Download PDF sample

THE
EVERYTHING®
World War II Book
2nd Edition
Dear Reader,
Unfortunately, more and more World War II veterans are dying every day, and despite the millions of
words already written about the devastating worldwide confl ict in which they par ticipated, many of
these veterans are taking their war stories to their graves with them. These stor ie s go untold for a
number of reasons, a primary one of which is that they are too harrowing to relive. Additionally, as
more and more time goes by and more and more wars take place, this particular war gets forgotten a
little bit more, romanticized a little more, and discussed a little less. All of these event s are
unfortunate.
Many people know something about World War II but couldn’t carr y on an informed conversation
about the subject. While we’re not asking that you become an expert in the subject (although those
people are fading as well), what we would like is that you take from this book a certain understanding
of what the world was like before, during, and after this mos t brutal of all wars. This book can help
guide you on that process, and it is our hope that you will continue your study or, at the ver y least,
have a greater grasp of the subject and its place in the history of our planet.
The EVERYTHING® Series
Editorial
Publisher
Director of Product Development
Managing Editor
Executive Editor, Series Books
Associate Copy Chief
Acquisitions Editor
Development Editor
Production Editor
Gary M. Krebs
Paula Munier
Laura M. Daly
Brielle K. Matson
Sheila Zwiebel
Lisa Laing
Brett Palana-Shanahan
Casey Ebert
Production
Director of Manufacturing
Production Project Manager
Prepress
Interior Layout
Cover Design
Susan Beale
Michelle Roy Kelly
Erick DaCosta
Matt LeBlanc
Heather Barrett
Brewster Brownville
Colleen Cunningham
Jennifer Oliveira
Erin Alexander
Stephanie Chrusz
Frank Rivera
Visit the entire Everything® Series at www.everything.com
From the rise of the Third Reich to V-J Day—
all the people, places, battles, and
key events you need to know
David White and Daniel P. Murphy, Ph.D.
Donald Vaughan (first edition)
Copyright © 2002, 2007, F+W Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced
in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions
are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.
An Everything® Series Book.
Everything® and everything.com® are registered trademarks of F+W Media, Inc.
Published by Adams Media, a division of F+W Media, Inc.
57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322 U.S.A.
www.adamsmedia.com
ISBN-10: 1-59869-641-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-59869-641-7
eISBN: 978-1-44052-458-5
Printed in the United States of America.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
available from the publisher.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter
covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other
professional advice. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional
person should be sought.
—From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the
American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as
trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book and Adams Media was aware of a trademark claim, the
designations have been printed with initial capital letters.
This book is available at quantity discounts for bulk purchases.
For information, please call 1-800-289-0963.
To my wife, who inspires my life and my work, and to my parents,
who started me on the road to appreciating history
Contents
Top Ten Things You Should Know about WWII
Introduction
Part One: Setting the Stage
1 Prelude to War
Hitler’s Rise to Power
Germany in Disarray
Fascism Takes Hold of Italy
Japanese Aggression
American Isolationism
Isolationism Following the First World War
2 Fanning the Flames
Germany Rearms
Hitler Takes Austria
Czechoslovakia Divided and Conquered
Hitler Pushes East
Hitler Takes Denmark and Norway
The Fall of France
Mussolini Joins the Fray
The Axis Expands
Japan Extends Its Military Might
3 The United States Enters the War
The Attack on Pearl Harbor
A Well-Planned Attack
Pearl Harbor Investigations
The American Response
Hawaii under Martial Law
The American Internment Camps
Part Two: The Major Battles
4 Europe
The Battle of the Atlantic
The Battle of Britain
