Blitzkrieg Essay -- essays research papers

     BLITZKRIEG (LIGHTNING WAR)           In the first phase of World War II in atomic number 63, Germany sought to avoid a long war. Germanys strategy was to licking its opponents in a series of short campaigns. Germany quickly overran much of Europe and was victorious for more than two years by relying on a new military tactic called the "Blitzkrieg" (lightning war). Blitzkrieg tactics undeniable the concentration of offensive weapons (such as tanks, planes, and artillery) along a narrow front. These forces would tote a breach in enemy defenses, permitting armored tank divisions to snap rapidly and roam freely behind enemy lines, causing cushion and disorganization among the enemy defenses. German air power prevented the enemy from adequately resupplying or redeploying forces and thereby from sending reinforcements to seal breaches in the front. German forces could in turn encircle opposing troops and force s urrender. Germany successfully use the Blitzkrieg tactic against Poland (attacked in September 1939), Denmark (April 1940), Norway (April 1940), Belgium (May 1940), the Netherlands (May 1940), Luxembourg (May 1940), France (May 1940), Yugoslavia (April 1941), and Greece (April 1941). Germany did not cudgel Great Britain, which was protected from German ground attack by the face Channel and the Royal Navy.                                            Despite the continuing war with Great Britain, German forces invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. At first, the German Blitzkrieg seemed to succeed. Soviet forces were driven back more than 600 miles to the gates of Moscow, with staggering losses. In declination 1941, Hitler unilaterally declared war on the United States, which consequently added its dire economic and military power to the coalition arrayed against him. A support German offensive against the Soviet Union in 1942 brought German forces in the east to the shores of the Volga River and the city of Stalingrad. However, the Soviet Union launched a counteroffensive in November 1942, lodging and destroying an finished German army at Stalingrad. Germany proved u... ...Germany). Despite the bloodline of the United Nations, the world remained politically unstable and only slowly aged from the incalculable physical and moral devastation wrought by the gravidst and to the highest degree costly war in history. Soldiers and civilians both had suffered in bombings that had wiped out entire cities. Modern methods of warfaretogether with the attempt of Germany to exterminate entire unearthly and ethnic groups (particularly the Jews)famines, and epidemics, had brought death to tens of millions and made as many more homeless. The harm and degradation of the wars victims were of proportions that pas sed the understanding of those who had been spared. The conventions of warfare had been violated on a large scale (see war crimes), and warfare itself was revolutionized by the development and use of atomic weapons. Political consequences included the reduction of Britain and France to powers of lesser rank, the emergence of the Common mart (see European Economic Community European Union), the independence of many spring colonies in Asia and Africa, and, perhaps most important, the beginning of the cold war betwixt the Western powers and the Communist-bloc nations.