When Hitler Made A Fatal Mistake: The Moment The World Knows Of The Fall Of The Third Reich

 

The First World War, fought between 1914 and 1918, was described at the time as the war to end all wars, yet history quickly proved that prediction tragically false. The unresolved grievances, economic upheaval, and national humiliation that followed left Europe a tinderbox, and within two decades of the armistice, the continent was once again poised on the brink of conflict. By September 1939, Adolf Hitler’s Germany had accelerated history to a breaking point. The invasion of Poland was not merely a military maneuver; it was a declaration that Hitler’s ambitions would brook no opposition. And though the German population had endured the horrors of trench warfare, gas attacks, and the shell shock of the First World War, Hitler’s charisma, propaganda, and promises of national restoration ensured that most of them went along with the war effort, at least outwardly. While fear and loyalty intermixed, the German people followed, unwilling or unable to resist the momentum of their leader’s ambitions.

Yet Hitler’s early victories masked an underlying overconfidence. The carefully calibrated military machine he had spent years building had, in theory, been unstoppable. Blitzkrieg, the rapid strike doctrine that emphasized coordination of tanks, aircraft, and infantry, had dazzled the world. Czechoslovakia fell, Austria was absorbed, and the Rhineland had been remilitarized with little more than a shrug from Western powers. But as his forces prepared to conquer Poland, and later all of Europe, Hitler was about to encounter the unyielding reality that no amount of planning could fully control the chaos of war. By 1939, the stage was set not merely for territorial conquest, but for a conflict that would spiral into the deadliest in human history, ultimately claiming over seventy million lives, the vast majority of them civilians.

The rise of Hitler’s N@zi regime had already unleashed horrors largely unseen by the outside world. The concentration camp system, beginning with Dachau in 1933, had initially targeted political prisoners—socialists, communists, and other dissidents—but soon expanded into a brutal instrument of oppression and terror against Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the mentally ill, homosexuals, and anyone labeled “undesirable” by the regime. These early atrocities gave Hitler the time and leverage to consolidate power, build military strength, and advance his vision of a German empire without immediate resistance from European neighbors. By the time German troops marched into Prague in March 1939, the continent’s major powers were either politically unprepared or unwilling to challenge him.

Hitler’s ambitions were far from subtle. His eyes were on Austria, Poland, and the Sudetenland, envisioning a unified Germanic empire that would rival even Rome at the height of its power. Children were evacuated in Britain; gas masks were issued to civilians in anticipation of war. Across the continent, governments were scrambling to interpret Hitler’s aggressive expansionism while facing the stark reality of a man who seemed willing to gamble everything to achieve domination. It was a period when diplomacy failed repeatedly, and the world began to understand that Hitler’s vision was not merely nationalistic, but expansionist to a dangerous extreme.

By late 1939, the invasion of Poland brought the world fully into conflict. But Hitler, ever calculating, was cautious on the eastern front. He knew Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union posed a formidable challenge and could not be ignored. To prevent immediate confrontation, he struck the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty with Stalin, allowing Germany to launch its invasion of Poland without fear of a two-front war. On September 1st, 1939, German tanks crossed the border, and the combined pressure of the N@zi Wehrmacht from the west and the Soviet army from the east quickly overwhelmed Polish defenses. The world watched in horror as the blitzkrieg proved devastatingly effective.

Yet while Poland fell swiftly, the invasion marked the beginning of a war that Hitler increasingly struggled to control. Early victories, though spectacular, bred overconfidence, while the moral and logistical challenges of prolonged conflict began to mount. Hitler’s decisions were no longer just military—they became political, strategic, and increasingly personal, as he sought to bend the world to his vision while ignoring the limits imposed by geography, resources, and international opposition. What had begun as rapid territorial conquest was morphing into a war of attrition that would stretch German capacity to its limits.

Meanwhile, in Western Europe, the German strategy seemed unstoppable. France, Belgium, the Netherlands—all fell under the shadow of Hitler’s blitzkrieg, and Britain faced the grim reality of standing alone against an aggressive, mechanized power. Yet even in these moments of triumph, cracks began to appear in Hitler’s plans. The initial assumption that military superiority alone could secure lasting victory ignored the complexities of sustaining long-term operations across multiple theaters. Logistical challenges, overextended supply lines, and the determination of adversaries who refused to submit would, over time, erode the foundations of what seemed an unassailable empire.

