At the beginning of World War II, the German blitzkrieg was overwhelming: Poland resisted for only 28 days, France for 39 days, Greece for 24 days, Norway for 2 months, The Netherlands for 5 days, Luxembourg for 1 day, Denmark even surrendered after only 6 hours of symbolic resistance... Denmark, Norway, Greece and other small countries, at least in the French campaign, the German army did not have an absolute superiority in strength and weapons: at that time, the Dutch, Belgian, Luxembourg, French and British Expeditionary Forces had 135 divisions, 3469 tanks, 2000 aircraft, and more than 1000 aircraft in the British Isles could be used to support the battle.
In the Battle of France, the German army was roughly equal to the strength of the British and French Allies, but the German army defeated france in a short period of time through the flexible use of blitzkrieg, and the British could only defend the English Channel to barely protect themselves. Although Germany was invincible in the war on land, the German navy was far less powerful than Britain, the old maritime hegemon. From 1940 to 1941, Germany tried to force Britain to surrender through large-scale air battles, but after losing a large number of fighters and pilots, it was still unable to gain air superiority in the English Channel, let alone use air raids to disintegrate britain's army, navy, and will to resist. After February 1942, Hitler had to temporarily shelve the "Sea Lion Plan" to invade Britain.
The failure to succeed in taking Britain laid the first foreshadowing for Germany's subsequent defeat. During the war, Britain took in the governments-in-exiles of France, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, Greece, Yugoslavia, and other countries, providing various supports to underground resistance organizations in various countries. At this time, Britain had in fact become a gathering place for various anti-German forces, and Britain was still trying to pull Canada, India and other British Commonwealth dependencies, as well as the United States and the Soviet Union into the war against Germany. Germany made another move to cut off the external support that Britain might have received: on June 22, 1941, Germany, together with its vassal states of Hungary, Romania, and Finland, launched a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union.
Germany's intention was to crush the Soviet Union again in the form of a blitzkrieg, thus completely cutting off the external support that Britain might receive. However, Hitler, who was invincible in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, and Southern Europe, eventually encountered the Waterloo of his life in the Soviet Union. In the early days of the war, the Germans continued their invincible offensive: within 18 days of the start of the war, the Germans had penetrated 600 kilometers of soviet territory. On the first day of the fighting alone, the Red Army lost 1200 aircraft, of which 800 were destroyed before they could take off. In the month or so since the start of the war, the Soviet Union has lost thousands of aircraft, more than 20,000 tanks, more than three million Soviet soldiers have been captured, and more than a hundred divisions have been maimed or annihilated by the Germans!
At the same time, the Germans seized 1,710 cities and more than 70,000 villages and towns in the Soviet Union, penetrated more than 1,000 kilometers into the Soviet Union, and lived in the territory occupied by the German army at that time, 40% of the population of the Soviet Union at that time. The Soviet Union also lost 63% of the country's coal, 58% of its steel production capacity and 41% of its railway lines, 60% of its aluminium and 80% of its copper-manganese production areas were occupied by the Germans, and as many as 31,850 industrial and mining enterprises were destroyed. By September 30, 1941, the Germans had concentrated 74 and a half divisions of about 1.93 million men, supported by 1,700 tanks and 11,000 artillery pieces, to launch the Battle against moscow, the Soviet capital, and the German vanguard could even see the tip of the Kremlin.
German command once thought that the Soviets had lost their fighting power, but this was not the case. Although the German army was once in no man's land in the early stages of the war, the more the German army felt as if the Soviet soldiers could not finish fighting. Germany had just crushed one Soviet division, but before it could catch its breath, it had to fight ten more divisions of Soviet forces. In fact, the Soviet losses in the war were enormous: between June 1941 and April 1944, the Germans captured 5.754 million Soviet troops (3.22 million of whom died in prisoner-of-war camps). During the war, as many as 13.6 million Soviet soldiers died in prisoner-of-war camps, but the number of Soviet troops remained at about 10 million during the war.
