Test #7 Lecture Notes
VUS.11-12
Axis Powers
Axis Powers
 1.) Italy
 Mussolini and the Fascist Party
 2.) Germany
 Hitler and the Nazi Party
 3.) Japan
 Emperor Tojo and General Hirohito
1.) Fascism in Italy
 Most people in Italy felt dissatisfied after WWI
 Italy had entered the war late on the side of the Allies
during WWI—hoping to gain some land
 Italy did not get what it had hoped for after the war
 Italy only received a small piece of Austrian territory
 This made Italy very bitter with the rest of the Allies
 Italy also suffered from heavy debts caused by WWI
 Soldiers coming home could not find work
 Italian industries had not raw materials
 Italian industries had no markets for their goods
 Italy’s largest buyers before the war were Austria and
Germany—now they both had been defeated in WWI
and had no $ to buy goods from Italy
 Benito Mussolini:
 Born in 1883 to a working class family
 A journalist and very active in socialist politics before
WWI
 After WWI, he left his socialist ideas and became a
nationalist
 1919: Mussolini created a new political party in Italy—
Fasci di Combattimento (Fascist Party)
 Mussolini’s Fasci di Combattimento:
 Glorified the state, a strong single ruler, and totalitarian
government
 The state had absolute authority
 The party defended private property and class structure
 War and conquest were glorified to achieve national
goals
 An attempt to recreate the old glory of ancient Rome
 1920s: Italy experience lots of economic problems
 Value of the Lira (Italian $) declined
 Bread prices increased
 A coal shortage occurred
 Workers began to strike
 Peasants started seizing land from the wealthy land
owners
 The Middle and Upper classes feared a communist
revolution like that which occurred in Russia
 Mussolini tried to win the favor of the landowners by
vowing to end all of the unrest and protect private
property—what the middle and upper classes wanted
 By 1921: fascism was a major force in Italy
 Mussolini’s Blackshirts—his followers—physically
attacked political opponents and drove officials out of
office
Mussolini and his
Blackshirts
 The democratic government of Italy did nothing to
stop the Blackshirts
 The government’s apathy caused Mussolini to do more
 October 1922: the Fascists marched on Rome
 King Victor Emmanuel II named Mussolini Prime
Minister of Italy
 Mussolini legally assumed power in Italy
 Mussolini’s Dictatorship:
 As Prime Minister of Italy, Mussolini quickly put an
end to the democracy in Italy
 In the elections of 1924, the Blackshirts used violence to
make people vote for fascist candidates
 Fascists won the majority of seats in the Italian
Parliament
 The party’s victory gave Mussolini lots of power in Italy
 With his new power, Mussolini began calling himself




“Il Duce”—The Leader
He reorganized the government into a cooperate state
The majority of people in Italy supported Mussolini
Those people that opposed fascism and Mussolini
were arrested, assaulted, and murdered
The people believed he had done good for Italy
 He had prevented a communist revolution
 He had brought order to Italy
 1935: Benito Mussolini wanted to test his powers
 He “flexed his muscles” by invading Ethiopia
(Africa)
 Ethiopian soldiers had no chance against
Mussolini’s mechanized military
 Ethiopians were fighting on horseback with outdated
weapons
 By the Spring of 1936, Italy had control over Ethiopia
2.) Germany
 Weimar Republic:
 The Allies wanted to make sure Germany would never
threaten European Peace again
 The Versailles Treaty put heavy restrictions on
Germany
 Limiting Germany’s size
 Forced a democratic government on Germany
 1919: the German people voted for delegates to go into
the new democratic national assembly
 The new assembly met in Weimar, Germany
 The new assembly drafted a democratic constitution
that created a democratic republic in Germany
 From 1919 to 1933, the Weimar Republic—the
assembly—ruled over Germany
 From very early on, the Weimar Republic met with lots
of opposition
 1920: nationalist army officers attempted to overthrow
the Weimar government by staging a coup d'état
 The officers believed the Weimar leaders had betrayed
Germany by accepting the Treaty of Versailles
 The Weimar leaders were able to squash the revolt
 Reparations:
 The governments of Great Britain and France had




promised their citizens that Germany would pay for
WWI
