will get war', Clement Attlee remarked in parliament that it was the 'greatest humiliation this nation has suffered since the days of King Charles II'. In Paris, France, Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew, entered the German Embassy and killed a German diplomat. Upon hearing of this news on November 9th, 1938, a nationwide pogrom erupted in Germany. It is now known as Kristallnacht. Schützstaffel officers began to ransack Jewish businesses, homes, synagogues, and attacked them in the streets. Civilians joined in, and the German police forces watched. 91 Jews were killed. Many were left so broken by having their belongings destroyed, they killed themselves. Others suffered injuries so bad, they caused them to die. 30,000 of them were put in concentration camps. Two days later, a law was passed that declared Jews were not allowed to own businesses and any of those operating were closed down. On December 2nd, 1938, the first Kindertransport arrived in Germany. Desperate Jewish parents from Germany, Austria, Danzig, Czechoslovakia, and Poland loaded their children on boats. These children were placed with British foster families. The program would go on until 1940, with its last transport being from the Netherlands as it fell to German invasion. 10,000 Jewish children had been saved from its activation to its end. I think it's also nice to note that, Clement Attlee, who was elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1945, rescued a Jewish mother and her son from Germany and allowed them to live with him, his wife, and kids, until they got stable employment and housing. In January 1939, Hitler delivered a speech to the Reichstag. He said that an outbreak of war would mean the end of European Jews. And with that, we march to war.
This is amazing, you must either love typing, love WWII or both! Just joking around, in all seriousness though this is great.
Part VII: She Has Chosen Shame, And She Will Get War In August 1939, Adolf Hitler remarked that the United Kingdom and France were 'led by men with no personalities, [they are] no masters, no men of action'. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, agreed to enter a neutrality pact with Germany that same month, agreeing to spheres of influence for both powers and a carving up of Poland. Convinced that the British and French would do nothing, Germany turned its land acquisition sights onto the Free City of Danzig and the Polish Corridor, both formerly Prussian territory. However, the two had signed a formal military alliance with Poland in March 1939 in order to protect it from German invasion - Prime Minister Chamberlain still hoped that he could negotiate a deal regarding Danzig. Talks between Germany and Poland broke down, resulting in Hitler gearing up to invade - the Polish and British signed a defence pact on August 25th, however, delaying Hitler's plans. Both the UK and Poland made it clear they wished to resume diplomatic talks. By August 26th, Hitler was telling the UK they could use the Wehrmacht to safeguard the British Empire in the future if they could just invade Poland first. On August 29th, the UK and Germany agreed to hold diplomatic talks with their ambassadors and a Polish one. All three ambassadors agreed to the terms by August 31st - the Polish ambassador, however, did not have the necessary authority to sign the agreement and instead had to wait for the approval of the Polish government. He was dismissed and the German government decided that Poland had, in effect, rejected their offer and ceased negotiations. On the 1st September, Clare Hollingworth, a British journalist working for The Daily Telegraph sent to Poland to report on the worsening tensions between Germany and Poland, phoned the British embassy in Warsaw. They laughed at what she had to say. She was taken more seriously when she held the phone out of the window, recording the sounds of tanks, gunfire, and the barking of commands. The Germans had invaded Poland. They were also using their tactic of blitzkrieg for the first time. The British moved swiftly to put evacuation and blackout plans in place, preparing their civilians for the high possibility of being bombed. On the 2nd September, Prime Minister Chamberlain sent an ultimatum to Germany: withdraw your troops from Poland, or else war will be declared by both the United Kingdom and France. As the two nations ignored their defence pact with Poland, the Polish air force fell. Hitler ignored the threat, believing it to be bluff. On the 3rd September, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. The British Expeditionary Force was put on a boat and sent to France. The passenger liner SS Athenia departed from Liverpool, England heading for Montreal, Canada - a German submarine shot at her and sunk her, killing 117 people, including Americans. The RAF raided German warships stationed at Heligoland, an island off the coast of Germany (the UK even once owned it), the next day. On the 7th September, the French launched the Saar Offensive. They were supposed to be dragging Wehrmacht forces away from Poland, but all of their aircraft and most of their soldiers were over there and they would stay there until their objective was complete. France completely accidentally rolled through the Rhine. They were forced to stop on the 10th September