Germany’s Soviet Campaign
The Italian Campaign
The Normandy Invasion
The Battle of the Bulge
The Soviet Offensive
5 North Africa
Egypt
Germany Enters the African War
Great Britain Reorganizes
The Northwest Africa Campaign
The North African Assault
Allied Forces Work Together
6 The Pacific
The Battle of the Coral Sea
Wake Island
Midway
The Philippines
The Battle of Guadalcanal
The Battle of Iwo Jima
The Battle of Okinawa
Part Three: The Major Players
7 The Political Leaders
Adolf Hitler
Benito Mussolini
Winston Churchill
Emperor Hirohito
Hideki Tojo
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Charles de Gaulle
Joseph Stalin
Harry S Truman
8 The Military Leaders
Isoroku Yamamoto
Erwin Rommel
Dwight Eisenhower
Bernard Montgomery
George Patton
Douglas MacArthur
Chester Nimitz
Masaharu Homma
Karl Dönitz
George Marshall
William Halsey
9 Other Prominent Figures
Adolf Eichmann
Joseph Goebbels
Heinrich Himmler
Rudolf Hess
Eleanor Roosevelt
Chiang Kai-shek
Marshal Philippe Pétain
Henry L. Stimson
Anne Frank
Oskar Schindler
Part Four: On the Battlefront
10 Ground Weapons
Personal Guns
Artillery
Antiaircraft Weapons
Tanks
Land Mines
Other Land Weapons
11 Air Weapons
Bombers
Bombs
Fighter Planes
Gliders
Guided Missiles and Rockets
Airships
12 Weapons and Vessels at Sea
Aircraft Carriers
Battleships
Destroyers
Submarines
Other Sea Weapons
Liberty Ships
13 The Horrors of War
Battlefield Conditions
Casualties
Suffer the Children
Prisoners of War
Battlefield Injuries and Medicine
14 The Axis Giants Fall
Germany Surrenders
Japan Surrenders
Part Five: Nazism and the Holocaust
15 German Anti-Semitism
The Need for a Scapegoat
Legislated Genocide
Jews in German-Occupied Lands
The Final Solution
Concentration Camps
Secrets and Propaganda
16 The War Crimes Trials
The Nuremberg Trials
Nazi Loyalists
Trial Results
The Tokyo Trials
The Doctors’ Trial
Part Six: America During the War Years
17 Life at Home
Hard Times on the Home Soil
Rationing
War Bonds
The Role of Propaganda
18 The Roles of Women During the War
Women Called to Morale Duty
The USO
Women at Work
Women at War
19 The War in the Media—During and After
On the Big Screen
Animation
Chronicling the War
The Influence of Comic Art
20 Rebuilding the World
The Yalta Conference
Brief Friends
The United Nations
The Postwar Pacific
Korea
Vietnam
Appendix A: Resources
Appendix B: The Holocaust in Numbers
Appendix C: World War II Timeline
Appendix D: Awards and Decorations
Top Ten Things You Should Know about WWII
• 1. D-Day gets a lot of press, but it wasn’t the most important battle in the war.
• 2. Pearl Harbor was certainly the instigation for the American involvement in WWII, but it’s
likely that Japan and the United States would have gone to war anyway.
• 3. The world might be a far different place today if Hitler had spent more time making speeches
and less time directing troop traffic.
• 4. More than anything else, many historians believe, the weapon that turned the tide of battles
more often than not was airpower.
• 5. The estimated American death toll for an invasion of mainland Japan was 1 million lives.
• 6. Winston Churchill, famous for being prime minister during the “Blitz,” was already out of
office a year after the war ended.
• 7. Weather played a vital role in nearly every important battle in the war.
• 8. Much has been said about the Holocaust. Much more needs to be said so that history doesn’t
continue to repeat this type of event.
• 9. What really made this war possible was the tremendous manufacturing capabilities of the major
players involved, which thrived and made tremendous innovations while the majority of their
“usual” workers were fighting on the front lines.
• 10. In a sense the war did not end in 1945 but was frozen in the new divisions of the moment,
which continued in the Cold War.
Introduction
LOOKING BACK from the vantage point of a new millennium, it’s clear that no other event of the
twentieth century was as momentous—or as horrendous—as World War II.
Many countries, such as Great Britain and the Soviet Union, were fighting for their very existence
against the military might of a fanatical madman bent on global domination. But even those lands not
directly involved in the fighting felt the war’s influence. At the height of the conflict, no nation was
left untouched.
