European Theatre of World War II





Preceding events

In Europe, the origins of the war are closely tied to the rise of fascism,
especially in Nazi Germany. A discussion of how the Nazis came to power is a
requisite in this context.

The origins of the Second World War are generally viewed as being traced
back to the First World War (1914-1918). In that war Imperial Germany under
the nationalistic Kaiser Wilhelm II had been defeated along with its allies,
chiefly by a combination of the United Kingdom, United States and France.
The war was directly blamed by the victors on the militant nationalism of
the Kaiser's Germany; it was Germany that effectively started the war with
an attack on France through Belgium. France had in 1871 suffered a defeat in
the Franco-Prussian War, which directly was followed by the constitution of
a German Empire under Prussian leadership. France now demanded revenge for
its financial devastation during the First World War (and its humiliation in
the earlier war), which ensured that the various peace treaties,
specifically the Treaty of Versailles imposed tough financial war
reparations and restrictions on Germany.

The Weimar Republic becomes the Third Reich

A new democratic German republic, known as the Weimar Republic, came into
being and was soon hit by hyperinflation and other serious economic
problems. Right wing nationalist elements under a variety of movements,
including the Nazi Party led by the Austrian Adolf Hitler, blamed Germany's
"humiliating" status on the harshness of the post-war settlement, on faults
of democracy, on Social Democrats and Communists, and on the Jews, whom it
claimed possessed a financial stranglehold on Germany.

In Germany, like in the radically diminished Austria, the citizens, or at
least the educated classes, remembered the pre-war years under autocratic
rule as prosperous – the post-war years under democratic rule,
however, as chaotic and economically disastrous. The popular support for
democracy was limited, and often perceived as "foreign" or "alien" to the
German nation. Social tensions after the world wide economic depression
following the Wall Street Crash aggravated the political situation.
Anti-democratic parties in the Reichstag (parliament), both left-wing and
right-wing, obstructed the parliamentary work, why different cabinets
resorted to governing by the special emergency powers of the Weimar
constitution, which enabled the President and the Cabinet, in concert, to
effectively bypass the parliament.

Hitler was appointed Reichskanzler (Chancellor) on January 30, 1933. The
arson of the parliament building on February 27, instigated by the Nazis,
was used as excuse for the cancellation of civil and political liberties,
enacted by the aged president Paul von Hindenburg and the rightist coalition
cabinet led by Hitler. After new elections a center-right majority could
easily abolish parliamentarism, the Weimar constitution, and practically the
parliament itself through the Enabling Act on March 23, whereby the Nazis'
planned Gleichschaltung (regimentation) of Germany was made formally legal.

After the president, the World War I hero General Hindenburg had died on
August 2, 1934, the authority of the presidency fell into the hands of Adolf
Hitler; and without much resistance from the Wehrmacht's leadership, the
Soldiers' Oat could be modified into a confirmation of unconditional
obedience to Adolf Hitler personally.

Italy

The Italian economy also fell into a deep slump following World War I.
Anarchists were endemic, Communist and other Socialist agitators abounded
among the trade unions, and many were gravely worried that a Bolshevik-style
Communist revolution was imminent.

After a number of liberal governments failed to rein in these threats, King
Victor Emmanuel III of Italy invited right-wing politician Benito Mussolini
and his Fascist Party to form a government on October 30, 1922, following
their largely symbolic Marcia su Roma of October 28, 1922 (March on Rome).
The Fascists maintained an armed paramilitary wing, which they employed to
fight Anarchists, Communists, and Socialists.

Within a few years, Mussolini had consolidated dictatorial power, and Italy
became a police state. On January 7, 1935, he and French Foreign Minister
Pierre Laval signed the Italo-French agreements.

German expansionism

Meanwhile in Germany, once political consolidation (Gleichschaltung) was in
place, the Nazis turned their attention to foreign policy with several
increasingly daring acts.

On March 16, 1935, the Versailles Treaty was violated as Hitler ordered
Germany to re-arm. Germany also reintroduced military conscription (the
treaty stated that the German Army should not exceed 100,000 men).

These steps produced nothing more than official protests from Britain and
France, for they were more serious about enforcing the economic provisions
of the treaty than its military restrictions. Many Brits felt the
restrictions placed on Germany in Versailles had been too harsh, and they
believed that Hitler's aim was simply to undo the extremes of the treaty,
not to go beyond that. Faced with no opposition, Hitler moved troops into
the Rhineland on March 7, 1936. Under the Versailles treaty, the Rhineland
should have been demilitarized, for France wanted it for a buffer between
herself and Germany. But, as before, Hitler's defiance was met with
inaction.

