The Beggining of the War: The Gleiwitz Incident

The Gleiwitz incident was a Nazi Forces, which in that moment were acting like if they were Poles, attack on August 31 in 1939. It was against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz the eve of World War II. This was part of the several actions in the Operation Himmler, a series of unconventional operations by the SS in order to make propaganda about Nazism at the outbreak of the war. 

The objective was to create the impression that there was a Polish aggression against Germany and in that way justify the subsequent invasion of Poland. Most of the information known about the Gleiwitz incident is because of Alfred Naujocks testimony, where he states that he organized the incident under the order from Reinhard Heydrich and Heincrich Muller that was the chief of Gestapo.

The night of August 31, a small group of Germans that were dressed as if they were from Poland seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a little anti-German message in Polish. Germans wanted like it seems that the attack and the broadcast were because of those “anti-German Polish saboteurs”. But to make it more convincing, Germans brought Franciszeck Honiok that was a German Silesian who was known as a man that sympathizes a lot with the Poles. Days before, he was arrested by the Gestapo. They dress him as a saboteur and then killed him with a lethal injection, then make him gunshot wounds and left him dead at the scene so he looks like he was killed during the attack.

The Gleiwitz incident is part of a large operation. It wasn’t only one attack, because there were other incidents orchestrated by the SS forces along the Polish. German Border, such as the House torching in the Polish Corridor and the spurious propaganda output. There were a total of 21 attacks all categorized as part of the Operation Himmler, all with the intensions of making people think that Poland was going against them. Also months before this, Germans started to publish in their newspapers messages from politicians, such as Adolf Hitler, accusing Polish authorities of organizing operations to harm the German people that lived there. The next day of Gleiwitz, Germany started the Fall Weiss operation (invasion of poland), initiatinf the WW2

Is incredible how Germans were so preparated and intelligent in a way, to create this big and datiled plan in order to invade Poland. Its a really shocking how people can be so determinated to  reach their goals, people thirsty of power that could do anything, to the point they killed people. And this is what the war is about. How the idea of one men can make a revolution all around the world, the extermination of a million of inocent families, the destruction of many countries, and the beggining of one of the worst mistakes humans may have been commited: the World War II.

Mariana Flores

Valeria Otarola

The beggining of the End: Cause of D-Day

The D- Day Invasion of Normandy laid a beachhead for the Allies on the Front of Europe. This battle was the most important battle in the Western Front because was a way of being closer to the Nazi defeat. D- Day is referred to the paratrooper operations that happened in June 6 of 1945 in Normandy.

To understand the D- Day it’s important to talk about the context to know what expectative and reasons had the allies to invade Normandy. Russia had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, and the two countries invaded Poland. That’s how the war started. The British and French people were indignant with this situation and declared the war to Germany. Germany advanced with big steps among Europe, invading France and the Low Countries too. Hitler wanted to invade the Low Countries because he wanted to get around the Maginot line, which was a huge fortification that stretches the whole distance of the German-French border. This was a big surprise for the French Army and they had to accept the defeat. Also the British army that was trying to help France had to retreat, this was embarrassing for Britain and the country now wanted to invade France to and with that obligate Germany to move on. But this was not the only problem…

In December 7 of 1941, Japan attacked the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. The attack caused the declaration of war and the entry of United States in WW2. Three days after, Germany and Italy declared war to USA, which had a really strong army. It was so strong that the country defeat Germans in North Africa and also invaded Italy for 2 years with the help of Britain.

On June 4, 1944, two days before D-Day, the allies captured Rome and Germany immediately started a plan to invade Russia, naming the operation: Operation Barbarossa. However the Russians didn’t permit it making a counterattack, but the problem was that USSR did not want to fight alone against the German Army so they asked British and American armies for help. The two countries accepted the call and immediately started the plan to liberate Western Europe with the code-named Operation Overlord, and their first step was Normandy.

Before the Allies could think how to release the invasion they needed a supreme commander. The three countries argued about this during months and finally Roosevelt took the decision to choose General Dwight Eisenhower as the Supreme Commander.

German commander did expect and invasion but the disadvantage is that they didn’t know when and where. Everybody think of a different place and they couldn’t prepare for anything because the problem was where they put their army if the invasion could be in many different places. The Plan for Normandy was very complicated; there were naval and aerial bombardment, paratroopers that were dropped behind the enemy lines, five beaches for landing, etc. America would take place in Omaha and Utah, and the British in Sword and Gold. The day of the invasion started with really bad weather conditions, buy Eisenhower however, decided to take the risk.

And these are the causes of why America, Britain and Russia decided to invade Normandy. They needed to stop the pressure that Germany was putting in France. The D-Day and the Operation Overlord were a big victory for the countries and had a great effect on the outcomes of the war. This time the Allies were determinate to succeed and it’s good they did it because if they could fail the operation, maybe their morale could go down and they would be weaker. The D-Day Invasion of Normandy have been a great part in the World History and the beginning of the end.

Mariana Flores

Operation Little Saturn

The Battle of Stalingrad is considered by many experts and historians to have been the turning point in World War Two in Europe. After the Germans bust intent to get Moscow, the Sixth Army was order to take Stalingrad because this city had all the products Russia needed to survive, without them a big crisis will appear. Also because Stalingrad was Russia’s center of communications in the south as well as being a center for manufacturing, after attacking this city, they would attack Moscow again. From a strategic point of view it would have been imprudent to have left a major city unconquered in your rear as they advanced. 

The Battle for Stalingrad was fought during the winter of 1942 to 1943. That was an advantage for the Russian army because the Germans suits were not prepare for a cold climate. In September 1942, the German commander of the Sixth Army, General Paulus, assisted by the Fourth Panzer Army, advanced on the city of Stalingrad. His primary task was to secure the oil fields in the Caucasus and to do this, Paulus was ordered by Hitler to take Stalingrad. The Germans final target was to have been Baku. 

