- See also: European history
World War II or the Second World War took place over many continents: while the Pacific War took place in Asia and Oceania, the European theatre saw combat from September 1939 to May 1945. The war was by far the most destructive conflict in European history in terms of loss of human lives as well as historic architecture.
The European theatre included North Africa; see World War II in Africa.
Understand
| “ | This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years. | ” |
—French Marshall Ferdinand Foch, Versailles, 28 June 1919 | ||
Background
After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles required Germany to give up its colonial empire, to cede parts of its territory to neighboring countries, to recognise the independence of Austria and to pay reparations which were seen by most Germans as crippling its economy. The treaty added insult to injury by forcing Germany to accept sole responsibility for the war; the "guilt clause", as it became known, caused great resentment and anger among Germans, especially veterans. Although Germany was able to temporarily recover somewhat with the help of loans from the United States during the Roaring Twenties, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 led to the withdrawal of American investment, resulting in a severe financial crisis, and many years of hardship for the German people much worsened by the deflationary austerity politics of the Brüning government (1930-1932).
The claimed injustices of the treaty and the economic problems, as well as the "Stab in the Back Myth" that denied the absolute nature of Germany's military defeat in 1918, were factors in Adolf Hitler's rise to power. The Nazi Party won a plurality in the Reichstag in the 1933 elections, leading to Hitler being appointed Chancellor. Following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg in 1934, Hitler seized the position of President, and combined the positions of Chancellor and President into a new position known as Führer, thus completing his rise to absolute power. Hitler then relied on and manipulated popular sentiment in a turn against minorities he deemed undesirable, including Jews, Roma people, disabled people, suspected communists and homosexuals and began the process of summarily executing some of them and rounding others up into concentration camps. Perhaps one of the best known pogroms was Kristallnacht in 1938, when Nazi paramilitaries and local civilians murdered many Jews, and also destroyed synagogues, as well as Jewish property and businesses, throughout Nazi Germany (including modern-day Austria and parts of the Czech Republic) and the city of Danzig (today part of Poland).
After coming to power, Hitler blatantly flouted the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, first by re-militarizing the Rhineland in 1936. Hitler and Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini also ignored the international agreement not to intervene in the Spanish Civil War, with Germany even sending air force units to destroy Guernica. The war brought Francisco Franco to power and made the two fascist regimes closer politically. Hitler then sent troops into Austria to initiate a merger of the two countries under German rule, in a widely popular move known as Anschluss, in March 1938. Following that, he annexed the German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in October 1938.
As Britain and France were both weary of war following the toll taken on them by World War I, they initially adopted a policy of appeasement in an effort to avert a repeat of the war. In particular, they threw Czechoslovakia under the bus, accepting Hitler's assurance that the Sudetenland would be his "last territorial demand in Europe"; British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain proudly proclaimed that he had negotiated "peace in our time". However Hitler's subsequent invasion of Poland would be the last straw.
The war
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The war in Europe began on 1 September 1939, as Germany invaded Poland, and the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany two days later, as they had declared in advance that they would consider an attack on Poland to be a casus belli. The countries of the British Empire also declared war.
From 17 September, the Soviet Union invaded Poland, which was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union. While the Soviets failed to defeat Finland in the Winter War, the western front was brought to a deadlock called the phoney war. Then in spring 1940, Germany swiftly captured Denmark, Norway, the Benelux and France using tactics they called Blitzkrieg (lightning war), mainly fast-moving tanks with strong air support. A mainly British force in France was almost trapped there but managed to escape via Dunkirk. France surrendered; part of it was occupied and the rest put under a pro-German puppet government whose capital was Vichy.