Hitler’s perception of inevitability—a belief that the superiority of German planning, training, and spirit could overcome any obstacle—was a fatal flaw. Early in the war, these assumptions had produced results: rapid conquests, the collapse of enemy resistance, and the consolidation of power across Europe. But the same hubris that enabled his swift successes also blinded him to the strategic realities that would eventually overwhelm him. Each calculated gamble, from the remilitarization of the Rhineland to the invasion of Poland, reinforced his belief in the invincibility of his plans. Yet as history would show, even the most meticulously calculated campaigns could unravel under the pressure of circumstance, opposition, and human error.

The seeds of Hitler’s eventual downfall were planted in these early miscalculations. By underestimating the resilience of opponents, overextending supply lines, and assuming that fear alone would compel compliance, he created vulnerabilities that would later be exploited with devastating effect. His pact with Stalin, while tactically shrewd in the short term, introduced an unpredictable variable into a grand strategy that left no room for error. At the same time, the N@zi regime’s internal policies of terror and repression, though consolidating power at home, diverted attention and resources from the external challenges of war. The combination of hubris, overreach, and internal obsession with ideological purity set the stage for decisions that would ultimately prove catastrophic.

In 1939 and 1940, as German forces advanced through Europe, it became increasingly apparent that Hitler’s methods, though initially brilliant in their execution, carried inherent risks. Every victory further entrenched his belief in personal genius and strategic infallibility, even as the complexities of global warfare began to outpace the N@zi military machine. By the time Germany confronted Britain across the English Channel, the limitations of his approach were beginning to show. Air superiority, naval logistics, and the sheer endurance of the British people—all underestimated—presented obstacles that could not be overcome by rapid maneuvers or intimidation alone.

Even as Hitler celebrated conquests, the world was slowly piecing together the full scope of his regime’s atrocities. Concentration camps, forced labor, and systematic persecution of Jews and other minority groups revealed the moral bankruptcy underlying the military prowess of the N@zi state. Yet, to many outside observers, the full extent of the horrors remained obscured. Information was limited, propaganda clouded perceptions, and the swiftness of German victories often overshadowed the human suffering that accompanied them. These early years allowed Hitler to consolidate both power and perception, giving him time to prepare for the larger, far-reaching conflicts he envisioned.

By late 1939, with Poland defeated and Western Europe increasingly under German control, Hitler prepared for the next phase: a war that would test not only military might but the resilience of nations and the will of peoples. The invasion of Poland, while tactically brilliant, was the first step in a conflict that would escalate far beyond his initial calculations. Each decision now carried consequences that could not be undone, and the foundation of what seemed a triumphant N@zi Germany rested on increasingly precarious assumptions.

And what the world would come to remember most starkly is that this carefully constructed edifice of power and intimidation, built through speed, terror, and tactical genius, was also fragile. The invasion of Poland, the pact with Stalin, and the early successes in Western Europe created the illusion of invincibility. Yet beneath that veneer, the seeds of vulnerability were growing. Hitler’s reliance on rapid, overwhelming force, his underestimation of the resolve of his enemies, and his obsession with ideological and personal imperatives created conditions that would, over the course of the war, produce devastating consequences for the Third Reich.

By the time German forces looked east toward the Soviet Union and west toward Britain, Hitler’s initial advantage had set the stage for one of history’s most remarkable military and moral reckonings. The world would come to see that even the most powerful armies, guided by the most charismatic leaders, are not immune to miscalculation. The decisions made in those early months of conquest, fueled by ambition, fear, and ideology, would echo across the continents, shaping battles, strategies, and the very fate of millions.

And yet, in the autumn of 1939, as Hitler’s tanks rolled across Poland and Europe braced for war, the outcome remained uncertain. The Third Reich appeared dominant, the N@zi war machine unstoppable—but the first cracks were already forming in its foundation. What the world would later recognize as the fatal mistake of Hitler, the turning point that signaled the beginning of the end for the regime he had built, was quietly gestating, a consequence of choices made in confidence and underestimating the resilience of those he sought to conquer.

The invasion of Poland was merely the opening act of a war that would engulf the world, and the true cost of Hitler’s ambition had yet to reveal itself. International observers, military planners, and the populations of Europe were still coming to terms with the sheer scale of the conflict. Yet the threads of destiny were already weaving a pattern that would lead to the eventual unraveling of Hitler’s empire. It was a time when boldness and hubris intersected, a moment in history when the ambitions of a single man threatened to reshape the globe, and the world began to sense that even the mightiest of powers could stumble.

The shadow of the Third Reich stretched across Europe, seemingly unassailable. Cities fell, armies surrendered, and the N@zi regime consolidated power. Yet beneath the surface, resistance simmered. Political miscalculations, overconfidence, and underestimation of the Allied response laid the groundwork for what would become a historic reversal. The question remained: when, and how, would the world witness the collapse of a regime that had appeared, only months earlier, invincible?

