•
Beat the Axis first!
• Germany posed a greater threat
• Time to make a bomb
• Ties to England
Air raids
• Objectives
• Bring the war to the German people
• Against industrial plants and military installations
• Everyone in Europe
• Alarm systems
• Bomb shelters were installed
• DARK OUT was ordered
• But there was still a war in the Pacific
Japan
War in the Pacific
Pacific Naval Battles
After Pearl…




Went against Philippines
Men were pushed into the Bataan peninsula
HELP IS ON THE WAY!!!!!!
Macarthur left to Australia
Bataan Death March
Code Talkers!

Navajo Code Talkers

The code was never broken!!!!!!
Original 29
Made up the code
 First
translating Navajo words into English
– Used the first letter of each English word to decipher the
meaning
– Different Navajo words might be translated into different
English words for the same letter
– Code was especially difficult to decipher
THEY WERE HEROES!
 Estimated that they saved 2 million lives
 Went back to the reservation without fanfare
or, in many cases,
Veterans Benefits
Original 29 honored!
 2001- 5 left and only 4 could come
 Congressional Gold Medal to four of
the original 29 Navajo
code talkers, Washington, D.C., July 26, 2001.
The 29


Code talker Chester Nez. "I'm really happy about it." "All of the 29
Marines that I went in [with], we got together and made a code in our own
language. There were over 400 or 500 words that we made up at that time.
We memorized them and everything was up here," Nez said, pointing to
his head.
"And nobody knew. The Japanese pulled all of their hair out trying to
decipher the code. But it's one of the hardest languages to learn, that's why
it was never decoded or deciphered."
Airplanes Change Naval Warfare
Coral Sea

Tactical victory for the Japanese
– sink the carrier Lexington
– Heavily damage the Yorktown
– Sink a destroyer and an oiler
What did it do for America?



Boosted our chances in the New Guinea campaign
Japanese were unable to disrupt supply lines running between the US and
Australia
Japanese were denied the services of their two newest carriers on the eve
of the Battle of Midway
Which leads us to Midway


Japan wanted the US carriers
Attack was to lure the fleet and destroy it
Midway



Yamamoto's plan was intended to be a surprise
To get the air craft carriers
But…superior American communications intelligence figured out the
scheme well before battle was joined.
 This
allowed Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the U.S. Pacific Fleet
commander, to establish an ambush by having his carriers ready
and waiting for the Japanese.
5 Minutes that changed the course of the entire
war





Naguma had led against Pearl Harbor had been almost destroyed
Four carriers
3500 men
300 planes
AIRCREWS
Midway Island
We won?
 Good luck
 From now on, Japan
 But they ain’t gone!
is on the defensive.
The Japanese were defeated by the Australians?



August 1942-September 1942
Milne Bay
First defeat for the Japanese on land since 1939
Guadalcanal
August’42-Feb’43

