Of all the countries that took part in the Second World War it was Poland that suffered most ... Almost 20% of the population. Charles Wheeler, The Road to War 8/8: Global War 8/8
Chamberlain had no desire for immediate offensive action. ibid.
Hitler’s attack on France was a brilliant success. ibid.
A simply exercise in logistics. Nothing very complicated. He merely wants Winston Churchill brought from London to Berlin. And we are ordered to make a feasibility study. The Eagle Has Landed 1976 starring Michael Caine & Donald Sutherland & Robert Duvall & Jenny Agutter & Donald Pleasence & Anthony Quayle & Jean Marsh & Sven-Bertil Taube & Siegfried Rauch & John Standing & Judy Geeson et al, director John Sturges
Since the build-up of the German army, the occupation of the Rhineland and now the takeover of the Sudetenland. The World Wars 4/6, H2 2014
Like Adolf Hitler, Stalin is a brutal dictator with dreams of world domination. ibid.
Hitler’s blitzkrieg completely overpowers the French army. ibid.
Hitler also conquers Belgium and the Netherlands. ibid.
If Hitler wants a war, Stalin will give him one. ibid.
A new threat emerges for the Allies as Japan expands its empire, moving its military within striking distance of the Philippines. ibid.
For the first time in modern history America has been attacked by a foreign power. Nearly the entire US naval fleet in the Pacific has been destroyed. The World Wars 5/6
On 2nd October Hitler launches his attack to capture Joseph Stalin’s capital, Moscow. The fighting is brutal and both sides incur heavy losses. ibid.
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill know that Joseph Stalin is a brutal tyrant who shares more with Hitler than with them. The World Wars 6/6
Operation Bodyguard: a collection of fake radio signals and ingenious tricks designed to conceal from Adolf Hitler the Allies’ greatest secret. ibid.
The ‘period of rest’ is short-lived. ibid.
This is the story of the greatest war of world history. It is the story of an age when the most wicked evils were perpetrated. 74,000,000 were to die. World War II: The Complete History e1: The Stumble to War, Discovery 2000
The Versailles settlement insisted that Germany pay reparations. Huge sums were to be paid, to pay off the debts of France and Britain. Repaying money loaned by America. The sums were unimaginably large. Crippling the German economy. ibid.
Hitler presented the German people with one big idea: the destruction of what he called the Slave Treaty of Versailles. And to once more make Germany a force. ibid.
One month after Hitler took office, the German Parliament – the Reichstag – burnt to the ground. It was arson. The attack upon the centre of German democracy is shrouded in conspiracy theory. ibid.
The reoccupation of the Rhineland ... Hitler ordered his troops to cross the Rhine. It was a gamble ... Hitler won ... The Reoccupation of the Rhineland has been described as the end of World War I and its aftermath. ibid.
Millions were to die and disappear. Of course in the despotic terror of Stalinism lay a fearful dilemma for the democracies, which explains much of what has been called appeasement. In the 1930s who was worse: Hitler or Stalin? ibid.
The battleship was no longer the capital ship, the decisive weapon of naval warfare. Aircraft were to make these ships too vulnerable to attack ... The submarine as U-boat is for ever associated with the mythology of World War II as the definitive Nazi weapon. World War II: The Complete History e2: The End of Illusion
Versailles kept the war alive in the mind of every German. In a Germany resentful of history. In a Germany suffering endless economic crises. A movement and a leader arose giving new voice to those resentments, and promising action. ibid.
Hitler and the Nazis rose to power through the structures of democracy. And then abolished those same freedoms. ibid.
In the steps to war in these last months of peace the Soviet Union, so distant and removed from much of European affairs throughout the decade, became increasingly involved. If Hitler was the prime mover of war, the originator of the events that propelled the continent to conflict, it was Stalin that opened the door for Hitler to walk to war. ibid.
Stalin was obsessed with territory, and saw the extension of his border westward as a resolution of old scores, and in his paranoia an insurance against invasion. ibid.
