Download World War II on the horizon

World War II on the horizon
 The Treaty of Versailles tried to secure a “just and secure peace” and make the
world “safe for democracy.”
 As you know, the Treaty of Versailles would fail and would lead to WWII. In
your bellwork write down some of the reasons you remember as to why the
Treaty of Versailles would fail to bring about what it promised.
 Rise of Nationalism in embittered European nations
 Result of failures of Treaty of Versailles and poor economic conditions.
 Nationalist, militaristic dictators come to power in Europe and Japan
 Joseph Stalin
 Soviet Union
 Communist
 “five-year plans”
 “The Great Purge”
 Responsible for roughly 8-13 million people.
 Benito Mussolini
 Italy
 Fascist
 Totalitarian
 Achieved high production and efficiency at the cost of freedom and human lives.
 Adolf Hitler
 Germany
 Nazism
 Extreme nationalism and racism
 Authored Mein Kampf (My Struggle)
 Blamed Germany’s problems on Jews
 Called for lebensraum – “living space”
 Hideki Tojo
 Japan
 Militarist and Nationalist
 Needed to expand to acquire more land and resources
 Francisco Franco
 Spain
 Fascist
 After civil war would not be able to contribute to WWII and would remain
neutral
 Franklin D Roosevelt
 USA
 Americans, again, attempt to stay isolated and not get involved.
 Opposed Neutrality Acts
 Outlawed sales or loans to nations at war.
 Supported “quarantine”
 Winston Churchill
 Britain
 Would replace Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister after Munich Pact
 Opposed appeasement
 Giving up principals to pacify an aggressor
 1938 – March
War in Europe
 Germany marched into Austria unopposed
 Germany annexed Austria
 Many German speaking people lived in Austria
 1938 – September
 Germany continues its move into the ‘Sudetenland’
 Hitler wanted to annex Czechoslovakia, why?
 Used German propaganda to gain support for the invasion.
 German headlines:
 “Women and Children Mowed Down by Czech Armored Cars”
 “Bloody Regime: New Czech Murders of Germans”
 All lies
German Offensive Begins
 What was Germany’s main concern in WWI?
 How would they deal with that problem in WWII?
 Hitler and Stalin sign nonagression pact
 A commitment to never attack each other.
 Dealt with Poland and the east.
 1939 – September 1st
 German luftwaffe stormed over Poland dropping bombs.
 German Tanks blitzed across the Polish countryside
 Blitzkrieg – new German military strategy meaning “lightning war.”
World War II begins…
 Fighting in Poland ended within 3 weeks
 Meanwhile…the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East
 Germany and USSR shared Poland.
 Within 3 weeks the country ceased to exist.
 Appeasement could no longer last
 2 days after the invasion of Poland France and Britain declared war on Germany
 World War II had begun
The Fall of France
 German offensive trapped 400,000 allied soldiers on the NW coast of France
 800 makeshift fleets ferried about 330,000 soldiers across to Britain
 Italy joined the war and invaded France from the south while Germany rushed in
from the east and north.
 France was forced to surrender June 1940
Battle of Britain
 Germans built military bases and naval fleets along the French coast
 Launched an air war with the luftwaffe against Britain as well
 Began bombing runs over Britain bases, airfields, and then cities
 Every night for 2 months approx. 2,000 German planes ranged over
London, dropping bombs
 The Britain’s RAF (Royal Air Force) fought back brilliantly using the newly
developed radar.
 Could fight in the dark
 On September 15th 1940 the RAF shot down over 185 German planes,
while only losing 26 aircraft
 Hitler forced to call off the invasion of Britain
 German bombers still flew over Britain to lower morale and decrease
industrial production
 Still…the United States remained neutral…
Quiz
1. What is the name for a government that tried to exert complete control over its
citizens.
2. List 3 countries that had a nationalistic & militaristic dictator come to power
during the time period leading up to WW II.
3. What type of government that had arisen in Italy stressed nationalism, military
expansion, and strong government controls?
4. What is the name for the type of government that combines racism and racial
purification with nationalism, military expansion, and strong government
controls?
5. What is the name of the book Hitler wrote that documents his life and beliefs about
Germany and Jews?
6. What is the name for the series of laws that outlawed arms sales and loans to nations
at war?
7. What is the term used for giving up principals to pacify an aggressor, like when
France and Britain signed the Munich Pact?
8. What did Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler sign that signified a commitment to never
attack each other?
9. Who is this man?
10. Who is this man?
The Holocaust
 What is it?
 Holocaust – the systematic murder of 11 million people across Europe
 More than half were Jews (approximately 6 million)
 Deliberately planned and executed by the Nazi regime, led by Adolf Hitler
 Others targeted as well, peoples known to Nazi’s as ‘undesirables.’