The story of Hitler’s fatal mistake, the moment when the ambitions of a man collided with the limits of reality and the courage of those who opposed him, was quietly unfolding, setting in motion a series of events that would change history forever. The world would later look back on these months and recognize that the seeds of defeat had been sown in the very triumphs that seemed so absolute at the time. And yet, for now, as German troops continued their march and the N@zi war machine expanded its reach, the outcome was far from certain. The stage was set, the actors in motion, and the forces of history were gathering toward a reckoning the world would never forget.

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The First World War, fought between 1914 and 1918, was described as the war to end all wars, but as the process of history attests, this was not the case. Consequently, when the issues of reparations and redistribution of land came to a head, within 20 years of an armistice being signed, matters accelerated at an alarming speed, into a full declaration of war on Adolf Hitler’s Germany, in September, 1939.

– The German population because of Hitler’s popularity, and even though they had experienced the horrors of the First World War and the trench warfare of the First World War, and all of the shell shock and everything that went with it, because he was so popular, they might not have been delighted to go to war, in September, 1939, but they went along with it.

However, Adolf Hitler’s carefully planned military strategy failed to deliver the success the Fuhrer had become so accustomed to. The fight would be long and bitter and Hitler’s decision to destroy his non-aggression pact with Stalin would cost him dearly. Statistically speaking, the Second World War was the deadliest conflict in human history, having claimed the lives of more than 70 million people. A vast majority of whom were civilians.

The tyrannical reign of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany brought about a war that changed history forever. – This is a war brought about by Hitler, and this is a war that Hitler has fought for too long and he’s fighting it to the death. And he’s fighting to the death of the people who he supposedly loves, and he no longer loves them by the end of the war.

Hitler boasted that this was a conquest that his army could quickly achieve, he was about to be proved wrong. By 1938 it was evident that Adolf Hitler was prepared to go to any lengths, not only to put Germany back on the European map as a force to be reckoned with, but also build a German empire, that would even rival the Romans.

 Hitler had already marched his army into the Rhineland, forced Austria into unification, and set his sights on the Czech’s Sudetenland. For the people of Britain, the threat of all-out war with Germany was so real even gas masks were issued. While children were evacuated from London. – Hitler’s being expansionist, he wants more territory. He is looking to Czechoslovakia, to an area called the Sudetenland, where he’s identified people who he thinks should rightfully be Germans, and he thinks that those people should be part of the new Nazi Germany.

He, of course, is also looking east, towards Poland, and thinking “Maybe I want a bit of that.” And he’s also, of course, looking down to Austria, which, of course, is a German-speaking country, and thinking, “Maybe I want to have Austria “as part of my new kingdom,” if you like. What had been happening back in Nazi Germany, including the persecution of many Jews, the killing of the mentally ill, and the vicious murders of political opponents, were still little known by the outside world. – Concentration camps in Nazi Germany started very early on in the dictatorship. In 1933, Dachau, which was just outside Munich, was the first Nazi concentration camp. First of all, used to detain political prisoners, and then throughout the course of the 1930s the camp system enlarged and took in many many more different kinds of prisoners.

So, not just socialists and communists but also Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, people that the regime just regarded as asocial or wastrels, or any kind of person that needed to be put to hard labor in these concentration camps. This gave Adolf Hitler time to build his military strength, and when he marched his troops into the Czechoslovakia capital of Prague, in March 1939, neither Britain or France were in any position to do anything about it.

Precious time had been lost, and Adolf Hitler had every advantage, something that would characterize the first few years of the conflict. As the Nazis move through Europe, becoming even bolder, it was evident that the British prime minister was unlikely to stand up against Hitler.

 This may seem of little significance today, but before World War II the British Empire made the island nation a force to be reckoned with, on an equal footing with the Americans and the Russians. But by the late summer of 1939, Hitler was preparing to extend his stranglehold on Europe with the invasion of Poland, but was all too aware that Joseph Stalin and the Russians on the eastern side would not be as easy to deal with as Chamberlain had been back in 1938.

 Hitler needed to be certain that Stalin would not attack the Germans and therefore agreed to a non-aggression pact with Russia before ordering his tanks into Poland on September 1st, 1939. – In September, ’39, Hitler invades Poland, along with Stalin. Stalin, also, Soviet Russia, also invades Poland at the same time.

 But what the world remembers is the fact that Hitler invaded Poland, and a couple of days later the British declared war on Germany. – The German population because of Hitler’s popularity, and even though they had experienced the horrors of the First World War and the trench warfare of the First World War, and all of the shell shock and everything that went with it, because he was so popular, they might not have been delighted to go to war in September 1939, but they went along with it.

