March of the Titans

[Stefanus]

March of the Titans
A History Of The White Race

Chapter 59:The First Great Brothers' War - World War I


PART ONE 1914 - 1916

The First World War was the first continent-wide war between the newly industrialized countries of Europe: starting out as a local war between Austro-Hungary and Serbia, it mushroomed into a world wide conflict involving 32 nations, inflicting incalculable genetic damage on all of the nations involved.

The fundamental cause of the conflict lay in the centuries of conflict in Europe which preceded it: the endless rounds of nationalist wars which had characterized the region for two hundred years, reached a climax in 1914, when the old adversaries squared up once again.

The big difference in this conflict was however that it was the first to be fought with the aid of the massive developments in technology which had occurred towards the end of the 19th and the early 20th centuries. The result was a devastating war which had never been seen before; and, indeed, some aspects were not to be seen again.


Nationalistic CONFLICTS FLOURISH AFTER NAPOLEONIC WARS

If there was a particular starting point for the rash of nationalistic conflicts in Europe, it must be the French Revolution and resulting Napoleonic Wars, starting in 1789. As Napoleon's armies marched across Europe, the idea of ethnic groups being entitled to their own lands with representative governments, separate and distinct from other nations, was spread in all directions.

It is no co-incidence that many of the modern European nations only started taking on their approximate present day borders at the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

In this sense, the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was an anachronism in a changing political landscape. Consisting of a multitude of different ethnic, and in some parts, even racial, nationalities thrown together under one royal household was a form of government which was certainly pre-French Revolution style: indeed it smacked of the empire of Charlemagne and of the Holy Roman Empire, and was completely out of pace with the spread of ethnically based nationalism.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
by Serbian nationalist Princip - the shot which
sparked the First World War, and, indirectly,
the Second World War as well.

Internationally, growing competition between the European nations and a series of conflicts dating back to the beginning of the 19th century resulted in the formation of two great alliances: the Central Powers and the Triple Entente. The Central Powers consisted of Germany, Austro-Hungary and Italy; and the Triple Entente, of Britain, France and Imperial Russia. Against the background of these emerging alliances, all the nations began to invest heavily in armaments, resulting in the creation of large standing armies poised for war.

Indeed, at least three times before the outbreak of the First World War, a conflict did break out: twice over German and French interests clashing in Morocco, and once over the Balkans Wars which saw the Ottoman Turks ejected from all but a small part of Europe. Against this turbulent background came the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Ferdinand, by a Serbian nationalist, Princip, in July 1914.


Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum to the Serbs

Unsurprisingly, the Austro-Hungarians linked the Serbian nationalist movement to the assassination - which it was - and on 23 July an ultimatum was submitted to Serbia submitting ten specific demands, most of which had to do with the suppression, with Austrian help, of anti-Austrian propaganda in Serbia.

Two days later, Serbia had accepted all but two of the demands. On 28 July, Austria-Hungary then declared war on Serbia, thinking it could use the opportunity to extinguish the budding pan-Slavism which was in any event tugging at the seams of that empire.


War Escalates as Russia, Germany Enter

Much to everyone's surprise, Russia promptly announced a partial mobilization against Austria. This was surprising, as everyone knew that the Russians were the weakest of all the powers, and had in fact just been beaten by tiny Japan a few years before in the 1904 Russo-Japanese war. The Russian army was badly equipped and suited mainly to 19th century warfare.

Nonetheless, Germany issued a warning that any moves against Austro-Hungary would be met with pan-German resistance. An official German note was sent to Russia demanding demobilization: the Russians refused, and on 1 August, Germany declared war on Russia. At the time the Germans did not foresee any great trouble in overcoming the Russian army. The French then announced a general mobilization: the conflict was already out of control.


German Invasion of Belgium and France - British Declare War

On 2 August, the Germans decided to strike first at the French: advancing through Belgium, they penetrated French territory on 3 August, declaring war on France the same day. Britain, objecting to the invasion of neutral Belgium, then declared war on Germany on 4 August. Japan, which had made an alliance with Britain in 1902, then declared war on Germany on 23 August.

Within a matter of days, three huge war fronts had been opened: in the west on the French-German border; in the east on the German-Russian border, and in the south east between Austria-Hungary and Serbia.


German Advance in the West

At first, the German advance was rapid: sweeping through Belgium, they easily won the first engagement with the French at the Battle of Charleroi. The British sent an expeditionary force of 90,000 men across the channel to help the French, but they too were routed by the Germans at the Battle of Mons.

The Allied forces in the west were plunged into a headlong retreat. Making the campaign seem easy, the Germans pressed home their victories, crossing the Marne River. The French capital, Paris, seemed certain to fall, and the seat of the French government was formally moved to Bordeaux. Flushed with victory, the Germans then transferred six army corps from the Western Front to the Eastern Front, where the campaign against Russia was moving into full swing.

This single tactical error would prove catastrophic for the German advance.


French Counter Attack Halts the German Advance

As the first of the three major German armies converging on Paris crossed the Marne River, a French attack fell upon them: the first Battle of the Marne was joined on 5 September 1914. Weakened by the transfer of part of its reinforcements, the German advance wilted under the unexpected French counter attack.

Quickly the tables were turned, and the German army was forced into a general retreat. The Germans fell back to the Aisne River, where they were reinforced by two other German armies. There they dug themselves into defensive positions and awaited the French attack.

A German trench position. The emergence
of static trench warfare proved to be the
main reason why the conflict lasted so long,
with each side finding it almost impossible
to dislodge the other from these well
fortified positions.

The First Trenches

The Germans prepared their defenses on the Aisne well: digging huge trenches and other positions in the earth, they unwittingly set the standard for virtually the rest of the war in the West. Trench warfare, a new and horrifying form of static war, was to emerge: moving completely away from the set battle pieces and mobile tactics of previous European wars.

The French launched three major attacks to try and dislodge the Germans from their dug in positions: the Battle of the Aisne; a battle on the Somme River; and the First Battle of Arras.

All three attempts failed, and the French saw first hand how effective trenches could be as a defensive measure. They started digging their own large trenches virtually immediately.


Antwerp Falls to Germans

On the northern part of the front, the Germans still managed to keep up their momentum: on 10 October, the city of Antwerp fell. The Germans then began pursuing the British Expeditionary Force and the Belgians towards the English channel itself. The Belgians then flooded a large part of the front in the path of the Germans by opening the sluices on the Yser River.

The British had in the interim managed to draw together their forces, and in a series of battles now known as the Battle of Flanders, halted the German advance in the north, forcing a trench-based stalemate as had happened in the south.


WESTERN Front GRINDS TO A HALT In December 1914

In December 1914, the French and British launched a new assault on the German line: this broke on the defensive positions and trenches set up by the Germans, and the entire front settled down to a bloody and muddy stalemate By the end of 1914, both sides had established trench lines extending 800 kilometers (500 miles) from Switzerland to the North Sea.

Trench warfare had broken the mobility needed to bring conflicts to a sharp end and neither side was able to penetrate each other's defenses to any great measure. As a result the front line hardly moved for another three years from the positions established in October 1914.


Naval Clashes in North Sea, Pacific and South Atlantic

During the course of 1914, the German and British fleets did not come to grips with one another off the European coast: the only engagements were a British raid on a German naval base at Helgoland Bight, an island off Germany in the North Sea, in which three German ships were sunk. German submarines then went onto the offensive, sinking several British naval units, including the warship Audacious, in October 1914.

During September and October 1914, a task force of five German naval raiders in the South Pacific attacked French installations on the island of Tahiti and the British on Fanning Island. The German raiders then engaged and defeated a British squadron off Chile in November 1914, but then suffered a major defeat, losing four of the five ships in the party, to the British at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914.


The Zeppelins RAID PARIS AND LONDON

The German air force launched its first air raid on Paris in August 1914, and the first German air raid on Dover, England, took place in December of that year. Then in 1916, the Germans perfected the airship (known as the Zeppelin, after its designer, Count Graf von Zeppelin) and during that year, England and London were raided 60 times by bomb-dropping Zeppelins. The first German aircraft raid on London took place in November 1916.

A Zeppelin and its air fighter escort -
these massive craft raided Britain and
France right up the end of the war.

The Germans continued to raid the city right up until the end of the war. No military advantage was gained by the raids, and they were intended solely as a moral breaking exercise on the British - an effort which failed.


Manfred von Richthoven - The Red Baron

The progress of the war saw a number of technological breakthroughs in aircraft design: the German invention of a machine gun which could shoot through the rotating propeller without destroying the blades, made the German fighters - for a while - the most accurate gun ships in the air.

Amongst the German air aces to exploit this technological leap was the famous Red Baron, Manfred von Richthoven, who led his squadron, the Flying Circus, in his aircraft painted bright red (so as to attract enemy aircraft - other aircraft were camouflaged to avoid detection.) After Richthoven was shot down and killed in 1918, leadership of the Flying Circus passed to his deputy and another German air ace of the war, Herman Goering.

By 1918, the arrival of hundreds of American aircraft had ensured that air supremacy had passed into Allied hands.


Chlorine Gas USED BY GERMANS FOR FIRST TIME

On the Western Front, the situation remained static until March 1915, when the British launched a massive attack at Neuve Chapelle. It achieved virtually no significant territorial advances, taking only the very outermost advanced German positions. The Germans then launched their only offensive of 1915 - they were busy with a major offensive in the East at the time - in April at Ieper.

This attack was marked by the German use of chlorine gas for the first time, setting a frightening precedent which would soon be followed by all sides, adding significantly to the horror of the front line. The German attack also achieved virtually nothing in terms of territorial advantage.

The horror of a gas attack: blinded
British soldiers are led away, each
man following the next by placing his
hand on the other's shoulder.

In May and June, the French and British launched a combined offensive against the German lines between Neuve Chapelle and Arras. Once again, despite huge losses, the gains were pathetic, with only some four kilometers (2.5 miles) of land, all still in the German trenchworks, falling into Allied hands. In September, the French launched an attack on the German lines between Reims and the Argonne Forest. Once again the attack ground to a halt after the French had taken only the first line of German trenches.


The Russians Invade EAST PRUSSIA

In the East, the Russians - initially - did well. Beating numerically inferior forces in several straight battles in August 1914, the Russians advanced deep into East Prussia and into the Austrian province of Galacia. The German situation became so desperate in East Prussia that emergency plans to evacuate the entire province were started, while the Russian armies in the south overran most of Galacia and by March 1915, were poised to invade Hungary itself.


The Battle of Tannenburg - RUSSIAN DEFEAT

Just when a German collapse in East Prussia seemed inevitable, a fresh German army arrived. Under General Paul von Hindenburg they rushed East and in a furious battle at Tannenburg, decisively defeated the invading Russians in East Prussia in August 1914. Tannenburg marked the first of three major defeats for the Russians: the cumulative effect of these reverses would see Russian forces retreat into Russian territory where the front would mostly remain for the duration of the war.

Russian troops march west
- and then east again.

The Germans and Austro-Hungarians Drive East

The German forces followed up this victory with two further overwhelming victories: the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes, fought in September 1914, and the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes fought in February 1915. In April 1915, a combined (German and Austrian) army launched a major offensive against the Russians, driving them out of the Carpathians.

In May, the Austro-German armies began a great offensive in central Poland, forcing the Russians to withdraw from Galacia. By September 1915, the Germans had driven the Russians out of Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, and had also taken possession of the western border of Russia itself. When the German drive east finally ran out of steam, the front line lay well within Russia: behind the Dvina River between Riga and Dvinsk and south to the Dniester River. The Russians lost thousands of men and much equipment: it would be months before they were to play any significant role in the war again.


The South Eastern Front Sees British and French Intervention

On the third front, that between Austro-Hungary and Serbia, the initial Austrian attacks were all repulsed by the small but powerful Serbian army. The front then stalemated with both sides holding their own territory. In October 1915, British and French troops were landed in neutral Greece at Salonika, with the permission of the Greek government, with the aim of coming to the aid of Serbia.

Then the Bulgarians, still smarting from their defeat in the Second Balkan War of 1913, tried to retake the territorial claims they had lost in that previous war. In the same month that the French and British troops landed in Greece, Bulgaria declared war on Serbia and formally entered the war on the side of the Central Powers.

The Allied troops immediately advanced into Serbia, but were routed by a well planned Bulgarian offensive and were forced to retreat all the way back to Salonika. Simultaneously the Bulgarians also managed to inflict a severe defeat upon the Serbians.


Serbia Overrun by Austro-Hungarian and German offensive

In October 1915, a fresh (combined Austro-Hungarian and German army) drive south was launched. This, coming on top of the Bulgarian victory, saw Serbia crushed. By the end of that year all of Serbia was occupied and the Serbian army eliminated from the conflict.


TURKEY ENTERS WAR WITH ATTACK ON RUSSIA

Ottoman Turkey, still smarting at its defeat and ejection from its southern European-held territories during the First Balkan War of 1912, was easily persuaded to join in an attack on Russia, its fiercest rival in Eastern Europe.

Turkish warships eagerly participated with German warships in a naval bombardment of Russian Black Sea ports; Russia, then, declared war on Turkey in November 1914. Britain and France then followed their Russian ally, and by the most bizarre set of circumstances the non-White power that had for so long tried to exterminate the Germans in Austria suddenly found itself allied to that very same nation.

A Turkish army caravan makes its way through
the desert in that country's abortive efforts to
stop the British advance through the Middle East.
The Ottoman Empire was to be destroyed for
once and for all in this war.

The Turks lost no time in attacking their Russian foes. In December 1914, they invaded the Caucasus, overrunning large areas. The Russians, under severe pressure from the Germans in the west and the Turks in the south, then asked for help in the form of a diversionary attack on Turkey by the Allied powers.


Gallipoli - ALLIED DISASTER

In February 1915, the French and British navies then bombarded Turkish forts along the Dardanelles. This was followed up with two sea borne invasions of Gallipoli in Turkey between April and August, one of British, Australian, and French troops in April, and one of several additional British divisions in August.

The Turks prepared their defenses well: the invasion was a complete failure and the Allied forces were forced to withdraw with severe losses.


BRITISH SEIZE Mesopotamia FROM TURKS

The land of Mesopotamia had been occupied by Muslims since soon after the founding of that religion, and had later been incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. Now it was attacked by a British force operating out of India. The Turks were defeated in a series of battles from 1914, and the British then launched a drive on Baghdad, another Ottoman stronghold.

However, a desperate Turkish rearguard action at the Battle of Ctesiphon in November 1915, saw the British defeated and forced to retreat back into Mesopotamia, where they were besieged by the Turks at the town of Al Kuut in December of that year.


ITALIANS SWITCH SIDES TO JOIN ALLIES

Although Italy had formally been a member of the Central Power alliance, it remained neutral until May 1915, when it broke ranks and declared war on Austro-Hungary, allying itself to the western powers. The Italians then launched an offensive to capture Trieste, but after four major battles with the Austrian army, at the Isonzo River from June to December, they failed in their attempts to break through the Austrian lines.


The SINKING OF THE Lusitania

By May 1915, the Germans had instituted a policy of trying to blockade Britain into submission: they reasoned that if that island-country could be starved of all supplies and raw materials, it would have to sue for peace. A policy of unrestricted submarine warfare was then declared: all ships traveling to or from Britain were targets and would be sunk without warning.

On 7 May 1915, the British passenger liner, Lusitania, which was later shown to be carrying munitions and military supplies, was sunk by a German submarine. A number of American nationals were on board and died in the sinking. The American government protested and the Germans then announced a modification in their policy: in future all such ships would be warned before they were attacked and the Americans undertook to urge their nationals not to travel on such vessels in future.

In March 1916, a French liner, the Sussex, was sunk by a German submarine, again with the loss of American lives, leading to another controversy between the American and German governments. This time the Germans announced they were abandoning the unrestricted submarine warfare policy completely.


The Battle of Jutland

On the last day of May and the first day of June 1916, the only major naval battle between the Germans and the British took place off the north European coast of Jutland. Although the British losses, both in ships and human lives, were greater than Germany's, the German fleet never again joined battle on such a scale for the rest of the war.


The Slaughterhouses of Verdun and the Somme

The German victories in the east enabled them to transfer a half million men to the Western Front in 1916. In February that year, they launched a new offensive designed to break the French lines around the city of Verdun. After bitter fighting, the Germans managed to seize some surrounding forts, but failed to take Verdun itself, mainly due to the heroic French defense of the region under the leadership of one of their ablest generals, Philipe Petain (who won the title of Hero of Verdun in France as a result).