The Allies set the cost of the war at $35 billion
1922: German government said it could not pay for
the war because the nation had NO $
France still insisted that Germany pay off the debt
1923: French troops marched into the Ruhr Valley and
took control of the coal and steal mills
 Inflation:
 To pay off the war debt, the German government
began printing more money—the money had no
backing
 Printing more $ without backing led to high inflation in
Germany
 The German Mark lost nearly all of its value
 1923: 1 trillion Marks=$1 (US)
 German money had no real value at all
 France eventually backed off a little from Germany
 Germany began getting loans from the US, allowing
Germany to slowly regain its economic strength
 This will, of course, end when the US enters a
depression and cannot loan money to Germany any
longer
 Nazism & Hitler:
 Many different political parties began challenging the
Weimar Republic
 One party in particular was the National Socialist
Workers’ Party—Nazi Party
 Adolf Hitler became a member of the Nazi Party
 Hitler had tried to enter an Austrian art school but
failed the entrance exams
 He had served in the military during WWI—becoming
wounded in the war
 After his failed art career, he decided to go into politics
Hitler’s Art
Adolf Hitler
 Hitler formed a private army—Brownshirts
 The Brownshirts were mostly street thugs and Hitler’s
friends
 1923: Hitler was arrested and put in jail for a drunken
attempt at to create a coup d'état against the Weimar
Republic
 While in jail, he wrote Mein Kampf—”My Struggle”
 The book outlined Hitler’s views on Germany and why
Germany had suffered so greatly during and after WWI
 He blamed the Jews and Communists for Germany’s
defeat in WWI
 When Germany began to recover some in the 1920s,
the Nazi Party began losing power and influence
 1929: after the American stock market failure and the
stoppage of loans to Germany, the German people
were ready for the Nazi message
 Germans began to believe Hitler’s claims that the Jews
were causing Germany’s problems
 The people believed Hitler could solve all of Germany’s
problems
 1932: the Nazi Party won 229 seats in the Reichstag
(German Parliament)
 The victories made the Nazi Party the largest party in
the Reichstag
 January 30, 1933: the German president—Paul von
Hindenburg—asked Hitler to become German
Chancellor
 The Nazi’s and Hitler had gained power in a legal manor
 Hitler Speech Video
 Hitler in Power:
 Hitler’s Primary goal when he came to power: to
create a totalitarian state
 He wanted the Nazis to have total control over the
Reichstag
 He wanted to hold new elections
 One week before the elections were held, the Reichstag
burned to the ground
 Hitler blamed the communists for the fire, but Hitler
probably had the fire started himself
 New elections were held
 Hitler’s Brownshirts forced German voters to vote for
Nazi candidates
 Once the Reichstag was under Nazi control, Hitler
then set out to crush his opponents—especially the
communists
 Hitler banned all political parties except the Nazi party
 Hitler banned freedom of speech, freedom of assembly,
freedom of religion, and freedom of the press
 All labor unions would be placed under Nazi control
 Hitler and the Jews:
 Hitler’s most vicious attacks were against the Jews in
Germany
 1935: Hitler passed the Nuremberg Laws
 The laws restricted Jews’ freedoms
 Citizenship was stripped from the Jews
 Jews were forbidden to hold public office
 Jewish children could not go to school
 Jewish businesses were burned
 Jews were forced to wear yellow badges signifying their
being Jewish
 Kristallnacht: “the night of broken glass”
 When Jews and Jewish business were vandalized by the
Nazi Party
 Gestapo: Hitler’s secret police
 The Gestapo arrested Jews and Nazi opponents
 Hitler even feared some of his own supporters
 He feared the radical members of the Nazi Party
 1934: Hitler had hundreds of Brownshirts killed
 Called Night of the Long Knives
 Also called Operation Hummingbird
 Once Hitler believed had had all power, he began
calling himself Der Fuhrer (the leader)
 Hitler called his government the Third Reich
 He believed his government would last 1000 years
 Once in power, Hitler began to ignore the Versailles
Treaty
 He began building a massive army and a huge supply of
weapons—actually giving many Germans jobs
 “Today Germany; tomorrow, the World.”—A.