– Hitler’s advanced through Poland was really quick, it was lightning quick. And actually the German word blitzkrieg literally means lightning war. A lot of people say that the Poles capitulated very easily, to be fair, they didn’t, but there was no doubt that Poland was overwhelmed by this superior force.

 And it was also a kind of new joined-up form of warfare in which you’ve got the Air Force and the ground forces, talking to each other in a way that hadn’t really been done before in an invasion, and you really can’t compete when you’re facing this newly re-mechanized armed force from Germany, punching its way all the way through. It was devastating. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, had to face an issue that would stand in the way of his idea for peace.

Along with the French, the British were equally bound by diplomatic pact to come to Poland’s aid, the British prime minister gave Hitler an ultimatum, withdraw from Poland by 11:00 a.m. on September 3rd, or a state of war would exist between the United Kingdom and Germany. With there being no such undertaking from Hitler, Chamberlain announced the news to the people of Britain, on a radio broadcast on that fateful Sunday morning.

 This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin, handed the German government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

Due to Chamberlain’s failure to go on the attack, little action was taken. Over the next few months this period became known as the Phoney War. Nevertheless, there was nothing phony about Adolf Hitler’s strategic advances. His army were only getting stronger, and his nation were supporting his every decision.

There was one voice loudly making itself heard in British politics, urging Chamberlain to take the fight to the Germans. With the declaration of war on September 3rd, came the news that the voice of reason, Winston Churchill, had been called to serve at the Admiralty as the First Lord. Throughout the 1930s, Winston Churchill had warned of the threat that Adolf Hitler’s rise to power posed, but Churchill was dismissed as a political has-been who was well past his sell-by date.

When his wise words of warning proved to be so well-founded people’s view changed dramatically. As the people of Great Britain looked for a hero, the Admiralty signaled its ships with just three words, Winston is back. As the Phoney War progressed, Churchill again came to the forefront, predicting that Hitler would invade the countries in Scandinavia, to protect his supply route from Norway.

Churchill told Chamberlain to send troops to stop this from happening. But again, the British prime minister favored a wait and see approach. Once more, it was only when it was too late, as Hitler’s troops stormed through Denmark and Norway, that Chamberlain realized his error of judgment. The crowds who had cheered Chamberlain, the peacemaker, on his return from Munich, no longer had any confidence in their prime minister, and on May 10th, 1940, he was replaced by none other than Winston Churchill,

head of a wartime coalition government. – It is upon this foundation, that Hitler, with his tattered lackey, Mussolini, at his tail and Admiral Darlan frisking by his side, pretends to build out of hatred, appetite and racial assertion a new order for Europe. We cannot see how deliverance will come or when it will come, but nothing is more certain than that every trace of Hitler’s footsteps, every stain of his infected and corroding fingers will be sponged and purged and, if need be, blasted from the surface of the earth.

For Churchill, as he offered nothing but blood, sweat and tears, one of the most crucial defining moments of the conflict came within hours of him taking up residence in number 10, Downing Street, as Hitler’s blitzkrieg advancing through the Low Countries began. With the British Expeditionary Force already fighting on mainland Europe, Churchill had an added incentive for implementing a rescue mission, as the Nazi war machine thundered into France from the east and the south, trapping the Allied troops.

It was a time for heroism, and Churchill rose to the challenge, inspiring Britain’s civilians to follow his lead. As the Allied forces retreated to the beaches of Dunkirk, awaiting certain death at the hands of the Germans, the British Navy, finding any sea where the vessel that could cross the English Channel, set out on a daring rescue mission.

700 ships, which included everything from luxury yachts to tugboats and paddle steamers, set sail for France, not knowing what carnage they’d find there. When they reached the French coast they work tirelessly to ferry home the awaiting soldiers. Some made many journeys, and with the British Navy estimating to save about 45,000 men.

When the numbers were finally counted in the early days of June 1940 more than 330,000 Allied servicemen had survived to fight another day. Winston Churchill had his miracle. For the first time, Adolf Hitler’s carefully planned military strategy failed to deliver the success the Fuhrer had become so accustomed to.

It could be said that although, overall, the Germans had won the battle for Dunkirk, the Allies had been triumphant, even in defeat. Winston Churchill was now offering inspiring leadership. The people of Great Britain shared the invincible, spirit of Dunkirk, and Hitler now had more a fight on his hands for the island nation than he could ever have imagined.

