The Second World War in 100 Facts

by Clive Pearson

  Russian forces were still some way from Berlin but in early April Stalin met with his two top commanders – Marshals G. K. Zhukov and I. S. Konev – and ordered them to go headlong for the German capital. He intimated that it was a competition between them to see who could reach the centre first. The Soviets had overwhelming force and between them the two generals controlled 1.5 million men with massive quantities of tanks and artillery.

  The task, however, was by no means easy. Berlin was a huge metropolis and 1 million Germans had been drafted in to hold it. Apart from the elite Waffen SS there were the Hitler Youth and the Volkssturm (Home Guard) who were determined to defend the capital to the last man. Zhukov, coming in from the west, was in command of the 1st Belorussian Army Front. At over 900,000 men it represented the mightiest concentration of ground forces ever assembled by the Soviets. Meanwhile, Konev’s smaller Ist Ukrainian Army Front was advancing from the south-west.

  Zhukov launched his initial attack on the well-defended Seelow Heights outside the capital on 16 April. Massive searchlights were used to accompany first an infantry and then a tank attack. However, German forces put up tremendous resistance and Zhukov’s men and armour became enmeshed in a confined space with little progress made. It was only after four days that his forces made it into the outskirts of Berlin. The Soviet Army hero had lost his touch. Meanwhile in the south Konev made more rapid progress through the defensive lines and into the city suburbs.

  Fighting in the city streets proved costly for the Soviets. Hitler Youth and Volksturm soldiers used the anti-tank Panzerfaust with devastating effect on Soviet armour. However, Zhukov, under pressure from Stalin, now sent forward smaller assault groups led by Chuikov (the hero of Stalingrad) to work their way to the centre. On the morning of 25 April forward units of Konev’s army arrived at the Tiergarten and found, to their surprise, they were firing on fellow Russians. It was Chuikov’s 8th Guards Army who had won the race for Zhukov after all.

  On 30 April the Soviet flag was hoisted over the Reichstag, the symbolic heart of the capital. On the same day Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. The formal surrender of the Reich was just days away.

  94. MUSSOLINI AND HIS MISTRESS ARE HIGHLY STRUNG

  After his dramatic rescue by Skorzeny in September 1943 (Fact 62) Mussolini was reinstated as fascist dictator. However, his new Republic of Salò was very much a pale imitation of his former glorious empire. For one thing he had very little jurisdiction over his new kingdom, which initially stretched down to south of Rome, as it was all very much under German military control and Mussolini was their puppet. He was even totally dependent on the Germans for financial support. He set himself up in Gargagno on Lake Garda and awaited events.

  It was clear from the start that the Italian dictator’s regime would only last as long as the Germans could defend it. How long that might be was unclear as Field Marshall Kesselring was putting up a masterly defence of the peninsula by creating strong defensive lines across it. After the fall of Rome in June 1944 German forces fell back to the formidable Gothic Line that went right the way across Italy from Pisa to Rimini and ran just north of Florence. The Germans were also in a favourable position as the Allies had moved some divisions to France, which left Italy as something of a sideshow for General Harold Alexander, the commander in charge of Allied forces there.

  The Allies launched an offensive in the autumn of 1944 and breached the line but failed to make much headway due to appalling autumn conditions, thereby making progress across the rivers and mountains something of an ordeal. The final offensive, which broke the German Army in Italy only came in April 1945. The new commander, General Heinrich Vietinghof, was forced by Hitler to stand and fight south of the River Po holding a position around Bologna. The obvious stratagem would have been to retreat behind the river and fall back into the Alps. But the Führer was having none of it. The result was predictable. The demoralised German army was battered by massed artillery and air attack before being outflanked and surrounded. It was all over in three weeks. On 2 May Alexander received the surrender of all German forces in the area.

