Research Topics

Hitler's War

After already fighting the bloody Great War, why would the nations of Europe once again go to war? Was the Second World War merely a continuation of the first?

When the Second World War ended with the unconditional surrender of Japan in August 1945, nearly 58 million civilians and soldiers had been killed. The Jewish population of Europe was nearly exterminated and numerous cities in France, England, Germany, Japan, Moscow and elsewhere had been destroyed. This was a war that was waged first in the mind of Adolf Hitler, and then on the battlefields of Europe, Africa and Asia. This was Hitler's war. And Hitler's Holocaust - by 1945, was it possible for any thinking person to believe that mankind was still on that incredible path of progress? Had mankind fallen from light into darkness?

• The Munich Pact (September 29, 1938)
  The Munich Pact decided the future of the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia and became a classic statement of appeasement.



• Neville Chamberlain, "Peace in our Time," Speech given in Defense of the Munich Agreement, 1938
  Following the Munich Conference, Chamberlain returned home and waved the agreement at the crowd as he read his speech.



• Letter from Albert Einstein to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1939)
  Einstein's letter to FDR warning him about "powerful bombs of a new type," and hinted that the Germans might be engaged in similar undertakings.



• The Night and Fog Decree (Nacht und Nebel), December 7, 1941
  This decree, initiated by Himmler and issued by Keitel, gave the German army the ability to arrest, detail, and deport political activists to concentration camps.



• Hitler Declares War on the Soviet Union (June 22, 1941)
  Hitler's declaration of war against the Soviet Union, as reported in the New York Times, June 23, 1941.



• Stalin's Speech on Red Square on the Anniversary Celebration of the October Revolution (November 7, 1941)
  Stalin's passionate speech recalling the victory of the revolution in 1918 and, in the spirit of Lenin, that the Soviets would succeed in their "utter destruction" of the German invaders!



• The Wannsee Protocol, January 20, 1942
  The Protocol is the result of high German officials meeting at Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin, to create those plans necessary for the "final solution to the Jewish question."



• R. H. S. Crossman, "Apocalypse at Dresden"
  The RAF and USAF firebombed the city of Dresden for three days in February 1945, killing tens of thousands of civilians.