The European theatre of World War II was one of the two main theatres of combat[nb

19] during World War II. It saw heavy fighting across Europe for almost six years,
starting with Germany's invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and ending with the
Western Allies conquering most of Western Europe, the Soviet Union conquering most
of Eastern Europe and Germany's unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945[nb 20]
although fighting continued elsewhere in Europe until 25 May. On 5 June 1945, the
Berlin Declaration proclaiming the unconditional surrender of Germany to the four
victorious powers was signed. The Allied powers fought the Axis powers on two major
fronts (Eastern Front and Western Front) as well as in a strategic bombing
offensive and in the adjoining Mediterranean and Middle East theatre.

Preceding events
Main articles: Events preceding World War II in Europe and Causes of World War II
Germany was defeated in World War I, and the Treaty of Versailles placed punitive
conditions on the country, including significant financial reparations, the loss of
territory (some only temporarily), war guilt, military weakening and limitation,
and economic weakening. Germany was humiliated in front of the world and had to pay
very large war reparations. Many Germans blamed their country's post-war economic
collapse on the treaty's conditions and these resentments contributed to the
political instability which made it possible for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party to
come to power.

After Hitler took Germany out of the League of Nations, Mussolini of Fascist Italy
and Hitler formed the Rome-Berlin axis, under a treaty known as the Pact of Steel.
Later, the Empire of Japan, under the government of Hideki Tojo, would also join as
an Axis power. Japan and Germany had already signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in
1936, to counter the perceived threat of the communism of the Soviet Union. Other
smaller powers also later joined the Axis throughout the war.

Outbreak of war in Europe

Main articles: Invasion of Poland and Phoney War
Germany and the Soviet Union were sworn enemies, but following the Munich
Agreement, which effectively handed over Czechoslovakia (a French and Soviet ally,
and the only remaining presidential democracy in Central Europe) to Germany,
political realities allowed the Soviet Union to sign a non-aggression pact (the
Molotov�Ribbentrop Pact) including a secret clause partitioning Poland, Lithuania,
Latvia, Estonia and Finland between the two spheres of influence.

Full-scale war in Europe began at dawn on 1 September 1939, when Germany used so-
called Blitzkrieg tactics and military strength to invade Poland, to which both the
United Kingdom and France had pledged protection and independence guarantees. On 3
September 1939, Britain and France declared war on Germany, and other allies soon
followed. The British Expeditionary Force was sent to France; however, neither
French nor British troops gave any significant assistance to the Poles during the
entire invasion, and the German�French border, excepting the Saar Offensive,
remained mostly calm. This period of the war is commonly known as the Phoney War.

On 17 September the Soviet forces joined the invasion of Poland, although remaining
neutral with respect to Western powers. The Polish government evacuated the country
for Romania. Poland fell within five weeks, with its last large operational units
surrendering on 6 October after the Battle of Kock. As the Polish September
Campaign ended, Hitler offered Britain and France peace on the basis of recognition
of German European continental dominance. On 12 October the United Kingdom formally
refused.

Despite the quick campaign in the east, along the Franco-German frontier the war
settled into a quiet period. This relatively non-confrontational and mostly non-
fighting period between the major powers lasted until Germany launched an invasion
on 10 May 1940.
Germany and the USSR partition Northern Europe
Main articles: Winter War, Norwegian Campaign, and Operation Weser�bung

Finnish soldiers during the Winter War

Several other countries, however, were drawn into the conflict at this time. After
28 September 1939, the Soviet government presented the governments of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania with ultimatums threatening with military invasion, thus
compelling the three small nations to conclude mutual assistance pacts which gave
the Soviets the right to establish military bases there. The Soviet Union issued
similar demands to Finland in October 1939 but these were rejected, leading to the
Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November, starting the Winter War.

The Soviet Union did not accomplish its goal of annexing Finland.[25] In the Moscow
Peace Treaty of April 1940, Finland ceded 9% of its territory, including parts of
Karelia and Salla. The Finns were embittered over having lost more land in the
peace than on the battlefields, and over the perceived lack of world sympathy.

In the rest of Scandinavia, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway in April 1940, and
in response, Britain occupied the Faroe Islands (a Danish territory) and invaded
and occupied Iceland (a sovereign nation with the King of Denmark as its monarch).
Sweden was able to remain neutral.

The Baltic Republics were occupied by the Soviet army in June 1940, and formally
annexed to the Soviet Union in August 1940.

War comes to the West

Main articles: Western Front (World War II), Battle of France, Battle of Britain,
and The Blitz

German troops in Paris after the Fall of France

On 10 May the Phoney War ended with a sweeping German invasion of the neutral Low
Countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, and into France bypassing
the French fortifications of the Maginot Line along the border with Germany. After
overrunning the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Germany turned against
France, entering the country through the Ardennes on 13 May�the French had left
this area less well defended, believing its terrain to be impassable for tanks and
other vehicles. Most Allied forces were in Flanders, anticipating a re-run of the
World War I Schlieffen Plan, and were cut off from the French mainland. As a result
of this, as well as the superior German communications and tactics, the Battle of
France lasted only six weeks; far shorter than what virtually all pre-war Allied
thought could have conceived. On 10 June Italy declared war on both France and the
United Kingdom but did not gain any significant success in this campaign. The
French government fled Paris, and soon, France surrendered on 22 June. In order to
further the humiliation of the French people and the country itself, Hitler
arranged for the surrender document to be signed in the Forest of Compi�gne, in the
same railway coach where the German surrender had been signed in 1918. The
surrender divided France into two major parts; the northern part under German
control, and a southern part under French control, based at Vichy and referred to
as Vichy France, a rump state friendly to Germany. Many French soldiers, as well as
those of other occupied countries, escaped to Britain. The General de Gaulle
proclaimed himself the legitimate leader of Free France and vowed to continue to
fight. Following the unexpected swift victory, Hitler promoted 12 generals to the
rank of field marshal during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony.

