The Lesser of Two Evils
War is the tool used by men to achieve what they want through the lives of many, and no greater use of war has been seen than in the fields of eastern Europe from June of 1941- until may 1945. On June 22nd, 1941 Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, ordered the German Wehrmacht to invade the Soviet Union to the east. This invasion went nearly three weeks before Josef Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, acted on the operation against his country. The German army reached the gates of Moscow when their offensive was halted, and so from that day in december, when the Germans reached their high water mark, to the day the fighting ended in Berlin in May of 1945, the fields of Eastern Europe became home to the deadliest conflict in human history. The two leaders hurled their armies at each other, issuing orders to kill prisoners, execute civilians, and in the case of the soviets, even rape thousands of women across eastern europe. Though Stalin did eventually win the war, he proved to be the less favorable of the two Leaders. The war in the Eastern Front of World War Two can be seen as the Deadliest Part of the bloodiest war in human history
As War progresses the amount of prisoners will rise, as that number rises so does the risk of those prisoners being killed or simply dying naturally, in the Eastern Front the risk of death was much higher than normal conflicts. The Prisoners taken by the Germans and Soviets in World War two faced the harshest treatment of any war ever seen. The Commissar Order issued by Hitler stated “political officers were to be shot on capture” (Tucker and Wadley). The Commissar Order was designed to destroy the will power of the Soviet Armies. The Commissars were political office...
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...tern Front: World War II."). The soviets knew that the german army was a shadow of its former self and they intended to make sure that the world knew that by shattering their lines time and again, casualties were not an issue to the soviets, as history has displayed. When faced with defeat a man is capable of two things, rolling over and giving in, or fighting until death to defend what he has come to love, in the war between the Evil Soviet Union and the Third Reich a man was more likely to choose death before defeat.
The War in the Eastern Front of World War Two witnessed some of the highest casualty rates in human history with men on both sides dying by the millions. In the end millions of soldiers and civilians lay dead, mile upon mile of eastern europe became engulfed in death and destruction, and in the end the winner became the one who paid the highest price.
World War II, known as the largest armed conflict in history, began in Europe in the 1930s and led to effect many people. The war resulted in not only the involvement of more countries than any other war but also introduced powerful, new, nuclear weapons that also contributed to the most deaths. As Hitler rose to power in 1933 the Holocaust began, his quest for the ‘perfect’ race resulted in the use of concentration camps, which would help to create the largest genocide of people in history.
The battle of Stalingrad has often been referred to as the turning point of World War II. Stalingrad, now called Volgograd is located on the river Volga in the southern part of western Russia. It was of extreme importance because it was the last stronghold protecting the vast oil fields that lay beyond it to the east. Hitler believed his Operation Barbarossa would be an easy victory, claiming that troops would be home for Christmas. There was much symbolism in Hitler’s decision to attack Stalingrad and that was due to that it was named after the Russian leader Stalin and would cause a great loss of morale in the Russian army if the German army could capture it. The German 6th Army ran into incredibly fierce resistance on the part of the Russians. As the battle waged on for nearly 3 months the daily bloodbaths of the street battles began to take their toll on both sides. Russia’s use of snipers began to cost the Germans more and more lives everyday. Most famous of...
The Great War, now known as World War II, devastated Europe, leaving political and economic instability in Germany to aid the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist (Nazi) Party. World War II began when Hitler invaded Poland on the 17 September 1939. The war lasted from 1939 to 1945 and directly involved over 100 million people. With an estimated death toll of 75 million, World War II is the deadliest conflict in history. Although there can be no definite turning point, many historians consider the Battle of Stalingrad to be the greatest and most significant battle in the war. The Soviet Union’s massive success in this battle marked the war turning in favor of the Allies.
World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind.
World War II was one of the most important wars in history. It featured multiple countries at constant conflict with each other. There were several battles that occurred in this 12 year long war. An example of two of the battles would be the Battle of Britain in the European theater of war, and the Attack on Pearl Harbor in the Pacific theater of war. Only one of these wars saw victory, while the other caused great devastation to the American military.
The only thing worse than being taken as a prisoner of war would be being killed in combat. Unfortunately, being taken as prisoner of war in world war two was the fate of many soldiers fighting. Their camps were supposed to be similar to an internment camp created for civilians, as stated by the Geneva Convention in 1929. A prisoner of war camp was supposed to allow the prisoners to write home to their families, get paid for doing non-war related jobs, and captives even got packages from the international Red Cross. While the camps were not made to be a five star hotel, the camps treated their captives well enough that they could live comfortably. In Japan, this was not the case. As explained in Unbroken, a biography about Louis Zamperini,
The deadliest war known to mankind was World War I the total of military and civilian casualties were more than 38 million. World War I began in Europe July 28th, 1914 and lasted until November 11th, 1918. The following countries that took part in the war were Britain, France, Russia, United States, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Serbia, and Italy. Since there were many deaths it left European nations to blame one another for the violent actions that lead up to the crisis. The underlying cause of World War I was both alliances and imperialism.