 Undesirables included:
 Romanians
 Soviets (particularly POWs)
 Slavic peoples (Ethnic Poles)
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 Disabled peoples
 Homosexuals
 Political and religious dissidents
Hitler immediately targeted Jews when coming into power
Carried out a campaign known as ‘racial purity’
 Removed ‘non-Aryans’ from government jobs
Hitler used Jews as a scapegoat for the cause of economic hardships in Germany
 Anti-semitism has had a long history in many European Jews
 Hitler found that the majority of Germans were willing to accept the idea
that the Jews were to blame.
Nuremberg Laws (1935) stripped Jews of their German citizenship, jobs, and
property
 To be easily identified, Jews were forced to wear a bright yellow Star of
David on their clothing.
 Many similarities can be found between the Nuremberg Laws and Jim
Crow laws in the United States
Kristallnacht – “Night of Broken Glass”
November 9-10, 1938
Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across
Germany
 About 100 Jews killed
 30,000 Jews arrested
 Hundreds of synagogues burned
 The Nazi’s blamed the Jews for the destruction
Hundreds of thousands of Jews in and around Germany attempted to flee.
 Other nations were having difficulty dealing with the Jewish refugees, and
many Jews were forced to be turned away.
 The United States accepted 100,000 Jewish refugee’s, but many more
attempted to travel to the U.S. and was turned away (including Albert
Einstein)
 The St. Louis – German ocean liner – 1,000 passengers turned away off
the coast of Florida
 Hitler was obsessed with eliminating all of Europe’s Jews even after
almost all Jews were out of Germany
Imposed what he called “the Final Solution;” the genocide of all Jews
Began implementing the Final Solution in Poland
 Used Death Squads, his elite Nazi security squadrons (S.S.) to round up
Jews (of all sex/age) and shot them on the spot.
To be more efficient the Nazi’s forcibly relocated Jews into Ghettos – segregated
Jewish areas in cities
 Ghetto’s were sealed off by barbed wire.
 Life in ghetto’s were miserable and dead bodies piled up faster than they
could be removed.
 Factories built near ghetto’s where Jews were forced to work as slaves.
Following ghetto’s Nazi’s set up concentration camps, or labor camps
Jews were herded onto trucks and trains and shipped off to these camps
 Families were often separated
 Used as warehouses for ‘undesirables’
 Inmates worked from dawn til dusk and suffered from hunger and beatings
 In 1942 the Final Solution was taken to ‘The Final Stage’
 Nazi’s agreed to the mass murder of jews by slaughter, starvation, and poison gas
 Germans built six death camps, each camp had several huge chambers in which
12,000 people could be killed a day
 Auschwitz was the largest of the death camps
 Jews were either buried in huge pits or burned in huge crematoriums
America Moves Toward War
 FDR slowly moves the U.S. away from neutrality
 Promoted the “cash-and-carry” provision to the Neutrality Acts. -1939
 FDR explained that providing arms to Britain and France would help them
defeat Hitler and thus keep the U.S. out of the war.
 FDR provided “all aid short of war.” Churchill recalled this policy with
affection as “a decidedly unneutral act.” -1940
 September 1940 Germany, Italy, and Japan sign the Tripartite Pact, a mutual
defense treaty
 These countries would be known as the Axis Powers.
 What do you think the goal of this pact was?
 Its goal was to keep the United States out of the war.
 If the U.S. declared war on one nation, the others would declare war on
the U.S., and we would be faced with a two ocean war.
 Roosevelt runs for a 3rd presidential term in 1940 and is reelected.
 The first and only president to be elected to three terms in office.
 Foreign policy was the main focus of the American people, and FDR and
his Republican opponent had the same ideas on foreign policy.
 By late 1940 Britain had no more cash to buy military goods
 FDR proposed a ‘lend-lease’ policy
 FDR would lend or lease arms to “any country whose defense was vital to
the United States.”
 FDR compared this policy to lending a garden hose to a neighbor whose
house was on fire; it’s the only sensible thing to do and the only way to
prevent the fire spreading to your property.
 June 1941 – Hitler brakes the non-aggression pact
 FDR began sending ‘lend-lease’ supplies to the USSR
 “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”
 “If Hitler invaded Hell, the British would be prepared to work with the
devil himself.” -Churchill
 German Wolf Packs
 Hitler deployed hundreds of U-boats disrupt the lend-lease shipments
 Groups of 20-40 subs would patrol and attack convoys at night
 FDR gave permission to shoot on sight
 Roosevelt knew that war was coming.
 FDR implemented the draft and extended the term of service to increase the
military
 FDR and Churchill secretly meet and establish the Atlantic Charter where the
two leaders agreed on aims of the war
 The Atlantic Charter became the basis for “A Declaration of the United
Nations”
 Meanwhile…Germany has created new opportunities for Japan
 Japan needed to expand for resources and British and French colonies lay
unprotected in Asia
 The United States was the only obstacle in Hideki Tojo’s way of uniting East Asia
under the Japanese banner
 The U.S. cut off trade with Japan after Japanese aggression in Southeast Asia
 Including oil, which Japan relied upon.
