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130 THE WIDENING WAR 1942

WAR IN EUROPE

AND AFRICA

Throughout most of 1942, the outcome of the war against Hitler hung in the balance.

However, by the year’s end, Allied victories on the Eastern front and in the North African

desert had decisively turned the tide, and Nazi Germany’s era of conquests had ended.

After the US, Soviet Union, and Britain

had united against Germany in 1941,

the increase in economic resources and

population were weighted heavily in

favor of the Allies. However, bringing

these resources to bear on the battlefield

was no easy matter.

German successes

Militarily, the Germans were still capable

of inflicting heavy defeats on their enemies.

In the Soviet Union, Axis forces repulsed

Soviet offensives and resumed their

advance eastward, reaching the Volga and

the Caucasus. By late summer 1942, Hitler’s

aim of crippling the Soviets’ war effort by

capturing their sources of oil supplies and arms

production looked within sight.

Meanwhile, in Egypt’s Western Desert, the German

field marshal Erwin Rommel outfought the British, and

by July had advanced to El Alamein, less than 70 miles

(100 km) from Britain’s major naval base at Alexandria. In

the Atlantic, German U-boats attacked American coastal

shipping and transoceanic convoys, threatening to block the

movement of US arms and troops to the European theater,

which depended entirely upon sea transport. Merchant

convoys taking military aid to the Soviet Union through

its Arctic ports also suffered heavy losses.

Domination over cooperation

Throughout this period, the German hold on

occupied Europe remained secure. Coastal

raids and RAF bombing of cities were too

ineffectual to have significant impact. In

occupied countries, the Nazis crushed

all opposition by force and exploited the

resources to the maximum. The scale of

resistance activity remained quite limited,

despite the efforts of the British Special Operations Executive

(SOE) and the growth of Communist-led partisan guerrilla

groups after the Soviet Union’s entry into the war.

Hitler also had plans for construction of a racially

stratified New Order in Europe. In 1942, his policy to

massacre all Jews (code named “the Final Solution”)

became organized into a coherent project to annihilate

Europe’s Jewish population. Extermination camps

industrialized killing, the scale of which was limited only

by the need to use Jews as slave labor. The same camps

killed off Soviet prisoners of war, political opponents of

Nazism, the Romany people, and homosexuals.

THE TURNING POINT

Throughout the first half of

1942, the Axis powers’ victories

continued. When German troops

reached Stalingrad in August, it

appeared another major success

was in prospect, but instead the

battle was a disaster for Hitler’s

forces. In North Africa, Field

Marshal Rommel’s Panzer Army

was trapped between the British,

who had recently been victorious

at the Second Battle of El Alamein,

and US troops, which landed in

Operation Torch. Meanwhile,

the sufferings of the people of

Nazi-occupied Europe mounted.

◁ Call for collaboration

A poster calls for Dutch volunteers to join the Nazis’ elite

force, the Waffen-SS. Recruits were sought from conquered

countries with racially “Aryan” populations, including the

Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway. Every nation in occupied

Europe produced enthusiastic collaborators, who identified

ideologically with the Nazis’ racist and anticommunist beliefs.

▽ The Americans arrive

A British policeman gives directions

to a newly arrived American soldier.

Over 200,000 US personnel were

based in Britain by the end of 1942.

DEC 1941 FEB 1942 APR

SOVIET FRONT

DESERT FRONT

OCCUPIED EUROPE

Dec 7, 1941 Nazis decree

resistance members in

occupied countries are to

be killed or “disappear”

Jan 20, 1942

Nazis hold Wannsee

Conference to

coordinate the

“Final Solution”

Mar 27, 1942 First

French Jews deported

to Auschwitz

May 19, 1942

Red Army

defeated at

Kharkov

May 30–31, 1942

RAF Bomber

Command launches

1,000-bomber raid

on Cologne

May 16, 1942

In the Western Desert

Campaign, successful Axis

offensive launched at Gazala

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