Adolf Hitler, now the Fuhrer of Germany,
has promised to bring prosperity and happiness back to the German people.
He’s also about to unleash hell on the world; years of bloody warfare that includes
a plan to annihilate the Jews and other people he considers a plague on mankind.
But our first day starts with some deception and comes before the outbreak of war.
It involves the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, going over to Germany and
having a chat with Hitler in his apartment. By this time, Hitler has already annexed
Austria and it's looking like he might have Czechoslovakia in his sights.
The Brits, and many other countries, are wondering what this strange man
with the funny mustache might do next. At the meeting, Hitler and Chamberlain sign the
Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which states that the two countries will not go to war.
Chamberlin then writes to his sister: “In spite of the hardness and ruthlessness
I thought I saw in his face I got the impression that here was a man who could
be relied upon when he had given his word.” Chamberlin arrives in England a hero. He’s seen
standing on a balcony at Buckingham Palace with the King and Queen. He gets a standing ovation
when he speaks at the House of Commons. To tens of thousands of people, he announces
that there will be “Peace for our Time.” Still, there are some people in this
crowd that have read Hitler’s book, “Mein Kampf”. My struggle in English. They know about his thoughts on what he perceives
to be a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. They understand that he has big plans for
Germany. They’ve read things like this: “All great cultures of the past perished
only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning.”
Chamberlain, however, tells those closest to him that Mr. Hitler is not insane. He says
he’s an excitable kind of chap, but in reality, he would barely stand out in a crowd. Hitler, he
says, is not hellbent on starting a major war. Day 1: September 1, 1939, just over one year later
At 2 am, the German army’s First Mounted Regiment hears the call of a bugle on the
Polish border. Someone shouts, “Muzzle caps off! Load!” There are around 1.5
million German soldiers and 1.2 million Polish soldiers currently fight on the western front.
The Germans seep into Poland like an infestation. Within a short time, the horses of the Polish
are crashing to the ground. An hour later, the Germans march on as riderless
horses run through clouds of smoke. In towns, civilians hear the sound of planes
dropping bombs from the sky. Sirens fill the air. Kids and their parents are running
through the streets still dressed in their pajamas. The German Luftwaffe shows no
mercy, raining bullets down on unarmed people. The head of the British military mission
in Poland, General Adrian Carlton, writes a letter. “I am seeing the very
face of war change. Its glory shorn, no longer the soldier setting forth into battle,
but the women and children being buried under it.” This is a war of machines.
A new kind of war has begun. Day 3
Men in flat caps shout from newspaper stands all over Britain, “Read all
about it, Hitler invades Poland.” On the front page of the Evening Standard a headline in bold
reads, “I Will Give Poland A Lesson – Hitler.” Both Britain and France declare war on Germany.
Americans on the other side of the world listen to their radios and think, thank God that’s not us.
There’s no way they are going to fight in another European war.
Day 4 Nazi Party official, Fritz Muehlebach, writes
in a letter, “I regard Britain and France’s interference as nothing but a formality. As soon
as they realize the utter hopelessness of Polish resistance and the vast superiority of German
arms, they will begin to see that we are always in the right and it is pointless to meddle.”
The British and the French are hoping that by saying they are joining the war they
will call Hitler’s bluff, and anyway, they are still thinking that the people of
Germany will overthrow this mad dictator. Day 8
The residents of Warsaw listen to their radios as bombs fall. Chopin’s “Military Polonaise” plays
through the din of thousands of machine guns. 30,000 bombs will drop every day and the German
army will storm the city, eventually killing 18,000 civilians in Warsaw and in just one day
taking 140,000 civilians as Prisoners of War. Hitler has plans for them at his concentration
camps, places, as you will see, where the peak of human depravity will be on show.
Day 17 The Polish are thinking that the French
will be joining them today in the fight. It doesn’t happen. What happens instead
is Joseph Stalin’s army crosses over the Polish border in a vicious attack of its
own against the eastern european nation. Stalin is intending to get some of the
spoils of war, and for now, at least, he has a pact with Hitler.