Hitler
 1938: Hitler marched into Austria and proclaimed
Austria part of Germany
 Hitler faced NO opposition in gaining Austria
 6 months later, Hitler’s troops marched into the
Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia
 This region had a large German population
 No one in Europe was willing to stand up to Hitler and
challenge his taking over of Europe
 France and Great Britain took on a policy of
appeasement toward Hitler
 France and Great Britain were trying to avoid war with
Hitler
 They would give into Hitler’s demands in an attempt to
keep peace
 September 1938: a conference was held in Munich
 British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French
Prime Minister Edouard Daladier agreed NOT to oppose
Hitler’s advance into the Sudetenland
 The 3 nations signed the Munich Pact—this allowed
Hitler’s conquest of the Sudetenland to stand
 Chamberlain believed war had been averted by the
Munich Pact—”We have secured peace in our time.”
3.) Japan—Prime Minister Hideki Tojo
 Japan’s government shifted from a civilian
controlled government to a military controlled
government after the world wide depression struck
in the 1920s and 1930s
 The military government was looking to create an
empire for Japan
 Japan’s growing population placed heavy strains on
the nation’s resources
 Japan needed to find new places to get the resources it
needed—especially land and raw materials
 Japan was also tired of being dependent on other
nations for much of the resources they needed
 A Pacific Empire would make Japan more selfsufficient and less reliant on other nations
 Japan started their quest for an empire even before
their involvement in World War I
 1895: Japan had gained the island of Taiwan
 1904-1905: Japan had gained land in Korea and
parts of Manchuria
 Japan wanted the rest of Manchuria
 1931: Japan invaded Manchuria to get its iron and
coal
 Japan also wanted the land in Manchuria so that Japan
could colonize the land to produce agricultural and
industrial goods
 By 1932, Japan had control over Manchuria
 Japan installed a “puppet government” in Manchuria
 The League of Nations looked down on Japan for
Japan’s taking of Manchuria
 Japan withdrew from the League of Nations
 1937: Japan moved its forces into Northern China
 Japan executed over 200,000 Chinese citizens in their
capture of the Chinese capital—called the “China
Incident”
 1940: Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Italy
and Germany—creating the Axis Powers
 Each nation pledged to help one another if the U. S.
