To gain support for his ideas, Hitler tapped into a hatred for Jews that had been known in European history. For generations, many Germans, along with other Europeans, had gone after Jews as the cause of their failures. Some Germans even blamed Jews for their country’s defeat in World War I and for the economic problems after the war. He ordered Jews in all countries under his control to be moved to designated cities. In those cities, the Nazis moved the Jews to their own segregated ghettos. As Nazi troops went across and through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the mass killings began soon after. The Nazis built camps with huge gas chambers that could kill as many as 6,000 people in a day. They would be told to undress and a take a shower though gas would be coming out of holes in the shower/ walls killing everyone inside. Around six million European Jews died in the death camps and in Nazi massacres. Fewer than four million survived leaving them scared for life.
(1)
The Great Depression
Several weaknesses in the U.S. economy (an uneven distribution of wealth, overproduction by business and agriculture, and the fact that many Americans were buying less) caused severe problems. By 1929, American factories were producing almost 50% of the world's industrial goods and the rising productivity led to enormous profits, but it wasn't shared equally throughout the nation. This made it very difficult for many of the families to buy the goods that were being produced. And because all the goods weren't being sold, store owners eventually cut back their orders from factories, forcing them to reduce their production and fire workers.
During this time, Wall Street was the financial capital of the world. Many middle-income people began buying stocks on margin. Around September of 1929, people started thinking that the prices were extremely high so they began to sell their stocks. This eventually led to a drastic drop in the prices of stocks since everyone wanted to sell and no one wanted to buy. After the market crashed, factory production was significantly reduced, unemployment rates went up, prices went down and wages for workers dropped. This would be the beginning of a long period of time known as the Great Depression.
The Rise of Dictators In Europe
Not only did the Great Depression affect the United States, but most of Europe and Asia were affected as well. Searching for hope, countries such as Italy, Germany, and Japan, began to become desperate. Everyone had there own ideas on how they could reform their countries, and eventually new leaders began to emerge. These new leaders made promises of gaining back financial stability and even helping get the country in an even better spot than before. People, desperately seeking change, elected these new promising leaders.
The people of Italy elected a man named, Benito Mussolini. Soon after being elected, he started a new political movement called Fascism. This political movement included governing by striking fear into the people of the country. With the help of his followers, he became Prime Minister in 1922, promising Italy will turn into a new Roman Empire.
In Germany, Adolf Hitler came to power through the Nazi regime. He came to power by blaming certain ethnic and religious groups of people for all of Germany's problems. (Including all of the expenses Germany faced for damages from WWI) He also used the communist party as an "enemy" toward Germany, making people believe the communist were there to take their businesses and outlaw private property.
In Japan, military officials held high rankings in their government. In 1931, Japan had invaded China, starting the beginning of an Asia expansion. In 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan formed the "Axis Powers".
The Beginning of World War II
September 1, 1939; the Nazis invaded Poland using massive air and ground attacks. Using these attacks made Britain and France realize that Hitler could only be forcibly stopped. After two days, France and Britain declared war on Germany, starting WWII. The "Allied Powers" included Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, among others. In the Spring of 1940, Germany conquered Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium, making them seem unstoppable. Most of France soon fell to the Germans later that Spring.