It was not just allied passivity that created the phony war. The Germans were in no great haste to raise the pace of the action. Perhaps another reason for the phoney war is the simple fact that the weather of that winter was some of the most severe in living memory. World War II: The Complete History e3: The War That Wasn’t
The British force that was slowly unit by unit being ferried across the channel to the fields of northern France went under the title of the British Expeditionary Force – the BEF. It went under the same name as that borne by the British Army in the First World War. ibid.
For several months the Royal Air Force scattered leaflets all over Western Germany, setting out a logical, reasoned case against Nazi expansion into Europe. Their appeared to be no effect on public opinion in the Third Reich. ibid.
Germany’s armies swept northward into Denmark and Norway. The aim was to conquer Norway and to secure Scandinavia on Germany’s northern flank. Denmark was just in the way. A British expedition to aid Norway was quickly defeated. World War II: The Complete History e4: A Kind of Victory
It has been said that all wars have at their root the control of resources, of food, of raw materials, of manufactured products. ibid.
The government could seize property and use it for the war. The right to strike was abolished. New taxes were introduced to prevent war profiteers. The democracy had paradoxically assumed the garb of the totalitarian dictatorship it sought to destroy. ibid.
The Battle of Britain was a battle of attrition. The side that lost most planes and most pilots would be defeated. World War II: The Complete History e5: Time of Legend, Time of History
The Spitfire was by far the fastest and most agile. Its flying qualities meant Spitfires were the planes of choice to engage the opposing German fighters. A myth of the War was that the Spitfire won the Battle of Britain for the RAF. The truth was that Hurricanes were far more numerous and shot down many more German aircraft. ibid.
The German plan was to weary the British people, to make them tire of the war. Night-time attacks were essential to preserve the planes of the German Air Force after the heavy losses of the Battle of Britain. World War II: The Complete History e6: The World Shall Hold Its Breath
On 10th May one of the strangest episodes in the story of the war occurred. Adolf Hitler’s Deputy Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess, parachuted into Scotland alone. Hess claimed that his astrologer had told him that he, Rudolf Hess, was personally destined to be the bringer of peace between Britain and Germany. Hess claimed that in return for a free hand in Europe, Britain would be allowed to retain her empire. The offer was rejected, and Hess was to spend the rest of his life in captivity. ibid.
The German messages transmitted by the highly secret Enigma machine were discovered. The code was broken by the British Ultra system. The agonising decision that had to be made was when and when not to use this intelligence. Its use was never discovered. The Nazis never believed their deepest secrets could be read. Never realising Enigma was a broken weapon. ibid.
In August 1941 at the Placentia Bay Conference in Canada Churchill and Roosevelt agreed and signed what came to be known as the Atlantic Charter. The Charter was an agreement, a statement of shared beliefs, that was at the same time a list of war aims and a blueprint for the post-war peace: ‘Neither Britain nor America sought conquest of territory’; ‘No border was to change, no territory altered without the consent of the population’; ‘All people have the right to self-government restored’; ‘After the war all states would have the right to economic resources for prosperity’. World War II: The Complete History e7: The Day of Infamy
On December 7 1941 at 6 a.m. the Japanese planes appeared in the skies above Hawaii. It was a Sunday morning. The surprise was complete. At Pearl Harbor that day seventy warships lay at anchor, including eight battleships. Torpedo dive-bombers attacked the lines of ships and the airfields. Then high-level bombers made further assaults. In an attack that lasted a bare two hours six battleships were sunk and damaged, numerous smaller ships were sunk and damaged, more than 160 aircraft were destroyed. ibid.
The German army, unequipped to fight in winter, suffered terrible losses in the deepest cold ... Barbarossa ended in the snow before Moscow. There were still much fighting and dying to be done. ibid.
Strategic bombing developed to the advantage of the Allies and against the Axis. World War II: The Complete History e8: Six Months to Run Wild
The fates which befell the prisoners of different armies varied widely. ibid.
Soviet prisoners falling into German hands were treated with what amounted to savagery. Nearly 80% died in captivity. The Germans claimed not to be bound by the Geneva Convention as the USSR had not signed. Russian officers were shot; ordinary soldiers were left without food or shelter. ibid.