 The two nations attempted peace talks, but behind the curtain Hideki Tojo
was sending secret messages to prepare for an attack.
 On December 7th, 1941 180 Japanese war planes bombed the naval base at Pearl
Harbor
 The attack was devastating to the American fleet.
 In less than two hours:
 2,403 killed
 1,178 wounded
 Sunk or damaged 21 ships (8 battleships)
 Nearly the whole U.S. pacific fleet
 More than 300 aircraft damaged or destroyed
 By chance three aircraft carriers escaped disaster
 This would prove to be crucial.
 “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a day which will live in infamy…the Japanese
launched an unprovoked and dastardly attack.” -FDR
 U.S. declared war on Japan
 3 days later Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S.
 United States preparation and entrance in the war would end the Great Depression
 Defense spending skyrocketed.
 Long idle factories came back to life.
 A merry-go-round company began producing gun mounts
 A stove factory made lifeboats
 A toy maker made compasses
 A pinball-machine company made armor-piercing shells
 Unemployment went down by 900,000 within two months
From Pearl Harbor to D-Day
 Japanese newspapers boasted the U.S. was reduced to a third rate power and was
“trembling in her shoes”
 America responded with the slogan ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ and sought out to
prove Japan wrong
 5 million men volunteered for military service
 The draft provided another 10 million
 Created the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC)
 Women served in non-combat positions
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 “There are innumerable duties now being performed by soldiers that can
be done better by women”
Minority groups faced dilemma
 “Why die for democracy for some foreign country when we don’t even
have it here?”
 “Just carve on my tombstone, ‘here lies a black man killed fighting a
yellow man for the protection of a white man.”
Despite discrimination minorities joined the armed forces
 1,000,000 African Americans
 300,000 Mexican Americans
 33,000 Japanese Americans (many served as spies)
 13,000 Chinese Americans
 25,000 Native Americans (including Navajo code-talkers)
 “We would not need the Selective Service if all volunteered like Indians.”
End of automobile production for private use
 Automobile plants transformed to produce:
 Tanks
 Planes
 Boats
 Command Cars
 Other changes
 Mechanical pencils  bomb parts
 Bedspreads  mosquito netting
 Filling bottles with soda  filling shells with explosives
6 million new female workers in factories
 Women earned 60% of men in same jobs
 Women operated:
 Welding torches
 Riveting guns
 Power drills
 Heavy machinery
FDR created the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD)
 Improved radar and sonar
 Created penicillin
 Secretly developed the Atomic Bomb
The Manhattan Project became the code name for secret development of the ABomb
The Battle of the Atlantic
Hitler ordered submarine raids along the U.S. coast
 Sunk over 600 allied ships in 6 months
 Improved Convoy techniques used to combat wolf packs
 Production increased
Hitler gets caught up in Stalingrad
 Freezing weather
 Broken supply lines
 Decreasing morale
 United States achieve victory in North Africa and move on to Italy
 Mussolini is removed from power
 D-Day invasion – June 6th, 1944
 6,000 ships
 130,000 soldiers (10,000 paratroopers)
 10,000 planes
 Largest land-sea-air operation in army history
 Within 1 week the allies held 80 miles of the coast, had landed over 1
million troops and 170,000 vehicles
The Allies gain ground
 August 25th, 1944 – Paris is liberated
 After 4 years of German occupation
 By end of September: Allies freed France, Belgium, & Luxembourg
 Allies success will help Roosevelt become elected to a 4th term of office,
along with his running mate Harry S. Truman as VP
 Battle of the Bulge (Dec. 44)
 Hitler’s last-gasp desperate offensive
 The offensive created a ‘bulge’ in the Allied defense lines
 Battle lasted for a month, both sides suffering heavy casualties
 Allies eventually stop the offensive, neither side would gain any territory
 The losses the Nazi’s suffered would leave them with no other option but
to retreat.
 April 25th – Soviets invade Berlin from the east.
 Hitler committed suicide April 30th
 Hitler blamed the Jews for starting the war
 FDR had died April 12th, not living to see Germany’s surrender
 The Third Reich surrenders May 7th
 On May 8th the allies celebrate V-E day
 Parties in Times Square would last for days
 Write down the following questions for the reading:
 What made it possible for Hitler to rise to power and stay in power?
 Who were the first prisoners sent to concentration camps?
 What territories does Germany occupy at the height of its power?
 What happens to Germany in 1949 after they surrender?
 What is the purpose of the Berlin Wall and what happens to the wall in
1989?
 Which countries have recently experienced events that are similar to what
happened in Germany?
 What does the article say exists today that may prevent another dictator
from rising to power and beginning a world war?
 Do you believe another Hitler/Holocaust/World War is possible?