1943         


In 1941 Hitler, realising that an immediate defeat of Britain was not forthcoming, decided to turn toward the East for the great reckoning with its old ideological adversary, but present ally, the Soviet Union. He made the same mistake Napoleon made about 130 years earlier. At first he had great success. Later the enormous recourses of Russia, and the Russian winter turned his campaign in to a catastrophe. The remaining unoccupied part of France was taken by the Germans in that year as well. The Japanese attack on the United States brought that country into the war on the Allied side. The United States under President Roosevelt had already supported Britain with the “Lend and Lease Act” which allowed the US to “lend” arms to Britain. Britain’s first great success was the winning of the North African war, in which German troops attacked the British in Egypt, from the Italian colony of Libya. Now an Allied attack on Sicily induced Italy to change sides. Defeat at Stalingrad, on the Eastern Front turned the tide definitely. Tito's communist partisans took hold of mountainous parts of Yugoslavia. Germany was now slowly but surely losing the War.

Enormous resources went into a program to kill Europe's Jewish population. Hitler’s strain of nationalism was fiercely racist, and in this vision, the Jews embodied the "powers of darkness" that stood in the way of the happiness of the European peoples. So they had to go. The program was set up like an international industry with resources, an infrastructure and an end-product. Jews, the basic commodity, were rounded up all over Europe and transported by train to death camps (mainly in Poland and Ukraine) where they were gassed with frightening industrial efficiency. The end-products were six million dead.

In 1944 Germany was retreating on the Eastern front. It had tried to reoccupy Italy and was fighting a war to regain that country. In the West, the British and Americans with other allies invaded France in Normandy. A year later Germany was defeated and the war in Europe was over.