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WORLD WAR II (1939–1945)
1
...
To this day, it remains the most
geographically widespread military conflict the world has ever seen
...
Despite the fact that Germany and
Japan were technically allies, however, they had vastly different motives and objectives, and their
level of cooperation was primarily one of distracting the attention of each other’s enemies rather
than of attaining any specific common goals
...

The rise of Nazi Germany and its aggression can be traced directly back to World War I
...
The Treaty of Versailles unfairly placed the full
blame for the war on Germany and demanded heavy reparations payments in return
...

Then, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the worldwide Great Depression took a further heavy toll
on the country
...
They
ranged from Communists to right-wing nationalists
...
By the time of the depression in Germany,
Hitler’s party had more than 100,000 members and was growing rapidly, and it began participating
in parliamentary elections with increasing success
...

By 1935, Germany had ceased to recognize the Treaty of Versailles and all the restrictions that
accompanied it
...
In 1938, Germany began annexing the territories of neighboring countries, including all of
Austria and most of Czechoslovakia
...

Like Germany, Japan was severely affected by the Great Depression
...
Japanese
military leaders, who at the time had a strong influence over the civilian government, saw territorial
expansion as the best solution
...
By 1937, Japan and China were officially at war
...
In 1940, Japan
signed a formal alliance with Germany and Italy, setting the country on a clear course to enter
World War II
...
Japan saw itself facing an impossible crisis, and without prompt and decisive action,
total collapse was inevitable
...
S
...
This action brought the United States into World War
II in both theaters, Europe and the Pacific
...
Summary of Events:
The European Theater
German Aggression

The war in Europe began in September 1939, when Germany, under ChancellorAdolf Hitler,
invaded Poland
...
In 1940, Germany launched its next initiative by
attacking Denmark and Norway, followed shortly thereafter by attacks on Belgium, the
Netherlands, and France
...

The Battle of Britain

Later in the summer of 1940, Germany launched a further attack on Britain, this time exclusively
from the air
...

Greece and North Africa

As Hitler plotted his next steps, Italy, an ally of Germany, expanded the war even further by
invading Greece and North Africa
...

The USSR

Later in 1941, Germany began its most ambitious action yet, by invading theSoviet Union
...
The country was
just too big, and although Russia’s initial resistance was weak, the nation’s strength and
determination, combined with its brutal winters, would eventually be more than the German army
could overcome
...
During the course of 1944, the Germans were slowly but steadily forced completely
out of Soviet territory, after which the Russians pursued them across eastern Europe and into
Germany itself in 1945
...
Soon the German army was forced into retreat from
that side as well
...
The Soviets were the first to reach the German capital of Berlin, and Germany surrendered in
May 1945, shortly after the suicide of Adolf Hitler
...
S
...
By this time, Japan had already been at war
with China for several years and had seized the Chinese territory of Manchuria
...


The U
...
Entrance and Battle of Midway

Although the Pearl Harbor attack provoked a declaration of war by the United States on Japan the
very next day, it would be several months before U
...
forces would get seriously involved
militarily
...

The Solomon Islands and Guadalcanal

For the next year, the United States engaged Japan in a protracted struggle for theSolomon Islands,
which lay near vital Allied shipping routes
...
In the meantime, British and
Indian forces were combating Japanese troops in Burma
...
By the late spring of 1945, most of Japan’s conquests had been
liberated, and Allied forces were closing in on the Japanese home islands
...

This process continued through the summer of 1945 until finally, in early August, the United States
dropped two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima andNagasaki
...


3
...
This appeasement policy essentially turned a blind eye to
Germany’s 1938 annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland
...
Churchill was among the most active
leaders in resisting German aggression and played a major role in assembling the Allied Powers,
including the United States and the USSR
...
S
...

Dwight D
...
S
...
Eisenhower was perhaps best known for his work in planning Operation Overlord, the Allied
invasion of Europe
...
S
...


Hirohito

Emperor of Japan from 1926 until his death in 1989
...
After Japan’s defeat, he was allowed to continue to hold his
position as emperor—largely as a figurehead—despite the fact that Japan was under U
...

occupation
...

Adolf Hitler

Chancellor and self-proclaimed Führer, or “leader,” of Germany from 1933 until his suicide
in 1945
...
During his rule, he
took a very active role in the government of Germany, making military decisions and implementing
edicts regarding the treatment of Jews and other minorities, such as the notorious “final
solution” that condemned Jews to death at concentration camps in German-controlled parts of
Europe
...

Yamamoto Isoroku

The Japanese navy admiral who planned the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in1941 and the attack
on Midway in 1942
...
S
...
LeMay is best known for developing the U
...
strategy of using massive incendiary bomb
attacks on Japanese cities in order to break the Japanese will near the end of the war
...
In many
ways, Mussolini served as an inspiration to Adolf Hitler, with whom he chose to ally himself during
World War II
...

Friedrich Paulus

A field marshal in command of the German Sixth Army at the Battle of Stalingrad
...
While a prisoner of war in the USSR, Paulus publicly condemned
Hitler’s regime
...
Rommel came
to be known by both friends and enemies as the “Desert Fox” for his brilliant strategies and surprise
attacks in Germany’s North Africacampaign
...
S
...
Together
with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, Roosevelt played a decisive role in holding together the

Allied coalition that ultimately defeated Nazi Germany
...
In
some ways, Stalin was responsible for the USSR’s severe losses at the beginning of World War II,
as he failed to head the warnings of his advisors and did not allow the Russian military to prepare a
proper defense
...
Stalin’s own regime in the USSR was just as brutal as the Nazi regime in many ways, and
the alliance between Stalin and the Western Allies always remained rather tenuous because of
mutual distrust
...
S
...
Roosevelt upon Roosevelt’s death in
April 1945
...

After the war, Truman was crucial in the implementation of the Marshall Plan, which greatly
accelerated Western Europe’s economic recovery
...
Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union were the most prominent
members, although many other countries also joined
...

Appeasement

The British and French policy of conceding to Adolf Hitler’s territorial demands prior to the
outbreak of World War II
...

Axis Powers

The collective term for Germany, Italy, and Japan’s military alliance in opposition to the Allied
Powers
...

Battle of Britain

An extended campaign from July 1940 to the spring of 1941 in which British air forces fought off
wave after wave of German bombers and denied Germany in its quest to attain air superiority over
Britain
...


Battle of the Coral Sea

A battle from May 4–8, 1942, in which U
...
naval forces successfully protected the Allied base at
Port Moresby, New Guinea, the last Allied outpost standing between the Japanese onslaught
and Australia
...

Battle of El-Alamein

An October and November 1942 battle that was the climax of the North African campaign
...

Battle of Guadalcanal

A campaign from August 1942 to February 1943 in which U
...
Marines fought brutal battles to
expel Japanese forces from the Solomon Islands, a strategically important island chain in the South
Pacific near Australia
...
S
...
During the battle, an Associated Press photographer took a
world-famous photograph of U
...
Marines raising the American flag on the summit of Mt
...

Battle of Midway

A battle from June 3–6, 1942, in which U
...
naval forces severely disabled the Japanese fleet
at Midway Island in the Pacific
...

Battle of Okinawa

The last large-scale battle in the Pacific theater, in which U
...
forces invaded the Japanese home
island of Okinawa
...

Battle of Stalingrad

A brutal, five-month battle between German and Soviet forces for the important industrial city of
Stalingrad that resulted in the deaths of almost 2 million people
...
In February 1943,
despite direct orders from Hitler forbidding it, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered the
German forces to the Red Army
...
Hitler applied the blitzkrieg strategy, with varying degrees of success, to
the German invasions of Poland, France, and theSoviet Union
...


