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Hitler, a cautious dictator for the first couple of years of his rule, had become reckless by 1941, and had gambled everything on a swift victory in the USSR. If StalinStalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Read More’s regime could be crushed and thirty million Russians starved to death as a result, then there would be enough living space for Aryan German settlers and the resources to defeat any enemy in the west. The defeat of…
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The position that Japan entered the war in was based on assumptions and desperation. Watch the video below for more: Japan's Strategic Failings 1940-41 Watch this video on YouTube.
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Most of the writing on individual perpetrators of the Holocaust focuses on senior figures (Hitler, Himmler, Goering being obvious examples) and the tier below them (Hans Frank, Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Eichmann) as well as camp commanders such as Rudolf Hoess and Franz Stangl. Colonel Alfred Filbert is a name that will probably be unfamiliar to most readers of Holocaust histories, but Dr Alex Kay of the Institute of Contemporary History in Berlin has written a compelling biography of him, detailing his involvement in the mass killing of Jews on the Eastern Front in 1941. It is a work of detailed scholarship,…
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By early 1943, Adolf Hitler was an increasingly remote and reclusive figure in Germany. His health had declined due to the stresses of the war and he had begun to suffer from Parkinson’s disease. The Nazi government attempted to suppress the defeat at Stalingrad of the German Sixth Army (which had marched triumphantly into Paris three years earlier), but by February it was announced that the army had been lost, sacrificing itself for the Reich. The catastrophe, combined with Hitler’s diminished presence became an opportunity for his propagandist Goebbels to increase his role and make a bid to be a…