Americans

The U.S. joined World War II after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. On the European front, U.S. Army troops made up large portions of the forces that captured North Africa and Sicily. On D-Day and in the subsequent liberation of Europe and defeat of Germany, the millions of U.S. Army troops played a central role. In the Pacific, Army soldiers participated alongside U.S. Marines in the "island hopping" campaign that wrested the Pacific islands from Japanese control. Following the Axis surrenders in May and September of 1945, Army troops were deployed to Japan and Germany to occupy the two nations. Two years after World War II, the Army Air Forces separated from the Army to become the United States Air Force on September 18, 1947 after decades of attempting to separate. Also, in 1948 the Army was desegregated.

American Maps

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British

History

After the end of World War II, the British Army was significantly reduced in size, although National Service continued until 1960. This period also saw the process of Decolonisation commence with the end of the British Raj, and the independence of other colonies in Africa and Asia. Accordingly the strength of the British military was further reduced, in recognition of Britain's reduced role in world affairs, outlined in the 1957 Defence White Paper, although major conflicts had been recently fought in form of the Korean War in 1950 and Suez Crisis in 1956. A large deployment of British troops also remained in Germany, facing the threat of Soviet invasion. The Cold War saw significant technological advances in warfare, and the Army saw more technologically advanced weapons systems come into service.

British Maps

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Russian

History

The Red Army carried out an offensive operation against Poland (invasion of the Polish eastern territory) in September 1939, with little resistance, and fought in a Winter War against Finland 1939-1940. By the autumn of 1940 the Third Reich had an extensive land border with the Soviet Union, but the latter remained neutral, bound by a non-aggression pact and by numerous trade agreements. For Hitler, no dilemma ever existed in this situation. Drang nach Osten (German for "Drive towards the East") remained the order of the day. This culminated, on December 18, in the issuing of ‘Directive No. 21 – Case Barbarossa’, which opened by saying “the German Armed forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign before the end of the war against England”. On February 3, 1941, the final plan of Operation Barbarossa gained approval, and the attack was scheduled for the middle of May, 1941. However, the events in Greece and Yugoslavia necessitated a delay — to the second half of June.

At the time of the Nazi assault on the USSR in June 1941, the Red Army's ground forces had 303 divisions and 22 brigades (4.8 million troops), including 166 divisions and 9 brigades (2.9 million troops) stationed in the western military districts. Their Axis opponents deployed on the Eastern Front 181 divisions and 18 brigades (5.5 million troops). Three Fronts, the Northwestern Front, the Western, and the Southwestern, controlled the forces defending the western border. However the first weeks of the war saw major Soviet defeats as German forces trapped hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers in vast encirclements, causing the loss of major equipment, tanks, and artillery. Stalin and the Soviet leadership responded by stepping up the mobilization that was already under way, and by 1 August 1941, despite the loss of 46 divisions in combat, the Red Army's strength stood at 401 divisions.

Soviet forces suffered heavy damage in the field as a result of poor levels of preparedness, whose primary causes were inadequate officers, as a result of the purges, disorganization as a result of a partially completed mobilization, and the reorganization the Army was undergoing. The hasty pre-war growth and over-promotion of inexperienced Red Army officers as well as the removal of experienced officers caused by the Purges offset the balance favorably for the Germans. The sheer numeric superiority of the Axis cannot be underestimated, though the combat strength of the two opposing forces appears to have been roughly equal in numbers of divisions.

A generation of Soviet commanders (most notably Zhukov) learned from the defeats, and Soviet victories in the Battle of Moscow, at Stalingrad, Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive in what became known to the Soviets as the Great Patriotic War.

The Soviet government adopted a number of measures to improve the state of the Red Army and to restore the morale of the retreating Red Army in 1941. Soviet propaganda largely abandoned its usual themes of class struggle, instead invoking nationalist sentiment for defense of the motherland, often employing pre-revolutionary historical examples of Russian courage and bravery in battle against foreign aggressors. Propagandists proclaimed the War against the German aggressors as the "Great Patriotic War", in allusion to the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon. References to ancient Russian military heroes such as Alexander Nevski and Mikhail Kutuzov appeared. Repression directed against the Russian Orthodox Church was temporarily halted; Orthodox priests revived the tradition of blessing arms before battle.