Meanwhile, despite remaining nominally neutral, Portugal would cooperate with the British by allowing them to set up military bases there. Neutral Ireland was the only country on earth to offer official condolences on the occasion of Hitler's death, but tens of thousands of Irish people volunteered to join the British forces, or fought in the U.S. Army after having emigrated there. Spain managed to evade Hitler's demands for troops and aid by pointing to the recent civil war, but did send "volunteers" to the Eastern Front. However, Spain also sold tungsten to the Allies. Sweden initially seemed to lean more towards the Axis but helped save the Danish Jews by offering them refuge, and later leaned more towards the Allies, as the Nazis were losing the war. After the breakup of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, Finland was allied with the Nazis against the Soviet Union, though they never turned their own Jewish community over to the Nazis, and towards the end of the war, they would successfully fight the Lapland War to expel the Nazis from Finnish territory. Switzerland, meanwhile, remained an important financial conduit for both sides, accepted a limited number of refugees and built a "national redoubt" that made invasion seem too costly for the Nazis to try it.
| “ | Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. | ” |
—Churchill on the Battle of Britain | ||
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For the next year, there was no fighting on the ground in Europe, but the Battle of Britain went on in the air. Unlike the French, the British were successful at repelling the Germans, and apart from the Channel Islands, were able to defend against occupation for the duration of the war. The Battle of the Atlantic continued until 1945. As part of that, British and Canadian forces occupied neutral Iceland in May 1940; they were later joined by American troops who would remain long after the war concluded and only withdrew in 2006.
In mid-1940, Mussolini-led Italy joined the war on the German side and there were soon a series of engagements between Italian forces based in their colony of Libya and Commonwealth forces based in Egypt. Toward the end of 1940 the Germans joined in, and fighting in North Africa continued until 1943. See World War II in Africa.
The most destructive campaign in Europe was the Eastern Front, where the Axis attacked the Soviet Union, starting with a sneak attack in June 1941. The Axis also grabbed most of the Balkans plus Greece at around the same time. The Soviet Army retreated to Leningrad (today's St. Petersburg), Moscow and Stalingrad (today's Volgograd). Both sides lost millions of soldiers in a stalemate which lasted until spring 1943, when the Soviets counter-attacked. The largest tank battle in history was fought around Kursk, west of Moscow, in July 1943; it ended with a costly Soviet victory. From then on, the Soviets had the initiative, though the battles continued to be protracted and bloody. The Soviet Union ended up occupying the eastern half of Europe including Berlin and much of Germany.
The Americans initially stayed out of the war, though they did assist Britain in several ways, until they were attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Once they were in, though, they made large contributions both in the European theater and in the Pacific War.
Late in 1942, the Allies mounted seaborne invasions of both Morocco and Tunisia, and by early 1943 both the Italians and Germans were driven out of North Africa. Then in mid-1943 the Allies invaded first Sicily and then the mainland of Italy. This invasion led to the toppling of Mussolini and his imprisonment, but he was freed by a Nazi-German commando raid and put in charge of a puppet state in Northern Italy, fighting on the Axis side until 1945.
Despite urgent Russian pleas for a "second front now", there was no ground fighting, except a few commando raids, in northwestern Europe from mid-1940 to mid-1944. From 1939 the RAF bombed Germany extensively, and after the US joined the war in 1942, the labor was divided, with the USAF attacking by day and the RAF and other Commonwealth air forces at night. In some places, notably Hamburg and Dresden, the two groups bombed continually for several days and created a firestorm (flames rising almost 500m and at ground level hot enough to melt glass) that almost completely wiped out the cities. After the war, there was some rather harsh criticism of Bomber Command's Sir Arthur Harris, and of Churchill, for these raids, but others argued they were necessary and justified.
Then in June 1944 the Western Allies made the largest seaborne invasion in history, departing from the United Kingdom and landing in the French region of Normandy; see D-Day beaches. The Germans were already losing to the Soviets on the Eastern Front and being heavily bombed. From D-Day onward, they also lost ground in the north-west.
Soviet forces reached Berlin on 16 April 1945, beginning the Battle of Berlin which lasted until the entire city fell under Soviet control on 2 May. Hitler would commit suicide in Berlin on 30 April 1945. The war in Europe ended with the unconditional surrender of the Nazis on 7 May 1945.