There is a saying that "the real Red Army was all killed before 1942". This is not entirely an exaggeration, for the post-war statistics of the Soviet Union show that none of the first officers and men of the Soviet Red Army who participated in the war at the outbreak of the war in June 1941 survived until the end of the war, that is to say, the Red Army at the end of the war was all conscripted in the course of the war. Within a week of the war, the Soviet Union had mobilized 5.3 million men, and by May 1942 the Soviet Union had mobilized 18 million men. At the outbreak of World War II, Germany, together with all the German-speaking populations of its occupied Austria, Sudetenland, Alsace, Lorraine, etc., was about 80 million.
The population of the Soviet Union during the same period was about 170 million, which is more than double that of Germany. At that time, the Soviet Union had established a complete ruling system: in every city in the Soviet Union, in every township, village and even in every production unit, there were party committees, and all the party committees in all places could be fully mobilized from the highest level to the most basic level as long as the party committee of the CPSU Central Committee gave an order, so that all the people who could be mobilized could be mobilized to participate in the war. Under the great threat of war, the Soviet party and government issued a mobilization call for "everyone is a soldier", the age of conscription was expanded to 17 to 55 years old, about 30% of the men in the Soviet Union were involved in the war, and 800,000 Soviet women participated in the Great Patriotic War.
Soviet women soldiers were widely distributed in various units of the army: they could be seen by digging trenches, they could be seen in trucks, and they could be seen by operating cannons. Lilia, the first female pilot in Soviet history to shoot down an enemy aircraft, had taken off and fought 168 times and shot down 12 enemy aircraft alone by 1943. Lilia even shot down a German ace pilot with a record of 35 air victories in one battle. On August 1, 1943, Lilia was killed in the air by eight German fighters, but managed to shoot down one enemy plane before she was shot down. During World War II, not only ace pilots like Lilia appeared among the Soviet women, but also ace snipers like Lyudmila.
While mobilizing women for the war, the Soviet Union also urgently transferred troops stationed in the Far East and Central Asia to the Soviet-German front. These units, far from the battlefield before that, were largely able to preserve their combat effectiveness: 1.2 million people were recruited to fight in the Kazakh republic of the Soviet Union alone. On Gogol Street in the present-day city of Almaty, Kazakhstan, sits the 18-hectare Panfilov Park, which was built to commemorate the 28 soldiers of the Panfilov Division in the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. The Panfilov Division was a force of 15,000 men composed mainly of Kazakhs. After the battle for Moscow began, the troops, transferred from as far away as Kazakhstan, quickly entered the battle.
In November 1941 the division valiantly fought against the German forces that had pounced on Moscow several times in the volokolamsk area outside Moscow. In the battle near Dubosekovo station on 16 November, 28 soldiers of the division smashed German tanks with gasoline Molotov cocktails or bombed tanks with cluster grenades after running out of anti-tank shells, and all 28 soldiers died heroically. The next day, the Soviet Defense Council conferred on the division the title of Guards, but when the commander of the 16th Army, Rokossovsky, called the Soviet Defense Committee to inform the division commander Offilov of the decision of the Division, panfilov, he was told by the other end of the phone that the division commander was dead. Later, the Usser Defense Committee awarded the division the title of "Guards Red Banner Panfilov Division".
Today, the Republic of Kazakhstan has a population of more than 18 million, compared with about 6 million in the Republic of Kazakhstan at that time. This means that at that time, Kazakhstan mobilized 20% of the population directly involved in the front line of combat, not counting the people who were engaged in logistical support in the rear arsenal, if the elderly and children who could not work were excluded, then Kazakh was almost a national mobilization to support the front. Like Kazakhs, Uzbekistan mobilized about 1 million men into battle, and Turkmens formed 10 divisions into battle. In November 1941, after the Soviet Union, another great power participated in the war against Germany.