Location in the Solomon's made them key to Japanese to cutting our
supply routes
Africa?
• 1940-Italy advanced into Egypt
• HELP!
• Rommell to the rescue
USA IN AFRICA!
• Why?
• Suez Canal
• Middle Eastern OIL!
Casablanca Meeting
January 1943
• FDR and Churchill (Stalin declined the invite)
• Unconditional surrender
• Enter Italy by way of Sicily
• Two disassociated French leaders, Henri Giraud and Charles
de Gaulle, were brought together.
Kasserine Pass
• Feb, 1943
• First large scale meeting of American and German forces in
WWII
• Green and untested American troops suffered heavy casualties
and were pushed back over fifty miles from their original
positions west
We learn how to fight a war!
• IKE
• Failed at first
• Bitter lessons about the inadequacy of its training, equipment,
and leadership in the North African campaign.
• Put a new general in charge—General Patton
Island Hopping
1943-1944
 Nimitz
and Macarthur
– bypassed heavily fortified Japanese positions
– concentrated the limited Allied resources on strategically
important islands that were less well defended but capable of
supporting the drive to the main islands of Japan
Die on the vine
 Some of the smaller islands were left to “die on the vine”.
 These islands held the Japanese soldiers who didn’t know the
war was over.
Two prongs of attack
 Nimitz
– From Hawaii
 Macarthur
– From Australia
Italian Campaign
•July, 1943
•Churchill
•“Soft underbelly” of Europe
•Entered through Sicily
Tehran Conference
November 1943
•Centered on the opening of a second front in Western Europe
•Stalin•I want Poland!
•Oh hush!
•Russia to come into the war with Japan after Hitler was gone.
•United Nations was formed
Victory in Italy is slow!
•Winter line (German troops) holds through winter of 1943
•Terrain and weather in Italy were as much an enemy as the
Germans
We took Rome
•June 4, 1944
•Allied troops entered Rome
•Mussolini was put under arrest (Germans freed him)
•Two days later, D-Day
•Italy took a back seat in the European war
What has been happening in Russia?
•"General Winter"
•Back and forth movement of Germany and Russia
•Leningrad is under siege from Sept 1941-1944
•Stalingrad-1942 to January of 1943
•By 1944, most of Russia back in the hands of Russia
D-Day
•Calais-obvious choice
•“Fortitude South”
•Leader-General Patton
Fortitude South
•Created a “dummy camp”
•Pretend radio transmissions were broadcast
•Harbors were filled with fleets of mock landing craft
It will be the longest day!
•Rommell
•a massive airborne assault
•areas of land flooded to hinder the progress of airborne troops
•Obstacles on the beaches
•Mines
“OK, we’ll go!”
June 6,1944
Paratroopers
•Dropped behind enemy lines
•to soften up the German troops
•to secure needed targets
•if the accompanying assault by sea failed -- there would be no
rescue.
•101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions missed their drop zone and
were scattered.
•Many men drowned when they landed in the water.
Dummies?
•Norbert!!
•Dummy paratroopers dropped along the French coast
• To confuse Germans as to where the actual Allied Airborne drops
would occur.
St Mere Eglise
The Beaches
June 6, 1944
More Beaches
Taking France
•Paris is liberated
•August 25,1944
How do we get to Germany?
•Montgomery had a different idea
•Single punch
•Go through Belgium and Holland
•It was a gamble
•Everything had to go perfectly
•Ike thought it was worth the gamble
•Ike
•General assault
•Establish supply lines and communication lines
Market Garden
September, 1944
•Large airborne assault
•Dropped during daylight
•Secure bridges across the rivers into Holland so that the
Allied army could advance rapidly northwards and turn left
into the lowlands of Germany
Bridge at Arnhem
•Proved to be 'a bridge too far'
•Unable to do this.
•Total defeat
Battle of the Bulge
•Coldest, snowiest weather “in memory” in the Ardennes
Forest on the German/Belgium border
•December, 1944
Surprise!
•Germans
•goal was to reach the sea, trap four allied armies, and impel a
negotiated peace on the Western front.
•Allied High Command considered the Ardennes a quiet sector
• relying on info from intelligence services that the Germans
were unable to launch any major offensive operations this late
in the war.
Bastogne
•December 21
•German forces had completely surrounded Bastogne
•Defended by the 101st Airborne Division
•General Anthony McAuliffe asked to surrender
•NUTS!
It’s over.
•The Costs to Germany
•Exhausted German last reserves
•German casualties -60,000 and 104,000
•Eastern Front was now ripe for the taking. In the East, the
German army was unable to halt the Soviet juggernaut.
• Germany was sent reeling on two fronts, and never
recovered.
•The Costs to Allies
•Delayed American advance into Germany
•US-70,000 to 81,000 (approximately)
Japan
1944
Mariana Islands
Guam
July 21-August 10 1944
Rain and thick jungle made it difficult for US troops
Won
US-3000 killed, 7,122 wounded
Japan-18,000+ killed, 485 POW’s
Built
