Topic+A-15+Summarize+events+that+led+to+the+unconditional+surrender+of+Germany

toc = **1. Events Leading up to the Battle of Berlin** =
 * Events Leading to the Unconditional Surrender of Germany **

1.1 Battle of Normandy
After D-Day, the Allies deployed additional troops through Normandy. Over 1 million troops were deployed by the end of the month and over 3 million soldiers were deployed through Normandy by the end of the war. The Wehrmacht was pushed back and by the end of August, most of Northern France had been liberated. The Allies then began to plan the invasion of Germany.

**media type="custom" key="9346796" align="left"1.2 Battle of the Bulge**
The Battle of the Bulge was the last chance for the Wehrmacht to divide the Allied forces. At the time, Germany was surrounded by the East by the Soviet Army and from the West by the combined American and British forces. Hitler decided to make his last stand by attacking the Allied forces in the West in hopes of dividing the American and British forces and, ultimately, driving them out of Europe. On December 16th, 1944, the Wehrmacht desperately broke through the Ally lines. The Allies were taken off guard. However the Allied forces regrouped and won the battle. The Wehrmacht had no other option but to retreat. This was among the last significant battles in the Western Front in WWII.

=2. Leaders = media type="custom" key="9346648" align="left"

2.1 Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882- April 12, 1945)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in January 30th, 1882 into a wealthy family in Hyde Park, New York. After marrying his distant cousin Eleanor in 1905, he began a life in politics by becoming a New York State Senator. He soon became the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Woodrow Wilson. He then proceeded to be the Vice President nominee for the 1920 election.

Later, at the age of 39, Roosevelt developed polio while vacationing in Florida. He returned to New York and worked relentlessly. He finally became the governor of New York in 1928. From there, Roosevelt became elected president in 1932, the first of 4 times. When Roosevelt became president, there were 13,000,000 unemployed Americans. He then set out to start the New Deal to create projects that would employ Americans.

In 1939, another World War broke out. As with the last world war, America remained neutral in the beginning but sent aid to the Allied forces. However, this time, America was directly attacked by Japanese planes on Pearl Harbor. America then had no option to join the war on the Allied side. Roosevelt commanded the war and almost saw the defeat of the Axis forces in Europe. He died of a stroke on April 12, 1945. Harry Truman became President after Roosevelt died.

2.2 General Dwight D. Eisenhower (October 14, 1890- March 28, 1969)
media type="custom" key="9354004" align="right" The American general led the force as General Erwin Rommel's forces retreated west when the Wehrmacht fell on November 4th, in The Battle of Alamein. Rommel's Afrika Korps finally were destroyed in May 1943 when it was caught between the raft of Montgomery's and Eisenhower's forces.

Two years later in 1945 General Eisenhower was chosen Chief Of Staff for the US Army. Three years after that Eisenhower was inaugurated the President of Columbia University until late 1950. When he left Columbia University, he was selected the first Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization also known as NATO. But Eisenhower soon retired from the active service, his commission, and went back home to Abilene, Kansas. There he formally announced his Republican nomination for the 34th President of the United States.

2.3 General Georgy Zhukov (December 1, 1896- June 18, 1974)
Before World War II broke out, Georgy Zhukov was a cavalry commander during the Russian Civil War for the Red Army. He then fell in favor with Joseph Stalin and became the Marshall of the Soviet Union and its chief commander. He was in commanded the massive counter attack on Germany, and pushed the Germans back out of the USSR, subsequently liberating then German held territories such as Ukraine, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Finally, he was the commander who attacked Berlin and brought the German High Command to surrender.

After the war, Georgy Zhukov was, of course, spectacularly popular due to his military success. Joseph Stalin feared his popularity and sent him to command unimportant areas to keep Zhukov from obtaining his power. Following Stalin's death, the reins then went to Nikita Khrushchev, who made Georgy Zhukov the Minister of Defense.

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2.4 Joseph Stalin (December 21, 1879- March 5, 1953)
Joseph Stalin was born in what is now today Georgia into abject poverty. He later won a scholarship to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, but was expelled soon after for his Marxist beliefs. He then joined the Bolsheviks but was exiled for life to Siberia.