Operation Saturn, also known as Operation Little Saturn, was a Red Army operation on the Eastern Front of World War II that led to battles in the northern Caucasus and Donets Basin regions of the Soviet Union from December 1942 to February 1943. The success of this operation during the Battle of Stalingrad was launched on November 19 of 1942 and trapped over 300,000 troops of General Friedrich Paulus's German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army in Stalingrad. To exploit this victory, the Soviet general staff planned a winter campaign of continuous and highly ambitious offensive operations, codenamed "Saturn". Later Joseph Stalin reduced his ambitious plans - due to his initial huge losses attacking the Axis troops - to a relatively small campaign codenamed "Operation Little Saturn". 

After the defeat of the Romanian Army around Stalingrad and the successful encirclement of the German Sixth Army, Stalin started a counter-offensive nicknamed "Operation Little Saturn" in order to enlarge the area controlled by the Soviet Army in eastern Ukraine until Kharkov and Rostov. 

The first stage was unleashed at December of 1942, an attempt to cut off the German Army in the Caucasus that had to be rapidly revised when General Erich von Manstein launched Operation Winter Storm on 12 December in an attempt to relieve the trapped armies at Stalingrad. While General Rodion Malinovsky's blocked the German advance on Stalingrad, the Operation Little Saturn was launched on 16 December. 

This operation consisted of a pincer movement which threatened to cut off the relieving forces. General Fyodor Isidorovich Kuznetsov's 1st Guards Army and General Dmitri Danilovich Lelyushenko's 3rd Guards Army attacked from the north, encircling 130,000 soldiers of the Italian 8th Army on the Don and advancing to Millerovo. 

With the relief column under threat of encirclement, Manstein had no choice but to retreat back to Kotelnikovo on 29 December, leaving the encircled Germans at Stalingrad to their fate. Of the 250,000 soldiers encircled 90,000 survived to be taken prisoner. Only 5,000 lived to return to Germany. 

The second stage of operations started on 13 January of 1943 with an attack by four armies of General Golikov's Voronezh Front that encircled and destroyed the Hungarian Second Army near Svoboda on the Don. As a consequence the Hungarian Second Army, as most other Axis armies ceased to represent a meaningful fighting force, in fact the German Sixth Army, encircled in Stalingrad, was destroyed on February 2 of 1943. 

On January 13 of 1943, the Soviets launched their second stage of Operation Saturn, where four armies of Soviet General Filipp Golikov's Voronezh Front attacked, encircled, and destroyed the Hungarian Second Army near Svoboda on the Don to the northwest of the Italians. 

Although the Alpini corps was ordered to hold the front at all costs, preparations for a general retreat began on January 15. On the evening of January 17, the commanding officer of the corps General Gabriele Nasci finally ordered the full retreat. 

At this point the Julia and Cuneense divisions were already heavily decimated and only the Tridentina division was still capable of conducting effective combat operations. 

Lucia Valdivia
Arianne Velez

Plan West

During the time Józef Piłsudski was the dictator of Poland, most of Polish planning concentrated on contingences in case of a possible attack from the East. It was only after Piłsudski's death in 1935 that the new Polish government and military reevaluated the situation and decided that the current Polish plan for a Polish-German war, dating from the mid-1920s (Plan "S"), was inadequate and needed to be revised.

Designed in the late 1930s, Plan Zachód (Plan West) was a military plan of the Polish Army of the Second Polish Republic, for defense against invasion from Nazi Germany.

Poland's most valuable natural resources, industry and population were located along the western border in Eastern Upper Silesia. The fact that none of Poland's allies had specifically guaranteed Polish borders or territorial integrity certainly did not help in easing Polish concerns.

The West Plan did permit the Polish armies to retreat inside the country, but it was supposed to be a slow retreat behind prepared positions and was intended to give the armed forces time to complete its mobilization and execute a general counteroffensive with the support of the Western Allies.

The plan of operations took into account, first of all, the numerical and material superiority of the enemy and, consequently, assumed the defensive character of Polish operations. The Polish intentions were: the defense of the western regions judged as indispensable for waging the war, the taking advantage of the propitious conditions for counterblows by reserve units, the avoidance of being smashed before the beginning of Allied operations in the West and the making of decisions depending of the existing situation. The operational plan had not been elaborated in detail and concerned only the first stage of operations.

                                                         Polish Infantry

The British and French estimated that Poland should be able to defend itself for two to three months, while Poland estimated it could do so for at least six months. Poland drafted its estimates based upon the expectation that the Western Allies honor their treaty obligations and quickly start an offensive of their own.

In addition, the French and British expected the war to develop into trench much like World War I. The Polish government was not notified of this strategy and based all of its defense plans on promises of quick relief by their Western allies.

Polish forces were stretched thinly along the Polish-German border and lacked compact defense lines and good defense positions along disadvantageous terrain. This strategy also left supply lines poorly protected. One-third of Poland's forces were massed in or near the Polish Corridor, making them vulnerable to a double envelopment from East Prussia and the west.


Although the Polish military had prepared for conflict, the civilian population remained largely unprepared. Polish pre-war propaganda emphasized that any German invasion would be easily repelled.

                                                 

                                                               Victims of German air raid







Consequently, Polish defeats during the German invasion came as a shock to the civilian population. Lacking training for such a disaster, the civilian population panicked and retreated east, spreading chaos, lowering troop morale and making road transportation for Polish troops very difficult

                                                                                                                        Valeria Otarola

The Battle of Salingrad: Operation Uranus

In October 1942, German forces had reached the Volga, and the Soviet generals Aleksandr Vasilyevskiy and Georgy Zhukov, both responsible for the strategic plan in all the Stalingrad territory, concentrated big masses of Soviet forces in the siege of Stalingrad. The German northern flank was particularly vulnerable to any attack, since it was defended by the allied axis and these that were the Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian forces suffered from inferior training, poor equipment, and lack of morale and hopes when compared with their German counterparts. 