Aftermath
Subsequently, some German political and military leaders were indicted for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials; many got prison sentences and some were executed. However, some high ranking Nazis had gotten away during the last days of the war or successfully hid from the Allies while others committed suicide, including Hitler himself, Himmler and Göring. Other Nazis were acquitted, sentenced to prison terms or never put on trial in the first place, and some war criminals got only nominal sentences. Some former Nazis later had successful careers in the German military, government, civil service or courts. The German-speaking minorities in neighboring countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, the Netherlands and the Soviet Union were viewed with suspicion by locals following the Nazi occupation, in part due to the high level of support for the Nazi regime among them. Subsequently, many were expelled to Germany in the years immediately after the war. The expelled refugees were integrated into German society but many formed a revanchist and politically right wing faction often led by old Nazis. Refugees turning away from the Social Democrats over Willy Brandt's policy of rapprochement and acknowledgement of the Oder Neiße Boundary led to a vote of no confidence and snap elections in 1972.
During the war, Nazi Germany and other Axis nations conducted a campaign of internment, forced labor, inhuman types of experimentation on captive human subjects that usually ended in their murder, and outright mass murders, today known as the Holocaust. Concentration camps and other remnants from these crimes against humanity are described in the article about Holocaust remembrance. As the Western Allies were fearful of the data ending up in the hands of the Soviet Union, many of the Nazi scientists who conducted the human experimentation were granted immunity from prosecution and resettled in the United States, where many would end up having successful careers in industry and academia.
The demographics of Europe would be permanently changed after the war, as most of Europe's Jews were killed by the Nazis, while most of the survivors would flee Europe for Israel or the United States in the years following the war. Today, the only Jewish communities that remain in significant numbers from the pre-War years are the ones in Russia and the United Kingdom that managed to avoid Nazi occupation. However, the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict and resulting anti-Jewish purges would lead to a large exodus of Jews from Muslim countries, with many of those from France's former North African colonies of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco settling in France and re-establishing the Jewish community there. Germany meanwhile once again has a Jewish community, in part growing through immigration from the former Soviet Union or even Israel since the 1990s.
Germany itself would be split into four occupation zones, which were occupied by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union respectively, with the city of Berlin, located entirely within the Soviet zone, also being split among similar lines. The American, British and French zones were gradually merged to form capitalist West Germany from 1946 to 1949, while the Soviet zone became communist East Germany. West Berlin became a de facto exclave of West Germany despite being located entirely within the Soviet zone, and the Berlin Wall was built to keep East Germans from defecting to the West via West Berlin. This would last until 1990, when the communist regime in East Germany fell, and Germany would once again be reunited as a single nation. Austria was likewise partitioned into four zones of occupation with Vienna also being split, but Nazi era annexations of surrounding suburbs being undone. However, by 1955 Austria had convinced the Soviets and the Western Allies to withdraw their occupation forces in exchange for a promise of perpetual neutrality and not to form any kind of union with Germany. Vienna subsequently became the headquarters of many international organizations and a city of spies, but many high-ranking Austrian Nazis escaped prosecution.
Most casualties of the war and its aftermath were young men. This caused a deficit of males, which has persisted until the early 21st century in the former Soviet Union. While birth rates were suppressed during the war, the numerous generation born in the late 1940s became known as the Baby boomers, who came to be a dominant generation in the 1960s and 70s counterculture. The 1960s decline in birth rates often ascribed to the effect of modern contraception and changing attitudes towards sexuality was also exacerbated by the potential parents never being born during the war.
In the following decades, Europe was divided between two power blocs in a latent conflict known as the Cold War, which ended through the East European revolutions in the late 1980s and early 90s.
Legacy
Wars have usually pioneered the usage of mass media; the printing press in the Thirty Years War, telegraphy and photography in the American Civil War, and radio in World War I. World War II was the war of motion pictures; while film had existed for decades, it came to be used on a scale never seen before, for newsreels, propaganda, entertainment and education, using new technologies such as sound, colour, incidental music, animation and even television.
The motion picture archives from the war is enormous, though the selection is uneven, and biased towards the respective government.
The war has also been the background of too many books, documentaries and historical dramas to make a representative selection.
As a result of the war, the swastika is inextricably linked with Nazism and anti-Semitism in the Western world, to the point that its historic use in much of the world, as a symbol for divinity, well-being and prosperity, is now largely forgotten, except in Asia where it continues to have positive connotations among Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains.
Sites
| “ | We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. | ” |
—UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, 4 June 1940 | ||
There are minor monuments, and exhibits in local museums, all over Europe and North Africa; those may be well worth looking for. This section makes no claim to being comprehensive; we just try to list some of the more important ones.
