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Hitler coming to power
Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933.The military leadership did not fully trust or support Hitler because of his populism and radicalism. However, the Nazi Party and the German military had similar foreign policy goals. Both wanted to renounce the Treaty of Versailles, to expand the German armed forces, and to destroy the communist threat. In this first meeting, Hitler tried to reassure the German officer corps. -
The Aryan Paragraph
Passed on April 7, 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service included the Aryan Paragraph. The paragraph called for all Germans of non-Aryan descent (i.e. Jews) to be forcibly retired from the civil service. At first it initially apply to military but Because the Reichswehr discriminated against Jews and blocked their promotion, the policy affected fewer than 100 soldiers. -
The Blomberg-Fritsch Affair
In early 1938, two scandals involving top Wehrmacht leaders allowed the Nazis to remove commanders who did not fully support Hitler’s plans .These changes were just the most public. Hitler also announced a series of forced resignations and transfers at a cabinet meeting in early February. They gave Hitler the opportunity to restructure the Wehrmacht under his control. The position of Minister of War was taken over by Hitler himself. -
Germany Invades Poland
Germany invaded and quickly defeated Poland, beginning World War II. German police and SS units shot thousands of Polish civilians and required all Polish males to perform forced labor. The Nazis sought to destroy Polish culture by eliminating the Polish political, religious, and intellectual leadership. Some in the Wehrmacht were unhappy with the involvement of their soldiers. Generals Blaskowitz and Ulex had complained to their superiors about the violence. However, they were quickly silenced. -
The Systematic Killing of the Soviet POWs ( June 1941 and January 1942)
German authorities viewed Soviet POWs as inferiors and as part of the "Bolshevik menace.By war’s end, over 3 million Soviet prisoners (about 58 percent) died in German captivity . This death toll was neither an accident nor an automatic result of the war, but rather deliberate policy. The army and the SS cooperated in the shooting of hundreds of thousands of Soviet POWs, because they were Jews, or communists, or looked asiatic. -
The Invasion of the Soviet Union
German forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Three army groups, consisting of more than three million German soldiers, attacked the Soviet Union across a broad front, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. -
German 6th Army Surrenders at Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from October 1942 to February 1943, was a major turning point in the war. Contrary to Hitler’s direct order, the surviving German forces surrendered on February 2, 1943. This retreat was marked by widespread destruction as the military implemented a scorched earth policy on Hitler’s orders. There was also an increased emphasis on maintaining military discipline, including ruthless arrests of soldiers who expressed doubts about Germany’s final victory. -
Operation Valkyrie
A small group of senior military officers decided that Hitler had to die. They blamed Hitler for losing the war and felt that his continued leadership posed a serious threat to Germany’s future. And so tried to assassinate him with a small but powerful bomb but survived and the plot fell apart. He quickly took his revenge for this attempt on his life. Several generals were forced to commit suicide or face humiliating prosecution. -
Hitler dies
. By July 1944, several German military commanders acknowledged their imminent defeat and plotted to remove Hitler from power so as to negotiate a more favorable peace. Their attempts to assassinate Hitler failed, however, and in his reprisals, Hitler executed over 4,000 fellow countrymen. On April 30, 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head.