when the mines all over the Warndt Forest were deemed too numerous and too dangerous to pass through. It has been admitted by the German's own estimates that Germany would have fell to French invasion had they continued with this offensive and with their true military capabilities. The British colonies, now mostly dominions with large degrees of independence, were starting to declare war on Germany. On the 17th September, the Soviet Union declared war on Poland, rolling through Eastern Poland to meet the Wehrmacht at Warsaw, which was now under siege. Poland's army retreated to Romania. Just ten days later, with 200,000 of their civilians now dead and a two front war they knew they couldn't win now happening, Poland surrendered to Germany and the Soviet Union. The French also retreated from the Rhine, ending the Saar Offensive. On the 6th October, Hitler contacted Prime Minister Chamberlain, hoping that he would agree to peace. Chamberlain said no. A week later, a British ship was torpedoed into flames off the coast of Scotland. The year ended with the Soviet Union storming 1,000,000 troops across the border of Finland and bombing Helsinki with bomber planes. According to the League of Nations, a formal declaration of war was a legal requirement. The Soviet Union was expelled from the League - the only Great Powers still left in it were the United Kingdom and France, practically killing it. Meanwhile, the Battle of the River Plate, the first naval battle of the war, was fought between the United Kingdom and the British Dominion of New Zealand against Germany in South America - the British won, but the German heavy cruiser was merely scuttled while the British had theirs damaged enough it was forced to retire. 1939 was eventful while not being very eventful.
Part VIII: A Harsh Tide Changes were afoot in the United Kingdom. Chamberlain sacked his War Minister, replacing him with the advice of multiple prominent military commanders. Food shortages were now making their presence known just a few months after the start of the war, and rationing was implemented - it would remain in place for fifteen years. They also began arming their merchant ships with weapons, causing Germany to class British merchant ships as warships - they would be attacked on sight. The evacuee program, which moved children away from major cities such as London, Liverpool, and Manchester, marked 400,000 people for evacuation to the countryside - including those in the Channel Islands and refugees from continental Europe. Meanwhile, in France, the government was overthrown. France has a really weird habit of doing this. Édouard Daladier, the French Prime Minister and the leader of the Radical Socialist Party (they were actually liberals, they used the word 'socialist' in their name the same way the Nazis did: to look, like, totally radical, dude), was replaced by Paul Reynaud, a member of the Democratic Republican Alliance... an offshoot of the RSP. They did this because Daladier refused to support Finland in their war against the Soviet Union, and now... Finland had just won the war against all odds in just a few short months. The Royal Navy, fearing that an attack on the Scandinavian countries was imminent, began laying mines in Norwegian-owned waters. They feared this because they were about to invade Norway for the same reasons: naval ports and iron - in fact, the allies wanted to invade Sweden too because they had even more iron and were a big source of it for Germany. Their fear was proven right just a day later - Germany declared war on Denmark and Norway. Denmark was of little interest to Germany by itself, but the air bases it had were essential to invade Norway and the position it held allowed for easier repelling of Allied invasion. Denmark was invaded and put under German control in a meagre six hours. Although armed with a Franco-British Expeditionary Force, Norway capitulated on May 8th, 1940. Chamberlain, already viewed as incompetent, found it increasingly difficult to hold onto power. In Parliament, he was slammed by his own MPs, including Winston Churchill. Some approached him cordially, asking for a restructuring of his government rather than a resignation. He decided that, unless the Labour Party joined his government and helped him run the country, he would resign: Clement Attlee said he would consider it. The last military success under Chamberlain's command was the Invasion of Iceland: British troops arrived at Iceland that morning, placing it under military occupation - one soldier accidentally killed himself on the way there. An Icelandic man threw a fish at a soldier in protest. Besides, that, there was no resistance. If Germany had gotten there first, they could invade the UK from the north, south, and east. The German invasions on May 10th, the Invasion of the Low Countries (the neutral Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg), were much more ambitious. With no other choice, Chamberlain resigned, recommending Winston Churchill for Prime Minister to the King. Churchill formed a new government, with Clement Attlee in the shiny newly created office of Deputy Prime Minister - Churchill would take care of the war and be a charismatic war leader for the nation, while Attlee and other Labour MPs would work more in the background and take care of domestic issues. The