By the end of November, the French had managed to retake the German gains and the front line had reverted to where it had started. German and French losses were massive: as a result, the French were only able to contribute 16 divisions out of the intended 40 with which they had started the year, to an Allied attack which began on the Somme in July 1916.

The Battle of the Somme, which continued until November 1916 saw the first significant Allied territorial gains of the war in the west: some 325 square kilometers of land was wrested from the Germans.

The main reason for this surprising territorial gain was the introduction of a British secret weapon: the tank, the first time ever such a weapon was deployed in any war. These armored vehicles, which had originally been conceptualized by Leonardo da Vinci, were built in secret, and were only called tanks as a code name: the word however stuck.

The tank, conceptualized by Leonardo
da Vinci, first appeared during the First
World War, developed by the British.

NEW Russian Offensive ENDS IN IMMEDIATE FAILURE

In the east, the Russians recovered from their first defeats and launched a new offensive against the Germans in February 1916, in the Lake Narocz region northeast of Vilna. The attack was a complete failure and saw the Russians lose more than 100,000 men.

In June 1916, the Russians carried out a new attack against the Austrians on a wide front running from Pinsk south to Czernowitz. This attack penetrated some 65 kilometers (40 miles) and took half a million prisoners until the arrival of German reinforcements in September turned back the Russian advance. The Russians lost a million men during the four month campaign.

The Russian advance had however persuaded Rumania that it could enter the war on the side of the Allies: it declared war on Germany and Austria in August 1916 and invaded the Austro-Hungarian province of Transylvania. In a combined offensive which saw Austrian, Bulgarian and Turkish troops invade Rumania, that country was completely overrun by January 1917 and eliminated from the war.


The Southern Front SEES ALLIED ADVANCE

On the Italian front, 1916 was marked by five more battles on the Isonzo River, all but one being launched by the Italians, and all ultimately failing in their objective to significantly move the front line.

Meanwhile, in Greece the Greek king was accused by the Allies of becoming pro-German. A renewed Allied landing at Thesalonika saw rebel Greeks set up an alternative government under Allied supervision in November 1916, splitting Greece politically and physically into two: one section neutral, the other declaring war on Germany and Austro-Hungary. The Allies then resorted to a naval blockade of the neutral part of Greece, giving formal recognition to the rebel government in Thesalonika.

Simultaneously, an Allied push into Austro-Hungarian territory took place: Macedonia was seized in November and by the end of the year the Allied armies had reached the border of Albania and Macedonia.


Turkish Territory Invaded

In the Middle East the Turks were steadily put under pressure: by February 1916, a large part of Mesopotamia had been cleared of Turkish troops by the British, while at the same time a number of Arabs seized the opportunity to revolt against Ottoman rule in Saudi Arabia. Then the British attacked from their long established bases in Egypt (which had been there since the building of the Suez Canal) and steadily drove the Turks out of the Sinai Peninsula and Palestine. By early 1917, most parts of these regions were under British rule.

[Stefanus]

March of the Titans
A History Of The White Race

Chapter 59: The First Great Brothers' War - World War I


Part Two: 1917 - 1918

Part One related the course of the war from its origin to end 1916.

Balfour Declaration

The World Zionist movement, a nationalist Jewish organization founded by European Jews to create a national homeland for Jews in Palestine, saw an opportunity open up with the British occupation of Palestine, and persuaded the British foreign minister, Lord Arthur Balfour, to issue a public promise in 1917 to the effect that Britain would support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This public promise became known as the Balfour Declaration.

In return for this undertaking, the World Zionist Movement then promised Britain that it would marshal the world's Jews behind the Allied cause (although how they gave such an undertaking when there were many thousands of German Jews fighting in the German army, remains a mystery) and, more importantly, endeavor to use their influence to bring the United States of America into the war. In this way, considerable pressure was brought to bear on the American government to enter the war against Germany, although by this stage they hardly needed much prompting.


The United States of America Enters the War

While the World Zionist Congress was actively working behind the scenes with the powerful Jewish lobby in the American government, the course of the war at sea presented the American president, Woodrow Wilson, with an opportunity to enter the war against Germany, despite his presidential election campaign having been specifically fought on a non-interventionist ticket.

In January 1917, Germany announced that it was resorting to unrestricted submarine warfare against all shipping to and from Britain - this in a renewed attempt to force the British to surrender by physically depriving them of necessary fuels and foodstuffs to keep going. The re-introduction of this policy brought about the excuse Wilson needed to bring America into the war.

In February 1917, the US broke off diplomatic relations with Germany and formally declared war in April. The timing of the US entry into the war - virtually simultaneously with the Balfour Declaration - is too good to be coincidental. By June 1917, more than 175,000 American troops were already in France; by the end of the war more than two million Americans had been deployed in France.


GERMAN Submarine Blockade OF BRITAIN Fails

The Germans had hoped to starve Britain of raw materials and supplies by sinking as many ships going to that island as possible: in this aim they failed due to the development of depth charges and other submarine hunting devices; the deployment of convoys for shipping and the overwhelming industrial production lines of the United States which could turn out new ships far faster than what the Germans could hope to sink them.

A new weapon of war: a German
U-Boat patrols the North Atlantic.

In April 1918, the British, in an effort to end the submarine war, blocked the German submarine port at Zeebrugge in Belgium by deliberately sinking three aged British cruisers in the harbor entrance. Finally the war of attrition grew too high: the German submarine losses, in percentage terms, started to outstrip the Allied shipping losses, and the campaign was gradually abandoned.


FAMOUS SPY - Mata Hari

In 1917, a Dutch woman by name of Gertrud Margarete Zelle was arrested by the French police in Paris. At the time she was working as an erotic dancer using the stage name of Mata Hari. Apart from her professional life as a strip tease dancer, she was also a German spy. By entrapping a string of high ranking Allied officers (who she befriended at the club where she worked) into sexual relationships, she had been able to obtain many important military secrets for her masters. The name Mata Hari from then on became synonymous with a femme fatale: the original Mata Hari was executed in October 1917 by a French firing squad.


French Mutiny ERUPTS AFTER ALLIED SETBACK

In April and May 1917, the Allies launched their first major offensive of that year at Arras. The Germans saw the attack coming, and withdrew from the Aisne to a new position a short way back known as the Hindenburg line. The Allied attack then found itself forced to attack this heavily fortified and well prepared defensive position: although Canadian troops took a small series of hills known as Vimy Ridge and the main British forces advanced some six kilometers (four miles), this was the sum total of the Allied gains.

A French attack in Champagne failed so atrociously that the French troops in the region mutinied - serious disorder broke out which had to be suppressed by military police and the replacement of the troops in that sector with much needed reserves from another sector. In June, a second Allied offensive went in: with the British launching an attempt to break the German lines at Flanders.

After a preliminary battle at Messines, a three and a half month static battle took place at Ieper from July to November: despite both sides losing in excess of 250,000 men, neither line moved at all.

British troops "go over the top" - out of the
trenches into the no-man's land. Both sides
launched endless suicidal attacks.

FIRST Mass Tank Attack

In other sectors, the Allies made slight gains: a new battle at Verdun saw the French take back a small area of land; and in the end November 1917, Battle of Cambrai, the British deployed 400 tanks in the first mass tank attack of the war. The sheer weight of the offensive punched through the German lines at last, but a lack of reserves saw the attack peter out before it could be properly exploited. A German counter attack saw the eight kilometer hole in their lines quickly filled and the original front line was restored once again.


The Russians Collapse WITH 1917 ABDICATION OF THE TSAR

Suddenly, on the Eastern Front, things took a dramatic turn: after the Germans had let the Communist revolutionary Lenin and his cohorts enter Russia with the deliberate intention of letting him stir up trouble, a popular revolution in March 1917 saw the abdication of the Tsar and the establishment of a new provisional government in Moscow.

However, much to Lenin's (and the Germans') anger, the new Russian government continued to participate in the war. In July, the Russians actually managed to make modest gains on the Galacian front, although an immediate German counter attack retook the lost areas and then pushed on to take the city of Riga and all of Latvia by October 1917.

The Russian surrender: on the right, the
victorious Germans, on the left, the new
Soviet representatives, who agreed to the
German occupation of a massive part of
Western Russia in exchange for peace.

Then in November 1917, the Communists seized power in a coup which finally saw Lenin come to power: on 20 November 1917, the Communists offered the Germans an armistice. In mid December, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed and all fighting ceased on the Eastern Front - Germany had won. The Germans had made spectacular territorial gains: virtually all of the Ukraine, Byelorussia and a large part of western Russia fell under German control in terms of the treaty. The occupying Germans were only expelled after their collapse in the West, over a year later.


YET More Battles at the Isonzo

On the southern front, the endless Battles of the Isonzo River continued. The Italian drives of 1917, which resulted in the 10th and 11th battles of the Isonzo, achieved nothing, breaking against the rock-solid German defense. Then in October, a renewed German-Austrian offensive at last succeeded in breaking the Italian line near the town of Caporetto and the first real gains of that campaign were made. The Italians suffered disastrously in this offensive: they lost 300,000 men as prisoners, and easily as many deserted. Concerned at the deteriorating situation, French and British troops were sent to bolster the Italian forces at their new position on the Piave River.


Greece Enters the War AGAINST CENTRAL POWERS

Finally, the stalemate in Greece came to an end with a formal invasion of the neutral part of that country by Allied troops in June 1917. The Greek king abdicated and the provisional government, recognized by the Allies alone, was installed over all of Greece, bringing all of that country formally into the war against the Central Powers.


Lawrence of Arabia - ARAB REVOLT AGAINST TURKS

After the initial British successes in the Middle East, 1917 saw them drive further north and attack the Turkish stronghold city of Gaza. The first two attacks on the city failed: but by November, other British gains in the region forced the Turks to evacuate the city. By December 1917, Jerusalem was taken by the British in an ironic re-enactment of the highpoint of the Crusades hundreds of years previously. 1917 also saw the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks on the Saudi-Arabian peninsula reach a climax, aided by the leadership of a British army officer named Colonel T. E. Lawrence, known as Lawrence of Arabia. The British also started rolling up other Turkish possessions in the Middle East: Baghdad fell, as did Ramadi on the Euphrates river and other important towns on the Tigris River. The net was closing on the Ottomans at last.


Rumania Pulls Out

Following the Russian collapse, Rumania threw in the towel: in May 1918, that country signed the Treaty of Bucharest which finally ended all sporadic resistance in that country and ceded important territories to Austro-Hungary and gave Germany a long term lease on Rumanian oil wells.


Austro-Hungarian Collapse AFTER CRUSHING DEFEAT at Battle of Vittorio Veneto

In September 1918, a combined Allied army of 700,000 men began an offensive in the Balkans against the south eastern reaches of the Austro-Hungarian empire in Serbia. The offensive was dramatically successful: by October, the Bulgarians were exhausted and surrendered, dropping out the war and their alliance with the Central Powers.

Then the Allied armies advanced into Rumania: a new provisional government in that country then tore up the treaty of Bucharest and re-entered the war on the side of the Allies. In a matter of months, the Austro-German successes in the south east turned sour. Belgrade was captured by the Allies on 1 November, while a surprise Italian invasion captured Albania.

On the Southern Front, a last Austrian offensive against the combined Italian, French and British emplacements along the Piave River in June 1918 was turned back; a failed offensive which cost 100,000 Austrian lives. As a result the combined Allied armies seized the initiative in Italy and at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto, fought from October to November 1918, the main Austrian army was destroyed, losing hundreds of thousands of prisoners and causing a general collapse, with thousands of demoralized soldiers streaming in a shambles back into Austria itself.

On 3 November, the city of Trieste finally fell to the Allies - the objective since 1915 - followed by Fiume two days later. The scale of the defeats served as the signal for the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Already the Czechs and the Slovaks had declared themselves independent; in October, the South Slavs declared themselves independent and in November the Hungarians set up their own government. The Austrians and Hungarians then signed an armistice with the Allies on 3 November 1918, and the last Habsburg Emperor ever, Charles I, abdicated. The Austrian Republic was proclaimed.


Turkish Collapse

In September 1918, the British finally routed the last Turkish forces in Palestine and quickly marched on into Lebanon and Syria, with Damascus falling in October. The French occupied Beirut and then the Turkish government surrendered: an armistice was concluded at the end of October which obliged Turkey to demobilize, break off relations with the Central Powers and allow Allied ships to pass through the Dardanelles.


Germans Launch Last Desperate Attack

Within the space of a year, the Germans had gone from what seemed to be a complete victory to total isolation and the collapse of all of their allies. The German High Command then drew together its reserves for one last push on the Western Front, being able to bring in significant reserves from the now defunct Eastern Front. In March 1918, they launched what was to be one of their biggest attacks ever; it smashed the British lines at Arras and drove them back 65 kilometers (40 miles) before being halted early in April by a French counter attack.

The Germans then renewed their offensive later in April, once again punching a further hole in the struggling British lines. In June a third attack, which took the French by surprise on the Aisne river, saw the Germans push to within 60 kilometers of Paris. The huge German gun, Big Bertha, made by the Krupp weapons factory, was then used to shell Paris, causing considerable anxiety in the French capital.

The end of the war comes for these men.

However, the Germans had left their offensive too late: by the time of the drive towards Paris, the first American troops had been deployed, and at the Battle of the Marne, before Paris, a combined French and fresh American force halted the German advance.

By the middle of July, the German offensive had run out of steam. Its soldiers were exhausted; political unrest was brewing at home; they were low on rations and supplies; all these factors combined to make them easy prey to an Allied counter offensive. In July, the Allies drove the Germans back over the Marne, retaking the initiative which they were never to lose again for the rest of the war.


ALLIED OFFENSIVE GAINS ADVANTAGE WITH FRESH AMERICAN TROOPS

In August, a British attack at Amiens saw the German lines begin to crack; a renewed Allied offensive leading to the Second Battle of the Somme and the Fifth Battle of Arras, saw the Germans forced back to what was their very last defensive position, the Hindenburg line, once again.

The arrival of fresh American troops
and equipment proved to the decisive
factor to swing the war against Germany.

In September, waves of fresh American troops captured 14,000 exhausted and virtually starving German troops at Saint-Mihiel, and then pushed on through the Argonne forest, breaking the German lines between Metz and Sedan.

With this major defeat, the German government asked for an armistice in October 1918 - this attempt to end the war failed when the American president Woodrow Wilson insisted on negotiating only with a democratic German government. The British then pushed home an attack in Belgium and Northern France and early in November American and French forces reached Sedan. By early November, the Hindenburg line had been broken and the Germans were in disarray.


Weimar Republic ESTABLISHED IN GERMANY

In Germany, the combined effects of starvation due to the Allied blockade; the military defeats and war weariness created ideal ground for revolution. The Communists launched a massive agitation program, with the conditions of the time creating many receptive ears.

Several localized Communist revolutions broke out: the German fleet mutinied; and an uprising dethroned the king of Bavaria. Minor democratic reforms were introduced and a limited election was held: the Social Democratic Party won the majority of votes. Its leader, Freiderich Ebert, became chancellor; in November the Kaiser, Wilhelm II, abdicated and went into exile in the Netherlands.

The first elected German government sat in the town of Weimar: the republic which they proclaimed on 9 November 1918 became known by that name thereafter.


WEIMAR REPUBLIC SURRENDERS, ACCEPTS VERSAILLES TREATY

The Weimar government then sent a delegation to the Allies to seek an immediate end to the war, and an armistice was signed on 11 November 1918. By this time, German military defeat loomed in all sectors. However, because the western front line never penetrated Germany proper right to the end of the war, many German soldiers were later to bitterly accuse the Weimar politicians of having "stabbed them in the back" before any final military defeat dictated the need for a surrender.

Treaty of Versailles which ended the war (which the Weimar politicians were forced to sign) made them even more unpopular and opened the way for a German nationalist revival which was later to be exploited by Adolf Hitler.


German Fleet Scuttled

In terms of the armistice, the remaining German fleet was surrendered to the Allies: all were interned at the British naval base of Scapa Flow in Scotland. The treaty of Versailles demanded that these ships all become the permanent property of the Allies. In protest, the German crews on the interned ships then scuttled their fleet in Scapa Flow.


