Germany
Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg is a term used to describe a method of offensive warfare designed to strike a swift, focused blow at an enemy using mobile, maneuverable forces, including armored tanks and air support. Such an attack ideally leads to a quick victory, limiting the loss of soldiers and ...read more
Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece
The German air force launches Operation Castigo, the bombing of Belgrade, on April 6, 1941, as 24 divisions and 1,200 tanks drive into Greece. The attack on Yugoslavia was swift and brutal, an act of terror resulting in the death of 17,000 civilians—the largest number of civilian ...read more
Germany declares war on the United States
Adolf Hitler declares war on the United States, bringing America, which had been neutral, into the European conflict. The bombing of Pearl Harbor surprised even Germany. Although Hitler had made an oral agreement with his Axis partner Japan that Germany would join a war against ...read more
Goths and Visigoths
The Goths were a nomadic Germanic people who fought against Roman rule in the late 300s and early 400s A.D., helping to bring about the downfall of the Roman Empire, which had controlled much of Europe for centuries. The ascendancy of the Goths is said to have marked the ...read more
When German Immigrants Were America’s Undesirables
In a recent interview, White House chief of staff John Kelly told NPR that undocumented immigrants are “not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society.” And he listed a few reasons why: “They’re overwhelmingly rural people,” he said. “In ...read more
Was Germany Doomed in World War I by the Schlieffen Plan?
The Schlieffen Plan, devised a decade before the start of World War I, outlined a strategy for Germany to avoid fighting at its eastern and western fronts simultaneously. But what had been meticulously designed to deal a swift “right hook” attack on France and then advance on ...read more
Why Was the Battle of the Somme So Deadly?
The Battle of the Somme was one of the largest battles of World War I, and among the bloodiest in all of human history. A combination of a compact battlefield, destructive modern weaponry and several failures by British military leaders led to the unprecedented slaughter of wave ...read more
The Myth That Reagan Ended the Cold War With a Single Speech
On June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood just 100 yards away from the concrete barrier dividing East and West Berlin and uttered some of the most unforgettable words of his presidency: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” By the time Reagan traveled to Berlin, Germany, to ...read more
How the Sinking of Lusitania Changed World War I
On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the British-owned luxury steamship Lusitania, killing 1,195 people including 128 Americans, according to the Library of Congress. The disaster immediately strained relations between Germany and the neutral United States, fueled ...read more
Reichstag Fire
The Reichstag Fire was a dramatic arson attack occurring on February 27, 1933, which burned the building that housed the Reichstag (German parliament) in Berlin. Claiming the fire was part of a Communist attempt to overthrow the government, the newly named Reich Chancellor Adolf ...read more
Why Poland Wants Germany to Pay Billions for World War II
If you’d visited Warsaw in 1945, you might not have recognized it as a city at all. Destroyed by the Nazis in retribution for a 1944 uprising, the city was pocked by craters and reduced to miles and miles of rubble. It wasn’t just the capital: Much of Poland was rubble by the end ...read more
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism, sometimes called history’s oldest hatred, is hostility or prejudice against Jewish people. The Nazi Holocaust is history’s most extreme example of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism did not begin with Adolf Hitler: Anti-Semitic attitudes date back to ancient times. In ...read more
A Divided Germany Came Together for the Olympics Decades Before Korea Did
At the opening ceremonies of the XXIII Olympic Winter Games, on February 9, 2018, something spectacular happened: Athletes from North and South Korea, which have been bitterly divided for 73 years, marched beneath a unified flag. Though North and South appear no closer to ...read more
How Trump’s Grandparents Became Reluctant Americans
The Past in Colorfeatures the work of colorist Marina Amaral, bringing to life black and white photos with color applied digitally. The German barber, restaurant-owner and property speculator Friedrich Trump and his young wife Elisabeth did not intend to spend their married life ...read more
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic was Germany’s government from 1919 to 1933, the period after World War I until the rise of Nazi Germany. It was named after the town of Weimar where Germany’s new government was formed by a national assembly after Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated. From its ...read more
Kristallnacht Started When This Diplomat Was Murdered in Cold Blood
When Ernst vom Rath went to work on the morning of November 7, 1938, he had no idea he would soon be mortally wounded—or that his death would serve as the excuse for a two-day terror attack on German Jews. He was at work at the German embassy in Paris when Herschel Grynszpan, a ...read more
Why German Soldiers Don’t Have to Obey Orders
Consider, if you will, a fraught military standoff. A soldier from the German army receives an order from a superior to fire his gun, but he puts it down and walks away. In the United States, he would have just committed the unforgivable and illegal act of insubordination, even ...read more
Meet the Youngest Person Executed for Defying the Nazis
Sixteen-year-old Helmuth Hübener couldn’t believe his ears. As he crouched in a closet in Hamburg, secretly listening to his brother’s forbidden short-wave radio, the voice of the BBC announcer painted a picture of Nazi Germany that was dramatically different from the one he had ...read more
Bauhaus
Bauhaus was an influential art and design movement that began in 1919 in Weimar, Germany. The movement encouraged teachers and students to pursue their crafts together in design studios and workshops. The school moved to Dessau in 1925 and then to Berlin in 1932, after which ...read more
8 National Anthem Backstories
1. The Star-Spangled Banner The story behind America’s anthem dates back to the War of 1812’s Battle of Baltimore. In September 1814, American attorney Francis Scott Key sailed out to the British fleet in the Chesapeake Bay to negotiate the release of an imprisoned friend. ...read more
Munich Pact signed
British and French prime ministers Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier sign the Munich Pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. The agreement averted the outbreak of war but gave Czechoslovakia away to German conquest. In the spring of 1938, Hitler began openly to support the ...read more
Norway surrenders to Germany
After two months of desperate resistance, the last surviving Norwegian and British defenders of Norway are overwhelmed by the Germans, and the country is forced to capitulate to the Nazis. Two months earlier, on April 9, Nazi Germany launched its invasion of Norway, capturing ...read more
Nazis test new air force, Luftwaffe, on Basque town of Guernica
During the Spanish Civil War, the German military tests its powerful new air force–the Luftwaffe–on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain. Although the independence-minded Basque region opposed General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, ...read more
Germany annexes Austria
On March 12, 1938, German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich. In early 1938, Austrian Nazis conspired for the second time in four years to seize the Austrian government by force and unite their nation with Nazi Germany. Austrian ...read more