Germany+4

GERMANY

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**Failures of the Weimar Republic**
WEIMAR REPUBLIC FLAG

-Hitler’s Rise to Power

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PICS OF STALINGAR

**Pre-war Stalingrad**

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FAILURES OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC

1.  The Weimar Constitution did not create a strong government:
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 * Article 48** of the constitution gave the President sole power in ‘times of emergency’ – something he took often. ||

The system of **proportional voting** led to 28 parties. This made it virtually impossible to establish a majority in the Reichstag, and led to frequent changes in the government. During 1919-33, there were twenty separate coalition governments and the longest government lasted only two years. This political chaos caused many to lose faith in the new democratic system. ||
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The German **states** had too much power and often ignored the government. ||
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The **Army,** led by the right-wing General Hans von Seeckt, was not fully under the government’s control. It failed to support government during the Kapp Putsch or the crisis of 1923. ||
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Many government officials – especially **judges** – were right-wing and wanted to destroy the government. After the Kapp Putsch, 700 rebels were tried for treason; only 1 went to prison. After the Munich Putsch, Hitler went to prison for only 9 months. [] ||

STALINGARD The Battle of Stalingrad is considered by many historians to have been the turning point in [|World War] [|Two] in Europe. The battle at Stalingrad bled the German army dry in [|Russia] and after this defeat, the Germany Army was in full retreat. One of the ironies of the war, is that the German Sixth Army need not have got entangled in Stanlingrad. Army Groups A and B were well on their way to the Caucasus in south-west Russia, when [|Hitler] ordered an attack on Stalingrad. From a strategic point of view it would have been unwise to have left a major city unconquered in your rear as you advanced. However, some historians believe that Hitler ordered the taking of Stalingrad simply because of the name of the city and [|Hitler's] hatred of [|Joseph Stalin]. For the same reason Stalin ordered that the city had to be saved.The Battle for Stalingrad was fought during the winter of 1942 to 1943. In September 1942, the German commander of the Sixth Army, General Paulus, assisted by the Fourth Panzer Army, advanced on the city of Stalingrad. His primary task was to secure the oil fields in the Caucasus and to do this, Paulus was ordered by [|Hitler] to take Stalingrad. The Germans final target was to have been Baku.Stalingrad was also an important target as it was Russia’s centre of communications in the south as well as being a centre for manufacturing._In early September 1942, the German Army advanced to the city. The Russians, already devastated by the power of [|Blitzkrieg] during [|Operation Barbarossa], had to make a stand especially as the city was named after the Russian leader, [|Joseph Stalin]. For simple reasons of morale, the Russians could not let this city fall. Likewise, the Russians could not let the Germans get hold of the oil fields in the Caucasus. Stalin’s order was "Not a step backwards".The strength of both armies for the battle was as follows:


 * **German Army** ||  || **Russian Army** ||


 * **Led by Paulus** ||  || **Led by [|Zhukov]** ||


 * **1,011,500 men** ||  || **1,000,500 men** ||


 * **10, 290 artillery guns** ||  || **13,541 artillery guns** ||


 * **675 tanks** ||  || **894 tanks** ||


 * **1,216 planes** ||  || **1,115 planes** ||

The battle for the city descended into one of the most brutal in [|World War Two]. Individual streets were fought over using hand-to-hand combat. The Germans took a great deal of the city but they failed to fully assert their authority. Areas captured by the Germans during the day, were re-taken by the Russians at night.__On November 19th, the Russians were in a position whereby they could launch a counter-offensive [] When World War I was touched off by the assassination by a Serb of the heir to the Austrian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Hitler's passions against foreigners, particularly Slavs, were inflamed. He was caught up in the patriotism of the time, and submitted a petition to enlist in the Bavarian army. After less than two months of training, Hitler's regiment saw its first combat near Ypres, against the British and Belgians. Hitler narrowly escaped death in battle several times, and was eventually awarded two Iron Crosses for bravery. He rose to the rank of lance corporal but no further. In October 1916, he was wounded by an enemy shell and evacuated to a Berlin area hospital. After recovering, and serving a total of four years in the trenches, he was temporarily blinded by a mustard gas attack in Belgium in October 1918. [] **Hitler set about organizing his new political party. In 1920 it was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party--the Nazi party for short. In 1928 the party won eight hundred thousand votes. Even then it was more than just a political group. Hitler had already begun turning it into a kind of military force. He trained "storm troopers" to act as militia at his command. And many leaders who remembered past German military might began to support the Nazi party and its troops.** []**
 * With former army leaders on his side, Hitler felt the time had come for direct action. On November 8, 1923, he and his storm troopers surrounded a group of government officials in a beer hall in Munich. Hitler told them that he wanted to turn the government over to the military. He forced them to swear loyalty to his "revolution." To gain their release, the officials agreed. But when they were freed, they had Hitler arrested. He was tried, given a sentence of five years, and sent to prison. His "beer hall //Putsch//" had failed, but news of it spread and Hitler's name was heard far and wide for the first time.