This weakness from the axis was well known and exploited by the Soviets, who preferred to battle against troops that weren’t German when was possible so they had more chance to defeat, just as the British preferred attacking Italian troops, instead of German ones in North Africa. The Soviet’s plan was to keep maintaining the Germans down in the city, then punch through the overstretched and weakly defended German flanks and surround the Germans inside the Stalingrad area. During the preparations for the attack, Marshal Zhukov himself visited the front, which was rare for such a high-ranking general. This master operation was code-named “Uranus” and launched by the hand with Operation Mars, which was directed at Army Group Center. The plan was similar to Zhukov’s victory at Khalkin Gol three years before, where he had destroyed an important division of the Japanese army. 

On November 19, the Red Army of Soviets unleashed Uranus. The attacking Soviet unit forces under the command of Gen. Nikolay Vatutin consisted of three complete armies, , including a total of 18 infantry divisions, eight tank brigades, two motorized brigades, six cavalry divisions and one anti-tank brigade. The preparations for the attack could be heard by the Romanians, who continued to push for reinforcements, but once again they ended being rejected. When the Romanian Third army which defended the northern flank of German Sixth Army was finally spread, outnumbered and poorly equipped, was shattered by the Soviets. 

On November 20, a second Soviet attack by two armies was launched to the south of Stalingrad, against flanks defended by the Romanian IV Corps. The Romanian forces, made up primarily of infantry, were defeated almost immediately. Soviet forces raced west in a pincer movement, and met two days later in a place near the town of Kalach, sealing the ring around Stalingrad. The Russians later reconstructed the link up for use as propaganda, and the piece of footage made famous around the entire world. We can say Operation Uranus was a master operation, wll prepared, where the Red Army knew how to explote and use the overwhelming resources to smash down the German flanks of the 6th Army that were weakly defended by the axis, and also encircled it into the Stalingrad pocket. During battle preparations, Stavka, employed empleado maskirovka for hiding his intentios, one facet that would turn into a distinguished hallmark of future attack operations, as would the huge artillery preparations which opened the offensive and the far greater superiority in manpower and material which were employed to ensure its success. Finally, Hitler's refusal to release forces from Stalingrad and allow 6th Army freedom of movement to meet the threat, added to Paulus's reluctance to take independent action, sealed 6th Army's fate. 

Lucia Valdivia

Pearl Harbor

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japaneesse navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor. It all happened in Hawaii at the morning of December 7, 1941, when many people at Pearl Harbor were at leisure. They were completely unaware that an attack was imminent. . The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia.

The base was attacked by Japanese fighters, bombers and torpedo planes in two waves, launched from six aircraft carriers. The 8 U.S. Navy battleships were damaged half of them being sunk. Of these eight damaged, two were raised and six battleships returned to service later in the war.

The Japanese also sank three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship and one minelayer. 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed; 2,402 Americans were killed and 1,282 wounded. The power station, shipyard, maintenance, and fuel and torpedo storage facilities, as well as the submarine piers and headquarters building were not attacked. Americans were destroyed in a question of minutes.


By the other side the Japanese losses were not as much as much as in the U.S.A, only 29 aircraft and five midget submarines lost, and 65 servicemen killed or wounded. One Japanese sailor was captured.


American people were totally shocked. This event is very important because after this attack americans will decide to enter to World War II in both the Pacific and European theaters. The following day, December 8, the United States declared war on Japan. The United States had clandestine support from Britain (for example the Neutrality Patrol) then they join to the allies and fight against Germany and Japan.


There were numerous historical precedents for unannounced military action by Japan. But, the lack of any formal warning, particularly while negotiations were still apparently ongoing, led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to proclaim December 7, 1941, "a date which will live in infamy" and a feeling of reveange to Japan that they will later put in action.


Now a days , the USS Arizona Memorial on the island of Oahu honors the lives lost on the day of the attack. Visitors to the memorial reach it via boats from the naval base at Pearl Harbor. Alfred Preis is the architect responsible for the memorial's design. The structure has a sagging center and its ends strong and vigorous. It commemorates "initial defeat and ultimate victory" of all lives lost on December 7, 1941.


Although December 7 is known as Pearl Harbor Day, it is not considered a federal holiday in the United States. The nation does however, continue to pay homage remembering the thousands injured and killed when attacked by the Japanese in 1941. Schools and other establishments across the country respectfully lower the American flag to half-staff.



                                                                                                      Arianne Velez

The Last Battle: The Consequences

The battle of Berlin was one of the last battles in World War 2. It was between Germany and the USSR. Stalin was determined to defeat Nazism this time. So he, with the Red Army, decided to invade Berlin where Hitler was. It was a really difficult and devastating battle, and although the Red Army was bigger in number, Germans were focused in being loyal to Hitler, as their phrase: Heil Hitler. That’s why it was very laborious for Stalin to win, and his army had to fight house by house, murdering also innocent people. 

The cause why Germans where defeated was because of the lack of ammonisation and troops. In April 30, the USSR entered to the centre of Berlin and Adolf Hitler after he marries Eva Braun, suicide with his recent wife. His last words ordered that Admiral Karl Donitz converted in the new Reich president and Joseph Goebbels to be the new chancellor of Germany, but Joseph suicide with all his family and all the war responsibility lay in Karl Donitz. Finally, in May 8 of 1945, Germany surrenders unconditionally to the Soviet Union, ending that way, the battle. The USSR lost tanks exceeded all the estimates due to the effective German use of the Panzerfaust(a cheap anti tank weapon), which was not enough to stop the armoured advance on the capital. That shows that they fight and give all their effort and capacities until they couldn’t, and explains how big was their feeling of pride for being a Nazi and having that ideology. 

