WWII
PRETEST
1. The term_____________
refers to a political philosophy
that values the nation or race
more than the individual.
2. In the 1930’s, England and
France tried to prevent war by
following a policy of?
3. The three leaders of the Allied
powers during World War II
were?
4. The three Axis powers were?
5. The three leaders of the Axis
powers were?
6. Allied victories in which two
battles marked a turning point
in the war against Japan?
7. What battle took place during
Operation Overlord?
8. Anti-Semitism refers to a hatred
of or discrimination of who?
9. Which two Japanese cities did
America drop atomic bombs
on?
10. Which American leader made
the decision to use the atomic
bomb?
PRETEST COMPLETED
1. FASCISM
2. APPEASEMENT
3. FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, WINSTON
CHURCHILL, and JOSEF STALIN
4. GERMANY, ITALY, and JAPAN
5. ADOLF HITLER, BENITO MUSSOLINI, and
EMPEROR HIROHITO
6. MIDWAY ISLAND and GUADACANAL
7. INVASION OF NORMANDY (D-DAY)
8. JEWS
9. HIROSHIMO and NAGASAKI
10. PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN
World War II
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Prelude to War
The Military Struggle
Americans on the Battle Front
Dropping the Atomic Bomb
Section 1
PRELUDE TO WAR
ITALY
• Benito Mussolini was an Italian schoolteacher, journalist, and political
activist who had been wounded in World War I.
• In 1919 Mussolini banded together with a group of war veterans to found
the revolutionary Fascist party.
• The term Fascism refers to a political philosophy that values the nation or
the race above the individual.
• During World War II, Italy, Germany, and Japan all were ruled by fascist
governments that wielded absolute power.
• In 1925, calling himself Il Duce (“the leader”), Mussolini declared a
dictatorship in Italy.
• Mussolini and the Fascists attempted to promote Italian power and pursued
an aggressive foreign policy.
• Under his direction, Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, and by the next year, it
dominated that East African nation.
GERMANY
• At the same time, Adolf Hitler, a poorly educated Austrian who supported
himself as a painter, rose to power in Germany.
• In 1920 Hitler’s political group became known as the National Socialist
German Worker’s party, or Nazi party.
• In January 1933, the Nazi party was the largest group in the Reichstag (the
German Parliament), and Hitler was named chancellor.
• The next month Hitler suspended civil liberties and an act of parliament
gave him dictatorial powers in the new government know as the Third
Reich.
• Hitler was now Der Fuhrer (“the leader”).
• Hitler appealed to a form of prejudice call anti-Semitism, or a hatred of
Jews.
• Like Mussolini, Hitler saw foreign policy as a way to bolster national pride
and in 1936 he marched troops into the Rhineland – a section of western
Germany from which the Treaty of Versailles had excluded German forces
since the end of World War I.
• In that same year Hitler formed an alliance with Mussolini and Italy and
Germany became known as the Axis Powers.
GERMANY
• Early in 1938 Hitler annexed Austria
• Later that year he demanded possession of the Sudetenland, a section of
Czechoslovakia inhabited by an ethnic German population
• England and France, reluctant to become involved in another conflict after
the devastation of World War I, adopted a policy known as appeasement.
• Appeasement means to “keep the peace by giving in to someone’s
demands.”
• England and France’s strategy of appeasement did not work as Hitler
annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia later that year.
• Then, in September 1939, after signing a nonaggression pact with the
Soviet Union, Germany invaded Poland.
• Two days later, England and France decided they would appease Hitler no
longer.
• Angry and frustrated over his steady encroachment on the European
continent, they finally declared war on Germany.
JAPAN
• In Asia in the 1930’s, Japan was every bit as eager as Germany and Italy to
establish itself as a world power.
• Military leaders who dominated the government resented their dependence
on the United States and other nations for resources such as iron, coal and
petroleum.
• To make Japan self-sufficient, its leaders were determined to incorporate
part of the Asian mainland into their nation.
