Conflict in Europe 1935–1945

Conflict in Europe 1935–1945 is one of six Peace and Conflict options in Section III: one 25-mark extended response (choose one of two alternatives), about 1,000 words. The syllabus key features are the causes of the conflict, the aims and strategies of the Allied and Axis powers, turning points, the impact of the war on civilians, the impact of the Holocaust in occupied territories, and the reasons for Allied victory.

• Survey — growth of European tensions: the collapse of collective security (Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War); Britain, France and appeasement; the significance of the Nazi–Soviet Pact.
• German foreign policy: aims and strategy to September 1939; the impact of Nazi ideology.
• Course of the war: the fall of Poland, the Low Countries and France; the air war (Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the bombing of Germany); Operation Barbarossa, Stalingrad and the Russian campaign; El Alamein and North Africa.
• Civilians at war: social and economic effects in Britain, Germany and the USSR; the nature and effects of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied territories.
• End of the conflict: D-Day and the liberation of France; Soviet offensives of 1944; final defeat 1944–45; the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

The war against Japan is not in this option (it belongs to Conflict in the Pacific), and the war at sea, Italy and the Balkans are useful context but not named dot points.

Collapse of collective security

• Abyssinia (1935–36): Italy's invasion met weak League sanctions (no oil); the Hoare–Laval Pact discredited Britain and France and pushed Mussolini towards Hitler.
• The Rhineland (March 1936): German troops reoccupied the demilitarised zone, breaking Versailles and Locarno, with no military response.
• The Spanish Civil War (1936–39): Germany and Italy helped Franco (the Condor Legion bombed Guernica in April 1937), the USSR aided the Republic, and Britain and France stuck to non-intervention. The Rome–Berlin Axis (1936) and the Anti-Comintern Pact (Germany and Japan 1936, Italy 1937) followed.

Appeasement

Appeasement was the British and French policy of meeting German grievances through negotiation to avoid war. Reasons: memories of 1914–18, military unpreparedness and the need to rearm, economic weakness, public opinion, a feeling that Versailles had been too harsh, fear of communism, and commitments to the Empire.

1. Anschluss (March 1938): Germany annexed Austria.
2. Munich Agreement (29–30 September 1938): Britain, France and Italy agreed that Germany would take the Sudetenland; Czechoslovakia and the USSR were not at the table. Chamberlain claimed ‘peace for our time’.
3. Prague (15 March 1939): Germany occupied the Czech lands — not German-speaking, so appeasement ended. Britain and France guaranteed Poland (31 March 1939).

The Nazi–Soviet Pact

Signed on 23 August 1939, it freed Hitler from the threat of a two-front war, and its secret protocol divided Poland and Eastern Europe between Germany and the USSR. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September; Britain and France declared war on 3 September.

German foreign policy and ideology

Hitler's aims: overturn Versailles, unite all Germans, win Lebensraum in the East, and destroy ‘Judeo-Bolshevism’. The Hossbach Memorandum (November 1937) records him telling military leaders that Germany must solve its ‘space’ problem by force, by 1943–45 at the latest. The big historical debate:

• Intentionalists (for example Hugh Trevor-Roper) argue Hitler followed a long-term ideological plan.
• A.J.P. Taylor (_The Origins of the Second World War_, 1961) argued Hitler was an opportunist exploiting Western weakness.
• Structuralists stress economic pressures from rearmament and the dynamics of the Nazi state.

Most historians now combine these: fixed ideological goals, flexible tactics.

German advances, 1939–1940

• Poland fell in about five weeks; the USSR invaded from the east on 17 September.
• The ‘Phoney War’ in the west, then Norway and Denmark (April 1940).
• The Low Countries and France (from 10 May 1940): panzers broke through the Ardennes and reached the Channel. About 338,000 Allied troops escaped from Dunkirk. France signed an armistice on 22 June 1940.

‘Blitzkrieg’ means fast, concentrated armoured attacks supported by aircraft. Historians note it was more improvised than the word suggests.

The air war

• Battle of Britain (July–October 1940): the Luftwaffe failed to win air superiority, thanks to radar, the RAF's control system, aircraft production and Germany's switch to bombing London. Hitler postponed the invasion.
• The Blitz (September 1940 – May 1941): around 43,000 British civilians were killed, but morale held.
• Bombing of Germany: RAF area bombing and US daylight raids (Hamburg 1943, Dresden February 1945). Historians debate whether it was decisive and whether it was moral; it did force Germany to divert fighters and guns to home defence.