Berlin suffered a lot of serious damage, especially in Reichstag (were Hitler was staying), and also Moltke and Alezanderplatz. The USSR count approximately 155 000 people dead and 250 000 that were sick or wounded. And Germans had 45 000 dead, that included civil people that were not necessarily soldiers. A lot of Nazis escape leaving German civilians to their fate and sometimes this people only know when the Red Army was coming when there was too late to escape. The soldiers in that moment showed that in a way they weren’t loyal to their people, they were loyal to Hitler and the Nazi ideology in particular. 

One famous characteristic about the Russian invasion in Germany were the aggressive and massive violations committed against German women as a “punishment” for the war. An idea that wasn’t right because it wasn’t their fault in a way. As a consequence, 2 000 000 women were sexually assaulted, and 10 000 of them suicide right after. It was a catastrophe; USSR had gotten out of control. And was very bad of their part because they had won that time, they invaded Berlin and defeated Hitler, but they wanted revenge and they were exceeded with these poor women.

 Berlin was in a big chaos. The USSR wasn´t happy with only distroying Germany and their revenge was terrible and devastating, and of course what germany did was bad but that is not an excuse for acting like that . Also the city was extremely destroyed and altough it was not the only one in bad conditions, its situation was horrible. Now the question is, What would happen next? How can Germany recuperate now? What would happen with the allies? There would be a second treaty and  a pay from germany?...

 There are a lot of questions and doubts to resolve but the truth is that, after 6 years, the war was   FINALLY  over

 Mariana Flores

The U Boats Threat

The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest battle of the Second World War and it was also the most important battle during these times because the success of any other campaign in during this war depended of its success. Many experts agree that defeat of the German U-Boats and control of the shipping sea routes that linked the allied nations of Great Britain, United States and Canada was essential if what the Allied nations wanted was to invade occupied Europe and the German territory. This battle was for commerce and it was waged by the German U-Boats that fought against Britain’s merchant marine. For almost six years, Germany launched over 1,000 U-Boats into combat, in an attempt to isolate and blockade the British Isles, forcing the British to withdraw from war. It was a fight which nearly obstructed the shipping sea routes of Great Britain, cutting off required supplies of food, fuel and raw materials needed to continue fighting. 

By the end of the war, U-Boats of the Kriegsmarine, in the Battle of the Atlantic had sent over 2,900 ships and 14 million tons of Allied shipping to the bottom of the sea. In exchange, the Allies sank almost 800 U-Boats and over 30,000 of the 39,000 German sailors who put to sea, never returned, this was the highest casualty rate of any armed service in the history of modern war. 

During the early year of war, German U-Boat successes against British and American shipping were so remarkable, that on January 1943, the Allies issued a decree in Casablanca which made the defeat of German U-Boats a number one priority. 

The Prime Minister of Britain, Winston Churchill once wrote: “the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril”. In this phrase, he remarked the importance of the threat that set during World War Two by the Germans to the British. If Germany would had prevented merchant ships from carrying food, raw materials, troops and their equipment from North America to Britain, the aftermath of World War Two could have been completely different. People in Great Britain might have been starved, and its armies would not have been equipped with American-built tanks and vehicles needed in the combat. 

Also, if the Allies wouldn’t have been capable of moving ships over the North Atlantic, it would have been impossible to launch British and American land forces into the Mediterranean territories or in the D-Day. Germany’s best hope to be able to finally defeat Great Britain was to win the “Battle of the Atlantic”, named like this by the British prime minister of the time Winston Churchill. In World War One, Germany waged a very similar campaign, and in 1917 Germans were pretty close of defeating the British. But when this Battle of the Atlantic happened in 1939 neither side was well prepared for what was going to implicate this big war. 

Germany underestimated the impact U-boats caused in the British, and was fighting with only 46 operational ships, using majorly surface ships than submarines to fight the Atlantic. On September 3 of 1939, the day that Britain declared war on Germany, the British craft, “Athenia”, was torpedoed by a U-boat. This marked the beginning of the second Battle of the Atlantic.

                                                                               

                                                                                     Lucia Valdivia

“Little boy”

At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was an important city due to their industrial and military. Even some military camps were located there, such as the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Shunroku Hata's 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defence of all of southern Japan. Hiroshima was a logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a storage point centre, and a communication centre.

It was one of several Japanese cities that have never been touched during the WW2, allowing to measure the damage caused by the atomic bomb, thats why Washington decided to assign it highest priority.



The centre of the city contained a number of reinforced concrete buildings and lighter structures. Outside the centre, the area had many small wooden workshops set among Japanese houses. A few larger industrial plants lay near the outskirts of the city. The houses were of wooden construction with tile roofs, and many of the industrial buildings also were of wood frame construction. The city as a whole was highly susceptible to fire damage.



On August 6, 1945 at the time of launch, the weather was good, and the crew and equipment functioned properly. The Japanese early warning radar net detected the approach of some American aircraft headed for the southern part of Japan. The alert had been given and radio broadcasting stopped in many cities, among them Hiroshima. At 08:15, the Enola Gay dropped the nuclear bomb called "Little Boy" over the centre of Hiroshima. It exploded about 600 meters above the city with a blast equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT, killing an estimated 70–80,000 people.

Radiation poisoning and necrosis caused illness and death after the bombing in about 1% of those who survived the initial explosion. By the end of 1945, thousands more people died due to radiation poisoning, bringing the total killed in Hiroshima to about 90,000. Since then about a thousand more people have died of radiation-related causes.

The survivors of the bombings are called hibakusha a Japanese word that means "people exposed to the bomb". The suffering of the bombing is the root of Japan's postwar pacifism, and the nation has sought the abolition of nuclear weapons from the world ever since.
 