• In 1931 Japan attacked Manchuria, a region in northern China rich in
minerals.
• In 1937 Japan seized Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing and other Chinese cities.
• In 1940 the island nation signed an alliance with Germany and Italy, known
as the Tripartite Pact.
• Secure in that alliance, the Japanese invaded southern Indochina – ruled by
France – in the middle of 1941.
ALLIES
• Many Americans wanted to follow a policy of isolationism, believing that
American interests could be best served by staying out of the quarrels of
other nations.
• Congress responded to isolationist sentiments in the 1930s by passing a
series of three neutrality acts.
• In 1940 President Roosevelt moved to help Great Britain directly and
agreed to help the British prime minister Winston Churchill by trading
fifty old American ships (to help convoy supplies) to the British in return
for sites on which to build eight naval and air bases.
• In 1941 Roosevelt helped push the Lend-Lease Act through congress.
• Lend-Lease Act: the United States would provide war supplies to Britain
and worry about payment later.
• With that commitment, the United States became, in FDR’s words, “the
greatest arsenal of democracy.”
PEARL HARBOR
• As the war in Europe unfolded, tensions between the United States and
Japan increased.
• In 1940 the United States stopped selling airplanes to Japan.
• By mid-1940, the United States had stopped selling other crucial items,
such as scrap metal and oil, to Japan.
• After Japan’s attack on Indochina, it froze all Japanese financial assets in
the United States.
• Hoping to knock out the United States Pacific Fleet before an all-out
military conflict could begin, Japan launched a surprise attack on the
American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.
• The attack destroyed five battleships, three cruisers, and several smaller
vessels, while wiping out almost 200 airplanes.
• The President told the Congress and the American people that December 7,
1941, was “a date which will live in infamy.”
• The United States quickly declared war on Japan and Japan’s allies,
Germany and Italy, retaliated by declaring war on the United States.
Roosevelt and Churchill
Japanese Emperor
Hirohito
Japanese
Admiral
Yamamoto
Attack on Pearl Harbor
SECTION 2
The MILITARY STRUGGLE
• The situation was desperate in Europe and North Africa by the time the US
entered the war.
• The German blitzkrieg (“lighting war”)- a series of sudden military attacks
by land and air – had extended Germany’s control across Europe.
• Hitler broke his nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union in 1942 and
drove deep into Soviet territory.
• In North Africa, a German army led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel,
known as the “Desert Fox” fro his shrewd tactics, was equally successful.
• Conditions for the Allies in the Pacific were not much better,
• Japan had destroyed most the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, secured
much of China and taken the islands of Wake, Guam, the Dutch East Indies
and the British controlled colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore.
• In the spring of 1942, Japanese forces defeated Filipino and American
troops in the Philippines and drove General Douglas MacArthur from the
islands.
• After the defeat on March 10, 1942, MacArthur promised the Filipino and
American soldiers, “I shall return”.
EUROPE
• The situation for the Allies began to improve by the end of 1942.
• The Soviet had stopped the German advance at Stalingrad.
• The British were using radar to defeat the German submarines and their
wolf pack tactics.
• The Americans and British in North Africa went on the offensive during
Operation Torch in November 1942.
• The combined Anglo-American operation was under the command of
General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
• The Allied forces landed in Morocco and Algeria and moved west into
Tunisia where they encountered Rommel’s Afrika Corp.
• In May 1943, the Axis forces in that region surrendered.
• In July 1943 the Allies invaded Sicily and mainland Italy.
• After the Allied invasion, the disgruntled Italian population overthrew
Mussolini and surrendered.
• The German troops in Italy dug in and prepared to defend mainland
Europe.
• It took the Allies almost a full year to liberate Rome.
PACIFIC
• At about the same time, battles over two small but highly strategic islands
in the Pacific shifted the balance of power between the Allies and Japan.
• Japanese Admiral Yamamoto decided to attack Midway Island, near
Hawaii on June 4, 1942.