The first German conquest was Austria. After Italy had joined Germany in the
Anti-Comintern Pact, thereby removing the main obstacle of an Anschluss of
Austria, Germany announced the annexation on March 12, 1938, making it a
German province: "Gau Ostmark."

With Austria secured, Hitler turned his attention to Czechoslovakia. His
first order of business was to seize the Sudetenland, a mountainous area in
northeast part of the country. With Austria in German hands, the tiny state
was nearly surrounded. Following lengthy negotiations, and blatant war
threats from Hitler, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain went out of
his way with French leaders to appease Hitler, even though the United
Kingdom had earlier guaranteed the security of Czechoslovakia. However, the
Munich Agreement of September 30, 1938, then allowed German troops to occupy
the Sudetenland. Czech representatives were not allowed at the conference;
their government strongly opposed giving up the Sudetenland but they were
powerless in the face of German military might and British and French
unwillingness to support them. A few months after that, in March, 1939, the
remaining Czech lands passed into German hands as well. March 14 Slovakia
declared her independence, recognized by France, Britain and other important
powers. The Slovak state tried to avoid nazification, but was finally
occupied by Nazi-Germany in September, 1944.

Establishment of the Axis

Italy, facing opposition to its wars in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) from the League
of Nations, forged an alliance with Nazi Germany, which had withdrawn from
the League in 1933. In May, 1939, Italy and Germany thus formed the Pact of
Steel, which deepened their alliance and established a Rome-Berlin "Axis."
On September 27, 1940, Germany and Italy included Japan into the Axis Powers
with the signing of the Tripartite Pact, establishing the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo
Axis.

Outbreak of War in Europe

Germany and the Soviet Union, the two most powerful dictatorships in Europe,
were sworn enemies, but following the Munich Agreement political realities
allowed the Soviet Union to sign a non-aggression pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact) including a secret clause partitioning Poland, the Baltic Republics
and Finland between the two.

Full-scale war in Europe began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded
Poland, to which both Britain and France had pledged guarantees (see: Polish
September Campaign 1939). On September 17, the Soviet Union invaded Poland
from the east. Poland fell quickly, with her last large operational units
surrendering October 5. However, Polish troops continued fighting for the
Allies until the end of the war.

Despite the quick campaign in the east, along the Franco-German frontier the
war settled into a quiet period. This relatively non-confrontational period
between the major powers lasted until May 10, 1940, and was known as the
Phony War.

Scandinavian Campaigns

Several other countries, however, were drawn into the conflict at this time.
By September 28, 1939, the three Baltic Republics felt they had no choice
but to permit Soviet bases and troops on their territory.

Finland was invaded by the Soviets on November 30. This began the Winter
War. After over three months of hard fighting, and heavy losses, the Soviet
Union gave up the attempted invasion. In the Moscow Peace Treaty, March 12,
Finland ceded 10% of her territory. The Finns were embittered over having
lost more land in the peace than on the battle fields, and over the
seemingly little use of the whole world's sympathy.

On April 9 Germany commenced Weserübung to seize and occupy Denmark and
Norway, ostensibly as a defensive maneuver against a planned (and openly
discussed) Franco-British occupation of those countries aimed at controlling
export of Swedish iron ore and the Northern Atlantic. After the failed
British campaign in Norway Finland and Sweden were physically cut off from
the West. As a consequence, Germany put pressure on neutral Sweden to permit
transition of military goods and soldiers on leave. Germany's presence
proximate to northernmost Finland, and its Nickel mines, were perceived as
an improvement of the strategic situation by the Finns.