Fascism

A system of government dominated by far-right-wing forces and generally commanded by a single
dictator
...

“Final Solution”

The Nazi’s euphemistic term for their plan to exterminate the Jews of Germany and other Germancontrolled territories during World War II
...

Gestapo

The brutal Nazi secret police force, headed by the infamous Hermann Göring
...

Lebensraum

Literally “living space,” Adolf Hitler’s justification for Germany’s aggressive territorial conquests
in the late 1930s
...

Luftwaffe

The German air force, which was used heavily in campaigns such as the Battle of Britain in 1940
...
S
...
Begun
in 1942, the Manhattan Project utilized the expertise of world-famous physicists, including Albert
Einstein and Enrico Fermi, to develop the weapon
...
After a difficult decision by
PresidentHarry S Truman, U
...
forces dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities
ofHiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, prompting Japan’s surrender
...
The Munich Agreement was
the most famous example of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy
of appeasement prior to World War II
...

Operation Overlord

The code name for the Allied invasion of France in 1944, which commenced on the beaches
of Normandy and ultimately was successful in liberating France and pushing German forces back
east to their own territory
...
S
...
Originally
formed as a unit to serve as Hitler’s personal bodyguards, the S
...
grew and took on the duties of an
elite military formation
...
S
...
The S
...
had its own army,
independent of the regular German army (the Wehrmacht), to carry out its operations behind enemy
lines
...

V-J Day

August 15, 1945, the day on which the Allied forces declared victory over Japan
...

Wehrmacht

The term used for regular German army
...
The Start of the War:
Events

March 13, 1938 Germany annexes Austria
October 7–10 Germany takes Czech region of Sudetenland
August 23, 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact
September 1 Germany invades Poland
September 3 Britain and France declare war on Germany
September 17 USSR invades Poland from the east
September 19 German and Soviet forces meet in central Poland
September 28 Warsaw falls to Germany
November 30 Soviet forces invade Finland
Key People

Adolf Hitler - Chancellor of Germany; pursued aggressive territorial expansion in the late 1930s
Neville Chamberlain - British prime minister; adhered to policy of appeasement that allowed
German territorial annexations in 1938
Joachim von Ribbentrop - German foreign minister; signed German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact
Vyacheslav Molotov - Soviet foreign minister; signed German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact

Germany Under Hitler
In 1938, Germany was a total dictatorship under the Nazi Party and ChancellorAdolf Hitler
...
He began not only to rebuild his military rapidly, but also to speak openly of Germany’s need
forlebensraum , or “living space
...
Hitler claimed that the annexation was supported by his doctrine of Anschluss , or
natural political unification of Germany and Austria
...
Shortly thereafter, Hitler demanded that Czechoslovakia cede to Germany
the Sudetenland, a territory along the German-Czech border
...

The September 1938 Munich Conference was called to address the situation; ironically,
Czechoslovakia was not present
...
Hitler did sign an agreement to that effect, promising no
further invasions
...
Britain and
France again took no action
...

The Consequences of Appeasement
The decisions made by the Allied nations leading up to World War II, as well as those of the first six
months or so after the war began, have dumbfounded historians ever since
...

However, although it may be obvious in hindsight that Hitler should not have been appeased, the
actions of Prime Minister Chamberlain must be considered within the context of the time
...
Few European leaders understood the full scope of Hitler’s intentions, and a
decision to go to war would have been hugely unpopular in countries, such as Britain and France,
that had been so devastated in World War I
...

The German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact
Several months after Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland, on August 23,1939, a fateful
meeting occurred in Moscow between German foreign ministerJoachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet
foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov
...

However, the ministers kept secret the fact that, in addition to agreeing not to attack each other,
Germany and the USSR had also agreed to overrun the countries that lay between them
...

The German Invasion of Poland
Germany’s invasion of Poland came quickly and with overwhelming force
...
Hitler
referred to the strategy as blitzkrieg, or “lightning war
...

The primary obstacle to the German invasion force proved to be the Polish capital of Warsaw,
which did not surrender until September 27, after a prolonged siege
...

Atrocities Against the Polish People
Although Germany’s invasion of Poland is often cited as the definitive example of the blitzkrieg
tactic, not all historians share this view
...
They sought not just to destroy the Polish
government but also to obliterate the Polish people
...
Villages and towns
were burned, and fleeing survivors were ruthlessly chased down and shot
...
Although the
regular German army, the Wehrmacht, defeated the Polish military within days of the initial
invasion, a more sinister set of squadrons followed—theTotenkopf, or “Death’s Head,” part of the
soon-to-be-infamous S
...
These squadrons immediately began rounding up and killing Polish
civilians
...
Smaller groups encountered along the way were
shot on the spot
...
Though these atrocities would pale in comparison with what was to come, the
initial weeks of Hitler’s invasion were a gruesome demonstration of the German war machine’s
capabilities and intentions
...
It took them only two days to push far enough to meet German troops
advancing from the west
...
Upon meeting the Russian troops, the Germans handed over large
numbers of prisoners and promptly pulled back to the line agreed upon in the German-Soviet
Nonaggression Pact
...


Allied Declarations of War and the “Sitzkrieg”
Britain and France—which were soon labeled the Allied Powers, just as they had been in World
War I—both declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, just two days after Germany began
its invasion of Poland
...
Rather, Britain initiated a propaganda effort against Hitler by
using its bombers to drop millions of anti-Nazi leaflets over Germany
...
”
Germany likewise took little action after the invasion of Poland was complete, aside from several
small naval attacks on Allied shipping vessels
...
Rather than make an offensive move of
their own, the Allies waited for the expected German attack on Belgium and France
...

The Russo-Finnish War
The one active hot spot during this “Sitzkrieg” was Finland, which the USSR invaded on
November 30, 1939, with the goal of seizing the eastern Finnish territory of Karelia
...
The invasion, which was expected to end quickly, instead
lasted until March13, 1940, when Finland finally capitulated, ceding Karelia to the Soviet Union,
along with the major port of Viipuri (present-day Vyborg)
...

Denmark and Norway
After months of inaction, the first sign that Hitler was again on the move came in early April 1940
...
Denmark gave in almost immediately
...
The combat was generally
limited to the less densely populated areas in the north of the country
...
The Invasion of France:
Events

May 10, 1940 Germany begins invasions of Belgium, the Netherlands, and France
May 13 French and British troops move into Belgium but are trapped between German armies
May 14 Luftwaffe bombs central Rotterdam; Netherlands surrenders to Germany
May 27 British troops begin mass evacuation from Dunkirk
June 3 Luftwaffe initiates air raids on Paris
June 12 German forces penetrate France’s final lines of defense
June 22 France signs armistice with Germany
June 23 Hitler visits Paris
The Western Front
After months of nervous speculation, Germany brought war to western Europe on May 10, 1940,
with the primary goal of conquering France
...
Elite squads of German paratroopers were dropped
onto fortified Allied points along the front, neutralizing a key element of France’s defense strategy
...
Unaware of the German advance to the south, Britain and France sent the bulk of their
troops to Belgium
...
In response, on May 14, the
German air force, the Luftwaffe, unleashed a massive bombing attack on central Rotterdam, even
while surrender negotiations with the Netherlands were under way
...
Over 800 civilians were killed, and the Netherlands surrendered that day
...
Unaware that these forts had already been captured by German
paratrooper units on the first night of the invasion, the British and French armies found themselves
under assault on May13
...
Over the next few days, the main Allied armies were trapped
between the two German forces, able neither to protect Paris nor to stop the Germans from
advancing to the English Channel
...
The Allied
defense of Belgium was unequivocally a disaster
...
With the BEF cornered
with its back to the sea, and with little hope of reuniting with French forces, the British government
decided that the BEF had to be evacuated
...
It took a full week to accomplish, using more than 800 civilian and military sea
vessels
...