In the early morning of December 7, 1941, Germany's ally Japan sneaked up on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet base in Hawaii. On December 8, 1941, the United States Senate voted 82 to 0 and the House of Representatives to 388 votes to 1 to pass Roosevelt's declaration of war on Japan. On December 11, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan's Axis allies Germany and Italy. In fact, the United States has long realized that the expansion of the fascist Axis powers such as Germany, Japan, and Italy will pose a threat to its own interests, and the Pearl Harbor incident is at best the fuse that directly induces the United States to enter the war. Even if the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States would have intervened in the war for other reasons.
After the United States entered the war, Germany had to face simultaneous attacks from the United States, the world's most powerful industrial production capacity, the Soviet Union, the most extensive country, and Britain, which had vast colonies. As an ally of Germany, Japan was firmly held back in the Chinese battlefield on the one hand, and on the other hand, it fought fiercely with the Allied forces composed of the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand in the Pacific, so Germany could not expect Japan to achieve strategic cooperation with itself, and Italy, which was also an ally of Germany, was a role that added to the chaos than helped. Germany actually had to single-handedly challenge the three major powers of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain, and at the same time, the underground resistance organizations in the countries of the European continent began to cause trouble for Germany.
In 1940 Germany had a total population of about 70 million, annual steel production was 21.5 million tons, and electricity generation was 63 billion kWh; the corresponding figures for the United States, which had not yet entered the wartime state, were 132 million, 60.7 million tons and 178 billion kWh; while the Soviet Union, which was technologically behind Germany, was 170 million, 18.3 million tons and 48 billion kWh. By this time Germany had conquered most of Western Europe by blitzkrieg. But even if Germany was able to mobilize resources from all over Western Europe, it would only make its steel production and power generation slightly ahead of the Soviet Union, which had just completed the Second Five-Year Plan, but the latter's labor resources were simply beyond Germany's reach. By 1944, Germany had increased its arms production by 200 percent in four years.
During the same period, however, the size of the U.S. military industry swelled a full 19-fold. In 1944, the annual production of arms in the United States reached 2.5 times that of Germany and 6.7 times that of Japan, and the combined arms production of Germany and Japan was less than a fraction of that of the United States, and the Soviet Union, which was relatively backward in technology, also increased its arms production to 90% of Germany's. In January 1942, the Soviets crushed the German attack on Moscow. On February 2, 1943, the Soviets took a strategic turn after winning the Battle of Stalingrad. After the Battle of Kursk on 23 August 1943, the Germans could no longer launch a decent offensive on the Eastern Front. Leningrad, which had been besieged by the Germans for 900 days, was liberated on 27 January 1944.
In the Battle of North Africa from 13 September 1940 to 13 May 1943, the Germans lost 21,994 killed and captured 180,000. After the North African Campaign, the American and British Allies took advantage of the victory to launch the Italian Campaign: the Allied landings in Sicily in July 1943 led to the collapse of Mussolini's fascist government. On October 13, 1943, the new Italian government announced its withdrawal from the Axis Alliance and at the same time switched to the Allies to declare war on Germany. At 6:30 a.m. on 6 June 1944, 176,000 Vanguard troops crossed the English Channel from England and landed on the beach in normandy, France. After the Allied vanguard stabilized the beachhead, 2.88 million Allied troops poured into France like a tidal wave, thus successfully opening up the second battlefield on the European continent.
On 26 August 1944, the Free French army led by de Gaulle entered Paris with the Allies. Paris, which had fallen for four years, was restored. At this time, a large number of members of the French Resistance, liberated Vichy French officers and soldiers, and civilians joined the French army. On August 27, 1944, the French conquered Toulon and on the 28th Marseille, 35,000 Germans were captured by the French in the process, and then the French won again at the Rhône and Lyon. By November 1944, the French First Army alone had reached more than 400,000. At the Battle of the Rhine, the French sent 14 divisions to participate in the Allied military operations. The French then broke into German territory and fought in major battles including the Battle of the Ruhr.
