The point and intentions of this blog are for the younger generation, and for the non-believers, to see and understand why and how a human race can be manipulated in doing such inhuman acts, the worst part of it is that the rest of the world was watching and waiting too long to interact and end this disaster. It is hard to believe that during the construction of dozens of concentration camps being built, with gas chambers, ovens, and torture chambers, which must have taken months if not years to build with thousands of workers that it hasn’t brought it to peoples attention outside of Germany!Today’s generation

can not allow such events to ever happen again, and that brings me to a previous blog in which I expressed my own opinion, that the globe needs to have a nation in charge in order to keep peace and democracy all over the world. Oppressive and dictating nations like North Korea, Russia (Crimea & Ukraine), Iraq during Saddam (Kuwait), have to be watched and kept in check.

To understand Part 2 of my blog, please go to Part 1 first: The World-Changing Events of the 1940s – Part 1

Below is an outline of events, that spanned over a 12 year period, during which this maniac was able to bring himself to power and turn an entire nation; these are the  subsequent turns of events that lead to the 2nd World War:

• Hitler’s Upcoming Struggle, December 20, 1924 –

• Adolf Hitler has been freed after only eight months in Landesberg Prison, where he was serving a sentence for High Treason after a failed attempt at a coup with Erich Ludendorff and other sympathetic members of the police and military last year. The coup had been modeled on Mussolini’s “March on Rome,” and Hitler had hoped to make his own “march on Berlin,” but several important factions withdrew their support at the last hour. Hitler’s imprisonment was turned into something of a publicity stunt by the ambitious leader of the Nazi Party. His original sentence was for five years, but after having found favor with the judiciary, prison guards, and other influential supporters, it was cut short. Adolf Hitler’s time in prison was predominantly spent
• dictating his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to his deputy Rudolf Hess. The book is both an autobiography and a political manifesto.

°     Germany, August 29, 1933,  

• Adolf Hitler now has total constitutional power in Germany and changes are underway throughout the nation with the abolition of all other political parties. It has also been confirmed that the Oranienburg concentration camp, which will be used to confine any political opponents and jews found to be in the way of Hitler’s vision for a new Germany, has been opened outside Berlin. Under new laws, such citizens may now be imprisoned without a trial or any right of appeal. Similar camps in Dachau in southern Germany, Buchenwald in central Germany, and Sachsenhausen near Berlin will all serve similar purposes. New laws allow anyone to inform on any person toward whom they have a grudge, and warrants state only: “In Article One of the Reich President for Protection of People and State of 28 February 1933, you are taken into protective custody in the interest of public security and order. Reason: Suspicion of activities inimical to the State.” Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany on January 30 this year and the passing of his Enabling Act on March 23 ended democracy for Germany. The act was passed in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin following the burning of the Reichstag building (the traditional seat of the German government).

   

  The only man to oppose Hitler on that was Otto Wells, the leader of the Social Democrats, who said, “We Germans Social Democrats pledge ourselves solemnly in this historic hour to the principles of humanity and justice, of freedom and socialism. No enabling act can give you the power to destroy ideas that are eternal and indestructible.” Hitler was enraged and responded with ” You are no longer needed! The star of Germany will rise and yours will sink! Your death knell has sounded!”

• Germany, August 2, 1934, 

• Following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, age 86, Adolf Hitler, proclaims himself Führer and Dictator of Germany, making him both Head of State and Chancellor within two months’ time.  Leaving a clear route for Adolf Hitler to merge his current position as chancellor into one. The armed forces are forced to swear an oath of allegiance.
• Berlin, Germany, November 9, 1933,
•  Jewish shops, homes, and synagogues are looted or destroyed as Hitler’s anti-Jewish scheme is unleashed throughout Germany.
• Germany, March 22, 1933,
• The first Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, near Munich, begins operation.
• Berlin, Germany, April 1, 1933,
• The nazi government uses violence to orchestrate its boycott of Jewish business, forcing stores to close and barring professionals from their offices.
• Berlin, Germany, April 11, 1933,
• The nazis decree “non-Aryans” to include anyone descended from non-Aryan, particularly Jewish parents or grandparents.
• Germany, August 29, 1933,
• Jews and socialists are herded into concentration camps.
• Berlin, Germany, January 1, 1934
• , A nazi law forcing people with genetic defects to be sterilized comes into effect in Germany.
• Berlin, Germany, January 15, 1934,
• Germany and Poland sign a 10-year non-aggressive pact following a period of tension.
• Nuremberg, Germany, September 15, 1935,
• The Nuremberg decree legalizes the Nazi prosecution of Jews.
• Germany, March 7, 1936,
• France decides a large military force will be needed after German troops reoccupy the Rhineland.
• Germany, November 25, 1936, Germany signs an anti-Comintern pact with Japan to protect the country’s common interests.
• Rome, Italy, August 3, 1938

  , Mussolini introduces his anti-semitic laws into <italy, following the lead of his German allies.