The feat was heroic—it was done under nearly constant bombardment from the Luftwaffe—but it
left France completely on its own
...
By June 12,
German tanks had broken through the main fronts along theSomme River and the fortified Maginot
Line, moving ever closer to their goal,Paris
...
The new British prime minister, Winston Churchill, even flew to Paris
himself to offer his personal encouragement
...

By this time, the size of the French army had been reduced by roughly half, and French leaders
became resigned to an inevitable surrender
...
Hitler insisted that it be done in the same railway car in which Germany had surrendered
to France in 1918, at the end of World War I
...

Reasons for France’s Defeat
Although many have attributed Germany’s rapid conquest of France to simple weakness of France’s
armed forces, this conclusion is incorrect
...
In fact, before the invasion, a number of senior German
military leaders felt strongly that Germany was unprepared to take on France militarily
...

Rather, France fell primarily due to mistaken assumptions about how the attack would be carried
out
...
Thus, the core of the French forces, reinforced
by the British, was sent into Belgium, where the main attack was incorrectly expected to take place
...
The Battle of Britain:
Events

July 3, 1940 British initiate Operation Catapult to neutralize French navy
July 10 First German bombers attack over English Channel
July 19 Hitler urges Britain to make peace
August 13 Eagle Day; more than 1,400 German planes attack southern England
September 7 Beginning of “London Blitz”
September 17 Hitler indefinitely postpones plans for ground invasion of England
Key People

Winston Churchill - British prime minister who took office in May 1940; rallied British people and
military during Battle of Britain
Fear in Britain
After France fell, the British government was certain that Germany’s next move would be against
the United Kingdom
...

Preparations in Britain had long been under way, and aircraft, guns, and ammunition were arriving
by ship from the United States on a regular basis, despite the constant threat of attack by German
submarines
...

Operation Catapult
As Britain braced itself, one of its immediate goals was to prevent the French navy from falling into
German hands
...
A British naval
force based in Gibraltar was ordered toMers-el-Kebir, Algeria, where much of the remaining French
navy had fled
...
The French crews
refused all four options, leaving the British little choice but to fire upon their allies, destroying the
ships and killing over 1,200 French sailors
...

The Channel Battle
The German code name for its plan to conquer the United Kingdom wasOperation Sea Lion
...
In fact, Hitler was still debating
whether to invade Britain or Russia first
...
Yet even as late as
July 19, Hitler made a last-minute speech advocating peace with Britain, presumably trying to buy
time
...
Skirmishes over the Channel and coastal southern England
continued into August, but the Royal Air Force only rarely came out to defend the ships in the
channel, preferring to hold off until the German planes got closer to the mainland, nearer to the
limit of their range
...

Eagle Day
In early August 1940, Hitler decided to begin massive bombing raids on air bases and military
command posts in southern England, hoping to break Britain’s will
...
On August 13, which the German high command labeled “Eagle Day,” Germany sent
more than 1,400bombers and fighters across the English Channel
...

Over the next several days, the Germans continued to suffer comparatively heavy losses
...
Nevertheless, even after three weeks of
incessant attacks, the RAF was still very much intact
...
The attacks began on September 7 and continued into May of the following year
...
Tens of thousands of
Londoners lost their lives during this time, along with thousands of residents of other British cities
...

Although this London Blitz continued, Hitler decided on September 17, 1940, to put his plan for an
invasion of Britain on hold indefinitely
...
Instead, Hitler turned his attention to Russia
...
The Royal Air Force’s strong and effective resistance caused
Hitler to abandon the idea of invading Britain and to turn his attention to Russia
...
It demonstrated to the world that with enough stubborn resistance, Hitler
could be forced back
...
Hitler knew that there was no way he could invade Britain on the ground without
first gaining air superiority
...
The German air attacks against Britain were massive,
but their initial intensity could not be maintained if the Germans were consistently losing twice as
many aircraft as the British
...

The value of the new technology of radar was also effectively demonstrated for the first time
...
Radar also prevented the loss of large numbers of aircraft on the
ground, as happened during the initial days of the invasion of France
...
It was a major mistake
...
Whereas
German pilots had limited time over their target areas before having to return home to refuel,
British pilots could stay in the air longer and even return to base, refuel, and then resume the fight
...
For both Britain and
Germany, this air combat was a new kind of warfare, and each side’s strategies were experimental
in nature
...
Italy and the Mediterranean:
Events

June 10, 1940 Italy declares war on Britain
June 11 Italian planes attack Malta British skirmish in African desert
September 13 Italy launches failed invasion of Egypt
October 28 Italy begins invasion of Greece
November Greek resistance forces Italians into retreat
April 6, 1941 Germany attacks Yugoslavia
April 17 Yugoslavia surrenders
Late April British forces retreat from Greece
May 20 German forces attack British troops on Crete
May British forces retreat from Crete
Key People

Benito Mussolini - Italian Fascist prime minister whose territorial ambitions drew Italy into the war
in June 1940
Erwin Rommel - German field marshal and tank specialist; helped Italian forces in Egypt; was also
involved in later North African campaigns

Italy’s Entrance
On June 10, 1940, Italy declared war on France and Britain, largely because its Fascist prime
minister, Benito Mussolini, had territorial and imperial ambitions of his own
...
Hitler himself
observed with annoyance that the Italians were in effect riding on his coattails so as to share in the
spoils without having to take part in the dirty work
...

Italian Conquests in Africa
Following its war declaration, Italy made its first moves in North Africa and other regions of the
southern Mediterranean
...
Skirmishes continued in Africa throughout the
summer, but the war there did not begin in earnest until August 3, when Italian forces invaded
British Somaliland
...

A second Italian offensive into British-occupied Egypt on September 13 was a catastrophic failure
...
This Italian defeat prompted
Germany to get involved by sending its best tank divisions under the command of Field
MarshalErwin Rommel, Germany’s most celebrated commander of mechanized forces
...
Mussolini
began the attack without consulting or even informing Hitler, who was incensed upon hearing the
news
...
In November, Greek forces broke through the Italian line and over the next
few months were able gradually to push the invaders back to the Albanian border
...
As in Egypt, Mussolini had bitten
off more than his military could chew
...

Germany’s Intervention
By March 1941, the situation for the Italians had deteriorated so badly that Hitler was finally forced
to step in
...
Therefore, on April 6, Germany invaded Yugoslavia
using its standard blitzkrieg method
...

By this time, Britain had forces on the ground in Greece to help the fight against the Germans
...
One more battle broke out when the
Luftwaffe struck the British garrison on the island of Crete on May 20
...