• The Americans, having deciphered the Japanese military code, were ready
for the attack and forces under the control of Admiral Chester Nimitz were
ready and waiting.
• By sheer luck the Americans managed to win this battle and inflicted heavy
casualties on the Japanese.
• The Japanese lost four aircraft carriers to the Americans one.
• This marked the last offensive operation in the war for the Japanese.
• The Allies took the offensive and secured the island of Guadalcanal in the
Solomon islands in February 1943 (after 6 months of intense fighting).
• The last two major battles in the Pacific war fought on the small islands of
Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
• The Japanese defended them fiercely, and both sides suffered heavy
casualties before the Allies prevailed.
EUROPE
• Toward the end of 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt and Soviet leader Joseph
Stalin met together for the first time in Tehran, Iran.
• They agreed that an invasion across the English channel should come next.
• Operation Overlord would be the name of the Anglo-American landings in
France.
• D-Day began before the dawn of June 6, 1944, it was the largest
amphibious landing in history.
• More than 150,000 Allied soldiers came ashore along 60 miles of the
Normandy coast in northern France.
• Bitter fighting followed as the Allies pushed toward Paris and then towards
Germany itself.
• The Germans launched a counterattack in Belgium and Luxembourg in
December 1944, called the Battle of the Bulge because it caused a large
bulge in the Allied lines.
• The counterattacked failed after one month and the road to Germany was
clear.
• The Allies pushed from the west and the Soviets pushed from the east.
D-Day
Meeting at Yalta
German soldiers during
Battle of the Bulge
German Panzer tank during
Battle of the Bulge
HOLOCAUST
• As the Allies moved toward final victory they discovered the horrors of
what Hitler called the “Final Solution” – his effort to exterminate all
Jews and other people he considered enemies of the Aryan state.
• The Nazis had engaged in a systematic campaign to liquidate the entire
Jewish population of Europe through the use of extermination camps
and forced labor camps.
• In these camps, the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in what we now call the
holocaust from the Greek term for “total destruction by fire”.
• They also murdered another 5 million Slavs, Gypsies, and other people
they considered undesirable- political enemies, homosexuals, and the
physically and mentally disabled.
• In liberating the concentration camps, American troops found the gaunt
survivors who somehow escaped death in the gas chambers and
crematoriums.
HOLOCAUST
• American officer Dick Winters from Pennsylvania recorded the following
impression when he first saw a Nazi concentration camp:
The memory of the starved, dazed
men, who dropped their eyes and heads
when we looked at them through the
chain-link fences, in the same manner
that a beaten, mistreated dog would
cringe, leaves feelings that cannot be
described and will never be forgotten.
The impact of seeing these people
behind that fence left me saying, only to
myself, “Now I know why I am here!”
THE END OF THE WAR IN EUROPE
• In early 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met again, this time in Yalta,
a city in the Soviet Union near the Black Sea.
• There they decided to split Germany into peacekeeping zones and to
reorganize the government of Poland.
• On April 10, 1945, as Soviet troops took the Reich Chancellory, Hitler
committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin.
• On May 8, Germany’s unconditional surrender took effect, and the
European war came to an end but Japan still had to be defeated.
• By the end of 1944, American bombers were relentlessly dropping
hundreds of tons of explosives on Japanese cities.
• In one final meeting of the Allied leaders (Harry S. Truman was President
now after Roosevelt’s death), the Ally leaders warned Japanese to
surrender or face “prompt and utter destruction.”
• Around the same time, a meeting of delegates from fifty nations met in San
Francisco to plan for an international organization to keep peace.
• That conference created and approved the charter of the United Nations.
SECTION 3
AMERICANS ON THE BATTLE FRONT
• American soldiers called themselves GIs, after the “Government Issue”
stamp on all shoes, clothes, guns, and other equipment provided by the
military.
• The miserable conditions of the American soldier on the front were
described in the newspaper columns of Ernie Pyle (a war correspondent).