• Munich, Germany, September 30, 1938, The Munich Agreement made by Germany, Italy, Britain, and France, allows Hitler to take Sudetenland, and Hungry and Poland to take border districts from Czechoslovakia. Another resolution is signed to resolve future disputes between Britain and Germany peacefully.
• Czechoslovakia, October 5, 1938,
• Hitler’s army marched into Czechoslovakia, on March 16th occupies Prague, and becomes a Nazi protectorate.
• Berlin, Germany, November 9, 1938, Jewish shops, homes, and synagogues are looted or destroyed as Hitler’s ant-Jewish scheme is unleashed throughout Germany.
• Rome, Italy, May 22, 1939,
• Mussolini signs a military pact with Hitler, obligating Italy to fight alongside Germany.

• Moscow, USSR, August 23, 1939,

• Hitler and Stalin sign a nazi-Soviet pact of non-aggression that divides Eastern Europe between Germany and the USSR.

• Poland, on September 1, 1939,

• German forces invade Poland from Germany in the west, East Prussia in the north, and Czechoslovakia in the south.

• Europe, September 3, 1939,

• Britain & France declare war on Germany in accord with treaty obligations to Poland. They are followed by New Zealand, Australia, and India.
• Poland, September 29, 1939,
• Warsaw surrenders; 700,000 Polish troops are taken, prisoners.
• Germany, October 1939,
• The Nazis begin a program to euthanize the sick and disabled in Germany.

• Finnland, November 30, 1939,

• The USSR attacks Finland after their strategic negotiations on November 12 fail.
• Europe, February 20, 1940

  ,Hitler orders his U-boat captains to attack all shipping, Allied vessels, and neutral ships alike.

• Europe, May 10, 1940,

• After invading Norway and Denmark on April 9, Germany now invades Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, and France.
• Berlin, Germany, September 27, 1940

  , Japan, Germany, and Italy sign a 10-year pact. They met in Berlin to sign an agreement recognizing each other’s spheres of interests, as well as promising to come to one another’s aid should one of them be attacked by any state “not now a belligerent.” This is being seen as a warning to both the United States and the USSR to remain neutral in the current conflict. Article 6 of what is now being referred to as the Three-Power-Pact states it will come into effect “immediately upon signing and shall remain in force 10 years” from that day.

• The UK, November 30, 1940

  , Germany is mass bombing regional cities, Glasgow, Birmingham, Coventry, Manchester, and Sheffield have been hit.

• London, England, December 29, 1940,
• The city burns from more than 10,000 German firebombs.

• Yugoslavia, April 17, 1941,

• The country surrenders after Germany occupies Sarajevo.

• Greece, April 30, 1941,

• Most of Greece is under German and Italian occupation, German forces took Athens on April 26.
• Crete, Greece, June 1, 1941,
• German forces take the island of Crete in a bloody battle, Allied troops are evacuated to Egypt.

• USSR, June 22, 1941

  , Germany invades the USSR, breaking the Nazi-Soviet pact.

• Honolulu, Hawaii, December 7, 1941,

• Japanese planes make a surprise attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbour.
• Washington DC, USA, December 8, 1941

  , The USA, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand declare war on Japan.

• The USA, December 11, 1941

  The USA reciprocates  Germany’s and Italy’s declaration of war.

• Central America, December 11, 1941,

• Cuba, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic declared war on Germany and Italy.
• Europe, December 12, 1941,
• Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria declared war on the USA.