Italy’s Effect on the War
Italy’s two early campaigns—North Africa and Greece—were similar in that they both were marked

by early success but later became quagmires
...
However, whereas Greece was a
relatively short campaign, lasting only a few months, the war in the deserts of North Africa would
go on for years
...
The Italian entrance into the war thus
greatly expanded its geographical scope and had significant influence on Germany’s decision
making
...
The Invasion of Russia:
Events

June 22, 1941 Germany begins invasion of USSR
July 1 Germany has Riga, Dvinsk, Minsk, and Lvov under control
July 3 Stalin orders scorched-earth policy
September Hitler shifts priority of attack to southern Russia
September 8 Germans begin siege of Leningrad
September 19 Kiev falls to German forces
October Thousands of russian civilians dig trenches around Moscow
November 27 German advance on Moscow is halted
December 8 Hitler orders all forces in USSR to shift from offensive to defensive operations
July 27, 1942 German troops cross Don River
August 23 German troops reach Volga River; Luftwaffe bombs Stalingrad
November 19–20 USSR launches two offensives against Germans
December 12 Germany launches Operation Winter Storm
February 2, 1943 German Sixth Army surrenders
Key People

Joseph Stalin - Soviet premier; ordered scorched-earth policy to halt German advances in USSR
Friedrich Paulus - German field marshal; defied Hitler’s orders and surrendered to Soviets at
Stalingrad
Operation Barbarossa
The initial German invasion of the Soviet Union was known as Operation Barbarossa
...
The general goals were to gain more
land for Germany, control the oil fields of Azerbaijan, and exterminate Bolshevism—the radical
Communism that Vladimir Lenin had installed in Russia during the Russian Revolution
...

Despite the fact that the USSR was far larger than Germany both geographically and militarily,
Hitler believed that the country would collapse quickly, after a brief show of German force
...
This resulted in a front line nearly 1,000 miles long, which necessitated a
gargantuan Axis force of approximately 4 million soldiers, 3 million of whom were German
...

The German Air Attack
Much like Hitler’s previous invasions, the attack on the USSR began by air and concentrated on
Russian frontline airbases
...
The German attack began
in the predawn hours of June 22and continued without letup nearly all day
...
Most of these aircraft were destroyed on the ground, parked at their
airbases
...
The setback
was devastating and would take the USSR a long time to overcome
...
In its confusion, the Soviet high command issued
contradictory orders, and Soviet premier Joseph Stalin hesitated before ordering decisive action
...
In little more than a
week, by July 1, the Germans had pushed 200 to 300 miles into Russia and captured the major cities
of Riga and Dvinsk in the north, Minsk in the central region, and Lvov in the south
...
First, during his infamous purges of the 1930s, Stalin had
most of the Soviet military leadership murdered or sent to labor camps in Siberia
...
Second, Stalin had resisted early
recommendations by his military leaders to mobilize forces along the western border or to take
steps to protect air bases from attack
...

The Russian Response
Despite these setbacks, the USSR still put up a formidable fight
...
Within days of the invasion, the Soviets organized small
partisan groups and “destruction battalions” and sent them behind enemy lines to interfere with
German efforts in numerous ways
...
The Russians thus destroyed roads and bridges, burned fields of crops, and
demolished or emptied many factories
...
The scorched-earth policy was effective and hindered the advancing
German armies
...
Within days of the invasion,

Britain began providing Stalin with intelligence information gleaned directly from secret German
transmissions that Allied code breakers had cracked and continued to read on a daily basis
...

By late July, the first allied shipments of military supplies began reaching ports in the northern
USSR
...
From
August 10–14, Churchill and Roosevelt met onboard a ship off Newfoundland and together laid out
an extensive plan for providing large-scale assistance to the USSR
...
On September 10, Hitler decided to concentrate on the
invasion of southern Russia and the Ukraine, hoping to gain access to the region’s economic
resources, which included the wheat fields of the Ukraine, the citrus farms of the Black Sea coast,
and the oil fields of the Caucasus
...
Rather
than enter the city, they were ordered to hold their current position, encircle the city, and slowly
starve it to death
...
Thus began the famous 900-day siege of Leningrad
...
After the
Germans captured nearly half a million Soviet troops outside Kiev, the Ukrainian capital fell on
September 19
...
Although the
Germans did initially make very fast progress, the farther into the USSR they traveled, the more
things slowed down
...
During October, the roads turned to mud, effectively halting the German advance
...
German soldiers, still in summer uniforms, succumbed to frostbite and
hypothermia in large numbers
...

The winter gave the Soviet armies a new advantage, as they were far better prepared to fight under
such conditions
...

German intelligence was unaware of these reinforcements, leaving the German troops in for a nasty
surprise
...
Since late October, thousands of Russian civilians had dug more
than 5,000 miles of trenches by hand all the way around the city
...

Overwhelmed by a strong Russian defense, frigid temperatures, and constant harassment by Russian
partisans behind the lines, the Germans became mired
...
During the
first week of December, the Germans slowly began losing ground, and the Soviets managed to push

them back for several miles
...

Costs of the Invasion for Germany
Most historians would agree that Hitler’s decision to invade the USSR was one of the main reasons
that Germany lost the war
...
It drained
Germany’s resources, hurt morale, and diverted its military presence from western Europe,
ultimately making it possible for British and American forces to invade France in 1944
...
Hitler underestimated
how long the operation would take, how hard the Russians would fight, how successful Russian
partisan actions would be, and how quickly and effectively the Allies would come to the Soviet
Union’s aid
...

Devastation in the USSR
The scope of the devastation that occurred in the Soviet Union during World War II is poorly
appreciated in the West and indeed hard even to fathom
...
Twenty million people died in Russia at the hands of the
invaders—a total that includes soldiers fighting on the front, Jews who were singled out and
murdered in Russian towns, local government officials, and millions of ordinary Russian citizens
who were killed with the same calculating methodology
...
The scale of the killing was so great
that even some members of the German death squads became overwhelmed by the grotesqueness of
their orders
...
On July 27, 1942, these forces crossed the Don River
and made for the industrial center of Stalingrad
...
In the meantime, resistance
by Soviet partisans behind the German lines continued with increasing success
...
On the same day, hundreds of German bombers struck
Stalingrad with enough ordinance to set off a firestorm, and the Volga itself caught fire after the
burning contents of local oil reserves spilled into the river
...
Encouraged by the early success, German commanders
believed that Stalingrad would be a quick victory
...

Urban Battle
Within days, the German army entered Stalingrad, where Soviet forces were waiting
...
For months, the
fighting moved street by street, block by block, and the city was gutted to a skeleton of its former

self as the Germans launched repeated air raids involving up to 1,000 planes at a time
...

Stalin ordered thousands of additional Soviet troops from other regions to be amassed to the north
of Stalingrad and sent the majority of Russia’s military aircraft to the city’s defense
...
The
Germans failed to gain control of the Volga River, however, and the Russians were able to send in
food and supplies via that route
...
The Germans
attempted to bring in supplies for the winter, but powerful Soviet air defenses combined with
vicious snowstorms proved too much of an obstacle
...
The German commander on the scene, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus,
requested permission to break free and retreat to the Don River
...

On December 12, Germany launched Operation Winter Storm in an attempt to rescue the trapped
army, but the action failed
...
At the end of
January 1943, Paulus decided to defy Hitler’s orders and surrender
...

Costs of the Battle of Stalingrad
Historians estimate that approximately 2 million people died in the Battle of Stalingrad, more
than 800,000 on the German side and 1
...
After the battle, little of the city
itself remained, and it would not be reconstructed fully for decades
...


9
...
S
...
Roosevelt - 32nd U
...
president; implemented economic penalties that angered Japan;
requested war declaration after Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941
Yamamoto Isoroku - Japanese admiral who planned surprise attack at Pearl Harbor
Hirohito - Japanese emperor; approved Pearl Harbor attack plan
Richmond K
...
S
...
Japan, which had been at war with China since1937, had declared openly its intent to
take over as much of eastern Asia as it could
...
If Germany, which the Japanese government saw as a potential ally, would attack
Russia from the west, Japanese military leaders felt that they stood a good chance of seizing Sovietcontrolled territory in the east
...