The Forgotten Wars - China, Africa and South East Asia

The conflict in Europe and the Middle East is the best known part of the First World War: however, the "forgotten war" was fought out in the colonies, and included action in China, Africa and South East Asia. In August 1914, an Anglo-French force opened the war in the colonies by capturing Togoland from the Germans; the next month they captured the Cameroons.

In September 1914, the White South Africans, officially allied to Britain, invaded German South West Africa with relative ease, but attempts to crush the German forces in German East Africa (modern Tanzania) were much more difficult. The first attack on the German forces in East Africa (who were under the remarkable leadership of General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck) by British and Indian troops was repulsed in November 1914.

It was only one year later, that a combined British, South African and Portuguese army, placed under the leadership of former Boer War general Jan Smuts, managed to finally capture the main German East African towns. Lettow-Vorbeck was not captured: he and his troops retreated south in the colony, where they in 1917 invaded Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) and in November 1918, they began an invasion of Rhodesia.

The war in Africa was still raging when the armistice in Europe was signed: Lettow-Vorbeck himself only surrendered three days after the German surrender in Europe.


GERMANY LOSES COLONIES IN PACIFIC

In August 1914, New Zealand occupied the German colony in Samoa; while Australian forces occupied German possessions in the Bismarck Archipelago and New Guinea. The Japanese took the German held port of Shandong, China in November 1914, simultaneously taking the German-held Marshall Islands, the Mariana Islands, the Palau group of islands, and the Carolines.


RACIAL Consequences of the War

The First World War was a bloody, unnecessary and violent struggle which took the lives of over 8.4 million Whites over the space of the four years it was fought: a staggering average of 2 million per year.

Deaths as a result of World War One, by Country
Russia	1,700,000
France	1,357,800
British Empire	908,371
Italy	650,000
United States	126,000
Rumania	335,706
Serbia	45,000
Belgium	13,716
Greece	5000
Portugal	7222
Montenegro	3000
Germany	1,773,700
Austria-Hungary	1,200,000
Ottoman Empire	325,000
Bulgaria	87,500
Total	8,538,015

France was particularly badly hit: much of the war was fought on its territory and the population went into severe decline: the French government then opened up its borders to North African and Black African immigration to fill up its numbers.

Britain, although weakened, came off the lightest of the Western European powers: her losses, both in material and human terms, were amongst the lowest in Europe, and the British Empire even expanded in size as a result of the annexation of German territories.

The United States of America played a key role in deciding the war: the arrival of fresh, well armed and massive amounts of troops and material played a major role in stopping the final German attack and rolling up the German armies at the end of the war.

The World War One cemetery at Verdun.

The war also saw the final death of the Ottoman Empire which had so long dominated the Middle East. A whole new can of worms was to be opened for the British who found themselves trying to appease both World Zionism and Arab demands for self rule in Palestine: eventually the British would end up fighting a vicious terrorist war against Jewish nationalists in the region.

Russia ended the war in the grip of a Communist revolution and a civil war which would only end in 1924. The country had been devastated by years of misrule prior to the war, and suffered huge human and material losses as a result. It would be years before any semblance of stability was restored. Germany was devastated, although the war had never actually reached its territory (apart from the initial Russian excursion into East Prussia).

Racked by rebellion and revolution, the Weimar Republic in Germany was doomed to failure: economic collapse followed and was aggravated by the huge reparations which the country was forced to pay to the victors of the war. Germany was held to blame for the war: this was unjust, as the Germans were no more to blame for the war than any of the other European powers: all were short sighted and bloody minded enough to allow all the continent to descend into a madness which provided the mainspring for, yet, another Europe wide-conflict twenty years later.

[Stefanus]

March of the Titans
A History Of The White Race

Chapter 60: The October Revolution: Communism in Russia

The two uprisings in Imperial Russia, in March and October 1917, are together known as the Russian Revolution. After this revolution, the super power known as the Soviet Union was to be created: it would play a major role in world politics for just over 70 years before collapsing into itself, racked not only by Communism's inherent economic contradictions, but also destroyed by ethnic and racial conflict. The two revolutions are known as the February Revolution and October Revolution by name: both had tumultuous effects on 20th Century history.


Mounting Crises

The 1917 revolutions were not however the first attempts to overthrow the Tsar: the 1825 revolt against Tsar Nicholas 1 and the 1905 revolution, which ended in the Bloody Sunday Massacres in St. Petersburg, were evidence of a dissatisfaction with the Russian state going back decades.

Imperialist Russia was one of the original belligerents in the First World War: by 1917 however, the country had been defeated in more major battles than it had won. The country was ill equipped to fight a modern war: the underdeveloped and mismanaged economy, combined with centuries of autocratic Tsarist rule, created conditions ripe for revolution.

The Russian Duma, or parliament, sits in 1915.
The Tsar ignored constant advice from the Duma
advising him of serious trouble brewing.

Despite some limited reforms being introduced, which saw a highly restricted Duma, or parliament, coming into being, the Tsar retained virtual absolute power. Warnings issued to him, even by the upper class dominated Duma, were ignored.

Food shortages were common: Russian troops were the worst supplied of the war; often going for long periods without food or basic clothing, yet expected to fight for a system from which they had long since been alienated. By 1917, serious famine threatened much of Russia and the pro-reform parties in the Duma had a majority. All the signs were there that trouble was ahead: all were ignored.


The February Revolution

The deprivations of the war finally proved too much. By February 1917, large crowds had started to form daily demonstrations in Petrograd (now called St. Petersburg) protesting against the food shortages, against the undemocratic Tsar and against the war.

The Duma, while not leading the protest, was overtly sympathetic to the demands of the workers, with the largest party in the Duma being the moderate pro-reformist Socialist Workers Party.

On 23 February, some 90,000 people gathered for one of the biggest demonstrations yet: the principle demand of that protest was bread - the simplicity of the demand an indication of how desperate things had become. Despite police and troops being called in to disperse the crowd, the masses remained unmoved: most soldiers were, in any event, sympathetic with the crowd.

The next day, 24 February, tensions had risen visibly: half of all Petrograd turned out on strike: hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets, calling for an end to the Tsar's rule and for an end to the war which they saw as the Tsar's personal war - a not wholly inaccurate interpretation. By 25 February, the whole city had been engulfed in a strike: as the nation's capital, it brought the entire administration of the country and of the war to a halt.

Tsar Nicholas, his wife and one of his children.
All were to be murdered by the Communists
once the latter party had seized complete power.

Then the strike turned violent: several police stations were seized by bands of armed strikers and burned down; and universal suffrage elections to the first workers councils (called Soviets) were held in the factories in Petrograd. The pro-reform Socialist Workers Party easily won the majority votes in these Soviets - which quickly became the de facto local government bodies, appropriating many duties and responsibilities to themselves that were normally the preserve of the Tsarist government.


The Army Mutinies

By 26 February, the Tsar called out the Russian army in Petrograd to suppress the uprising: at first there were some violent clashes, but soon the troops mutinied and refused to fire on the workers: the first line of defense for the old order had collapsed under a wave of disloyalty caused by the Tsar's own short sightedness.

The Tsar then dissolved the pro-reform Duma: this body obeyed but informally reassembled and elected a provisional cabinet to run the state: by 27 February, there was virtually nothing left of the Tsar's administration and the informal Duma was the de facto government.

Then the army mutinied on a grand scale: in Petrograd, 150,000 soldiers joined the revolution in one go: together with the armed workers, the capital was completely seized and the remains of the Imperialist government driven out. The revolution had claimed some 1,500 lives up until that stage.


The Petrograd Soviet INITIALLY NOT COMMUNIST

Despite the Petrograd Soviets being firmly pro-reform, they were not dominated by the Communists. Together they elected an overall Soviet for Petrograd, and together with the Duma formed what was in reality a fairly moderate socialist administration whose first priority was to organize food supplies and the release of the hundreds of political prisoners who had been jailed by the Tsarist government.

Both the Duma and the Soviet in Petrograd also believed in continuing the war against Germany: despite the end of the war being a demand specifically made by the crowds who had driven the Tsarist government out of the capital.


GERMANS ALLOW Vladimir Lenin TO ENTER RUSSIA

Vladimir Illyich Ulynaov, who later adopted the name of Lenin, was born in 1870 and had become a convinced revolutionary by the age of 17, when his brother had been executed for his part in a plot to assassinate the Tsar.

By then already a follower of Karl Marx, who in 1848 had published the Communist Manifesto in Germany and who had thereby formalized the ideology of Communism, Lenin was exiled to Siberia by the Tsarist police for three years from 1887 to 1890.

On his release, he fled to Western Europe and built up the radical wing of the Russian Communist Party, mainly through the publication of his famous newspaper "Iskra" (the Spark) from Switzerland. Lenin returned briefly to Russia in 1905 to take part in the abortive revolution of that year. When it failed and was suppressed, he fled once more into exile.

Lenin addresses a meeting - to his left,
Leon Trotsky, the principal organizer of
the Communist Revolution and the real
brains behind the creation of the Soviet Union.

The February revolution of 1917 caught Lenin unprepared: he was still in Switzerland when it broke out. He immediately made an offer to the German government: if they would give him safe passage to Russia, he would endeavor to take Russia out of the war. The Germans agreed to this plan, and along with a tight group of selected revolutionaries, Lenin was put across the Russian border by the Germans in a secret operation which involved the Communists hiding in a railway truck. Lenin finally arrived in Petrograd in April 1917, with his small but tough and trained hard core group of revolutionaries.


Lenin and the Bolsheviks

Upon Lenin's return, the almost dormant Communist Party was reactivated and sprang into life: Lenin demanded of the Petrograd Soviet that they seize land, distribute it to the peasantry; and end the war. Lenin's Communists, who had been created out of a split at the 1903 Russian Socialist Workers' Party conference (at the time of the split, Lenin had carried the majority of party delegates with him - they became known as the "Bolshevists", or "majority", while the remainder were known as the "Mensheviks", or "minority". These names did not however reflect their support amongst the population: the Mensheviks, or moderate Socialists, had the most support, as the few elections that were held in 1917, proved beyond doubt.) Thus it was that Lenin's demands fell onto Menshevik ears in the Petrograd Soviet and were ignored.


The Tsar Abdicates

Before Lenin had arrived, the Soviet in Petrograd had already recognized the Duma as the legitimate government of Russia: dominated by Mensheviks, the Duma formally took over the administration of the country as a whole on 28 February. The Tsar, realizing that the game was up, formally abdicated on 2 March 1917.


The Revolution Spreads

Using the Petrograd revolution as a model, similar uprisings then occurred throughout Russia: in each case workers' committees, or Soviets, were created in tandem with civil authorities created by the Duma. In virtually all cases, the Soviets were dominated by Mensheviks and all held themselves subservient to the central Menshevik government.

The provisional government then disbanded the Tsarist police, repealed all limitations on freedom of opinion, press, and association, and repealed all laws which discriminated against Jews. Despite all these moves, the basic structure of the society remained unaltered: this was exemplified by the determination to continue the war at all costs.

Slowly the workers' Soviets began to become more radical, and it was not long before the subservience which had been the characteristic of the first Soviets began to change. After a few months it became clear that the Duma government only existed because the Soviets tolerated it: all the actual infrastructure of the state was controlled by the workers' committees, and the Duma government exercised power in name only.

Before Lenin's return from exile in April, Bolshevik policy had been formulated by its internal leaders, Lev Kamenev and Joseph Stalin. At that stage they favored conditional support of the Duma, or Provisional Government, and were in the process of making a political bloc with the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.

Lenin's return to Russia in April changed that: he was implacably opposed to co-operation with the Menshevik government and immediately redirected the Bolsheviks into breaking with the Menshevik government and towards establishing control of the Soviets. In this way, Lenin wanted to capture power in the country as a whole, and not to share it with the Mensheviks or others.


Leon Trotsky Returns

Then, Lenin's greatest organizer, and the man who can quite rightly be called the brains behind the Bolshevik revolution, Leon Trotsky, arrived back in Russia from America where he had been in exile since escaping from a Tsarist prison following his arrest during the abortive 1905 revolution.

Trotsky was to lead the Bolshevik revolution: unquestionably, without him it would never have occurred. Trotsky's arrival in May 1917 in Russia, accompanied by a large number of international Communists, greatly strengthened Lenin in his struggle with the Mensheviks.

This was primarily because Trotsky was a brilliant organizer, but also because he brought with him a considerable amount of money from Jewish sympathizers in the United States, particularly from the banker Jacob Schiff of the firm Kuhn Loeb & Co. - the latent anti-Semitism of successive Tsarist governments had made the revolutionary movement a cause celebre amongst Western Jews.


The Soviets Flex their Muscle

In April, the first serious confrontation between the Duma government and the Petrograd Soviet occurred: in that month, the Duma government issued a pronouncement to the Western Allied powers stating that it would continue the war with Germany and that it fully intended to annex territories from the defeated Central Powers at the conclusion of the war.

This pronouncement flew directly in the face of the Petrograd Soviet's political position on the war: the month before, in March, it had issued a proclamation calling for the end of the war and the creation of peace without annexations and reparations.

The Duma government's announcement immediately led to demonstrations in the streets of Petrograd: the unwillingness of the Russian masses to continue with the war which had already killed over a million and a half Russians had been completely underestimated. The Petrograd Soviet then assumed sole control in the capital city: the Duma government was summarily ejected and the entire army garrison in Petrograd obeyed the orders given to it by the Soviet. This marked a sea change: although the Bolsheviks were still a minority, their policy had in effect been endorsed by the leading Soviet in the country.


First Congress of Soviets

In June 1917, the Soviets from around the country gathered in Petrograd for the first all-Russian Congress of Soviets. It was still heavily dominated by Mensheviks and Duma government supporters: but cracks were beginning to appear.

The Duma government had failed to address the major issues facing the country: the lack of food, inflation and continued reverses on the war front created ever deepening crises for the government. The Duma government also had not yet held proper democratic elections, arguing that it was not possible to do so while so much of the country was still under German occupation.

Then the Congress of Soviets declared itself in favor of state monopolies of the bread industry and other essential items, the first socialist reform that had actually been proposed. The Duma government turned this request down, arguing that the first issue to be resolved was winning the war, and that all other things would be addressed afterwards. With policy pronouncements such as this, the Duma government was, without realizing it, continually alienating the Soviets, upon whom it depended to stay in power.


Russian Army Discipline Cracks

Then the Menshevik Minister of War in the Duma government, Alexander Kerensky, compounded the crisis by launching a major Russian offensive on 16 June 1917: it was an utter failure and discipline in the Russian army collapsed. Millions of soldiers deserted and flooded back into the Russian cities to escape the fighting at the front. Alienated, hungry and angry, they were ideal revolutionary material and the Bolsheviks were able to engage in mass recruiting led by the extremely able Trotsky.


The July Uprising

News of the defeat at the front arrived while the Congress of Soviets was still in session: under pressure from the Petrograd Soviet the congress then issued a demand calling for the abolition of the Duma and the holding of formal democratic elections on 30 September.

The momentum builds: Soviet
supporters rally in the streets,
supported by the army.

The Petrograd Soviet then organized a demonstration in support of its demands: the size of the turnout - estimated to be at least a half million - surprised even the Petrograd Soviet organizers: an even greater shock was the realization that the majority of the demonstrators were Bolshevik supporters. The demonstration grew by leaps and bounds: from 3 to 5 July, the crowd was joined by armed soldiers from the city garrison and sailors from the nearby naval fortress of Kronstadt.

The mass then descended on the Tauride Palace, where the Congress of Soviets was in session, demanding that it take sole power in the country and eject the Duma government for once and for all.


Bolshevik Leadership

The Bolsheviks naturally assumed the leadership of this great demonstration: Lenin and Trotsky could be seen up and down the streets of Petrograd, speaking and whipping up the crowds with appeals for bread, peace and socialism.

Although the demonstration was largely non-violent, the executive committee of the Congress of Soviets denounced it as a counter-revolutionary Bolshevik insurrection and summoned troops from the front to disperse the demonstrators. The troops arrived on 5 July - by which time the majority of the crowd had dispersed. The troops however made a symbolic gesture by placing themselves under the command of the Congress of Soviets - effectively ignoring the Duma government.


