WWII
Causes, Conflict, and Consequences,
1919-1945
Exploitable Frustrations with Tr.
Of Versailles
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Polish Corridor
Reparations
Tariffs
Security provisions require enforcement
Totalitarianism
• Individual Subordinated to the state
• Strong dictators created a cult of personality that
tied the individual to the glories of the state
• Dictators linked popular frustration to popular
scapegoats
• Economic woes—first in early Weimar
Germany—and then in the late 1920s across the
globe fueled discontent and strengthened the
appeal of the dictators.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)
• Played on frustrated Italian nationalism and
fear of communism.
• March on Rome
• Other parties outlawed
• Corporatism
• Vatican Accord
Josef Stalin (1879-1953)
• Political skills helped him triumph over
rivals following Lenin’s Death
• 5 year plans
• Purged army, party, and Kulaks
Adolf Hilter (1889-1945)
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War Hero
N.S.D.A.P.
Beer Hall Putsch
Mein Kampf--lebensraum
Enabling Act of 1933
Nuremburg Laws
Kristallnacht
Japan
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Tension between militarists and liberals
Depression
Murder of Hamaguchi Yuko
Militarists seize cabinet
Movement toward “Greater East Asian CoProsperity Sphere”
Aggression by the Dictators
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Manchuria invaded 1931
Ethiopia invaded 1935
Remilitarization of the Rhineland 1936
Spanish Civil War
Anschluß with Austria 1938
Sudetenland crisis 1938
Remainder of Czechoslovakia seized 1938
Non-aggression treaty with Russia
Poland invaded 1939
Munich Conference:
Chamberlain and Hitler
Appeasement
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Belief that WWI treaties were unfair
Lack of belief in liberal democracy
Anything is better than war
“peace in our time”
War finally declared by Britain and France
in September 1939.
WWII
• Following sitzkrieg, Germany invaded and
conquered France and subjected Great
Britain to aerial assault.
• Loosing patience, Hitler ordered his army to
launch Operation Barbarossa against Russia
• U. S. began to supply aid—Cash & Carry,
Destroyers for Bases, Lend-Lease—to Great
Britain and Lend-Lease aid to Russia.
Pearl Harbor
• Japanese desire to get raw materials and oil
for Indonesia necessitated attacks on the
Philippines and Pearl Harbor
• Attack on Dec. 7, spurred U. S. to declare
war on Japan on Dec. 8.
• Germany declared war on U. S. in response
to its declaration of war on Japan.
War Aims and Strategies
• Atlantic Charter—better international
economics and collective security as a war
aim.
• Focus on Germany first
• Led to coordinated attacks in North Africa
and expulsion of German military there.
Key Military Operations
• Pacific secured following Battles of Coral
Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal in 1942
• Sicily invaded in 1943
• Russian counterattack from Stalingrad
• Allies won Battle of Atlantic by Spring ’43
• Operation Overlord
• Battle of the Bulge
The Beaches at Normandy became a vast staging area
Key Military Operations
• Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945—VE day is
May 8
• Island Hopping strategy in Pacific
• Philippines reoccupied, then Iwo Jima, and
Okinawa
• Huge losses make Operations Coronet and
Olympic too deadly to undertake, especially with
Japan’s ketsu-go defense
• Atomic Bombs dropped on August 6, 1945
(Hiroshima) and August 9, 1945 (Nagasaki)
Outcomes
• Holocaust leads to Nuremburg Trials—
Crimes against humanity
• Nuclear Arms Race/Cold War—defined by
need for security and nuclear bombs
• Huge loss of life
• War cost over a trillion dollars.
• United Nations Created
Some of the 6,000,000 dead due to the Holocaust
Nuremberg Trials