Japan and the United States
In the meantime, the United States was becoming more and more of a problem for Japan
...
These tariffs greatly curbed Japanese exports and
heightened the effects of their own economic depression
...

In July 1939, President Franklin D
...
S
...
Then, on July 2, 1940, the
U
...
Congress passed the Export Control Act
...

These developments dealt not only a severe economic blow to Japan but also a humiliating slap in
the face to Japan’s leaders, who felt that the United States had no right to pass judgment on them or
to interfere in their affairs
...
The pact made the
three nations official allies
...
The United States
provided material support first to Britain and later to the Soviet Union, secretly at first but then with
increasing openness over time
...
The American people also paid close
attention to the events developing in the Pacific and, by mid-1941, considered war with both Japan
and Germany to be likely possibilities
...
S
...
S
...
One man in particular, AdmiralRichmond K
...
S
...
S
...
During previous U
...
war games and exercises, Pearl Harbor had proven
highly vulnerable to surprise attacks
...

Indochina
Indochina was a French-administered colony in Southeast Asia comprising the present-day nations
Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia
...
Japan justified the occupation as necessary in order to deny resources to
the Chinese resistance
...
Both the United States and Britain saw this move as a threat and a clear
indication of Japan’s intention to continue its expansion throughout the Pacific Rim
...

The Japanese Attack Plan
As early as January 1941, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku developed a plan for attacking the U
...
fleet
at Pearl Harbor and carried out training exercises to prepare specifically for such an attack
...

On November 25–26, the Japanese fleet set sail from Japan, unseen by U
...
spies
...

By December 1, all discussion had ended, and Hirohito ordered the plan to proceed
...
S
...

Pearl Harbor
On the morning of December 7, 1941, a fleet of six aircraft carriers, twenty-five submarines, and
nearly three dozen additional support ships was sitting 200miles north of the Hawaiian island
of Oahu—in the open sea, far beyond the line of sight of any U
...
forces
...
Although U
...
radar operators saw the massive formation
nearly a full hour before the attack began, they raised no alarm, because they mistook the planes for
a group of U
...
bombers expected to arrive from California around the same time
...

The first wave arrived at the U
...
Navy base at Pearl Harbor at 7:55 A
...
and achieved complete
surprise; only nine Japanese planes were lost
...
S
...
These included eight of the nine battleships in the
U
...
Pacific Fleet, along with several dozen other warships
...
A second attack wave of more than 160 planes followed just over an hour later
...

In all, the attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2,402 Americans, destroyed five battleships completely, put
three more out of commission, sank or seriously damaged at least eleven other warships, and
destroyed nearly more than 180 aircraft on the ground
...
S
...


In addition to attacking Pearl Harbor that day, Japan also attacked the U
...
territories of Guam, the
Philippines, Wake Island, and Midway Island, as well as British interests in Malaya and Hong
Kong
...
S
...

Britain declared war on Japan on the same day
...
Thus, the United States was now at war
with both Japan and Germany and able to enter fully into its alliance with Britain
...
For the American
population, the event was a traumatic shock, as few regular Americans knew much about the events
in Japan leading up to the war or about the level of hostility that Japan bore toward the United
States
...
S
...

Uncomfortable questions were soon raised in Congress and on the streets about why the United
States had been so poorly prepared and why the U
...
intelligence services had failed to see the
attack coming or raise warnings earlier
...
S
...
Furthermore, the United
States was able to decode and read Japanese military communications until shortly before the
attack, when Japan abruptly changed its military codes
...
S
...
S
...
A meeting was even scheduled for 3:00 P
...
on
December 7 to discuss the matter
...

To this day, there is avid speculation about how much the United States could and should have done
to prevent the attack, and even more speculation over how much the United States and its allies
knew about Japanese plans
...
S
...
Some
historians maintain that British intelligence had specific information about the Pearl Harbor attack
and that Churchill deliberately kept the information to himself so that the United States would
finally go to war
...


10
...
As more and more of eastern Europe fell
into German hands, the territory became a sort of backyard for the Nazis, where the ugliest parts of
their plan could be carried out far away from prying eyes
...

At this point, the notorious gas chambers of the later Nazi concentration camps were not yet
common
...
Indeed, one of the reasons for creating the gas chambers and extermination camps
was that many troops in the German S
...
experienced severe psychological repercussions carrying
out the gruesome tasks put before them
...
Precisely the same fate awaited millions of
non-Jewish Russian and eastern European civilians, as well as many Soviet prisoners of war
...

The Wannsee Conference
On January 20, 1942, a group of fifteen Nazi officials met in a villa in the Wannsee district outside
Berlin in order to settle the details for resolving the so-called“Jewish question
...
S
...
Neither
Hitler nor any heads of government ministries were present
...
The conference devoted considerable attention to the matter of who would
be legally considered a Jew; ultimately, it set different conditions for pure Jews and those of mixed
blood, in turn classified by first generation and second generation
...
”
The official record of the Wannsee Conference made no mention of mass killing of Jews or of
extermination camps
...
The terms “final solution” and
“absolute final solution” were used, although the specifics were not elaborated
...
These actions expanded greatly during the invasion of the USSR in 1941
...
During the previous year, S
...

commanders had experimented with different methods, and gas chambers proved to be the method
of choice
...
Six were located
in Poland, one in Belorussia
...
A limited number of prisoners deemed fit
enough to work were temporarily forced to labor in these camps, but they were underfed and
overworked until they too were unfit for labor and subsequently killed
...
Romany (Gypsies) and homosexuals also lost their lives in the camps in significant
numbers, as did some Soviet prisoners of war
...


11
...
S
...
On February 15, 1942, Japanese
forces took Singapore, which was a very humiliating defeat for Britain
...
On April 9, the U
...
territory of
thePhilippines also fell to Japan
...

The Doolittle Raid
On April 18, 1942, U
...
forces launched a daring air raid to demonstrate that Japan itself was
susceptible to Allied attack
...
Although aircraft carriers were designed to launch
fighters, not bombers, Doolittle specially prepared a squadron of sixteen B-25 bombers to fly from
the Hornet
...

The lightweight planes managed to take off from the Hornet and fly more than 800miles to Japan,
where they dropped bombs on oil reservoirs and naval facilities in Tokyo and several other cities
...
Low on fuel, all sixteen planes crash-landed, but two
went astray into Japanese-held territory and another landed in Vladivostok, in the eastern USSR
...

The Battle of the Coral Sea
By late spring 1942, Japan had captured most of Southeast Asia and turned its attention southward
...
U
...
forces in the area were alerted in advance
because of intercepted Japanese radio transmissions
...
The Japanese landed at Tulagi on May 3, before
American ships could arrive on the scene
...

The Americans and Japanese finally engaged each other on May 7 in the Battle of the Coral Sea
...
Both sides suffered
heavy losses, and theLexington was sunk
...

Japan’s New Plan
Following the humiliation of the Doolittle Raid and the failure to take Port Moresby during the
Battle of the Coral Sea, Japanese strategists knew that something had to be done to eliminate the
threat from U
...
aircraft carriers
...

Yamamoto’s plan involved a massive assault on the Pacific island of Midway and a second, smaller
attack on the Aleutian Islands of Alaska with the intent of drawing part of the U
...
Navy away from
Midway
...
As with the Battle of the Coral Sea, however, U
...

intelligence managed to decipher Japanese coded transmissions and determine where the actual
attack would take place
...