Belarus
- 1 Naliboki Forest, Nalibaki, Belarus. The old-growth forest complex, situated on the right bank of the Neman river, was a camp site called "Jerusalem in the Woods", where Tuvia Bielski and his Jewish brothers, built a community as a hideout for partisan fighters in saving 1,200 Jews who survived the Holocaust.
Belgium
- 1 World War II Ardennes American Cemetery and Memorial, Neupré (Highway N-63 from Liège to Marche passes the entrance to the Memorial about 19 kilometers (12 miles) southwest of Liège). Open daily except Dec 25 and Jan 1: 9AM to 5PM.. This memorial commemorates the American soldiers who died in Northern Europe during World War II. The chapel contains maps and relief sculptures depicting the campaigns in the region. Free.
- 2 World War II Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery and Memorial, Rue du Mémorial Améreicain, Henri-Chapelle. Open daily except for Dec 25 and Jan 1: 9AM to 5PM. The cemetery is the final resting place for 7,992 American military dead lost during the drive into Germany, many in the Battle of the Bulge. A monument is inscribed with the names of 450 Americans whose remains were never found or identified. A museum and a chapel are located on the grounds. Free.
Czech Republic
With the emerging danger of Nazi Germany, Czechoslovakia built a system of border fortification between 1935 and 1938. As a result of 1938 Munich treaty, the army gave up the resistance efforts and abandoned the defense line. The fortification system is mostly well preserved and can be toured in several locations.
- 2 Hanička artillery fortress (Tvrz Hanička) (It is not possible to arrive to the museum by car, parking is at 50.187135 N, 16.509408 E. From the parking lot take the marked tourist route (red) in the direction Anenský vrch, an approximate walking distance between the parking and the fortress is 20-30 min.), ☏ 420 491 616 998, ✉[email protected]. In the 1970s, Hanička was intended to be rebuilt into a nuclear bunker and the construction works lasted until 1993, but they were never completed. You can take a guided tour through some of the objects. The Educational Trail "Fortification of Rokytnice and surroundings" runs through the museum area and provides information about the fortifications and their history in Czech, Polish and English. 80 Kč (reduced 40 Kč).
Czechoslovakia was occupied by Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1945, with Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia being established at approximately the area of today's Czech republic. The center for Czechoslovak resistance was the government-in-exile in London. They decided to attack Reinhard Heydrich, the acting Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. British-trained Czech soldiers Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík lead the operation. Heydrich was wounded during the assassination attempt on 27 May 1942 and died on 4 June in hospital. The act was followed by a brutal retaliation, during which two entire villages Lidice northwest of Prague and Ležáky in East Bohemia were completely destroyed by German forces. Inhabitants were massacred; men were shot, women taken to concentration camps or killed and children gassed or given over to German families for Germanization. The memorials of the civilian victims tell the story of these war crimes.
- 3 Lidice memorial, Tokajická 152, 273 54 Lidice, ☏ 420 312 253 088, ✉[email protected]. Nov-Feb: daily 09:00-16:00, Mar: daily 09:00-17:00, Apr-Oct: daily 09:00-18:00. Commemoration on the annihilation of village Lidice by Nazis on 9 June 1942, as a retaliation for the assassination of the acting Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich. 80 Kč (reduced 40 Kč).
- 4 Ležáky memorial, ☏ 420 469 344 179, ✉[email protected]. Nov-Mar: M-F 09:00-16:00, Apr-Oct: Tu-Su 09:00-17:00, otherwise upon agreement. A memorial to a massacre of a small Czech village by Nazi troops on 24 June 1942, as a retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. 30 Kč (reduced 20 Kč).
France
- 5 D-Day beaches (Normandy). D-Day was June 6, 1944, the date of a massive Allied amphibious landing on the beaches of Normandy, also called Operation Overlord. It can be seen as the decisive point of no return for the war, though by that point the war was already lost for the Nazis on the Eastern Front, and in the West they had already lost North Africa and Italy. The massive German defenses were overcome by the smart planning, manpower and technology of the Allies, and less than a year later Germany surrendered. American general Dwight D. Eisenhower made his name as the main planner behind the D-Day invasions, which would eventually propel him to the presidency in the 1952 election. The article covers not only the invasion itself but also the whole campaign in Normandy which lasted into August.