  Mussolini, meanwhile, had decided that he would make his getaway to Switzerland. Accompanying him on his travels was his mistress, Clara Petacci, his brother Marcello and several other ministers and top fascists. The area was infested with partisans and getting past them was going to be tricky; in fact the inevitable happened as they were stopped at a roadblock and taken into partisan hands. They were not about to show leniency after all the misery that Mussolini had inflicted on his country. On 28 May 1945 the ex-dictator and his mistress were executed by sub-machine gun.

  The next day their corpses were taken to a small suburban piazza in Milan where they were kicked and spat upon by a hysterical crowd before being hung upside down from girders. It was the same piazza where fifteen partisans had been executed ten months earlier.

  For many it was just retribution.

  95. HITLER MAKES HIS FAREWELL

  Since the beginning of 1945 Hitler had retreated into his bunker in Berlin. From there he gave out increasingly frantic orders to phantom armies, which had already disintegrated in the face of Allied firepower and overwhelming numbers.

  With Soviet forces pressing in on the German capital his entourage wanted the Führer to escape down to the south and make a last stand in the Bavarian mountains. However, Hitler was determined to go down ‘heroically’ in Berlin. On 21 April he once again flew into one of his uncontrollable rages. He claimed he was surrounded by cowardice, treachery and incompetence. Suddenly, to the astonishment of those around him he collapsed in a pool of tears and cried, ‘The war is lost! Everything is falling apart.’

  With the dictator increasingly cut off in his bunker, his closest colleagues outside the capital began considering ways of making the most of the deteriorating situation. First of all, Goering, who was officially Hitler’s deputy, sent a telegram asking him if he still had ‘freedom of action’ and if not, he, Goering, would take control of the Reich. Hitler immediately saw red and had him stripped of all his offices.

  The next up was Himmler, his ‘trusty Heinrich’, who, it was revealed, was secretly negotiating terms with Count Bernadotte of Sweden and was offering unconditional surrender of all German troops to the Western Allies. Hitler was stunned by this and ordered someone to arrest him forthwith. It really was all falling apart.

  Before his final demise there were two things Hitler wanted to do: make a final testament and marry his mistress, Eva Braun – and in that order. After that he would commit suicide rather than fall into Allied hands and suffer a similar fate to his old playmate Mussolini.

  Hitler dictated his testament to his youngest secretary, Traudl Junge. He claimed he had always loved his people and had never wanted war but it had been foisted on him by the Jews. The army had betrayed him and the Luftwaffe were not much better, and so he wanted Grand Admiral Dönitz to take over as president of the Reich after his death. He then set out his intention to make an honest woman of his mistress before their double suicide, much to Junge’s astonishment.

  There was one problem about tying the knot, however: there was nobody to officiate at the ceremony. Luckily, Goebbels, who loyally stayed with Hitler, managed to get hold of a notary who was fighting in Berlin. Afterwards the newlyweds celebrated with champagne and sandwiches. However, it was rather difficult to offer them a bright future!

  On the next day, 30 April, a rather elderly-looking Hitler lined up his staff and shook hands with them before entering his private room with his wife. Some time later a shot rang out. The dictator had killed himself and beside him on the sofa lay Eva Braun, who had swallowed a cyanide capsule. Later their bodies were burned.

  The next day Goebbels and his wife Magda sadly murdered their six children before also committing suicide.

  96. GERMANY SURRENDERS TWICE

  After the death of Hitler it was only a matter of time before all Nazi forces surrendered. There were pockets of encircled German units
right across Europe. However, not all of them were keen to throw in the towel. In Eastern Europe in particular some enemy armies were determined to fight on. This was because they preferred to surrender to the Western Allies rather than the Soviets, whose vengeance the Germans feared.

  Montgomery was the first to receive a partial surrender in Germany itself. After crossing the Rhine at the end of March he had taken his British armies north-east in the direction of Denmark. They had made rapid progress and had reached Hamburg on the coast by the last week of April. Admiral Dönitz, now president of the Reich, sent a delegation to discuss terms of surrender, which would include German armies still fighting in the East. Monty could not risk offending the Soviets and so insisted that only troops in northern Germany, Holland and Denmark could surrender to him and that it should be unconditional. Eventually, on 4 May at Lüneberg Heath, the instrument of surrender was signed by a Dönitz’s representative. Other ceremonies soon followed in southern Germany. Although this was momentous it was not the end.

  Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in the West, demanded a full and complete surrender ceremony for all German forces be held in Reims, France, where Ike had his headquarters. The special event took place at 2.41 a.m. on 7 May. General Alfred Jodl duly signed on behalf of the German High Command with representatives of the Western Allies and the Soviet Union signing afterwards. Eisenhower decided not to attend the ceremony so as not to offer any respect to those Germans present. When Churchill was awoken in London with the news by a certain Captain Richard Pim, the great man replied ‘For five years you’ve brought me bad news, sometimes worse than others. Now you’ve redeemed yourself.’

  Unfortunately, a few hours later the Soviet High Command contacted Eisenhower to say that Moscow would not recognise the ceremony and wanted a separate one. Stalin claimed they were still fighting in the East and the surrender at Reims did not sufficiently recognise the supreme effort of the Russian people. Stalin wanted the new ceremony on 8 May in Berlin. Eisenhower agreed.

  In the end the Berlin ceremony took place at 1 a.m. on 9 May. Present was Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the German General Staff, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, representing the Soviet High Command, as well as other Allied representatives. It was a much more formal and impressive ceremony than Reims

  Eisenhower had hoped to keep the first signing secret for thirty-six hours so that general celebrations could take place at the same time right across Europe. But the news leaked out early and so VE (Victory in Europe) Day was celebrated on 8 May in the West and 9 May in the Soviet Union.

  97. THE HOLOCAUST WAS AN UNSPEAKABLE HORROR

  We have seen that the Holocaust was not fully implemented until after the Wannsee conference in January 1942 (Fact 37). From that period until the end of the war the Nazi regime set about the extermination of the Jewish race in Europe. Never before in history have so many people been subjected to such a methodical and clinical destruction. It was mass murder on an industrial scale resulting in the estimated deaths of 5.7 million Jews. It is a genocide that should never be forgotten.

  By 1942 Jews across Europe had already been subjected to ad hoc killings in Russia by Einsatzgruppen while many others were forced to live in ghettoes. The intensification of the ‘Final Solution’ required the victims to be transported wholesale to concentration camps specially set aside for the process. There were already camps across Europe, but these were often holding places for enemies of the state, for example those who may be murdered or suffer horrific privations but who did have a chance of survival. In the new camps the aim was liquidation. In such notorious places as Treblinka, Sobibór and Auschwitz (all in Poland) there was expected to be no escape.

  Most Jewish people were cynically told they were going for resettlement in the East and were allowed to bring up to 25 kilograms of belongings. On the long journey in cattle trucks of up to eleven days they were provided with little food or water. On arrival at Birkenau, for example, there would be a selektion at which point only fit men and women would be sent off to work while the old, weak, and mothers with children would be immediately despatched to the ‘showers’. Once inside, Zyklon B gas pellets would be dropped in and a wretched death would result within thirty minutes. Around 230,000 children died in this camp alone. The ‘lucky’ more able internees could expect to die through overwork, disease or arbitrary execution. Life expectancy was just six months.

  Life in the camps was a daily test of survival. Over the entrance was written ‘Arbeit macht frei’ (Work sets you free), but this was a cruel joke. Instead work in the factories of death was expected to grind people down until they could do no more and then they would be sent to the ‘shower’ blocks. In the camps the SS guards knew no bounds to their sadistic cruelty.

  Liberation came in 1945 but for many it was too late. In Poland, ahead of the Soviet advance, many Jews had to suffer forced marches westwards in sub-zero temperatures. The usual executions were meted out for those who could not keep up and from Auschwitz 15,000 died in this way. Across the Nazi empire hundreds of those saved were too starved and malnourished to survive their day of freedom.