                                                                                                         Arianne Velez

Blitzkrieg: The Lightning War against Poland

Blitzkrieg operations were very effective during the campaigns of 1939–1941. These operations were dependent on surprise penetrations, general enemy unpreparedness and an inability to react swiftly enough to the attacker's offensive operations. It included surprise attacks, rapid advances into enemy territory, with coordinated massive air attacks, which struck and shocked the enemy as if it was struck by lightning.

The classic characteristic of what is commonly known as "blitzkrieg" is a highly mobile form of infantry and armor working in combined arms teams. (German armed forces, June 1943)

These forces would drive a breach in enemy defenses, permitting armored tank divisions to penetrate rapidly and roam freely behind enemy lines, causing shock and disorganization among the enemy defenses. German air power prevented the enemy from adequately resupplying or redeploying forces and thereby from sending reinforcements to seal breaches in the front. German forces could in turn encircle opposing troops and force surrender.

This tactic attempts to keep its enemy off-balance, making it difficult to respond effectively at any given point before the front has already moved on.

German operational theories began to evolve immediately after Germany's defeat in the First World War. The Treaty of Versailles limited any German Army to a maximum of 100,000 men, making impossible the deployment of massed troops which had characterized German strategy before the War. Although the German General Staff was also abolished by the treaty, it nevertheless continued to exist as the Truppenamt or "Troop Office", supposedly only an administrative body.

Committees of veteran staff officers were formed within the Truppenamt to evaluate 57 issues of the war. Their reports led to doctrinal and training publications, which became the standard procedures by the time of the Second World War. The Reichswehr was influenced by its analysis of pre-war German military thought, in particular the infiltration tactics which at the end of the war had seen some breakthroughs in the Western Front's trench war, and the maneuver warfare which dominated the Eastern Front.

Germany had a substantial numeric advantage over Poland and had developed a significant military prior to the conflict. The Luftwaffe (air force) provided both tactical and strategic air power, particularly dive bombers that disrupted lines of supply and communications. Historian Basil Liddell Hart claimed "Poland was a full demonstration of the Blitzkrieg theory."

Dispositions of the opposing forces on 31 August 1939 with the German plan of attack overlayed.

Polish military planners failed to foresee the speed of the German advance and predicted that Armia Prusy would need to be fully mobilized by 16 September, by which time it was too late. In late 1939, Polish analysts prepared a report, examining the faults of the Polish defensive strategy against German Blitzkrieg tactics, and proposing a solution. This report was presented to the Allies, of whom the French refused to read it. The French Army ended up fighting in 1940, not even on the "Polish schedule," but on the World War One schedule (even slower).

It was an extremely effective tactic when employed against the armies of the Allies, who were initially largely expecting a re-run of the Trenches in the First World War. The Third Reich had extensive military success in the first years of the Second World War with this strategy and conquered France, Poland and many other countries (almost) with ease.

Valeria Otarola

A new beggining for Spain: The II Republic

In this article I will talk about the II Republic, this political instability that really marked Spain and that, although it was started not only with good intentions because some of them wanted only the power but although all of them wanted a change for good, and finally this led Spain to a terrible civil war.

Background
Spain after the First World War was in a political crisis. The King, Alfonso XIII, was forced to abdicate because people wasn´t happy with his government anymore. So the II Republic appeared for the happiness of the majority of Spanish people, with a promise of modernization and democracy. After the elections for a provisional government, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora was named the first prime minister. But Spain at that time was still a subdesarrollated country with unemployment and poorness. The provisional government was also having a problem with the education and analphabetism was really common at that moment. There was a strong anti-clerical feeling and the Catholic Church and the government didn’t have a good relationship because the socialist group have a strong power and influence in people and some integrants of the church start supporting the monarchy, population gets angry , people burn churches and other religious buildings. People wanted a fast change, they aspire for a better life and in my opinion they were very confused because at that time many groups of different parties appear and the real reason why they wanted a republic is that they didn’t want a monarchy anymore but neither a republic, they only wanted to impose their point of view and that people could know it was “the best” for them.

Elections of 1931

In this year the government decided to make elections and much different party all around Spain got reunited from constitutionals to communists, all spreading their ideas. But the Socialist party, the one that was in the power in the provisional government, had the victory. The second most popular was the Radical one, led by Alejandro Lerroux and the right wing was reduced in the minority. Manuel Azaña was now the president and the new constitution proclaimed, among other things, the equal right for women, the determinate separation of the state with the church and also rights for the worker class.

The relationship between the church and the government tightened more because of the separation of powers of the church-state. In this moment the church loses all their privileges. Government permitted the divorce, banned the church to teach or show some catholic symbols and send Jesuits to the exile.


1931-1933 first Biennium

Government started making military reforms looking for the extreme fidelity of the army. The Socialist group entered in the government with three ministers and started making reforms, helping the working class. They started to provide upper wages, gave them pay vacations, health insurance, eight-hour workday, establishment of a minimum salary. The Republican government didn’t finish consolidating because people wanted fast reforms and in my opinion it was difficult to solve problems that have many years without a solution, it was a weak government. People were angry with this and Azaña was forced to abdicate and enters Martinez Blanco.

1933-1936 second Biennium

This period was also known as the Black Biennium because there was a big opposition against the government and it couldn’t continue with the reforms that they were doing to improves the stability and happiness of the people. This stopped the education and military reforms and that’s why they permitted the Catholic Church to teach again and help them doing the reforms. In an ideological way, because Mussolini and Hitler´s ideas advanced in Italy and Germany, the right wing started to gain more power and popularity in the right parties of Spain. And this is what brings the end of the Republic and a catastrophic event that takes place in the worst moment for Spain. They were tired and have been just emerging from another war, but without even thinking about it, a civil war started.

Mariana Flores

Treaty of Versailles

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud was born in 1856, before the invention of telephones, radios, automobiles, airplanes, and many of the other material and cultural changes. Freud lived when the Great War unleashed, a war that destroyed the empire whose capital city was his home for most of his life and he also lived the beginning of the Second World War. He began his career as an ambitious but isolated neurologist; by the end of it, he described himself as someone who had had as great an impact on humanity's conception of itself as had Copernicus and Darwin, big science contributors. 