Hitler, having brilliantly maneuvered the Allied troops onto the beaches of Dunkirk, ordered his divisions to halt just a matter of miles short of the stranded Allies. It’s fair to say, with a rescue mission of the scale ordered by Churchill, highly unlikely, that Hitler could’ve assumed he would of had all the time in the world to allow his air force, the Luftwaffe, the honor of finishing the operation.

However, it has also been suggested that Hitler permitted the Allies to escape as a goodwill gesture, as he was still hoping for a negotiated peace with the British. But if was indeed the case, he had seriously misjudged the mood of his enemy. Churchill openly declared that Britain would never surrender and Hitler quickly realized that if he was to invade Britain he would have a huge battle ahead of him, despite his position of strength.

From a strategic point of view, Hitler was well aware that the German Navy was inferior to that of the British. While the Luftwaffe seemed significantly stronger than the British RAF. Consequently, the Battle of Britain began on July 10th, 1940, as Hitler aimed to destroy the British Air Force and their bases, so that when his invasion force attacked there’d be no hindrance from the skies.

But Hitler had failed to account for the spirit of Dunkirk, and the British were victorious in the skies, holding off the Luftwaffe, until the autumn when a German invasion would not be possible due to weather and the tides. Undeterred, Hitler redirected his pilots to bomb Britain’s major cities, instigating a terror campaign that has gone down in history as the Blitz.

Again, the Dunkirk spirit came to the aid, as communities rally to support each other. As 1941 dawned, the conflict was escalating on a global scale. The assistance from the United Kingdom’s natural allies, the U.S., was soon forthcoming. From the outbreak of World War II, the American President Franklin Roosevelt, had been keen to support the Allies fight against Adolf Hitler, but due to public opinion America had remained neutral.

However, after losing so many vehicles and supplies during Dunkirk, Churchill asked Roosevelt to provide the tools so they could finish the job. The American president passed the Lend-Lease Act in 1941, funding Britain in the war, giving them some chance of withstanding Hitler’s onslaught. This, combined with a rather unexpected change of tactics from Hitler meant that matters look considerably brighter for Winston Churchill and the British, although it would open up one of the darkest chapters in the war.

Having failed to achieve the objectives of Operation Sea Lion, the codename for the invasion of Great Britain, on June 22nd, 1941, Adolf Hitler set Operation Barbarossa into action, as three million German troops marched into Russia, opening up an eastern front. – Had Hitler stopped after he’d successfully conquered France and the Low Countries, and not decided in, June 1941, that he was going to invade this really quite big country called Russia, he may have stayed in power.

But in June ’41 he has this enormous roll of the dice. It’s the ultimate gamble. “I’m going to invade Russia. “I’m gonna to get to Moscow before winter.” And so he thinks he’s gonna be able to do it. He’s built up his armed forces. Stalin’s had this pact with Hitler for years, and he’s thinking, “Hitlers never gonna invade.

” Oh, dear, Hitler goes straight in, June 1941, and again the blitzkrieg, Operation Barbarossa, as it was called in this instance, was tremendously successful, and initially the forces just went through Russia like a knife through butter. And they slaughtered, pillaged in their wake. This was an absolutely, a dazzling piece of offensive warfare. But, of course, what Stalin’s got is a lot of room to fight it, because he can retreat and retreat and retreat and retreat, and you still got thousands of miles of Russia behind you, that you can fall back on.

But also what Stalin does is he’s very good at regrouping and getting his forces back together. Germans use a lot of over-designed tanks, over-designed uniforms, over-design weapons. What the Russians are good at doing is just getting things together in a kind of makeshift way, but that works. Everything Russians have, uniforms, tanks, weaponry, it’s really simple, really easy to use, easy to mass-produce very, very quickly. German kit takes ages to produce. So this is another real problem that’s faced by the Germans.

Its aim was to conquer the Soviet Union before winter. But Stalin’s Red Army had very different ideas. The fight would be long and bitter and Hitler’s decision to destroy his non-aggression pact with Stalin would cost him dearly. What’s more, the alliances of the conflict changed overnight and Churchill immediately contacted Stalin to secure the might of Russia to fight for the Allied cause.

For the American president, this was an equally dramatic turn of events, but Roosevelt had more pressing issue needing his attention out in the Pacific. The USA was about to experience one of the most shocking moments in their history. The conflict between America and Japan had been growing in the Pacific since the beginning of the war.

This is where the link with the war in Europe became more clearly defined, as the Japanese had signed the Tripartite Act with Germany and Italy, back in 1940. Undoubtedly, the last thing Hitler wanted was the Americans entering the war on the side of the Allies, but as events played out in the Pacific that was precisely what would happen before the end of 1941.