The Battle of Midway
After light U
...
bombing of the Japanese carriers on June 3, 1942, Japan initiated the attack early in
the morning on June 4, bombing the U
...
base on Midway Island
...
Although the first American attacks were easily
repulsed, a group of U
...
dive-bombers finally got through Japanese defenses and near three
Japanese aircraft carriers, whose decks were loaded with freshly fueled aircraft preparing for
takeoff
...
All three carriers were put out of commission and were eventually scuttled
by the Japanese themselves
...

The Battle of Midway was over by the end of the day
...
The Japanese toll was far worse:
four aircraft carriers, along with more than 230airplanes and more than 2,000 men
...
Japan had
begun with a strong offensive but quickly overextended itself by conquering most of Southeast
Asia
...
S
...
Japan’s losses at Coral Sea and Midway forced it to shift into a defensive mode
...
S
...
Although
the war in the Pacific was far from over, for the rest of the World War II, Japan’s struggle would
remain a fight to maintain the territory it had already conquered, rather than an aggressive campaign
for further expansion
...


12
...
Roosevelt - 32nd U
...
president; agreed to continued commitment of United States to
defeat Germany in Europe
Joseph Stalin - Soviet premier; met with Churchill and Roosevelt at Tehran; pushed for early
invasion of western Europe to take German pressure off the USSR
The Casablanca Conference
On January 12–23, 1943, U
...
president Franklin D
...
They
also made a number of important strategic decisions
...

Moreover, they decided to delay plans for an Allied invasion of Europe via the English Channel
until the summer of 1944, due to ongoing difficulties with the preparations
...

Following the conference, the two leaders sent a telegram to Soviet premier Joseph Stalin,
informing him of their decisions and reaffirming their commitment to work together with the USSR
in defeating Germany
...
The three leaders discussed detailed plans for the Allied
invasion of Europe, which Churchill and Roosevelt had decided to postpone at the Casablanca
Conference earlier that year
...
Stalin was
frustrated by the delay, but Churchill and Roosevelt insisted that the extra time was needed to
sufficiently degrade Germany’s military strength
...


13
...
S
...
Suribachi
March 26 Iwo Jima declared secure
April 1 Battle of Okinawa begins
May 3 Allies liberate Rangoon
June 21 Battle of Okinawa ends
Guadalcanal
After the Japanese defeat at Midway in June 1942, the war in the Pacific shifted south, as the
Japanese focused on winning complete control of the Solomon Islands
...
When the Japanese took Guadalcanal in July 1942, the move threatened Allied shipping
throughout the region, and Allied leaders were determined to respond
...
S
...
The landing went relatively smoothly, although the Japanese naval forces sank eight
Allied cruisers, two heavy carriers, and fourteen destroyers, killing more than 1,000 men
...
The Americans soon captured an airfield, which
they quickly made operational, and all was quiet except for a series of Japanese air raids, which
were fought off with the help of U
...
naval air support
...
The Japanese fought to the last man in virtually every
engagement, regardless of the odds, which was shocking and intimidating to the U
...
troops
...

New Guinea
While the Allied campaign in Guadalcanal was going on, the United States and Australia launched a
joint offensive on November 16, 1942, into New Guinea, the control of which the Japanese and
Allied forces had both been struggling over for many months
...

Although the majority of Japanese forces were driven off the island by January 1943, the Allies
were unable to remove them fully, and fighting in New Guinea continued well into1944
...

Britain, along with its colonial armies in India, took responsibility for containing this portion of the
conflict
...
This setback was a particularly bitter loss for the Allies, as it had been a
primary supply point and the site of a crucial base for the British Royal Air Force
...
During the rest of1942, British-Indian
forces launched minor offensives into Burma, but with little success
...
Under this new command, the British cooperated with the Chinese to advance on the Burmese
border, while U
...
and British special operations forces went behind enemy lines to cut
communications and create chaos in general
...
There was a prolonged
struggle for the Myitkyina, which finally fell on August 4, 1944
...
The
Burma Road was reopened in January, 1945
...

The Island Campaigns
Following their success in the Solomon Islands, the Allies fought fiercely
throughout 1944 and 1945 to free the many other South Pacific island groups that Japan had seized
earlier in the war
...
The largest of the island groups included the Marshall Islands, the
Marianas, the Philippines, and the Ryukyu Islands
...

For Japan, it was a nearly continuous series of losses, beginning with the Battle of the Philippine
Sea near the Mariana Islands on June 19–20, 1944
...
Three Japanese aircraft carriers were sunk and more than 300 airplanes destroyed
...
For example, in the Battle of Leyte, which took place in the Philippines between
October 20 and December 31, 1944, the Japanese lost49,000 soldiers out of a total
of 55,000 involved in the conflict
...

One by one, the Allies liberated Japanese-controlled islands until the last obstacle between Allied
forces and the Japanese mainland were the Ryukyu Islands, which included Okinawa
...

Iwo Jima
A small island off the Japanese coast, Iwo Jima served as an early warning station against Allied
bombers en route to attack Japan
...
Following a heavy bombardment of the island by aircraft and battleships, U
...
Marines
began an amphibious assault on February 19, 1945
...
Suribachi, which overlooked the southern end of the island
...
S
...
Suribachi within a single day
...
After a brutal, four-day struggle, U
...

forces reached the peak of Mt
...
Although
taking the mountain was a victory in itself, it would be more than a month before U
...
forces
secured the entire island
...
The American death toll was 7,000
...
Unlike Iwo Jima, Okinawa had a large civilian population, which became one of
the great tragedies of the battle
...
S
...
Japan had more than100,000 soldiers lying
in wait in a series of fortified defensive lines
...
As a result, they planned a massive series
of kamikazeattacks on these ships—suicide missions in which Japanese pilots crashed their fueland bomb-laden planes into targets—with the goal of destroying the ships or forcing them to
abandon their troops on land
...
S
...

The battle lasted for two and a half months, until June 21, and cost nearly 19,000American lives
...

Mounting Casualties
As Allied forces retook one by one the territories that Japan had captured earlier in the war, they
became alarmed by Japan’s increasingly extreme tactics
...
This tactic resulted in huge death tolls for the Japanese forces, as well as increased
Allied casualties
...
In Okinawa, even
many Japanese civilians committed suicide when it became clear that the island was falling to the
Americans
...

Although the Allies had a plan in the works to land U
...
ground troops on the Japanese home
islands, if the Japanese population chose to fight to the death, as many were speculating, the cost in
American lives would be overwhelming
...
S
...


14
...
S
...
One of
the primary flash points in North Africa was the key port of Tobruk, Libya, which changed hands
between the Germans and the British several times and was the site of several major battles
...
More than a year
later, in June 1942, Tobruk fell to the Germans after a long and intensive siege by Field
Marshal Erwin Rommel’s tank forces
...

El-Alamein
Perhaps the most decisive battle in North Africa was the Battle of El-Alamein, from October 23 to
November 3, 1942, in which a powerful British offensive defeated German forces overwhelmingly
...
As the battle started, Rommel’s substitute died of a heart attack, and by the time Rommel
arrived, the situation was hopeless
...
On November 8, 1942, British and American forces carried
out an amphibious landing on the coast ofFrench North Africa (present-day Morocco)
...
Operation Torch was highly successful and enabled the Allies to take more than 1,000 miles
of North African coastline
...
The desert terrain in
Tunisia was ideal for a defending force, and it was here that Rommel planned to make a stand
against the Allies
...
Thus, by the time U
...
and British forces began their attacks, the Axis
forces substantially outnumbered them
...
Rommel’s forces
fought with tenacity in one battle after another as the fighting continued well into the spring
of 1943
...
On May 7, the
Allies took Tunis and soon took the remaining Axis forces in Africa—more than 200,000 in all—
prisoner
...

