Factions
The German Army
World War Two
The Treaty Of Versailles stated that Germany
Now The Weimar Republic
Was only allowed to have 100.000 men for its military
To prevent future agresion
Hitler bypassed this by allowing the SA
With a Paramilitary unit
Of the National socialist German Woker's Party
To Expand Rapidly
The growth of the SA worried the German Army
Who feared it would be taken over by the group
An its leader Ernst Röhm
This fears were settled when hitler ordered the Night of the Long Knives
Purging the SA leaders and reducing its power
In its place the SS emerged as The nazi loyal paramilitary force
In 1935
Hitler
Fuhrer of nazi Germany
Violated The Treaty of Versailles by rebuilding the German army
strength by bringing in military
conscription and rearmament
the German armed forces as a whole
previously known as the Reichswehr now became the Wehrmacht
this was the Heer, the army
The Kriegsmarine, the Navy
and the Luftwaffe, the Air Force
The Wehrmacht absorbed most of the members of the SA into military service
The waffen-ss also formed
which was the carefully selected well armed and well
trained military wing of SS serving
alongside the Regular Army
1939 the German army invaded Poland the operation
known as Operation Fall Weiss and a
strength of 1.5 million men
and nine Panzer divisions
they defeated the Polish army within weeks of the invasion
using such military doctrine as sweeping pincer
and lateral movements later known as blitzkrieg
interestingly the majority of the German army would not be motorized
like news propaganda would depict
instead it relied on railways and
horse-drawn transport for transportation
in 1940 Norway, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands would fall to the German Army
and another swift victory to the
German army, France, came in operations
Fall Gelb and Fall Rot
the French army mobilized more men than
the Germans but were poorly led and
organized while the French were
well-armed and fortifications of imagine
a line it was broken by the German army
at its weak point through the Ardennes
in early nineteen forty one German
troops known as the Africa Corps
commanded by Erwin Rommel were sent to
North Africa to reinforce the Italian
forces who had fared badly against the Allies there
Yugoslavia and Greece would
also fall to the german army in 1941 and
by june of the same year three million
men were ready for operation barbarossa against the Soviet Union
plus 850,000 from other Axis countries
the German army was unable to defeat the Red Army
on the Eastern Front and received heavy casualties
battles like Stalingrad
ended the myth of the invincibility of the German army
the Allied forces in France following the d-day landings
had pushed the German forces back on the
Western Front the army still had over
a hundred infantry divisions and 25 Panzer
divisions by january 1945
supported in a last-ditch effort by the Volkssturm
the German army was defeated in
the Battle of Berlin on may eight 1945
but some units continued to fight on
for a few days in pockets of resistance
against the Soviets in the east
Around thirteen million Germans served in the
Army during World War two it is
estimated that 5.2 million were killed
or missing in action