The Eastern Front

• Operation Barbarossa (22 June 1941): the largest invasion in history. Early victories, but the Germans were stopped before Moscow in December 1941.
• Stalingrad (August 1942 – February 1943): the Sixth Army was encircled and surrendered; a turning point.
• Kursk (July 1943): Germany's last major offensive in the east failed.
• Operation Bagration (June–August 1944): destroyed Germany's Army Group Centre.

Most German military losses were suffered on the Eastern Front, which is why many historians call it the decisive theatre.

North Africa

The Second Battle of El Alamein (October–November 1942) saw Montgomery's Eighth Army, including the Australian 9th Division, defeat Rommel. With the Operation Torch landings (November 1942), Axis forces in Tunisia surrendered in May 1943. Its significance: protecting Suez and Middle East oil, the first big British land victory, and opening the way to Italy.

The Holocaust in the occupied territories

The Holocaust was the systematic murder of about six million European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Stages:

1. Ghettos in occupied Poland (from 1939–40), such as Warsaw and Łódź.
2. Mass shootings by the Einsatzgruppen after Barbarossa (from June 1941), for example at Babi Yar near Kyiv (September 1941, about 33,000 killed in two days).
3. Wannsee Conference (January 1942) coordinated the ‘Final Solution’.
4. Death camps: Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, Poles and disabled people were also murdered in large numbers. Effects in occupied territories included the destruction of Jewish communities, collaboration and resistance (for example the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, April 1943) and rescue by some individuals.

• D-Day (6 June 1944): Operation Overlord landed on the Normandy beaches; Paris was liberated on 25 August 1944.
• Soviet offensives of 1944 pushed Germany out of the USSR and into Poland and the Balkans.
• Final defeat: the failed German offensive in the Ardennes (Battle of the Bulge, December 1944 – January 1945), the Allies crossing the Rhine, the Soviet capture of Berlin, Hitler's suicide (30 April 1945) and Germany's unconditional surrender (7–8 May 1945).
• Nuremberg trials (November 1945 – October 1946): the International Military Tribunal tried leading Nazis for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity; 12 were sentenced to death. Critics called it ‘victors' justice’; supporters saw it as founding modern international criminal law.

Worked example (not a bank question). _‘Evaluate the significance of the air war in the defeat of Germany.’_

1. Thesis: the air war was significant but not decisive; it weakened Germany most by forcing it to divert resources, while the land war in the east did most to destroy German power.
2. Battle of Britain: kept Britain in the war as a base for later operations.
3. The bombing of Germany: damage to cities, oil and transport (especially in 1944–45); debate about morale and civilian deaths.
4. Diversion of resources: fighters and anti-aircraft guns kept at home instead of the Eastern Front; air superiority before D-Day.
5. Weighing against the Eastern Front and economic factors.
6. Conclusion with a clear evaluation.

• Narrating the war in order instead of arguing.
• Overstating the Western contribution or ignoring the Eastern Front (or the reverse).
• Getting the order of 1936–39 events wrong: Rhineland, Anschluss, Munich, Prague, Pact, Poland.
• Treating appeasement only as cowardice; strong answers explain why it was followed.
• Writing about the Holocaust inside Germany only; the syllabus focuses on the occupied territories.
• Writing about the Pacific War — it belongs to another option.

• Use key terms precisely: appeasement, collective security, Lebensraum, Blitzkrieg, total war, area bombing, turning point, genocide, crimes against humanity.
• A turning point question needs criteria: did the event change the direction of the war militarily, economically or psychologically?
• Bring in interpretations where they help: A.J.P. Taylor on the causes of war; Richard Overy on why the Allies won; debates over the morality of area bombing.
• Have statistics ready: 338,000 evacuated from Dunkirk; around 43,000 killed in the Blitz; about 91,000 German prisoners at Stalingrad; about six million Jews murdered.

• The core covers Nazi ideology, German and Japanese ambitions and the League's failure — the background to this option.
• Russia and the Soviet Union 1917–1941 explains Soviet foreign policy up to Barbarossa.
• The Cold War 1945–1991 begins with the wartime conferences and the division of Europe that came from the end of this war.