Results of the North African Campaign
The war in North Africa was essentially an adventure initiated by Italy in an attempt to seize former
colonial territories of Britain and France
...
In that respect, the
campaign in North Africa was very much like the failed Italian campaign in Greece in
November1940
...
Ultimately, the
North Africa campaign was a serious defeat for the Axis powers
...
S
...

Operation Husky
Following the Axis defeat in North Africa, the Allies pursued them to the island ofSicily
...
S
...
Many of these landings were disrupted by high
winds, making it difficult for Allied troops to regroup once on the ground
...
On July 22, the Sicilian capital of Palermo fell to the Allies, and Sicily was secured
...
Prior to
Mussolini’s ouster, U
...
and British forces had planned an invasion of the Italian mainland, and the
sudden turn of events took the Allied leaders by surprise
...

Following the success in North Africa, British forces landed at Taranto, on the southeastern tip of
Italy, on September 2
...
The two forces planned to fight their way across the country to meet in the middle
...
S
...
After slow and treacherous fighting, the Allies finally captured the port of Naples on
October 1, putting all of southern Italy under Allied control
...
As the Allies secured their position in southern Italy, German
forces formed a defensive line across the width of Italy, just south of Rome
...

The heavily defended Winter Line presented a very formidable obstacle to the Allied forces, who
assaulted the entrenched Germans over and over again and each time were pushed back
...

Rome was liberated shortly thereafter, on June 5
...

Italy’s Role in the War
In sum, Italy’s participation in World War II provided little strategic benefit for Germany; in fact, it
actually hindered the German war effort by diverting German forces from more important tasks
...
Indeed,
the battles that resulted from Italy’s initially frivolous and aimless campaigns became increasingly
devastating
...


15
...
Though forced to abandon the Caucasus region,
the Germans continued to hold the Ukraine, with their forces concentrated to the west of the city
of Kursk in western Russia
...
Both the Germans and Soviets built up heavy armor,
artillery, and air forces prior to the attack
...

The Battle of Kursk
The clash between German and Soviet forces began on the night of July 4, 1943, on a 200-mile
front with a total of roughly 5,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft in place—one of the largest armored
conflicts in history
...
After several days of escalation, the central episode of the battle took place on
July 12 at the village of Prokhorovka, where nearly 2,000 tanks clashed at once
...
By July 14,
Germany was in retreat, with the Soviets pursuing them close behind
...

From this point forward, the USSR had the initiative and commenced a long offensive push that
would slowly drive the Germans back to the west
...
The first major victory came on
August 22, when the Red Army retook the city of Kharkov
...
To be called the Panther Line, it was meant to be analogous to the Atlantic
Wall that the Germans were building near Normandy, France (seeThe Allied Invasion of
France, p
...
The wall was never built, however, for the Soviets advanced too quickly for the
construction site to be held
...
Dnepropetrovsk fell on October 25, followed by the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on
November 6
...

The End of the Siege of Leningrad
The city of Leningrad, meanwhile, was still starving under the crippling German siege that had
begun all the way back in September 1941 (see Kiev and Leningrad, p
...
The city was
completely encircled by German troops, aside from a sliver of land that allowed access to nearby
Lake Ladoga
...
The task
was dangerous, as many trucks fell victim to German shelling or broke through the ice and sank, but
the supplies helped Leningrad’s population endure the Germans’ brutally long siege
...
The combined forces of the Red Army pushing in from the outside and Soviet troops and
resistance fighters pushing out from the inside broke the German siege line
...

The liberation of Leningrad was a tremendous victory for the Soviets, both literally and
symbolically
...

Throughout the siege, Soviet forces trapped within the city had stood firm and prevented German
forces from ever entering
...
With each passing month, more and more Soviet cities and
towns were liberated, and the Germans lost more and more of the ground they had seized
in 1941 and 1942
...
As the Nazi forces abandoned their positions, they executed any remaining
Jewish slave laborers and Soviet prisoners, along with anyone even remotely suspected of partisan
involvement
...


Operation Bagration
Although the Red Army kept pushing, it was not until the summer of 1944 that a major Soviet
offensive took place
...
The objective was to drive out completely the German forces
centered in Belorussia and central Russia
...
On July 3, Soviet
forces took the Belorussian capital of Minsk, and less than two weeks later, the Red Army reached
the Polish border
...
On July 24 , 1944, Soviet soldiers moving
through Lublin, Poland, captured the Majdanek extermination camp before its German operators
could destroy the evidence of what had taken place there
...
Although the West had received reports of such atrocities for some time, this
Soviet discovery was the first absolute proof
...
The Allies had limited success in their efforts to airdrop supplies
and other means of support to these insurgents
...
However, as the Red Army made its way deeper into Poland, Stalin’s
intentions became clearer, as reports surfaced in the West that Soviets “liberating” Polish territory
were actually arresting members of the Polish insurgency in large numbers
...

This multi-front war began to take a serious toll on Germany’s capability to control the territory it
had seized over the previous four years
...
Consequently, Germany withdrew still more forces from the collapsing eastern front
...


16
...
Eisenhower - U
...
general and supreme commander of Allied forces in western Europe;
planned Normandy invasion
Operation Overlord
By early 1944, the Allies, under the leadership of U
...
general Dwight D
...
The Germans, anticipating such an invasion
since 1942, had begun building theAtlantic Wall, a series of heavily armed fortifications all along
the French coast
...

As part of the invasion plan, the Allies instigated a mass disinformation campaign in hopes of
directing German forces away from the actual landing point
...
These
double agents helped convince the German leadership that the invasion would take place
near Calais, the point where the English Channel was narrowest, when in fact the invasion was
targeted farther south, in Normandy
...
S
...
Overnight, roughly 20,000 British and
American airborne troops had been dropped by parachute and glider a short distance inland of the
Normandy coast, ordered to do as much damage as possible to the German fortified coastal
defenses
...
The first wave
alone brought 150,000 Allied soldiers to the French shore, and over the coming weeks, more
than 2 million more would enter France via the Normandy beaches—to this day the largest seaborne
invasion in history
...

The first day of the invasion was costly for the Allies in terms of casualties—especially at one
landing point, Omaha Beach—but the Germans were vastly outnumbered and rapidly overwhelmed
by the incoming forces
...
The Allies therefore accomplished nearly all of their set objectives for the
first day, which included fully securing the landing areas
...
The
Allies were unable to advance inland in significant numbers until July 28, 1944, by which time the
two German forts had been defeated
...

Operation Dragoon
On August 15, a second Allied assault was made into France, this time along the Mediterranean

coast in the south
...
With this southern operation a success, Allied forces were
able to approach the French capital from two directions
...
Hitler ordered the evacuation of southern France, and German troops
also began the process of evacuating Parisitself
...

Even as it became inevitable that France would fall to the Allies, however, the Nazi war machine
continued deporting French Jews to Auschwitz and other extermination camps without letup
...

