Failing fortunes of Nazi Germany: Russian Front: Surrender

German soldiers surrender. 1941. District Tula, 1941.

German soldiers in the flooded trenches. October 1943

The retreat of German troops from Leningrad. February 2, 1944.

Russia's victory (From the BBC)

In the spring of 1944, a Soviet invasion of Germany became a real possibility, as Soviet troops pursued the retreating German army. Hitler ordered the citizens of Germany to destroy anything that the enemy could put to good use. Embittered by defeats, he later turned against the Germans themselves. 'If the German people lose the war, then they will have proved themselves unworthy of me.'

Hitler suffered his greatest military setback of the war in the summer of 1944. More destructive by far than the D-Day landings, Stalin's Operation Bagration in Belorussia eliminated three times more German army divisions than the Allies did in Normandy. Hitler retaliated by demanding specific divisions of the German army stand fast to the last man - the very tactic that Stalin had deployed so disastrously in the early days of the war. Defeat for Germany was only months away.

Final victory came for Russia when Soviet soldiers hoisted the red flag over the Berlin Reichstag in April 1945. The occupying troops celebrated, some indulging in the rape and murder of German citizens. When Stalin was told how some of the Red Army soldiers were treating German refugees, he is reported to say: 'We lecture our soldiers too much; let them have some initiative.'

"Vladlen Anchishkin, a Soviet battery commander on the 1st Ukrainian Front, sums up the horror of the whole event, when he tells how he took personal revenge on German soldiers: 'I can admit it now, I was in such a state, I was in such a frenzy. I said, 'Bring them here for an interrogation' and I had a knife, and I cut him. I cut a lot of them. I thought, 'You wanted to kill me, now it's your turn.'

A captive Field Marshal von Paulus at Stalingrad, 1943.


District Tupse, 1943. This Russian soldier must have nerves of steel. See the explosion just near him.

Raising the flag of the fascist Nazis in an occupied area of Stalingrad, 1942.

The soldier escort German prisoners of war captured in the battle for Moscow, in 1942, the Smolensk region.

General Helmuth Weidling (left), surrenders to the Russians. May 1945. He was in charge of the defence of Berlin.

Hitler in desperation had sent these boys to fight the approaching Russians. Berlin. May. 1945.

A column of German prisoners of war on the Garden Ring of Moscow July 17, 1944.

Soviet fighters tear down the Nazi swastika from the entrance to the factory. Voykova in the liberated city of Kerch, 1944.

A column of German prisoners of war captured in fighting in the Orel region, 1943.

General-Field Marshal Keitel directed to the signing of the act of unconditional surrender of Germany. May 8, Berlin, Karlhorst.

Keitel signs the surrender.

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Victorious Germans march through Paris: June 1940

The swastika flutters over Paris. France had surrendered.

A German parade in Paris

Ceremonial march of German troops on the Champs Elysees in Paris.

The German generals take a salute of their troops in Paris on June 14, 1940.

The German army pass the Arc de Triomphe, Paris, 1940.

German cavalry in the streets of Paris

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France during the Second World War
France surrenders: June 1940: WW2

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France surrenders: June 1940: WW2

1940. June. France has been defeated. Crestfallen French representatives arrive to 'discuss' surrender treaty with Nazi Germany

German and French offocials at the talks.

France hands over formally the Maginot Line to Germany.

Handing over the Belfort Fortress

German troops march at the elaborate ceremony of the surrender of France. Hitler wanted France to sign the surrender in the same rail coach in which representatives of a defeated Germany had been forced to sign the surrender in 1918. Rubbing it in, one could say.

Goering arrives. On his right is Petain, the head of the puppet regime of Vichy France.

Hitler arrives. One can see, he is full of pride.

Account of the surrender

(Hitler's face) "is afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph."

William Shirer was a radio reporter for CBS News. We join his story as he stands in a clearing in the forest of Compiegne next to the railroad car where the ceremony will take place. Hitler and his entourage arrive just moments before the ceremony:

"The time is now three eighteen p.m. Hitler's personal flag is run up on a small standard in the centre of the opening.

Also in the centre is a great granite block which stands some three feet above the ground. Hitler, followed by the others, walks slowly over to it, steps up, and reads the inscription engraved in great high letters on that block. It says:
"HERE ON THE ELEVENTH OF NOVEMBER 1918 SUCCUMBED THE CRIMINAL PRIDE OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE... VANQUISHED BY THE FREE PEOPLES WHICH IT TRIED TO ENSLAVE."