Kerensky Government

In what was in retrospect an act of supreme stupidity, the Duma then elected the unpopular Kerensky as prime minister on 10 July. His disastrous record as minister of war had been the primary cause of the mass uprising and the break down of the Russian army; now he was head of a government already struggling to keep control over the increasingly restless Soviets.

Kerensky then further destroyed what little support he may have had by postponing the long promised democratic elections until the end of November. He then, finally, moved against the Bolsheviks: Lenin's entry into the country, courtesy of the Germans was exposed and he was denounced as a German agent: Trotsky was arrested and kept in detention without trial.

Alexander Kerensky - a failed military
leader and possibly the second most
unpopular Russian leader after the
Tsar himself: he fled Russia after the
Communists came to power and ended
up running a restaurant in America.

The Kerensky government also refused to listen to the increasing clamor for economic reform, ignoring all demands, from the most reasonable to the outrageous (such as the seizure of all land and the outlawing of private property). In short, Kerensky did nothing, always a recipe for trouble.


The Kornilov Incident

Convinced that Kerensky could not cope with the situation, some conservative Russian army elements led by the newly appointed commander in chief of the army, general Kornilov, then made plans to occupy Petrograd and dissolve the Soviet in the city. For a while Kerensky supported the plan, but when he learned that Kornilov intended to depose the Duma government as well, he warned the Petrograd Soviet and appealed for their help in stopping Kornilov.

The Petrograd Soviet then organized the soldiers and workers in the city into armed formations to ward off the Kornilov invasion: the leadership fell almost immediately to the Bolsheviks. As Kornilov's army approached the city, they were met by large numbers of workers and soldiers under the Bolshevist banner, proclaiming friendship and peace. Kornilov's army dissolved in front of his eyes and he was arrested without a shot being fired.

The Kornilov fiasco saw the workers of Petrograd being formally armed and the Bolsheviks for the first time won an outright majority on the workers' Soviet in the city. At last they were the most popular party in the capital of the country. The popularity of the Bolsheviks then spread to other Soviets around the country: by October, they dominated the Congress of Soviets as well, in effect meaning that the majority of workers' organization in the country were under their influence.


Trotsky and the Military Revolutionary Council

Still however, the Duma government persisted in claiming to be the only legitimate government of the country. Kerensky tried to break up the armed militancy of the Petrograd soldiers' garrison by ordering part of them to the war front: they simply refused and the government was unable to coerce them into doing so.

On 16 October, the Petrograd Soviet created the "Military Revolutionary Committee for the defense of the capital against the counter revolution" - with the Bolshevists achieving an outright majority in the election to head this council. The Mensheviks and others then refused to participate: full control of all military forces in the capital city of Russia then fell under the control of the now freed Trotsky.


The October Revolution

As soon as Trotsky had achieved this important breakthrough, he realized that the time was never better to act decisively. Under his orders, the Military Revolutionary Council seized all important government buildings and sites over the night of the 24-25 October 1917: the October Revolution, which would create the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR), was launched.

Armed workers, soldiers, and sailors stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, the headquarters of the Duma government and physically ejected them from office. The seizure of power was virtually bloodless.

On 25 October, Trotsky officially announced the end of the Duma government: many of its ministers were arrested and Kerensky fled into exile in America. The second Congress of Soviets was held the next month: it overwhelmingly endorsed the new Bolshevik government. Trotsky's organizational abilities had achieved the transformation of Russia into a Bolshevist dominated state within six months of his arrival in the country.


The New Government - Soviet People's Commissars

The Congress of Soviets then adopted a constitution in which supreme authority was vested in the congress itself. Execution of the decisions of the congress was entrusted to the Soviet of People's Commissars - a gathering of several hundred regional leaders (the "commissars") which was made subject to the authority of the Congress of Soviets and to its Central Executive Committee.

Each of the people's commissars was the chairman of a commissariat (commission) corresponding to the ministries of other governments. Lenin was elected head of the Council of People's Commissars.

The Congress of Soviets then called upon the new government to immediately end the war and to engage in the redistribution of land and economic wealth to the masses - this done, the Congress of Soviets then adjourned. The decisions of the Congress of Soviets on peace and land evoked widespread support for the new government, and they were decisive in assuring victory to the Bolsheviks in other cities and in the provinces.

All banks were nationalized and all factories placed under the control of local Soviets: in short, the most extreme tenets of Marxism were implemented with great haste.

The new government then ended the war with Germany: in terms of the treaty of Brest Litovsk, signed in March 1918, the Ukraine and other parts of western Russia were ceded to Germany.

The Black Hundreds: a pro-Tsarist militia,
march through the city of Odessa. Violently
anti-Jewish, they were later to form part of
the anti-Communist army which battled the
Red Army for supremacy in the aftermath of
the October revolution.

Trotsky's Troops Disperse Democratic Government

Seemingly safe in their hold on power, the new government then held the longed for democratic elections. The results were a rude shock: the Bolsheviks received one of the lowest numbers of votes. Trotsky refused to accept the outcome: the new parliament was physically attacked under his orders by troops from the Military Revolutionary Council and dispersed, never to be heard of again.

From that time on the ideal of a democratically elected government was simply dropped from the political program of the Russian Communist Party, and rule by the commissar system continued as if nothing had happened.


Civil War ERUPTS BETWEEN REDS AND ANTI-COMMUNIST "WHITES"

Although the Tsarist government had been universally unpopular, the only democratic election showed that the Bolsheviks were most certainly not the firm favorites to replace them: opposition to the Bolsheviks erupted into a civil war that started in 1918, after the anti-Bolshevik democratically elected parliament was smashed up by Trotsky.

The Bolsheviks became known as the Reds - after their flag - and the anti-Bolsheviks gathered together into an alliance that became known as the Whites. Red and White armies fought several major battles, the most ferocious in 1920, with isolated battles sputtering on until 1924.

The devastation of the Russian civil war
upon the Russian and Ukrainian people:
a Ukrainian family, suffering from the
emaciating disease typhus, sit by the
wreckage of their house.

Initially the Whites had the potential to overthrow the Bolshevik dictatorship: however, they destroyed their chances of getting mass support from the anti-Bolshevik voters by associating themselves with the Tsar. Faced with a choice between the Bolsheviks or a return by the Tsar, most Russians stayed neutral, allowing the better armed Reds to finally wear the Whites down.


The Red Terror

Moving the capital to Moscow, the Bolsheviks then instituted what became known as the Red Terror - all opponents, suspected or real - and there were many of them - were arrested and most often executed in a wave of violence which made even the previous Tsarist system seem mild.

A secret police and internal security agency was set up, later to became known as the Cheka, through which opponents of the state were hunted down. Workers' strikes, peasant uprisings, and a sailors' revolt known as the Kronstadt Rebellion were quickly crushed. Victims included the Tsar and his entire family, gunned down and buried anonymously by Cheka policemen after months in detention.

On 30 December 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formally established when the ethnic territories of the former Russian Empire were united with the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR).

[Stefanus]

March of the Titans
A History Of The White Race

Chapter 61: The Suppressed Link - Jews and Communism


Part One: The Ideological Origin of Communism

The creation of the Soviet Union was to impact upon history for the greater part of the 20th Century - and an understanding of the sub-racial and ideological divisions it caused is crucial to understanding not only the events of that century, but also to understanding the flare up of anti-Jewish sentiment which culminated in the creation of the Third Reich in Germany.

For the Soviet Union's best kept secret was that the Bolshevik elite had one outstanding characteristic: it had an inordinately large number of Jews in its controlling body.

Above left and right: Two extracts from the Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 18, page 717, 1984, Chicago, describing Leon Trotsky's critical role in the creation of the Communist state of the Soviet Union, describing him as the "outstanding leader" of the Russian Communist Revolution. The same article then goes on, above left, to reveal that Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, of a Jewish family from the Ukraine.

Virtually all of the important Bolshevik leaders were Jews: they included the "father of the revolution," Leon Trotsky (whose real name was Lev Bronstein: in an attempt to hide his Jewishness, he adopted the name Trotsky); Lev Kamenev, the early Bolshevik leader who later went on to become a leading member of the Politburo, was born with the surname Rosenfeld; Grigori Zinoviev, head of the Petrograd Soviet, was born with the surname Apfelbaum; and many other famous Communists of the time, such as Karl Radek, Lazar Kaganovich; and Moses Urtisky, (the head of the Cheka) who all changed their names for reasons similar to that of Trotsky.

The Bolshevik's Party's Central Committee chairman, Yakov Sverdlov, was also Jewish - and it was he who gave the order to the Jewish Soviet secret policeman, Yurovsky, to murder the Tsar - Yurovsky personally carried out this order.


Karl Marx - Descendant of a family of rabbis

As if the Russian Revolution was not enough, the originator of the Communist ideology itself, Karl Marx, was also a Jew, with his family name in reality being Mordechai.

The large Jewish role in the Russian revolution, combined with the fact that Marx had been born a Jew, was manna from heaven for the European anti-Semitic movement, and the link between Jews and Communism was exploited to the hilt, particularly by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist (Nazi) movement in Germany during the 1920s.

Above left: Karl Marx, whose real family name was Mordechai, originator of the Communist ideology. Above right: An extract from the Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 11, page 459, 1984, Chicago, revealing Karl Marx's Jewish ancestry.[/B]

It was not only in Germany that the association of Jews with Communism was made: all over the world Jews became associated with radical political movements, sometimes justifiably so, other times not. Nonetheless, the presence of so many Jews in the creation of the Soviet Union played a massive role in justifying anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe prior to, and with, the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Directly after the First World War, there were another three specifically Jewish Communist revolutions in Europe itself:

• the German Jew, Kurt Eisner, led a short lived communist revolution in Munich, Bavaria from November 1918 to February 1919 (at the same time that Adolf Hitler was an unknown soldier in that city - the effect of being a first hand witness to a Jewish and Communist-led revolution helped to cement Hitler's anti-Communist and anti-Jewish feelings);
  
  
• the short lived Sparticus uprising in Berlin (September 1918 to January 1919) led by the German Jews, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg; and
  
  
• the short lived Communist tyranny in Hungary led by the Jew, Bela Kun (Cohen), from March to August 1919.

Above left: The Jewish Communist leader Karl Liebknecht speaks in Berlin; and alongside, his alter ego, the Jewess Rosa Luxembourg. These two leaders of the early German Communist Party helped to cement the association of Jews and Communism in the German publics' mind.

These incidents all helped to identify Jews with Communism in the public mind: in this light it becomes perfectly explicable why the Nazi Party was able to win support on an anti-Communist and open anti-Jewish platform.


Jews in the Later Soviet Union

Jews retained their leading roles in Soviet society until growing anti-Semitism within the Communist Party itself led to a change in policy. Trotsky was the first major Jewish casualty: he split with Stalin over the issue of international socialism and the need to spread the revolution: he was forced into exile in 1929. He was then assassinated in Mexico City in 1940, allegedly by a Stalinist agent.

By the middle 1930s, Stalin had started purging the Soviet Communist Party of other important Jews. The period immediately following the end of the Second World War and the creation of the state of Israel saw another rise in Soviet anti-Semitism: by 1953, Stalin had started purging all Jews in the Soviet hierarchy who were also Zionists.

The Communists, quite correctly, saw Zionism as Jewish nationalism and contrary to the interests of an international socialist brotherhood. Many leading Russian Jews were also fervent Zionists: and it was this group that was then targeted for persecution, and who became famous throughout the rest of the lifetime of the Soviet Union as the victims of Soviet anti-Semitism.

Zionism, as an expression of Jewish separatism was declared a crime against the Soviet state, and Zionist organizations were forced to close down their operations inside the Soviet Union.

East Germany, as an official Soviet satellite, was forbidden by Moscow to make any reparations payments to the Zionist created state of Israel for the treatment of Jews by the Nazi government.

Not all Russian Jews were Zionists: those who were not, were generally left alone and some did achieve prominent positions within the post Stalin Soviet Union.

Many thousands of Jews did however leave the Soviet Union - estimates putting the total number at over the one million mark, with most settling in Israel or the United States.

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March of the Titans
A History Of The White Race

Chapter 61: The Suppressed Link - Jews and Communism


Part Two: The Encyclopedia Judaica Confirms the Jewish Origin of Communism

The Encyclopedia Judaica, published in Jerusalem, Israel, by Jews, is available at most large public libraries and is in English. This reference book for all things Jewish is quite open about the Jewish role in Communism, particularly early Communism, and contains a large number of admissions in this regard.

Above: The front cover of Volume 5 of the 1971 edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica, published in Jerusalem, Israel, from where all of the extracts below have been taken.

Under the entry for "Communism": in Volume 5, page 792, the following appears:

"The Communist Movement and ideology played an important part In Jewish life, particularly in the 1920s, 1930s and during and after World War II." (below)

On page 793, the same Encyclopedia Judaica then goes on to say that "Communist trends became widespread in virtually all Jewish communities. In some countries, Jews became the leading element in the legal and illegal Communist Parties.."

The Encyclopedia Judaica on page 793 then goes on to reveal that the Communist International actually instructed Jews to change their names so as "not confirm right-wing propaganda that presented Communism as an alien, Jewish conspiracy." (above).

JEWISH ROLE IN THE RUSSIAN COMMUNIST REVOLUTION

The Encyclopedia Judaica then goes on to describe the overwhelming role Jews played in creating the Soviet Union. On page 792 it says : "Individual Jews played an important role in the early stages of Bolshevism and the Soviet Regime" (below).

On page 794 of the Encyclopedia Judaica, this Jewish reference book then goes to list the Jews prominent in the upper command of the Russian Communist party: these included Maxim Litvinov, (Later foreign minister of Soviet Russia); Grigori Zinoviev, Lwev Kamenev, Jacob Sverdlov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Karl Radek, amongst many others. (Below: page 794 of the Encyclopedia Judaica).



The organizer of the Revolution was Trotsky, who prepared a special committee to plan and prepare the coup which brought the Communists to power. according tot he Encyclopedia Judaica, this committee, called the Military Revolutionary Committee,, had five members - three of whom were Jews. (below)



The Politburo - the supreme governing body of Russia immediately after the Communist Revolution - had four Jews amongst its seven members, according to page 797 of the Jewish Encyclopedia Judaica (below).



While many have alleged that Lenin was also Jewish, or at least of part Jewish origin, there is little concrete evidence of this. However, Lenin was ardently pro-Jewish, branding anti-Semitism (correctly) as "counter revolutionary" (Encyclopedia Judaica, page 798). A statement against anti-Semitism was made by Lenin in March 1919 and was "one of the rare occasions when his voice was put on a phonograph record to be used in a mass campaign against the counterrevolutionary incitement against the Jews," according to the Encyclopedia Judaica, page 798. One of the first laws passed by the new Soviet Communist government was to outlaw anti-Semitism (Encyclopedia Judaica, page 798, extract above).

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March of the Titans
A History Of The White Race

Chapter 61: The Suppressed Link - Jews and Communism


Part Three: Winston Churchill on the Jewish Role in Communism

The preponderance of Jews in the inner sanctum of the Communist revolution in Russia was in fact well known at the time that the revolution took place: it is only in the post Second World War II era that this fact has been suppressed. A good example of the contemporary awareness of the Jewish nature of early Russian Communism can be found in the writing of the young Winston Churchill, later to become prime minister of Great Britain, who, in 1920, was also working as journalist.

In 1920, Churchill wrote a full page article for the Illustrated Sunday Herald on 8 February 1920 detailing the Jewish involvement in the revolution. Churchill discusses in this article the split between Jews: some are Communists, he wrote, while others are Jewish nationalists. Churchill favored the Jewish nationalists, (and of course they indeed fall foul of the Jewish Communists, eventually becoming bitter enemies) and he appealed to what he called "loyal Jews" to ensure that the Communist Jews did not succeed. Churchill went even further and blamed the Jews for "every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century", writing :

"This movement amongst the Jews (the Russian Revolution) is not new. From the days of Spartacus Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kuhn (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this world wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and the reconstruction of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Nesta Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities has gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire. There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistic Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from Jewish leaders." (ibid)

Churchill also pointedly accused Leon Trotsky (Bronstein) of wanting to establish a "world wide Communistic state under Jewish domination" in this article.