• Hongkong, December 25, 1941,

• Japan seizes HongKong
• St.Petersburg, USSR, December 25, 1941,
• Over 3000 people have starved to death since the German siege on the city began in September.
• Washington DC, USA, January 1, 1942,
• The Declaration of the United Nations to pledge support for the Atlantic Charter is signed by 26 countries.
• Berlin, Germany, January 20, 1942,
• In the meantime, Nazi leaders at the Wannsee Conference structure the “final solution of the Jewish question,” aiming to exterminate over 11 million European Jews.
• Italy, July 25, 1943
• Premier Benito Mussolini is ousted. New Marshal Pietro Badoglio places him under arrest. Badoglio declares Italy is no longer a fascist state.
• Italy, October 13, 1943,
• Badoglio declares war on Germany.
• Poland, on January 27, 1944,
• Soviet forces seize the concentration camp at Auschwitz, find 50000 starving prisoners left near death, the remainder having already herded out.
  Milan, Italy, April 28, 1945,
• Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci are strung up for public display after being shot dead.
• Germany, April 1945,
• Allied forces discover dens of horror in the Nazi concentration camps, finding starved, critically ill, captives, and grounds piled with rotting corpses.
• Berlin, April 30, 1945
• Hitler suicide in his bunker by shooting himself. His newlywed wife, Eva brown, poisons herself and dies.
• London, England, May 8, 1945,
• Crowds of spectators jam London’s street to hear Churchill’s broadcast announcing the war in Europe will end at midnight. Around 50,000 gleeful revelers take to the streets, singing, dancing, and embracing.
• Reims, France, May 7, 1945,
• Germany signs its surrender after the foreign minister gives notice in a radio broadcast.

• Japan, August 6 -9, 1945

  , The United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagaski.

• Japan, August 15, 1945,

• Japan signs an unconditional surrender to the Allied powers.

      Your blogging friend Ulrich Koepf

LINKS: History Stories – The Holocaust 

LINKS: The Pictures that Defined World War II

The World process in a big context

A closer look at the past events of the 1940s shows almost a temporal symmetry: in the first five years, from 1940 to May 1945 (in Asia until the beginning of September), there was war, while the second half of the decade was dominated by peace, more precisely, remained: full of attempts to keep the world at peace. That is the unusual symmetry: five years of war, five years of peace.

The limitation that the “second” five years had been filled with attempts to keep the world at peace is necessary because the years from 1945 to 1950 entered the memory of contemporaries less than the early years of peace than the years of the so-called cold war, the years of severe tensions in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the area of ​​the economy, it is the years of the beginning of an unprecedented boom.

One could also call them the years of the beginning of the triumphal march of the engine with all its revolutionary influences, or the years of the beginning of new dimensions in the world in which the continents quickly came closer, and also in the cultural field the limitation of the national standards and Conditions were partially suppressed.

This general, global upturn in the second half of the 1940s was not only a blatant contrast to the terrible conflict during the war years; it already indicated a contradiction. By this allusion, I mean the contradiction between the results of technical and natural economic progress, which have broken all previous dimensions and transformed the world into one, as well as the ongoing political turmoil of the world, and it’s a threat to all possible manifestations of violence.

From European to World War 

Let us first follow the abrupt events in the five war years of the decade from a European and worldwide aspect. Hitler’s Armies flooded into Denmark and Norway and occupied both countries. A few weeks later, on the 10th, they attacked France, which was sitting behind a fortress wall, which was named after its builder and was considered to be the insurmountable Maginot Line, in the meantime the Germans attacked and raided Holland, Belgian and Luxembourg. The immobility of the “drôle de Guerre” had turned into the stormy force of the motorized war of aggression on land and in the air. Within a few weeks, France surrendered and then, under Marshal Pétain, the legendary former defender of Verdun Fortress in the First World War, formed a new government, after an armistice with Hitler was signed on June 22.

French General de Gaulle, meanwhile, escaped to England, where Winston Churchill had become Prime Minister. And he didn’t think of making peace with Hitler. Mussolini, the dictator of fascism from Italy, panicked that he might be late in the redistribution of the world, therefore quickly declared war on collapsing France and annexed areas around Nizza. Except for the neutral states of Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, and Spain (which were heavily depressed after the civil war), Hitler now controlled the European continent, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The resistance was embodied by Britain, on its own, in Great Britain. Hitler, whose navy was inferior to the British, tried to seize England with all of his strong air force in September. But the Brits, equipped with all of the most modern radar equipment, were able to withstand the Germans from the air and repel them. They won the Battle of Britain. On their side standing, the states of the British commonwealth and, in terms of support with money and war material, the United States of America.

The next chapter followed, which is conditioned by the principle that successful, violent folding of powers stimulates the hunger for more power. The war spreads rapidly, first in Europe, then beyond Europe. When Italy entered the war, it also spread to Africa. The Britons drove the Italians out of their possession in the Libyan Cyrenaica, in spring 1941 from Eritrea and afterward from Abyssinia.

