Western Civilization - History Of European Society

584 Chapter 29

the British to retreat. By June 1942 the Afrika Korps
was threatening to take the Suez Canal. Simultane-
ously, Italian armies invaded Greece (October 1942)
and opened war in the Balkans. The Wehrmachtalso en-
tered this theater, supporting the Italians in Greece and
then invading Yugoslavia. Belgrade (severely bombed
by the Luftwaffein punishment for continued resistance)
and Athens both fell to German occupation. The war in
the Balkans continued as a guerrilla war, however, and
Yugoslav partisans led by Joseph Broz (known as “Tito”)
never surrendered. The Balkan theater saw some of the
most ferocious combat of World War II, and Yugoslavia
(a nation of 14 million people in the 1930s) would lose
1.5 million to 2 million people.
The most important theater of World War II in Eu-
rope was the eastern front. Hitler, like Napoleon before
him, turned from his failure to invade England and at-
tacked Russia. This was the logical culmination of
Hitler’s determination to gain Lebensraumin the east, a
calculation eased by his racist conviction of Slavic infe-
riority. In June 1941 he launched Operation Barbarosa,
hitting the Soviet Union along a two-thousand-mile
front in three massive offensives—toward Leningrad,
Moscow, and Kiev. Finland resumed its war with the
Soviet Union in the north while Hungary and Romania
supported Germany in the south. The Nazi Blitzkrieg
again won quick victories. Soviet armies were in disar-
ray, partly because of Stalin’s purge of army comman-
ders in the 1930s and partly because of Stalin’s belief
that Hitler would not attack him. (The USSR was still

shipping food and military aid to Germany in the

spring of 1941.) By autumn the Wehrmachthad pene-

trated hundreds of miles into the Soviet Union. In the

north they laid siege to Leningrad and subjected it to

the treatment that obliterated Warsaw, Rotterdam, and

Belgrade. In the center, German bombers hit Moscow

in the first weeks of the war, and German armies drew

within sight of the city by late fall (see illustration

29.2). In the south, the Wehrmachtoverran the Ukraine,

taking Minsk, Kiev, and Odessa and finally planting the

Swastika on the banks of the Black Sea, as they had

hung it from the Eiffel Tower and the Parthenon. Hitler

seemed near to dominion over continental Europe. His

empire stretched from the Arctic Circle in Norway to

the desert of western Egypt, from the French Pyrenees

to the Crimea. But he had opened Pandora’s box; for

the next three years, 90 percent of German deaths

would happen on the eastern front.

World War II on the Home Front

Life on European home fronts during the Second

World War was naturally austere. The British, who im-

ported much of their food, faced strict rations of basic

foods (such as meat, butter, sugar, eggs, and tea), the

total loss of many foreign foods (such as oranges, ba-

nanas, and chocolate), and reliance upon foods not pre-

viously eaten (such as shark and whale). Rationing

identity cards were issued in September 1939 (during

Illustration 29.2
The Home Front.In total war there
was scant respect for the distinction be-
tween a “battle front” and a “home
front”—and civilian populations suffered
terrible attacks in many countries. One
of the most famous attacks on civilian
centers was the German bombing of
London, known as “the Blitz.” During
the German air raids, many British fami-
lies took refuge in makeshift quarters,
such as those shown in this photograph,
set up in the tunnels of the London
subway system.