WWII
Germany Moves on Poland
• Surprise attack on
September 1, 1939
• France and Great Britain
declare war on
September 3
• Poland fell before those
nations could make a
military response
• Hitler annexed the
western half of Poland
Blitzkrieg
• Lightening War
• Use of fast-moving
airplanes and tanks,
followed by massive
infantry forces to take
enemy defenders by
surprise and quickly
overwhelm them
Soviets Move on Poland
• September 17, Stalin sent Soviet troops to
occupy the eastern half of Poland
• Annexed countries to the north of Poland
– Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia fell without struggle
– Finland resisted- does not surrender until March
1940
Germany Moves on France
Dunkirk Retreat
Resistance Crumbles
• By June 14, Germans have taken Paris
• June 22, 1040- French leaders surrender
• Germany took control of the northern part of
France
• Left the southern part in control of a puppet
government
Charles de Gaulle
• French general
• Sets up a governmentin-exile in London
Britain Stands Alone
“We shall fight on the
beaches, we shall fight on
the landing grounds, we
shall fight in the fields and
on the streets… we shall
never surrender.”
- Winston Churchill, British
Prime Minister
Battle of Britain
• Hitler’s plan: take out
the Royal Air Force
(RAF) and land more
than 250,000 soldiers
on England’s shores
• Summer 1940- German
Luftwaffe (air force)
began bombing Great
Britain
Battle of Britain
• RAF hit back hard
• Two technological
devices helped turn the
tide:
– Radar
– Enigma
Battle of Britain
Battle of Britain
• Hitler called off his attacks
• Lesson of the Battle of Britain: Hitler’s attacks
could be blocked
Mussolini Gets Involved
• Italy had remained neutral
• Declared war on Great Britain and moves into
France
• While Battle of Britain is raging, Mussolini
orders his army to attack British controlled
Egypt
North Africa
• Suez Canal = key to oil
fields in Middle East
• British defend and take
130,000 Italians
prisoner
• Hitler has to step in and
save Italy
The Desert Fox
• Afrika Korps- German
tank force led by
General Erwin Rommel
• British retreat to
Tobruk, Libya
• Rommel pushes the
British back and seizes
Tobruk
• Shattering loss for the
Allies
The Balkans
• Hitler wanted to build bases in Southeastern
Europe- for an attack on the Soviet Union
• “Persuaded” Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary
to join the Axis powers
– Threat of force
• Yugoslavia and Greece resisted
– Hitler invaded both
– Yugoslavia fell in 11 days
– Greece surrendered in 17 days
Operation Barbarossa
“Red Beard”
• Hitler’s plan to invade
the Soviet Union
• June 22, 1941- invasion
begins
• Soviet Union was not
prepared
– Largest army in the
world
– Not well equipped or
well trained
Operation Barbarossa
Scorched-Earth
• Germans pushed 500
miles inside the Soviet
Union
• Scorched-earth strategy
Operation Barbarossa
Leningrad Under Siege
• September 8- Leningrad
under siege
• Early November- city is
entirely cut off from the
rest of the Soviet Union
• Hitler planned to starve
the city’s more than 2.5
million inhabitants
• Nearly 1 million people
died during the winter of
1941-42 but the city
refused to fall
Operation Barbarossa
Moscow
•
•
•
•
Soviet Union’s capital and heart- Moscow
Nazi army reach the outskirts in December
Soviet army counterattacked
Germans retreated
“No retreat!”
Operation Barbarossa
Results
Hitler’s advance on the
Soviet Union gained
nothing but cost the
Germans 500,000 lives
History Lesson for the Ages:
DON’T INVADE RUSSIA IN THE WINTER
U.S. Neutrality Acts
Lend-Lease Act
• March 1941
• President could lend or
lease arms and any other
supplies to any country
vital to the U.S.
• By summer 1941, U.S.
