Download WORLD WAR ii

V. Victory in
Europe
1. Allies target Italian island of Sicily as next
step to invading Europe
2. Sicily (July 1943) – Allied forces led by U.S.
Gen. George S. Patton and British Gen.
Bernard Montgomery take control in less
than a month
3. September 1943 –
a) Italian king orders Mussolini’s arrest, Germans
take him into hiding, eventually he reappears in
northern Italy
b) Italian government signs armistice with Allies,
but Germans take over the fighting
4. January 1944 – Allied troops land at Anzio,
near Rome – fierce fighting
5. June 1944 – Rome becomes first Axis capital
to be taken by Allies
6. April 1945 – Mussolini is captured, shot and
hung by his feet in Milan’s square
1. Operation Overlord
a) Code name for the Allied invasion of France,
led by Gen. Eisenhower
b) Fortitude – Code name for fake operation led
by Patton that would have landed at Calais,
narrowest part of the English Channel
c) June 6, 1944 (D-Day) –

Description – 150,000 American, British and
Canadian troops land along 50-mile stretch of
Normandy coast, 25,000 paratroopers jump behind
German lines
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German defenses – all heavily fortified
Eisenhower unsure of mission’s chances
Result – Germans caught off-guard, Hitler refused to
send more troops, Allies advanced 15 miles in first
week
 Very nearly failed, first units to land lost almost 90% of
troops
 By nightfall 5,000 Allied troops were dead
d) August 25, 1944 – Paris liberated by Allies
e) September 1944 – first Allied troops enter
Germany
1. November 1944 – FDR wins fourth
term, beating New York Gov. Thomas
Dewey 432-99
2. Liberation of Europe – Germany
attacked from three directions –
west (France), south (Italy), east
(Eastern Europe led by Soviet Union)
1. Where? Heavily forested Ardennes
region of Belgium, Luxembourg and
France
2. What happened? 250,000 German
troops attack unsuspecting Allied front
in dead of winter, creating a bulge in
the line
3. “NUTS!” – Gen. Anthony McAuliff’s
response to German surrender
demand
4. Result – Allied reinforcements push
Germans back and restore line, last
major German attack of the war
5. Casualties – 100,000 Germans killed,
captured or wounded, 81,000
Americans
1. Yalta Conference (February 1945)
a) What was it? Meeting between FDR,
Churchill and Stalin to begin planning for
postwar peace
b) Result –
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Stalin pledges to declare war on Japan three
months after Germany’s surrender
Agree to divide and occupy Germany
c) Creation of a new international peace
organization
2. Race to Berlin
a) Early 1945 – Air attacks take toll on German
cities, Allied troops move in on Berlin from both
sides

Debate – Churchill wanted US and GB to take Berlin so
Soviets wouldn’t try to claim seized territory,
Eisenhower didn’t want military strategy decided by
political concerns
b) April 30 – Hitler commits suicide in his bunker
deep under Berlin
c) May 7 – Germans surrender unconditionally
d) May 8 – V-E (Victory in Europe) Day
VI. Victory in
the Pacific
1. Air and naval forces played much larger
role in Pacific than it did in Europe
2. Plan to take Japan –
a) Island-hopping – troops would attack and
seize only certain strategic Japanese-held
islands and skip others
b) Why? To cut off other Japanese islands
from reinforcements and supplies
3. Battle of Leyte Gulf (Fall 1944) –
a) The last, largest and most decisive naval fight of
the war
b) Result – Four Japanese carriers and two
battleships sunk, Japanese navy no factor after
this battle
4. February 1945 – MacArthur fulfills his
promise to return to the Philippines
 Troops succeed despite fierce Japanese
resistance
5. Code-talkers – Native Americans who
created a code of key terms in their
native language, never broken by
Japanese
6. Kamikaze – Japanese for “divine
wind,” refers to suicide planes sent
into U.S. carriers and battleships
1. Bombing Japan – island victories give U.S.
new bases to launch B-29 bombers at
mainland Japanese islands
2. March 1945 – Bombing raids destroy much
of Tokyo, lowers civilian morale but
government won’t quit
3. Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19-March 26,
1945)
a) Significance – 750 miles south of Tokyo, small
island allows planes closer access to home
islands
b) First days – More fierce resistance
encountered
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Picture of flag-raising on top of Mount
Suribachi is one of the most famous photos in
American history
c) Took six weeks to completely eliminate
the Japanese threat
 Much longer than expected
d) Result – only 212 of 22,000 Japanese
soldiers taken prisoner, almost 7,000
Americans killed and 18,000 wounded
4. Battle of Okinawa (April 1945)
a) Largest U.S. landing force in Pacific invades
small island 350 miles from southern islands of
Japan
b) Result – Bloodiest battle of the Pacific war,
49,000 American casualties and over 100,000
Japanese killed
5. April 12 – FDR dies in Georgia, Harry S.
Truman becomes President
1.
Manhattan Project – started in 1942, code
name for project by a group of scientists to
build an atomic bomb

started in basement of a building at Columbia
University, thus “Manhattan” name
2. Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein – scientists
who had warned the U.S. government about
the threat of an atomic bomb built by the
Axis
3. Major research labs – Oak Ridge, Tennessee
(U-235 uranium), Hanford, Washington
(plutonium) and Los Alamos, New Mexico
4. J. Robert Oppenheimer – head of the Los
Alamos lab who helped build the first
atomic bomb
5. July 16, 1945 – first successful atomic
bomb test at Alamogordo, New Mexico,
flash seen 180 miles away
6. July 26 – Japan refuses Allied demand for
unconditional surrender, Truman
authorizes use of atomic weapons
1. Why did Truman make this decision?
a) Military leaders estimated that a land invasion of
Japan would cause 1 million U.S. casualties, even
more Japanese
b) Truman wanted to show USSR that the U.S. had
a powerful new weapon
2. August 6 – Bomber Enola Gay drops
“Little Boy” on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m.,
75,000 killed
3. August 8 – Soviet Union declares war
on Japan, invades Manchuria
10. August 9 – “Fat Man” dropped on
Nagasaki, everything within 1/8 mile
vaporized
11. August 15 – Japan surrenders
12. September 2 – Formal surrender
signed on board USS Missouri in Tokyo
Bay
13. Total death toll from both bombings
by end of 1945 – 200,000
VII. Costs of War
1. Genocide – The systematic annihilation of a
political, racial, or cultural group.
2. Prejudice – a feeling directed at another
person or group before you get to know
them
3. Anti-Semitism – a feeling of hostility
towards the Jewish people
4. Ethnocentrism – the feeling that your ethnic
group is superior to others
5. Concentration Camps – used the Jews as a slave
labor force to keep the German war machine
going
6. Death Camps – included Auschwitz and
Treblinka in Poland among others, place where
Hitler’s “Final Solution” was carried out by
killing Jews
7. Result – 6 million Jews killed, 2/3 of all European
Jews, 5 million others including Gypsies, Poles,
mentally disabled, religious and political
prisoners
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Full extent of the Holocaust wasn’t discovered until after
Germany was defeated
1. Unprecedented death toll and property
damage
2. Nazi government and Japan’s military
warlords destroyed
3. Towns, cities, buildings, artifacts and forests
were destroyed
4. Millions lacked heat, running water,
adequate food and the means to travel from
one place to another
Military
Dead
Military
Wounded
Civilian
Dead
Britain
373,000
475,000
93,000
France
213,000
400,000
108,000
Soviet
Union
USA
11 million
14 million
7 million
292,000
671,000
N/A
Germany
3.5 Million
5 million
780,000
Italy
242,000
66,000
153,000
Japan
1.3 million
4 million
672,000