In the US, isolationists urged Americans to stay out of the European conflicts/affairs and avoid being part of the war. FDR, however, thought that if the Nazis and the Fascists would endanger the United States if not stopped soon. In 1941, he addressed the public on aiding the Allies in the effort to stop the Nazis and Fascists. (1)
December, 7 1941: "A day that will live in infamy". The Japanese launched a surprise attack on the U.S Naval base of Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. FDR and congresses passed A declaration of war on Japan, and the rest of the Axis Powers (Germany and Italy) declared war on the United States. The United States, after entering the war, jumped right out of their Depression because of all of the available jobs that the war brought. Since men were in the war, all of manufacturing jobs fell to the women, thus providing women to basically "prove" their worth. Opening up all of these jobs for manufacturing, was the main reason the US got out of its Depression. (1)
Japan's role in WWII
By October 1940, Americans had found one of the codes that the Japanese used in sending secret messages. Therefore, they all had knowledge of Japanese plans for Southeast Asia. Early in the morning of December 7, 1941, American sailors at Pearl Harbor were awaken to the sounds of explosive bombs. They soon had figured out they were being attacked by the Japanese. U.S. military leaders had known that a Japanese message had been sent and that an attack might come soon though they didn't know when. Japanese forces took over Guam and Wake soon after. The Japanese then went on the offensive and started moving towards the Philippines. In January 1942, they finally marched into the Philippine capital of Manila. The Japanese continued their strikes against British forces in Asia. After seizing Hong Kong, they invaded Malaya from the water, and on ground from Thailand. Doolittle’s raid on Japan destroyed the confidence of people in Japan and made the Americans feel more in power. Japan soon went after Midway Island, which was 1,500 miles west of Hawaii, the location of a important American air base. Thanks to Allied code breakers, Admiral Chester Nimitz knew that a huge Japanese fleet was coming toward Midway. With hopes high after their victory at Midway, the Allies feeling better went off and after Japan. The war in the Pacific covered vast distances where Japanese troops had grown onto hundreds of islands across this ocean. In February 1943, after six months of fighting, the Battle of Guadalcanal finally ended. After losing more than 24,000 out of 36,000 troops, the Japanese abandoned the island they occupied in the Pacific. (1)
U.S Involvement in WWII
The beginning of U.S Involvement was on December 22, 1941 when Winston Churchill met with the current U.S President Roosevelt at the White House to create a joint war policy. Stalin wanted them to open a second front in the west to split German forces in half, making it easier to take them down. They both agreed to this plan but could only offer supplies until 1942 when they started invading in North Africa and Southern Europe, so the Soviet Union had to hold out on their own until then.
The first battle was The Battle of El Alamein and began on the night of October 23 when 1,000 British soldiers ambushed the German forces. The Germans fought back fiercely and held their ground for several days, but by November 4, the army, led by Erwin Rommel, had been beaten and his remaining troops fell back. Soon after on November 8, 100,000 Allied troops, many of them American and led by American general Dwight D. Eisenhower, landed in Morocco and Algeria.
Next, Roosevelt and Churchill decided to invade Italy. On July 10, 1943, Allied forces entered Sicily and captured it from Italian and German troops after a month of continuous fighting. While this was happening, the Soviet Union was winning on the eastern front at Stalingrad, gradually pushing the Germans west.
The conquest of Sicily drove Mussolini from power. King Victor Emmanuel III had Mussolini arrested on July 25. About 2 months later, Italy surrendered. Despite Italy's surrender, the Germans seized control of northern Italy and made Mussolini the absolute leader again. In the end, the Germans retreated to the north and the Allies entered Rome on June 4, 1944. However, fighting continued until May 1945.
Americans not fighting in the war were also a major help in contributing to the Allied war effort. They produced the weapons, vehicles, equipment, etc. that would help the Allies defeat the Axis powers. In the United States, factories devoted themselves to making everything from weapons to apparel. Tanks were now being produced in automobile factories and the shells to be used by the tanks were manufactured in typewriter companies By 1944, around 17.5 million workers had jobs in war industries (many of these workers were women) Because of all this production going on for the war, there was a large shortage of consumer goods, so the American government set standards for rationing these goods. They also helped to save gas and rubber by setting new driving standards. (1)
The Allied Victory
In 1943, the Allies began to secretly build an invasion force in Great Britain. The Allies were planning on launching an attack on the Germans in France across the English Channel. (1)
