The article is about World War II, Technically Eastern Front, which took place in Europe in the mid-20th century. In 1939, France and Great Britain declared war on Adolf Hitler’s Germany after it invaded Poland. Germany invaded Poland since propagandists, the Nazis, accused Poland of enslaving and persecuting ethnic Germans who lived in Poland.
Additionally, the Nazis falsely accused Poland of planning to encircle, attack, and dismember Germany with the help of France and Great Britain. Hitler immediately launched a retaliatory war campaign against Poland using false actions. In the appeasement of the Munich treaty, Great Britain sought to take no action against Germany to avoid war.
World War II initially started in Europe but spread to the rest of the world, with many fights in Southeast Asia and Europe. It was the deadliest war in history in which more than 70 million people died worldwide. It was fought between the Allied Powers, consisting of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France, and the United States of America, against the Axis Powers involving Japan, Italy, and Germany. In 1939, Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, and Adolf Hitler signed the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, which created fear in Paris and London.
The action greatly shocked the world since no one thought the Soviet Union could form allies with Nazi Germany. The two allies agreed that no one could take any military action against the other for the following ten years. The treaty, also referred to as the treaty of non-belligerency and friendship, helped them form a military duo that was greatly feared by their rivals.
In 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the west and east, respectively. Poland fell quickly, and by 1940, they had divided it according to their agreement. Britain and France quickly reacted to the Poland invasion, and the so-called phony war started, although Germany was tough to defeat. It was referred to as the phony war since Great Britain and France seemed hostile toward Germany like they were in wars, but no one sought to attack another. Germany simultaneously invaded Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Netherlands, and Belgium in the lightning war. In the same year, the British forces evacuated from Dunkirk, leaving France on the verge of collapsing.
Over 198,000 British troops evacuated the region leaving behind some France soldiers who were summarily executed, wounded, denied medical treatment and food, and others sent to Germany’s salt mines. Benito Mussolini of Italy allied with Germany and declared war against Britain and France. In 1941, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary joined the Axis forces to conquer Greece and Yugoslavia. In a turn of events, in 1941, Germany made a surprise invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, destroying their alliance.
As Britain and France were facing Germany, the United States of America was combating the Japanese aggression. Japan used 360 aircraft to attack Pearl Harbor, a United States navy base in Hawaii, hitting 2300 troops by surprise. Japan’s primary intention was to prevent the United States of America’s Pacific Fleet from noticing, intervening, and interfering with the planned military attack against overseas territories of the United States, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom in Southeast Asia. The Allied forces brought down Mussolini’s government in 1943 and advanced to Germany. In 1944, the Allies sent 156,000 soldiers to France’s Normandy beaches to combat the Axis forces. The war ended in 1945 when the United States of America unleashed an atomic bomb from the Manhattan Project to massively destroy two Japanese cities, Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Blitzkrieg was the military doctrine used by Germany involving surprise and rapid attacks on its opponents. It consisted of motorized, armored, and mechanized infantry attack formations with overwhelming force concentration and convenient air support. It helped break the opponent’s defense lines with ease since they were caught unaware. The attack formation helped unbalance the opponents and dislocate their defenders, making it hard for them to respond to the continuously changing attack fronts quickly. First, Germany used military formulae to invade Poland from the west in 1939.
Furthermore, Adolf’s Germany used the same tactic to attack the Soviet Union, its Axis forces ally, in 1941 in Operation Barbarossa and proclaimed much of its territory. Germany was highly threatened by Soviet Union’s proximity to the vast Romanian oil fields, which Germany entirely depended on; hence Hitler became suspicious, and his interest in overthrowing Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union heightened. The campaign involved three million soldiers allotted in about 150 divisions with 2,500 aircraft, 7,000 artillery pieces, and 3,000 tanks. Germany’s strength was boosted by the addition of 30 divisions of Romanian and Finnish troops, making the attack the largest, most deadly, and most powerful in human history.