The German-Soviet conflict dominates World War II. ibid.
Montgomery was called the master of the set piece. He was determined to gain victory at the least loss of life. He believed in painstaking planning and preparation. Montgomery’s technical genius was matched by an ability to communicate and inspire the ordinary soldier. World War II: The Complete History e9: The End of the Beginning
On 7th August 1942 US forces attacked the Pacific island of Guadalcanal. Since the Japanese invasion of the Philippines the armies of the Japanese empire and America had not met. The fighting on Guadalcanal, a tiny and remote colony, part of the Solomon Islands archipelago, was to be lengthy and bloody. ibid.
It is thought that nearly one million died in the winter of 1941-42 of hunger, disease, of cold. ibid.
Rommel had been ordered to Germany a sick man. 238,000 Axis forces became prisoners. World War II: The Complete History e10: The Beginning of the End
As [Monte] Cassino fell, US forces in the Pacific occupied Japanese territory for the first time. World War II e11: The Complete History: Overlord
The fleet included 4,000 landing craft, and hundreds of specially adapted transport ships which stretched from horizon to horizon in every direction: seven battleships, twenty-three cruisers, and more than one hundred destroyers accompanied the troops’ transports. ibid.
Ground forces were delivered to five landing beaches: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword. ibid.
Hitler became convinced that the Western allies had over-reached and exposed themselves to a devastating counter-attack. On December 16th that attack began. World War II: The Complete History e12: Unconditional Surrender
There came to be as many as three-quarters of a million Home Guards. Far from being a Dad’s army, the average home guardsman was under thirty years of age. ibid.
The Final Solution was not a monolithic single event. ibid.
He [Mussolini] was captured and shot. His body with that of his mistress were hung from a lamp-post in a Milan street. ibid.
In Europe vast tides of humanity, waves of misery, swept through ruined streets and cities, desperately seeking for food, shelter and safety amongst the wreckage of civilisation. ibid.
Stalin was of course a dictator whose power depended on fear and violence. The Russian was in many ways a greater dictator than Hitler who had come to power through democracy and had enjoyed popular German support. ibid.
Victory in Europe or VE Day was May 8th 1945. World War II: The Complete History e13: The Presence of History
A General Election was called. Despite being cheered wherever he went Churchill’s Conservatives were defeated in the poll, with the Labour Party winning a massive majority in parliament. ibid.
The message passed on by those millions of men and women to present and future is that we must never forget. ibid.
Evil will always be present in the world. Its eradication is not in the power of men; yet if there ever was an action by men that aimed to eradicate evil it is in that war waged upon Nazi Germany by Britain and America. ibid.
Of the three Allies, the Soviet Union and its people made a tremendous sacrifice, paying the highest price in death and destruction. Theirs was the only territory that was to become a battlefield; it was mostly Soviet soldiers that died for the Allies. ibid.
The USSR lost thirteen and a half million soldiers and eight million civilians. ibid.
Here at the Wolf’s Lair, his headquarters in the forest of Rastenburg, in what was then part of German East Prussia, Adolf Hitler took decisions which shaped the course of World War II. The result was a level of destruction and suffering unprecedented in the history of war. The Nazis: A Warning From History: Helped into Power, BBC 1997
The Nazis were obsessed with images of order ... But in Germany the Nazis only created an illusion of order. The Nazis: A Warning From History: Chaos and Consent
The first to be imprisoned in this revolution were the Nazis’ political opponents: communists and socialists. ibid.
Thousands of Jews emigrated from Germany during the 1930s realising that there could never be a fair or safe place for them in German society while the Nazis ruled. ibid.
Goebbels asked for Hitler’s permission to let loose the Stormtroopers in an act of vengeance against the innocent Jews of Germany. Hitler agreed. And so began Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass. ibid.
The concentration camps were a tool of oppression – not yet of systematic murder. In 1933 for many Germans they were an acceptable part of the Nazi revolution. ibid.
Staff here on their own selected the children they wanted to kill. ibid.
With Germany threatening Czechoslovakia the British prime ministry tried to prevent war. The Nazis: A Warning From History: The Wrong War
Yet in 1939 Hitler ended up in war with the country he most admired – Great Britain. And allied to the country he most wanted to colonise – Russia. How did he end up fighting what was from his point of view the wrong war? ibid.
Just as it was with animals, so it was with great men. And even whole countries. Hitler believed the entire world was locked in a permanent struggle in which the stronger must prevail. This was the theory he developed in Mein Kampf, the book he had written in 1924. In it he also wrote that the Germans were a nation who needed to expand; like the British they needed colonies. ibid.
On 1st September 1939 Germany invaded Poland; on 3rd September Britain and France declared war. ibid.
Himmler now announced an extension of the cleansing in the East. Since the Nazis thought that every single Jew was a supporter of Bolshevism they now said that every single Jew was a military threat. So women and children in the newly conquered territories were killed as well. The Nazis: A Warning From History: The Road to Treblinka
Other groups the Nazis considered a threat were also to suffer: most prominently Europe’s gypsies. ibid.
Adolf Hitler had decided on a radical action that was to alter the course of the war and change the Nazi policy towards the Jews. Hitler had decided as the fulfilment of his ideological dream to invade the Soviet Union. The German operation Barbarossa began on June 22nd 1941. ibid.
Unlike the conflict in the West, the German soldiers knew that the war on the Eastern front was to be fought without rules. ibid.
The result was a leadership in which almost everybody hated and distrusted everyone else ... The entire Nazi leadership was riddled by dislike and suspicion as they fought each other for Hitler’s praise and favour. The Nazis: A Warning From History: Fighting to the End
400,000 foreigners joined the Waffen-SS and fought alongside the Germans. ibid.