By May 1944, the invasion force, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was fully prepared. It consisted of three million troops, along with thousands of planes, ships, tanks, and landing craft. Eisenhower planned to strike on the coast of Normandy, but they arranged for a fake army to be created so that the Germans beleived that the French seaport of Calais was where the attack would happen. This invasion was code-named Operation Overlord and was the largest land and sea attack in history. (1) On June 6, 1944, now known as D-Day, is the day the invasion began. That morning, British, American, French, and Canadian troops fought their way onto a 60-mile stretch of beach in Normandy. The Germans fortified their position behind concrete walls with machine guns, rocket launchers, and cannons. Many casualties were suffered that day, including 2,700 American soldiers. (4)
Despite these loses, the Allies were able to maintain control of the beachheads and within a month of D-Day, received an extra one million troops. On July 25th, the Allies crippled the German forces near Saint-Lô and the United States Third Army, led by General George Patton, broke out. After a month, the Allies victoriously marched into Paris & liberated France, Belgium, and Luxembourg by September. (1)
At this point, the Soviet Union is advancing west and pushing the Germans back on the Eastern Front while Britain & the U.S are advancing east and pushing the Germans back on the Western Front in order to close them in to deliver the killing blow. Hitler took a big risk and ordered a counter-attack in the west in an attempt to split up the British and American forces and damage their sources of supplies. (1) On December 16, German tanks travelled into Allied territroy along a 75-mile front in Ardennes, but were eventually pushed back and forced to retreat. This battle became known as the Battle of the Bulge. (4)
After this battle, the war ended fairly quickly. In late March 1945, the Allies crossed the Rhine River into Germany. By mid-April, an estimated 3 million Allied forces met Berlin from the southwest while another 6 million Soviet troops approached from the east. By April 25th, the Soviets completely surrounded Berlin and had already begun to destroy the city with artillery fire. (1) On May 7, 1945, General Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich from the German military. Harry Truman, fulfilling Roosevelt's role as President, received the news of the Nazi surrender. On May 9, now known as V-E Day, is when the surrender was officially signed in Berlin and war in Europe was officially over. But now the Allies had to turn their attention towards Japan. (4)
Around the same time as D-Day was going on in Europe, the Allies were looking towards Japan. In October, Allied forces arrived on the island of Leyte in the Philippines. General Douglas MacArthur, approached Leyte's shores with his troops. Meanwhile, the Japanese had created a plan to stop the Allies from advancing. (1) They planned on destroying the American fleet to prevent the Allies from replenishing their ground troops. However, this plan puts the entire Japanese fleet at risk of being crippled. This would become the Battle of Leyte Gulf which began on October 23. By October 27, the Japanese navy had lost poorly, removing it as a fighting force in the war, leaving only the Japanese army and the kamikaze. (3)
In March 1945, after a month of death and constant fighting, the American Marines took Iwo Jima. Then on April 1, U.S. troops moved to the island of Okinawa. On June 21, the battle ended with a victory for the Allies. There were a total of 112,000 as a result of this battle (100,000+Japanese & 12,000 American) (3)
Soon after this, a mission known as the Manhattan Project began and was a race against the other countries, especially Germany, to be the first to create the atomic bomb. After the U.S completed the Manhattan Project, President Harry Truman had to decide between invading Japan with his forces or dropping A-bombs to force a surrender out of Japan. Truman decided to go with the A-bombs and then warned the Japanese of the situation. He told them indirectly that unless they surrendered, they would drop the A-bombs, but the Japanese never replIced. (1) Because of this, on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima (population of 350,000). 70,000-80,000 people died as a result. Three days later, on August 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki (population of 270,000) The death toll for this bombing is similar to that of Hiroshima. Due to these bombing suspects, Japanese finally surrendered to General Douglas MacArthur on September 2, 1945, officially ending the war. (3)
Major Battles of World War II
The Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was a major German offensive campaign launched through the dense Ardennes forest.
The attack was intended to split the British and American Allied line in half. The Germans then could then encircle and destroy four Allied armies, forcing the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis Powers' favor. The offensive was planned by the German forces with utmost secrecy. Despite their efforts to keep it secret, the U.S. Army's intelligence staff intercepted German communications that a substantial and offensive attack was expected, although they could not predict a date or point of attack. Aircraft from the Russian Front and transport of forces by rail to the Ardennes was noticed but no one did anything.
The Germans attacked a weakly defended section of the Allied line which grounded the Allies' superior air forces. Fierce resistance on the northern region of the offensive and in south blocked German access to key roads. Improved weather conditions allowed the allies to do air attacks on German forces and supply lines. In the end many experienced German armies were left depleted of men and supplies.