Just as Hitler had built his power base in Europe during the 1930s, the Japanese had been expanding their empire into China, leading to Japan resigning from the League of Nations. Roosevelt registered American disapproval by terminating trade with Japan, but the Empire of the Sun continued to expand until in 1941 the USA completely cut off oil supplies to the Japanese.

This was a major problem, as America provided 80% of Japan’s oil, and if going to war with the USA was the only way to secure this precious material, then the Japanese were prepared to do it. However, being excellent military strategists they knew they would have to plan with the greatest of care, the element of surprise would be absolutely crucial.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was a total success for the Japanese, as the Americans awoke to total devastation with the first wave of Japanese pilots attacking at 7:45 a.m., while 3/4 of the anti-aircraft guns were unmanned. In less than 30 minutes, the U.S. Navy had been desolated with the loss of 16 ships, more than 160 planes, and 2,400 servicemen.

Unsurprisingly, President Roosevelt declared war on Japan on December 8th, with the full support of the nation. – I ask that Congress declared that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan, on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

Due to the Tripartite Act, this meant that Germany and Italy were duty-bound to declare war on the USA, in support of the Japanese. As ever, Winston Churchill had something to say on the decision of the USA to enter the war, marking that Hitler’s fate was sealed.

 – We have certainly a most encouraging example here of what can be achieved by British and Americans working together, heart and hand. In fact, one might almost feel that if they could keep it up, there’s hardly anything they could not do, either in the field of war or in not less tangled problems of peace. But our thanksgiving, however fervent, must be brief.

Heavier work lies ahead, not only in the European, but as I have indicated, in the Pacific and Indian spheres. The world was quite literally now at war, and the true horror of Adolf Hitler’s treatment of those banished to Nazi concentration camps was now becoming all too evident. At the beginning of 1941, Churchill and the British had stood alone in the battle to withstand the Nazi threat, and Hitler was still very much in the ascendancy.

However, by the end of the year, the world’s greatest financial power, the Americans, the world’s greatest military power, the Russians, and the world’s greatest empire, the British, were all joined together fighting the Allied cause, turning the tide in their favor, for the first time. Slowly things were improving on the side of the Allies, as the Russian Red Army were making life very difficult for the German invaders.

Adolf Hitler had his sights set on the Russian city of Stalingrad. This was predominantly for propaganda value, as it shared its name with the Russian dictator. Unsurprisingly, Stalin was determined to defend the city until the bitter end. As Hitler boasted that this was a conquest that his 6th Army could quickly achieve, he was about to be proved wrong.

The conditions at Stalingrad were truly appalling for both fighting forces. It proved to be the bloodiest battle in human history, with civilians caught in the crossfire treated with the worst brutality. The combined casualties have been estimated at more than 1 1/2 million, with neither side able to give way.

As Hitler and Stalin took on a siege mentality, neither wanting to even contemplate defeat. The new year of 1943 brought with it little cheer for Adolf Hitler from the east. By the end of January, the Germans began their surrender. When the Red Army celebrated winning the Battle of Stalingrad, they’d completely destroyed the German 6th Army.

It was a defining moment for Adolf Hitler, but not of the kind he’d been used to, as his health deteriorated, possibly due to Parkinson’s disease, his behavior became even more unpredictable. However, there was one area where the Germans were unseemingly unbeatable, at sea. Out in the Atlantic, the German offensive was devastating for the Allies, even Winston Churchill later commented that the only thing that had really scared him during the war was the Germans at sea.

But in the end, the Allies won the battle for the Atlantic in a matter of months. The brilliant British code breakers consistently deciphered the German Enigma transmissions, and combined with a new radar system that could identify submarines, the Allies were able to seize the advantage. Meanwhile, with the new backup of the Americans, the Allies were ready to begin their assault on Italy, starting with Sicily.

Operation Husky, as it was known, was a success as the Italians, in Sicily, no longer had the motivation to continue to fight Hitler’s battles, and an armistice was signed with the Allies on September 8th, 1943. Mussolini was imprisoned, but the Germans rescued him, and he was restored as a puppet leader, with the Nazis in total control of Italy.

Europe was now a maelstrom of changing power bases. Despite matters progressing more slowly than had been anticipated in Italy, the Allies plans for the biggest conflict were ready to be put into action. June 6th, 1944, an invasion force left the south coast of Britain, heading for the beaches of Normandy.

It would go down in history as D-Day, and despite Adolf Hitler being well aware that such an attack was imminent it still came as a complete surprise, giving the Allies in advantage. The Germans had been convinced that the invasion would come from Dover, and target Calais, and the Allies did all they could to encourage their enemy to believe this.

