Hi I’m John Green and this is Crash Course
European History. So, On August 23, 1939 the USSR and Germany
concluded a non-aggression pact. The pact caused shocks across Europe for a
couple reasons. First, the USSR, while it did conduct extensive
trade with Hitler’s Germany, also, like, roundly denounced Nazism’s fascism and capitalism. And secondly, Hitler had come to power by
railing against so-called “Judeo-Bolshevism,” a concept that merged anti-Semitism with his
attacks on Communism. They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. But war makes really, really strange bedfellows. [Intro]
The pact between the USSR and Germany stipulated that if one party became involved in a war,
the other would remain neutral. Secretly, it also divided up Poland and the
Baltic states, and also bought Stalin some time to repair the USSR’s military leadership,
which as you’ll recall had been decimated by Stalin’s own purges. Another example of tyranny solving the problems
that tyranny has created. Then, on September 1, 1939, a mere nine days
after the pact was signed, German forces launched a huge attack on Poland, beginning World War
II in Europe. Airplanes bombed cities, while tanks and motorized
infantry rolled in rapidly as part of an overall strategy called Blitzkrieg, or lightning war. The idea of Blitzkrieg is that it would do
away with the stationary trench warfare, of World War I, along with that war’s massive
casualties and unending need for material. This was supposed to result in lower costs
and less suffering for Germans, and by gaining lots of new land--living space, or Lebensraum
on which to farm and build German industry--Hitler would end the German Depression and the humiliation
of World War I. Of course, it didn’t work out that way. One reminder among literal thousands that
the promises made before wars are rarely kept. As for Poland, Polish armies fought valiantly
but were utterly ill-equipped--both because the nation was new and because it had far
less sophisticated military equipment. Britain and France declared war on Germany
just two days after the invasion. And seventeen days later, as Poland collapsed,
the USSR invaded Poland from the east, picking up the territory their pact with Germany allowed
them. By the spring of 1940 after a quiet period
called the “phony war,” the Germans proceeded to use Blitzkrieg to defeat Norway and Denmark,
and then in May and June the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. These defeats happened so quickly that hundreds
of thousands of French and British soldiers were trapped in the French port city of Dunkirk;
and as the French government surrendered, most of those soldiers were rescued by fishing
boats and other small craft that came over from the British side of the English channel. And so of course Hitler’s next target was
Britain. He ordered an air attack, convinced overwhelming
airpower would lay the groundwork for Germany to cross the English channel and conquer it. And in this moment, I just want to pause to
note that , you know, like, we know how World War II ends--Philip Roth described history
as a field “where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page
as inevitable.” And the defeat of Nazism does feel inevitable
to us, but imagine how it felt in Europe when the Nazi bombing of Britain began in July
of 1940. I mean, in ten months, Germany had captured
all this land. And I don’t want to minimize how uncertain
the war felt in the minds of those who were fighting in it, or living amidst it. so during the three month Battle of Britain,
the German air force pounded cities and towns, industrial sites, and monuments, and over
10,000 British civilians were killed. But the British eventually outsmarted the
Nazis--partly because of a code-breaking group called Ultra that was able to decrypt Nazi
attack plans, partly because of the development of radar, and partly because the British maintained
far higher industrial productivity than Germany could achieve. But also, contrary to the (always fallible)
theory that bombing breaks civilian resolve, the British public refused to give in. They were fortified by a stalwart royal family
and the stirring oratory of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who summoned them to “blood,
toil, tears, and sweat” in the cause of defending liberty. By the fall of 1940, Hitler had quit the failed
Battle of Britain. But, despite that defeat, he began to plan
an even bigger undertaking: the invasion and conquest of his erstwhile frenemy the Soviet
Union. As his generals planned, the seeming invincibility
of the German army brought Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria into what was known as the Axis—an
alliance centered on the agreement among three authoritarian regimes: Germany, Italy, and
Japan. Britain and its empire had as an ally only
the remnants of the French army, which was in exile--in fact, many of them were in Britain. So Hitler considered himself a military genius,and
to him, invading the USSR was a no-brainer. Now, his generals wanted a concentrated, targeted