Low Countries invasions could not be reversed - they were doomed. However, Churchill immediately authorised the Royal Air Force to bomb the crap out of Berlin. Hitler one-upped him a day later by winning the Battle of Sedan - a vital French bridge crossing was overrun by German forces, giving Germany access to ports that led into the English Channel. A few days later, Erwin Rommel led the first major tank battle at Phillipeville, Belgium, ending in a German victory. They marched into Abbeville, France, also overrunning that. The British and French attempted to counter-attack, ending in failure. The British and French were now stuck at Dunkirk. Hitler ordered his forces to halt in order to allow the infantry to catch up - they'd storm the British and French Army who were stuck on the beach and kill them all/take them as prisoners. The British organised Operation Dynamo. An evacuation of the French portion of soldiers still there and the British Expeditionary Force began on May 26th. A fleet of 800 boats, 700 of them belonging to British civilians who took their boats there themselves, saved over 338,000 soldiers by June 4th, when the evacuation ended. France was now abandoned, left to fight off Germany by itself without British support. A day later, Germany launched a major offensive at the Somme. Rommel's tank division penetrated deep into France, moving 37 miles in just two days. The French defence at the Somme collapsed completely on day three. On June 10th, Italy declared war on France and the United Kingdom - they planned to invade and claim British and French African colonies for themselves. On June 11th, Paris was deemed 'imminent to be invaded'. The British and French met to discuss their options, with Churchill getting particularly excited at the prospect of uniting the United Kingdom and France into one country - this proposal collapsed, with Petain, the French government's resident Nazi-sympathising surrender monkey scumbag, calling it 'fusion with a corpse' and a plan for the UK to 'steal French colonies'. On June 12th, the French Army completely abandoned Paris and on the morning of June 13th, the Wehrmacht rolled into it completely unopposed. Reynaud was ousted from government by Petain, who then asked Germany to agree to terms of surrender. Germany annexed North France and left Petain in control of Vichy France, which he planned to turn into an authoritarian military state allied with Germany and Italy. He signed the agreement with Hitler in the same train carriage Germany signed their WW1 armistice in. With the United Kingdom showing no signs of budging towards surrender, Hitler ordered his generals to draw up plans for invasion during July. The only places he had invaded that belonged to the UK so far were the Channel Islands off the coast of France. He commenced the Battle of Britain on August 1st, bombing important British cities like London, and the major port city of Liverpool. The goal was to destroy all of the UK's aircraft industry. The RAF was outnumbered four to one and were ordered to defend their homeland at all costs. By August 24th, the Germans accidentally attacked Central London, dropping bombs on a church. Enraged by this, the RAF launched a retaliatory attack on Berlin. The first lend-lease agreement between the United States and United Kingdom was signed on September 3rd, with 50 American destroyer ships being given in exchange for access to the UK's air and naval bases. Frustrated with a lack of progress, the Germans started bombing civilian targets in London in September to damage the British population's morale and force their government to surrender. However, the British had (and still have) a cultural tradition of 'stiff upper lip', which means not reacting in the face of hardship and just getting on with it - as such, this intimidation tactic didn't really work, even when the threat of death by bomb droppings was literally hanging over their heads. This cultural quirk is designed to make the British amazing soldiers, so when they're put in a situation like this it worked as intended. The Royal Air Force, who was actually on its last legs and wouldn't have been able to defend the UK for much longer, was now given breathing room to relax a bit and repair their airfields and aircraft. This was part of a long list of examples of how Nazi Germany was run by absolute idiots. The Battle of Britain ended on September 28th, with Operation Sealion cancelled by Adolf Hitler and the Luftwaffe leaving the skies of Britain. However, they still launched frequent air raids, even one time completely destroying the entire British town of Coventry in November. On November 11th, the Royal Air Force attacked the Italian Navy, using only obsolete biplanes armed with bombs to destroy three Italian battleships. On November 28th, Mussolini ordered the Italian Invasion of Greece, seeking to prove his worth to the Axis, which also consisted of Germany and Japan. The British sent an Expeditionary Force to Greece. Italy, being Italy, kept losing battles to Greece. Meanwhile, after having invaded British Egypt in September, Italy found itself under attack there by the British using Germany's blitzkrieg tactic, and were on the retreat after a few days. The Italian Front was a pleasant Allied - well, British - playground after a year of constant defeats.