  Many of the camp guards escaped punishment. However Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of the deportations and concentration camps in Eastern Europe, was later captured in Argentina, put on trial in Israel in 1962 and afterwards hanged.

  98. THE JAPANESE SURRENDER AS THE WORLD GOES ATOMIC

  The people of Britain, America, France and the Soviet Union had marked VE Day with joyful celebrations. However, as Churchill had noted at the time, there was still another unfinished war in the Far East against the empire of Japan. Although the war was clearly lost, the military leadership there was determined to fight on until the last man standing. By May 1945 the Japanese mainland was being constantly pummelled by American B-52 bombers while the destruction of her merchant fleet and a naval blockade meant starvation for her people was perhaps only months away.

  Estimates for an invasion of the Japanese mainland varied, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff put it at over a million US personnel killed and wounded. It could take months to secure final victory. However there was an alternative to this scenario. Since 1942 American scientists, with some assistance from the British and Canadians, had been working on the Manhattan Project, whose aim was to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was directed by Robert Oppenheimer and was based at Los Alamos in New Mexico. By July 1945 it was reckoned that the first two bombs could be ready by the beginning of the following month. The explosive power of these weapons was 2,000 times more than the largest bomb known to man.

  In the end President Truman had few qualms about employing such terrible weapons. If their massive destructive power could convince the Japanese to surrender rather than fight on with the resultant loss of millions of lives on both sides then it had to be done. The first bomb to be dropped was codenamed Little Boy (named after Roosevelt). It was a uranium bomb that was loaded on to the B-29 Super fortress Enola Gay on 6 August 1945. At 8.15 a.m. the 8,000-lb bomb was released over the Japanese city of Hiroshima and forty-seven seconds later the people there were hit with a blast which, for a split second, generated 300,000 degrees Celsius. A mushroom-shaped cloud soon appeared over the city. The centre was literally vaporised and perhaps 140,000 people died in total with many suffering a prolonged death from radiation sickness.

  The Japanese government was shocked by this but nevertheless decided to fight on in the hope that this was a one-off. So the Americans had another go to make their point. Three days later a plutonium bomb named Fat Boy (after Churchill) was released over Nagasaki killing over 70,000 people. At the same time the Soviet Union declared war. At this point even the most diehard nationalists had to admit the situation was hopeless. Emperor Hirohito agreed and broadcast to his people that unconditional surrender was the only option.

  The surrender ceremony took place on Admiral Nimitz’s flagship USS Missouri, which was anchored in Tokyo Bay. American and Allied top brass were there to see the
high-ranking Japanese entourage, including its one-legged foreign minister, sign the surrender document. There was peace at last.

  99. THE NURMBERG TRIAL BROUGHT A MEASURE OF JUSTICE

  After the war the three great powers – Britain, America and the Soviet Union – decided that there should be special courts set up in order to bring to trial those in Germany and Japan who had been responsible for some of the worst crimes in history. In Tokyo a trial was held for those who had perpetrated massacres and terrible cruelties and some faced execution as a result. In occupied Germany, the Allies brought together twenty-three (two were missing) top Nazis, who were paraded before an international tribunal.

  The star defendant was Hermann Goering. As the highest-ranking Nazi leader present he clearly took precedence and dominated his fellow defendants. He was suave and sophisticated and showed himself to be remarkably adroit and shrewd. He accepted full responsibility for his actions and made no apologies or excuses; indeed he said he was proud of his achievements. He denied that he was anti-Semitic and claimed to have no knowledge of the concentration camps.

  Other defendants blamed the war and the horrors of the Holocaust on leaders who were conveniently dead: Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich. Many said they had no choice as they were just obeying orders. Others made statements that just failed to convince; for example, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest-ranking member of the SS remaining, said ‘I never killed anybody’, and Wilhelm Keitel, the German Army’s Chief of Staff for six years, claimed ‘I was never really close to the Führer.’ Some like Julius Streicher remained rabid Nazis to the end. Only Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect and wartime armaments’ minister, took full responsibility for the actions of the regime, although he denied having used slave labour.