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Aim:
Summarize events that led to
the surrender of Germany &
of Japan
Germany Sparks a New War in Europe
Allies were preparing to push
toward victory in Europe

1943: Allies began building an invasion
force in Britain
 Plan was to launch an attack on German
held France across the English Channel

June 6, 1944: Planes, ships, tanks,
landing craft, & 3 million troops
planned to strike on the coast of
Normandy (Northwestern France)

Known as the D-Day Invasion
 Germans knew an attack would happen
but didn’t know where
 By September, they had liberated France,
Belgium, Luxembourg
 Dec 6: German tanks broke through
American defenses but were pushed back
(Battle of the Bulge)

Germany’s Unconditional Surrender
March 1945: 3 million
Allied soldiers approached
Berlin from the Southwest

Six million Soviet troops
approached from the East

May 7, 1945: General
Eisenhower accepted the
unconditional surrender of
the Third Reich from the
German military

The United States & other
Allied powers celebrated VE Day (Victory in Europe)

Victory in the Pacific
Allies were still fighting the
Japanese in the Pacific

Japanese had devised a bold plan to halt
the Allied advance
 They would destroy the American fleet
 This would prevent the Allies from
resupplying their ground troops
 Within days, the Japanese navy had lost
disastrously

Kamikazes (Japanese suicide
pilots) were only thing between
Allies and Japan

Pilot would sink Allied ships by crashdiving bomb-filled planes into them
 March 1945: American Marines took Iwo
Jima
 April 1: US troops moved to Okinawa
 June 21: Japanese lost 100,000 in battle

The Japanese Surrender
President Truman’s advisers had
informed him than an invasion of
the Japanese homeland might cost
the Allies 500,000 lives

Truman decided to use a powerful new
weapon (Atomic Bomb)

Aug 6, 1945: The United States
dropped an atomic bomb on
Hiroshima

Aug 9: Second bomb dropped on
Nagasaki

Sept 2: The Japanese finally
surrendered to General MacArthur
