A Short Walk through Our Long History

Well, here we are, finally.  The Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan have been defeated.   Hitler has committed suicide, at least that’s the official story, Mussolini was captured and hanged, and the Japanese emperor had to go on a nationwide broadcast and admit that he was not a deity.  The Allies were firmly in control of all the Axis lands, and the countries that they had conquered.  If you look at a map of the high-tide mark of the Axis control, which was probably mid-1942, they controlled all of Europe, except the UK and the remnant of the European part of the USSR.  They controlled much of North Africa.  The Axis controlled all of the western Pacific Ocean, and in mid-1942, they had inflicted huge damage on the existing militaries of the Allies.  Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.comemail:  [email protected]

Well, here we are.  Humans are about to devise the technology that could realistically end the world.  For the first time, humans have the ability to basically eradicate all of life on earth, and it’s only restrained by, well humans.  Yikes.  The war in Europe ended in May of 1945, but the war in the Pacific was still going on.  We talked about the turning point in the Pacific, the Battle of Midway, a couple of episodes ago, but since then we’ve only talked about the war in Europe.   So we need to go back a couple of years and catch up with what was going on in the Pacific.  

Well, VE Day is the sort of nickname that the world press gave to the day when victory in Europe was achieved.  So VE stands for victory in Europe, which obviously is where we are going with this episode, but we’ve got a ways to go yet.  And the eventually victory over Japan is going to be called VJ Day, but that one doesn’t get all that much traction, for some reasons that we’ll go into next episode.  But lots of newspapers and countries around the western world were very excited about VE Day, and the name kind of stuck.At the end of the last episode, we left about 150,000 Allied troops holding a small but solid beachhead in Normandy.  The D-Day invasion was a huge Allied victory, but it was only the start of a long and difficult road to the defeat of Nazi Germany.  But it was, indeed, the beginning of the end.  

Well, here we are.  This episode is about one of the most massive, high-risk and pivotal events of the last 100 years.  Seriously, if you had to pick one day that was the most important or consequential days of the last 100 years, I think you might have to pick June 6th, 1944.  It wasn’t quite the same ‘turning of the tide’ event that Midway and Stalingrad were, but in some ways, June 6th 1944 was an even bigger deal than either of them.  Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.comemail:  [email protected]

As the Soviets were fighting the Germans all along a 1000 mile long front, they were demanding that the Allies in the west do something to open a second front against the Germans.  We’ll get to the Allies eventual response to this in a couple of episodes, but the western allies had the same problem invading Europe that the Germans had had when they were thinking about invading Britain.  That problem was the English Channel.  In order to send an invasion fleet across the channel to land in France, the Allies had to have complete control of the air above the channel, to protect the invasion fleet from German planes.  So before the sea-borne invasion could take place, the Allies needed to defeat the Luftwaffe, or at least drive them back from their bases in France where they could attack an invasion fleet.  So the Allies started building up their air forces in Great Britain. The Royal Air Force, which had done such a heroic job of defeating the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain, had continued to build up its fighter and bomber forces.  But early 1942, they were joined by the newly formed American group, the Eighth Air Force.  The Americans began to ship men, planes, bombs and ammo, and fuel to Great Britain.  By the end of the war, the Americans are going to have over 200 airbases in Great Britain, with over half a million men on those bases, and over 50,000 planes. 

Every once in a while, there is a great moment or battle that really changes the course of history.  Yes, yes, I know I said that exact thing at the beginning of the last episode too, but I need to say it again, because this episode is, once again, a pivotal moment in human history.  And instead of it being decided by a few crucial minutes, this battle will take about half of the year of 1942.  And unlike the Battle of Midway, where the casualties were measured in the thousands, the casualties in the battle of Stalingrad will be measured in the millions. Welcome to the deadliest battle in all of human history, the battle of Stalingrad.

Every once in a while, there is a great moment or battle that really changes the course of history.  The Battle of Salamis, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Charles the Hammer winning the Battle of Tours, The Battle of Hastings in 1066, Luther nailing the 95 theses to the door in Wittenberg, the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the time I defeated my neighborhood HOA by installing a whole pallet of grass sod in my front yard even before they mailed me a nasty letter.  I got other nasty HOA letters, but not about the front yard grass. All of those were key moments that changed the direction of history in some way.  They turned the tide, so to speak.  And this episode is one of those moments.  And, as a quick spoiler, next episode will be one, too.  

Ok, it’s the beginning of 1942, and for the Allies, things are looking, well, kinda bleak.  France, one of the great powers of the world as recently as 1939, is now occupied by the Nazis, who are in total control of the north and west of France, and who have installed a puppet government in the south and east of France.  Great Britain is alone in Europe, and it very dependent on imported goods, but Nazis are threatening British shipping in the Atlantic with both surface boats and U-boats.  The Soviet Union has lost almost a million square miles of territory to Nazi Germany, and the Germans are at the doors of Moscow and Leningrad, and in the south have captured much of the Ukraine. The Italians, with German help, have captured Greece and Cyprus, and are also trying to gain territory in North Africa, pushing towards British-held Egypt and the vitally important Suez Canal.  British naval control of the Mediterranean and the North Sea is threatened by German air power and U-boats.  In the Pacific, the United States has lost its entire battleship fleet, though some will be back in action before the end of the year.  The Japanese have captured the US territory of the Philippines, and the British holdings of Singapore and Hong Kong, and are threatening Indonesia and Australia.  The Japanese navy has also driven the British navy out of the Pacific, and now the only area that the Royal navy is really in control of is the Indian Ocean.  So that’s a quick summary of how things are looking for the Allies.  Looks pretty grim, actually.  Let’s take a closer look at each area of the world, and just how close the Axis is to completely taking over the world.  

Last episode, we left the German soldiers freezing off ihr Gesäß in the the early, harsh Russian winter of 1941.  But there was more going on in the winter of 1941 than just frozen Germans.  I mentioned back in episode 113, which was about the rise of Hitler and fascism, that the Germans had made a pact with Italy and with Japan.  Both the Germans and the Empire of Japan regarded the Soviet Union as their most dangerous potential enemy, which is why they signed a treaty.  This is actually going to work against them here in just a minute.

Last episode, I said Hitler might have done better in the long run if he hadn’t had Germany attack Great Britain. Well, after that mistake, he decides to double down, and make an even bigger mistake.  He is about to fall victim to one of the classic blunders - never get involved in a land war in Asia!  Well, technically, he doesn’t get all the way to Asia, but he was trying to.  Anyway, it’s going to be an even bigger mistake than not continuing to bomb the RAF bases in south and east England. And it’s going to lead to the biggest invasion in human history, the deadliest battle in human history, and the biggest tank battle in human history.  And, the deadliest overall campaign in human history.  So many people are about to die. Website:  shortwalkthroughhistory.comemail:  [email protected]