Winston Churchill, later prime minister of Britain, pointed out the large Jewish involvement in the Communist revolution in an article published in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, 8 February 1920. See in particular under the heading "Terrorist Jews", enlarged below. For the full article, click here (NB: large file)

Churchill was not the only journalist to note the Jewish role in the Russian Revolution: Robert Wilton, the chief correspondent for the London Times, who was stationed in Russia at the time, wrote in his book The Last Days of the Romanovs (Hornton Butterworth, London, 1920, pages 147, 22-28, 81,118, 199, 127, 139-148) that "90 per cent" of the new Soviet government was composed of Jews. The correspondent for the London Morning Post, Victor Marsden, went further and actually compiled a list of names of the top 545 Bolshevik officials: of these, Marsden said, 454 were Jews and only 23 Non-Jewish Russians. (All These Things, A.N. Field, Appendix B pages 274-276).

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March of the Titans
A History Of The White Race

Chapter 61: The Suppressed Link - Jews and Communism


Part Four: The US Army's Telegrams on the Jewish role in Communism

The American Army Intelligence Service had its agents in Russia at the time of the Communist Revolution, and the Jewish nature of that revolution is accurately reflected in those reports.

An American Senate subcommittee investigation into the Russian Revolution heard evidence, put on congressional record, that "(I)n December 1919, under the presidency of a man named Apfelbaum (Zinovieff) . . . out of the 388 members of the Bolshevik central government, only 16 happened to be real Russians, and all the rest (with the exception of a Negro from the U.S.) were Jews" (U.S. Senate Document 62, 1919).

Below: Both these telegrams are from official US National Archives: the upper one, State Department document 861.00/1757 was sent on 2 May 1918, from Moscow by US Consul General Summers. The lower one, State Department document 861.00/2205, was sent from Vladivostok on 5 July 1918, by US Consul Caldwell. Both describe the domination of the Bolshevik Communists by Jews, using the words "Fifty per cent of Soviet Government in each town consists of Jews of the worst type..." Copies of documents from the US National Archives are freely available to anyone from the Washington DC, USA, office.

US Army Intelligence Reports CONFIRM JEWISH ROLE IN SOVIET REVOLUTION, COMMUNISM

However, none of these authorities quoted above dared to use quite the language of a US Military Intelligence officer, one captain Montgomery Schuyler, who sent two reports to Washington in March and June 1919, describing in graphic detail the Jewish role in the Russian Revolution. Both these reports were only declassified in September 1957 and the originals are still held in the US National Archives in Washington, open for public inspection.

The first report, sent from Omsk on 1 March 1919, contains the following paragraph:

"it is probably unwise to say this loudly in the United States but the Bolshevik movement is and has been since its beginning, guided and controlled by Russian Jews of the greasiest type..."

The second report, dated 9 June 1919, and sent from Vladivostok, said that of the "384 commissars there were 2 Negroes, 13 Russians, 15 Chinamen, 22 Armenians and more than 300 Jews. Of the latter number 264 had come to Russia from the United States since the downfall of the Imperial Government."

Below: Both these American army military intelligence reports are freely available from the US National Archives in Washington DC. They were written by Captain Montgomery Schuyler, US Army. Schuyler made a point of the heavy Jewish involvement in the Communist revolution. Schuyler writes that "It is probably unwise to say this loudly in the United States but the Bolshevik movement is and has been since its beginning guided and controlled but Russians Jews of the greasiest type.." and goes on to point out that of the total 384 commissars running the Soviet Union, more than 300 were Jews."

The importance of this information does not need to be overemphasized in the light of the crucial governing role the commissars played in the running the early Soviet society.

It therefore came as no surprise when anti-Semitism was duly entered into the Soviet law books as a death penalty crime - although latent anti-Semitism simmered even in Communist Party circles, flaring up quite seriously when a Jewish woman, Fanny Kaplan, tried to assassinate Lenin by literally stabbing him in the back.

Eventually, as outlined earlier, the hardcore Communists were to part ways with the Jewish nationalists, or Zionists, and the two camps were to become bitter enemies, a situation which persisted right until the collapse of the Soviet Union late in the 20the Century.


AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY ALSO JEWISH

Jews were also behind the American Communist Party, which although politically unsuccessful, was very successful in its espionage and infiltration activities, eventually reaching right into the Civil Rights Movement and that group's leader, Martin Luther King.

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, published in Jerusalem, Israel (1971), page 804 (extract below)

"the list of Jews who played a prominent role in the leadership and factional infighting of the American Communist Party is a long one . . . Many American Jewish authors and intellectuals, some of whom later recanted, were active in editing Communist publications and spreading party propaganda . . among them Micheal Gold, Howard Fast and Bertram Wolfe."

American Jewish Communist Spies gave secrets of Atom Bomb to Soviets

Many of the Soviet spies arrested by the American government during the Cold War have been Jewish, and none have been more damaging than the group of spies who passed the secret of the Atom Bomb to the Soviet Union.

This group of Communist spies was all Jewish, from the ringleaders, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, to the actual scientists working at the top secret Los Alamos laboratory, namely David Greenglass and Theodore Hallsberg. The latter actually passed the atomic secrets to the Rosenbergs, who then passed it onto their Soviet handlers, via their Jewish courier, Harry Gold.

Above: the team of American Jewish Communists who passed the USA's secrets of the Atom Bomb to the Soviet Union after the Second World War, enabling the latter country to explode its first atom bomb in 1948. From left to right: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the spy ring leaders, executed at Sing Sing prison; David Greenglass, scientist at Los Alamos; Theodore Hallsberg, scientist at Los Alamos, and Harry Gold, courier for the group to their Soviet handler.

Despite the overwhelming preponderance of Jews in Communist parties and movements world wide, it would however be incorrect to allege that all Jews were or are Communists, as the millions of Jewish capitalists and as the conflict between Zionist Jews and Communist Jews both attest.. It is however accurate to say that individual Jews, from Karl Marx onwards, have provided the mainspring for Communist activities.

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March of the Titans
A History Of The White Race

Chapter 62: The Second Great Brothers' War - World War II


PART ONE: From Versailles to operation barbarossa (1919-1941)

As staggering as had the cost been of the First World War, even that disaster paled into insignificance with the war which became the single greatest conflict of all time: the Second World War. This war saw all of Europe consumed into a conflict in which the total dead of the First World War would be surpassed by the dead of one country alone: it marked the first total and ideological war which Europe had ever seen.


The Treaty of Versailles

It is no exaggeration to say that the Second World War started with the treaty that ended the first one: the Treaty of Versailles, drawn up by the victors of the First World War treated Germany and her allies very badly, blaming them for a war which had been as much the Allies fault as anybody else.

Germany was stripped of huge pieces of territory in all directions.

• In the west, the province of Alsace Lorraine was ceded to France;
• three German districts were given to Belgium;
• half of the state of Schleswig was given to Denmark; and
• a large slice of Germany, extending 50 kilometers west of the Rhine, was placed under effective French control by the creation of a demilitarized "buffer" zone.
• In the east, the German city of Danzig was declared a "free city" under control of the new established League of Nations (the forerunner to the United Nations): in reality it was run by Poland.
• In addition to this, a huge swathe of German land, complete with German inhabitants, was ceded directly to Poland, cutting Germany into two parts, with East Prussia being isolated on the Baltic coast;
• a massive part of Silesia in central Germany was given to Poland as well; and
• a portion of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire which was traditionally German, was cut away to form the new state of Czechoslovakia.

All told, Germany lost some 25,000 square miles of territory inhabited by nearly seven million Germans: it was a recipe for a nationalist revival. The union of Germany and Austria - the logical consequence of the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was also strictly forbidden, crippling Austria economically.


Military Restrictions AND Reparations

The German army was placed under great restrictions: limited to 100,000 men, no important naval units; and no air force at all. These measures were taken as personal insults by the Prussian militarists. Finally, foreign observers were stationed in Germany to keep an eye on factories which might be used to make munitions.

Germany was then presented with a bill for the war, again based on the totally false grounds that Germany had alone been responsible for the conflict. An immediate payment of the then amount of $5,000,000,000 was demanded and paid - by the exchange rate of the end of the 20th century, this would probably amount to several hundred times that figure.

This was however was not all: when the Allies finally fixed the full amount of the reparations bill in 1921, it was put at a further $32,000,000,000 - in value at the time. It was not physically possible for Germany to meet this demand, but nonetheless the Weimar government, established by the Social Democratic Party government in Germany, was forced to sign the treaties: thereby earning the enduring hatred of a large number of Germans.


German Economic Collapse FOLLOWS FIRST MAJOR PAYMENT

In August 1921, Germany made a payment of $250,000,000 - only a fraction of the amount demanded, but in real terms a staggering amount. Immediately the German economy crashed with this massive pay-out impacting on its foreign reserves.

The German currency failed completely: in January 1923, one US dollar was worth 896 Marks: by November 1923, one dollar was worth 6,666,666,666,667 Marks.

Unable to make any more payments, Germany threatened defaulting on the next reparations bill. In retaliation, the French army then invaded the Saar demilitarized area, establishing martial law in the region. The French used Black African occupation troops in this move: something which caused great resentment in Germany.

Only in 1924, did the American government intervene with a massive loan in terms of a plan drawn up by the banker Charles Dawes: the bail out became known as part of the Dawes plan, which helped to stabilize the German economy, although it was never to recover fully until after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.


The League of Nations

In 1920, the international community created the League of Nations in an attempt to establish a lasting peace. Despite some small successes, the League never addressed itself to the real cause of conflict: the provisions of the treaty of Versailles. Although the European states tried to address some issues of potential conflict with treaties in the 1920s - most notably the Pact of Locarno and the Kellogg-Briand treaty, nothing was done to lift Germany out of the state in which it had been placed.

The advent of the Great Depression in 1929 made the economy even worse and paved the way for the coming to power of the German nationalist Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler speaks in the German Reichstag,
1935: "Not only have I united the German
people politically, but I have also rearmed
them. I have also endeavored to destroy,
sheet by sheet, that treaty (Versailles) which
in its 448 articles contains the vilest
oppression which peoples and human beings
have ever been expected to endure."

The state that Hitler created is the subject of another chapter: suffice to say here that it was by exploiting German grievances with the Treaty of Versailles, both in terms of national pride and territorial losses; and by pulling the German economy back on track, that Hitler was able to come to power with the support of the majority of Germans.


Hitler Overthrows the Treaty of Versailles

An important part of Hitler's political program was the overthrow of the Treaty of Versailles: as a first stage he unilaterally re-armed Germany and refused to pay any more reparations.

Then Hitler started retaking the areas lost by Germany in which Germans still lived: the Saar was occupied in 1936 (the French had left a while earlier, but the region still was officially a demilitarized zone); in 1938, Austria was annexed to Germany and in that same year Czechoslovakia was broken up, with the region in which a majority of Germans (3.5 million of them) lived, the Sudetenland, being formally annexed to Germany.

Further parts of Czechoslovakia that were ethnically Polish and Hungarian were given to those two countries; the eastern section of the country was made independent as the Slovak Republic. The remainder of Czechoslovakia was then made into a German protectorate.


The Polish Question and the Outbreak of Hostilities

Then Hitler turned his attention to the Polish corridor made up of former German territory and the city of Danzig. At first restricting himself to requesting road and rail links between Germany and East Prussia, Hitler decided on a military option after these overtures were rejected by the Poles. Alleging that Germans were being maltreated by the Poles - and in certain areas they were - Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.

A German poster illustrates how East
Prussia was cut off from the rest of
Germany by the Danzig corridor, which
comprised German territory handed
over to Poland in terms of the
Versailles Treaty.

The Germans hoped that France and Britain would not go to war over the issue - Hitler drew the analogy that Germany would not go to war with France if that country claimed one of its cities back from foreign rule. This hope was misplaced: on 3 September, France and Britain both declared war on Germany for the act of invading Poland.

The Second World War had started, on the surface caused by Germany reclaiming territory inhabited by Germans which had been torn off that country by the Treaty of Versailles.


The Polish Campaign DEMONSTRATES GERMAN "Lightning WAR"

Germany put 1.5 million men into battle: the Poles met them with a numerically superior force of 1.8 million. The Germans had however learned the lessons of the First World War well: they had invested heavily in the building of tanks and had developed the concept of mobile war in these armored vehicles: the "blitzkrieg" or lightning war, was unleashed on Poland.

The Polish army, expecting head-on static conflicts as had happened in the First World War, were no match for the mobile Germans. By 17 September, the Germans had overrun huge areas of the country and had encircled Warsaw, routing the Poles in every major engagement of the campaign.


Soviet Union Invades POLAND - ALLIES DO NOT REACT

On 17 September, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East: an earlier treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union had provided for such an eventuality. The Soviets quickly rolled up the by now panicked Poles, and within three days Poland had been divided between German and Soviet troops. The last pockets of Polish resistance surrendered on 6 October 1939.

The Soviet Union's invasion was a mirror image of the German invasion: yet here came the best indication that there was something more to the war than just Britain and France resisting German aggression, as the conventional historical accounts would have everyone believe.

For if France and Britain had declared war on Germany for the aggressive act of invading Poland, then surely for the sake of consistency they should have declared war on the Soviet Union as well, when it too invaded Poland.

The reason for this clear and obvious double standard was the overtly racial ideological element which Hitlerian politics had introduced into the war: this is discussed in a later chapter.

Adolf Hitler enters the shattered city of Warsaw,
5 October 1939. Britain and France declared war
on Germany for invading Poland, but not on the
Soviet Union for doing the exact same thing - the
clearest evidence one can find for the existence
of ulterior motives in wishing to destroy Hitler.

The Sitzkrieg - SITTING WAR

Germany only annexed that part of Poland which had been German before the First World War: the rest of the country was made into a protectorate, while the eastern part was annexed by the Soviet Union.

France and Britain were astounded at the speed of the Polish campaign: the French only launched a half hearted attempt to attack from behind their heavily fortified Maginot line of concrete emplacements along the border with Germany. The Germans had built a similar fortified wall: the Siegfried Line, and the French attack petered out before it even reached the German line.

Hitler than made an offer of peace to Britain and France: he had never declared war on them (and never did during the entire course of the war) and did not seek a war with them. Making the offer of peace in a speech in Berlin, Hitler put no pre-conditions other than that the two European nations recognized the right of Germany to re-incorporate the German lands in Poland. The offer was rejected out of hand by both the British and French governments.

Still no military action took place: caught in between building up military reserves and trying to end the war by diplomatic means, Germany kept behind its Siegfried Wall. France, waiting for the British to arrive in significant numbers, kept behind their wall: both sides feared above all else a repeat of the static trench war of 1914-1918. The Sitting War, or Sitzkrieg, continued from September 1939 until May 1940.


The Soviet-Finnish War - ONCE AGAIN, ALLIES DO NOT REACT

At the end of November 1939, the Soviet Union then invaded Finland. Despite being outnumbered five to one, the Finns fought bravely and inflicted massive losses on the Red Army. Fighting on into the new year, without aid or support from Britain or France, Finland only lost small pieces of land before fighting the invaders to a standstill. On 8 March 1940, the war came to an end, with Finland only ceding the small slice of territory which the Soviets had managed to grab.

A Soviet column, wiped out by A Finnish
attack, during the Soviet invasion
of Finland in 1940.

Once again Britain and France refused to declare war on the Soviet Union for doing exactly what Germany had done to Poland: this blatant double standard once again proving that the declaration of war against Germany was motivated by an underlying ideological reason, rather than just a desire to protect small nations against aggression.


Denmark and Norway OCCUPIED BY GERMANS

Britain in the meanwhile decided to land troops in Norway to seize the Swedish iron ore mines which were continuing to supply Germany with raw iron. On 6 April, a large British and French expeditionary force sailed for Norway; then the British navy proceeded to lay mines outside the Norwegian harbor of Narvik, hoping to sink some German ships carrying ore back to Germany.

The mines were laid on 7 April: Hitler, sensing that something was afoot, hastily pulled together an invasion force which sailed the same day, landing in Norway on 9 April. On the way, Germany occupied Denmark to use that country's ports and airfield. The small nation surrendered immediately and was relatively well treated by Germany for the rest of the war.

The German landings in Norway succeeded everywhere except in Narvik, where a small German force of 4600 men were faced by 24,600 British, French, and Norwegian troops. The minute German force held out, but by the first week of June had been pushed back against the Swedish border. They were on the point of surrendering when the French and British withdrew to go the aid of the then rapidly deteriorating military situation in France.