attacked either Japan, Germany, or Italy
 By the fall of 1941, Hideki Tojo had become Prime
Minister of Japan
 The U. S. had become very upset at Japan’s attacks on
China
 FDR cut off all fuel and metal shipments to Japan
Allied Powers
 1.) Soviet Union
 Joseph Stalin and Communism
 Had a pact with Germany, but the pact was broken when
Germany invaded The Soviet Union
 2.) Great Britain
 Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill
 3.) United States
 Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman
Joseph Stalin
Hitler with Neville Chamberlain
Winston Churchill
Franklin Roosevelt
Harry S. Truman
Axis Strategy for WWII
 Germany wanted to invade the Soviet Union to gain
access to the Soviet Union’s oil fields
 Germany planned on defeating the Soviet Union quickly
 Germany also wanted to avoid a 2-front war—having
enemies on both sides
 Make a pact with the Soviets
 Concentrate on and defeat France
 Then attack the Soviets
Allied Strategy for WWII
 First order was to defeat Hitler
 Most efforts were placed on gaining Europe back from
Nazi control
 Most American military resources (once we enter the
war) were targeted toward Europe
 Settle problems in Pacific
 Island Hopping—seizing islands closer and closer to
Japan
The War In Europe
Non-Aggression Pact and the Soviet Union
 5 months after the signing of the Munich Pact, Hitler
took the rest of Czechoslovakia
 August 29, 1939: Hitler signed the Non-Aggression
Pact with Stalin and the USSR
 The Pact stated that neither nation would attack the
other
 Hitler, could then, avoid a 2-front war—he could
concentrate his efforts on the West and France
Invasion of Poland
 Hitler and Stalin had divided Poland between
them in the Non-aggression Pact
 With Stalin’s approval, Hitler’s mobile army moved
into Poland on September 1, 1939
 Hitler’s Luftwaffe (air force) bombed Polish cities
 His Panzer tank divisions stormed into Poland
 This swift attack style is called Blitzkrieg
(lightening) warfare
 September 3, 1939: France and Great Britain
declared war on Germany—World War II had
begun
Invasion of Poland Video
Invasion and Fall of France
 France had prepared for a German invasion
 Nearly 1-million French soldiers stood along the
French/German border in an attempt to protect France
 England had also sent supplies and troops to help aid
the French in a possible German attack
 May 1940: German tanks stormed across the French
border from Belgium
 The Germans went north and swept in behind the
French troops defending the border
 The fortified guns of the Maginot Line were never fired
 The failure of the Maginot Line to defend France sucked
the life out of many in France
 The massive tank attacks and constant bombardment
by the Luftwaffe caused the French and British to
retreat
 By the end of the month, many French soldiers had
given up the fight
 The British had retreated all the way to Dunkirk—a
port on the English Channel
 The British were saved by boarding private ships that
took them back to England
 The evacuation of the British left the French to fight
alone
 June 3: Paris was bombed
 One week later, Italy declared war on France and
attacked Southern France
 June 14: Germans marched into Paris
 June 22: France surrendered to Hitler
 Hitler could now focus on Great Britain
Battle of Britain
 Hitler now set out to conquer Great Britain
 Great Britain was now led by Prime Minister Winston
Churchill
 Hitler attempted to use his Luftwaffe to bomb the
British
 The British conquered with their Royal Air Force
 The RAF had better planes and pilots
 The RAF shot down hundreds of German planes
 Hitler put a ban on the daytime bombing of Great
Britain
 Hitler started attacked Great Britain at night from
Sept. 1940 until May 1941
 Hitler also started using his V-2 rockets to bomb Great
Britain
 Churchill pleaded for the Americans to give the British
some aid against the Germans
America’s Response
 Many in the U. S. felt that the nation should have
stayed out of WWI and were in favor of the Neutrality
Acts
 These people were isolationists
 Others believed in interventionism and believed the
U. S. should give all possible support to Great Britain—
except a full scale declaration of war
 FDR remained cautious as not to offend any
groups within the United States
 After the French fell to Germany in 1940, FDR
began sending aid to the British
 September 1940: FDR sent 50 American destroyers to
Britain in return for the right to establish U. S. naval
bases on British held lands
 FDR also singed into law the Selective Training and
Service Act—the 1st peacetime draft in history



All men between the ages of 21 and 35 were eligible
Over 1 million men served 1-year terms, but they only served in
the Western Hemisphere
FDR was trying to build an American military in case the U.S. got
involved in the war
 In 1941, after his re-election—FDR created the Lend-
Lease Bill
 This was open support for the Allies
 The president had the right to sell, lend, or lease
military supplies to any nations deemed vital to the
defense of the U. S.