- 6 Dieppe. A coastal town that was the target of a large — over 6,000 men, mostly Canadian — commando raid in 1942.
- 7 Dunkirk. A coastal French town in the Pas de Calais region. As the Germans overran France in 1940 a large Allied force, mostly British but including Canadian, Belgian and French troops, were surrounded in the Dunkirk region. Over 300,000 men were evacuated to Britain, many by volunteers using everything from fishing boats to pleasure craft, despite strenuous German efforts to prevent evacuation. There is a monument in the main cemetery of the town for 4,000 Commonwealth troops who fell in the battle but have no known grave.
- 8 Oradour-sur-Glane. A French village razed and burned by the Nazis, with its civilian population murdered, to avenge the resistance. Now a ghost town.
- 9 Saint-Nazaire. This coastal town has the only dry dock on the French Atlantic coast large enough for battleships. The British destroyed it in 1942 by ramming it with an old destroyer packed full of explosives.
Germany
As Hitler fought the war to the bitter end (fighting on, long after any chance at military victory was gone) and military innovations (notably bomber airplanes) made this war far more destructive than the one before it, especially for Germany, hardly any place important during the Nazi era was left untouched by the war.
- Several old towns were severely bombed and in some places there are still monuments reminding of that as well as "mountains" made up of debris.
- 10 Berlin. The capital of Germany, captured by the Red Army in April, 1945. There is the Topographie des Terrors that explains which Nazi office sat where and played which role in the war and criminal machinery.
- 11 Heligoland. This island still sees the scars of one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions to date. This happened shortly after the war: the British tried to blow up the island, which was used as a military installation during the war. Several other East Frisian islands and North Frisian islands were also used militarily by the Nazis.
- 12 Nuremberg. Known for the Nazi party rallies. After the war, the Allies held the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi leaders here. The rallying grounds (now thankfully sans swastikas) have partially been turned into a museum but the complex is so huge that it is also used for numerous other purposes, including - perhaps ironically - American Football matches and rock concerts. A Burger King branch also sits in a building built for some purpose during the rally ground era.
- 13 Peenemünde. The site where Wernher von Braun (later an important figure at NASA) and his scientists developed and constructed the first V2 (Agregat 4) rockets (one of them is on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich) to be shot at London and later Antwerp.
- In the waning years of the war many "war important" industries were relocated underground. One of the most infamous is the forced labor camp Dora Mittelbau near Nordhausen where the V2 rockets were built. The site has been turned into a museum that show the horrific conditions (more people died in constructing the rockets than in their actual use).
Italy
- 3 Anzio Beachhead Museum (Museo dello Sbarco di Anzio), Via di Villa Adele, 2 Anzio (in the 17th-century Villa Adele, on Via di Villa Adele, just downhill from the railway station.), ☏ 39 06 984 8059. Tu Th Sa 10:30-12:30 and 16:00-18:00 (17:00-19:00 in summer). In the same building is the Archaeological Museum. Free.
- 4 Monte Cassino War Graves (follow signs when approaching Cassino from the Rome - Napoli Autostrada). The Commonwealth War Graves cemetery is a beautifully maintained area with magnificent views of the Monte Cassino monastery. The French and Italian cemeteries are on Highway 6 in the Liri Valley. There is a very striking Polish cemetery close to the battlefield and easily visible from the monastery. The German cemetery is approximately 2 miles (3 km) north of Cassino in the Rapido Valley. American casualties are not buried here but at Nettuno-Anzio.
Netherlands
- Rotterdam was bombed by the Nazis even after the surrender of the Dutch government.
Poland
Poland saw a disproportionally high number of civilian deaths mainly because it was invaded by both the Soviets and the Nazis in the early stage of the war with both trying to "remodel" their part of the country according to their wishes, which in practice meant killing members of all groups that could potentially resist the occupation such as intellectuals, politicians, Catholic priests and high-ranking military. As Poland had a big and thriving Jewish community it was also hit particularly hard by the Shoah, with Poles both aiding the Nazis and helping Jews escape. Poland was the only country where aiding Jews was explicitly punished by death and the Polish underground responded by making the betrayal of Jews also punishable by death. See Holocaust remembrance#Poland.