The Germans' initial attack included 200,000 men, 340 tanks and 280 other tracked vehicles. About 67,200 to 100,000 troops were killed. The Americans had 610,000 men involved in the battle. About 89,000 were casualties plus 19,000 killed. It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in World War II.
The Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943) was a major battle of World War II when Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad. Most of the fighting was close quarters combat and attacks on civilians by air raids, it is often regarded as the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of war. The heavy losses on the German Wehrmacht make it one of the most strategically decisive battles of the whole war. It was a turning point in the European theatre of World War II. The German forces never regained the morale that had in the East. They also withdrew a vast amount of troops from the West to replace their losses.
The German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in the summer of 1942. The 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army were the main forces used in the attack. The attack was supported by intensive air bombing that reduced much of the city to rubble. The fighting turned into a building-to-building fighting. Both sides poured reinforcements into the city. By mid-November, the Germans had pushed the Soviet defenders back at a great cost.
On 19 November, the Red Army launched a two-pronged attack against the weaker Romanian and Hungarian forces protecting the German 6th Army's flanks. The Axis forces on the flanks were overrun and the 6th Army was surrounded in the Stalingrad. Hitler ordered that the army stay in Stalingrad and make no attempt to retreat. Instead, Hitler tried to supply the army by air and to break the blockade from the outside. Fighting continued for another two months. By the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces in Stalingrad had exhausted their ammunition and food. The remaining troops of the 6th Army surrendered. The battle lasted five months, one week, and three days.
The Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific theatre of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet. It was Japan's first naval defeat since the Battle of Shimonoseki Straits in 1863.
The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Great Empire. The Japanese hoped that another demoralizing defeat would force the U.S. to lose interest in the Pacific War and thus ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific.
The Japanese plan was to lure the United States' aircraft carriers into a trap. The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive perimeter in response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii itself.
The plan was based off the assumption that Americans would not react as hard and that they would be demoralized. Most significantly, American codebreakers were able to determine the date and location of the attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to prepare its own ambush. Four Japanese aircraft carriers—Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, all part of the six-carrier force that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier—and a heavy cruiser were sunk at a cost of the carrier Yorktown and a destroyer. After Midwayand the losses of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's capacity to replace its losses in materiel and men rapidly became insufficient to cope with amounting casualties, while the United States' massive industrial capabilities made American losses far easier to bear. Allied victories afterward thus became much more frequent as Japan desperately tried to restore its naval power. The Battle of Midway, in combination with the Soviet victory against Germany at the Battle of Stalingrad some months later, are considered to be the turning points of the Second World War in favor of Allied victory.
Europe and Japan in Ruins
Europe after the War
By the end of World War II, Europe lay in ruins. Close to 40 million Europeans had died, two-thirds of them civilians. Constant bombing and shelling had reduced hundreds of cities to rubble. The ground war had destroyed much of the countryside. Displaced persons from many nations were left homeless.
A few of the great cities of Europe—Paris, Rome, and Brussels—remained largely undamaged by war. Many, however, had suffered terrible destruction. The Battle of Britain left huge areas of London little more than blackened ruins. Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was almost completely destroyed. In 1939, Warsaw had a population of nearly 1.3 million. When Soviet soldiers entered the city in January 1945, only 153,000 people remained. Thousands of tons of Allied bombs had demolished 95 percent of the central area of Berlin.
After the bombings, many civilians stayed where they were and tried to get on with their lives. Some lived in partially destroyed homes or apartments. Others huddled in cellars or caves made from rubble they had no water, food, or electricity.
Japan after the War
The defeat suffered by Japan in World War II left the country in ruins. Two million lives had been lost. The country’s major cities, including the capital, Tokyo, had been largely destroyed by bombing raids. The atomic bomb had turned Hiroshima and Nagasaki into blackened wastelands. The Allies had stripped Japan of its colonial empire.