The losses in Libya forced Mussolini to ask Hitler for help in fighting the English in Africa. But soon, in October, the Italians brought the war into southern Europe: they attacked Greece, but soon got stuck there as well, so German troops once again had to come to their aid. In April 1941 Hitler’s troops attacked Yugoslavia and occupied it. There, the war was then called the “Kleinkrieg” (small war).

Then, on the night of June 21-22, 1941 Hitler gave the order to attack the Soviet Union. This marked the German Reich, being in a two-front war, which Hitler himself described in his book “Mein Kampf” as the worst strategic mistake of imperial Germany including the First World War.

By late autumn 1941, the German armies managed to advance in a stormy, aggressive way, right up to Moscow. But they didn’t get any further.

That success prompted the officer-ruling Camilla in Japan, who had already embroiled the country in a war with China and had also sealed a three-power pack with Hitler and Mussolini in 1940, in the early morning of December 7, 1941, to attack and destroy the American naval base in the port of Pearl Harbor on the island Hawaii with submarines, and from the air, inflicting massive destruction and loss of lives.

Overnight the United States was drawn into the war. Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese campaigners stood now at the peak of their power. The Allies, i.e. Great Britain and the states of its Commonwealth, the United States of America, the  General de Gaulle entrusted, free French and colonial associations, and the other European states at war with Germany were the challenging ones and were on the defensive front. The situation lasted until the summer of 1942. Then the turn began with the penultimate section of the Second World War.

The Turn

The turn came thanks to the British’s inner resilience and determined resistance and the brutal challenge of the Americans. Until the (video) Pearl Harbor attack, the idea of ​​America entering the war had by no means been very popular. The nefarious blow of the Japanese changed the mood quickly and thoroughly. America unfolded its huge potential for wartimes. It mobilized people, materials, and skills. The war economy pounded out of the ground was sufficient to equip armies within a few months, to build up the air force and the fleet according to the latest achievements, and also to a large extent to supply weapons and ammunition to the Allies, to the Britons, the French and above the Persian Gulf, to the Soviet Union.

Then, however, the counter-strikes began in all locations. In the summer of 1942, the Americans won the naval and air battles in the Coral Sea and Midway Islands, causing heavy losses to the Japanese. At the end of November, the Russians were able to encircle several army units near Stalingrad. The terrible Winterschlacht (Winterbattle) ended in early February 1943 with the death of 146,000 and the capture of 91,000 German soldiers – an event that triggered a shock in Germany.

In May 1943

the German-Italian army group capitulated at El-Alamein. Over 200,000 men were captured here. The transition from Africa to Sicily stood now open for the Brits and Americans.

The situation had now turned into its opposite, and the Americans were gradually recovering areas in the Pacific Ocean that the Japanese had occupied. In the European theater of war, the Germans retreated. In the south, the Allies seized Italy. Fascism collapsed on July 25, 1943, Mussolini was arrested and later executed

The new government declared Italy to have left the war on September 8, and from autumn onwards the Russians slowly but surely pushed the Germans back to the borders of the Reich. The Western Allies landed on June 6, 1944, on the French Channel coast. At the same time, the devastating air raids on the German cities, and the centers of their war productions, began. An assassination attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944, attempted by conspiratorial officers and underground opposition politicians, failed and was cruelly avenged by Hitler afterward.

From the winter of 1944, the end of the war in Europe was only a matter of time. The war was now at the borders of Germany and had already exceeded some of them.

The Collapse

The last chapter followed in Europe, characterized by the state of the agony of the Third Reich. Hitler committed suicide in Berlin on April 30, 1945, while the final battles with the invaded Russians took place in the city. On May 8, 1945, Grand Admiral Dönitz, who had been appointed by Hitler as his successor, signed the unconditional surrender. The fighting in Asia continued until the Americans dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in early August. The terrible effects of these bombs led to the unconditional surrender of all Japanese troops on September 2, 1945 – after the European war, the world war had finally come to an end.

The Calamity of Power

The Second World War was a major political and economic disaster. Do catastrophes such as war make sense? Today we hardly ask this question anymore when it comes to natural disasters: natural disasters are caused by forces that are beyond human influence.

In such disasters as water shortages, fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, or tornadoes, people see the punishing hand of God and they accept it as a warning.

Could you imagine what this world be like if the combined forces of the Allies hadn’t removed Hitler from power?!

Read part two of World changing Events here