Freud displayed his brilliance at a young age and gained the favoritism of his parents. As a result, his poor parents sacrificed a lot of money to provide him with a proper education. Despite the family's economic struggles, Freud graduated from high school with honors. He then attended the University of Vienna where he studied medicine and was first introduced to psychodynamics, a theory used to determine the psychological forces of human behavior. Medical school ensured the way for the beginning of his career and he also worked in the fields of neurology, philosophy, psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, and literature. His most famous work, “The Interpretation of Dreams”, describes some of his most famous theories about the mind and the unconscious such as dream symbolism and interpretation, wish-fulfillment. It also mentions his famous theories of the Id, Ego, and Superego also called Chiriac. 

In the years of war, Freud had a few number of patients. He continued to treat those that he did have, but spent much of his time writing. In the winters of 1915 to 1916 and 1916 to 1917, he gave lectures on psychoanalysis at the University of Vienna which were later published as the “General Introduction to Psychoanalysis”. One of Freud's most important patients during the war years was a Hungarian named Anton von Freund. Freund was a wealthy Hungarian who was treated by Freud for a minor neurosis. Very enthusiastic about his treatment and excited by the congress in Budapest in 1918, Freund donated a large sum of money to the Association in order to found a psychoanalytic publishing house. The house was founded in January of 1919 and run by Otto Rank until 1924. For bad luck, Freund's generosity turned insignificant by postwar economic conditions in Austria. After this inauspicious beginning, the Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, as the publishing house was called, was almost never solvent: it depended mostly on donations from supporters of psychoanalysis, dues from members of the Association, contributions from authors published by the Verlag, and sales of Freud's books. The Verlag was finally done by the annexation of Austria by Hitler in 1938. 

For concluding Sigmund Freud created a whole new outlook on the idea of psychology by considering the idea that personality is determined by childhood experiences and he was one of the first to consider the internal workings of the human brain. 

Lucia Valdivia

Birth of Modernism during the Interwar Period

As an aftermath of the Great War, a growing tension and depression in society with social order, manifested in artistic works in every source which strictly rejected the old practice. Young painters like Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were causing a shock with their rejection of traditional perspective as the means of structuring paintings something that any of impressionists before had taken. In 1907, as Picasso was painting “Demoiselles d'Avignon”, Oskar Kokoschka was writing “Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen”, the first Expressionist play made in 1909, and Arnold Schoenberg was composing his “String Quartet No.2”, his first composition "without a tonal center". In 1911, Kandinsky painted “Bild mit Kreis" which he later called the first abstract painting. In 1913, a Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, working in Paris for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, composed “The Rite of Spring” for a ballet, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky that depicted human sacrifice. 

These developments, during the interwar years of 1914 to 1939, began to give a new meaning to what was termed "modernism": It embraced discontinuity, rejecting smooth change in everything from biology to fictional character development and filmmaking. It allowed disruption, rejecting or moving beyond simple realism in literature and art, and rejecting or dramatically altering tonality in music. 

It is considered to be the most significant architectural development in the interwar period. The designed world in which we live was largely created by Modernism, which is best identified as a loose collection of ideas that developed suddenly in different countries rather than as a single movement. The unadorned, geometric forms, abstracted shapes, and bold colors of Modernist art and design are notable, seen in everything that surround us and behind all this looks and forms of Modernism are set some radical ideas and conditions. 

Writers like Dickens and Tolstoy, painters like Turner, and musicians like Brahms were not radicals or "Bohemians", but were instead valued members of society who produced art that gave to society, even when critiquing its less desirable aspects. As a reaction for the unprecedented violence and destruction of World War I, these artists searched for ways to create a better world through art and design. 

The interwar period it’s not considered technologically as a great innovative period because the big inventions as the electric light bulb, the automobile, the airplane, the skyscraper, the radio, and the telephone appeared formerly World War I. It is greatly considered a time of development and dispersal giving rise to widespread use of modern technologies. Modernism includes remarkable art movements of the interwar period like Dadaism (1916 – 1924), Bauhaus (1919 – 1933), Art Deco (1920 – 1935) and Surrealism (1920 - 1935). The most paradigmatic movement during this time was Dada or Dadaism Dada, an informal international movement, with participants in Europe and North America. The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. The movement was a protest against the bourgeois nationalist and colonialist interests, which many Dadaists believed were the main cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity in art and in society that corresponded to the war. 

Many Dadaists believed that the reason' and logic of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and supports chaos and irrationality. George Grosz, a artist, recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest against this world of mutual destruction.

Lucia Valdivia

A new Republic, New hope for Germany?

After the World War I, Germany was in a very devastated situation. They had lost people and territory in the battle, unemployment, food problems, and had a strong feeling of revenge but also of despair, they wanted a change. Population didn’t want a small parliament that chooses Germany´s future, they wanted to participate. This led Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate and when a small social movement appears with the idea of democracy, a way that people could vote, citizens approve it immediately. Here is where the Weimar Republic appears.

In 1918, the leader of The Social Democratic Party, Friedrich Ebert started a provisional government where he had to face twice against the Spartacists, a radical communist group, that revolt because they weren´t happy with the new government ideas. After defeating this group, Ebert called for elections in 1919. Members of the Reichstag, the parliament, got reunited in the small town of Weimar and write a constitution, naming Ebert as the new president. The government took place in Weimar because Berlin, the capital, was in chaos. This new constitution consists in having a real democratic system that gave the right to vote to all men and woman over the age of 21. Also the parliament was going to be elected every 4 years. Germany was divided in states and each of them had its own government that manages internal affairs. The head of these states was the president, that was elected every 7 years and under the article 48 of the constitution, the president could declare a state of emergency and rule by decree. 