Day 36 Hitler is in Warsaw, proudly walking
through the ruins of a devastated city. Foreign Correspondents line up to
hear him speak. Hitler tells them, “Gentlemen you have seen for yourselves what
criminal folly it is to try and defend this city.” He sends the world a stark warning, saying,
“I only wish that certain statesmen in other countries who seem to want to turn all Europe into
a second Warsaw could have the opportunity to see, as you have, the real meaning of war.”
Hitler’s message is clear. Get in our way, and your cities will be turned
to rubble. Do not test me. The German army is a beast, and other countries
know it. The U.S. ambassador in London, Joseph Kennedy, asks, “Where on Earth can
the Allies fight the Germans and beat them?” No one wants to hear such
words, but he has a point. Day 104
Hitler is angry, stamping his feet on the ground, spit coming out of his mouth
as he screams at his generals. He’s embarrassed more than anything. He’s had his first taste of
defeat at the Battle of the River Plate when his navy, the Kriegsmarine, experienced a humiliating
defeat against the superior British navy. Maybe the Germans aren’t invincible after all. Day 252
Hitler has already had success in invading both Denmark and Norway. On
this day his troops invade Belgium, with Hitler feeling supremely confident that his Blitzkrieg
tactics will make easy work of the country. Over in the UK, a new man has become the
Prime Minister, a stubborn old goat with a taste for war and a romantic idea of
empire. His name is Winston Churchill. Soon he will make one of his moving
speeches on the radio, telling the Brits, “Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valor,
and be in readiness for the conflict.” The problem is, in spite of
Churchill’s powerful words, the Germans have a much stronger military
and Hitler knows this only too well. Day 270
The Nazis now occupy Belgium. Hitler’s troops again show no mercy as they shoot
down unarmed Belgian civilians. 1.5 million manage to flee the country, but many thousands are
slaughtered. Houses are on fire as tanks destroy everything in sight.
Day 279 A big day! Hitler delivers
a message to his troops: “Soldiers of the Western front, Dunkirk has
fallen. Soldiers! My confidence in you knows no bounds. You have not disappointed me.
40,000 French and English troops are all that remains of the formerly great armies.
Immeasurable quantities of materiel have been captured. The greatest battle in the
history of the world has come to an end.” He is now winning the Battle of France. He’s sent the British scurrying off back
to England where, to be honest, they count their blessings. The evacuation was
perilous, but it could have been much worse. The German military is a force of nature.
Day 299 Hitler is celebrating again. Bodies of French
citizens lay strewn across the countryside, their faces no longer recognizable. With 4.2 million
German army soldiers, one million Luftwaffe, 180,000 Kriegsmarine, and 100,000 Waffen-SS (the
Nazi Party military), Hitler has taken France. The result is occupation and collaboration
under Vichy France. 85,310 French military personnel have died defending France, and the
British have also been considerably weakened, losing not just thousands of men, but 100s
of ships and close to a thousand aircraft. Let’s just remember that Hitler has always
had a soft spot for Britain. He once said, “The English nation will have to be considered
the most valuable ally in the world.” He believes that the only reason he’s hated in the UK is
because of an American and Jewish conspiracy. Still, now he knows he has
to defeat this tiny nation. Day 314
Hitler is sitting in a quiet room at home, mulling over a speech that Churchill
made a while back. Part of it went like this: “We shall fight in France…We shall fight on the
beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the
streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
Hitler now reflects on this, smiling wide. He looks down at his pet
Alsatian, and says, “They did fight us in France, didn’t they, but they lost,
didn’t they, my little German dumpling.” Churchill knows what is coming. He
outlined this in another speech: “Hitler knows that he will have to break us
in this Island or lose the war…if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States,
including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.”
Most of the world doesn’t give Britain a chance. Even if Hitler has to hold back on a land
invasion, his airstrikes will get Britain down on its knees, begging to sign a peace treaty. Then
he can take of conquering elsewhere, notably, Stalin’s Russia. Pact shmact!