- 14 Gdansk. The war began with a dispute over Gdansk (German name: Danzig), that was deliberately escalated by Hitler. Gdánsk was at the time a "free city", independent of both Poland and Germany, and had many German-speaking residents, but the proposed construction of an autobahn from Germany to Gdansk/Danzig would have clearly encroached upon sovereign Polish territory. Poland was an ally of the United Kingdom, seat of a mighty empire, and this alliance would bring the British Commonwealth nations to war. Gdansk is now part of Poland and was the birthplace of the Solidarność trade union movement during the Cold War. The city has a modern and impressive Museum of the Second World War.
- 15 The Wolf's Lair (German: Wolfsschanze) near Kętrzyn (German: Rastenburg) was the Nazi military headquarters where Hitler resided during most of World War II. It was here that the failed attempt to kill Hitler took place on July 20, 1944.
Russia
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 and were guardedly friendly for some years; the Soviet Union even took a chunk of Poland, with Nazi permission, in September 1939. However the Nazis broke the pact by invading the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 (Operation Barbarossa).
The Russian name for World War II translates as the Great Patriotic War. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the fighting and had more dead (both civilian and military) in this war than any other country; only China was even close.
The Nazis considered Slavs an inferior race and fought a war of extermination on the Eastern Front. When forced to retreat, as they often were at first, the Russians used a "scorched earth" policy, burning crops in the fields and destroying everything else that might be useful to the enemy.
POWs of both sides were mistreated horribly on the Eastern Front and sometimes the surviving Soviet POWs were regarded as "traitors", as having survived the inhumane conditions without "treason" was deemed impossible. A large number of Soviet prisoners, especially those from Ukraine, the Baltic States and Byelorussia, did collaborate with the Nazis, for several reasons, including as a way of avoiding the high probability of death as Soviet POWs, hostility to the Soviet Union, and virulent antisemitism. Some of the SS "volunteers" among the Soviet POWs were used to shoot Jews and serve as guards in extermination camps.
- 16 Stalingrad (Volgograd). This city, now called Volgograd, was the scene of one of the longest (almost six months) and bloodiest (around two million total casualties) battles in history. The Russians had 478,000 killed or missing in this one battle, more than the UK or US lost in the entire war. The city was then, as it is now, an important transport hub and regional center. The almost utter annihilation of the German forces in the area was the definitive turning point on the eastern front. In Russia and in Germany the battle is shrouded in myth and for the 70th anniversary of the battle in 2013, local authorities renamed the city to Stalingrad for one day.
- 17 Kursk. The largest tank battle in history — 6,000 tanks, 4,000 aircraft and about two million troops — was fought near this city in July 1943 as the Red Army began to roll west after Stalingrad and the Germans tried unsuccessfully to stop them. Casualties were heavy on both sides. The town has a museum for that battle and there is a memorial on the battlefield itself. Arguably the war was over for Germany when this battle was lost; the Soviet forces kept the initiative all the way to Berlin and the Germans never again came so close to stopping them.
- Prokhorovka. En route to Kursk, the Red Army won a battle near this town. There is a memorial in the city's cathedral.
- 18 Leningrad (Saint Petersburg). One of the most beautiful cities in Russia, the seat of power of the Tsars in imperial times, called Saint Petersburg in Tsarist times and again since 1991. During the war, the city was known as Leningrad, and was site of the Siege of Leningrad (8 September 1941–27 January 1944), which was one of the longest sieges in history, resulting in countless deaths, both civilian and military. Though the Soviets eventually succeeded in driving the Germans back, many historical artifacts were looted or destroyed by the Germans as they retreated.
