World War 2--1937-1945
• Why did WW2 happen?
• What was WW2?
• Why did the allies win?
• Who “won” WW2?
“Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering than
ever before in the world.”
The bloodiest war ever: 50-85 million dead, mostly civilians
from bombing, starvation, genocide, and mass murder
Fighting across the world on
land, sea, air, and under water…in
deserts, jungles, arctic freeze, cities
What caused WW2?
• Complicated, but many think that WW2 in
Europe was really a continuation of WW1.
OPPOSING SIDES
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AXIS POWERS
vs
Germany + Austria
Japan
Italy
Hungary
Romania
Finland
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ALLIED POWERS
Soviet Union
Britain + Empire (India)
U.S.
France
China
Belgium
Holland
Norway
Poland
Yugoslavia
Greece
Australia
Canada
New Zealand
South Africa
WW2 was not really one war, but was
several conflicts lumped together
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1937: Japan invades China
1939: Germany invades Poland
1939: Soviet Union attacks Finland
1940: Italy attacks Greece
1941: Germany invades Soviet Union
1941: Japan attacks U.S. (Pearl Harbor)
Many countries switched sides during the course
of the war
• Numerous civil wars (Italy, Yugoslavia, China)
Germany invades Poland
Sept. 1, 1939
• Surprise attack
“Blitzkrieg” use of
armor and swift attacks
• German warplanes
invaded Polish air space,
bomb Warsaw, capital
• France and Britain
declare war and
mobilize
• http://www.spartacus.s
choolnet.co.uk/2WWap
peasement.htm
Germany and Soviet Union Divide Poland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
s8dW3zSd4EA&feature=related
Germany conquers Europe
• April-June 1940,
German “blitzkrieg”
through:
– Denmark, Norway,
Belgium, Holland, and
France
– British retreat from
Dunkirk
• Pro-Nazi French puppet
gov’t set up in city of Vichy
(Vichy France)
France falls in six weeks
Germans outnumbered-even early in
WW2
• When Germany
attacked France in May
1940, British and French
had more, troops, more
artillery, more tanks
• Germans concentrated
their armor, more
powerful, more mobile
• Germans also had more
planes
1940: Nazi Luftwaffe (airforce) attacks
Britain
Battle of Britain, summer
of 1940. British Royal Air
Force victorious, averts
German invasion of
Britain
April 1941 Germany overruns the Balkans
• Italy and Greece
fighting; not going well
for the Italians…
• Hitler steps in to save
the Italians, Germany
occupies Yugoslavia and
Greece.
• Few casualties but
German invasion of
USSR is delayed…
January 1942
“Final Solution to the
Jewish Question”
SS Head Heinrich
HimmlReinhard
Heydrich
June 1941, Germany attacks USSR,
setting off the largest war in history
• The Eastern Front over 2,000 miles long
• 6 million Soviet troops vs. 3 million Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Finns
• By December 1941, 6 months into the war, Soviets had lost 4 million soldiers,
8,000 aircraft, 17,000 tanks
• By the end of the War of 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians died
• 10 million Germans killed, wounded or captured
Russo-German War 1941-45
5-6 million Soviet POWs-more than 3 million died
2 million Germans captured,
more than a 1 million
disappeared. Only 5,000 of
90,000 Germans captured at
Stalingrad in 1943 ever returned
…it was incredibly
brutal
…atrocities were
widespread
Stalingrad: the turning point in the
war-August 1942-March 1943
War in Asia: Japanese Expansion
Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere
1937 Japan invades China
• 1931 - Invades Manchuria
• December 1937 “Rape of
Nanjing” 250-300,000
Chinese dead, at least
20,000 raped. 50% of the
population
• People were bayoneted,
buried and burned alive,
beheaded.
The Pacific War
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In 1940, United States and Great Britain reacted to Japanese
expansion with an oil boycott (Japan got 80% of its oil from
West).
In December 1941, Japan attacked the Allied powers at Pearl
Harbor and several other points throughout the Pacific,
destroying much of the US navy.
The turning point in the Pacific War was the battle of Midway
in June 1942. From then on, the Allied forces slowly won back
the territories occupied by Japan including Saipan. In 1944,
intensive air raids started over Japan.
In spring 1945, US forces invaded Okinawa in one of the war's
bloodiest battles.
Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941
“A date which will live in infamy” -FDR
• American losses:
• 8 of 8 battleships
destroyed or damaged
• More than 2,400
military dead
• Nearly 350 aircraft
destroyed or damaged
1942: Tide of Japanese conquest
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Philippines U.S.)