Vyacheslav Molotov, the Foreign Policy Minister of the USSR, which was tied with
Soviet�German non-aggression treaty, congratulated the Germans: "We hand over the
most cordial congratulations by the Soviet government on the occasion of splendid
success of German Wehrmacht. Guderian's tanks broke through to the sea near
Abbeville, powered by Soviet fuel, the German bombs, that razed Rotterdam to the
ground, were filled with Soviet pyroxylin, and bullet cases, which hit the British
soldiers retreating from Dunkirk, were cast of Soviet cupronickel alloy..."[26]
[unreliable source?][dubious � discuss]

Later, on 24 April 1941, the USSR gave full diplomatic recognition to the Vichy
government situated in the non-occupied zone in France.[27]

Thus, the Fall of France left Britain and the Commonwealth to stand alone. The
British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, resigned during the battle and was
replaced by Winston Churchill. Much of Britain's army escaped capture from the
northern French port of Dunkirk, where hundreds (if not thousands) of tiny civilian
boats were used to ferry troops from the beaches to the waiting warships. There is
much debate over whether German Panzer divisions could have defeated these soldiers
alone if they had pressed forward since the tank divisions were overextended and
would require extensive refitting; in any case, Hitler elected to follow the advice
of the leader of German air forces Hermann G�ring and allow the Luftwaffe alone to
attack the Allied forces until German infantry was able to advance, giving the
British a window for the evacuation. Later, many of the evacuated troops would form
an important part and the center of the army that landed at Normandy on D-Day.

The British rejected several covert German attempts to negotiate peace. Germany
massed their air force in northern German-occupied France to prepare the way for a
possible invasion, codenamed Operation Seel�we ("Sea Lion"), deeming that air
superiority was essential for the invasion. The operations of the Luftwaffe against
the Royal Air Force became known as the Battle of Britain. Initially, the Luftwaffe
concentrated on destroying the RAF on the ground and in the air. They later
switched to bombing major and large industrial British cities in the Blitz, in an
attempt to draw RAF fighters out and defeat them completely. Neither approach was
successful in reducing the RAF to the point where air superiority could be
obtained, and plans for an invasion were suspended by September 1940.

During the Blitz, all of Britain's major industrial, cathedral, and political sites
were heavily bombed. London suffered particularly, being bombed each night for
several months. Other targets included Birmingham and Coventry, and strategically
important cities, such as the naval base at Plymouth and the port of Kingston upon
Hull. With no land forces in direct conflict in Europe, the war in the air
attracted worldwide attention even as sea units fought the Battle of the Atlantic
and a number of British commando raids hit targets in occupied Europe. Churchill
famously said of the RAF personnel who fought in the battle: "Never in the field of
human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".

Air war
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This section needs expansion with: aerial warfare on the Eastern Front and Soviet-
based air operations. You can help by adding to it. (May 2013)
Main articles: Strategic bombing during World War II � Europe, and Combined Bomber
Offensive

RAF Supermarine Spitfires, used extensively alongside the Hawker Hurricance during
the Battle of Britain
The air war in the European theatre commenced in 1939.

Pre-war expectations that "The bomber will always get through" assumed that waves
of bombers hitting enemy cities would cause mass panic and the rapid collapse of
the enemy. As a result, the Royal Air Force had built up a large strategic bomber
force. By way of contrast, Nazi German air force doctrine was almost totally
dedicated to supporting the army. Therefore, German bombers were smaller than their
British equivalents, and Germany never developed a fully successful heavy bomber
equivalent to the British Avro Lancaster or American Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress,
with only the similarly sized Heinkel He 177A placed into production and made
operational for such duties with the Luftwaffe in the later war years.

Initial German bomber attacks against the UK were targeted at the RAF's airfields
in the Battle of Britain; from 7 September 1940 until 10 May 1941 the targets were
British towns and cities in "The Blitz".

Following the abandonment of any idea of invasion of the UK, most of the strength
of the Luftwaffe was diverted to the war against the Soviet Union leaving German
cities vulnerable to British and later American air bombings. Great Britain was
used by the U.S and other Allied forces as a base from which to begin the D-Day
landings in June 1944 and the liberation of Nazi-occupied Western Europe.
Nevertheless, German raids continued on British cities albeit on a smaller and less
destructive scale for the rest of the war, and later the V1 Flying Bomb and V-2
ballistic missiles were both used against Britain. However, the balance of bomb
tonnage being dropped shifted greatly in favour of the RAF as RAF Bomber Command
gained in strength.

British bombing by day resulted in too many losses and too few results; as a result
the British operated by night while building up their strategic force with larger
bombers. By 1942, Bomber Command could put 1,000 bombers over one German city.

During the beginning raids of Operation Barbarossa the Luftwaffe wiped out the
majority of the Soviet air forces. The Soviets would only regain their air wing
later in the war with the help of the United States.

From 1942 onwards, the efforts of Bomber Command were supplemented by the Eighth
Air Force of the United States Army Air Forces, U.S. Army Air Forces units being
deployed to England to join the assault on mainland Europe on 4 July 1942. Bomber
Command raided by night and the US forces by day. The "Operation Gomorrah" raids on
Hamburg (24 July 1943 � 29 July 1943) caused a firestorm leading to massive
destruction and loss of life.

On 14 February 1945, a raid on Dresden produced one of the most devastating fires
in history. A firestorm was created in the city, and between 18,000 and 25,000
people were killed.[28][29][30] Only the Hamburg attack, the 9�10 March 1945
firebombing of Tokyo and the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and
Nagasaki (9 August 1945) killed more people through a single attack.