War Comes to the West

On March 18, 1940, Hitler and Mussolini had agreed to make the Axis Powers'
Pact of Steel an alliance against France and the United Kingdom. On May 10
the Phony War ended with a sweeping German invasion of Belgium, the
Netherlands and Luxembourg, that bypassed French fortifications along the
Maginot Line. After overrunning these countries Germany turned against
France, entering the country through the Ardennes on May 13 - the French had
made the fatal mistake of leaving this area almost totally undefended,
believing its terrain to be impassible for tanks. Most Allied forces were in
Flanders, anticipating a re-run of the World War I Schlieffen Plan, and were
cut off from the French heartland. As a result of this, and also the
superior German communications, the Battle of France was shorter than
virtually all prewar Allied thought could have conceived. It lasted six
weeks, after which France surrendered. In order to further the humiliation
of the French people, Hitler arranged for the surrender document to be
signed in the same railway coach where the German surrender had been signed
in 1918. The fall of France left Britain and its Empire to stand alone.
Fortunately for Britain, much of its army escaped capture from the northern
French port of Dunkirk. The exploits of the "little ships" at Dunkirk were
exploited for propaganda purposes to turn the disastrous defeat into
something approaching a victory in the minds of the British people. In
total, 330,000 troops were pulled off the beaches, of which 230,000 were
British. The Germans massed their air force in northern France to prepare
the way for a possible invasion, codenamed Operation Seelöwe. The operations
of the Luftwaffe against RAF Fighter Command became know as the Battle of
Britain. It is widely held that the invasion could never realistically have
been mounted successfully. Even had the Luftwaffe driven the RAF from the
skies of southern England, which was the object of the Battle of Britain for
the Germans, there would still have been the remains of Fighter Command in
the Midlands and northern England, Bomber Command, and Coastal Command,
along with the firepower of the Home Fleet for the Germans to contend with.
It is likely that had the invasion been attempted that German troops would
have been landed and cut off by British sea- and airpower, to be destroyed
virtually at leisure. After the failure to destroy Fighter Command, the
Luftwaffe switched to bombing major British cities. That bombing campaign is
commonly know as the Blitz.

During the Blitz, all of Britain's major industrial cites were heavily
bombed. London suffered particularly, being bombed each night for several
months. Other targets included Birmingham and Coventry, and strategically
important cities, such as the naval base at Plymouth and the port of
Kingston upon Hull. With no land forces in direct conflict in Europe, the
war in the air attracted worldwide attention even as sea units fought the
Battle of the Atlantic and a number of British commando raids hit targets in
occupied Europe. More critical was the war in the air.

Bomber War

Prewar doctrine had held that waves of bombers hitting enemy cities would
cause mass panic and the rapid collapse of the enemy. As a result, the Royal
Air Force had built up a comparatively large strategic bomber force. By way
of contrast, German air force doctrine was almost totally dedicated to
supporting the army. Therefore, German bombers were smaller than their
British equivalents, and the Germans never developed a four engined heavy
bomber equivalent to the Lancaster, B-17 or B-24.

The main concentration of German raids on British cities was from autumn
1940 until spring 1941. After that a large proportion of the strength of the
Luftwaffe was diverted to the war against the Soviet Union. German raids
continued on a smaller scale for the rest of the war, and later the V-1
cruise missile and V-2 ballistic missile were both used against Britain.
However, the balance of bomb tonnage being dropped shifted greatly in favour
of the RAF as Bomber Command gained in strength. By 1942, Bomber Command
could put 1,000 bombers over one German city. However, it should be noted
that this was a special effort using all available aircraft and training
units as well. It was 1943 before 1,000 bomber raids became possible without
a special effort. From 1942 onwards, the efforts of Bomber Command were
supplemented by the Eighth Air Force of the United States Army Air Force.
Bomber Command raided by night and the US forces by day. During 1943, a raid
on Hamburg produced one of the most devastating fires in history. A
firestorm was created in the city, and 40,000 people were killed. Only the
raid on Dresden (February 13 - February 15, 1945_, the firebombing of Tokyo
and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August
9, 1945) killed more people through a single attack. In addition to the
direct damage caused by these attacks, large amounts of resources were
diverted to air defense.

The Balkans

Italy invaded Albania on April 7, 1939 and Greece on October 28, 1940, but
was unable to match the German success in France. Not only did the Italians
fail to conquer Greece, but under the supervision of Prime Minister Ioannis
Metaxas (term April 13, 1936 - January 29, 1941) the Greeks successfully
counterattacked into Albania starting from November 14, 1940. This prompted
German intervention. On April 6, 1941 German forces engaged in combat with
the Greeks and simultaneously invaded Yugoslavia where on March 27, 1941 a
coup d'état by Army General Dusan Simovica had seized control from
pro-German Regent Prince Paul Karadjordjevic. British forces were dispatched
from Egypt to Greece, but were comprehensively beaten. Advancing rapidly the
Germans captured Athens, Greece's capital on April 27, 1941 effectively
placing most of the country under occupation. After the mainland was
conquered, the Germans invaded Crete in what is known as the Battle of
Crete(May 20 - June 1, 1941). Instead of an amphibious assault as expected,
the Germans mounted a large airborne invasion. It succeeded, but the
paratroops of the German army were so badly mauled in the process that an
airborne operation was never again attempted by Germany during the war. The
last remaining British and Greek armed forces evacuated Crete on June 1,
1941 heading for Egypt, where King George II of Greece and the exiled Greek
government of Emmanouil Tsouderos had already arrived. Once the Balkans were
secure, the largest land operation in history was launched, when Germany
attacked the Soviet Union.