For every reconnaissance flight over Normandy, two flew over a Calais. The Allies landed on the planned beaches of invasion and were met with a fight for the land. Nevertheless, by the end of D-Day, the mission which had been so crucial to the Allies winning the war had been successful. Incredibly, the events on D-Day could equally have gone Hitler’s way, but it would take the entire summer for the Battle of Normandy to be won.

The Allies suffered casualties of over 220,000. The German casualties were more than 300,000. A visit to Normandy today, as cemeteries for the soldiers on all sides can be found, would prove to be a very moving experience. Shortly after D-Day, an assassination attempt on the life of Adolf Hitler would prove that resistance in Germany was building at an alarming rate. – There were lots of plots to kill Hitler.

And, of course, today, we wish at least just one of them had actually worked. And he survived so many that it made Hitler feel that he really did have this kind of divine providence behind him that made him survive. The most celebrated plot against him was the July bomb plot, of July 1944, in which you’ve got this, kind of, coterie of senior officers, all over the Third Reich, who have been meeting in secret for many years, actually, and they decided that the thing to do, is in Hitler’s headquarters, is that they’re gonna put a briefcase full of explosives underneath his conference table, and they’re gonna send it off,

by a man called Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, very aristocratic war hero, quite badly wounded, and that bomb is gonna go blow up underneath Hitler and is gonna kill him. And then these German officers are gonna take control of the Third Reich, and they’re either gonna find peace with the Allies, or fight the war in a different way. But what they wanna do is to get rid of Hitler.

 And they don’t want to get rid of Hitler because he’s evil, that may be part of it, they wanna get rid of Hitler because they think he’s fighting the war badly, and they just are fed up with him. And, indeed, Hitler is fighting the war badly, ’cause he’s a terrible, terrible strategist. On 20th of July 1944, everything’s in place. You’ve got people in Berlin ready to take over the SS.

You’ve got various army units, all over the Third Reich, ready to go at the drop of the code word, Valkyrie, which is gonna say that Hitler’s been killed. Now, Stauffenberg is at the planning conference that day, on the 20th of July, it’s a lovely of the day. And he takes his briefcase, big bomb, puts it under this big oak table, where Hitler’s gonna to lean over and study various maps of the military situation.

The bomb goes off, Stauffenberg’s hot-footing it at that point. And the whole building is basically destroyed. There’s no way anybody can survive. But miracle upon miracle, Hitler survives. Because this oak table is so heavy, so over-engineered, that, actually, it absorbs so much of the blast that Hitler gets away with, I think, a perforated eardrum, some torn trousers and a bit of shock.

 He survives this absolutely huge blast and people look at the building and think, “How could anybody have survived that?” He’s incredibly lucky, and as a result, of course, the bomb plot fails. And all the people who are involved, the conspirators, are rounded up. Some of them are executed summarily, some of them are famously strung up and hanged with piano wire and filmed, and their executions are supposedly watched by Hitler, repeatedly.

 This is a really, really devastating blow for any resistance in the Third Reich. It comes just a month and a bit after D-Day. And, of course, as the Allied forces, both Russian, American, British, Canadian, French, punch their way into the Third Reich, the resistance never quite manages to take advantage of that. What might have been a major defining moment that would have undoubtedly shortened the war by many months had failed to happen.

 And despite the outcome of the conflict now being almost certain to go the Allies way, many lives would still be lost that could have been saved if Operation Valkyrie had resulted in the death of Adolf Hitler. The Allies themselves viewed their victory as a foregone conclusion. And as the Germans retreated back to their homeland, towards the end of 1944, the Allies decided to make a push for Berlin.

However, the Nazi war machine was still capable of inflicting immense damage, and in a last desperate bid to fight back Hitler attempted a daring mission to split the Allies by attacking through the Ardennes, just as he had done on the way to Dunkirk. – This is a war brought about by Hitler, and this is a war that Hitler has fought for too long and he’s fighting it to the death, and he’s fighting to the death of the people who he supposedly loves, and he no longer loves them by the end of the war. And he says that, basically, the German people don’t deserve him,

the German people don’t deserve Germany, and everybody should fight to the death because, basically, they don’t deserve to be alive because they failed him. Classic narcissistic thinking, the world is for him and he’s not there for the world. Beginning on December 16th, the Germans attempted to defeat the Americans in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge.