The Holocaust
To gain support for his ideas, Hitler tapped into a hatred for Jews that had been known in European history. For generations, many Germans, along with other Europeans, had gone after Jews as the cause of their failures. Some Germans even blamed Jews for their country’s defeat in World War I and for the economic problems after the war. He ordered Jews in all countries under his control to be moved to designated cities. In those cities, the Nazis moved the Jews to their own segregated ghettos. As Nazi troops went across and through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the mass killings began soon after. The Nazis built camps with huge gas chambers that could kill as many as 6,000 people in a day. They would be told to undress and a take a shower though gas would be coming out of holes in the shower/ walls killing everyone inside. Around six million European Jews died in the death camps and in Nazi massacres. Fewer than four million survived leaving them scared for life.(1)
The Great Depression
Several weaknesses in the U.S. economy (an uneven distribution of wealth, overproduction by business and agriculture, and the fact that many Americans were buying less) caused severe problems. By 1929, American factories were producing almost 50% of the world's industrial goods and the rising productivity led to enormous profits, but it wasn't shared equally throughout the nation. This made it very difficult for many of the families to buy the goods that were being produced. And because all the goods weren't being sold, store owners eventually cut back their orders from factories, forcing them to reduce their production and fire workers.During this time, Wall Street was the financial capital of the world. Many middle-income people began buying stocks on margin. Around September of 1929, people started thinking that the prices were extremely high so they began to sell their stocks. This eventually led to a drastic drop in the prices of stocks since everyone wanted to sell and no one wanted to buy. After the market crashed, factory production was significantly reduced, unemployment rates went up, prices went down and wages for workers dropped. This would be the beginning of a long period of time known as the Great Depression.
The Rise of Dictators In Europe
Not only did the Great Depression affect the United States, but most of Europe and Asia were affected as well. Searching for hope, countries such as Italy, Germany, and Japan, began to become desperate. Everyone had there own ideas on how they could reform their countries, and eventually new leaders began to emerge. These new leaders made promises of gaining back financial stability and even helping get the country in an even better spot than before. People, desperately seeking change, elected these new promising leaders.The people of Italy elected a man named, Benito Mussolini. Soon after being elected, he started a new political movement called Fascism. This political movement included governing by striking fear into the people of the country. With the help of his followers, he became Prime Minister in 1922, promising Italy will turn into a new Roman Empire.
In Germany, Adolf Hitler came to power through the Nazi regime. He came to power by blaming certain ethnic and religious groups of people for all of Germany's problems. (Including all of the expenses Germany faced for damages from WWI) He also used the communist party as an "enemy" toward Germany, making people believe the communist were there to take their businesses and outlaw private property.
In Japan, military officials held high rankings in their government. In 1931, Japan had invaded China, starting the beginning of an Asia expansion. In 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan formed the "Axis Powers".
The Beginning of World War II
September 1, 1939; the Nazis invaded Poland using massive air and ground attacks. Using these attacks made Britain and France realize that Hitler could only be forcibly stopped. After two days, France and Britain declared war on Germany, starting WWII. The "Allied Powers" included Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, among others. In the Spring of 1940, Germany conquered Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium, making them seem unstoppable. Most of France soon fell to the Germans later that Spring.In the US, isolationists urged Americans to stay out of the European conflicts/affairs and avoid being part of the war. FDR, however, thought that if the Nazis and the Fascists would endanger the United States if not stopped soon. In 1941, he addressed the public on aiding the Allies in the effort to stop the Nazis and Fascists. (1)
December, 7 1941: "A day that will live in infamy". The Japanese launched a surprise attack on the U.S Naval base of Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. FDR and congresses passed A declaration of war on Japan, and the rest of the Axis Powers (Germany and Italy) declared war on the United States.