The front-line soldier has lived like an animal for
months and is a veteran of the cruel fierce world of
death. Everything has been abnormal and unstable
in his life for months. He has been filthy dirty, has
eaten if and when, has slept on the hard ground
without cover. His clothes have been greasy, he has
lived in a constant haze of dust, pestered by flies and
the heat, moving constantly, deprived of all the things
that once meant stability. Things such as walls,
chairs, floors, windows, faucets, shelves, Coca-Colas
and the greatly important little matter of knowing
that you’ll go to bed tonight in the same place you got
up in the morning.
WOMEN in the ARMED FORCES
• Not all soldiers were men.
• By the war’s end, over 300,000 American women had served in the
military (except in combat).
• Oveta Culp Hobby, director of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps
(WAAC – later shortened to WAC, Women’s Army Corp), told potential
recruits, “This is your war.”
• Women worked as typists, clerks, tower and radio operators, parachute
riggers, and mechanics.
• The Navy had a similar organization, the WAVES (Women Accepted for
Volunteer Emergency Service).
• One quarter of all WAVES served in naval aviation.
• Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASPS) ferried planes around the
country, and they towed targets for antiaircraft gunnery practice missions
as well.
EQUALITY in the ARMED FORCES
• Although the military discriminated against African Americans, their
participation as soldiers helped to win the war.
• African Americans were only allowed to join the Army or Navy, and only
in the Navy’s messman’s branch.
• It wasn’t until 1945, and a shortage of personal, that the Army
desegregated their units.
• The Marines allowed African Americans to enlist in 1945.
• The military, like the Red Cross, separated the blood plasma donated by
African Americans.
• Nearly 350,000 Mexican Americans served in the military, most in the
Army.
• 25,000 Native Americans served in the military.
• Some Navahos worked as code talkers in the marines, using their unique
language as a means of transmitting messages by radio and phone.
Section 4
DROPPING the ATOMIC BOMB
• A letter written by physicist Albert Einstein in August 1939 helped set in
motion the process of developing the atomic bomb.
• Roosevelt established an Advisor Committee on Uranium to look into this
matter.
• After the United States entered the war, the venture was reorganized and
became known as the Manhattan Project.
• The Manhattan Project developed into one of the greatest engineering
enterprises of all time involving the building of thirty-seven installations,
employing 120,000 people and costing $2 billion.
• The first atomic bomb was tested on July 16, 1945 in the desert of New
Mexico.
• As he watched the first blast, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had
spearheaded the entire project, remembered the words of a Hindu holy
book: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
THE DECISION to DROP the BOMB
• Once the bomb was ready, American policymakers had to decide if and
when to use it.
• With Germany’s surrender, the planning shifted to using it on Japan.
• The estimated cost of the invasion of mainland Japan in American lives
was as high as one million.
• American officials debated many different courses of action that could be
taken to end the war in the Pacific in the Interim Committee, a group that
included both government leaders and scientists.
• Harry S. Truman, President for barely four months, would have had a
difficult time arguing against using the weapon that had consumed so many
resources over the past five years.
• Truman agreed to use the bomb and based his decision on two main
factors.
• One was the fact that invading Japan would result in high casualty figures.
• Second was the bitterness Americans felt toward the Japanese in the first
place.
The BOMBS in JAPAN
• On August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped “Little Boy”, a uranium bomb, on
the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
• It killed 70,000 people immediately or soon thereafter and injured 70,000 more.
• August 9, 1945, another plane dropped “Fat Man”, a plutonium bomb, on the city
of Nagasaki, killing 40,000 people and injuring another 40,000.
• On August 14, 1945, Japanese leaders accepted American terms and the island
nation formally surrendered on September 2, 1945, bringing the long and
destructive war to a final end.
President Harry S. Truman
and
British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill
Japanese Surrender
Germans Surrender
America
Celebrates the
end of the War