The Second World War in Europe

The short analysis

Between September 1939 and May 1945, Europe was consumed by a war that defies easy summary. Germany's invasion of Poland triggered declarations of war from Britain and France, but what followed was far more than a conventional clash of armies. The conflict rapidly became several overlapping struggles at once: a war of imperial conquest driven by Nazi ideology, a war of national survival fought by occupied peoples across the continent, a war of extermination carried out against Jewish communities and others deemed enemies of the racial state, and an industrial competition between great powers that would determine whether liberal democracy or totalitarianism would govern the postwar world. The fighting ranged from the North Atlantic to the Caucasus, from Norway to North Africa, encompassing naval campaigns, strategic bombing offensives, partisan warfare, and some of the largest land battles in recorded history. Germany's early advantages in doctrine, coordination, and initiative gave it a succession of stunning victories, but the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 transformed the strategic landscape entirely, opening a front of such scale and ferocity that it would ultimately consume the Wehrmacht. By the time Allied forces converged on Germany from east and west in 1945, the continent lay in ruins, tens of millions were dead, and Europe's future had already been quietly negotiated between the powers that remained standing.