- 19 Road of Life (Доро́га жи́зни Doroga zhizni). This route, crossing Lake Ladoga on an ice road, was the only lifeline of the residents of Leningrad/St Petersburg trapped in their city during the Siege of Leningrad. Continuing east from the city past Vsevolozhsk, it arrived in the village of Kokkorevo on the western side of Lake Ladoga. Here, the ice road began on the southern arm of the lake. The ice was thick enough as to allow even mass transit of supplies, but the high winds that blew out of the open vastness of the lake (the largest in Europe) were a problem. A driver testified "we would drive with the door open, ready to jump...we lost some trucks". The ice road made its landfall in the village of Kobona on the eastern coast of the lake and continued on to the Voibokalo train station before connecting with the national rail network there. Along the entire length of the Road of Life on solid ground, as well as other nearby areas, numerous monuments commemorate the route, including the 20 Broken Circle (Разорванное кольцо Razorvannoe kol'tso) on the 40th kilometre of the road, right on the bank of the lake near Kokkorevo.
Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet general who commanded at both Stalingrad and Kursk, also has a museum near the site of his first major victory, trouncing the Japanese in the 1939 Battle of Khalkhin Gol in Mongolia.
Crimea
- 21 Livadia Palace (Crimea). The summer retreat of the Tsars, in Yalta, this is where the famous Yalta Conference took place from February 4 to 11, 1945 in which Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met to discuss how they wanted to rebuild and reform Europe after the war. Roosevelt stayed in the palace during the conference period.
Nordic countries
The war turned out very differently for the Nordic countries. Despite Sweden being neutral throughout the war, both there and in Norway and Denmark that were occupied by the Nazis, a number of bunkers still exist. Most of them were built after the Nazis took over Norway and many never saw a shot fired in anger, but their presence even in remote areas is somewhat eerie. Routes used by refugees from Norway, and by the Norwegian resistance, can be experienced on a hike.
Finland, on the other hand, was directly involved in the Second World War, fighting two wars against the Soviet Union (the Winter War and the Continuation War), and one to expel the German troops from Lapland towards the end of the war (the Lapland War). In places like Hanko, Kymenlaakso, North Karelia and Lapland, you can still see fortifications and bunkers. Also on the coast there are stories to be told, and e.g. on Örö the coast artillery of the time is left to be visited. More can be seen on the Karelian Isthmus and in other regions that were part of Finland before WW2.
Iceland was invaded by the UK without mounting any resistance in 1940. The British transferred control of the island to the United States in July 1941, which violated American neutrality. Allied soldiers came to outnumber adult Icelandic men, establishing a strong Anglo-Saxon influence, with American fast food and arguably the highest proficiency in English in any non-Anglophone country. While Iceland had been a Danish dominion for centuries, the country voted to become independent in 1944. Today, steel hut barracks and other wartime installations remain spread around the island. Iceland's main international airport, Keflavík International Airport, was initially built as an American military airbase during the war.
- 5 Occupation Museum (Besættelsesmuseet) (Aarhus, Denmark). A small museum telling the story of local life under German occupation, located in the old town hall which was used by the Gestapo during the occupation.
- 22 Rjukan (Telemark, Norway). A hydroelectric power plant where the Germans tried to extract heavy water for their nuclear program. A British-Norwegian commando team managed to destroy the facility.
- 23 Hegra festning (Hegra fortress) (Trøndelag, Norway). The only Norwegian fortress to be manned during the German invasion. As it was built to defend against an attack from Sweden, it had limited strategic importance, but resisted a few German attacks. The garrison surrendered on 5 May, 1940.
- 6 Beredskapsmuseet (The Military Readiness Museum in Sweden), Djuramossavägen 160 (Helsingborg, Sweden), ☏ 46 42-22 40 39, ✉[email protected]. A museum of Sweden's preparation for the war that never came.
- 7 Finnish Military Museum, Maurinkatu 1 (Helsinki, Finland, Trams 7A and 7B). Tu-Th 11AM–5PM, F–Su 11AM–4PM. Closed Mondays.. Founded in 1929, the central museum of the Finnish Defence Forces. €4.
- 8 Finnish air force museum (Tikkakoski, near Jyväskylä). Aircraft, engines and aircrew equipment used by the Finnish Air Force. Large collection of scale models, photos etc. Messerschmitt Bf 109 simulator (book in advance).
- 9 Järämä Sturmbock-Stellung (on E8 between Karesuvanto and Kilpisjärvi). Partly restored massive German fortification, part of a the Operation Birke during the Lapland War, to secure access to the Petsamo nickel, protect the harbours of the Arctic Ocean and protect an evacuation route. Museum and café.
