1915 Highway 281 North
Blanco, TX 78606
ph: 830-833-5708
The Germans had been at war for over two years when American entered the conflict in 1941. Germany was a relatively young nation having been founded in 1871 and the Germans were a people with a solid military tradition and high cultural achievement.
A generation of Germans had been lost on the battlefields of World War I and the military felt it had had been sold out by the business amd political elite. Severe reparations imposed by the victors strangled the German economy after the war as the Great Depression gripped the world. The German were a proud people and the severe conditions after the war fueled a resentment and increase in national pride. .
The Nazis played off of those sentiments as they gained power. The following section on propaganda details their efforts inthat regard.
When Germany invaded Poland in Septemebr 1, 1939, the German people s were not wildly enthusiastic at the prospect of being at war again. The cost of World War One was still fresh in their memory. The quick victory there and the stunning sweep through western Europe that next Spring brought a return of pride and nationalism.
The invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941 was the biggest mistake that Hitler had commited to date. And while the German forces swept through Russia with relative ease, nature conspired to slow and finally stall out their advance by that December. And despite stiffening Russian resistance, the Germans were still confident they could finish the business that next Spring. .
When Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, it was the greatest blunder of the war. He greatly under estimated the American ability to mobilize for war much as he misjudged the Russians capacity to wage war. Now Germany's worst nightmare became reality again, a two front war and now against the Americans who the German held little issue with
The war in Russia became the all consuming focus of Germany's war effort. Lengthening casualty lists brought the pain home on a daily basis. By the time the first American ground troops encountered their German counterparts in North Africa, issues on the Russian front were already taking their toll.
Allied airpower soon started to take its toll on the Grman military machine. British bombers devastated German cities at night while the American focused on production and infrastructure in the day. By the time the Allies landed in France the once vaunted Luftwaffe had been cleared out of the skies over the battlefield. German forces were under regular assualt in the field and in their supply networks. The result reduced the German military to desperate measures to forstall the inevitabe defeat.
The Germans fought with desperation as the Russians closed in from the East and the Americans and British from the West. In the final days of the war Volksturnm units of old men and Hitler Youth were thrown into battle in a futile attempt to stem the tide. It was the final act of the atrocity that was Nazi Germany for which the German people paid a terrible price.
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1915 Highway 281 North
Blanco, TX 78606
ph: 830-833-5708