INTRODUCTION

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The Allies manage, after long and very hard fighting from January to May 1945, to advance inside the Reich and to destroy the Wehrmacht which is still fighting in Italy or in the Balkans, including against the resistance fighters. The consequences for the territories occupied by Germany or subject to their vassals are terrible.

THE FRONTS, REPRESSION AND DEPORTATION The repressive dimension and its connection with the fronts are evident in the occupied countries and those who collaborate with Nazi Germany, as evidenced by massacres such as Tulle, Oradour, Maillé, etc., in France8, Marzabotto in Italy9. In addition to the Allied military operations, we will mention the uprisings of cities and territories like Warsaw, Paris, and Bratislava. The resistance fighters pay a very heavy price for repression, with the often dramatic consequences of actions developed by partisans and maquis who aim to liberate territories before the arrival of the Allies, and which lead to the annihilation of Belarusian partisans between April and June 1944 during the Averse and Cormoran operations, to the dismantling of the maquis of Mont-Mouchet, Saint-Marcel and Vercors in June-July 1944 in France, to the massacres of the partisans of the Po plain in December 1944 in Italy. The relationship with deportations is strong: in France, many prisons are emptied, there are the "ghost trains", like the one that left Toulouse and wanders for weeks on the tracks, or the convoy transferring detainees from Lyon to Drancy, Compiègne and Romainville, and which is diverted to Struthof, Ravensbrück and Auschwitz On August 11, 1944, a transfer of some 700 prisoners from Montluc (resistants, Jews) is set on the road from Lyon to Paris, to Drancy and Compiègne. Due to an attack on the railway, it is diverted towards Struthof-Natzweiler, Ravens-brück (for women) and Auschwitz for Jews (about 350, making it the last important convoy departing from the province). One can speak of a radicalization of repressive practices on French soil, with the hunt to which Alois Brünner engages, the raids in different children’s homes like Izieu and the

reinforces the repression in the occupied territories, to ensure the rear of the German army, by attacking and eliminating the maquis (Ain, Glières, Limousin) or by fighting the Belarusian Free Parties on the Eastern front. In February 1944, the German military command for the West promulgated a regulatory text (decree Sperrle) which transformed repressive policies, particularly concerning France, which went from «friendly» territory to «hostile» and must therefore be treated as such. These operations also have one thing in common: they are accompanied by raids against civilians, primarily Jews. June 1944, after the turning point of the defeat of the German armies in Stalingrad, in February 1943, provides a possible break to mark the beginning of the end of the conflict, with the landing in the West, the liberation of Rome and the Bagration offensive fifteen days later, colossal operation that sweeps almost the entire Eastern front and marks the beginning of the march to victory on the Soviet side. In this beginning of the final phase of the war, in the East as well as in the West, the consequences of military operations on repressions and deportations are evident. The repression that is inflicted on the populations is all the more violent as the final fate of the war is played out (Oradour, Tulle, Vercors, Warsaw and deportations everywhere). While decisive battles are engaged, the Germans implement a real strategy of terror in the territories that remain under their control. The end of summer 1944 and the fall that followed marked a third gap, with a generalized retreat of the Wehrmacht and the failure of rare counter-offences3 which resulted in increasing violence and exactions in the territories concerned. Fear becomes the daily life of peoples. The mention of «the end of the Third Reich» in the title allows to circumscribe the subject to the European continent and emphasizes in the same historical movement the most intense moment, the failure and the consequences of the «annihilation war» launched to the East by Adolf Hitler on June 22, 1941, with Operation Barbarossa4 and which only ended with the fall of Hitler and the capitulation of Germany on May 8, 19455. On the Western Front, from the end of July 1944, the Allies trample Paris and are liberated only in August. The war is not over at Christmas and entire regions remain under occupation, that is to say under repression, in Germany. It is only with the campaign from the Rhine to the West7

and the crossing of the Vistula to the East that the

The reflection proposed by the theme of the CNRD for 2021-2022 focuses on the relationships between three separable but not separate historical realities: allied military operations, their objectives, their progress and their results; repressions and deportations up to the most limits

extremes; the end of the Nazi regime, in the context of the most deadly period of the Second World War, from 1944 to 1945. One of the central points of this issue lies in the consequences that military operations entail in terms of recrudescence of brutalization and repression by the Nazis, particularly on civilians and resistance fighters. On the other hand, they change nothing in their exterminatory practice against the Jews, which shows by default the centrality of this one in Nazi politics. For the Nazis and since the origins of the conflict, but with a growing intensifi- cation, the tensions are ideological and racial. They continue to wage the war against the Jews until the end. Towards the military collapse and the unleashing of repression, the last two years of the war are fraught: radicalization of warrior violence, terror policy from East to West, reprisals everywhere, while Auschwitz becomes the epicenter of the Nazi concentration camp system. This reflection is part of the framework and in line with the programs of middle school and high schools, which emphasize the importance of military facts and their interactions with the different forms of repression and deportations practiced by Nazi Germany and its vassals, but also by the USSR, during the Second World War1. Faithful to the reform of the CNRD, it joins the themes of the last four years: linked to the programs, open to research contributions, with broad views on France and Europe.

A CHRONOLOGY OF THE YEARS 1944-1945

The theme begins in January 1944, which allows to include not only deportation convoys from France, but also all that precedes the deportation of the Hungarians. The period from January to June 1944 is like a vigil of arms during which s inten-

THE END OF THE WAR THE OPERATIONS, THE REPRESSIONS, THE DEPORTATIONS AND THE END OF THE THIRD REICH (1944-1945)