Key Terms (page 756-764)
Page
756-764
3-11-11
 The Defeat of the Axis
 Liberation of France
 The Allied forces bombed Germany at Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin to destroy
the production and transportation of their industries in 1944
 Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower led an invasion into
Normandy, France through the English Channel on June 6, 1944, otherwise
known as “D-Day”
 During the Battle of the Bulge in Ardennes Forest, Germany attacked the
Allied forces however the Allied forces had been ready to attack from several
directions: American General Omar Bradley led troops to Berlin through
Central Germany, British came in from the North, and Russians from the East.
 Finally on April 30 Hitler commits suicide
 Germany surrenders on May 8, 1945
 The Pacific Offensive
 American army used the two-pronged strategy combining the strategies of
General MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz. The strategy called for
American troops to he moving north from the South Pacific into the
Philippines while other forces travel westward through the Pacific from Hawaii
to Japan therefore leading up to its invasion
 In the Battle of Bismarck Sea U.S. forces sank eighteen enemy ships from
March 2 to March 3, 1943 with the help of Australian forces
 In November 1943 Admiral Nimitz launched his island-hopping campaign
where the army began attacking several Japanese naval bases in the Gilbert
Islands. In February of 1944 he conquered the Marshall Islands and then the
Mariana Islands in June, and finally the western Caroline Islands by September
 The Manhattan Project
 In 1939 U.S. and Great Britain heard that the Nazis were trying to construct an
atomic bomb which led them to create one of their own before the Nazis
 The invention of the atomic bomb was based on the discovery of uranium
radioactivity in the 1930s by Enrico Fermi as well as Einstein’s theory or
relativity
 The whole project was taken over by the army and several billions of dollars
had been invested into the Manhattan Project which would ultimately nuclear
chain reactions with a bomb
 The plutonium bomb Trinity was created by Scientist Robert Oppenheimer on
July 16, 1945 at the Los Alamos Laboratory in Alamogordo, New Mexico and
was successfully tested
 Atomic Warfare
 President Truman sent an ultimatum to Japan ordering that they surrender
unconditionally by august 3rd otherwise they will face utter devastation
 With no response from the Japanese government bomber Enola Gay dropped
the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima killing 80,000 citizens on August 6, 1945
and then the second bomb on August 8, 1945 in Nagasaki killing 100,000
citizens
 On August 14 the emperor of Japan surrendered
 On September 2, 1945 World War 2 ended when Japan formally surrendered
Where Historians Disagree: The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb
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It is recorded that Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb was because he
knew the only other alternative would be to invade Japan by mainland which
could lead to a million deaths. To avoid that he felt that using the atomic bomb as
a military weapon was correct because he got America out of the war as quick as
possible. Other people like the Secretary of War Henry Stimson and other
historians like Herbert Feis agree with Truman and believe that he made his
decision only based on which strategy would take America to victory quicker
British physicist P.M. S. Blackett who wrote in Fear, War, and the Bomb in 1948
that the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not just the military act of the
second World War but the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with
Russia