Day 339 Into the Battle of Britain. The
RAF is a handful, that’s for sure. German intelligence has supplied
information that is incorrect, thinking the British are much weaker than they
actually are. The British on the other hand, think the Germans are much stronger than they are.
100s of German bombers fly over cities in England and many civilians are killed,
but the British are resilient. Germany makes a strategic error, one of many
during the Battle of Britain. They focus on bombing not airfields but concentrating on
cities. This brings great relief to Churchill, who secretly thanks Hitler. The
cities can take it, he thinks. He’s right.
Day 427 Brits are out in the streets celebrating.
People all over the country laugh while singing this song:
“Hitler has only got one ball, Göring has two but very small,
Himmler is rather sim'lar, But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.”
Germany has made too many strategic mistakes, but what the Brits don’t know is that Hitler’s focus
isn’t on Britain now; he can save that for later. Now he wants to invade the Soviet Union. He has
economic reasons for this, but ideological ones, too. He might have a love-hate relationship with
Britain, but for the Soviet Union, he only feels hate. He despises Communists and anyway, the
Soviet Union, he says, is full of Jews and Slavs. Germany and Britain have lost over 3,000
aircraft between them and over 4,000 personnel, not to mention the 43,000
British civilians that have perished under German bombs in the eight-month battle.
But as no one expected Britain to hold its own, the people of the world have now gained
confidence. Over in the US, where many folks expected Britain to fall, people are saying the
Battle of Britain will “go down in history as a battle as important as Waterloo or Gettysburg.”
A battle might have been won, but the fight is just beginning.
Day 661 It’s 3.15 in Berlin and Hitler is inside
his apartment at the Reich Chancellery on Wilhelmstraße 77. Down at his side is the
Alsatian puppy he’s just been given, Blondi. He strokes the back of Blondi’s head and says,
“They won’t know what has hit them, will they, my little dumpling. 3.8 million men, thousands
and thousands of aircraft, tanks, artillery, are coming to squash those Slavic fools.”
He pats the dog on the head, saying, “Stalin’s not so tough, is he dumpling?
Let’s see if he really is the man of steel.” Stalin might not be so tough, but his people
are. Millions of them will be slaughtered in the bloodiest fight the world has
ever seen. They will starve, freeze, and over 300,000 will be killed by their own army
for defecting or other such transgressions. Around five million Soviets will be taken prisoner
and many of them will be tortured and killed, but these people are as hard as the cold
Russian soil in winter. They will prevail. Hitler doesn’t know that when he’s detailing
to Blondi what he’ll do to them. That night he lies awake mulling over every detail of the
invasion. Operation Barbarossa is about to start. Just after 3.15, close to the Bug River
bridge on the Russia/Germany border, a German soldier shouts over to the Russian side.
“Hey guys, can you come over here for a second, we have some important matters to discuss.”
As soon as the Russians walk over, all of them are machine-gunned down. In the mayhem,
German sappers pull the charges to blow up the bridge. The German soldiers think, “It’s kill,
or be enslaved by an inferior race of devils”. What Hitler doesn’t account for is just
how resilient these people are. 6 million of them were not long ago killed under Stalin’s
oppressive measures when he began a system of forced industrialization. They know what pain is.
Hitler is hoping some of them won’t want to fight, or they might defect, and this is one
reason why he thinks he will be victorious. Stalin will dispatch millions of
troops, young and old if need be, and they will walk into gunfire because if they
don’t their own commanders will have them killed. Day 829 Japanese planes rain bombs down on the US
airbase at Pearl Harbor, the US is caught unprepared. It’s a total disaster and one
which Japan sees as a resounding success. That’ll show the Americans what happenbs when
you offer support to the Allies and it should make them think twice about interfering
with Japan’s plans for Southeast Asia. Hitler finds out about the attack only after
it happens since Japan hasn’t given him any warning. He is delighted, telling one of his
commanders, “We can’t lose the war at all. We now have an ally which has never been conquered
in 3,000 years.” Still, he has never relinquished his objective that one day in the future he will
have to defeat what he calls the “yellow race.” He is quite content, thinking that Britain
will now have its hands full fighting Japan in its empire in the East and the
US will stay out of his way since it will have to deal with Japan. Hitler can now
concentrate on Eastern European domination. Day 833
The USA declares war on Germany and Italy after already declaring war on
Japan. President Roosevelt matches Churchill with his rousing words, saying, “The forces endeavoring
to enslave the entire world now are moving toward this hemisphere. Rapid and united effort by all
of the peoples of the world who are determined to remain free will insure a world victory of
the forces of justice and of righteousness over the forces of savagery and of barbarism.”