Navy was escorting British
ships carrying U.S. arms
– In response, Hitler ordered
submarines to sink any
cargo ships they met
The Atlantic Charter
• Roosevelt and Churchill met secretly and
issued a joint declaration
• Upheld free trade among nations and the right
of people to choose their own government
• Will later serve as the Allies’ peace plan for
the end of the war
Shoot on Sight
• September 4- German
U-boat fired on a U.S.
destroyer in the Atlantic
• FDR orders navy
commanders to shoot
German submarines on
sight
• The U.S. is now involved
in an undeclared naval
war with Hitler
Japan
• Dreams of building an empire
• Looks to rich European colonies of Southeast
Asia
• This would threaten U.S.-controlled Guam and
Philippine Islands
• U.S. aids China and cuts off oil shipments to
Japan
• Japan continues attacks and British and Dutch
colonies
“A dagger pointed at [Japan’s] throat”
Japanese Admiral Isoroku
Yamamoto calls for an
attack on the U.S. fleet in
Hawaii
Day of Infamy
December 7, 1941
U.S. military knew from a
coded Japanese message
that an attack would
happen- but not when or
where
Day of Infamy
• Within 2 hours, the
Japanese had sunk or
damaged 19 ships
including 8 battleships
• More than 2,300
Americans were killed
and over 1,100
wounded
Day of Infamy
• News of the attacks
stunned the American
people
• FDR addressed congress
the next day
• U.S. declares war on
Japan
Japanese Victories
• Japanese launch raids on British colony of
Hong Kong and American-controlled Guam
and Wake Island and Thailand
– Guam and Wake Island quickly fell
• Japanese take the Philippines, Hong Kong,
Malaya, Dutch East Indies, and Burma
• Japanese treated people of their new colonies
with extreme cruetly
Bataan Death March
• Forced march of more
than 50 miles up the
peninsula of Bataan
while subjecting
captives to terrible
cruelties
• Of the approximately
70,000 prisoners who
started, only 54,000
survived
Allies Strike Back
• April 1942- U.S. bombs
Tokyo and several other
Japanese cities
• Allies begin to turn the
tide of war
• May 1942- Battle of the
Coral Sea
Battle of Midway
• U.S. knew attack was
coming
• June 4- American forces
hidden beyond the
horizon
• Crippled Japanese fleet
• Turned the tide of the
war in the Pacific
Island Hopping
• General Douglas
MacArthurcommander of the
Allied forces in the
Pacific
• Don’t storm each island,
hop past Japanese
strongholds and sieze
islands that were not as
well defended but
closer to Japan
Battle of Guadalcanal
• August 7, 1942
• Several thousand U.S.
marines, with Australian
support, land on
Guadalcanal and
neighboring island Tulagi
• February 1943- Battle
ended- Japan lost more
than 24,000 of a force of
36,000
• “the Island of Death”
The Holocaust
Nuremberg Laws
• 1935
• Deprived Jews of the rights to German
citizenship and forbade marriages between
Jews and non-Jews
• Later laws limited the kinds of work Jews
could do
Kristallnacht
The Night of the Broken Glass
• November 9, 1938
• Nazi mobs attacked
Jews in their homes and
on the streets
• Destroyed thousands of
Jewish-owned buildings
• Signaled the start of the
process of eliminating
Jews from German life
Refugees & Ghettos
• Jews fled to other countries
• Hitler favored emigration as a solution to “the
Jewish problem”
• France, Great Britain, and the U.S. closed their
doors to further immigration
• Hitler ordered Jews to be moved into
designated cities
“Final Solution”
• Genocide
• Eliminate other races, nationalities, or groups
viewed as inferior or “subhuman”
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Roma (gypsies)
Poles
Russians
Homosexuals
Insane
Disabled
Incurably ill
Especially Jews
Killing Squads
• Units from the SS
moved from town to
town
• Rounded up men,
women, children, and
infants
• Took them to isolated
spots where they would
shoot their prisoners in
pits that became graves
Concentration Camps
• Located mainly in
Germany and Poland
• Prisoners worked seven
days a week for SS or
German businesses
• Guards severely beat or
killed prisoners not
working fast enough
• Most prisoners lost 50
pounds in the first few
months
Final Stage
• Nazis built
extermination camps
• Gas chambers could kill
as many as 6,000
people a day
• 6 million European Jews
died in death camps
and Nazi massacres
• Fewer than 4 million
survived
On the Home Front
Mobilizing for Total War
• Factories converted
their peacetime
operations to wartime
production
• By 1944, between 17
and 18 million U.S.