Hong Kong (British)
Singapore (British)
Burma (British)
Dutch East Indies
(Indonesia)
• Numerous islands
in the Pacific
• Indo-China
(French)
• Attu (Aleutians)
Bataan Death March
1942 76,000 Americans and Filipinos
captured in the Philippines
Marched 80 miles to POW
camps, thousands are killed
June 1942: Tide turns Battle of Midway
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHfm7GX
3tHY&feature=related
Americans “island hop” toward Japan
• Battles were bloody
• Japanese fought to the
death (suicide over
surrender)
Japanese POWs
• “Never live to experience
shame as a prisoner. By
dying you will avoid
leaving a stain on your
honor.”
• -Senjinkun, Japanese
“Code of Battlefield
Conduct”
• Very few surrendered at
first, more as war wore
on and it was clear Japan
would lose.
By the end of 1944, Japan is basically
finished
• U.S. submarines cut off
Japan’s oil supply
• U.S. bombing
devastates Japanese
mainland
• Japan resorts to
desperate tactics
Battle of Iwo Jima: Feb-Mar 1945
• 2 months of Allied
bombardment on island
only 4.5 miles x 2.5 miles.
• Allies land 2,400 casualties
in the first day
• Nearly 7,000 Americans
killed and 19,000 wounded
• Only 216 of the 19,000
Japanese defenders
surrendered; the rest died.
• http://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=fp_LXObnCj8&featu
re=fvsr
Japanese kamikaze (“Divine Wind”)
Japanese War Crimes
• Starvation
• POW treatment
• mass executions
(Nanjing)
• rape and forced
prostitution (Korean
“comfort women”)
Meanwhile…back in Europe, the Allies
counterattack
1942:
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Strategic bombing of
Germany and Europe begins
and intensifies
British forces take El Alamein
in North Africa
Russians counter-attack at
Stalingrad
Full American support to
Britain, France, Russia
German submarine strategy to cut off
allied supplies, fails
• 80 % of all German
submariners die
1943: The Allies invade Italy
• July, allies take Sicily and
attack mainland
• September, Italy
surrenders
• Germany invades, civil
war in Italy. Fascists under
Mussolini against
communists, socialists
and other partisans
• Bloody fighting last nearly
2 years. Mussolini
executed April 1945
D-Day June 6, 1944
• British, Americans,
Canadians land in
Normandy
• Largest armada ever
assembled, 12,000 allied
planes vs. 170 German
planes
• Germans put up fierce
resistance, but landing is
successful
• Within 3 months,
Americans are at the
borders of Germany,
then are stopped
End of the war 1944-1945
• “The most professionally
skilful army of modern
times,” but Germany faced
overwhelming odds
• German units, ½ strength,
often composed of
wounded soldiers, old men
and boys
• 2 million Allied troops in the
West alone
• Germans had almost no air
force and so little fuel that
oxen were used to tow
airplanes to the runways
Soviets & Americans meet at the Elbe
River, dividing Germany in two
• April 25th, 1945
Fall of the Axis
 1945, Russians:
 push Germans from
Poland
 Auschwitz liberated in
January
 Berlin taken in April in a
battle that kills another
300,000 people
 Nazi leaders surrender
on May 7, “V-E Day”
World War 2 ends
May 1945-Germany Surrenders
Sept 1945- Japan surrenders
Why did the Allies win?
• Industrial and economic power
• Outnumbered the Germans and Japanese
• Strategic bombing diverted German and
Japanese resources and disrupted production
• The Soviet Union “took one for the team” 27
million dead
• Japan and Germany lacked oil and in the end
their militaries couldn’t function without it.
Legacies of World War II
• Increased nationalism among colonies ->
decolonization
• Unleashing of new technology-> nuclear arms race
• International Human Rights (UDHR, Nuremberg and
Tokyo Trials)
• Creation of buffer zone for the Soviet Union (eastern
Europe)
• Cold war -> avoidance of a global (nuclear) war
through proxy wars
Books and Movies about WW 2
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MOVIES
“Schindler’s List”
“The Best Years of Our
Lives”
“Stalingrad” (German)
“Saving Private Ryan”
“Das Boot” (German)
“The Great Escape”
“Letters from Iwo Jima”
“Midnight Clear”
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BOOKS
Midnight Clear
Correlli’s Mandolin
Love and War in the
Apennines (NF)
Schindler’s List (NF)
Night (NF)
Hiroshima (NF)
An Artist of the Floating
World
Kamikaze film clips
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEWOX8Vgd4&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyLiS2sFyU&feature=related