attack--an operation called Barbarossa--that would take the military directly to Moscow. But Hitler demanded a showy two-thousand mile
war front entailing attacks across the USSR. That turned out to be a mistake. Beginning in June 1941, three million German
soldiers and others from conquered territories rolled toward the USSR, with the enigmatic
Stalin disappearing from view for the first days of the attack. He seemed ill or maybe in denial, even though
his agents had provided detailed information about German preparations. Soon, however, Stalin reappeared, and roused
Soviet citizens to an amazing resistance. The USSR and Britain became allies, united
despite radically different governments by their shared existential threat. Again, in war, you make weird friends. Hitler’s ultimate imperial goal was to colonize
Eurasia, from central Europe to the Pacific. And the so-called “inferior” inhabitants
of this region would be ruled military-style, with ideas of rights and citizenship completely
discarded. And this gets at something really important,
which is that racism pervaded every aspect of Nazism-- in two episodes’ time we’ll be discussing
the horrors of the Holocaust in detail, but racism also pervaded Nazi military planning
and concepts of proper governance. And so as the German army swept through central
and eastern Europe, Hitler ordered tests of citizens, promising those who could read good
jobs. But then literate captives were routinely
shot on the spot so they couldn’t provide leadership in future resistance, paving the
way for military dictatorship. The illiterate were more likely to survive,
with the idea they would serve as slave workers on vast agricultural estates directed by the
German elite to provide the German master race a better standard of living and plentiful
food. For a time, the German advance eastward was
monumentally successful, especially as anti-Semites in captured regions joined in the killing
of Jewish neighbors and the theft of their property. The German army captured, killed, or wounded
some 2.25 million Soviet soldiers. In total, as many as 47 million Soviet citizens
died as a result of World War II. For context, around 418,000 Americans died
in the war. And with such widespread devastation within
the Soviet army, leading German military officials declared the war virtually won. Hitler ordered military production to switch
from making winter gear, and tanks, and artillery to fight in the Soviet Union, and instead
to focus on battleships and planes so they could capture territory beyond Europe. But the Soviet Union wasn’t defeated, and
Soviet officials drove citizen resistance mercilessly, including the transport of the
USSR’s massive industrial infrastructure eastward to escape German attacks. Also, the Soviets knew something that the
Germans seemed not to: Winter was coming. And as the weather grew colder, the German
offensive bogged down. We’ve said it before and we’ll probably
have to say it again: Don’t invade Russia in winter. Unless you’re the Mongols. That same winter, in December 1941, the Japanese,
with imperialist designs similar to those of Germany, bombed the U.S. naval base at
Pearl Harbor and U.S. air bases in the Philippines. Japan then proceeded to scoop up islands in
the Pacific and territory in Southeast Asia while also continuing its attack on China. “The era of democracy is finished,” Japan’s
foreign minister announced along with promises that Japan would free Asians and other world
citizens from Western tyranny. And replace it with...a new kind of tyranny! In response, the United States declared war
on Japan and joined what came to be called the Grand Alliance of the USSR, Britain, the
Free French, and several dozen other nations against the Axis powers. And that meant the balance was extremely lopsided,
because Britain and the USSR individually produced more weaponry, tanks, and other material
than Germany in every year of the war. And the United States was also a huge industrial
power. Japan, meanwhile, had relied on U.S. copper
and oil in the years before the war, which obviously the U.S. became reluctant to share
after war was declared. So, the Allies decided on a Europe first strategy,
after which they would turn to take on the Japanese. Stalin pushed for the Allies to open a European
western front to divide Axis resources that up to now were targeting the USSR almost exclusively. But Churchill, aiming to protect the British
empire, demanded that priority go elsewhere, specifically to the southern Mediterranean
and the Middle East, which was flush with oil. In the Middle East and North Africa, German
general Erwin Rommel’s motorized armies moved rapidly and successfully against the
Allies--arguably too successfully, as their supply lines couldn’t keep up with them. Also, critically , the code-breaking skills
of the Allies tipped them off to German movements. By the fall of 1942, Algeria and Morocco were
under Allied control. But still, Churchill insisted on not opening
a western front, and under his influence the Allies instead launched a costly invasion