 Most Americans supported the Lend-Lease Bill
 The U. S. was not physically at war with Germany, but
was in an economic war with Germany
 FDR compared Lend-Lease to “lending a garden hose to
a next-door neighbor whose house is on fire”
 March 1941: Congress approved the Lend-Lease bill
 Summer 1941: German subs sank many American and
British ships carrying supplies to Great Britain
 FDR ordered the US navy to help track German subs
 The Navy was ordered to escort British ships and destroy
any subs trying to sink the ships
 Fall 1941: a German sub sank an American destroyer
 FDR ordered the navy to shoot Axis ships on sight
 October 1941: German subs sank 2 American
destroyers killing 100 American sailors
 Congress responded by repealing the Neutrality Acts
 FDR and Churchill met to talk about what would
happen in the world when and if the war ended
 The 2 created the Atlantic Charter—becomes the
basis for the United Nations
German Invasion of the Soviet Union
 1939: Germany and the USSR signed the Non-
aggression Pact
 Stalin still did not fully trust Hitler
 June 22, 1941: Germany invaded the Soviet Union
 The invasion took Stalin and the Soviets by surprise
 German troops used Blitzkrieg warfare to take
Leningrad and the Crimean Peninsula
 By November 1941, Germany had the capital of
Moscow surrounded
 The harsh Soviet winter helped the Soviet military
push the Germans back
 Spring 1942: Germans attacked Soviet oil fields in
SW Russia
 September 1942: 300,000 German soldiers were
attacking Stalingrad
 the Battle of Stalingrad lasted 5 months until the
Germans surrendered in 1943
 The surrender stopped the German’s advance eastward
 Stalin never forgave the Allies for failing to support
the Soviet’s defense—one reason for the Cold War
United States Enters the War
 Although the US had gone a long ways to help Great
Britain, the US had not officially entered the war
 Japan had started taking steps that made FDR upset
 FDR placed further embargoes on Japan after Japan
made an alliance with Germany and Italy—RomeTokyo-Berlin Axis
 The US continued to use negotiation to deal with
the Japanese instead of taking hostile action
 The US would only reopen trade with Japan if Japan
pulled out of China and Indochina
 By November 1941: war with Japan was just about
inevitable—everyone knew it
 Japan decided it was time to act
 Most Americans believed the attack would come in
Malaysia or the Philippines
 The Japanese planned to attack the Americans at
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
 December 7, 1941: the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor
destroying many American ships and killing
thousands of American sailors
 The attack only lasted 3 hours
 19 ships were destroyed
 188 planes were destroyed
 2400 men were killed
 December 8, 1941: FDR asked Congress for a
declaration of war against Japan
 A few days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the
United States
 The US had officially entered WWII
 WWII had become a true world War
Video on Pearl Harbor
 The US had to prepare for war on 2 fronts
 One in Europe
 One in the Pacific
 As soon as war was declared, the draft was increased in
the United States
 Thousands of men and women voluntarily enlisted in
the military
 By 1945, the US had 12 million people in the military
 About 1 million soldiers were African-Americans
 The military was segregated into black and white units
 Most black units were commanded by whites
 Many black soldiers were put into cooking or laboring
jobs
 Racial discrimination existed on most military bases
 Some African-Americans did get to see some battle
action
 Tuskegee Airmen—an all African American air fighting
force
Video on teh Tuskegee
Airmen
 Japanese-Americans were the most decorated war
heroes in World War II—Nisei Regiments
 Nisei Regiments were all Japanese American
soldiers
 Other minority groups also contributed to the war
effort
 Hispanic-Americans fought for the US in WWII
 Fought in non-segregated (integrated) units
 Communication codes of the Navajo Indians were used
 The Navajo was an oral, not written, language
 The Navajo code was impossible for the Japanese to
break
 Minority units usually received very high casualties
 The War @ Home in the United States:
 Conflict between the different races was going on in
the US while the US was fighting in WWII
