The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

Having conquered Poland in a matter of weeks, and having divided the spoils with an accommodating Stalin, Hitler turned his attention to the West. In public, and in the presence of unofficial diplomats, Hitler spoke of peace. According to Field Marshal Walther Brauchitsch, however, Hitler planned to attack France as early as November 12. This date was repeatedly pushed back throughout the winter and early spring, when the Fuehrer temporarily changed his strategy, but he never wavered in his belief that he could knock France out of the war as quickly as he had vanquished Poland.

Convinced that an attack on France would bring certain defeat, the anti-Hitler conspirators, Army and civilian, once again discussed removing the Fuehrer by force if necessary. Once again, they did not act. On November 8, the anniversary of the failed 1923 Munich putsch, a bomb exploded at the famous beer hall, 12 minutes after Hitler finished speaking. The SS falsely blamed British Intelligence agents. On November 23, Hitler summoned his commanders to a meeting at the Reich Chancellery, where he informed them that his impending attack on France would serve as mere prelude to a contest with the Soviet Union. Still, the conspirators did nothing. Meanwhile, the SS began its reign of terror in Poland, shipping Jewish people to the ghettos and concentration camps, and forcing Polish people to perform unpaid labor for the Reich. Auschwitz opened on June 14, 1940.

For the next phase of Nazi aggression, Hitler decided to showcase the German navy. After more than a dozen postponements of the planned attack on France, it was clear that Hitler had shifted his strategy. Through Alfred Rosenberg and Admiral Raeder, Hitler met Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian Nazi eager to surrender his country to the Germans. To stave off a possible British landing in Scandinavia and to secure air bases for an eventual campaign against the British Isles, Hitler decided to invade both Denmark and Norway.

Hitler ordered the attack on Scandinavia to begin on April 9. Throughout the first week of April, the British government had received credible reports of German forces massing in the north, but the invasion still caught them by surprise. The Danes accepted their fate and offered little resistance, but the Norwegians put up a spirited fight. Norway’s major port cities fell on the first day, but Haakon VII, the nation’s democratically elected king, refused to capitulate. The king, his government, and survivors of his battered army fled Oslo for the mountains and then to the northwest coast, where they hoped a British relief expedition might find them. British troops arrived and clashed with the German Army for the first time in the war at Lillehammer on April 21. British forces held northern Norway until early June, but the long-delayed German invasion of France, which began on May 10, required a redeployment of British resources. The Royal Navy evacuated the king and his government. All of Norway fell to the Nazis.

On May 10, 1940, Hitler’s forces attacked Belgium and the Netherlands, both neutral nations, both of which fell in a matter of days. The skillfulness of the German strategists, coupled with the swiftness of their advance, trapped the Allied armies, including the British Expeditionary Force, in between Belgium and the English Channel. Panzers rolled virtually unopposed past the old battlefields of World War I. Then, on May 24, with the Allied forces trapped near Dunkirk, the German armored divisions received the order to halt. Shirer dwells at length on the origins and reasoning behind this inexplicable order, which delayed the German advance by two full days and probably allowed tens of thousands of Allied troops to escape across the Channel. He concludes that the responsibility lay with Hitler, egged on by Goering, who wanted to showcase the Luftwaffe and believed he could wipe out the enemy at Dunkirk using air power alone. Goering failed, as more than 300,000 Allied troops were evacuated by June 4.

Elsewhere, however, Hitler achieved staggering successes. On June 14, German forces entered Paris and raised the swastika over the Eiffel Tower. One week later, on June 21, Hitler met French officials outside the forest at Compiegne. In the same railway car and in the exact spot where the Germans had signed the armistice on November 11, 1918, the victorious Fuehrer now dictated the terms of France’s surrender to Nazi Germany. Shirer witnessed the scene and noted the mixture of joy, triumph, hatred, and revenge on Hitler’s face. In the weeks that followed, Hitler spoke of peace, declaring that he saw no reason why the war should continue. After all, the British were isolated, their military situation hopeless.

Hitler mentioned a possible invasion of Britain as early as May 21, 1940, though he does not appear to have given it much thought. Years later, German generals insisted that Operation Sea Lion was little more than a diversion—that Hitler never really planned to invade Britain. Copious amounts of evidence uncovered after the war, however, prove that Hitler was serious about Sea Lion and would have invaded had circumstances been more favorable. By the end of July, the Fuehrer had established September 15 as the optimal date for an attack. Goering’s Luftwaffe would rain terror from the skies above London, Coventry, and other cities. Only after the Royal Air Force had been dilapidated could Admiral Raeder’s navy facilitate the cross-channel invasion with a reasonable chance of success.

Everything, therefore, depended on the battle in the skies: the Battle of Britain. The German air attack began on August 15. At first, British fighters inflicted heavy damage on the Luftwaffe, but the Germans soon figured out that the British air defense was being coordinated from ground-based sector stations using radio and radar, and the tide turned when the Luftwaffe began targeting these stations. Attrition took its toll on the RAF pilots, who flew multiple sorties each day. On September 7, however, in retaliation for a handful of British bombs dropped on Berlin, Goering shifted to nighttime terror bombing of London. The change in tactics gave the RAF time to regroup. When German daylight raids resumed on September 15, the relentless British pilots pounded the Luftwaffe and shot down dozens of bombers, proving that weeks of effort had failed to win the Germans air superiority. Two days later, September 17, Hitler postponed Sea Lion indefinitely. Captured documents show that, in the event of a successful invasion, the Nazis would have subjected the people of Britain to the same terrors they inflicted on the vanquished of continental Europe.