of Italy in 1943 that lasted until April 1945. Amid these developments, in 1942-1943, the
USSR fought the expensive and agonizing battle of Stalingrad, important because of its industry
and its role as a shipping hub. Hitler decreed that on victory all men in
the city would be executed and all women deported. In house-to-house fighting, massive German
bombing, and horrific ground warfare, some two million people were killed and wounded
including tens of thousands of civilians.The USSR eventually emerged from this nightmare
victorious and it was a huge turning point in the war. The Soviets proceeded to move westward across
the continent toward Germany. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble. 1. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then president
of the United States, 2. finally insisted on the cross-Channel invasion
of France in Normandy, which began in June 1944. 3. Allied forces disembarked from landing craft
to confront German firepower from the well-fortified shores. 4. But because of Allied disinformation campaigns, 5. the Germans had not sufficiently massed their
forces on those specific beaches. 6. Paratroopers dropped from the sky behind the
German lines 7. and together with troops moving from the
beaches 8. began the eastward march toward Paris and
Berlin. 9. then in July 1944 a group of elite German
military men made an attempt on Hitler’s life, 10. an attempt that failed to kill Hitler
but did increase his erratic and paranoid behavior. 11. A bloodbath followed, leading to the torture
and murder of hundreds of the plotters, their families, and completely unaffiliated Germans. 12. Some downplay the importance of this plot— 13. there were several plots against Hitler during
his rise and reign-- 14. but other historians point out that had the
plot succeeded, 15. it might have saved the lives of the five
million Germans who died in the last nine months of the war 16. along with millions more Allied soldiers
and other civilians who also perished. 17. Regardless, as Allied forces advanced from
east and west, 18. Hitler came to see the Germans as a nation
unfit for the superior destiny he was forging for them. 19. But he refused to talk peace. 20. Moreover, the Germans themselves were experiencing
the deprivation and losses of their loved ones 21. that Hitler had promised would never happen. 22. Greatness was not materializing. Thanks Thought Bubble. As the Allies descended on Berlin, in the
spring of 1945, Hitler and his wife Eva Braun killed themselves, as did other high-ranking
officials. At about the same time, resistance fighters
captured Italian leader Benito Mussolini along with his mistress Clara Petacci, shot them,
and hung their bodies upside down on the roof of a gas station for public display. On May 7th, 1945, Germany surrendered. The next day was celebrated as “Victory
Europe” Day or VE Day. But World War II was not over, because the
Allies were confronting the Japanese in the Pacific, moving to reclaim islands and their
people from Japanese rule. Their first significant move was to destroy
elements of Japan’s navy at the battles of Midway Island and Guadalcanal. These significant advances allowed the Allies
to control the movement of supplies and troops in the Pacific. And then, there was the atom bomb. Almost since the beginning of the war, an
international team of scientists had been working on creating the atom bomb. The code name for the secret venture was the
Manhattan Project. Once developed and tested, actual use of the
bomb was hotly debated--not least because people did not yet know--and in fact still
do not fully know--the long-term environmental and human consequences of atomic bombs. But also, the short term consequences were
known to be horrendous. Ultimately, it was decided to drop an atom
bomb on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. On August 9th, a second bomb was dropped on
the city of Nagasaki. By August 15th, Japan had surrendered. Around 20,000 Japanese soldiers died in the
bombing of Hiroshima; only 150 died in Nagasaki. Over 100,000 civilians died in the bombings. So, the course of World War II unfolded among
heads of state and diplomats, among soldiers suffering cruel deprivation and death on the
frozen battlefields of the USSR and the roasting deserts of Northern Africa, in the labor,
death, and refugee camps of Eurasia, and in the lives of often terrified civilians. Among all of these, new research speculates
that the global death toll may have reached as high as 100 million people, nearly five
percent of all humans on Earth at the time. War is hell. Don’t forget it. And yet how else could the world respond to
totalitarian aggression? When we consider the big question--which wars
are “worth it” and why--let’s not forget to shift perspectives. I mean, the value of a war changes if you’re
an arms manufacturer, or if you’re a schoolteacher murdered for being literate. We’ll try to examine some of those perspectives
in detail next time. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you then.
