The plan of Germany for the invasion of Poland

The invasion of Poland was an invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union that marked the beginning of World War II in Europe. The invasion of Poland was the first of the military aggression that Hitler’s Germany would undertake. The Polish army was easily defeated, unable to cope with the superior German troops who were using their famous technique called Blitzkrieg (lightning war), based on the rapid movement of armor and high firepower brutally applied. However, the fall of Poland would be accelerated by the subsequent invasion by the Soviet Union and the lack of help from its allies Britain and France.

The Soviet Union and Germany wanted to invade Poland but they were afraid of a war in two fronts (between them and against Poland). That strong fear that both countries felt made them sign the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact (1939) or a Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was signed by the foreign ministers of each country, Ribbentrop from Germany and Molotov from the Soviet Union. They put aside their ideological differences for their interests. The Pact, in secret, was a strategy developed by both countries to achieve the partition of Poland between them.

They both were interested on invading Poland. In case of the Soviet Union because Poland was filled with Jewish people that agreed with communism and also they needed Poland territory to be near Germany for future possible attack.

In the Case of Germany they needed to recover the city of Danzig taken by the League of Nation after World War I because Danzig was important for naval war because it was located strategically. They wanted to have free access to the port of Danzig through the Polish Corridor but the Polish refused so Germany decided to attack Poland. Also Poland was filled with Jewish people, so it was time to start the final solution (Nazi anti-Semitism).  The fall of Poland would mean the sharp fall in living standards of its citizens, especially the Polish Jews, killing 20% of the Polish population that existed before the invasion during the occupation. The same as the Soviet Union, Poland had always been a frontier between the Soviet Union and Germany so they needed to be closer for a future attack.

 

By: Giovanna Trisoglio

The Plan of Pearl Harbor Attack

On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched an incredibly daring, technically sophisticated combined naval-aerial surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, just northwest of Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The devastating aerial attack carried out by Japanese fighters, dive-bombers and torpedo planes crippled the U.S. Pacific fleet as a preamble to Imperial Japan’s lunge for strategic territories spanning the Pacific Ocean – but it also stirred the wrath of the American people, decisively ending U.S. isolationism and bringing the world’s largest industrial power squarely into the war against Japan and its European allies in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United Stated naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories ode the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States.

The man in charge of planning the attack, the brilliant admiral Isoroku Yamamato, was an admiral and commander in chief of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. It was formed in the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy and Harvard at university. He advised against the Pearl Harbor attack and plan, noting that even if it succeeded, Japan would still face an implacable enemy drawing on huge resources. 

The Pearl Harbor attack plan had two immediate goals. The first one was the destruction of American aircraft carriers known to frequent the area. The second one was the sinking of as many other capital ships as possible, especially battleships. With these two tasks complete, the Japanese hoped to neutralize the American fleet’s ability to project air and sea power in the Pacific Basin for at least six months.

During that time they planned to occupy the East Asian and West Pacific regions with such firmness that the Allies would be forced to negotiate a settlement.  In pursuit of these attack goals, Japanese naval officers created a detailed plan which took advantage of known factors such as the American Navy’s habit of returning to its main anchorage at Pearl Harbor every weekend. Equally detailed alternate plans included options for attacking the American fleet’s deep sea anchorage, or hunting down U.S fleet units in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands. This later plan was the worst situation for them, because it would require their carrier fleet to fight its way into the attack zone.

By: Giovanna Trisoglio

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Blitzkrieg

Blitzkrieg was a tactic based on speed and surprise and needed a military force to be based around light tank units supported by planes and infantry (foot soldiers). Its meaning is lighting war and it was first used by the Germans in World War II. The Blitzkrieg included surprise attacks, rapid advances into enemy territory, with coordinated massive air attacks, which struck and shocked the enemy as if it was struck by lightning. The Blitzkrieg main moves were technology, surprise, speed and move. The tactic was developed in Germany by an army officer called Hans Guderian. He wrote a military pamphlet called “Achtung Panzer” which got into Hitler’s hands.  As a tactic it was used as a devastating effect in the first years of World War II.

Germany used this tactic because they needed to maintain high mobility to succeed in an attack, in order to maintain the element of surprise. In the early war it was extremely successful, just like the Schliefflen Plan of World War I. By maintaining the element of surprise they could destroy the enemy before it has the chance to fight back. They used Blitzkrieg tactics in the early war as they needed to also maintain their numbers in order to fight a war against almost all of Europe.

Germany needed to be fast enough because it could kill everyone in their sleep before they can woke up and fight back in a counterattack. By maintaining the high mobility Germany was able to win battles very easily.

