Download Early World War II - World History with Ms. Byrne

Early World War II
Who’s Who?
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Axis Powers:
Germany 
Adolph Hitler
Italy  Benito
Mussolini
Japan  Hideki
Tojo
Who’s Who?
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Allied Powers:
Great Britain 
Neville Chamberlain;
Winston Churchill
United States 
Franklin D. Roosevelt;
Harry S. Truman
France  Charles de
Gaulle
Soviet Union 
Joseph Stalin
Early Axis Advances
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1937  Japan attacks China
Hitler creates a new type of
military strategy known as
“Blitzkrieg” or lightning war
• Uses this strategy to invade
Poland
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April 1940  Hitler launches
new blitzkrieg against
Denmark and Norway
May 1940  Germany
invades France
• Allied troops are forced to
evacuate at the beaches at
Dunkirk
• France signs an armistice on
June 22, 1940
Early Axis Advances
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Summer 1940  Japan demands
right to exploit economic resources
in French Indochina
August 1940  Germany begins
invasion of Britain by air using
the Luftwaffe (German air force)
• Battle of Britain
• Bombed British air and naval bases,
harbors, communication centers, and
war industries
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September 1940  Germans
began to bomb British cities as
well, hoping to break British
morale
By June 1941, Hitler gives up on
his attempts to invade Britain after
the Royal Air Force is able to
successfully defend Britain
Early Axis Advances
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1941  General Rommel, a German
military leader, invades North Africa
1941  Bulgaria, Romania, and
Hungary join the axis powers
April 1941  Hitler seized Greece
and Yugoslavia
June 22, 1941  Hitler invades
USSR, known as “Operation
Barbarossa”
• Massive attack along a 1,800 mile line
• Germans captured 2 million Russian
soldiers
• Harsh Russian winter forced German
soldiers back because they had no
winter uniforms
• December 1941  Counter-attack by
Soviets
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By 1943, Hitler abandons Soviet
invasion
Japan at War
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December 7, 1941 
Japanese aircrafts attack
the U.S. naval base at
Pearl Harbor in Hawaii
Surprise attack damaged
or destroyed 18 ships and
created 3,500 American
casualties
Same day, Japanese
attacked the Philippines
and Malaya
Occupied a number of
small islands in the Pacific
Japan at War
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On the Bataan Peninsula
and the island of
Corregidor, the
resistance was fierce
Japanese forced
American and Filipino
soldiers on a 60-mile
march
• Bataan Death March
• Thousands died from
starvation or
mistreatment before
reaching the prison camp
Japan’s New Community
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Japan declared a
community of nations
Called the new
community the
“Greater East Asia CoProsperity Sphere”
Japan announced
intention to liberate
areas of Southeast Asia
from Western colonial
rule
A Global War
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Prime Minister Tojo hoped that a
lightning strike at American bases
would destroy the U.S. fleet in the
Pacific
Japanese thought of Americans
as soft and were convinced that
the Roosevelt administration
would accept Japanese domination
in the Pacific
However, attack on Pearl Harbor
brought the American people
together and President Roosevelt
convinced Congress to declare
war on Japan on December 8,
1941