The Approach to Germany
Even though the war in Europe would continue for another seven months, September 1944 brought
Germany perilously close to defeat
...
The first Allied
soldier crossed into Germany on September 10; although this mission was only a brief excursion,
Allied ground missions into Germany would become increasingly frequent
...
Simultaneously, the Soviets were closing in from the east: although Warsaw was still
under German control, the Red Army had taken much of eastern Poland
...

Germany Surrounded
By the autumn of 1944, Germany was surrounded on all sides
...
This gap in Germany’s defense left the country very vulnerable to attack
...
Ploiesti had been the last oil source
available to Germany, as it was now cut off from the Black Sea
...
A resistance movement against Hitler grew among the
German officer corps, and several attempts were made on Hitler’s life throughout the summer,
including a bombing on July 20 that nearly succeeded
...

On October 18, Hitler ordered the conscription of all healthy German men aged sixteen to sixty in
order to defend the country from an obviously imminent invasion
...


17
...
S
...
S
...
S
...
Roosevelt - 32nd U
...
president; met with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta Conference but
died in April 1945
Harry S Truman - 33rd U
...
president; took office upon Roosevelt’s death
Winston Churchill - British prime minister; met with Roosevelt and Stalin at February 1945 Yalta
Conference
Joseph Stalin - Soviet premier; began to assert USSR’s dominance over Eastern Europe in final
days of the war, which led to Cold War tensions
German Desperation
During the second half of 1944, the Nazi empire gradually imploded as its enemies invaded from
east, west, and south
...
The oncemighty Luftwaffe had some of the best military aircraft in the world but lacked fuel to fly them and
parts to maintain them
...

Far separated from reality, Hitler placed his last hope of winning the war on the latest developments
of German technology
...
Among Germany’s
most fearsome new weapons were two missiles, the V1 and the V2
...
Other German innovations
included both jet- and rocket-propelled aircraft
...
German scientists were also
busily working on the development of an atomic bomb, but the war ended before they could
succeed
...
This time, Allied intelligence failed to intercept the German
plans, and the action was a complete surprise
...
Furthermore, the Germans deployed a
group of about thirty English-speaking soldiers behind Allied lines, dressed in American uniforms
and driving captured American vehicles
...

By December 24, the Germans had penetrated deep into French territory, making a distinct bulge in
the front line that lent the Battle of the Bulge its name
...
S forces in the town of Bastogne and attempted to intimidate them with an invitation of
surrender
...

As the weather cleared and Allied aircraft could fly again, the Germans were pushed back, and
supplies were airdropped to the trapped American troops
...
By early January 1945, the Germans were once again in
retreat, and on January 16, the soldiers trapped at Bastogne were free, and the “bulge” was no more
...
The brunt of the assault was concentrated on Poland, where most
of the Nazis’ concentration camps were located
...
S
...

The Nazis forced those prisoners who were still living to march on foot westward to Germany
...

The Yalta Conference
On February 4, 1945, Franklin D
...
During the
meeting, the “Big Three,” as they came to be called, discussed their strategy for the last stages of
the war
...

The three leaders also spoke about the issue of how Europe would be divided after the war, with
particular concern regarding the situation in Poland, which was by this point controlled entirely by
the Soviet Union
...
However, these turned out to be heavily rigged in favor
of a pro-Soviet Communist government
...
U
...
and British aircraft provided
support as the Soviets advanced into German territory, making devastating bombing attacks on the
cities of Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin
...

By late March 1945, the Red Army had secured all of eastern Europe
...
By this time, the Allied forces coming
from France had crossed the Rhine River and were moving swiftly toward Berlin from the west
...
S
...

Roosevelt’s Death
On April 12, 1945, U
...
president Franklin D
...
The United States saw an
outpouring of grief, as Roosevelt had been president an unprecedented twelve years and, in addition
to being an effective commander in chief and diplomatic leader, had almost single-handedly rallied
the American people through the hardships of the war
...

The End of Nazi Germany
Just days after Roosevelt’s death, on April 16, 1945, the Soviets began their final offensive against
the Third Reich
...
On April 20, Hitler spent
his birthday in an underground bunker and soon resigned to kill himself when the city fell
...

On April 25, the Allied armies advancing from east and west met for the first time, when a small
group of American and Soviet soldiers met at the German village of Stehla
...
On April 28, the former
dictator of Italy, Benito Mussolini, under arrest since his ouster nearly two years before, was
executed by Italian partisans and hung upside down in the center of Milan
...
Later that evening, the Red Army hung a Soviet flag from the top of the Reichstag,
the German parliament building in Berlin
...
Some German
forces surrendered, while others continued to fight
...
Others followed Hitler’s example and committed suicide
...
Some sporadic fighting continued in the
interim, particularly in Czechoslovakia
...
The Western Allies thus celebrated May 8, 1945, as V-E Day (Victory in Europe
Day)
...

The Seeds of the Cold War
As it turned out, the dividing line between the Red Army’s position and the Western Allied armies’
position at the end of the war in Europe would solidify into roughly the same line as the Iron
Curtain, the line dividing Western Europe from Eastern Europe in the Cold War
...


18
...
S
...
S
...
In March 1945, the U
...
Air Force began a series of heavy
bombing campaigns against major Japanese cities
...
The operations used America’s
new strategic bomber, the B-29 , and directly targeted the Japanese civilian population in addition to
industrial and military targets
...

Many of these raids were conducted on the capital of Tokyo itself, though other cities such as Kobe
were also hit
...
By late summer,
little of Tokyo and the other targeted cities were left standing
...
On July26, the three also held a special meeting to settle on the
terms of surrender for Japan in order to end the war
...
In short, it demanded an unconditional surrender that included
the complete demilitarization of the country and the replacement of Japan’s current leadership by a
“peacefully inclined and responsible government
...
Scientists around
the world had theorized about the concept of such a weapon for years, and active research on its
development had been taking place not only in the United States but also in Nazi Germany, Japan,

and the USSR
...
Shortly after the July test, the Truman
administration began seriously to consider using the bomb against Japan
...
S
...
Despite
the fact that the bomb would kill tens of thousands of innocents, Truman felt that it would
ultimately save both U
...
military and Japanese civilian casualties that would inevitably result from
a ground invasion of Japan
...
The blast obliterated most of the central city,
killing 80,000 in a single moment
...
It is estimated that the total death toll from Hiroshima was well
over 200,000
...
All
communications with Hiroshima were lost, and rumors quickly spread that the city had vanished in
some kind of cataclysmic explosion
...
The Japanese would learn the truth sixteen hours following the
explosion, when the U
...
government released a public statement explaining what had taken place
...

Japan Surrenders
The day before the Nagasaki bombing, the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan and
commenced an attack on the Chinese province of Manchuria, which was still held by the Japanese
...
On
August 15,1945, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s capitulation in accordance with the Potsdam
Declaration
...

Truman’s Decision
The campaign against Japan at the end of the war and the use of the atomic bomb have long been
the subject of debate and controversy around the world, especially outside the United States
...
The same was said
about the mass incendiary bombing attacks on Tokyo and other cities, which killed even more
people than did the atomic bombs, although without as many long-term effects
...
Indeed, the only alternative to the bombings would have been a ground invasion using
U
...
troops, which would have been extremely costly in both American and Japanese lives
...

Moreover, evidence suggests that external political factors played a significant part in the decision
to drop the atomic bombs
...
Furthermore, tensions were growing with the Soviet Union over the division of

Eastern Europe, and the United States may have wished to demonstrate its newfound power
...
The worldwide cultural taboo
surrounding such weapons did not exist at the time, and in general there was less understanding of
the long-term effects of their use—only one atomic bomb had ever been tested successfully
...




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