Germany Poland British and French diplomats delivered ultimata in Berlin that day These were contemptuously ignored until they expired on September 3, five hours later for the French than for the British By evening, most of the Great Powers of Europe were once again at war In the first two years Hitler’s legions overran Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, France, Belgium, Greece, and Yugoslavia; chased the British from the continent; and assaulted and conquered one-third of European Russia Behind the advancing Panzers the Nazis began systematic liquidation of Jews, as well as of Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, many Communists, “mental defectives,” homosexuals, and any others they deemed undesirable Germany reintroduced slavery to areas that had not seen it for 1,000 years: by 1944, 25 percent of the German economy depended on forced labor, mostly Slavic Ostarbeiter but also tens of thousands of Jews reimported to Germany to be worked to death From Western Europe, too, they came, forced and conscripted laborers by the hundreds of thousands, including French conscripts and over 600,000 Italian prisoners of war from 1943 They were shipped into Germany from Belgium and across the Balkans, from any place SS jackboots stamped and Gestapo agents spread terror and instilled compliance Most were forced to labor in Germany under terrible conditions that cost many thousands of lives By war’s end the slave labor system in Germany would use up and discard millions of human beings from nearly all occupied nations It was especially severe for any one hailing from Poland, Belorussia, or Ukraine Even erstwhile allies were not safe: some 200,000 Italians, nearly all former comrades in arms of Wehrmacht soldiers, died in German forced labor camps from September 1943 With the strategic failure of BARBAROSSA in front of Moscow in December 1941, Hitler and his generals already faced the prospect of total defeat in place of the total victory their methods demanded All their core assumptions of “Vernichtungskrieg”—of a quick “war of annihilation” in the east—were proven false Germany instead found itself caught in the very type of war its military leaders long feared most: a vast Stellungskrieg, a great war of attrition and Materialschlacht it could not really hope to win The German economy was unprepared to sustain such a protracted war, and too small in any case to win production battles against the enormously powerful enemies that Hitler and the Wehrmacht arrayed against Germany A head start in war production actually turned against the German war economy by 1942, as enemies brought into action newer and better weapons, while the Heer and Luftwaffe retooled for slight modifications of existing designs and systems Germany faced a power in the east alone that had twice its prewar population, vastly greater reserves of natural resources, and total war mobilization capabilities of a comparably savage and brutal terror state Moreover, the Soviet Union was allied to the British Empire as a direct consequence of German aggression Upon Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States on December 11, 1941—made without a corresponding declaration of war on the Soviet Union by Japan—Germany faced in war the three greatest industrial empires in the world Its diplomacy and ill-conceived grand strategy gathered around it only distant Japan, militarily weak Italy, and a few yet weaker, reluctant, and increasingly distraught 437