The Blitzkrieg was very useful for Germany. It had many advantages such as assuring success by attacking force; prevent reinforcement for defenders and supplies delivery for soldiers. The Blitzkrieg used less ammunition and equipment, and soldiers.

The most important advantage of Blitzkrieg was speed and mobility. Blitzkrieg was primarily a strategy of repeated “shock and awe” tactics that relied on overwhelming force directed through military hardware. The German military in World War II achieved most of its great victories with the Blitzkrieg tactic.

However, the Blitzkrieg had its disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage was that it becomes easy to overextend Germany in an invasion. Germany risk gaining too much ground too quickly, making it very easy for the enemy to slip in behind Germany and destroy its supply lines, which can destroy an entire invasion by breaking the will to fight and equipment needed to fight, as many generals have repeatedly learnt over time.

 By: Giovanna Trisoglio

NAZI EDUCATION

Education played a very important part in Nazi Germany in trying to cultivate a loyal following for Hitler and the Nazis. Nazis were aware that education would create loyal Nazis for the future. Schools were to play a critical part in developing a loyal following for Hitler. Indoctrination was to be common practice. All teaches were vetted by Nazi officials, if any teacher was considered disloyal he would be sacked.  97% joined the Nazi association. All teachers had to be careful about what they said. Children were encouraged to inform the authorities if a teacher said something that didn’t fit with the Nazi’s curriculum.

They explained the defeat of 1918 ad the work of the Jewish and Marxist spies who dad weakened the system from within. The treaty of Versailles was the work of nations jealous of Germany’s power. The inflation on 1923 was the work of Jewish saboteurs.

Biology became a study of the different races to prove that Nazi belief on racial superiority was a sound belief.

Biology and history were the main distorted areas but in all of the subjects different radical ideas were imposed.

Hitler as a dictator made sure to have the support of all the people, controlling every area of German’s society. By teaching children all this believes he ensured that when they grew up, they’d be against Jewish and Communists and he would have all the support.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8UlviPpTzs

By: Angelina Galvan

Wall Street Crash

The Wall Street Crash of 1929 was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout. The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries and that did not end in the United States until the onset of American mobilization for World War II at the end of 1941.

The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s, which had led hundreds of thousands of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market. A significant number of them were borrowing money to buy more stocks. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than two-thirds of the face value of the stocks they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan, more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the U.S. at the time. On October 24, 1929, with the Dow just past its September 3 peak of 381.17, the market finally turned down, and panic selling started.

The stock market crash and the Great Depression formed "the biggest financial crisis of the 20th century”. “The panic of October 1929 has come to serve as a symbol of the economic contraction that gripped the world during the next decade."

The Great Depression

The Great Depression, was a severe worldwide economic depression, began in the United States but quickly turned into a worldwide economic slump owing to the special and intimate relationships that had been forged between the United States and European economies after World War I. The United States had emerged from the war as the major creditor and financier of postwar Europe, whose national economies had been greatly weakened by the war itself, by war debts, and, in the case of Germany and other defeated nations, by the need to pay war reparations. So once the American economy slumped and the flow of American investment credits to Europe dried up, prosperity tended to collapse there as well. The Depression hit hardest those nations that were most deeply indebted to the United States, Germany and Great Britain. In Germany, unemployment rose sharply beginning in late 1929 and by early 1932 it had reached 6 million workers, or 25 percent of the work force. Britain was less severely affected, but its industrial and export sectors remained seriously depressed until World War II. Many other countries had been affected by the slump by 1931. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries. Farming and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by approximately 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few alternate sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as cash cropping, mining and logging suffered the most.

By :Mariel Buendia 

Dadaism

Dadaism

Dadaism was an artistic movement that began in the interwar period. It was, among other things, a protest against the barbarism of the War and what Dadaists considered an oppressive intellectual rigidity in both art and everyday society. Its works were characterized by a deliberate irrationality and the rejection of the prevailing standards of art.

Dada began not as art; it was anti-art. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. If art is to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strives to have no meaning, they are abstract art works, interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer. If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada offends.

 The artists of the Dada movement had become disillusioned by art, art history and history in general. Many of them grown cynical of humanity after seeing what men were capable of doing to each other on the battlefields of Europe. The basis of Dada is nonsense. With the order of the world destroyed by World War I, Dada was a way to express the confusion that was felt by many people as their world was turned upside down.

The arts works of dada were characterized on the basis of law of chance and proved to be anarchic and anti-art. Dadaism took a direct approach to destroy the beliefs of the society.

  

By: Angelina Galvan