In an attempt to encourage initiative by Red Army commanders, the Communist Party even abolished the institution of political commissars, though it soon restored them. The Red Army re-introduced the old system of military ranks, adopting many additional individual distinctions such as military decorations and awards for valour. The concept of the Imperial Guard re-appeared: units which had shown exceptional heroism in combat gained the designation of Guards unit (for example 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps, 6th Guards Tank Army). This term was more than symbolic, since as an elite military designation, 'Guards' forces had a higher standard of training and preference in obtaining the best and most modern Soviet weapons and equipment. 'Guards' units also had a higher pay scale and rank than soldiers of equivalent service in other Red Army infantry formations, in turn attracting the best recruits from the military training centers and service academies.

Negative reinforcement was also utilized. Instances of poor performance, malingering, self-mutilation to avoid combat, cowardice in the face of the enemy, theft, or desertion from the Red Army were dealt with in a manner of ways, including physical beatings, loss of rank, assignment to undesirable or dangerous duty, and summary executions by NKVD punitive detachments. During this period, the osobist (NKVD military counterintelligence officer) emerged as a key figure in the Red Army. The osobist could sentence to death any enlisted soldier and most officers in the unit to which he was attached, as well as spare officers or men from execution. Red Army Marshal Rokossovsky, himself saved by such an intervention, later tracked down and helped confer the Order of the Red Banner on the osobist officer of the 16th Army who spared his life in the fall of 1941. In 1942, Stalin ordered the formation of penal battalions made up of gulag inmates, former Soviet POWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters to perform extremely hazardous front-line duties, such as ordering men to spearhead Red Army advances through German minefields (so-called tramplers). As an indication of the dangers of serving in such a penal unit, Soviet authorities set the maximum term of service (sentence) at only three months. Soviet treatment of Red Army units taken prisoner by German and other Axis forces was particularly harsh. A 1941 directive from Stalin ordered all Red Army officers and men to commit suicide rather than surrender; Soviet law regarded all Red Army prisoners of war (POWs) as traitors. Soviet POWs liberated by the Red Army were usually sentenced to penal battalions and used to clear minefields as tramplers.

Russian Maps

Leningrad
Moscow
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German

History

National Socialist philosophy came together during a time of crisis in Germany; the nation had lost World War I in 1918, but had also been forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, a devastating capitulation, and was in the midst of a period of great economic depression and instability. The Dolchstosslegende (or “stab in the back”), described by the National Socialists, featured a claim that the war effort was sabotaged internally, in large part by Germany’s Jews. The National Socialists suggested that a lack of patriotism had led to Germany’s defeat (for one, the front line was not on German soil at the time of the armistice). In politics, criticism was directed at the Social Democrats and the Weimar government (Deutsches Reich 1919–1933), which the National Socialists accused of selling out the country. The concept of Dolchstosslegende led many to look at Jews and other so-called “non-Germans” living in Germany as having extra-national loyalties, thereby raising antisemitic sentiments and the Judenfrage (German for “Jewish Question”) at a time when the Völkisch movement and a desire to create a Greater Germany were strong.

On January 5, 1919, the party that eventually became the Nazi Party was founded under the name German Workers' Party (DAP) by Anton Drexler, along with six other members. German intelligence authorities sent Hitler, a corporal at the time, to investigate the German Workers’ Party. As a result, party members invited him to join after he impressed them with the speaking ability he displayed while arguing with party members. Hitler joined the party in September 1919, and he became the propaganda boss. The party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party on February 24, 1920, against Hitler’s choice of Social Revolutionary Party. Hitler ousted Drexler and became the party leader on July 29, 1921.

Although Adolf Hitler had joined the Nazi Party in September 1919, and published Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) in 1925 and 1926, the seminal ideas of National Socialism had their roots in groups and individuals of decades past. These include the Völkisch movement and its religious-occult counterpart, Ariosophy. Among the various Ariosophic lodge-like groups, only the Thule Society is related to the origins of the Nazi party.

The term Nazism refers to the ideology of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and its worldview which permeated German society (and to some degree European and American society) during the party’s years as the German government (1933 to 1945). Free elections in 1932 under Germany’s Weimar Republic made the NSDAP the largest parliamentary faction; no similar party in any country at that time had achieved comparable electoral success. Hitler’s January 30, 1933 appointment as Chancellor of Germany and his subsequent consolidation of dictatorial power marked the beginning of Nazi Germany. During its first year in power, the NSDAP announced the Tausendjähriges Reich (“Thousand Years’ Empire”) or Drittes Reich (“Third Reich”), a putative successor to the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire).

German Maps

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Rostov
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