Turkey
- 24 Yenice Railway Station (Yenice Garı) (east of Tarsus on the Mersin–Adana commuter line). While Turkey was neutral throughout most of the war, none of its neighbours were, and there was pressure from both camps to join in the fight with them. In 1943, Winston Churchill and Turkish president İsmet İnönü secretly met in a railcar in the unlikely location of the train station of Yenice, a small town in southern Turkey (selected as a compromise between the suggested conference sites of Cyprus, then ruled by Britain, and Ankara, the Turkish capital) to discuss the Turkish entry to the war on the Allied side (Turkey formally joined the Allies only in the final days of the war, in 1945). The event is commemorated by a large sign on the façade of the station building, and the railcar in which the meeting took place, colloquially known as the Beyaz Vagon ("white car") has been renovated and parked in the siding of a major rail junction just to the west of the station.
United Kingdom
During the first years of the war, cities like London and Coventry were heavily bombed though unlike the French and Dutch, the British were successful in repelling the Germans and avoided occupation during the war. In the waning moments of the war the Nazis shot V1 (a crude version of a cruise missile) and V2 (the first ballistic missile ever to be used in war) on London in a last ditch effort to turn the tide of a lost war, but missed more often than actually hitting anything.
- 10 The Tank Museum, Bovington, ☏ 44 1929 405096. One of the world's largest museums covering tanks and armoured vehicles. The museum also conducts a Tanks in Action display with explosions and a mock battle.
- 11 Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes. Central site of the British project codenamed "Ultra" which broke many German and Italian codes throughout the war and, along with the American "Magic" penetration of Japanese codes, provided much critical intelligence to Allied commanders. British counterintelligence was particularly effective with every German agent who tried to spy on Britain eventually either captured, killed or "turned" - in many cases without the Nazis ever being any the wiser.
- 12 Churchill War Rooms, London, ☏ 44 20 7930 6961. Daily 9:30AM-6PM. Location of a secret government bunker used during the war, only about 150m from Number 10 Downing Street, which provided a meeting place for military and government officials.
- 13 St Martin's Church, Church Street; Bladon, OX20 1RS, ☏ 44 19 9381 2915, ✉[email protected]. Church where wartime prime minister Sir Winston Churchill was buried. Churchill was the last non-monarch to have been granted a British state funeral.
United States
While no fighting occurred in the contiguous United States, several American ships, including civilian ones, were sunk by German submarines off the East Coast even before the United States formally entered the war. The United States would only formally enter the war on 8 December 1941, after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor the day before.
- 14 The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, ☏ 1 504 528 1944. Museum commemorating the American war effort in both theatres of World War II, with interactive displays that aim to re-create the battlefield experience for visitors.
Western Balkans
World War II began in Yugoslavia in April 1941 when the country was occupied by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The resistance movement, known as the Partisans and led by Josip Broz Tito, fought a guerrilla liberation war against the occupying forces and their puppet regimes. With help from Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, the Partisans emerged victorious in Yugoslavia, and a federal socialist republic with Tito as leader was formed after the war. There were also other groups, including Yugoslav monarchists who tried to re-establish the interwar Yugoslav monarchy and even some who fought to annex parts of Yugoslavia to Italy. On the whole the anti-Nazi partisan movement in Yugoslavia was the largest in Europe.
Numerous memorials to fallen Partisan fighters and victims of atrocities committed by Axis forces can be found throughout the region.
- 15 Šumarice Memorial Park, Kragujevac, Serbia, ☏ 381 34 335 607. Daily 9AM-4PM. Memorial in central Serbia near the place where 2,800 local people, including children, were massacred by Nazi German occupying forces as retaliation for a Partisan attack. 150 RSD.
- 16 Sutjeska National Park, Tjentište, Bosnia and Herzegovina, ☏ 387 58 233 102. A mountainous area in southeastern Bosnia known for being the site of a major World War II battle. At Sutjeska in June 1943, the Partisans repelled a German offensive, and despite casualties turned the tide of the war in their favor. The battle was later the subject of a popular film with Richard Burton in the role of Tito. 5 BAM.
- 17 Jasenovac. see Holocaust remembrance#Croatia
See also