However, the Germans were unable to capitalize on their advantage, and by early January, 1945, Hitler withdrew his soldiers from the Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge was recorded as an Allied victory. Hitler’s last gamble had failed. The push for Berlin now became the main focus for the Allies. – The first half of 1945 is probably the darkest six months in Germany’s history, because it’s being invaded by the Russians, the Red Army, from the east and you’ve got the other Allies coming through from the west. And it’s the Russians who reach Berlin first. And when they reach Berlin, it’s a city in rubble,

it’s a city in flames, it’s a city in chaos. It’s a city in which squads of marauding loyal Nazis are going around hanging people who are not taking part in the resistance of the city. It’s a city in which you then got some Nazis committing suicide. It is the most benighted, appalling place you can imagine, and you’ve got the Soviet Army literally raping and pillaging this city.

The Allied leaders met to discuss the fate for post-war Germany, while the battle for Berlin was beginning. The Russians move steadily from the east, while the Western Allies cross the Rhineland, and by April the Soviet troops, three million strong, dealt brutal blows to the last traces of the German resistance.

With the Russians at the gates to Berlin, Adolf Hitler had nowhere to run, and on April 30th, he committed suicide in his bunker. As the city at the heart of his Thousand-Year Reich burnt to the ground and crumbled in ruins around him. – Hitler’s last days in the in the Fuhrerbunker, under the Reich Chancellery in the center of Berlin, our a kind of terrible end of a Shakespearean tragedy.

 As the thunder, Russian artillery, all around them, and they’re, deep, deep inside this sort of concrete, underground fortress, everybody going mad, and especially Hitler. Who then gets married to his long-term girlfriend, Eva brown, in this bizarre ceremony. And then just a few days later, Hitler, on the 30th of April, 1945, decides to take his own life, and Eva Braun is gonna do the same thing with him, or Eva Hitler, as of course, she became.

 And so he goes into his little, kind of, living room, with his new bride, and they poison and shoot themselves. It’s thought that Hitler’s done both. He takes little glass ampoule, little canister of cyanide, and also shoots himself, and Eva Braun commits suicide by poisoning herself. Their bodies are then removed by some loyal SS men, he’s adjutant, and they are taken out in what passes now for a garden in the Reich Chancellery, but, of course, it’s just to kind of pot-marked hellhole of artillery shells. And their bodies are burned.

I mean, this great, kind of almost like a Viking pyre, like in a Viking longship going up. Effectively, the war in Europe was over. And after the official surrender on May 7th, 1945, the Allies celebrated in style. Hitler’s war was finally over. – This is a solemn, but glorious hour. I wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to see this day.

General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations. The flags of freedom fly all over Europe. For this victory we join in offering our thanks to the providence which has guided us and sustained us through the dark days of adversity and into light. The tyrannical force of Nazi Germany sent the world into chaos, fighting to defeat this growing empire of hate, violence and discrimination.

 – It was very difficult for the German population to come to terms with what they found out about the Hitler regime after its demise. The Allied occupation from 1945 brought about the demilitarization, the denazification, and the re-education of Germans, and that was very important. But then also the Nuremberg trials and a host of other post-war trials, in which the leading Nazis, or at least the ones who hadn’t committed suicide, the leading Nazis were brought to trial. Again, this brought to popular attention exactly what the evils of the regime had been.

The most famous trials were those held in Nuremberg, when 21 high Nazis faced their accusers. Hitler was dead, but these were his chief lieutenants, Hess and Ribbentrop among them. It was an international tribunal that sat judgment, and heard massive evidence that was collected. The prisoners remained defiant throughout the trial, seemingly confident that they would be freed. They were all were quick to plead not guilty.

Nuremberg trials went on for 15 months and bit by bit this exponents of mass murder moved closer and closer to hangman’s nose. 21 were found guilty and 10 were executed. But he misery and horror the spawned lived after them. For successive generations of Germans, they’ve really struggled to come to terms with this very difficult aspect of their nation’s past.

– It’s not to say that there’s a specific moment when we know that Germany got over the evil of Hitler’s regime. There was no doubt that for many years, decades, a process of learning about your past has taken place in Germany. Of course, schoolchildren are taught today in Germany, what was done in the name of the German people.

There are two ways of looking at it, you can either say, the Germans were seized by these bunch of gangsters, and then they then abused the power that was given to them, or the Germans willingly gave these people this power. Certainly, there are a lot of reasons why you might have voted for Hitler in the ’30s, not all of which involved you being evil.

But certainly, if you are a fan of Hitler after the war, still, and after all the revelations that had come out, then I’d say you definitely are evil. Hitler’s war has left a mark on history. A reminder that this behavior should never be tolerated. And the world should not dismiss such brutal atrocities again.