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Germany in WW1 and WW2
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Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was a Peace Treaty that was discussed between the Allied powers. France, Italy, Great Britain and the U.S. assigned reparations to Germany. Germany lost national territory, their military was dramatically decreased, the Rhineland was demilitarized, overseas territories were taken, they paid for war damages, and they were not aloud to have a union with Austria. -
Munich Conference
The Munich Agreement, a settlement reached by Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy, gave Germany the right to annex Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. About three million of the people that lived in the Sudeten area were of German origin. -
Great Depression
The Great depression all started in the US when the Wall Street stock exchange collapsed, and the American economy collapsed with it. American banks immediately withdrew the loans they made to Germany. This was bad for the Weimar Republic because of German reparations. The government could not keep up with the economic crisis in Germany, as a result unemployment and inflation rose. German money became worthless and people were suffering because of it. -
The Holocaust
The mass murder of some 6 million European Jews by the German Nazi regime during WWII. To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s came to fruition under the cover of world war, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland. -
Enabling Act
The Enabling Act was a Weimar Constitution amendment that gave Adolf Hitler the power to enforce laws without the involvement of a legislative body called the Reichstag. -
Nuremburg Laws
The Nuremburg Laws were introduced by the Reichstag. These two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood, which forbade marriages between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households. They were also deprived of most of their political rights. -
Reoccupation of the Rhineland
German military forces entered the demilitarized Rhineland in early march of 1936. This was the first time Germany had violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The remilitarization of the Rhineland changed the balance of power in Europe from France to Germany. -
Kristallnacht
Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, also called the “Night of Broken Glass,” some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. After Kristallnacht, conditions for German Jews grew increasingly worse, soon came the "Final Solution". -
Invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland was a joint invasion between Germany and the Soviet Union, which marked the beginning of WWII. Germans began their invasion on September 1st of 1939 from the western border, and the Soviets came in later on September 17th from the eastern border. The campaign ended on 6 October with Germany and the Soviet Union dividing and annexing the whole of Poland under the terms of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty. -
Battle of Britain
In early July German and British air forces clashed in the skies over the United Kingdom. This battle became know as the largest bombing campaign to that date. A significant turning point in WWII, the Battle of Britain ended when Germany’s Luftwaffe failed to gain air superiority over British air forces. Britain’s decisive victory saved the country from a ground invasion and possible occupation by German forces while proving that air power alone could be used to win a major battle. -
Operation Barbarossa
Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on June 22nd, 1941. Germany was doing great through the warm summer months, but when winter hit Russia, Germany was not prepared. They were quickly defeated and suffered significant losses. -
First Extermination Camp
Chelmno was the first extermination camp that the Germans established on Polish soil. When the deportees reached the camp, they were ordered to undress, stripped of their belongings, and tricked into boarding a van whose exhaust pipe was actually connected to its interior. nearly 300,000 Jews and 5,000 Sinti and Roma were murdered in Chelmno. Only three Jews survived this death camp. -
D-day
The Battle of Normandy resulted in the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany’s control. 156,000 American, British and Canadian forces landed on five beaches along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily fortified coast of France’s Normand region. The Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the Germans about the intended invasion target. August 1944, all of northern France had been liberated, and by the following spring the Allies had defeated the Germans. -
Liberation of Paris
The Liberation of Paris was a military action that took place during World War II from 19 August 1944 until the German garrison surrendered the French capital on 25 August 1944. The liberation began when the French Forces of the Interior staged an uprising against the German garrison upon the approach of the US Third Army. -
Yalta Conference
The February 1945 Yalta Conference was the second wartime meeting of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The leaders agreed to require Germany’s unconditional surrender and to set up in the conquered nation four zones of occupation to be run by their three countries and France. -
Hitler Commits Suicide
In a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head.