The new government was established in August 11, 1919, recognized as the Weimar Republic. Since the beginning the republic started to have many problems. The Treaty of Versailles shocked the government with a huge amount of money that Germany has to pay, exactly £6.6 Billion, to the Allies for reparations. The Treaty was signed by Ebert and it was his worst decision, people lost faith in the republic, which was really weak and unstable. Germany already has lost a lot of money in the war and didn’t have enough to pay the big debt. Also, the country wasn’t used to a democracy and didn’t have the determination or the security to make decisions, government was a chaos. 

It seems that Germany was falling apart. In 1923, the man recognized as the one that “save” Germany was Gustav Stresemann. He rapidly became popular because he gave money to the unemployment, built houses and the most important and started paying reparations again, etc. But the most important, he was giving German people faith and hope that they could make it and they would have a better life. That is why he became the new Chancellor of the Republic. The problem was that he leave the German economic prosperity on the American loans, this was a terrible dilemma because United States, in 1929, suffered the Great Depression a big economical problem, Germany started to show vulnerability again. In 1930 people was tired of all the crisis and chaos where they were living. People that in all this time have opposed to the Weimar Republic, the radical groups, were angry and desperate; they wanted a new idea of government, something that would help Germany to acquire stability. These groups started to act and work rapidly looking for a new ideology, in this moment a new political movement appears with the name of the Nazi party with its popular leader Hitler. This party promised a new and better government, very strong. In my opinion people was really confused, and hopeless, they wanted a change rapidly and they were app to everything and when this strong party with concrete arguments and ideas of a stable state, it catches people’s attention and they let the Nazis party to propague all around Germany, while they were putting all their faith in them. The Weimar Republic was a mistake, but now people was sure that this time they´ll go through it… 

But probably Germany has a really bad luck and their leader wasn´t as good as they think, he was really going to help them leading them to a second war?

Mariana Flores

Equality Now

Interwar England witnessed the change of a new generation of socially and financially independent young working-class women who worked in offices, shops, and factories. These increasing earning opportunities, and rising economic importance to the household, enabled them to become important consumers, thus giving them the right to express their opinion in different matters. In 1918 the British parliament passed the Reform Act of 1918 where “important measures effecting large improvements in the status of women” were taken. These reforms allowed women to enter certain professions; to ask fathers to pay toward the maintenance of an illegitimate child, to improved health and welfare facilities for mothers and children and even allowed women to work in these newly established courts of arbitration. At least twenty-three laws were passed between 1918 and 1930 to promote gender equality. These included changes in marriage and family to equal the right to sue for divorce, equal guardianship rights over children and greater equalization of property rights. In 1929 the permissible age of marriage for both sexes was raised to sixteen.


Women voters also made an impact on British local government. In 1937 sixteen per cent of London borough councillors were female and women made up five per cent of the membership of other councils.

In the United States, during the beginning of the 20th century, the women suffrage movement, known as the National Women's Party led by suffragette Alice Paul became the first "cause" to picket outside the White House. Paul and Lucy Burns led a series of protests against the Wilson Administration in Washington. Wilson ignored the protests for six months, but on June 20, 1917, suffragettes showed a banner which stated; "We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote. President Wilson is the chief opponent of their national enfranchisement". Another banner on August 14, 1917, referred to "Kaiser Wilson". With this manner of protest, the women were subject to arrests and many were jailed. On October 17, Alice Paul was sentenced to seven months and on October 30 began a hunger strike, but after a few days prison authorities began to force feed her. After years of opposition, Wilson changed his position in 1918 to advocate women's suffrage. The key vote came on June 4, 1919, when the Senate approved the amendment by 56 to 25 after four hours of debate.


To conclude we can see that the role of women changed a lot during the interwar period. Especially in England, were it started. Women pressure to make changes started small like the demands to increase child support, and ended with more sustainable changes like the right to vote on the United States and other countries.

Arianne Velez

The Great depression: effect in German economy

The depression began with the Wall Street Crash. This was a collapse of confidence among American investors. After Wall Street, there was a dramatic slump in the USA and this had catastrophic results because the world economy depended on the USA. After the crash, there was a worldwide economic crisis. Governments turned to protectionism: they imposed high import taxes to protect their own industries. This resulted in a further decline in world trade and widespread unemployment.

Rampant hyperinflation, massive unemployment and a large drop in living standards were primary factors.

In Europe, the impact of the Depression was at its greatest in Germany. The democratic government set up at Weimar was already in trouble before the Depression started. This added a new sense of crisis to German politics which made the economy of Germany depend on American loans. As nearly as 1930 emergency powers were given to the president that limited the power of the Reichstag.

Unemployment soared, especially in larger cities, and the political system veered toward extremism(any ideology or political act far outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards).The unemployment rate reached nearly 30% in 1932, bolstering support for the anti-capitalist Nazi and Communist parties, which both rose in the years following the crash to altogether possess a Reichstag majority following the general election in July 1932.

A scene from the Great Depression: an unemployed man seeking work.



After the Wall Street Crash, America gave Germany 90 days to start to re-pay money loaned to her. No other world power had the money to give Germany cash injections. Britain and France were still recovering from the First World War and the Wall Street Crash was to have an impact on industrial Britain. Stalin’s Russia was still in a desperate state and embarking on the 5 year plans. Therefore, an impoverished Weimar Germany could only call on America for help and she was effectively bankrupt by the end of 1929 and quite incapable of lending money.


Companies throughout Germany - though primarily in the industrial zones such as the Ruhr - went bankrupt and workers were laid off in their millions.

September 1928	650,000 unemployed
September 1929	1,320,000 unemployed
September 1930	3,000,000 unemployed
September 1931	4,350,000 unemployed
September 1932	5,102,000 unemployed
January 1933	6,100,000 unemployed

Unemployment affected nearly every German family just 6 years after the last major economic disaster - hyperinflation - had hit Weimar.