 Segregation was the norm in the southern states
 1.) African Americans:
 Many African Americans migrated to the cities to
find work in the war plants
 Segregation was legal in the 1940s
 The war gave many civil rights groups a reason to
protest against segregation
 A. Philip Randolph led the movement for black
equality
 Randolph was upset that minorities were excluded from
the high paying industrial jobs in many wartime plants
 Randolph organized the March on Washington
Movement (MOWM)
 “We loyal American citizens demand the right to work
and fight for our country.”—A. Philip Randolph
A. Philip Randolph
 1943: riots broke out in Detroit
 Blacks attacked white workers
 The next day, a mob of whites roamed the streets
looking for any blacks they could find
 25 blacks and 6 whites were killed
 2.) Mexican-Americans:
 Thousands of farm workers form Mexico illegally
entered the US to work—American Southwest
 Many of these workers had children in the US
 Those born in American were called Chicanos
 The Chicanos began getting jobs in industry—
willing to work for less than poor whites and
blacks
 In Los Angeles, the discrimination against the
Chicanos and Hispanic-Americans turned into
hatred
 Many Hispanic teenagers wore “Zoot Suits”—a
long jacket with padded shoulders and pleated
pants
 The Zoot Suiters and white sailors squard off in LA
 The sailors blamed Zoot Suiters for stabbing and
robbing a group of white sailors
 The sailors roamed the Hispanic neighborhoods,
beating up any one in a zoot suit
 The police arrested the zoot suiters, NOT the
sailors
 3.) Japanese Americans:
 1942: many Japanese Americans were taken from their
homes and placed in internment camps
 Many in the US government feared the Japanese
Americans were going to try to sabotage the US from
within—helping Japan win the war
 A false belief that the Japanese were aiding the enemy
 Over 100,000 Japanese Americans were placed in
internment camps even though they showed NO signs
of disloyalty
 The people were eventually released and a public
apology was given to them by the US government
 Ironically, Japanese American soldiers were the most
decorated of all American soldiers in WWII
Video on Japanese
Internment Camps
 Media and Communications in America during
the War:
 The United States government maintained strict
censorship of reporting of the war
 Public morale and ad campaigns kept Americans
focused on the war effort
 The entertainment industry produced movies, plays,
and shows that boosted morale and patriotic support
for the war effort as well as portrayed the enemy in
stereotypical ways
 How the War Changed Home Life:
 As soon as the US officially entered the war, the US
began to change
 Factories were converted over to produce materials for
war
 Planes
 Tanks
 Weapons
 Uniforms
 The War Production Board (WPB) was created to
oversee the transformation
 Production of non-essential materials was cut back
 The government paid businesses to build new plants
and factories to produce war materials
 Industrial production nearly doubled—helping the
economy
 The war and its need for materials caused the
American economy to grow
 The nations GNP (Gross National Product) rose from
$90 billion to $211 billion in 1945
 17 million new jobs were created
 Crop prices doubled between 1940 and 1945
 With more money, people looked to spend $ on stuff
 This need to spend caused prices on consumer goods to
inflate
 FDR wanted to stop the inflation in prices
 FDR began freezing people’s wages
 FDR created the National War Labor Board (NWLB)
to control wages and monitor inflation
 Workers said that if wages were to freeze, the prices on
goods should also freeze
 1942: Congress allowed the Office of Price
Administration (OPA) to fix a maximum price on
goods
 the OPA instituted rationing—limiting how much of
something the people could buy
 Local rationing boards were created
 Each family had a quota on their rationing coupons
 Since most men were out fighting, women were
needed to work in the factories (“Rosie the Riveter”)
 Welding
 Carpentry
 Heavy construction
 The women had a job, but the job security was only
temporary
 The women were paid less than men
 After the war, most of the women lost their jobs to the
soldiers returning home
 To help pay for the war, the government began selling
war bonds
 The government was borrowing $ from the US people