More people were killed, more nations got involved than any war before it. This war is being referred to is World War II. There are many examples of what happened during the war, these can be seen in Golding's Lord of the Flies. The characters in Golding’s Lord of the Flies mirror political leaders during World War II, as well as, the struggle of power among them.
“Stalingrad is the scene of the costliest and most stubborn battle in this war. The battle fought there to its desperate finish may turn out to be among the decisive battles in the long history of war…In the scale of its intensity, its destructiveness, and its horror, Stalingrad has no parallel. It engaged the full strength of the two biggest armies in Europe and could fit into no lesser framework than that of a life-and death conflict which encompasses the earth”
World War II was seen around the globe as a war to end all wars. Combat like this had never been experienced before and it was the largest scale battle in recent history. The death tolls for all sides skyrocketed to heights that had never been reached in any battle ever before. There was one man at the center of it all, one man who came to personify the root of living, breathing evil. That man was Adolf Hitler and to the rest of the world, he was a superhuman military machine who had no other goal but to achieve world domination through destruction. But the roots of the Battle of Stalingrad all began in 1941 when Hitler launched operation Barbarossa. Hitler’s powerful army marched across the east, seemingly unstoppable to any force. Stalin’s Red Army was caught completely off guard and their lines were completely broken apart. A majority of the country’s air force was destroyed when airfields were raided and many of the planes never even got the chance to leave the ground. Hitler’s army finally came to Leningrad where the city was besieged. The city held for 900 days and never gave way to the relentless Germans. At the cost of 1.5 million civilians and soldiers, the Red Army stopped Hitler from advancing further and postponed his plan to sweep over the south. Another cause for the retreat of Hitler was the brutal Russian winter, which Hitler and his army were completely unprepared for and the icy cold deaths would continue to haunt the Germans.
As we know, the World War II was the great war that we will never forget. The war, which slay millions people, even innocent children whose know nothing about what was going on. The war that brought the greatest holocaust to this world. This worse holocaust started in Germany by a man named Adolf Hitler, who concluded that the Jews were the nationality which made the German people impoverished. Consequently, the war broadened all over the world which including Japan, America, Russia,and Australia.
The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point in World War II, in which the Soviet Red Army surrounded and defeated a very weak and broken German Sixth Army. Hitler sent in his army in an attempt to capture Stalingrad, as it was a major hub, as well as the oil fields right beyond that. Hitler had already depleted much of his army in Operation Barbarossa, in which a large fraction of troops was sent to capture European Russia, mainly Moscow(Willmott, Messenger, and Cross 102). Hitler sent his troops into the Caucasus Region of Russia to attack Stalingrad in the summer of 1942, underestimating the Russian defensive effort. Stalin of Russia sent in millions of troops whom destroyed the German army and had them officially surrender on January 31, 1943. The results of the battle put a massive dent in the German military force and destroyed the German's ability to fight allied forces entering in France and North Africa. Hitler also lost control of himself as a leader and The United States and Russia, with British assistance, officially defeated the Germans within a year of their invasion.
But the sheer size in numbers of the Russian people allowed them to overcome the Germans with help from the winter and the industrial might of the country, the Russians put the Germans on the defensive. The successful defense of the Russians at Stalingrad stopped the advance of the Nazi’s into Russia The Russians surrounded the Nazi’s and annihilated a complete German army, cutting off any route for supplies and reinforcements. Stalingrad was the turning point for the war on the eastern front and from there on the Germans were on the retreat, the Russians slowly recaptured Kursk in February of 1943 and in the following year Orel and Kiev were under Russian control. By January, 1945 the Red Army had fought their way from Moscow and over into Germany and took the the capital city of Berlin along with the surrender of the German people and the suicide of Adolf Hitler. Even though Operation Barbarossa was Hitler’s master plan to conquer Russia, it ended up being his biggest failure and led to the deaths of millions of innocent people while bringing a quick end to his thousand year
...e German’s defeat at Stalingrad was the turning point of the action in the West. Hitler’s downfall had begun and his control over his once powerful army had been extremely weakened. It is safe to say that after the battle at Stalingrad, Russia became a world superpower and rode its strength all the way into the Cold War. If the outcome of this battle had been different, the war might have had a different outcome for Hitler and the Axis powers. There is no doubt that Hitler would have continued his campaign for world domination and he might have even succeeded. Stalingrad is also considered to be one of the bloodiest battles of all time, with total casualties from both sides surmounting past one million. This battle might have been the most significant one in all of World War II and it definitely turned the tides against one of the most infamous leaders of all time.
Some occurrences in time will be remembered for all eternity. The deaths of kings, generals, and religious followers have always marred time's beauty. World War I and World War II were not only bloody and heart wrenching wars, but these wars brought together entire nations, even continents, to fight against a common adversary.