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Military history of Germany during World War II

  • French declaration of war on Germany (1939)The defensive treaty with Poland stood as the legal foundation for France's entry into conflict. This agreement obligated Paris to intervene if Berlin…
  • Commissar OrderPlanning for Operation Barbarossa began in June 1940. Adolf Hitler started vague allusions to the operation during December 1940.
  • Hunger PlanThe Hunger Plan was a blueprint for murder by starvation, drafted not by soldiers in the field but by bureaucrats at a conference table in Berlin.
  • Anglo-German Naval AgreementPart V of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles imposed severe limitations on Germany's naval forces. The treaty allowed no submarines, no naval aviation, and only…
  • German prisoners of war in the Soviet UnionGerman prisoners of war in the Soviet Union represent one of the most contested and tragic chapters of the Second World War.
  • End of World War II in EuropeField Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signed the German Instrument of Surrender in Karlshorst, Berlin on the 8th of May 1945. This document marked an unconditional…
  • Molotov–Ribbentrop PactThe Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed in Moscow on the 24th of August 1939, and within a week Germany had invaded Poland.
  • Anglo-Iraqi WarThe Anglo-Iraqi War began in earnest at 05:00 on the 2nd of May 1941, when 33 aircraft lifted off from RAF Habbaniya into the pre-dawn dark.
  • German Army (1935–1945)In the span of just 17 months after Adolf Hitler announced Germany's rearmament programme in 1935, the German Army reached its projected goal of 36 divisions.
  • Blockade of Germany (1939–1945)In 1937, Sir Frederick Leith-Ross began urging senior British government figures to revive the World War I blockade strategy.