The United States, after entering the war, jumped right out of their Depression because of all of the available jobs that the war brought. Since men were in the war, all of manufacturing
jobs fell to the women, thus providing women to basically "prove" their worth. Opening up all of these jobs for manufacturing, was the main reason the US got out of its Depression. (1)
Japan's role in WWII
By October 1940, Americans had found one of the codes that the Japanese used in sending secret messages. Therefore, they all had knowledge of Japanese plans for Southeast Asia. Early in the morning of December 7, 1941, American sailors at Pearl Harbor were awaken to the sounds of explosive bombs. They soon had figured out they were being attacked by the Japanese. U.S. military leaders had known that a Japanese message had been sent and that an attack might come soon though they didn't know when. Japanese forces took over Guam and Wake soon after. The Japanese then went on the offensive and started moving towards the Philippines. In January 1942, they finally marched into the Philippine capital of Manila. The Japanese continued their strikes against British forces in Asia. After seizing Hong Kong, they invaded Malaya from the water, and on ground from Thailand. Doolittle’s raid on Japan destroyed the confidence of people in Japan and made the Americans feel more in power. Japan soon went after Midway Island, which was 1,500 miles west of Hawaii, the location of a important American air base. Thanks to Allied code breakers, Admiral Chester Nimitz knew that a huge Japanese fleet was coming toward Midway. With hopes high after their victory at Midway, the Allies feeling better went off and after Japan. The war in the Pacific covered vast distances where Japanese troops had grown onto hundreds of islands across this ocean. In February 1943, after six months of fighting, the Battle of Guadalcanal finally ended. After losing more than 24,000 out of 36,000 troops, the Japanese abandoned the island they occupied in the Pacific. (1)
U.S Involvement in WWII
The beginning of U.S Involvement was on December 22, 1941 when Winston Churchill met with the current U.S President Roosevelt at the White House to create a joint war policy. Stalin wanted them to open a second front in the west to split German forces in half, making it easier to take them down. They both agreed to this plan but could only offer supplies until 1942 when they started invading in North Africa and Southern Europe, so the Soviet Union had to hold out on their own until then.The first battle was The Battle of El Alamein and began on the night of October 23 when 1,000 British soldiers ambushed the German forces. The Germans fought back fiercely and held their ground for several days, but by November 4, the army, led by Erwin Rommel, had been beaten and his remaining troops fell back. Soon after on November 8, 100,000 Allied troops, many of them American and led by American general Dwight D. Eisenhower, landed in Morocco and Algeria.
Next, Roosevelt and Churchill decided to invade Italy. On July 10, 1943, Allied forces entered Sicily and captured it from Italian and German troops after a month of continuous fighting. While this was happening, the Soviet Union was winning on the eastern front at Stalingrad, gradually pushing the Germans west.
The conquest of Sicily drove Mussolini from power. King Victor Emmanuel III had Mussolini arrested on July 25. About 2 months later, Italy surrendered. Despite Italy's surrender, the Germans seized control of northern Italy and made Mussolini the absolute leader again. In the end, the Germans retreated to the north and the Allies entered Rome on June 4, 1944. However, fighting continued until May 1945.
Americans not fighting in the war were also a major help in contributing to the Allied war effort. They produced the weapons, vehicles, equipment, etc. that would help the Allies defeat the Axis powers. In the United States, factories devoted themselves to making everything from weapons to apparel. Tanks were now being produced in automobile factories and the shells to be used by the tanks were manufactured in typewriter companies By 1944, around 17.5 million workers had jobs in war industries (many of these workers were women) Because of all this production going on for the war, there was a large shortage of consumer goods, so the American government set standards for rationing these goods. They also helped to save gas and rubber by setting new driving standards. (1)
The Allied Victory
In 1943, the Allies began to secretly build an invasion force in Great Britain. The Allies were planning on launching an attack on the Germans in France across the English Channel. (1)By May 1944, the invasion force, led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was fully prepared. It consisted of three million troops, along with thousands of planes, ships, tanks, and landing craft. Eisenhower planned to strike on the coast of Normandy, but they arranged for a fake army to be created so that the Germans beleived that the French seaport of Calais was where the attack would happen. This invasion was code-named Operation Overlord and was the largest land and sea attack in history. (1) On June 6, 1944, now known as D-Day, is the day the invasion began. That morning, British, American, French, and Canadian troops fought their way onto a 60-mile stretch of beach in Normandy. The Germans fortified their position behind concrete walls with machine guns, rocket launchers, and cannons. Many casualties were suffered that day, including 2,700 American soldiers. (4)