**-Aggression in the face of appeasement**
During September 1938, European eyes were focused on Munich in Southern Germany where an extraordinary conference was taking place. The Munich Conference, culmination of weeks of negotiation and an early version of “shuttle diplomacy” by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, resulted in a policy of “appeasement.” Although Chamberlain would return to England, telling the people that he brought, “peace with honor…peace for our time,” Adolf Hitler soon broke the agreement in March 1939, taking all of Czechoslovakia. [] -Nazi-Soviet Pact- In the 1930s Joseph Stalin became increasingly concerned that the Soviet Union would be invaded by Germany. Stalin believed the best way to of dealing with Germany was to form an anti-fascist alliance with countries in the west. Stalin argued that even Adolf Hitler would not start a war against a united Europe. Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister, was not enthusiastic about forming an alliance with the Soviet Union. He wrote to a friend: "I must confess to the most profound distrust of Russia. I have no belief whatever in her ability to maintain an effective offensive, even if she wanted to. And I distrust her motives, which seem to me to have little connection with our ideas of liberty, and to be concerned only with getting everyone else by the ears." Joseph Stalin realized that war with Germany was inevitable. However, to have any chance of victory he needed time to build up his armed forces. The only way he could obtain time was to do a deal with Hitler. Stalin was convinced that Hitler would not be foolish enough to fight a war on two fronts. If he could persuade Hitler to sign a peace treaty with the Soviet Union, Germany was likely to invade Western Europe instead. On 3rd May, 1939, Stalin dismissed Maxim Litvinov, his Jewish Commissar for Foreign Affairs. Litvinov had been closely associated with the Soviet Union's policy of an antifascist alliance. Meetings soon took place between Vyacheslav Molotov, Litvinov's replacement and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister. On 28th August, 1939, the Nazi-Soviet Pact was signed in [|Moscow]. Under the terms of the agreement, both countries promised to remain neutral if either country became involved in a war. [] -Invasion of Poland On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. From East Prussia and Germany in the north and Silesia and Slovakia in the south, German units, with more than 2,000 tanks and over 1,000 planes, broke through Polish defenses along the border and advanced on Warsaw in a massive encirclement attack. After heavy shelling and bombing, Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on September 28, 1939. Britain and France, standing by their guarantee of Poland's border, had declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. The Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland on September 17, 1939. [] The Panzer divisions cut through the Polish forces at will and isolated them for the later disarming. September 15th led to the Polish Resistance collapsed. The Polish government fled to Romania and France where they organized the their government in exile. Warsaw was able to hold out for a month after. (More information on the Battle for Poland can be found on the Poland pages). []

=
the blitzkrieg of hollandThe next blow came a month later. In the early morning darkness of May 10, the Germans unleashed their Blitzkrieg against the Netherlands and Belgium. The attack sent the defending troops reeling. The roads overflowed with refugees fleeing the front. French and British troops rushing to the rescue were caught in the headlong retreat and pushed back. German dive-bombers - the Stukas - filled the sky, strafing the retreating mix of civilians and soldiers with machine gun and bomb. The Allies fought valiantly but in vain - the German war machine advanced unperturbed. In England, the invasion forced Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to resign, to be replaced by Winston Churchill.====== [] -Operation Sea Lion and the Battle of Britain

= Operation Sealion was the name given by Hitler for the planned invasion of Great Britain in 1940. Operation Sealion was never carried out during the war as the Germans lost the Battle of Britain and it is now believed that Hitler was more interested in the forthcoming attack on Russia as opposed to invading Britain. = = [] =

-Operation Barbarosa and the invasion of Russia Operation Barbarossa was the name given to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Russia on June 22nd 1941. Barbarossa the largest military attack of World War Two and was to have appalling consequences for the Russian people. The Red Army was paralyzed by Stalin’s purges. Officers would not move without direct orders, stifling imaginative tactics and leadership. The High Command had more political than military ability. In total, Germany amassed 117 army divisions for the attack excluding Rumanian and Hungarian units. In total, Russia amassed 132 army divisions for the defence of the ‘motherland’, including 34 armoured divisions. When the barrage opened on the morning of June 22, 1941, Red Army units were slow to react. Officers radioed for permission to fire back. Tanks numbering in the hundreds were knocked out of action by superior tactics backed by superior morale. The Red Air Force was destroyed on the ground. .The attack started at 03.00, Sunday morning June 22nd 1941. In total the Germans and her allies used 3 million soldiers, 3580 tanks, 7184 artillery guns, 1830 planes and 750,000 horses. -Importance of Stalingrad [] -Normandy during World War II, the Allied invasion of western Europe, which was launched on June 6, 1944 (the most celebrated D-Day of the war), with the simultaneous landing of U.S., British, and Canadian forces on five separate beachheads in Normandy, France. By the end of August 1944 all of northern France was liberated, and the invading forces reorganized for the drive into Germany, where they would eventually meet with Soviet forces advancing from the east to bring an end to the Nazi Reich. []

-Defeat from both sidesDefeat of both sides
during the early part of the war hitler hoped to sue britain for peace following dunkirk and the battle of britain. german military planning was based on the idea of blitzkrieg which meant a short war, when hitler attacked the soviet union on june 22nd he hoped to defeat the russian within 3 months and before the onset of winter, following the failure of this germany was faced with a long war and the entry of the united states in december 1941 meant that germany was faced with a two front war, hitler and the german high command hopes of victory were now placed in the idea of crushing the soviet unions armies and reducing britain into submission via a submarine blockade this would leave the united states confronted by a fortress europe impossible to assault. however the tide of battle turned on the eastern at stalingrad in november 1942 and in the atlantic in march 1943. following the iniative being passed to the allies hitler was thrown back on his belief in secret weapons that may swing the war back in germany favour despite the fact that germany invented the first jet aircraft the messersmit me62 and the v1 and v2 rockets which were ballistic missile these were created to late to affect the war outcome and defense of the german reich was impossible.
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