Era X · The World Wars

The Second World War in Europe

For nearly six years the continent is fought over from the Atlantic to the Volga — the war in which this history closes.

1939–1945 · From the Atlantic to the Volga
The closing chapter of this history. A map study — the campaign is told on the interactive map below; the fuller narrative essay is in preparation.

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†1 September 1939 · Europe returns to total war

Axis conquest, and the two-front road to Berlin

On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and Europe returned to total war. For nearly six years the continent was fought over from the Atlantic to the Volga: the Blitzkrieg conquest of Poland and France, Britain’s lone stand through the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, the vast German invasion of the Soviet Union and its turning at Stalingrad, and the two-front Allied advance — D-Day in the west, Operation Bagration in the east — that met on the Elbe and ended in the ruins of Berlin in May 1945.

Era X · The Second World War

The Second World War in Europe: Axis Conquest & Allied Victory, 1939–1945

Scroll to follow the collapse of Poland and France, the clash before Moscow, the turning points at Stalingrad and El Alamein, the two-front vise of D-Day and Bagration, and the link-up on the Elbe.

1939–1940

Blitzkrieg in the West & The Miracle of Dunkirk

On September 1, 1939, Germany unleashes the mechanized Blitzkrieg upon Poland; Warsaw capitulates in four weeks under terror bombardment and dual invasion from east and west. In May 1940, Hitler strikes west with Fall Gelb. Bypassing the formidable Maginot Line, General Heinz Guderian’s panzer corps smash through the Ardennes forest at Sedan, racing to the Channel coast to slice Allied armies in two. Trapped against the sea at Dunkirk, the British Expeditionary Force executes a miraculous nine-day evacuation, saving 338,000 troops aboard naval warships and civilian 'Little Ships.' Paris falls on June 14, and France signs an armistice at Compiègne. Britain stands alone.

1940–1941

Fortress Britain & The Mediterranean Duel

Throughout the summer of 1940, the Royal Air Force engages Göring’s Luftwaffe in the skies above London. Armed with radar and flying Spitfires and Hurricanes, RAF Fighter Command repulses the air assault, forcing Hitler to indefinitely postpone Operation Sea Lion. Blocked from crossing the Channel, the Axis pivots to the Mediterranean. Following Italian debacles, the Wehrmacht intervenes: German armored columns crush Yugoslavia and occupy Athens, while General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps disembarks in Tripoli. Rommel thrusts across the Libyan sands, encircling the Australian garrison at Tobruk and menacing the British lifeline at Suez.

1941

Operation Barbarossa: The Clash of Titans

On June 22, 1941, over three million Axis troops storm across an eighteen-hundred-mile front into the Soviet Union. Army Group North encircles Leningrad in an 872-day siege that starves over a million souls; Army Group South annihilates four Soviet armies at Kiev, taking 665,000 prisoners. Army Group Center sweeps past Smolensk toward the Kremlin. By late November, German panzer scouts reach the snowy tram stops of Moscow’s outer suburbs. There, in sub-zero blizzards, General Georgy Zhukov unleashes Siberian divisions in a ferocious winter counteroffensive outside Moscow, driving the frozen invaders back over a hundred miles. The Blitzkrieg is shattered.

1942–1943

The Turning of the Tide: The Volga and El Alamein

In summer 1942, Hitler launches Case Blue toward the Caucasian oil fields and Stalingrad on the Volga. In five months of apocalyptic close-quarters rubble combat (*Rattenkrieg*), the Red Army bleeds the 6th Army white. In November, Operation Uranus snaps Soviet armored jaws shut behind Paulus; by February 1943, ninety-one thousand Germans surrender. In Egypt, Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army routs Rommel at El Alamein, while Anglo-American forces under Eisenhower land in Morocco and Algeria (Algiers). In July 1943, Hitler’s final strategic offensive at Kursk collides with Soviet defense-in-depth in history’s largest tank battle. The German armored core is broken forever. Allies land in Sicily and southern Italy, precipitating the arrest of Mussolini.

1944

The Vise Closes: Normandy and Bagration

On June 6, 1944 (D-Day), the Western Allies stage Operation Overlord: 156,000 troops land on fifty miles of heavily defended Normandy beaches. After brutal hedgerow combat in the bocage, Patton’s Third Army bursts through in Operation Cobra, encircling the German Seventh Army at Falaise. Paris rises and is liberated on August 25. Simultaneously in the east, on the third anniversary of Barbarossa, the Red Army unleashes Operation Bagration. In five weeks, Soviet mechanized shock armies annihilate twenty-eight of thirty-four divisions of Army Group Centre, liberating Minsk and racing three hundred miles to the gates of Warsaw. Nazi Germany is crushed between two titan pincers.

1945

The Crossing of the Rhine & The Fall of Berlin

Hitler’s desperate Ardennes counteroffensive (*Battle of the Bulge*) collapses with irrecoverable armor losses. In March 1945, American troops storm the intact Ludendorff railroad bridge at Remagen, pouring across the Rhine to bag 325,000 soldiers in the Ruhr Pocket. From the east, Zhukov and Konev smash across the Oder River. On April 25, 1945, American and Soviet soldiers embrace at Torgau on the Elbe River, cutting Germany in two. In Berlin, Soviet flags are raised over the ruined Reichstag; Hitler commits suicide in his bunker on April 30. On May 8, 1945, German High Command signs unconditional surrender. Total war in Europe is won.

1939–1940

Western Allied base / positionSoviet stronghold / liberated siteAxis fortress / occupied capitalmajor battle / turning pointhistoric link-up on ElbeAxis Blitzkrieg assaultWestern Allied offensiveamphibious landingSoviet strategic offensive

Cartography & Military Records: US Military Academy West Point History of Warfare Atlas; Martin Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Second World War. Coastline, lake, and river hydrography: Natural Earth (public domain). Routes and fronts are schematic.

‡What it changed

Aftermath

This is where the history closes. The war left tens of millions dead, the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews, cities in ruins from London to Stalingrad, and a continent about to be divided between the powers that had defeated Germany. Nothing in this history runs past 1945.