The Eastern Front

From a contemporary German perspective, and also from the view of many other
Westerners, the war against France and Britain was nothing but a prelude to
the expected life or death struggle between the atheistic, internationalist
Communism and the bourgeois nationalist civilization of the West, which the
Nazis believed to be the supreme representatives of. On June 22, 1941, the
Germans launched a surprise invasion, code-named Operation Barbarossa,
against their erstwhile Soviet allies. The early weeks of the invasion were
devastating for the Soviet Army. Enormous numbers of Soviet troops were
encircled in pockets and fell into German hands. However, it wasn't only
German troops that went into the Soviet Union. Italian, Hungarian and
Romanian troops were also involved in the campaign. Out of all the
adversaries of the Allies, the situation of Finland was unique. Finland
initially declared neutrality, however with German and Soviet troops on her
soil, and well prepared for co-belligerence with Germany when the Soviet
Union attacked on June 25. The following conflict from 1941-1944 is referred
to as the Continuation War, i.e. the continuation of the Winter War.
Operation Barbarossa suffered from several fundamental flaws. The most
serious of these was the logistical situation of the attack. Ultimately it
is logistics that determine what a military can do. The sheer vastness of
the distances in the Soviet Union meant that the Germans could only advance
so far before outrunning their supply chains. By the time the German attack
froze to a halt before Moscow on December 5, 1941, it literally could not go
any further. There simply were not enough supplies reaching the front to
conduct proper defensive operations, let alone a proper offense. The
timetable that Barbarossa was planned to assumed that the Soviets would
collapse before the Russian winter hit. The failure of that to happen also
fatally affected German plans.

During their long retreat, the Soviets employed a scorched earth policy.
They burnt crops and destroyed utilities as they withdrew before the
Germans. That helped to contribute to the logistical problems that the
Germans experienced. The extension of the campaign beyond the length that
the Germans expected meant that the German Army suffered hundreds of
thousands of casualties in the bitter cold of the Russian winter, and from
the counterattacks of Soviet units.

Even with their advance having ground to a halt due to a lack of supplies
and the onset of winter, the Germans had conquered a vast amount of
territory. Dislodging them cost the Soviet Union dearly and took until late
1944.

Once the Germans had conquered so much of the Soviet Union, one of the great
tragedies of the war began, the siege of Leningrad: Leningrad (now Saint
Petersburg) was reached fairly quickly, from the North by Finnish forces,
and from the South by the German Wehrmacht. Finland's C-in-C Mannerheim had
halted at the River Svir and refrained from attacking the city.

Hitler had ordered that the city of Leningrad must "vanish from the surface
of the earth", with its entire population exterminated. Rather than storming
the city, the Wehrmacht was ordered to blockade Leningrad so as to starve
the city to death, while attacking it with bombers and artillery. About one
million civilians died in the Leningrad siege - 800,000 by starvation. It
lasted 900 days, and at its height the only way into the city was across
Lake Ladoga, between the German and Finnish lines.

After enduring the winter of 1941/42, the German army prepared for further
offensive operations. One of the major problems faced by the Nazi war
machine in World War II was a shortage of oil. For this reason, the Germans
decided to give up on Moscow for the time being, and the summer offensive of
1942 decided to focus on the war in the south, with the target being the oil
fields of the Caucasus. In a major blunder, Hitler split Army Group South
into two subgroups, Army Group A which would attack the Caucasus and army
group B which would advance towards the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd).

Indecision by Hitler, dissent among the higher ranked German officers, and
extended supply lines combined in a prolonged battle in the streets of
Stalingrad. The Germans eventually occupied over 90% of the city, but in an
attempt to defeat the remaining Soviet defenders almost all Germans in the
area were funneled into the ruins of the city. Months of bitter hand-to-hand
combat in the ruins of the city depleted the German forces, leaving only
weak Romanian and Hungarian forces to guard the flanks of the Stalingrad
army group. In Operation Uranus, the Soviets easily defeated these minor
axis forces as they performed an encirclement operation. The Germans were
trapped - cut off from their supply lines and starving, they were ordered by
Hitler to fight to the last man, and they displayed incredible fortitude and
bravery under unbearable conditions.

