Map1 Outbreak of War, Britain and France as Allies, September 1939
Hitler's decision to invade Poland provoked Britain and France to declare war on Germany. The Werhmacht tore through Poland in a matter of weeks. After the fall of Poland the war entered a lull - "the phoney war" - which lasted until Hitler unleashed his armies Western Front in the spring of 1940
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Map2 The Fall of France, June 1940
The Germans overran Norway and Denmark with frightening speed. British failures in Norway forced the resignation of Chamberlain and brought Churchill to power. The Nazis then defeated the Allies in France, making the British Expeditionary Force flee via Dunkirk, and leaving Britain to fight on alone
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Map3 British fighting in North Africa, Autumn 1940
Italy only entered the war when France's defeat was a certainty. From their positions in Libya the Italians advanced into Egypt in an attempt to break the British hold on the Suez canal and secure the whole of the Mediterranean
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Map4 British defeat the Italians in North Africa, and the British sends troops to Greece
After the brief Italian advance British and Commonwealth forces launched an effective counter-attack. Having defeated the Italians, Churchill diverted men and equipment to Greece in an attempt to prevent the German invasion of the Balkans
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Map5 British and Commonwealth forces fight in and withdraw from Greece and Crete April and May 1941. Rommel advances in North Africa May 1941.
British and Commonwealth forces in Greece were forced to withdraw in the face of an efficient and aggressive enemy. When Greece and Crete fell to the Germans, it created problems for the British in North Africa
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Map6 Invasion of the USSR, Britain no longer fights alone.
In June 1941 German forces stormed into the Soviet Union, breaking the non-aggression pact which Hitler and Stalin had made in 1939. The Russians were taken utterly unawares, and the German advance was halted only at the gates of Moscow. It was a disaster for the USSR, but Britain was no longer fighting alone
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Map7 Summer Winter 1942
As Soviet resistance stiffened , the Wehrmacht was able to advance only in the south, where it stalled at Stalingrad. Meanwhile Anglo-American forces landed in French North Africa and were now able to close on the Axis forces from both the East and West
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Map8 The first half of1943
The war in Russia reached a turning point in 1943. Slowly but surely, the Russians drove the Germans back. The Allies crushed Rommel and secured the whole of North Africa ready for a move into Sicily and Italy. Following these Axis reverses Italy changed sides and joined the Allies, provoking a German invasion
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Map9 The Summer of 1944
June 1944 saw the long awaited allied landings in France. Despite fierce counter attacks the Germans were unable to dislodge the allied beachead. In the East, the Red Army pushed onwards while the British and Americans fought a long and frustrating campaign in Italy against skilful German resistance
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Map10 The Autumn of 1944
By the autumn of 1944 the Red Army was in possession of much of Eastern Europe, and the allied breakout from the Normandy beachheads had reached Paris. Allied landings also took place in the French Riviera, where the overstretched German forces had no choice but to withdraw
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Map11 The Winter of 1944
By the winter of 1944 the Germans were defending their own borders fron the advancing Allies. All of France and much of Belguim was now in Allied hands. The Red Army was advancing ever eastwards and the Allies were moving steadily north through Italy
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Map12 May 1945 Germany Surrenders
Hitler's "thousand-year Reich" came to an end after only twelve years on May 8 1945. Germany was split into zones of occupation, the war in Europe was over, and the process of reconstruction could now begin.
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STALIN
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Map1 Soviet Borders in 1925
Russia lost vast lands in the first world war - Poland, Finland , the Baltic states. For the first years of its existence, the new communist state was too busy with civil war to address territorial issues. But Stalin came to power with plans for a new Soviet Empire, greater than its tsarist predecessor
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Map2 September 1939 The Molotov Ribbentrop Pact
When war loomed again, Stalin rejected an alliance from Britain and France, and made a pact with Nazi Germany. In the autumn of 1939, Russia and Germany divided Poland between themselves, and under a secret protocol to the non-aggression pact, the Baltics and Bessarabia came into the Soviet sphere of interest
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Map3 Russia moves into the Baltic States and invades Finland
Stalin consolidated his advance into Poland by absorbing Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia into the Soviet Union. Stalin also declared war on Finland, and after several humiliating defeats in "the winter war" Stalin managed to force Finland to cede territory to Russia, and so make the area around Leningrad more defensible
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Map4 Summer 1941 Germany invades Russia
On the 21st of June the German army invaded the USSR, and so began the single biggest war in history. Stalin refused to believe that the Germans were planning to invade Russia, and this affected the ability of the Red army to cope with the German attack. By the end of the autumn the Germans were in sight of Moscow
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Map5 November 1942
The German advance continued into 1942, but Stalin refused to surrender Moscow to the Nazis and the city held out. The Germans were encountering serious resistance in Leningrad and Stalingrad, which like Moscow, refused to yield, though at horrific cost to the population
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Map6 Russian advance to the west 1943
The tide of the war changed in 1943. The Red Army pushed forward first from Stalingrad, then over the entire front. For the first time, the Red Army's supply of tanks and planes outstripped the Germans', and this superiority began to make itself felt on the battlefield
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Map7 Winter 1944
At the beginning of 1944, the three-year siege of Leningrad lifted, and by the year's end the Germans had been pushed right of the entire Soviet Union. Stalin was now in a position to establish the Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe which he believed was essential for Russia's own security
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Map8 The Defeat of Germany and the creation of the Soviet bloc.