By November 1944, Germany was like a strapped beast: the East-West attack between the Red Army and the American and British Allies put Germany in a two-front situation, and After Italy switched to the Allies, Germany faced a situation of being attacked from the belly and back. By this time it was only a matter of time before Germany was defeated and surrendered, and the cornered Hitler decided to make a desperate bet: Hitler planned to concentrate 28 or 30 German divisions to form 2 tank armies to launch a surprise attack between Monschau and Echternach, the 7th Army launched a surprise attack to cover the southern flank, cross the Maas River at Liège and Namur, and then detour to capture Brussels and Antwerp, thus cutting off the retreat of the Allied forces north of the breakthrough area.
This was the last attempt of the Germans in World War II , the Ardennes counterattack. At dawn on 16 December 1944, the Germans launched a three-pronged raid after intensive artillery preparations: the 7th Army (with 4 divisions) commanded by Brandenburg on the left wing, the 5th Panzer Army (with 7 divisions) commanded by Manteffer in the middle, and the 6th SS Panzer Army (with 9 divisions) commanded by Dietrich on the right. Before the general offensive, the Germans also conducted two special operations to complement the frontal attack: an airborne operation code-named "Eagle", which was aimed at occupying a road transportation hub in the rear of the Us army, and the other "Griffin" operation was carried out by the German special forces, the 150th Panzer Brigade.
The German 150th Panzer Brigade disguised as Americans infiltrated Allied positions to create as much chaos and destruction as possible. On December 17, 1944, two regiments of the U.S. 106th Division, with more than 7,000 men, surrendered after being surrounded by Germans. This became the worst defeat suffered by the U.S. military on the Battlefield in Europe. On the 18th, the German 5th Panzer Army in the middle forced it into baston, a road transportation hub; the 6th SS Panzer Army on the right wing occupied the Mus River crossing; and the left-wing 7th Army crossed the Orr River. By December 20, 1944, the Germans had torn open the American lines, forming a protrusion about 100 km wide and 30 km to 50 km deep. On the morning of December 17, 1944, the Allied High Command dispatched reinforcements from the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions.
On the 19th, the US 3rd Army under the command of General Patton rushed north to aid Baston. The U.S. 1st Army, which was holding the Ardennes, was ordered to resist the German attack at all costs. On December 25, 1944, the German 2nd Panzer Division and the U.S. 2nd Panzer Division engaged in a fierce battle at Cyrus. The Germans lost 2,500 killed and 1,050 captured, and lost all their tanks. On December 26, 1944, the vanguard of the US 4th Panzer Division finally broke through a bloody road and rushed into Baston. The sudden change in weather allowed allied aviation to support ground operations, giving the German 5th Panzer Army a fatal blow, and ultimately the German hope of crossing the Maas River was dashed.
On 1 January 1945, the Germans dispatched more than 1,000 aircraft to attack Allied airfields in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, while German ground forces took the opportunity to attack northern Alsace. On 3 January 1945, the Allies also launched a massive counteroffensive: Patton's 3rd Army and the US 1st Army, which was holding the Ardennes, attacked at the same time. The Germans also launched the fiercest offensive against Alsace on this day, thus launching the fiercest battle in the Ardennes Campaign. After a bloody battle of 5 days, the Germans, who had suffered heavy losses, were forced to retreat. On January 12, 1945, the Red Army launched the Battle of the Vistula-Oder on the Eastern Front eight days ahead of schedule.
In this situation, the Germans were forced to transfer 6 panzer divisions of reserve troops prepared to be sent to the Ardennes to the Eastern Front. This made it impossible for the Germans to continue their offensive in the Ardennes. On 28 January 1945 the Germans were driven back to their positions before the Ardennes Campaign. In the Battle of the Ardennes, the Germans were killed, wounded or missing about 120,000 people, losing 600 tanks and heavy artillery, 1,600 aircraft, and 6,000 vehicles; the Americans were wounded 81,000 and 19,000, losing 733 tanks and anti-tank guns; and the British were wounded 1,400 and 200. The constant flow of arms production and the abundance of human resources enabled the Allies to make up for their losses quickly, while Germany, which was in the midst of a war on the eastern and western fronts, was unable to make up for these losses.