Hitler believes that the US, a race of mongrels, can’t fight to save their lives. He has little
respect for this relatively new nation, but he’ll see what these “mongrels” are capable of soon.
Day 1010 If you need to know about the USA’s strength look
no further than the victory against Japan in the Battle of Midway. It’s just happened on this day.
Japan takes an absolute beating, but not quite a knockout punch. 3,057 Japanese
have died compared to the USA’s 307. Day 1100
A German soldier named Hans-Jurgen Hartmann says never mind how many Russians they
slaughter, they just keep coming. He and his men are starving, too, and dying from the bitter cold.
They’ve been ordered to kill everyone in sight. In his diary, he writes, “How brutal this
war is becoming. It is now a total war, a war against women, children, and old people.
And that is the greatest horror.” But he, like the other troops, has had words like this
drilled into his head time and again, “Russia, a country of cruelty, must be cruelly treated.” At some point soon, Hitler will realize
he can’t outright win this war, but he will carry on fighting in order to get what he
thinks Germany deserves as part of settlements. Day 1206
The battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad have been raging on for awhile now , and they
are both horrific affairs. Together, millions of people will die, mostly Soviets, but Germany will
also see a shocking number of casualties. War is always monstrous, but these battles are something
the word monstrous cannot begin to describe. Both sides have acted with savagery on
an unprecedented scale, but Stalin has taken advantage of this by getting his people
into a state of fury in what he’s called the Patriotic War. As more time passes, some German
soldiers don’t hold out much hope for a victory, as can be seen in the words of a Panzer
officer named Wolfgang Paul. He writes: “We have blundered, mistakenly, into an
alien landscape with which we can never be properly acquainted. Everything is
cold, hostile, and working against us.” Another German soldier says the Russians will
fight to the very last man, and die over every last foot of land. He says, “We are entering a war
of attrition, and I only hope in the long run that Germany will win it.”
Day 1250 In Leningrad, the people are being starved, with
bread rations being only 4.5 ounces per day. The people try and carry on. A scientist named
Axel Reichardt actually finishes a great work called “The Fauna of the Soviet Union”. Days
later he’s found slumped over a chair, dead. The theater still puts on plays, but half-starved, the actors collapse on the stage. A woman
named Elena writes in her diary, “People are so weak with hunger that they are completely
indifferent to death. They perish as if they are falling asleep. Those half-dead people who are
still around do not even pay attention to them.” Perhaps the most shocking thing is cannibalism
among the starved. In the Winter of 1942, a report at the militia office in
Leningrad contains these chilling words: “One woman, utterly worn out and desperate,
said that when her husband fainted through exhaustion and lack of food, she hacked
off part of his leg to feed herself and her children.” That woman was executed.
The British and the Americans don’t know the full scale of the misery. They’re
just hoping the Russians can hold out, not too concerned about how they do it.
Lt. von Heyl writes to his family back in Germany. “Human life is cheap, cheaper than the shovels
we use to clear the roads of snow. The state we have reached will seem quite unbelievable
to you back home. We do not kill humans, but the ‘enemy’, who are rendered impersonal -
animals at best. They behave the same towards us. These battles on the Eastern Front will go on for
years and easily be the biggest bloodbath of WW2, but Russia will hold out.