 People would buy a bond and, in a few years, they
buyer would get their $ back plus interest
 The bonds also helped to control inflation
European Front
 The Allies were in a jam early in the war with France
surrendering and Hitler bombing Great Britain
 The Allies decided they had to fight an offensive war to
have any chance of defeating Hitler
 Allied Offenses:
 Nov. 1942: the US and Great Britain landed troops in
Northern Africa
 Trying to get Africa so the Allies could enter Europe through
the back door
 The Allies marched into Morocco and Algeria
 The Allies faced the German tank commander Erwin
Rommel
 Germany was threatening to seize Egypt and the Suez
Canal
 The British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery
defeated Rommel at El Alamein
 the Allied victory marked the turning point in the war
 The Allies had control over Northern Africa by 1943
 Germany’s defeat also kept Hitler from gaining access to
Middle Eastern oil fields and attacking the Soviet Union from
the South
 From North Africa, the Allied launched an invasion of
Southern Europe
 July 1943: the Allies landed in Sicily
 August 1943: the Allies had driven the Germans out of
Sicily
 Mussolini’s fascist party fell out of power in Italy
 The Allies invaded Italy from Sicily
 September 8, 1943: Italy surrendered to the Allies
 June 4, 1944: the Allies finally liberated Rome
 D-DAY:
 June 6, 1944: General Dwight D. Eisenhower
launched the largest land-sea-air attack in
history—Operation Overlord
 175,000 Allied soldiers came ashore on the coast of
Normandy, France
 The Allies were trying to gain a foothold in Hitler’s
Europe
 The Allies established a beach head, but suffered
heavy casualties
 2245 killed
 1670 wounded
 From Normandy, the Allies began to launch an
invasion into Europe to drive the Germans back to
Germany
 Near the End:
 The Allies proved their superiority in the skies over
Europe
 With control over the skies, Allied ground troops
could move against the Germans
 August 25, 1945: Paris was liberated from the
Germans
 By the end of the summer other European nations
had been freed from German control
 France
 Belgium
 Luxembourg
 The Allied navy began using SONAR to track and
destroy German U-boats
 The Allies also used naval convoys to help transport
goods across the Atlantic
 Battle of the Bulge:
 Hitler launched one last ditch effort to help him
win the war
 He launched a counter-offensive in the Ardennes
Forest of Belgium
 German troops drove a bulge 80 miles long and 50
miles deep into the Allied lines
 After a week of fighting, the Allies were able to
drive the Germans back
 The Battle of the Bulge was the final German
offensive of the war
 the Allies could now advance toward Germany
 Yalta Conference :
 Just before the end of the war in Europe, the big three
nations met at Yalta in the Soviet Union
 Great Britain—Winston Churchill
 United States—FDR
 Soviet Union—Joseph Stalin
 These nations and their representatives became
known as the “Big Three”
 Churchill wanted to save the British empire
 Stalin wanted to protect his borders and rebuild the
USSR
 FDR wanted a worldwide spread of democracy and free
trade
 FDR wanted the Soviets to help him defeat Japan
 The Big Three met for a week in Yalta
 Stalin agreed to help the US against Japan, but
only after the war has been over for 2 or 3 months
 For his help, Stalin would get some territory in
Asia
 All 3 disagreed on what should be done with
Germany after the war
 Each nation agreed to divide up Germany once the war
was over
 Stalin wanted to have power in






Romania
Poland
Bulgaria
Austria
Hungary
Czechoslovakia
 Holocaust:
 After arriving in Germany, the Allies met with
something they had never expected
 The troops witnessed what Hitler was doing with the Jews
 1942: Hitler began to round up Jews, 1st in Germany,
then in the rest of Europe
 Hitler called his attempt at exterminating all European
Jews his “final solution”
 Jews were shipped to concentration camps to do slave labor or
face medical experiments
 Many Jews were beaten or starved or killed
 The bodies were burned or buried in mass graves
 1945: the Allied forces liberated many of the
concentration camps and were shocked at what they
saw
 About 6 million Jews were killed
 Hitler also went after the Polish, Slavs, Gypsies, and
what he called the “untouchables” (homosexuals,