After the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin gave him a job in government as the General Secretary because of Stalin's loyalty. Nearing his death, Lenin was concerned about the character of Stalin, and did not want him as the leader of the USSR. However, after Lenin died, Stalin ousted Leon Trotsky and became the leader of the Soviet Union.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"> One of the many things Stalin did as leader was the Great Purge. Some of his former supporters and closest friends, including his disciple Sergey Kirov, Lev Kamenev (who helped him oust Trotsky), and Gregory Zinoviev (who also helped him oust Trotsky) were killed either by show trial (and the following execution) or were assassinated. Then, he shifted his gaze to the military. He feared that the military was planning a coup, so he killed 30,000, or 50% of all his officers.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Another one of his many goals were the 5 Year Plans. The 5 Year Plans called for a 111% increase in coal production, 200% percent increase in iron production, and a 335% increase in electrical power. Around the same time, Stalin "encouraged" peasants (with the threat of death) to work in collective farms to buy machinery so then the Soviet Union could increase crop production. Even though each of the criteria in the 5 Year Plans were not met, it industrialized the Soviet Union and bolstered the stagnant Soviet economy.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"> At the beginning of World War II, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a Non-Aggression pact, which secured Germany and Soviet Union from mutual attack. Both nations invaded Poland, with the USSR getting the Eastern part (Germany obtained the Western part of Poland), and the USSR invaded Finland in order to protect Petrograd which was not far away from the border. However, Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa and invaded the Soviet Union, breaking the Non- Aggression pact. After being turned back at Petrograd, the Germans were defeated by the Red Army on May 8, 1945.

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0in;"> Following the war, Stalin realized that he had control over Eastern Europe and allied with the Eastern European nations through the Warsaw Pact in order to create a buffer to protect Soviet interests by creating Communist regimes in said countries. The United States realized that Communism and the USSR posed a threat, so it created NATO to countervail the Communist juggernaut of Eastern Europe. This proved to be the catalyst of the Cold War.

==<span style="color: black; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 17px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 0in;">**2.5 Winston Churchill (November 30, 1874-January 15, 1965)media type="custom" key="9368998" align="right"** == Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874 in the Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire. His family was a military dynasty meaning his ancestors were generals or in the army. So Churchill was naturally ready for war. During times of crisis Churchill decided to meet often with other leaders and generals. He met with Franklin Delano Roosevelt on nine occasions. He also met with Joseph Stalin five times. Winston Churchill was the general of the British army and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during World War II.

media type="custom" key="9346634" align="left" =**<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">3. Soviet Invasion of Germany **= <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px;">Joseph Stalin took the initiative and rushed forward to seize Berlin before the other three Allies (United States, United Kingdom, and France) did. Germany had already been surrounded on all sides, and defeat seemed all but inescapable. However 300,000 Wehrmacht soldiers remained to defend the capital of their nation.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">To start out, Stalin separated his generals. This act made the generals willing to push ahead since each of them wanted to capture Berlin and win eternal glory for himself. On April 15, the Soviets launched millions of shells across the Oder River to cross into Germany <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;">, making this one of the largest artillery attacks of all time. However, the Red Army was met with fierce resistance. It took more than 3 days to break through the German line and cross into Germany. But, this victory came at a high cost: 30,000 Soviet soldiers were killed as opposed to the 10,000 German deaths.

3.1 Battle of Berlin
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px;">Hitler was in command of his own army when the Soviet soldiers finally arrived in Berlin. He ordered that he have direct control of 70,000 soldiers. That army, the 12th army, was to meet with the 9th army to recuperate and launch a counter attack. However, the 9th army was cut off and thousands of German soldiers and civilians were slaughtered by the Soviet Army in one of the nearby villages around Berlin. Still, thousands of bodies are found today in the forests around Berlin.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">Hitler attempted to have a last stand, including flooding the streets to try to slow the Russian advance, trying to hold off the oncoming Russian army, but to no avail. His 90,000 strong, rag-tag army proved to be no match for the 1 million soldiers in the gargantuan Red Army. Hitler realized that he was defeated. Nearing the end of the battle, Hitler and his then fiancée Eva Braun were married and subsequently committed suicide in a bunker under Berlin. This marked the final major campaign on the European Theater of World War II.

=4. Surrender of Germany= media type="custom" key="9346638" align="right" <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">By April 1945, Germany was surrounded on all sides by the Allied forces and defeat seemed inevitable. Depressed, Adolph Hitler committed suicide on April 30th and named Kriegsmarine Karl Doenitz as his successor. However, the German war effort seemed to be losing hope. 4 days earlier, the German units in Denmark and the <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif;"> Netherlands surrendered on April 26th, 1945.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">The war did not continue much longer. After a few days of fierce fighting in Berlin, the Germans finally capitulated on May 2nd, 1945. The German military sent Colonel General Alfred Jodl of the Wehrmacht to sign the peace treaty the same day. On May 7th, 1945, The German Army signed the surrender document with France, Britain and the United States. The next day, the Germans signed the surrender document with the Soviet Union. After more than 5 years of fighting, World War II was over in Europe.

**4.1 Hitler's Death**
Adolf Hitler was born in 1889 and died in 1945. Adolf Hitler was a dictator in Germany and the leader of the Nazi's. He was also the founder and leader of The Nazi Party. He proclaimed the official symbol of the Nazi Party, and later on Germany, the swastika (<span style="font-family: sans-serif,helvetica,sans-serif;"> 卐 )<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">. His wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and he shot himself. Hitler was pronounced dead on May 1, 1945. When he died he was in an underground bunker surrounded by the Red Army. Adolf believed that the collapse of his Third Reich was not graceful so that could have led to his death. Then he was then cremated with his wife.

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