Our series on World War II focuses on the territorial expansion of Germany, known as the Great Reich at the time of its largest extension.
This map shows the size of the Reich at the end of 1942, when the territories annexed by Germany extend all the way to what is modern Belarus, while territories under occupation reach the Atlantic Ocean to the West and the Volga River to the East. Furthermore, the rest of the continent is mostly held by allies of the Reich, with only Switzerland, Sweden , European Turkey and the Iberian Peninsula remaining out of their reach.
By then, the German army was so stretched, and the combined military power of its three enemies, the USSR, the United States and the United Kingdom so great, that the counterattacks were imminent: a triple offensive from the East (Stalingrad, Winter 1943), the South (Sicily, Summer 1943) and the West (Normandy, Spring 1944) would prove fatal to Germany's grandiose plans of total domination over Europe and led to the capitulation of May 8, 1945.
The Great Reich