Starved of food, fuel and ammunition, the pocket was gradually reduced, with
the last portion surrendering on February 2nd 1943. In a cynical attempt to
prevent the surrender, Hitler promoted Friedrich Paulus, Commander of 6th
Army to Field Marshal, because no German of that rank had ever surrendered.
Heavy losses affected both sides in the Battle of Stalingrad, one of the
bloodiest battles in history. An estimated 2 million people perished in this
battle, including 500,000 civilians.

After Stalingrad, the initiative had passed from the Germans but had not yet
been seized by the Soviets. A desperate counterattack in the spring of 1943
by the forces of von Manstein temporarily halted the Soviet advance, and
lead to the largest tank battle in history, at Kursk. Kursk was the last
major offensive by the Germany Army on the eastern front. The Soviets had
intelligence of what was to come and prepared massive defenses in huge depth
in the Kursk salient. They stopped the German armoured thrusts after a
maximum penetration of 17 miles. After Kursk the Red Army never ceased being
on the offensive until Berlin was captured in May 1945.

The Soviets bore the brunt of World War II; the second front in Europe did
not begin until D-Day, apart from the invasion of Italy. More Soviet
citizens died during World War II than those of all other countries
combined. Approximately 27 million Soviets, among them more than 13 million
civilians, were killed in the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Civilians
were rounded up and burned or shot in many cities conquered by the Nazis.
Since the Nazis considered Slavs to be "subhuman", this was ethnically
targeted mass murder.

It would be wrong however to say the Soviets fought alone. Supply convoys
sailed to Soviet ports at great risk. Allied activities may have tied up
only a few divisions in actual fighting, but many more were forced to guard
lonely coasts against raids that never came or to man antiaircraft guns
throughout Europe. It should also be mentioned that the Soviets took
virtually no part in the great naval campaigns of the war, had a very
limited effect on the strategic bombing offensive, and contributed very
little to the defeat of Japan.

North Africa

The north African campaign began in 1940, when small British forces in Egypt
turned back an Italian advance from Libya. This advance was stopped in 1941
when German forces under Erwin Rommel landed in Libya. Thus began a seesaw
campaign that culminated in the two Battles of El Alamein. The First Battle
of El Alamein took place between July 1 and July 27, 1942. The Germans had
advanced to El Alamein, the last defensible point before Alexandria and the
Suez Canal. However, as in the Soviet Union, they had outrun their supplies,
and a British defence stopped their thrusts.

The Second Battle of El Alamein occured between October 23 and November 3,
1942. It saw British forces take the offensive. Rommel was pushed back, and
this time did not stop falling back until Tunisia.

To complement this victory, on 8 November 1942, American and British troops
landed in Morocco and Algeria in Operation Torch. The local forces of Vichy
France put up limited resistance before joining the Allied cause. Ultimately
German and Italian forces were caught in the pincers of a twin advance from
Algeria and Libya. Advancing from both the east and west, the Allies
completely pushed the Germans out of Africa and on May 13, 1943, the
remnants of the Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. Not widely known is
that the number of prisoners taken in this incident, 250,000 was as many as
at Stalingrad.

The Allies' Invasion of Italy

With the North African shore acting as a springboard, an Allied blow into
what Winston Churchill referred to as the 'soft underbelly' of Europe was
inevitable.

A prelude of this attack was the capture of the offshore island of Sicily on
10 July 1943. This took the wind out of the bombastic Mussolini. He was
deposed on July 25, 1943, by the Fascist Grand Council. He was arrested and
placed under house arrest in an isolated mountain resort. His replacement,
General Pietro Badoglio, negotiated an armistice with the Allies on
September 8, 1943.

Meanwhile, the US 7th Army under General George Smith Patton arrived in
Messina on August 17, 1943, followed several hours later by the British 8th
Army under Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, thus completing the Allied
conquest of Sicily.

The Germans moved quickly into the confused situation, disarmed Italian
formations and established strong defensive lines.

Allied troops landed in mainland Italy on September 3, 1943; the American at
Salerno, the British at Taranto.

A German commando (first such?) led by Otto Skorzeny rescued Mussolini and
installed him as the head of the Italian Social Republic, a Nazi puppet
state in northern Italy. He continued in this role until he was captured and
lynched by mobs on April 28, 1945, as the Allied forces closed in on Milan.

The Germans had built a fortified zone in the mountains called the Gustav
line. The Allied forces attacked both sides of the line, attacking Monte
Cassino from the south and landing at Anzio in the north.

