World War II and Holocaust Study Guide
Stalin signed a ten-year nonaggression pact with Hitler. In this pact Germany and USSR agreed to divide Poland
between themselves
Germany’s Blitzkrieg (lightning war)
• 1st – attack with fast moving planes and tanks
• 2nd – send in massive infantry forces
• Whole goal is to take the enemy by surprise and quickly overwhelm them
• First country that blitzkrieg is used on is Poland
Rescue at Dunkirk
• By the end of 1940 the German troops had the Allied forces trapped in the French city of Lille.
• The allies were forced to retreat to the beaches of Dunkirk, trapped with their backs to the sea.
• Britain sent 850 ships (navy ships as well as civilian crafts) across the English Channel
• From May 26 to June 4 they sailed back and forth under attack from the Germans and saved about 338,000
soldiers
Fall of France
• Germans took Paris on June 14th
• French leaders surrendered on June 22,1940
• The Germans controlled northern France and set up a puppet government in the south.
• Charles de Gaulle set up a government-in-exile in London with the sole purpose of reconquering France.
• De Gaulle organized the Free France military forces that battled the Nazis until France was liberated in 1944.
The Battle of Britain
• 1940 Germany began attacking the British airfields and aircraft factories
• Two devices helped the weakened air force fight Germany: Radar & Enigma Machine
• Hitler gave up attacking Britain on May 10,1941
• The battle of Britain showed that Hitler’s attacks could be blocked
Axis Forces Attack North Africa
• During the Battle of Britain Mussolini attacked Egypt (controlled by England)
• Egypt was important to England because of the Suez Canal - The canal allowed the British to reach Middle
Eastern oil fields
• Hitler had to send troops to North Africa to aid the Italians and eventually took over control of the region from
the British
Germany invades The Soviet Union – Operation Barbarossa
• Hitler attacked on June 22, 1941
• Germany cut off the city of Leningrad from the rest of the Soviet Union
• To force surrender Hitler began to starve the city’s 2.5 million inhabitants
• People began to eat cats, dogs, crows and rats to survive
• 1 million people died in the winter of 1941-42, but the city refused to fall
The United States Aids its Allies
• America passed a series of Neutrality Acts that made it illegal to sell arms or lend money to nations at war
• Roosevelt knew that if the Allies fell the US would be brought into the war
• Lend-Lease Act – president could lease arms to any country vital to the United States
Undeclared Naval War
• German U-boat fired on a US destroyer escorting an merchant ship
• Roosevelt ordered navy commanders to shoot German submarines on sight
Japan wanted to build an empire like Hitler was trying to do in Europe
• In 1931 Japan took over Manchuria in northeastern China
• Six years later Japan tried to take over the rest of China, but the Chinese resisted
• This war put a strain on Japan’s economy so they began to look towards rich European colonies in Southeast
Asia
• America worried that these plans would threaten their colonies in the pacific (Philippines and Guam)
• U.S. sent aid to the Chinese Resistance
• Stopped sending oil to Japan when they overran French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos)
Pearl Harbor
• December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
• In two hours:19 ships were damaged or sunk (8 battle ships), 2,300 Americans were killed & 1,100 Americans
were wounded
• America formally enters the war the next day
• 1942 Japan marched into the Philippines
• American and Filipino forces took up a defensive position on the Bataan Peninsula, but japan took the peninsula
four months later
• Japanese considered it dishonorable to surrender and they had contempt for the prisoners of war
• Bataan death march – forced POW’s to march more than 50 miles and treated them terrible
• Of the approximately 70,000 prisoners who started the death march only 54,000 survived
Battle of Coral Sea May 7, 1942
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Strategic Allied victory—halted the Japanese advance on Australia
First naval battle carried out entirely by aircraft.
The enemy ships never even came into contact with each other
Beginning of the end
• Operation Torch – Allies take Morocco and Algeria
• Battle of Stalingrad – Nazis and the Soviets fight for control of a City in USSR
• Important because even though the Soviets were getting bombed and suffering heavy casualties Stalin
told his commanders to defend the city named after him to the death
• Invasion of Italy – July 10, 1943 allied troops land on Sicily and capture Sicily about a month later
Operation Overlord
• June 6, 1944 Allies fought their way onto the beaches at Normandy (D-Day)
• July 25th the Allies punched a hole through German defenses
• August the Allies Marched into Paris
Battle of the Bulge
• Allies began moving on Germany from the west while the Soviets moved in from the East
• Battle ensued and at the end of the battle the Germans were retreating
• April 1945 the Allies were closing around Berlin and began pounding the city with artillery fire
• May 7, 1945 Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of Germany
Victory in the Pacific
• The Japanese refused to surrender and many thought that the atomic bomb was the only answer to end the war
• American atomic bomb project, known as the Manhattan Project, in its early stages in 1941.
Uses for the Bomb
• Against Germany or Japan
• General Groves believed it could end World War II
• $2 billion used to build the bomb. Not using it would be a waste
Debate over the Bomb: American Support
• Americans were suffering many casualties and the Japanese were showing no signs of possible negotiation.
• A cease fire was non-negotiable.
• If the United States dropped the atomic bomb, surrender and peace would probably occur.
• Non-combatants were dying throughout Asia at the rate of 200,000 per month.
• The complete naval blockade of Japan would have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths due to
malnutrition, dehydration, and famine.
• The atomic bomb saved thousands of American soldier’s lives
• If America did invade Japan, many Americans would have died
• Secretary of State James Byrnes claimed 500,000
• America dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima. America thought that this would make Japan surrender, but it
didn’t
• America drops the second bomb on Nagasaki which leads to Japan surrendering on September 2, 1945
The Holocaust
• 1933 - NAZIS boycott Jewish businesses & issue decree that defines non-Aryans
• 1935 – Nuremberg Race Laws – Jews are not allowed to: marry or have sexual relations with Aryans, hire Aryan
women as maids, have rights of citizenship
• 1937 - Jews are not allowed to teach Germans, “Eternal Jew” exhibit opened in Germany (promoted stereotypes of Jews and warned Germans)
• 1939-KRISTALLNACHT -Night of Broken Glass Jewish stores, shops and synagogues burned down. This is the
formal start of the Holocaust.
• 1939 - Reinhard Heydrich is ordered to speed up emigration of Jews, The St. Louis is turned away from the US.
Forced labor decree issued and all Jews must wear yellow stars
• 1940 German Jews are deported to Poland Ghettos of Lodz, Krakow and Warsaw are sealed off.
Wannsee Conference
• Heydrich was ordered by Hermann Goering to prepare a “final solution” to the Jewish question
• Heydrich organized a meeting with 15 top Nazi officials in Berlin = Jan. 20, 1942
• Nazis would attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe, an estimated 11 million persons
FINAL SOLUTION
• Phase 1 = Shooting - Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated. They were taken to the woods
and were shot one by one. Their bodies were buried in mass graves.
• Phase 2 = Gas Vans - Again, Jews were rounded up and told they were to be relocated in vans. The vans were
equipped so that the van’s exhaust was piped back into the van.
• Phase 3 = The Camps - Nazi leaders decided to drastically speed up the Final Solution
• ZYKLON-B – Gas used to kill vermin. It was inexpensive compared to gas.
MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS
• Sterilization of men and women
• endurance of pain to high and low temperatures and pressure
• experiments on twins to increase number of multiple births to Aryan women
• injections of phenol to kill patients
• Dr. Mengele attempted to sew children together to make Siamese twins