Day 1400 Hitler is reading documents about what
is happening in the Nazi death camps. Around 6 million Jews will
die at the hands of the Nazis, while prisoners of other ethnicities will
be murdered, starved, beaten to death, or used for medical experiments at the camps. The
human depravity at these camps is incalculable. Things are changing on the battlefields,
though, and Hitler now is rarely the receiver of good news.
Day 1524 Hitler writes an important letter
to his generals. He says no more troops should be sent to the Eastern Front. He
says the Anglo-American armies must be fought in Italy and France, where they will soon be.
At this point, the long battle of Leningrad is pretty much lost, but the Germans keep flighting.
Many of Hitler’s top generals don’t agree with his orders, with one of them, Rolf-Helmut Schroder,
saying if he just lets them decide what to do, they might stand a chance at having some success.
Still, Hitler’s word is final. He’s deluded, thinking his posters on walls in Ukraine saying
“Hitler the Liberator” will become a reality. He’s wrong.
Day 1532 Hitler finds himself backed into a corner.
The Italians have just retreated, and he knows that the Soviets are about to stage a big
offensive. He thinks if he can just push back the Anglo-American invasion of France, he might
be able to move more troops back to Russia. There is much debate among the US and the UK
as to how to take France back, with Churchill disagreeing with the Americans about bombing the
French railways. He says that will mean too many civilian casualties, to which the Americans say
such collateral damage will have to happen if they are to be victorious. 70,000 French folks will be
killed by these Allied bombs. Since many French embraced the Vichy regime and fought against the
allies, some generals aren't too bothered about spilling some French blood.
Day 1574 Allied forces storm the beaches of Hitler’s
so-called Atlantic Wall in Normandy in France, what we all know as D-Day.
The D just stands for Day. As many will later say, it is like
walking into the jaws of death. 156,000 Allied troops, mostly American,
British, and Canadian, arrive on the beaches, some embracing battle, and others scared out
of their wits. A US private will later write, “There were men crying with fear; men defecating
themselves. I lay there with some others, too petrified to move.” He was hit in the arm
and thought it was a bullet, only to find out it was someone’s hand that had been shot off.
In the US, everyone is listening to the news on the radio, while in the UK even the
industrial strikes have been canceled for the day so people can listen to
live reports and go and donate blood. One of the German soldiers
writes a letter that morning: “The whistling of shells and shattering explosions
around us created the worst kind of music…Only a tiny, tiny handful of our company remains.”
By evening, the British have beaten back the German 21st Panzer division and the Americans
have established positions up to three miles inland. 2,501 men from the USA. 1,449 British, 391
Canadian, and 73 from other Allied countries, die in the invasion, as well as thousands more Germans
and as you know, even more French civilians. Day 1600
Hitler is on the brink of defeat, his troops are now withdrawing from all over tthe
western front line and facing utter catastrophe in Russia. In Germany, many towns and cities have
now been devastated by Allied bombs and the morale of the people is low. Hitler should surrender,
but he will not. He might lose, but he’s going to cause as much bloodshed as is possible,
even if that means conscripting children. Day 1784
It is madness to carry on, and this is why some Nazi generals on this day try to kill
Hitler with a bomb. They fail. Hitler is injured, and while his trousers certainly take some
damage, he will soon be shouting orders again. Now in a state of paranoia and shock,
Hitler orders an investigation, and many, many people who he even minutely believes
are against him are arrested. 4,980 of them are executed. One of them screams out
before his executioners pull the trigger: “The whole world will vilify us now, but
I am still totally convinced that we did the right thing. Hitler is the archenemy
not only of Germany but of the world.” Day 2029
The Allies have entered Germany, with the Soviet Red Army
getting there first in the East. They will give no quarter to German civilians; their troops
having seen such horrors over the years. A woman, who is now starving, writes, “We are afraid.”
From the West, the British and the Americans will invade, and like the Soviets, will march towards
Berlin. A Soviet soldier writes in his diary, “At first the fascists fought back fiercely,
but they could not endure this hell…Everything is bound to finish soon.”