mentally ill, political dissidents) in his attempts at
genocide—systemic and purposeful destruction of a
racial, political, religious, or cultural group
 Victory in Europe:
 The British and US were moving east through





Germany, the Soviets were moving west through
Germany
April 12, 1945: FDR died leaving VP Harry Truman as
president
April 30, 1945: Hitler committed suicide
May 2, 1945: Berlin fell
May 7, 1945: Germany surrendered to the Allies
May 8, 1945: V-E day
War in the Pacific
 While the war in Europe was over, it still raged on in
the Pacific against Japan
 The war in the Pacific was fought differently than the
war fought in Europe
 Very early in the Pacific theatre, Japan was victorious
 May 1942: the Americans were having more success
against the Japanese
 the US kept Japan from taking Australia
 June 1942: Battle Midway Island
 The American naval forces defeated a much larger
Japanese force
 If Japan had won at Midway, Japan could have invaded
Hawaii
 The Americans sank 4 Japanese carriers and destroyed
300 Japanese planes
 A great victory for the US
 Japan still held a lot of strategically important islands
in the Pacific
 The US adopted a strategy called “island hopping”
 A way of capturing key islands
 Once captured, military bases were built on the islands
 August 1942: the Marines landed on Guadalcanal
 The Americans were trying to destroy a Japanese
military base
 Early 1945: the US fought Japan at Iwo Jima and
Okinawa
 the US gained the islands, but suffered heavy losses
 The US pulled within 700 miles of the Japanese
islands—closer than they had ever been to Japan before
 The battles also proved that an all out assault on Japan
would cost millions of American lives
 The Japanese were willing to commit suicide than
surrender
 Convinced Truman to use the Atomic bomb
American Flag being raised @ Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima Video
 Atomic Bomb:
 The US was secretly working on a new weapon—
the atomic bomb
 The name of the project to build the bomb was
called the Manhattan Project
 the project was led by J. Robert Oppenheimer
 Truman had scheduled an invasion of Japan for
late in 1945
 July 16, 1945: scientists successfully detonated the
1st atomic bomb in New Mexico
Oppenheimer
First Atomic Bomb Test Video
 Truman decided to use the Atomic bomb instead of
sending in millions of Americans to their death with
an invasion of Japan
 August 6, 1945: “Little Boy” was dropped on
Hiroshima
 100,000 people were killed on impact
 100,000 more died from burns, radiation, or wounds
 The bomb was dropped by the Enola Gay
Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Video
 August 9, 1945: Japan had still not surrendered
 The US dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki—
40,000 killed instantly
 August 14, 1945: Japan finally surrendered to the US—
V-J Day
 WWII was now over
 Now members of both Japan and Germany were
placed on trial for war crimes committed against the
Jews and other people in the war
 Geneva Convention:
 Created in 1949
 Attempted to ensure the humane treatment of
prisoners of war (POWs) by establishing rules to be
followed by all nations
 The treatment of POWs in WWII was horrible,
especially in the Pacific Theater
 Examples of mistreatment of POWs
 Bataan Death March—American and Filipino POWs
were brutally treated by the Japanese military after the
Philippines surrendered to Japan
 POWs were forced to march 60 miles and face severe
physical abuse
Dead soldiers during the
Bataan Death March
 Nuremburg Trials:
 Nazi leaders and others were placed on trial and
convicted of war crimes
 Emphasized individual responsibility for actions
during war, regardless of orders received
 The Nuremburg Trials increased demand for a Jewish
homeland
Creation of Israel
 1948: The Allies that fought in WWII will complicate





problems in the Middle East
The nation of Israel was created out of the British mandate
of Palestine
Starting in the early 1900s, thousands of Jews migrated to
British held Palestine
Initially, Palestine would be divided among the Jews and
Palestinian Arabs (Muslims)
Israel was created in 1948 with roughly 650,000 Jews
Since the land taken to create Israel at one time belonged
to Palestinian Muslims, confrontations broke out between
the Muslims and Jews
 These confrontations are still going on today