waited to hear if they were going to take part in the largest amphibious assault ever attempted The captain of an X class minisub stands on deck giving orders to the crew just three weeks before the D Day invasion Minisubs played a key role in the attack The radio message came through the attack was on X23 returned below the water's surface to avoid being detected by German ships or soldiers on land In the late 1930s Germany had invaded large parts of Europe including France The amphibious
assault planned for Normandy was designed to push the Germans out of the lands they had conquered and bring an end to World War II 1939 1945 The crew of X23 and another British minisub waited throughout the night They had orders to surface again early on the morning of June 6 At that time they would help guide British troops and tanks ashore playing a key role in what the world knows today as D Day A DREAM OF CONQUEST World War II had started with Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1 1939 German Chancellor Adolf Hitler had several goals in mind when he sent troops there and into other European
countries First he wanted to make Germany the most powerful country in Europe He also wanted to take back lands that Germany had been forced to give up after losing World War I 1914 1918 Hitler also wanted to rule over people who he considered inferior to Germans such as the Poles He believed Germans were superior to most other people and had a right to deny those people even their basic human rights He particularly hated Jews and anti Semitism fueled many of his government's actions Shortly after Hitler's Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933 they passed laws that limited the freedom of Germany's Jewish citizens Some were sent to prisons called concentration camps As he conquered countries across Europe Hitler sent millions of
European Jews to these camps Some of the camps were death camps By the time World War II ended the Germans had killed more than 6 million Jews two thirds of the entire Jewish population in Europe at the time Prisoners at concentration camps were given very little to eat Two men in front are holding up a friend who is too weak to stand on his own Hitler also imprisoned non Jewish people across Europe Some were his political opponents Others were from religious groups he didn't like And some
