1 - France Acquires the Saar

Summary

Let me do as I wish and in ten years you will not recognize your city.

—Adolf Hitler to the people of Saarbrücken in 1935

Never before in modern world history had a country been defeated so thoroughly as was Nazi Germany.

—Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace

Germany and the Saar at “Stunde Null”

THE SECOND WORLD WAR was a war of unspeakable tragedy. The war began on September 1, 1939, when Great Britain and France declared war on Germany after the German invasion of Poland. Then, to the shock of the world, in the summer of 1940, France, which had held out for four years during the First World War, fell to the Germans in only six weeks. In June 1941 Germany turned eastward again, invading the Soviet Union.

The Nazis’ ultimate objective was to acquire Lebensraum, or “living space” for German settlers. In addition, they intended to secure raw materials that would ultimately help Germany match the vast production capacities of the United States, which entered the war in December 1941. The Nazis waged what amounted to a war of racial annihilation in the Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Tens of millions of Slavs, many of whom had already suffered under the rule of Joseph Stalin, perished in this war. The Nazis most barbaric act was their systematic attempt to destroy Europe's Jewish population, resulting in the deaths of around 6 million Jews.

While the Nazis unleashed war and genocide upon Europe, Germany struggled to defeat Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Beginning with their defeat at the battle of Stalingrad in early 1943 and then in North Africa and Italy later that same year, the Germans experienced a series of military reversals. After successfully landing in Normandy, American, British, and Canadian troops liberated France in the summer of 1944. As the Vichy regime crumbled in France, Charles de Gaulle's Provisional Government took power. France, however, experienced a near civil war at the end of the war as the French Resistance summarily executed thousands of alleged collaborators, while many more were later sentenced to death, prison, or other punishments in trials and administrative purges.