airbases for Allied operations
Flew from the island to attack targets in the Western Pacific
and mainland Japan
How?
B-29
Seabees
–Builders from the depression
"It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive."
Shoichi Yokoi
After US capture of Guam, he went into hiding
January 24, 1972
28 years
Had not believed the leaflets that told of the Japanese
surrender.
Battle of the Leyte Gulf
Japanese navy was effectively destroyed in the Philippines
36 ships including
–4
carriers
–3 battleships
–6 heavy cruisers
–3 light cruisers
–10 destroyers
Greatest
naval battle in history
“The only weapon I feared in the war."
Adm. Halsey
Kamikaze
planes
Suicide
Last
day of the Battle of Leyte Gulf
First time used
Admiral Halsey
Kamikaze
The first suicide air attacks occur against U.S. warships in
Leyte Gulf
By the end of the war, Japan will have sent an estimated 2,257
aircraft.
“I have returned!”
Philippines
Philippines were taken from the Japanese after 67-day
70,000 Japanese
15,500 Americans
READ ABOUT PELLILU
Election of 1944
Roosevelt had been diagnosed with congestive heart failure
BUT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE NEVER KNEW IT!
Election of 1944
D-FDR
–Harry
Truman
R-Dewey
FDR won a fourth time!
Yalta
•February , 1945
•Objectives
•Organize German occupation
•Soviets reaffirmed their intention to fight Japan and in return
expected to occupy areas in the East.
•Ok , but free elections
Last meeting of the Big Three
FDR sold Europe out!
•We weren’t over the Rhine
•No atomic bomb
•Losing Americans in the war with Japan and we needed
Russian help.
FDR
The President’s dead.
•Stresses of three and a half long years of war
•Worn down by polio
•Excessive cigarette smoking
•Congestive heart disease
•High blood pressure
•
•Died April 12, 1945
Unfinished Portrait
•Elizabeth Shoumatoff
•Shortly before he died
Truman is President!
•Never let into the inner circle of FDR
•Never told about the atom bomb.
Coming in from both sides
•March, 1945
•Americans cross the Rhine at the Remagen Bridge
•Russia entered through Poland
Italy surrenders
•Mussolini
•Caught trying to board a plane to Switzerland
•Arrested again
•Killed April, 1945
•Hung upside down
•Americans continue through Germany
The end of the Reich
•April 16,1945
•Berlin had already been battered due to preliminary air
bombings
•Nazi leaders had been killed or captured.
•Hitler called on civilians and children to defend Berlin
•April 30, 1945
•Hitler committed suicide
•Russia takes Berlin
It’s Over!
•Germany surrenders unconditionally
Iwo Jima
February, 1945
•The island is mostly barren
•Mt. Suribachi
•556-foot extinct volcano on the southern tip of the island
•Black sands
•Rocky cliffs
•No source of drinkable water
•Japanese had dug in
Why Iwo Jima?
•Strategically crucial to continue B-29 raid on mainland Japan.
•Contained 3 airstrips that the Japanese had been using for
their Kamikaze attacks.
•Iwo Jima would provide an emergency landing strip half way
from Marianas island to mainland Japan
“So every Son of a Bitch
on this cruddy little island can see it!”
•February 23, 1945
•Took several pictures
•No one paid attention
•The first flag raised had been taken down for this
“replacement flag”
The Flag Bearers
•1-John Bradley (wounded a few days after)
•2-Frank Sousley (March 21)
•3-Harlon Block
•-struggling with the pole (next day)
•4-Ira Hayes
•can’t reach the pole
•Killed himself after the war
•5-Rene Gagnon-hidden in the picture
•6-Mike Strank
•-”Old man” -(next day)
•36 days of some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting the
Marines had encountered
•Allied Forces suffered 25,000 casualties, with nearly 7,000
dead
•Over 1/4 of the Medals of Honor awarded Marines in World
War II were given for conduct in the invasion of Iwo Jima.
Okinawa
•Largest landings of Nimitz's central Pacific drive
•Bloodiest battle of the Pacific
•April, 1945
Kamikaze
•Greatest Kamikaze raids of the war
• 26 ships sunk and 168 damaged.
• Almost 40 percent of the American dead were sailors lost to
Kamikaze attacks.
Last kamakazi we saw
B-29
Flying Fortresses
Next Target: Japan
•Planners feared that the invasion of Japan would produce a
bloodbath.
• Operation Downfall
•The Invasion of Japan, November, 1945
Manhattan Project
Manhattan Project
•” Father of the atomic bomb”
•Oppenheimer -director
•Effort of the US to develop nuclear weapons
•Hanford ,Washington, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Oak
Ridge Tennessee
• Some families in Tennessee were given two weeks notice to
vacant the family farm lands they had had for generations
Potsdam
•Reparations was number one on the list
•Drew up plans for reconstructing Europe
•Potsdam Declaration
•unconditional surrender and total destruction
•War crime trials to take place
War Crimes
•READ Nuremburg trials
•Paul Tibbets commanded the plane that would carry the
bomb code named “Little Boy”
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
It’s all over
•August 15, 1945
•V-J Day