With Germany crushed , Stalin was now in complete control of the whole of Eastern Europe and of half of Germany too. The War cost the Soviet Union nearly twenty million dead, and had tested Stalin's leadership to the limit, but made the Soviet Union a superpower
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Map9 The emerging Cold War1949
Stalin set up puppet communist governments in all the Eastern European states. Co-operation between Stalin and his former allies in America and Western Europe ground to a halt, and was replaced with the profound mistrust which characterised relations between East and West for the next forty years
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HITLER CAPTIONS - there are still small errors in maps nine and ten
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Map1 Germany on Hitler's ascension to power
When Hitler came to power, German bitterness over her defeat in the first world war became the driving force of Nazi foreign policy. Hitler's chief aim became uniting all the German people in Europe within one state
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Map2 1936 The re-occupation of the Rhineland
The re-occupation of the Rhineland was a daring gamble. Germany was forbidden to station troops in the Rhineland, which still remained within Germany's borders. Hitler risked a war with France which he would certainly have lost. But Britain and France lacked the reslove to resist Hitler, so the gamble paid off
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Map3 The Anschluss
Encouraged by his success in the Rhineland, Hitler proceeded to absorb Austria into the Greater Germany. This too was forbidden by international treaty, but appeasement was the dominant policy in Britain and France, and again Hitler encountered no resistance.
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Map4 The Sudetenland
The Sudentenland became part of Czechslovakia after the first world war, but it's population was largely German. By threatening to go to war if he did not get the Sudetenland for Germany, Hitler managed to cajole Britain and France into forcing Czechslovakia to give the Sudentenland to Germany
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Map5 Czechslovakia
Slovakia became a German puppet state soon after the Munich Agreement. Bohemia and Moravia (all that remained of Czechslovakia) were occupied in March 1939. Having destroyed Czechslovakia, Hitler was now in a position to realise his dreams of expanding Germany dominace further eastwards
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Map6 Poland
Though the British and French had signed treaties guaranteeing Poland's independence, Hitler believed that the Allies would never go to war. He was wrong. When Germany invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and the second world war was under way
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Map7 Norway, Denmark, and the Low Countries Spring 1940
Elated by the swift destruction of the Poland, Hitler prepared to launch his armies on the Western Front. Denmark and Norway capitulated almost immediately. Then the Nazis turned their attention to Belguim and the Netherlands
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Map8 The Fall of France
The world was shocked and amazed when France, an international power of the first rank, crumbled in the face of German attack. With France under German occupation, Hitler was able to begin planning Operation Sealion, the invasion of Britain
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Map9 Invasion of the Balkans
Hitler invaded the Balkans to secure the flanks which would be exposed once the invasion of Russia began. The capture of Romania also gave the German war machine access to a vital oil fields
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Map10 German Invasion of North Africa
After chasing British forces out of Greece, Hitler moved into Crete and began strengthening the Axis position in the Mediterranean. German troops were despatched from there to North Africa to reinforce the Italian army, under pressure from the British in Libya
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Map11 The Invasion of Russia
Hitler always saw Russia as Germany's enemy. He considered the Slavic peoples sub-human and he detested communism. Hitler also believed that it was Germany's destiny to expand into the East, which he planned to re-settle with German colonists. This aim could only be achieved by force of arms.
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Map 12 German Occupation of Vichy France
Vichy France, Hitler's puppet state in the south of the country, was occupied when Anglo-American landings in French North-Africa met little resistance. The capitulaion of France's colonies in North Africa convinved Hitler he could no longer trust the Vichy government
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Map13 The Greatest Extent of the German Reich
In an astonishingly short space of time, Hitler created one of the largest empires of modern times. The Wehrmacht had won victories from the Russian steppes to the Atlantic coast, from North Africa to the Arctic Circle
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GURION
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Map1 The UN settlement 1947
According to the United Nations partition plan for Palestine, the land was divided up between Arabs and Jews. To the consternation of the Jews, Jerusalem, the ancient capital of the Jewish people, was not to be part of the new Israeli state
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Map2 The war of independence
Arabs also rejected the UN plan, and in May 1948 the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia attacked the new Israeli state. Though poorly armed and hugely outnumbered, the Israeli defence force drove back the Arab assault, and by the time of the 1949 ceasefire was in possession of new territories
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Map3 The Six-Day War
In 1956 Israel had temporarily occupied Gaza and Sinai in response to Arab violations of the 1949 armistice. In 1967 Israel was again attacked on three fronts from Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Israel destroyed the Egyptian air force, re-occupied Sinai and Gaza, and took control of the Golan Heights and Judea-Samaria
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Map4 In 1988
In 1973 Egypt and Syria had launched another attempt to destroy Israel during the holy festival of Yom Kippur, and had again been repelled. Under ceasefire agreements Israel, withdrew from parts of the Golan Heights, but in 1982 entered southern Lebanon to destroy bases from which the PLO had been shelling northern Israel