workers (many of them
women) had jobs in war
industries
Rosie the Riveter
Rationing
Victory Gardens
Propaganda
Propaganda
Internment of Japanese Americans
• FDR issues executive
order for the
internment of Japanese
Americans- February
1942
• Two-thirds of those
interned were nativeborn Americans
• Many volunteered for
military service
Allied Victory
North Africa Campaign
• Battle of El AlameinOctober/November- British
beat Rommel’s army in
Egypt
• Allies launched Operation
Torch
• November 8- Allied force,
led by General Dwight D.
Eisenhower landed in
Morocco and aLGERIA
• Rommel’s Afrika Korps was
caught between the two
allied forces- crushed in
May 1943
Battle of Stalingrad
• August- German’s attack
• February- 90,000
German-troops
surrendered (all that was
left of the original
330,000)
• Defense of Stalingrad cost
the Soviets over 1 million
soldiers and the city was
99% destroyed
• But, Germans were now
on the defensive and
being pushed westward
Invasion of Italy
• Allied forces capture
Sicily from German and
Italian troops
• Fighting in Italy as
Germans control the
north and Allies move
into Rome
• April 27, 1945Mussolini found by
Italian resistance
fighters and executed
Plans for Invasion
• Allies secretly build an invasion force and plan
to launch an attack on German-held France
• Thousands of planes, ships, tanks, and landing
craft and more than 3 million troops awaited
attack orders
– Commanded by General Eisenhower
Operation Overlord
German Defenses
Allies Arrive in Paris
Battle of the Bulge
• Hitler faces a war on
two fronts
• Decides to
counterattack in the
west
• German tanks break
through weak American
defenses
• Allies are able to push
the Germans back
Berlin Attacked
• Late March 1945- Allies
enter Germany
• Mid-April- about 3
million Allied soldiers
approach from the
southwest and 6 million
soviet troops from the
east
• Hitler prepares for the
end while Berlin is
attacked
Germany Surrenders
• May 7, 1945
• General Eisenhower
accepts the
unconditional surrender
of the Third Reich from
the German military
V-E Day
May 9, 1945
In the Pacific
• Fall 1944- Allies moving
on Japan
• May 1945- American
Marines take Iwo Jima
• April 1- Americans
move onto the island of
Okinawa
The Manhattan Project
• Top secret project to
develop the atomic
bomb (A-bomb)
• Headed by General
Leslie Groves and chief
scientist J. Robert
Oppenheimer
• Truman only learns
about it when he
becomes president
Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Japanese Surrender
Europe & Japan in Ruins
Europe Destroyed
• Cities in ruins
• Some stayed in cities,
others took to the roads
• Agriculture disrupted
• Thousands died
Postwar Governments
• Pre-war governments in Belgium, Holland,
Denmark, and Norway returned quickly
• Return to old leadership in Germany, Italy, and
France was not desirable
– Nazi government brought Germany to ruins
– Mussolini had led Italy to defeat
– Vichy government in France collaborated with the
Nazis
Nuremberg Trials
• International Military
Tribunal representing 23
nations put Nazi war
criminals on trial
• 22 Nazi leaders charged
with waging a war of
aggression and
committing “crimes
against humanity”
• The bodies of the
executed were cremated
in the ovens at Dachau
concentration camp
Postwar Japan
• General MacArthur took control of the U.S.
occupation- determined to be fair and not
plant seeds of future war
• Demilitarization & Democratization
Yalta Conference
• February 1945
• Churchill, FDR, Stalin
• Agreed to divide Germany
into zones of occupation
controlled by the Allied
military forces
• Germany agrees to pay the
Soviet Union to compensate
for loss of life and property
• Stalin agrees to help in the
war against Japan and that
Eastern Europeans would
have free elections
– Churchill is skeptical
The World is Changed
• Enemies could become allies
• Allies could become enemies
• Soviet Union & United States emerged as the
world’s two major powers and as allies
– Soon became clear the two countries had very
different post-war goals
– Those differences would shape the modern world
for decades