Most, though not all, of the unemployed were male. These men were almost certainly family men who could see no way ahead with regards to providing for their families. Money was required for food, heating a home, clothes etc. With no obvious end to their plight under the Weimar regime, it is not surprising that those who saw no end to their troubles turned to the more extreme political parties in Germany - the Nazi and Communist Parties.


Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in January 1933, establishing a totalitarian single-party state within months and initiating the path towards World War II, the most devastating conflict in world history.






Valeria Otarola

Sigmund Freud and his revolutionary theory

After WWI, an important psychologist, Sigmund Freud, revolutionized the perception of sexuality during that period. He changed sexuality forever. Many of the social and cultural changes of the interwar period centered around the sexual and psychological theories of Sigmund Freud.




Freud, the inventor and chief practitioner of psychoanalysis, developed the idea of the “unconscious,” a repository of sexual desires and dreams. Freud’s theories helped some American women break free from small-town, white, Protestant values in favor of increasingly permissive and tolerant attitudes toward the sexual freedoms and desires of women. Sigmund Freud human behavior was motivated by unconscious drives, primarily "Sexual Energy". He called his therapy Psychoanalysis. His work provoked a serious challenge to prudishness by saying that children emerged from the Oedipus complex, a sexual desire towards their parent of the opposite sex. According to Freud's theory, in the earliest stage in a child's psychosexual development, the oral stage, the mother's breast became the formative source of all later erotic sensation.




The effects of Freud’s ideology were many, some of them we can still see today: Freud said, and many Freudians still believe that many mental illnesses, particularly hysteria, can be traced back to unresolved conflicts experienced during childhood, or to events which otherwise disrupt the normal pattern of infantile development. He also changed and explained homosexuality. Before Freud homosexuals were persecuted, imprisoned or killed. Freud explained that homosexuality is a failure to resolve the conflicts of the Oedipus complex, particularly a failure to identify with the parent of the same sex.


Freud also allowed for sexual freedom, especially in women. Before Freud women were seen as objects. They had to fulfill their spouse’s wishes. They couldn’t feel desire because it was frowned upon. Women who were sexually active were seen as neurotic and sent to mental hospitals. Women couldn’t express sexual desire. Freud postulated that when a person experiences an instinctual impulse to behave in a manner which the super-ego deems to be reprehensible, then it is possible for the mind to push this impulse away, to repress it into the unconscious. However, the repressed instinctual drive, as an energy-form, is not and cannot be destroyed when it is repressed–it continues to exist intact in the unconscious.


To conclude, Freud´s ideas, even though discussed and challenged by the men in his time, were so strong that psychoanalysts to this day treat people´s minds following his philosophy. Freudians explain behaviors and desires as impulses that one can control if we understood our psyche. This is how some of the most important criminals in our times have been freed, because lawyers following Freud’s ideas explained their behavior after childhood traumas.

Arianne Velez

The USSR under Stalin’s dictatorship

Stalin ruled the Soviet Union from 1929 until 1953, when he died. He was a dictator, which is he personally had complete control of the government. Lenin announced the New Economic Policy, (NEP) which re-established limited economic freedom. His plan was to rebuild both agriculture and industry.


In 1927, the party which had ratified Stalin’s consolidation of power adopted the first Five Year Plan. The Plan called for industrial production to be increased within five years by 250 per cent, with heavy industry to grow even faster. Agricultural production was to increase by 150 percent, and one fifth of Soviet peasants were to give up their private plots and join "collective" farms


Industries and Agriculture

Compared with other main European countries, Soviet industries were very backwards. Also the years of war and civil war had causes much damage and disorganization. Stalin decided that a huge effort must be made to develop the main heavy industries like steel. He was afraid that the USSR may be attacked again by countries who wanted to destroy Communism


Many more mines, factories, oil-refineries and generating stations had to be developed during the ten years 1928-38. Millions more workers were needed. In fact, during those ten years the proportion of the whole population living in towns increased from one-fifth to one-third.


Stalin organized a great publicity campaign to persuade peasants to move to the towns and encourage the workers to work extra hard.

A propaganda poster of 1934.   It is titled: 'Peasants can live like a Human Being'.  

                                              Study the poster - can you see how it is promising people the following:

                 •enough to eat,

                 •   adequate clothing,

                 •   the latest consumer goods,

                 •   electricity,

                 •   education,

                 •   happiness.

The problem

Soviet farming was very backward. Most of the peasants were extremely poor and used the most primitive methods to cultivate the land. Flails for threshing and even wooden ploughs were still widely used.


Yet Stalin urgently needed to increase the production of food. The first five-year plan needed a huge increase in the number of industrial workers. Food had to be available in the towns for them.


Stalin’s solution

Stalin produced a scheme to solve all this problems. The small peasant plots would be joined together to form big collective farms. This would have the following advantages:


1. They will be big enough to use modern methods of farming, including tractors.


2. A very large farm would need fewer peasants than the smaller plots separately. The surplus people could go to the towns to work in the factories.


3. Communist Party officials could control the collectives through their organizing committees.


The changes were introduced very quickly and the result was anger and chaos. The peasants were forced to give up their land, their animals, even their tools to the collective. Many peasants burned their crops or slaughtered their animals in protest, such that by 1933, the number of horses, cattle, sheep and goats fell by at least half. Man also slaughtered their animal rather than give them up to the collective.

And the state took the grain- a picture referring to collectivization.

Collectivization, often called the "second serfdom," was an unmitigated disaster. While the communist economists had expected collective farms to generate enough income to pay for factories, heavy investment was needed in tractors to replace draft horses that had been slaughtered. There was no efficient infrastructure or means of getting crops delivered to processors; tons of wheat rotted in the fields while people starved for lack of bread.

Valeria Otarola