Norway then fell completely under German occupation, never to be disturbed again for the entire duration of the war, with the occupation army only withdrawing after the German surrender in 1945.


Case Yellow: The Invasion of France

On 10 May 1940, Germany broke the Sitzkrieg and attacked in the west, following a plan worked out by Hitler personally which he called Case Yellow: created over the objections of his generals. Employing the same tactics they had used in Poland, the tight German armored divisions raced past British and French troop concentrations, surrounding them into isolated pockets where their dispersed tanks and armor was of little use.

This tactic was especially advantageous in light of the fact that the opposing armies were, in terms of numbers, evenly matched.

On the first day of the invasion, German airborne troops landed in Belgium and the Netherlands. In Belgium. German paratroopers succeeded in knocking out the Belgian concrete forts of Eben-Emael, swiftly defeating that small nation's only major line of defense. In the Netherlands, Dutch resistance crumbled after a small German bomber force attacked the inner city of Rotterdam, killing several hundred civilians.

The British and French forces in northern France then moved into Belgium to meet the oncoming Germans. Then Hitler launched what would be his master stroke in the West: the main German force attacked in the center of the border between France and Germany, the Ardennes forest.

With the tank, or panzer, army in the lead, the Germans raced past the Maginot line and then swung northward, covering 400 kilometers (250 miles ) in 11 days: mobility unheard of in any war till that time. Racing for the coast, the panzers encircled the British and French forces busy moving into Belgium. The Allied army was cut into two by this move.


Dunkirk - HITLER LETS BRITISH ESCAPE

By 26 May - 16 days into the campaign - the Allied army in the north was trapped along a coastal enclave next to the town of Dunkirk. For reasons which have never been explained (the most common belief is that Hitler wanted to let the British escape so as to facilitate a peace with them at a later stage) the German panzers were deliberately stopped outside the town.

The pause in the German attack allowed the entire British Expeditionary Force - some 330,000 men - be evacuated by an astonishing flotilla of British naval and civilian ships, back to England across the channel. Although all the men were evacuated, they left behind tons of sorely needed equipment on the beach.


The Defeat of France - THE 46 DAY CAMPAIGN

With the main body of the British force gone, the Germans turned south and west once again: ignoring the French troops still sitting in their virtually impregnable Maginot Line, the German tanks drove deep into the French countryside. They met only scattered resistance: more often than not, when French soldiers surrendered, their weapons were taken from them and they were sent home by the Germans who did not want to burden themselves with prisoners.

Finally on 17 June, the French premier, Marshal Henri Petain, the First World War hero who had held the French together in their darkest hour of that war, realized that the situation was militarily hopeless. He asked for an armistice which was signed on 25 June. France had been beaten by Hitler's plan in 46 days.

German troops march down the main
thoroughfare of Paris, 1940, with the
Arc de Triomphe behind them.

The armistice gave Germany control over northern France extending into a strip down the Atlantic coast: the rest of France was left independent under Petain, with its capital at the city of Vichy, causing this territory to become known as the Vichy republic.


Operation Sea Lion - ABORTIVE PLAN TO INVADE ENGLAND

The invasion of France had been followed in Britain by the appointment of Winston Churchill as prime minister, who proved to be an able war leader, whose carefully media cultivated-image in many ways captured the dogged resistance put up by the British when that nation was the only major power on the European continent which had not been overrun by Germany.

The English channel had been the only physical reason why the German tanks had not rolled on to occupy Britain at the same time that France was overrun: certainly after the defeat at Dunkirk the British army barely had enough armor or heavy weapons left to ward off any significant German attack.

The Germans then drew up a plan to invade Britain: called Operation Sea Lion, it consisted of crossing the channel in invasion barges and landing on the southern coast of England. Before this could be achieved, Germany had to achieve air superiority to make up for their overwhelming inferiority at sea. The mighty British navy could knock out almost anything put to sea and could only be warded off by superior air power. The war for Britain then switched to a battle in the air.


The Battle of Britain

When Germany had invaded Poland in September 1939 and the Netherlands in May 1940, pinpoint air strikes against civilian towns had been carried out in Warsaw and Rotterdam: both had served effectively to wear down the resistance of the invaded countries.

So it was that when Winston Churchill became prime minister of Britain on 10 May 1940, his first act the next day was to announce that German cities would be targeted for bombing attacks. The same month the first German cities were bombed by British aircraft.

The German air force however avoided bombing British cities, concentrating on the strategically more important airfields and ports, launching the first of these major raids during August 1940.

The British came up with a surprise weapon: the Spitfire fighter, which at first outclassed almost all the fighters the Germans put into the battle, apart from the Messerschmitt Bf109, with which it was on virtually equal terms. However, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) took a heavy toll on the other German aircraft. The famous Stuka dive bomber, for example, was shot out of British skies in such numbers that after a few weeks they had been withdrawn from the battle.

German air losses mounted: the bravery of the British aircraft teams in defending their homeland has become legendary: certainly it was their efforts which caused the Germans to shelve Operation Sea Lion indefinitely by the end of 1940.


The Blitz STARTS IN RESPONSE TO BRITISH AIR RAIDS

In the interim, British bombers had been raiding German cities for almost four months: finally, after a bombing raid on Berlin itself, Hitler authorized the Luftwaffe to start bombing British cities in return. Selected British cities were then targeted: London, Coventry, Birmingham and Sheffield came in for particularly heavy bombing, and the raids became known as the Blitz.

Despite large scale destruction, the death toll was surprisingly low: in Coventry, only 380 civilians died as a result of the bombing raids throughout the course of the entire war: and total British civilian losses during the war due to German bombing was around 60,000.

To put this into perspective, more than 500,000 German civilians died in the Allied bombing of German cities during the war: in one raid, on Dresden in 1945, 135,000 German civilians were killed in a single raid.

Nonetheless, the Blitz caused great hardship and forced the British to evacuate virtually all children out of the major cities to rural destinations, splitting families and greatly adding to the misery of wartime Britain. However, most importantly, the Blitz did not break the spirit of the British people or their preparedness to pursue the war.

Above left: The ruins of the German city of Dresden, where 135,000 German civilians died in one bombing raid a few days before the war ended: more than all the Japanese who died in both the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together. Right: St. Paul's cathedral in London during the Blitz. 60,000 Britons were to die in all the German bombing raids on that country during the entire war.

Italian Misadventures

The Italian leader, Benito Mussolini, had allied himself to Germany before the war in a 1938 alliance known as the Pact of Steel or the Berlin - Rome Axis: as a result this alliance was known as the Axis. In the closing week of the German campaign against France, Mussolini entered the war on Germany's side.

The Italian declaration of war against Britain caught a large number of Italians living in Britain by surprise: the British government detained thousands of Italians and kept them without trial for the duration of the war in prisoner camps.

Mussolini launched an attack on France from the Italian side of the French-Italian border immediately after declaring war on that country. The attack was a total failure and French troops even crossed the border into Italy after driving off the initial Italian assault. Only the collapse of the French armies in central France saved Mussolini from an embarrassing defeat.

Eclipsed by Hitler in Western Europe, Mussolini then turned his attention south: in September 1940, he launched an attack on British held Egypt from the Italian colony of Libya, which was easily driven off.

The British then in turn invaded Libya, and started to push the Italians back into that territory. Undaunted, Mussolini then launched an invasion of Greece from the Italian held territory of Albania, in October 1940. Soon the Greeks had defeated the Italian forces as well, and pushed deep into Albania in retaliation. British forces then landed in Crete and Greece to aid the Greeks.

On all fronts then, Mussolini's endeavors faced catastrophe: his inept invasion of Greece had even allowed the British back onto mainland Europe: Hitler was forced to act to bring the situation under control.


The Balkan Campaign - GERMANS OCCUPY YUGOSLAVIA AND GREECE

Germany quickly prepared an invasion force to drive the British out of Greece. To reach Greece, German forces had to cross a number of other Eastern European countries: Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary had formally allied themselves to Germany and gave permission for German troops to move through their countries: only Yugoslavia refused and had to be subdued by force.

The German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece began in early April 1941: by 13 April, Belgrade had fallen and the Yugoslav army surrendered the next day. The Germans split Yugoslavia up, giving the Albanian dominated region of Kosovo to Albania and letting Croatia become independent: however for the rest of the war, Yugoslav guerrillas fought a merciless war against German troops in the region, and were never completely subdued.

By 9 April, the Germans had smashed the relatively strong Greek army of some 430,000 men: the British expeditionary force in that country was forced to retreat south with its entire force of some 62,000 men. By the end of April, all of Greece had been overrun: the British had withdrawn to Crete, an operation which cost them 12,000 men.

Even there they were not safe: a German airborne invasion in May 1941, (the first in history, discounting the comparatively small landings in the Netherlands in May 1940) drove them off that island, although the German losses were so high that they were never to try an airborne assault on this scale again.


AFRIKA KORPS ESTABLISHED UNDER ROMMEL

Hitler also sent a small German panzer division to Libya to aid the Italians there: under the able leadership of General Erwin Rommel, this German unit, to be known as the Afrika Korps, soon won renown as daring and tactical fighters, quickly stabilizing the military situation and even pushing the British back into Egypt.


USA WAGES De Facto War AGAINST GERMANY

Although officially neutral, the United States made its partiality for Britain known from the beginning, even duplicating the British overlooking of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland and Finland as a reason to censure that country. In March 1941, the US Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act and appropriated an initial $7 billion to lend or lease weapons and other aid to any countries the president might designate as in America's interests: this of course meant Britain and immediately a flow of material and other supplies started to the beleaguered island.

In July 1941, the US stationed troops in Iceland and the American navy was escorting convoys supplying Britain in waters west of Iceland. In September 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized American ships doing convoy duty to attack German warships or submarines. America was as good as at war with Germany already.


OPERATION Barbarossa - THE GREATEST LAND WAR IN HISTORY

Hitler had decided as early as December 1940 that an invasion of the Soviet Union would have to be made: apart from the fact that the Communists were his traditional political foe, all evidence showed that the Soviets were planning to attack Germany at some time during the course of 1941 or 1942. Given all the factors, Hitler decided to strike first.

An invasion plan was drawn up under the code name Barbarossa: after the ancient German king of the same name. This plan entailed a series of quick thrusts through western Russia, halting at the Ural mountains.

Hitler never foresaw going further than this, nor of concluding a treaty with the defeated Russians: rather he saw the territory east of the Urals as alien land which he neither wanted nor wished to subdue.


BALKANS CAMPAIGN DELAYS GERMAN ATTACK

Originally, Hitler planned Barbarossa for early 1941 so that the campaign could be completed before the advent of the notorious Russian winter. This early invasion had to be postponed due to the disastrous invasion of Greece by Mussolini.

Forced to intervene in Greece and Yugoslavia, the Germans lost a critical month in organizing the invasion of the Soviet Union: the result was that the Russian winter did indeed set in before their primary objectives were reached, forcing them onto the defensive for the first time in the war.

This loss of initiative was the first important German reverse of the war: if ever there was a turning point in the war, it was the delay caused by Mussolini's clownish invasion of Greece. Ultimately Hitler was undone by his choice of allies, rather than by his choice of foes.


The Greatest Land War of All Time

Finally, Barbarossa was executed on 22 June 1941. More than 3 million German troops took part in the assault, which was spread from the Baltic Sea in the north right through to the Black Sea in the south. It was the beginning of the greatest land war of all time, never equaled since.

The Soviet Army also had just over 3 million men in its western army (it had more reserves in the far east) and outnumbered the Germans by two to one in tanks and by two or three to one in aircraft. The Soviet tanks, in particular the T-34s, were far superior to anything the Germans had at the time: the first T-34s captured intact were dragged away by German engineers for inspection, and it was only much later in the war that the Germans were able to put anything as effective into the field.

Despite the odds, the three German army groups: North, Center, and South, made tremendous speed in rushing towards their three objectives: Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev respectively.

The speed of the initial advances served to give credence to the German hope that the campaign could be finished before the end of the year: however the delay caused by the Italian debacle would yet catch up with the Germans.

The British offered the Soviet Union an immediate alliance, with Churchill personally issuing the offer: Roosevelt also offered lend-lease aid, which soon came flooding into the Soviet Union in such quantities as to significantly affect the course of the war.


Massive Soviet Losses

By the end of the first week in July, the German Army Group Center had taken 290,000 prisoners and had passed Minsk: in early August, the Germans crossed the Dnieper River, the last natural barrier west of Moscow, and destroyed a Soviet army at Smolensk, taking another 300,000 prisoners.

By early September, Leningrad, the former city of Petrograd (now known as Saint Petersburg) had been encircled by Army Group North. The Finns, who had participated in the invasion in the far north, also lay siege to Leningrad. Soon a great famine spread through the city, with its only supply route being across the frozen lakes, an extremely hazardous route.

In mid-September, Army Group South captured an incredible 650,000 prisoners in an encirclement to the East of Kiev. By late October, Army Group Center was once again pushing east towards Moscow. On the way, it captured yet more prisoners: this time some 663,000 Red Army soldiers fell into their hands.

Despite severe losses, the Soviets
had managed to rally themselves
by the time the German Army stood
at the gates of Moscow: here a Soviet
poster shows their readiness to
defend the capital city.

In less than four months, the Soviets had lost more than 1.8 million men in prisoners alone: it became a serious logistical problem for the Germans in handling the prisoners: in effect they all of a sudden had to feed and provide shelter for a mass of men two thirds the size of the German army itself.

Such losses had not been sustained by an army before in history, yet the Soviet ability to fight on serves as a striking example of how vast this particular campaign was and also of the massive reserves the Soviets could call upon.


ADVANCE GERMAN TROOPS WITHIN SIGHT OF THE KREMLIN - Winter Sets In

By late November, two German advance units penetrated right into the suburbs of Moscow: one advance unit came to within eyesight of the onion domes of the Kremlin itself. Then the Russian winter set in with a viciousness which the Germans were not expecting: many were also not equipped for the winter, and the month delay in launching the campaign finally tripped up the Blitzkrieg war.

With victory in Moscow in sight, the German tanks, vehicles and even guns froze: hundreds of soldiers froze to death in the cold snap which halted the advance in its tracks. On 5 December the advance unit commanders reported that they could go no further: they were not equipped to fight under the freezing conditions and they were unable to dig in because the ground itself was frozen. It was impossible even to bury the dead: not that they needed burying, as they did not decay in the frozen ice. The German commanders reported finally that the conditions and lack of winter equipment for the German troops had caused morale to sink to a low as then unseen amongst the soldiers.


Soviet Counter Attack Succeeds

The Soviets, all well equipped for the harshness of the winter, had brought up reserves from the Far East and exploited the halt in the German advance to press home a counter attack. With their vehicles, equipment and weapons specifically designed to fight in sub-zero temperatures, the fresh Soviet troops devastated the advance German units and the invaders were driven out with great ease.

Below left: Clad only in gray coats, German soldiers struggle to dig their vehicles out of the snow, December 1941. Below right: Soviet troops, on the other hand, marching through Moscow towards the front in the same month, are fully equipped for winter fighting, with snow camouflage, skis and padding. The onset of winter - one of the worst in decades - combined with the German Army's unpreparedness for it - proved to be too much for the exhausted invaders.

The retreating Germans left behind their frozen tanks, trucks and weapons, being forced to flee on foot. It was the first major defeat for the Germans of the war. Fighting a desperate rearguard action, the Germans managed to plug the holes in their front line by the end of December: but the immediate threat to Moscow was lifted and the plan to destroy the Soviet Union by the end of 1941 had been wrecked.

[Stefanus]

March of the Titans
A History Of The White Race

Chapter 62: The Second Great Brothers' War - World War II


Part Two : Pearl Harbor to D-Day (1941 - 1944)

Part One dealt with the origin of the Second World War and its course up to November 1941.

Japanese Power

In the Far East, the recently industrialized Japan had gained in confidence since its defeat of the Russians in the 1905 war at Port Arthur on the Chinese coast. Increasingly, Japan saw itself as the regional power - which it was - and in 1936, became embroiled in a war with China over land which saw the Japanese army invade Chinese territorial space. In retaliation, the United States and Britain imposed an oil embargo on Japan in 1936, hoping to starve the mineral-poor island-nation out of further expansionist moves.