Part IX: Tidal Shifts By the 6th February 1941, Italy had been almost completely pushed out of Africa after the British won the Battle of Benghazi. With control of Malta and Libya, it would have been easy for them to attack Italy from the south, and thus Germany too. The German Afrika Korps was formed, with Erwin Rommel at the helm. He arrived in Tripoli with a tank division on the 12th February. Twelve days later, he clashed with British forces for the first time in the Western Desert, recapturing Benghazi within just two months. Meanwhile, Bulgaria joined the Axis Powers, giving Germany a direct route to Greece and (neutral) Yugoslavia. Hitler declared war on Yugoslavia on April 6th, after a Yugoslav coup saw a vocal pro-ally Serbian nationalist gain power. Germany started the invasion with a brutal air raid on Belgrade, followed by an invasion from the north and south through Bulgaria and Hungary. Italy joined in a few days later, cutting through Slovenia. Yugoslavia was completely spent by April 18th and surrendered. The Axis cut it up amongst themselves, allowing Croatia and Serbia to exist as fascist puppet states. The Serbs protested against their occupation, causing the Germans to punish them with genocide - 600,000 Serbs were killed in the Holocaust by 1945, making them the fourth largest group affected. The Yugoslavian liberation movement started up immediately, led by a Croatian communist called Josip Tito. On May 10th, Germany stopped bombing the United Kingdom. Throughout the Blitz, one million homes in just London were completely destroyed and over 40,000 civilians were killed. Germany was focused on Russia. In what is widely regarded as the most stupid move in a war to have ever, ever, ever been made, Germany declared war on the Soviet Union. They wanted to fulfil their goal of annexing the Baltic States and Western Russia to populate it with Germans, use the Russians and Ukrainians as a slave labour-force since they were running out of Jews to use for that (they didn't seem to understand that when you kill and sterilise your slaves, you're going to run out of them), and get access to all the sweet, sweet oil in the Caucasus region. A German invasion force of three million men, the largest invasion force ever assembled, gathered on the European border of the Soviet Union - they were joined by 600,000 land vehicles and 700,000 horses. At first, they saw quick successes, inflicting heavy casualties and gaining control over Ukraine, the Soviet Union's economic powerhouse. They took over five million Soviet soldiers as prisoners of war and killed three million of them. Over one million Jews living in the Soviet Union were gassed to death. The 'Hunger Plan' aimed to starve the Slavic populations living in the land that Germany wanted - they expected 30 million people to die, but the actual number is unknown. Germany reached Moscow in October 1941, tired and beginning to freeze, and lost that fight. On top of that, the United Kingdom had begun to send convoys to Russia in September, promising to keep deliveries regular and offer all the support it could to the Soviet Union. Germany got as far as the Third Rome. Their plan was to wait for their troops to regain strength, wait for winter to end, and attack Moscow again. By Germany's estimates, the Soviet Union was done as a military force and could not fight back. They were wrong. Joseph Stalin mustered a force of over one million men, almost 2,000 tanks, and 1,500 aircraft, and launched them at the invading German forces. By December, Germany was on the retreat. The commander in charge of the front wanted to retreat more, away from the cold and snow, but Hitler was adamant that they were to hold their current position until the ice thawed. Temperatures reached -41 degrees and the Wehrmacht based in Russia were completely paralysed. The Red Air Force, built for the cold and taking off from nearby air bases, dominated the skies. On December 7th, the Japanese Empire sailed to Hawaii. Here they hoped to paralyse the American navy and keep them neutral. They attacked the United States, unprovoked, by bombing Pearl Harbour. 18 warships and 188 aircraft were destroyed, and 2,400 American soldiers and 68 American civilians were killed. Luckily, the American aircraft carriers weren't present and were able to come back, keeping the American navy very much alive in the Pacific. On December 8th, the United Kingdom and United States issued a joint-declaration of war on Japan. Germany declared war on the United States on December 11th. I think this is the year the Axis decided it wanted to die.
