Word: germanism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...original German plan was to launch a frontal assault by Army Group B on the Low Countries, just as in 1914, with a secondary attack in the Ardennes by Army Group A. But General Erich von Manstein, chief of staff for Army Group A, passionately argued that this would only lead to stalemate in northern France, again just as in 1914. By contrast, a strong armored offensive right through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes could lead to a breakthrough all the way to the English Channel. The Allied armies would be encircled and cut off; all France would lie open. Manstein...
...after, and so began the Battle of Britain, the first ever to be fought entirely in the skies, anxiously watched by ordinary citizens below. Goring had roughly 1,400 bombers and nearly 1,000 fighters, the R.A.F. defenders fewer than 900 fighters. The opposing planes were roughly equal, the German Messerschmitts with a slightly faster rate of climb, the British Spitfires and Hurricanes more maneuverable. (The British also had some secret weapons: a radar warning system that the Germans greatly underestimated, and the Operation Ultra computer that broke most German military codes, particularly those of the Luftwaffe.) The outnumbered British...
...France and its Atlantic coast; the southern half could remain an autonomous state under Petain, with its capital in the sleepy resort town of Vichy. But he insisted that the armistice be signed in Compiegne, just outside Paris, in the same railroad car where Marshal Foch had made the Germans sign the armistice in 1918, the site marked by a stone tablet placing blame for the war on "the criminal pride of the German empire." CBS correspondent William Shirer, who was standing nearby, reported that Hitler's face was "afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph." Once the armistice...
...essential German goal was to knock out the R.A.F., and though the Luftwaffe was taking heavy losses, so were the defenders and their bases. Then there occurred another one of those almost accidental twists. Two German bombers on their way to attack aircraft factories at Rochester strayed over central London and dropped their bombs on the hitherto unattacked capital. Churchill promptly ordered several retaliatory raids on Berlin. Hitler, unaware of his increasing success against the R.A.F. installations, made the mistake of ordering further retaliations against London. And so, while the R.A.F. won a vital reprieve, the citizens of London...
...Hitler had thought that Britain would give up after the fall of France, he now thought that nightly bombing would make the English rise in revolt against Churchill's pursuit of the war. (It was a miscalculation that the Allies were to repeat in their subsequent bombing of German cities.) Londoners instead took pride in their ability to endure the blitz, to spend long hours in the subway bomb shelters, to put out the fires and go on with their lives. "I saw many flags flying from staffs," Edward R. Murrow reported to America one night over CBS radio...