Japan then signed the anti-Communist anti-Comintern pact, indirectly allying itself with Germany and Italy. Despite this, the Japanese remained neutral in the opening phases of the war; even signing a treaty with the Soviet Union guaranteeing that the latter country would never be subject to attack by Japan. This treaty enabled the Soviets to withdraw a large part of their eastern army to the west where they were instrumental in the Soviet victory at Moscow in December 1941.

By 1941, the oil embargo was starting to seriously hurt Japan: as Germany's victory appeared to loom large that year, the Japanese decided that to survive they would need to capture the oil and mineral reserves of South East Asia.

The Japanese realized however that the Americans, who had objected to the Japanese-Chinese War, would never peacefully let Japan seize even more territory. However the Japanese also believed that the Americans would not fight for long and soon leave Asia to itself: in this they made a major miscalculation.


Pearl Harbor

In terms of the Japanese plan, a swift campaign would see their troops take Burma, Malaya, the East Indies, and the Philippines in quick succession: the only thing that stood between them and these possessions was the presence of the US Pacific fleet based at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

It was decided to try and cripple the American fleet with a surprise air attack on the morning of 7 December 1941, in order to prevent the Americans from interfering with the Japanese invasions. The American military intelligence records reveal that the US Army intelligence was aware of the Japanese plans, including the attack on Pearl Harbor itself. A warning was in fact sent to the military base, but mysteriously delayed, only arriving after the attack had started.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor sank 21 ships, including eight battleships; 188 American aircraft were destroyed on the ground and 2,200 American soldiers and sailors were killed. The attack changed public opinion in America overnight: from a strongly anti-participation in the war sentiment, the American public swung solidly behind Roosevelt who led the US Congress into declaring war on Japan.

The results of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
December 1941: American ships on fire. 2,200 men
were killed in the attack.

Germany Declares War on America

America had, as outlined above, been all but committing active troops to the war against Germany before Pearl Harbor: now, partly out of an acceptance of the de facto situation and partly out of what was clearly a misplaced loyalty to Japan, Germany then declared war on America on 11 December, an example followed by Italy on the same day.

This was the second great error on Hitler's part (the first being his alliance with Mussolini). By declaring war on America, he gave Roosevelt the excuse to commit troops and the full force of American industrial power to the war in Europe.


Germany Lost the War in 1941

The events of 1941 were catastrophic for Germany, even though in terms of outright military defeats, the retreat before Moscow had been relatively minor. However, America's entry into the war meant that an overwhelming industrial power, whose production and military hardware output Germany could not hope to match, was now formally ranged against the latter country.

In addition to this, the failure to knock the Soviet Union out in 1941 meant that a long war of attrition in the east would continue for years. The Soviet Union, having the greater population and therefore greater reserves, could not do anything but win a war of attrition.

Also, the German field code, previously thought unbreakable (developed by a German engineer using a device which randomly selected numbers off a spinning wheel - dubbed the enigma machine) was cracked by a superb British intelligence unit at Bletchley Park, England, with the aid of a huge analogue computer built specially for the purpose. For the greatest part of the war, many of Hitler's commands were known to the Allied intelligence service, very often even before the German commanders to whom they were sent, had received them.

Germany therefore never stood a realistic chance of winning the war after December 1941, and it was only with a superhuman effort that it continued fighting until 1945.


The War in the Pacific

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese quickly advanced through their target territories: by the end of December 1941, they had occupied British Hong Kong, the Gilbert Islands and the islands of Guam Wake. In addition they had made significant advances into British Burma, Malaya, Borneo, and the Philippines.

By February 1942, British Singapore had fallen to the Japanese army, and the next month they occupied the Netherlands East Indies and landed on New Guinea. The main force of American and Philippine armies on the Philippines surrendered in Bataan in April 1942, and the surrender of Corregidor in early May, sealed the fate of that country.

The Japanese then launched a bid to seize Port Moresby on the south eastern part of New Guinea: the Americans, being able to read the Japanese signals, sent a naval unit to attack the invasion force. The resultant May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, fought exclusively by aircraft launched from aircraft carriers, saw the first Japanese defeat. The American force overwhelmed their Japanese foes and the invasion of Port Moresby was abandoned.


The Battle of Midway - Japanese isolation from white technology reveals stagnation

One month after the Japanese defeat at the Battle of the Coral Sea, an American air and naval attack on a powerful Japanese fleet consisting of nine battleships and four aircraft carriers, saw all four carriers being sunk. Although the Japanese navy had more carriers, this engagement, known as the Battle of Midway, dealt the Japanese a severe blow.

Cut off from the White world's technology, Japan never managed to build a carrier during the war again, placing it at a permanent disadvantage. This isolation of Japan from the White technology centers of Europe and North America would dog Japan in other areas as well: in aircraft design, for example, by 1945, the Japanese air force was still equipped with virtually the same aircraft with which it had started the war. The main fighter they possessed was the Mitsubishi Zero - while this airplane was approximately the equivalent of the average American fighter in mid 1941, by 1945 it had been hopelessly outclassed by the highly developed American P-51 Mustang fighters, not to mention comparison with the European aircraft: the fabulous Spitfires, Hurricanes and Mosquitoes of the British Royal Air Force, and the Me 262 jet aircraft of the Luftwaffe.

The stagnation of Japanese technology during the war period, when it was cut off from the White technological centers of America and Europe, tells a story all by itself.

The British Eight Army drives home
an attack on the German and Italian
lines in North Africa.

Rommel Advances in North Africa

In North Africa, the German expeditionary force had managed to initially drive the British back and had laid siege to the important town of Tobruk. German reinforcements trickled in, and by early December 1941, the British had managed to relieve Tobruk and take the equally important town of Benghazi.

It was only in January 1942, that Rommel managed to draw up enough reserves to counter-attack: a successful drive pushed the British back towards the Egyptian border. In June, Tobruk finally fell to the Germans and Rommel pushed on into Egypt itself, only finally running out of steam before the town of El 'Alamein. Rommel had badly overstretched his supply lines with the extent of the advance: this was to cost him dearly.


New German Campaign in the East, 1942

As the 1941/1942 Russian winter lifted, the Germans launched a new offensive in the east, hoping once again to knock the Soviets out with a series of dramatic victories. The year started well for the Germans: a battle near Kharkov to the south of Leningrad and an invasion of the Crimea - which saw the city of Sebastopol fall after a tremendous siege - saw another 500,000 Red Army soldiers being taken prisoner.

Then on 28 June - virtually to the day a year after the initial invasion, the second great German offensive in the east was launched. In four weeks, they seized vast areas of land, penetrating hundreds of kilometers past Moscow to the south.

The German force was then split into two: one unit raced south into the Caucasus to take the oil fields at Groznyy and Baku. By August, the invasion of the Caucasus had penetrated 300 kilometers into Soviet territory, and by early September the northernmost unit had reached the outskirts of the city of Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga River.

Once again the Germans seemed poised for total victory: but the sweep south and south east had not seen the massive Soviet surrenders so characteristic of the campaign till then. Soviet losses had been light: all the while German supply lines had been stretched to the point where the sheer distance covered meant that the effective fighting strength of the German Army Groups was nowhere near what they should have been.

By this stage, the Soviet Union had also been receiving vast amounts of American material aid: this, combined with the manpower reserves of the Soviet state - three times that of Germany - meant that the Soviets could launch a devastating counter attack: they chose Stalingrad as the most exposed and easterly part of the German lines to do so.

An American soldier cautiously approaches
a dead Japanese soldier during the long
and costly "island hopping" campaign to
free South East Asia of Japanese control.
Often the Japanese soldiers would feign
death, and as a enemy soldier approached,
would release a hand grenade.

Guadalcanal - American Island Hopping Starts

In the Pacific, American troops invaded the island of Guadalcanal in August 1942, starting a series of "island hops" which would characterize the rest of the American war against Japan. The Japanese fought tenaciously for all the territories they had occupied: it took a series of major naval battles and vicious hand to hand fighting before Guadalcanal was cleared of the last Japanese soldiers in February 1943.


Battle of El Alamein - tide turns in North Africa

In North Africa, the German advance into Egypt was reversed by a brilliantly planned counter attack by the British Eighth Army - which now included South Africans - commanded by general Bernard Montgomery. By 5 November 1942, the Afrika Korps was in retreat out of Egypt.

On 8 November 1942, a combined British and American force then landed in Vichy French held Morocco and Algeria, behind the German supply lines which started in Tunisia. Startled, the Germans rushed reinforcements to Tunisia, simultaneously occupying Vichy France in the process. Fighting desperate rearguard actions on two fronts, Rommel managed to halt both the American and British advances in Algeria, most famously at the February 1943 Battle of Kasserine Pass: but the overwhelming numbers of the Allied forces eventually won the day.

Advancing through Libya from the East and from Algeria in the west, the Afrika Korps was rolled up and surrendered in May 1943: the Germans and Italians lost 275,000 prisoners as a result.


The Soviet Victory of Stalingrad

On the Eastern Front, the German advance to the Volga River and into the Caucasus added a staggering 1100 kilometers to the front line. The sheer length of this advance meant that there were not enough German troops to man the entire front, a serious miscalculation on Hitler's part.

The Germans then put the armies of their poorly trained and equipped allies into the holes in the front line: these included Rumanian, Italian and Hungarian armies: none of whom had the battle experience or equipment of the German forces which were tied down at the very points of the advance.

On 19 November 1942, while the German forces had reached the banks of the Volga River and had occupied most of the city of Stalingrad itself, a huge Soviet attack smashed through the Rumanian forces positioned to the north and south of the main German army: within three days the Soviets had surrounded Stalingrad and the German invaders.

Soviet soldiers advance on the German
Sixth Army, surrounded at Stalingrad.
It was to be a Soviet victory which would
mark the last of the great German
offensives in the East - with few
exceptions, the Germans would from
then on fight a holding action against ever
more powerful Soviet armies.

Efforts to relieve the surrounded army failed and Hitler forbade the army to withdraw, as it might have been able to do at the early stages. This order could have only one consequence: on the last day of January 1943, the German forces in Stalingrad were forced to surrender.

Some 200,000 men were lost as a result. The Italian, Hungarian and Rumanian armies collapsed and the Germans were forced to retreat from the Caucasus to patch up the holes in the front: virtually all the land gained during the 1942 offensive was lost.


Air Raids on German Cities

By 1943, the British and Americans had launched a strategy of trying to demoralize the German civilian population by launching 24 hour round the clock incendiary bombing raids: the British by night and the Americans by day. Civilian targets were therefore specially selected, with huge losses for ordinary Germans: in raids on Hamburg in July 1943, 50,000 civilians were killed in four days.

The Luftwaffe concentrated its forces over the skies of Germany: flying missions as strenuous as anything undertaken by the British during the Battle of Britain, they managed to halt the major daylight attacks by October 1943. Such serious losses were inflicted on the American bombers that they were grounded until modifications were made to the P-51 Mustang fighter to enable it to escort the American bombing missions: when this happened at the end of 1943, the daylight bombing resumed, with the long range American fighters taking the pressure off the bombers by engaging the Luftwaffe in combat. From then on the Allied bombing campaign of civilian targets in Germany would not cease until the very last days of the war.

Allied bombers over Germany -
Americans by day, British by
night, they kept up a 24 hour
campaign which was designed
to hamper the German war
effort.

The Biggest Single Battle of All Time: Kursk

On the Eastern Front, the Germans launched one final attempt to grasp the initiative against the Soviets. This came with the Battle of Kursk, fought from 5 July to 12 July 1943. This was the largest single land battle ever fought in history: more than a million men and over 5000 tanks engaged one another in a seven day encounter.

The German offensive attempted to surround a Soviet force in Kursk: the Red Army prepared its defenses well, and on the seventh day the German advance had been halted. Hitler then called off the operation because the Americans and British had landed in Sicily, and he needed to transfer divisions to Italy to shore up that new front.

If any Germans had begun to doubt that they could not win the war after Stalingrad, the failure to win the Battle of Kursk must have confirmed it.


Mussolini Dismissed from Office

On 10 July 1943, at the height of the Battle of Kursk, Allied armies invaded Sicily from North Africa. In five weeks, they cleared the island of all Italian and German troops - although the former started to surrender in large numbers, many being unwilling to partake in what was increasingly looking like a German defeat.

The Italian king, Emanuel III, then used his constitutional powers and fired Mussolini from office (the fact that Mussolini could be removed from office in this way belies the often made allegation that he was responsible to no-one) and appointed a new government, which then negotiated a surrender to the Allies on 8 September. Mussolini was placed under arrest and held at a mountain top hotel which had hastily been converted into a prison, while the new Italian government waited for the Allies to tell them what to do with him.


The Invasion of Italy

The Allies had invaded the Italian mainland itself before that country's government surrendered, occupying a large slice of the tip of Italy north of Naples across the peninsula to the Adriatic Sea. The German forces rushed to Italy from the Eastern Front were battle hardened veterans and by the end of the year had halted the Allied advance 100 kilometers south of Rome, at the Liri River and Monte Casino. An Allied landing of 50,000 men behind the German line at Anzio failed to dislodge the Germans who had in the interim also freed Mussolini and had installed him as leader of a new Italian government.


MORE JAPANESE DEFEATS

During May 1943, American troops retook the island of Attu in the Aleutians in a hard-fought, three week battle, while a combined American and New Zealand army took the Solomons islands, landing a major beachhead on Bougainville by November.

Australians and Americans then captured the East coast of New Guinea; and then several island groups were captured in succession. The Gilbert islands were captured in November 1943: however the Japanese resistance got all the more fanatical with the passing of time. Some 3,000 Americans were killed seizing the 291 acre island of Beito in the Gilbert islands. Cape Gloucester, New Britain, was taken in December 1943; the Admiralty Islands and the Marshall islands in February 1944; and by March 1944, Emirau Island had been retaken.


German Retreat IN EAST

The Red Army followed up its successful defense of Kursk with an August 1943 offensive in the region against the weakened German forces: by the middle of the month, the Red Army attack had been expanded south and the Germans were firmly in retreat.

In mid-September, Hitler ordered the major German army in the south to retreat to the Dnieper River: he had learned from his error at Stalingrad and could not afford to lose another entire army. In the Crimea however, another German army group was surrounded by a renewed Red Army assault south: they were eventually to be devastated and their 150,000 exhausted survivors forced to surrender when that peninsula was completely retaken by the Soviets in May 1944.

Advancing steadily westwards, the Red Army then recaptured Kiev, continuously driving the defeated Germans before them. In January 1944, a Soviet offensive raised the siege of Leningrad and drove Army Group North back to the Narva River-Lake Peipus line, where fanatic resistance by a Waffen-SS (fighting SS) army checked the Soviet advance for over six months.

By April 1944, virtually all of Soviet territory except Byelorussia had been cleared of German troops: in June 1944, a massive Soviet assault took Byelorussia. Outnumbering the German defenders by ten to one, the victory was swift.

By the third week, the Soviets had advanced 300 kilometers, capturing over 57,000 German prisoners. The Red Army stood at the German jump-off points of June 1941, ready to turn the tables in a final push into Eastern Europe.

OPERATION OVERLORD - THE ALLIES LAND IN EUROPE

In the west, the Americans had been massing a huge army in Britain, ready to launch an invasion of Western Europe and thereby open a third front to engage the already overstretched Germans. The invasion, code named Operation Overlord, took place on 6 June 1944, with dramatic dawn landings on the beaches of Normandy.

Taken by surprise (the German high command had been expecting the invasion to take place further north on the French coast) the Germans were pushed back: by this time the skies belonged to the Allies and their air superiority had already virtually won the land battles, as the Germans could not move any troops or armor around without attracting immediate attention from hostile aircraft.

The view from an American landing
craft, 6 June 1944, as its troops wade
into towards the French shore.

The German commander in the west, Rommel, was himself severely wounded in an Allied aircraft attack upon his personal car: he never fully recovered from his wounds before he was forced to commit suicide after being implicated in a plot to kill Hitler in July 1944.

By the end of June, the Allies had managed to land over 850,000 men and 150,000 tanks and other vehicles in Normandy: this, combined with the overwhelming air superiority, made the outcome in the west only a matter of time.