The Allies finally entered Rome on June 4, 1944, two days before the
landings in Normandy. The Germans regrouped at the Gothic Line further
north. After a landing in southern France in August, 1944 to threaten the
German flank, on September 10, 1944 British forces started the attack on the
line. The offensive by Allied and some Italian forces continued until the
Germans surrendered in Italy on April 29, 1945 two days after Mussolini's
capture.

The Allies' Invasion of France

Essentially simultaneously with the fall of Rome came the long-awaited
invasion of France. Operation Overlord put troops ashore in Normandy on June
6, 1944. A long grinding campaign two months long followed as American,
British and Canadian forces were slowly built up in the bridgehead, and
German forces slowly worn down. When the breakout finally did come it was
spectacular, with American forces under Patton racing across France to the
German border. The German forces that had been fighting in Normandy were
trapped in a pocket around Falaise.

Incessant bombing of Germany's infrastructure and cities caused tremendous
casualties and disruption. Internally, Hitler survived a number of
assassination attempts. The most serious was the July 20 Plot, occuring on
July 20, 1944. Orchestrated by Claus von Stauffenberg and involving among
others Erwin Rommel and Alfred Delp, the plot had intended to place a time
bomb in a position to kill Hitler but a number of unscheduled factors led to
its failure. Adolf Hitler was only slightly injured.

Operation Overlord was complemented by an invasion of southern France on
August 15, 1944 codenamed Operation Dragoon. By September, 1944 three Allied
Army Groups were in line against German formations in the west. There was
optimism that the war in Europe might be over by the end of 1944.

An attempt was made to force the situation with Operation Market Garden
(September 17 - September 24, 1944). The Allies attempted to capture bridges
with an airborne assault, to open the way into Germany and liberate the
northern Netherlands. Since heavier German forces than intelligence had
predicted were present, the British 1st Airborne Division was almost
completely destroyed.

The cold winter of 1944 combined with a poor situation for the Allies led to
a stagnate situation on the western front. The Americans continued to grind
away at the defenders in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest (September 13, 1944 -
February 10, 1945. As long as they stayed on the defense, the Allies were
hard-pressed to advance rapidly.

That changed when the Germans mounted a major counteroffensive on December
16, 1944. The Ardennes offensive, also called the Battle of the Bulge, drove
back and surrounded some American units. The Allied forces were eventually
successful in driving back the Germans, in what turned out to be their last
major advance of the war. The battle officialy ended on January 27, 1945.

The final obstacle to the Allies was the River Rhine. It was crossed in
April, 1945, and the way lay open to the heart of Germany. The last German
forces in the west were encircled in the Ruhr.

The End of the War in Europe

On April 25, 1945 United States and Russian troops linked-up at the Elbe
River, cutting Germany in two.

On April 30, 1945 when all seemed lost, Hitler committed suicide in his
bunker along with his long-time lover and briefly wife, Eva Braun. In his
last testament Hitler appointed his successors. Karl Dönitz as the new
Führer and Joseph Goebbels as the new Chancellor of Germany. However
Goebbels himself suicided on May 1, 1945, leaving the new Führer to
orchestrate negotiations of surrender. The final surrender documents were
signed by General Alfred Jodl on May 7, 1945. May 8 was declared V-E
(Victory In Europe) Day. Karl Dönitz continued to act as Führer until his
arrest on May 23, 1945. The remains of the former Third Reich were
subsequently partitioned by the Allies into an area of Soviet control, which
later became East Germany, and an area of joint British/French/American
control, which later became West Germany. Following the war, Allied soldiers
discovered a number of concentration camps and other locations that had been
used by the Nazis to imprison and exterminate an estimated 12 million
people. The largest single group represented in this number were Jewish
(roughly half the total according to the Nuremburg trials), but Gypsies,
Slavs, Catholics, homosexuals and various minorities and disabled persons
formed the remainder. The most well-known of these camps is the death camp
Auschwitz in which about two million prisoners were killed. Although the
Nazi genocide or "Holocaust" was largely unknown to the Allied soldiers
fighting the war, it has become an inseparable part of the story of World
War II.

In May and June 1945 thousands of refugees from Yugoslavia and the Soviet
Union were rounded up by the Western Allies in Austria, Operation Keelhaul,
and executed or deported by the Soviets. Also defeated Finland and neutral
Sweden felt compelled to extradite Ingrian and Baltic refugees in a similar
manner, some of whom committed suicide before the extradition.