Hitler reads it and Goring reads it. They all read it, standing there in the June sun and the silence. I look for the expression on Hitler's face. I am but fifty yards from him and see him through my glasses as though he were directly in front of me. I have seen that face many times at the great moments of his life. But today! It is afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph. He steps off the monument and contrives to make even this gesture a masterpiece of contempt. He glances back at it, contemptuous, angry - angry, you almost feel, because he cannot wipe out the awful, provoking lettering with one sweep of his high Prussian boot. He glances slowly around the clearing, and now, as his eyes meet ours, you grasp the depth of his hatred. But there is triumph there too - revengeful, triumphant hate. Suddenly, as though his face were not giving quite complete expression to his feelings, he throws his whole body into harmony with his mood. He swiftly snaps his hands on his hips, arches his shoulders, plants his feet wide apart. It is a magnificent gesture of defiance, of burning contempt for this place now and all that it has stood for in the twenty-two years since it witnessed the humbling of the German Empire.

...It is now three twenty-three p.m. and the Germans stride over to the armistice car. For a moment or two they stand in the sunlight outside the car, chatting. Then Hitler steps up into the car, followed by the others. We can see nicely through the car windows. Hitler takes the place occupied by Marshal Foch when the 1918 armistice terms were signed. The others spread themselves around him. Four chairs on the opposite side of the table from Hitler remain empty. The French have not yet appeared. But we do not wait long. Exactly at three thirty p.m. they alight from a car. They have flown up from Bordeaux to a near-by landing field. ...Then they walk down the avenue flanked by three German officers. We see them now as they come into the sunlight of the clearing.

...It is a grave hour in the life of France. The Frenchmen keep their eyes straight ahead. Their faces are solemn, drawn. They are the picture of tragic dignity. They walk stiffly to the car, where they are met by two German officers, Lieutenant-General Tippelskirch, Quartermaster General, and Colonel Thomas, chief of the Fuhrer's headquarters. The Germans salute. The French salute. The atmosphere is what Europeans call "correct." There are salutes, but no handshakes.

Now we get our picture through the dusty windows of that old wagon-lit car. Hitler and the other German leaders rise as the French enter the drawing-room. Hitler gives the Nazi salute, the arm raised. Ribbentrop and Hess do the same. I cannot see M. Noel to notice whether he salutes or not.

Hitler, as far as we can see through the windows, does not say a word to the French or to anybody else. He nods to General Keitel at his side. We see General Keitel adjusting his papers. Then he starts to read. He is reading the preamble to the German armistice terms. The French sit there with marble-like faces and listen intently. Hitler and Goring glance at the green table-top.

The reading of the preamble lasts but a few minutes. Hitler, we soon observe, has no intention of remaining very long, of listening to the reading of the armistice terms themselves. At three forty-two p.m., twelve minutes after the French arrive, we see Hitler stand up, salute stiffly, and then stride out of the drawing-room, followed by Goring, Brauchitsch, Raeder, Hess, and Ribbentrop. The French, like figures of stone, remain at the green-topped table. General Keitel remains with them. He starts to read them the detailed conditions of the armistice.

Hitler and his aides stride down the avenue towards the Alsace-Lorraine monument, where their cars are waiting. As they pass the guard of honour, the German band strikes up the two national anthems, Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles and the Horst Wessel song. The whole ceremony in which Hitler has reached a new pinnacle in his meteoric career and Germany avenged the 1918 defeat is over in a quarter of an hour."

Source: Eyewitnesstohistory.com

German planes fly over an occupied Paris

Top German generals with the French delegation.

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Dramatic moments WW2: Surrender of Poland 1939
Victorious Germans march through Paris: June 1940
France during the Second World War

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Dramatic moments WW2: Surrender of Poland 1939

Fall, 1939. The German blitzkrieg has smashed Poland. Time for the painful formal surrender of Poland to Germany.

The Wehrmacht gives Hitler a rousing welcome to Warsaw.

(From Leesaunders.co.uk)

With the Polish army using WW1 tactics, cavalry attacks on advancing tanks, it was swept away within two weeks by a well organized modern German army, and Poland fell first victim to 'Blitzkrieg' (Lighting War).

On the 17th of September the Soviet Union invaded Poland, and the two invading armies met at Brest-Litovsk, the site of the Russian surrender to Germany in 1918. The Soviet Union's justification for the invasion of Poland were that these areas of Poland they had just invaded and occupied, were rightfully territories of the Soviet Union.

For three weeks Warsaw radio had defiantly played the Polish national anthem continuously over the air, and on the 21st of September Warsaw was attacked. On the 27th of September Poland surrendered, after which Warsaw was reduced to rubble.

Top Polish general at the surrender ceremony. All very formal and proper, but the Polish must be feeling the utter humiliation.

Polish generals with top Wehrmacht officers.

The despair is writ large on the faces of the Polish

German troops enter Warsaw as scattered groups of Polish civilians watch in dismay

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France surrenders: June 1940: WW2

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