Despite these loses, the Allies were able to maintain control of the beachheads and within a month of D-Day, received an extra one million troops. On July 25th, the Allies crippled the German forces near Saint-Lô and the United States Third Army, led by General George Patton, broke out. After a month, the Allies victoriously marched into Paris & liberated France, Belgium, and Luxembourg by September. (1)
At this point, the Soviet Union is advancing west and pushing the Germans back on the Eastern Front while Britain & the U.S are advancing east and pushing the Germans back on the Western Front in order to close them in to deliver the killing blow. Hitler took a big risk and ordered a counter-attack in the west in an attempt to split up the British and American forces and damage their sources of supplies. (1) On December 16, German tanks travelled into Allied territroy along a 75-mile front in Ardennes, but were eventually pushed back and forced to retreat. This battle became known as the Battle of the Bulge. (4)
After this battle, the war ended fairly quickly. In late March 1945, the Allies crossed the Rhine River into Germany. By mid-April, an estimated 3 million Allied forces met Berlin from the southwest while another 6 million Soviet troops approached from the east. By April 25th, the Soviets completely surrounded Berlin and had already begun to destroy the city with artillery fire. (1) On May 7, 1945, General Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich from the German military. Harry Truman, fulfilling Roosevelt's role as President, received the news of the Nazi surrender. On May 9, now known as V-E Day, is when the surrender was officially signed in Berlin and war in Europe was officially over. But now the Allies had to turn their attention towards Japan. (4)
Around the same time as D-Day was going on in Europe, the Allies were looking towards Japan. In October, Allied forces arrived on the island of Leyte in the Philippines. General Douglas MacArthur, approached Leyte's shores with his troops. Meanwhile, the Japanese had created a plan to stop the Allies from advancing. (1) They planned on destroying the American fleet to prevent the Allies from replenishing their ground troops. However, this plan puts the entire Japanese fleet at risk of being crippled. This would become the Battle of Leyte Gulf which began on October 23. By October 27, the Japanese navy had lost poorly, removing it as a fighting force in the war, leaving only the Japanese army and the kamikaze. (3)
In March 1945, after a month of death and constant fighting, the American Marines took Iwo Jima. Then on April 1, U.S. troops moved to the island of Okinawa. On June 21, the battle ended with a victory for the Allies. There were a total of 112,000 as a result of this battle (100,000+Japanese & 12,000 American) (3)
Soon after this, a mission known as the Manhattan Project began and was a race against the other countries, especially Germany, to be the first to create the atomic bomb. After the U.S completed the Manhattan Project, President Harry Truman had to decide between invading Japan with his forces or dropping A-bombs to force a surrender out of Japan. Truman decided to go with the A-bombs and then warned the Japanese of the situation. He told them indirectly that unless they surrendered, they would drop the A-bombs, but the Japanese never replIced. (1) Because of this, on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima (population of 350,000). 70,000-80,000 people died as a result. Three days later, on August 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki (population of 270,000) The death toll for this bombing is similar to that of Hiroshima. Due to these bombing suspects, Japanese finally surrendered to General Douglas MacArthur on September 2, 1945, officially ending the war. (3)
Major Battles of World War II
The Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was a major German offensive campaign launched through the dense Ardennes forest.
The attack was intended to split the British and American Allied line in half. The Germans then could then encircle and destroy four Allied armies, forcing the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis Powers' favor. The offensive was planned by the German forces with utmost secrecy. Despite their efforts to keep it secret, the U.S. Army's intelligence staff intercepted German communications that a substantial and offensive attack was expected, although they could not predict a date or point of attack. Aircraft from the Russian Front and transport of forces by rail to the Ardennes was noticed but no one did anything.
The Germans attacked a weakly defended section of the Allied line which grounded the Allies' superior air forces. Fierce resistance on the northern region of the offensive and in south blocked German access to key roads. Improved weather conditions allowed the allies to do air attacks on German forces and supply lines. In the end many experienced German armies were left depleted of men and supplies.
The Germans' initial attack included 200,000 men, 340 tanks and 280 other tracked vehicles. About 67,200 to 100,000 troops were killed. The Americans had 610,000 men involved in the battle. About 89,000 were casualties plus 19,000 killed. It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in World War II.
The Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943) was a major battle of World War II when Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad. Most of the fighting was close quarters combat and attacks on civilians by air raids, it is often regarded as the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of war. The heavy losses on the German Wehrmacht make it one of the most strategically decisive battles of the whole war. It was a turning point in the European theatre of World War II. The German forces never regained the morale that had in the East. They also withdrew a vast amount of troops from the West to replace their losses.
The German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in the summer of 1942. The 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army were the main forces used in the attack. The attack was supported by intensive air bombing that reduced much of the city to rubble. The fighting turned into a building-to-building fighting. Both sides poured reinforcements into the city. By mid-November, the Germans had pushed the Soviet defenders back at a great cost.
On 19 November, the Red Army launched a two-pronged attack against the weaker Romanian and Hungarian forces protecting the German 6th Army's flanks. The Axis forces on the flanks were overrun and the 6th Army was surrounded in the Stalingrad. Hitler ordered that the army stay in Stalingrad and make no attempt to retreat. Instead, Hitler tried to supply the army by air and to break the blockade from the outside. Fighting continued for another two months. By the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces in Stalingrad had exhausted their ammunition and food. The remaining troops of the 6th Army surrendered. The battle lasted five months, one week, and three days.
The Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific theatre of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet. It was Japan's first naval defeat since the Battle of Shimonoseki Straits in 1863.
The Japanese operation, like the earlier attack on Pearl Harbor, sought to eliminate the United States as a strategic power in the Pacific, thereby giving Japan a free hand in establishing its Great Empire. The Japanese hoped that another demoralizing defeat would force the U.S. to lose interest in the Pacific War and thus ensure Japanese dominance in the Pacific.
The Japanese plan was to lure the United States' aircraft carriers into a trap. The Japanese also intended to occupy Midway as part of an overall plan to extend their defensive perimeter in response to the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. This operation was also considered preparatory for further attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii itself.
The plan was based off the assumption that Americans would not react as hard and that they would be demoralized. Most significantly, American codebreakers were able to determine the date and location of the attack, enabling the forewarned U.S. Navy to prepare its own ambush. Four Japanese aircraft carriers—Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, all part of the six-carrier force that had attacked Pearl Harbor six months earlier—and a heavy cruiser were sunk at a cost of the carrier Yorktown and a destroyer. After Midwayand the losses of the Solomon Islands campaign, Japan's capacity to replace its losses in materiel and men rapidly became insufficient to cope with amounting casualties, while the United States' massive industrial capabilities made American losses far easier to bear. Allied victories afterward thus became much more frequent as Japan desperately tried to restore its naval power. The Battle of Midway, in combination with the Soviet victory against Germany at the Battle of Stalingrad some months later, are considered to be the turning points of the Second World War in favor of Allied victory.
Europe and Japan in Ruins
Europe after the War
By the end of World War II, Europe lay in ruins. Close to 40 million Europeans had died, two-thirds of them civilians. Constant bombing and shelling had reduced hundreds of cities to rubble. The ground war had destroyed much of the countryside. Displaced persons from many nations were left homeless.
A few of the great cities of Europe—Paris, Rome, and Brussels—remained largely undamaged by war. Many, however, had suffered terrible destruction. The Battle of Britain left huge areas of London little more than blackened ruins. Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was almost completely destroyed. In 1939, Warsaw had a population of nearly 1.3 million. When Soviet soldiers entered the city in January 1945, only 153,000 people remained. Thousands of tons of Allied bombs had demolished 95 percent of the central area of Berlin.
After the bombings, many civilians stayed where they were and tried to get on with their lives. Some lived in partially destroyed homes or apartments. Others huddled in cellars or caves made from rubble they had no water, food, or electricity.
Japan after the War
The defeat suffered by Japan in World War II left the country in ruins. Two million lives had been lost. The country’s major cities, including the capital, Tokyo, had been largely destroyed by bombing raids. The atomic bomb had turned Hiroshima and Nagasaki into blackened wastelands. The Allies had stripped Japan of its colonial empire.
Cited Sources
(1) World History: Patterns of Interaction(2) History.com
(3) http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/world-war-ii-allied-victory-pacific.html
(4) http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/world-war-ii-allied-victory-europe.html