11 Days of Remembrance: Overwhelmed With Lessons

It's no secret that I'm working on an English degree. What might not be known is that I'm working on a minor in history, with a particular fascination for military history. This last year, I've learned so much on that subject that I truly want to share many of the lessons, but I simply do not know where to start. So, to try to combat the overflow of knowledge, I've decided to give a list of the Top Five things I've learned so far. No thing is more important than the other, they just happen to be the bits and pieces that have stuck out to me the most.

1) Neville Chamberlain didn't understand Hitler. He thought that appeasement would keep the Nazi leader at bay and prevent a war, but unfortunately, the former British Prime Minister learned the hard way that some people will never be satisfied until they obtain absolute power and control over a nation, continent, and (hopefully) the world.

2) Had the Allies lost the Battle of the Atlantic, WWII would have had a very different outcome. This battle was arguably the most important of the Second World War because everything from lives to trade routes were on the line.

3) Operation Barbarossa (July 10, 1941) took Stalin and the Soviets completely by surprise. Stalin had signed a pact with Hitler, as a means of keeping him at bay, but it sadly meant nothing. Stalin had anticipated a war with Germany, but he thought that it would have come in 1943, not 1941.

4) ENIGMA. This piece of code-making genius has received a lot of attention lately. However, while the Allies were celebrating breaking the ENIGMA codes, the Nazis managed to get its hands on British Naval Codes, and made to use them to the same advantage.

5) WWII in the west is what we always remember, but it was the war in the East that brought the Allies to victory. Germany kept trying to use the Soviet as Liebensraum (living space for the Aryans), and the Russians were too damn stubborn to let the Nazis get their way. Sure, the Red Army suffered greater losses (in the millions) than the Germans (lesser millions), but they had more reinforcements handy at all times. Actually, the total number of deaths that occurred with the fighting between Germany and the Soviet can rival, and arguably surpass, the number of Jews who were killed.