A Look at the Second World War in Europe

In 1036 there was an election in Spain. The elected government wanted to divide properties so that the small farmers would get more land, and that way that could limit the power of the Catholic Church. However the wealthy people and the Catholic Church opposed, and put themselves up against the government.

In the summer of the same year a group of officers lead by General Francisco Franco rebelled, and tried to take down the elected government. They were supported by Germany and Italy, and the Spanish civil war had started. Defenseless Spanish cities were bombed and the war proved to be somewhat of a training camp where Germany and Italy could try out new weapons and strategies. The Soviet Union sent weapons to oppose the officers and from all over Europe help came to support the government.

Europe was now divided, and in March of 1938 German soldiers marched into Austria to try to gain Lebensraum, or more space. The conditions in Austria at the time were horrible, and so a lot of people actually supported Hitler's invasion hoping it would lead to better times. When Germany marched into Vienna they were saluted by masses of people, and not long after Austria disappeared from the map.

Next one up was Czechoslovakia. They were largely inhabited by Checks, Slovaks, and Sudeten Germans. Many of the Sudeten Germans admired Adolf Hitler, and he demanded that the areas where there were most of them should be handed over to Germany. Czechoslovakia refused, believing they had great backup from Britain and France.

Britain and France however, did not want to be involved in a big conflict so in a conference in Munich they agreed that Czechoslovakia had to give up the western part of the country, completely ignoring the Nations wishes. Six months after the agreement in Munich Hitler had invaded the rest of the country as well. From this moment on Britain and France saw for the first time what kind of threat they were facing.

In 1939, after 3 years of civil war general Franco and his army won in Spain, and the government elected three years earlier was dissolved and Spain was ruled by a fascist regime.

Germany, getting very confident after their latest success, demanded land from Poland. When Poland refused, Germany and France stood up and told Germany that in case of an attack against Poland, there would be repercussions, and there would be attacks aimed at Germany.

Germany managed to achieve a no-attack agreement with the Soviet Union at the end of August the same year, and knowing they would not face a threat to him, Hitler started his attack on Poland September 1^st. Two days later Great Britain and France went against Germany, but in a few weeks time Hitler had invaded Poland. A clause on the no-attack agreement made Germany surrender parts of Poland to the Soviet Union, who in turn captured 10,000 polish officers and ended up executing 8000 of them.

The same fall soviet troops marched into the Baltic countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and ended their independence. Finland had areas in the east that the Soviet Union wanted, and when Finland refused this the Soviet army attacked Finland. However, while they originally believed that the attack would go smooth, it turned out to be harder than they thought. Finland was backed up by Swedes, Norwegians and Danish who all came to fight with Finland. For four months they had surprised the whole world by their stamina in the fights with the much bigger Soviet Union, but in the end Finland lost and had to surrender big areas to the powerful neighbor in east.

On April 9^th, 1940, Norway and Denmark was attacked by the Germans. Denmark surrendered almost immediately as they understood there was no possible way they could withstand an attack. Norway on the other hand fought back with everything they had. Big canons managed to sink Blucher, a huge battleship from Germany killing 1000 Germans. This caused a delay in the German invasion, making it possible for the Norwegian royalty to flee to England where they stayed for the remainder of the war. Norway had to accept the loss after two months of hard fighting.

By this time the Netherlands, Luxemburg and Belgium had been invaded as well, and in June 1940 even France had to surrender, as neither they could withstand the German attacks.

In Britain the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had to resign because he failed to recognize the threat Hitler posed, and Winston Churchill took his post. Churchill had for a long time known how fatal the situation was getting, but until now nobody would listen to him.

The German plan to take over Britain involved first bombing the country so hard that they had nothing left to face the German invasion with. Great Britain had fewer planes then Germany, but they had developed a tool that automatically put them one step ahead despite Germany having more planes. Right before the war they got the radar, so they could see exactly when and where the Germans were coming. During the summer of 1940 London was bombed 57 nights in a row, but despite Germany's superiority they were never able to conquer Great Britain.

On the 22 of June, 1941 Germany neglected the no-attack agreement with the Soviet Union. Germany's army was nothing compared to the number in the Soviet army, but the unexpected attack came as a shock on Stalin, who was not prepared for an attack. His men also had very poor equipment, so in the beginning the Germans got great progress, and many Soviet lives were lost. They conquered big territories, but since the Soviet Union covers such a big area the task proved to be too big on Germany.

The winter of 1941-1942 proved to be very hard. In Russia it was far colder then the Germans had expected, so both German lives and vehicles suffered greatly from the weather. The Soviets were better acclimated, and knew how to live and fight in such conditions, so while the Germans were stuck and couldn't get any progress because of the bad roads and frozen vehicles, the Soviet Union managed to organize themselves.

In September of 1942 the Germans reached Stalingrad. They were completely surrounded, but kept up the fighting in the Soviet Union until they accepted the loss in January 1943.

On June 6^th British and American troops entered the beaches of Normandy. On the so called D-Day they fought to free France of the German invasion. Germany was now pushed on both sides, the British and the Americans from the west, and the Soviet Union from the east.

In May 1945 came Germany's final loss, and the Second World War was finally over after six years of fighting in Europe.