He’s right, kind of. As this is happening, the Germans are busy
exterminating people in their concentration camps trying to burn all the documents that
show what horrors they’ve committed. Many of the Nazi bigwigs and scientists who work in those
camps are already making their getaways, and to everyone’s astonishment in decades to come,
some will be helped by American Intelligence Agencies if they prove useful to science or
in the new fight against communist Russia. Day 2042
The Americans liberate the Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany
and cannot believe what they are seeing. They see stacks of dead bodies,
people alive that have suffered cruelty on an unimaginable scale, and
soon when other camps are liberated, the Allies will begin to understand
the absolute evil of Nazi ideology. The Soviets have already seen similar
horrors when they liberated the largest camp at Auschwitz. They found stacks of
shoes and bodies thrown into trenches. It’s around this time that
from his bunker in Berlin, Hitler learns that some of his orders haven’t
been followed. He suffers a nervous breakdown. Day 2044
Stalin wants to get to Berlin first. This isn’t only a matter of pride, but also
because he’s aware that the US and Britain have almost perfected a nuclear bomb. When he gets to
Berlin, he’s going to make sure he gets his hands on German scientists.
Day 2063 The Red Army’s General Zhukov and General Konev
have their troops stationed around Berlin. They meet with resistance, but many of the German
fighters are boys that are so young their helmets drop over their babyfaces. When they are shot
and injured, they give off high-pitched screams. One reason the Germans are fighting so stubbornly
is that they know what will happen to them if the Red Army catches them. It will be death, but
it might not be a fast one, especially for the women civilians.
Day 2066 From his bunker, Hitler can hear the gunfire
and the bombs. He wakes up as usual to the sound of his valet Heinz Linge shouting, “On
your marks!” Hitler learns that Mussolini has been shot and his body paraded around, spat
at and beaten, and hung up with meat hooks, something Hitler imagines will happen
to him in the hands of the enemy. He turns to Linge and says, “You must never allow
my corpse to fall into the hands of the Russians. They would make a spectacle in Moscow out of
my body and put it in waxworks.” Linge agrees, and then hands Hitler some flatulence
pills, one of 28 medications he’s on, and also some cocaine drops for an eye problem.
To make matters even worse, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler has just tried to negotiate
a surrender with the enemy. It's the end and Himmler knows it. Hitler knows it, too.
On this day, he gets married to his mistress Eva Braun. They celebrate with copious cups of
champagne, but this will be a very short marriage. Day 2068 Hitler wakes up at about 11 am and
calls for his secretary, Traudl Junge. They have tea together, and Hitler asks,
“Have you had a nice little rest, child?” She replies, “Yes, I have slept a little.” Hitler
says, “Come along, I want to dictate something.” In his last will and testament, he says
that Germany isn’t to blame for all the years of misery and carnage, saying,
“It was desired and provoked entirely by those international statesmen who were either of
Jewish origin or worked in the Jewish interest.” He adds, “The responsibility of the outbreak of
this war cannot rest on me” and instead he blames British politicians and the Jewish hierarchy.
Four people sign the document: Goebbels, Bormann, Burgdorf, and Krebs, and soon, like
Hitler, they are all dead. Before they die, Goebbels and Bormann take Hitler’s body
along with his wife’s body and burn them in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. As they
do this, Soviet guns can be heard close by. Soon, the Americans and British arrive
in Berlin, but it is the French army, who believe they are owed something by the
Germans, that do most of the looting and killing. Sometimes they arrive at houses only
to find whole families sitting in chairs in the living room, all of them dead already.
This is why a British officer named David Fraser writes, “There is so much vile cruelty in
the world for us to say that with any satisfaction that ‘good’ has been victorious.”
At home in England, the philosopher, and pacifist, Bertrand Russell, puts
pen to paper. He agreed that Hitler had to be stopped, but he still writes:
“And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and
our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly
stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that
any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country`s pride.”
Now you need to hear this amazing story “Why Hitler's Nephew Was His
Worst Enemy.” or, have a look at…
