Germany

The Thirties were marked by confrontation and violence. The Western diplomats practicing Appeasement believed it would prevent another global war, but were woefully unaware of what they were dealing with. Most of the confrontation was between the ideologies of Nazism and Communism; they became mortal enemies in the thirties, which made their non-aggression pact and the dismemberment of Poland all the more shocking.

Europe was in chaos after the First World War. Tens of millions were dead. Large parts of France and Germany were completely destroyed, including France's major source of coal and much of their farmland. The Total War that consumed so many lives had also consumed the combatants' thirst for war.

In 1932, German President Paul von Hindenburg was asleep in his home. His son woke him with the news that he had defeated Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler and reelection to the Presidency. “It will still be true in an hour,” he said as he went back to sleep. Dismissive of the “Bohemian Corporal” as he called Hitler, Hindenburg hoped making Hitler Chancellor in January 1933 would appease and quiet him. A year later he was dead, and Hitler folded the powers of the Presidency into his own.

The battle raging in Berlin signaled the end of the Third Reich. Soviet Red Army Forces and the western Allies pressed the Wehrmacht so far into Germany that neither Western commands nor Eastern commands had room to maneuver.

Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were captured during the war. Their fate depended on whether the Red Army or the British or Americans took their armistice. Prisoners of the Western Allies had a much better chance of survival.

With the fall of Poland, thousands of POWs were taken by the German Army, and millions more before the war was over. The question of what to do with those POWs would lead to some of the worst atrocities of the war.

In their failed attempt to invade Greece, the Italians were driven out of Santi Quaranta, which Mussolini had renamed Proto Edda after his oldest daughter. Mussolini, embarrassed, had to ask Hitler to help his forces. In a fast moving campaign, the British were driven out of Greece and the Germans occupied Athens on April 27.

By the end of 1944 Germany was losing on all fronts. Her generals, faced with ever increasing armies armed with superior technology, fell back under the combined assaults in Italy, the Eastern Front, and France.