Hitler consumed his most valuable armored unit in the Ardennes campaign and thus lost the last trump card in his hand. From April 16, 1945, the Soviet Red Army concentrated 270 divisions and cavalry divisions, 20 tank and mechanized corps, and 14 air force groups, including the 1st and 2nd Fronts of Belarus, the 1st Ukrainian Front, with a total of 2.5 million troops, equipped with 2,450 aircraft, 14,200 artillery pieces, 1,500 tanks and self-propelled guns, to attack the capital of Nazi Germany. The Germans guarding Berlin consisted of about 550,000 men of the Vistula Army Group and a large number of independent troops, about 150,000 men of the Fourth Tank Army of Army Group Center, and about 120,000 men of the Berlin Garrison.
Combined, these defenders numbered more than 800,000 men and were armed with 10,400 artillery and mortars, 1,500 tanks and artillery, and 3,300 combat aircraft. In addition to the Berlin garrison, Germany had 300,000 troops unused in Norway; 900,000 German troops in the Czech Republic; 450,000 German troops in Yugoslavia; and Katherine B's Army Group in Italy was almost completely destroyed after the siege of Ruhr. If you add up the German army at this time, there are about 2.45 million troops. Of course, this number is actually very watery: most of the Berlin defenders are temporarily recruited zhuang ding. Of the more than 800,000 Berlin defenders, only about 150,000 had real combat experience.
In contrast, the German troops stationed in Norway, the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia and other countries were basically fully combatable units that had not been destroyed by the war. These troops, together with about 150,000 veterans of the Berlin garrison, totaled more than 1.8 million. Bearing in mind that the total strength of the German army in the Battle of Moscow was only more than 1.8 million people, was it possible for Hitler to fight a turnaround battle with these more than 1.8 million veterans plus temporarily recruited Zhuang Ding? In fact, this possibility does not exist. First of all, the temporarily recruited Zhuang Ding were invincible in the face of the battle-hardened Soviet Red Army—they played almost no role except to send people to the head.
If we do not consider the temporary recruitment of Zhuang Ding, then the German army also has more than 1.8 million troops. The problem was that these armies were in a state of dispersion: only about 150,000 veterans confronted the Soviets in the Battle of Berlin, while the Germans scattered in Norway, the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia, etc. were almost all under the threat of Allied encirclement, in fact, they were pinned down on the ground and could not move, so it was difficult to expect these troops to reinforce Berlin in time and effectively. The scattered Germans had a hard time forming a combined force—they could not form a powerful fist, but could only slap people with a scattered slap. These armies are really just numbers trapped in the end of the road, and there is not even a chance to trap the beasts.
At this time, the quality of the German army's military resources and weapons and equipment were no longer the same as in the early days of the war: at this time, Germany's important industrial bases and raw material production sites had been occupied, so there were no factories that could provide weapons, medicines and other logistical supplies for the German army. The Germans had depleted the most elite armored units in the Ardennes Campaign, so by the time the Battle of Berlin began, the Germans were highly short of heavy weapons, and the military supplies of the troops were almost exhausted. At this time, Germany could no longer perform its own blitzkrieg, and could only fight hand-to-hand combat such as guerrilla warfare and street warfare. Moreover, at this time, the German reserve oil reserves had also been exhausted, so even if the armored units were still in operation, they could not function.
At this time, most of the German generals had also recognized the fate of Germany's doomed defeat, so they began to plan a way out for themselves after the war. By this time Hitler was in fact in a state of rebellion. On April 27, 1945, the Red Army had broken into the central area of Berlin. On April 29, 1945, Hitler and Eva Braun were married – making the woman who had fallen for him since the age of 17 and followed him without hesitation his wife. At 3:30 p.m. on April 30, 1945, Hitler shot himself in the basement of the German Chancellery. At 21:50 that night, Soviet heroes Sergeant Mikhail Yegorov and Corporal Myridon Cantaria planted soviet red flags on the dome of the main building of the Reichstag.