The July Plot

A group of German officers and civilians concluded in July, that getting rid of Hitler offered the last remaining chance to end the war before it swept onto German soil from two directions. On July 20, they tried to kill him by placing a bomb in his headquarters in East Prussia. The bomb exploded, killing and wounding a number of his senior officers but inflicting only minor injuries on Hitler.

Afterwards, the German police hunted down everyone suspected of complicity in the plot and those who were not killed during the suppression of the conspiracy (such as Count Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who planted the bomb) were hanged after spectacular show trials. Millions of still faithful Germans were shocked at the attempt to kill Hitler; he emerged from the assassination attempt more secure in his power than ever before.

[Stefanus]

March of the Titans
A History Of The White Race

Chapter 62: The Second Great Brothers' War - World War II


Part Three: ALLIED VICTORY IN EUROPE AND ASIA

Part One dealt with the origin of the Second World War and its course up to November 1941.

Part Two dealt with the entry of Japan and the USA into the war, and the course of events until mid 1944.

France Cleared of Germans

By 25 July, the Allied armies proceeded to break out of the Normandy beachheads they had established. Their overwhelming material superiority was only challenged in part by the limited number of new German super tanks, the Tiger and Panther models. These new weapons were too little, too late; by late August, the Germans had been driven across the Seine.

On 25 August, the Americans, in conjunction with General Charles de Gaulle's Free French and Resistance forces, occupied Paris after the retreating Germans had declared it an open city to prevent it being damaged (the same courtesy had been extended by the French in 1940 - the result was that Paris was virtually completely unharmed during the war).

American troops march through
Paris, August 1944.

Southern France Invaded

On 15 August, a combined American and Free French force landed on the southern coast of France east of Marseilles. Meeting virtually no resistance, they pushed north along the valley of the Rhone River, making contact with the American troops in the north in mid-September. British troops seized Antwerp in early September and American troops entered German territory for the first time on 11 September 1944.


Germans Stand and Fight

The crossing into German territory served as a bolt to the German army: they turned and fought against the overwhelming odds, halting the Allied advance on the Meuse and lower Rhine rivers and on the German border with France. There the front would stalemate for several months.

In June 1944, the first of the German secret weapons, the V1 flying bomb, had started to fall on England; by September the first intercontinental ballistic missiles, the V2, had started falling on England as well. While there was some measure of defense against the V1 (it could be heard coming and it could be shot down or overturned by specially prepared and lightened British aircraft) there was no defense against the supersonic V2: its engine could only be heard after it had exploded on its target.

By November, the Germans had also deployed their first jet fighter squadrons: the ME 262 made mincemeat of all its opponents, from bombers through to fighters, and was nearly invincible as nothing the Allies had was fast enough to shoot it down. It was however available in too few numbers to affect the outcome of the war.


The Warsaw Uprising

By July 1944, the Red Army had reached the Baltic coast near Riga and cut off the German Army Group North from the other German forces. Pushing westwards, the Red Army reached the Vistula River deep in Poland at the same time.

The closeness of the Red Army prompted the Polish resistance to launch an uprising in Warsaw against the Germans: this was suppressed after an uneven battle, although it is often claimed that the Red Army could have pushed on and invaded Warsaw if they wanted to. Why this was not done has never been satisfactorily answered. The Soviets argued that they were busy with offensives elsewhere: this was certainly true.

An offensive between the Carpathian Mountains and the Black Sea in August resulted in Rumania's surrender. Bulgaria followed suit in early September and Finland the same month. Soviet troops took the Yugoslavian capital Belgrade in mid-October. By November, the Soviet Army had reached Budapest in Hungary, where fanatical last ditch German and Hungarian resistance held them off for weeks.


Rome Falls

By May 1944, the Allies finally managed to break the German line at the famous Battle of Monte Casino (where a monastery had been reduced to rubble by Allied aircraft, ironically providing an ideal defensive position for the Germans who held off waves of successive attacks for months).

On 23 May, the besieged Allied troops at the Anzio beachhead finally managed to break out as the Germans withdrew: the Allies then entered Rome, an open city since June 4. After taking Ancona and Florence in August, the Allies were stopped by desperate German resistance for three months from overrunning all of Northern Italy.


The Battle of the Philippine Sea

In the Far East, the Allied island hopping continued: one after the other, Japanese strongholds fell, sometimes with horrendous costs to the Allies. Then the June 1944 Battle of the Philippine Sea saw the Japanese technological stagnation dramatically exposed.

On 19 June, in what was called the Marianas Turkey Shoot, advanced American aircraft shot down 219 of the now antiquated 326 Japanese aircraft sent against them. While the air battle was going on, American submarines sank all but one of Japan's remaining aircraft carriers: utterly defeated, the devastated Japanese navy limped back home with just 35 aircraft left. In the entire battle, the Americans lost 26 aircraft. Japanese technological stagnation as a result of being cut off from the White west, was the major cause for the scale of the defeat.

In October 1944, the Japanese were driven out of the Philippines: this saw the Japanese navy fighting its last major battle at the three day engagement known as the Battle for Leyte Gulf. The Japanese lost their last giant battleship in the Leyte Gulf and 25 other important ships: the Americans lost seven ships.


Bombers Over Japan

The American army captured the small but strategically vital islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam by August 1944. From these islands, American B-29 bombers could reach Japan with ease: the regular bombing of Japan began in November 1944. It was from these island airfields that the decisive act of war against Japan would be launched, one that saved the American army from having to physically invade Japan itself: the atom bomb raids.


The Battle of the Bulge

In the west, the Germans launched one last offensive: taking advantage of bad weather which grounded the Allied air force, a regrouped armored column attacked through the Ardennes forest on 16 December 1944. Taken by surprise, large numbers of Americans were captured: although a strong American pocket remained at the Belgian town of Bastogne which refused to surrender.

As the weather cleared, Allied air
supremacy was able to halt the
German offensive in its tracks
during the Battle of the Bulge,
1944. Here masses of Allied
aircraft swarm towards the front.

Despite making an 80 kilometer dent in the Allied lines (hence the name of the battle) the German effort was doomed after 23 December, when the bad weather broke and the Allied aircraft took to the skies, decimating the German land forces. The area captured by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge was only finally retaken by the Allies at the end of January 1945, causing the advance into Germany to be postponed until February of that year.


Crossing the Rhine

To cross into Germany required the seizure of the all important bridges over the Rhine and Ruhr: to this end the Allies developed a plan to seize two bridges in southern Holland: one at Njimigen and the other at Arnhem. The first objective was reached, but the second was a disaster: the Allied paratroopers landed virtually on top of a Panzer division and were decimated, the survivors eventually escaping in dribs and drabs back to the Allied lines.

This, combined with the German offensive in the Ardennes, put off the final Allied invasion of German territory until 1945.

In February 1945, the first large American army crossed the Ruhr: in early March, American troops captured an intact bridge over the Rhine at Remagen. By the middle of March the Americans had occupied German territory east of the Rhine between Bonn and Koblenz and by the end of the month another American force had landed south of Mainz. The Ruhr industrial valley was encircled by American troops by the beginning of April; while British troops crossed the Weser River, halfway between the Rhine and the Elbe rivers, on 5 April. On 11 April, the Americans reached the Elbe near Magdeburg, only 120 kilometers from Berlin.

The first Soviet officer to enter Vienna poses
in front of his tank: an American Sherman,
supplied to the Soviet Army by the USA.
American material help was one of the
decisive factors which helped defeat Germany.

The Final Soviet Advance

By February 1945 the Red Army had driven the by now exhausted and shattered German forces to the Oder River, 60 kilometers from Berlin where Hitler had chosen to await the end, despite the existence of a much larger piece of German held territory in the south, centered around the Bavarian Alps.


Germany Crushed - HITLER COMMITS SUICIDE

In Italy, a renewed Allied offensive saw the Po River valley falling in April 1945; and on 16 April the Red Army began its drive on Berlin. On 20 April, the Americans captured Nuremberg, and by 24 April the Red Army had completely encircled Berlin, cutting it off from the rest of the shrinking Germany. On 25 April, the Soviet and American troops met up at Torgau on the Elbe River northeast of Leipzig, and Germany was split into two parts. By the end of April, virtually all German resistance in the west had collapsed: but in the east, the Germans fought even harder than before against the approaching Communists, exacting a toll of over 100,000 Soviet casualties in the Battle of Berlin.

When the German held part of Berlin was down to a few blocks in the center of the city, Hitler committed suicide by shooting himself on 30 April 1945. His body, and that of his long time girl friend and in the last day of their lives, his wife, Eva Braun (who had committed suicide by taking cyanide), was then burned to cinders in a shell hole in the garden of the chancellor' s office. Fragments of Hitler's skull were found by Soviet troops and were taken back to Moscow, where they are still held to this day in the Russian state archives, along with other personal effects belonging to the Nazi leader.


German Surrender

As his last official act, Hitler nominated the head of the German navy, Admiral Karl Doenitz, as his successor. Faced with a hopeless military situation, Doenitz organized an immediate surrender, which was signed on 7 May 1945. By then, the German forces in Italy had already surrendered, as had those in Holland, north Germany, and Denmark.


The Divine Wind

Japan also faced certain defeat by the time of Germany's surrender. Nonetheless, they refused to even consider giving up. Instead, hundreds of volunteers came forward to pilot the aging and otherwise useless Zero fighters as manned flying bombs to smash them into the approaching American invasion forces. These suicide pilots, known as kamikazes ("Divine Wind") were to inflict serious losses on the American forces before Japan's final surrender: for example, during the fighting for Luzon in the Philippines in January 1945, kamikaze pilots sunk 17 American warships and damaged a further 15.


WAR IN Burma

At the height of their land invasion of Burma, Japanese troops had penetrated right to the eastern border of India itself. British troops then launched a counter attack: fighting under the most appalling conditions, often struggling with the jungle animals and disease as much as with the Japanese, the British soldiers in Burma slowly but surely fought the Japanese into a retreat. By the time of the end of the war, this "forgotten army" had virtually expelled the Japanese from Burma.

Fighting was often hand to hand: the British soldier's greatest fear was to be taken prisoner by the Japanese, who had a host of cruel tortures and slave-labor prisoner-of-war camps set up: one of the more famous of these built a bridge over the River Kwai, the subject of which later became a book and famous film.


Iwo Jima and Okinawa

The first piece of Japanese territory proper was invaded on 19 February: the tiny barren island of Iwo Jima took three and a half weeks and 6,000 dead Americans before it was captured: the Japanese garrison resisted fanatically.

On 1 April, the second piece of Japanese land, Okinawa, was invaded. The northern part of the island was occupied in two weeks, but the Japanese resisted furiously in the south and were only finally subdued on 21 June. The lessons learned from Iwo Jima and Okinawa were not lost on the American Command: tiny pieces of land were defended literally to the last man, women and child.

On Iwo Jima, virtually no Japanese soldiers had been taken alive; on Okinawa hundreds of soldiers and civilians had jumped off cliffs rather than surrender. In addition, kamikaze planes had sunk 15 naval vessels and damaged 200 others off Okinawa alone. It had cost thousands of American lives to seize two minuscule pieces of territory: Japanese resistance would only get even more fanatical if the main Japanese islands were invaded.


Hiroshima and Nagasaki

To save American lives, it was decided to attack Japan with the newly developed atom bomb and force it to surrender without a physical invasion. The first bomb was exploded in a test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on 16 July 1945, and two more bombs were built in quick order. The first was dropped over Hiroshima on 6 August, the other over Nagasaki on 9 August. The effect was devastating: in Hiroshima some 70,000 civilians died, and in Nagasaki, some 39,000 Japanese civilians died.

The mushroom cloud of the atom
bomb attack on Nagasaki billows
up: the two nuclear attacks ended
the war without the Allies having
to set foot in Japan itself.

While these are staggering figures, perspective is put on the use of atomic bomb attacks on Japan by comparing them with the Allied fire bombing of the German city of Dresden. On one single night's bombing of the German city, a week before the war ended, 135,000 German civilians were killed: more than all the Japanese killed in both the atom bombings put together.


The Japanese Surrender

On 8 August, the stunned Japanese government found itself invaded in Manchuria by the Soviet Union: this was however a minor worry compared to the possibility of further atom bomb attacks. On 14 August, Japan announced its surrender. Unlike Germany, the terms of surrender were not unconditional: Japan was allowed to keep its emperor. Japan itself was placed under American occupation, with General Douglas MacArthur being appointed military governor.


The Nuremberg Trials

Once the war was over, the surviving leaders of Germany and Japan were put on trial by the Allies for what was called "War Crimes". While some of the charges were based on wartime atrocities committed by the accused - any atrocities committed by the victors were unsurprisingly ignored - the main defendants at Nuremberg faced the chief charge of "waging aggressive war."

Most of the defendants, who included Luftwaffe head Herman Goering, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, Minister of Production Albert Speer, former Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess (who had been in British captivity since 1941 after flying off to a friend in Britain to try and make peace) and many general staff members, were all found guilty and sentenced to death or long periods of imprisonment.

The main Nazi accused at Nuremberg
had in reality committed no greater
crimes than the Allies who were
judging them. Charged with "waging
aggressive war" the hypocrisy of being
judged by representatives from the
Soviet Union's case, Nazi Germany's
former partners in the invasion of
Poland, was not lost on the accused.

The trials themselves broke many legal principles, most notably the principle of retro-active prosecution: which holds that a person cannot be convicted of a crime if the act in question was not a crime at the time that it was committed.

In other words, if an act is declared illegal from date 10, then any acts similar to that committed before date 10 cannot be classed as crimes because the law declaring it illegal was not in existence at the time.

This was the case with the main charge of "waging aggressive war" - in 1939, there was no legal international precedent or law forbidding the "waging of war": if there was, every nation in the world would have been called up before an international court on this charge, as they all had waged war at some time or another.

The most shocking failure of the Nuremberg trials was however the inclusion of representatives of the Soviet Union on the panel of judges, rather than in the accused box. The Soviet Union had also "waged aggressive war" against Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia before it was attacked by Germany. No mention was ever made of the Soviet attacks at the trials, and the inclusion of a Soviet judge on the bench made the entire process a mockery and clearly showed the trials up for what they were: an act of political revenge and nothing else.

Even in many of the atrocity charges there were glaring inconsistencies: the massacre of 11,000 Polish army officers at Katyn, carried out by members of the Soviet military, was pinned on the German door at the trials, with the Katyn massacre specifically included in the charge sheet against lower echelon German defendants.

The Nuremberg trials - and the Tokyo trials in which similar politically-motivated charges were trumped up against the Japanese leaders - were a disgrace to the institution of international law.


Racial Implications of the War

The Second World War was yet another catastrophe for Europe with millions of people being killed directly or indirectly in the ultimately pointless conflict.

Direct Military Losses are estimated at the following:

USSR	13,000,000
USA	415,000
Germany	3,500,000
Poland	120,000
Yugoslavia	300,000
Rumania	200,000
France	250,000
British Empire and Commonwealth	452,000
Italy	330,000
Hungary	120,000
Czechoslovakia	10,000

In addition to these military losses, millions of civilians were killed, either in bombings, cross fire or starvation. Estimates of civilian losses by these means are put at:

USSR	5,000,000
Germany	3,740,000
Poland	200,000
Yugoslavia	300,000
Rumania	20,000
France	30,000
British Empire and Commonwealth	60,000
Italy	50,000
Hungary	40,000
Czechoslovakia	10,000

Finally Europe's Jewish population was badly dented by a deliberate Nazi policy of rounding them up and putting them into concentration camps.

Above left: German "black propaganda" - a fake 1944 stamp printed in Germany, almost the same as a British stamp then in circulation, only adjusted to replace the British king's head with that of Joseph Stalin, Soviet leader. The Communist and Star of David emblems were inserted as was the slogan : "This is a Jewsh War". The word "Jewsh" was deliberately misspelled to lay emphasis on the words '"Jews". The stamps were then circulated into British society through sympathizers in an attempt to spread propaganda. Above right: British "black propaganda" - a parody stamp produced by the British and circulated in Germany, depicting Hitler's head as a death head. 'Futches Reich' means 'Ruined Reich' a word play on 'Deutsches Reich'.

The effect of the Jewish factor was a primary reason for the outbreak of the war and lay behind much of the Allies' double standards when reacting to German and Soviet aggression at the beginning of the war. For this reason it is first necessary to look at the position of the European Jews in some detail before discussing the German state itself: this is done in the following chapter.