Today, 68 years ago, Great Britain, France and Australia declared war on Germany. It was to be the start of World War II. After Hitler's Nazi-Germany had annexed Austria in what was euphemistically called the "Anschluss" (the joining) in March 1938, the next country was Checho-Slovakia. The Sudetenland, containing a German minority, was joined onto the Fatherland, and the remainder of the country subjugated. When German troops invaded Poland, to join East Prussia onto the Fatherland, an ultimatum was issued by the British government for the Germans to withdraw from Poland. This was not obeyed, and at 11pm on September 3, 1939, war was declared.
A period of stagnant warfare ensued until the spring of 1940, when the Lightning War (Blitzkrieg) quickly overran Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Belgium and France. Hitler's conquests led him all the way east to Stalingrad, and south to North Africa. Stalingrad was to be his undoing. His troops suffered a defeat after a bloody battle, and the Red Army of Josef Stalin pushed them back - all the way to Berlin in April 1945. Meanwhile, Allied Forces, joined by the USA following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, invaded Italy from North Africa. D-day, in June 1944, marked the start of an invasion of northwestern Europe by Allied Forces, which eventually granted them victory 11 months later. In the Far East, war finally ended on 2 September 1945 with the enactment of the surrender of Japan, something agreed on 15 August after two nuclear bombs obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
By that time, 6 million people had been systematically murdered on an industrial scale and with industrial methods and precision. Why? Because they professed the Jewish faith. Twenty million Russian civilians lay dead, and Western Europe lay in ruins.
Nobody commemorates these days in September.
They should be.
They mark the beginning and the end.
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a heart wrenching time, it was.... hard to believe there are still groups that follow Hitler. :-/
ReplyDelete~Amy
A truly terrible time, it all started right before I was born. You know they never taught us about the concentration camps when I was in school. Found out about it after I was married and decided to read Mila 18 by Leon Uris. I was appalled. Joni
ReplyDeleteGreat points all. There really isn't enough awareness today of the events connected to WWII and the Holocaust. Some kind of observance in schools would be a great start. For too many people, these are events of ancient history, like something out of ancient Rome. Too few people see the connection between those events and our current age. If it's not their own personal pain, there's no interest.
ReplyDeleteThanks for a great entry...
Ben
http://journals.aol.com/totallymentalben/better-left-unsaid
I recall in school they showed us films of the skinny dead bodies being thrown into mass graves and I was SHOCKED! They really tried to educate us on it back then. Now, my son gets a better education about it from ME.
ReplyDeletePam
You're right, Guido, we hear of the end, which is fantastic that this horrid time ended, remembering that it ended and people who did survive could in theory move on now, but not the beginning of this declared war. Sobering to think only a "mere" (comparatively mere) 68 years ago. There is a Holocaust Museum in D.C., with tons of little shoes on one wall of children dead from this. I don't get as many nightmares as I used to, but they returned when I first saw that wall. Nightmares is nothing compared with living (or dying from) it, though, I know, I know.
ReplyDeleteSo many now want to believe it never happened, couldn't happen. - Barbara
ReplyDelete