Officially beginning in 1939 with Germany’s invasion of Poland and ending six years later with
most of Europe and much of the rest of the world in crumbling chaos, World War II proved to be, in
terms of lives lost and cities destroyed, the most devastating conflict in human history. When the big
guns ceased and the smoke cleared, freedom had proved victorious over dictatorial rule, but the world
as we knew it would never be the same.
Much has been written and said about World War II since its official conclusion with Japan’s
formal surrender on September 2, 1945, yet the war, its goals, and the stories of the men and women
who fought it grow dimmer with each passing year. Two generations have grown up in its shadow,
with each becoming more distant and uninterested.
World War II defined an entire generation. For the United States, it was the last “good war,”
unmuddied by conflicting ideology or uncertain public opinion. The commitment to preserve
everything all free countries hold dear can be traced back to those tumultuous six years.
It has been estimated that more than 22 million military personnel and civilians died over the
course of World War II, and that another 34.4 million were wounded. Of that total, more than 408,000
deaths were those of American servicemen.
It is to them—and to all the military personnel throughout the world who fought so valiantly against
tyranny and hate—that this book is dedicated.
Part One:
Setting the Stage
Chapter 1
Prelude to War
Germany’s defeat in World War I was difficult for its people to accept. The nation had been one of
Europe’s strongest, proudest, and most impressive lands for centuries. But now, after four years of
bloody fighting, it was literally helpless. How had this happened? Where had things gone wrong? In
the eyes of the world, Germany had been justly humbled, but it was from these ashes that the German
phoenix rose just a few years later in the form of a charismatic leader named Adolf Hitler.
Hitler’s Rise to Power
Adolf Hitler, an ardent fan of composer Richard Wagner, the French writer Joseph Arthur de
Gobineau, and the British-born writer Houston Stewart Chamberlain, all early proponents of Nordic
supremacy and anti-Semitism, believed that Germany was preordained by God to be a world power.
He also believed that the nation had become poisoned by what he considered “foreign elements” and
inferior races (particularly the Jews), and that they were the reason for the nation’s lowly position
after World War I.
Hitler had been a soldier during World War I, volunteering for a Bavarian unit in the German army
and serving through the entire conflict. It was during this period that Hitler’s anti-Semitism grew into
the demented brand of nationalism that eventually made him one of the most reviled leaders in world
history.
After the war, Hitler joined the German Workers’ Party, which he eventually led. He later changed
the party’s name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, from which the word Nazi
(German acronym for National Socialist) was derived, and borrowed the swastika as the group’s
defining symbol. Many of Hitler’s followers were members of the Free Corps—supposed freedom
fighters and foes of socialism who often took the law into their own hands, settling disputes with
violence. By 1923, the organization boasted nearly 70,000 members.
Germany in Disarray
In the years after World War I, Germany fell deeper and deeper into chaos. By late 1923, its economy
had bottomed out, making the German currency, the mark, virtually worthless. This is exactly the kind
of environment in which dictators are born, and Hitler knew it. On November 8, he tried to incite a
revolution against the Bavarian provincial government during a rally of monarchists and nationalists.
Though his efforts resulted in nothing more than a small riot that was quickly put down by armed
police, Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch became famous. He was sentenced to five years in prison but served
only nine months.
Adolf Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), was written while he was imprisoned at Landsberg am Lech for
his failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. In the book, Hitler details his life and philosophy. Much of it is anti-Semitic, claiming
that the Jews were responsible for all that was wrong in Germany.
When he was released, Hitler was more intent than ever on assuming power in Germany. The
Germans needed help—they were barely surviving, their national pride in tatters. They needed an
explanation, they needed self-assurance, they needed a common cause and a common scapegoat, and
Hitler gave them what they asked for. He portrayed himself as the father figure that Germany so
desperately needed. All the nation’s problems, Hitler told his followers, resulted from unsavory
influences and the poisoning of Germany’s racial purity. As the years went on, Hitler’s closest
advisers and confidants came to include Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels,
all of whom would later help Hitler lead the nation into one of the most barbaric periods in human
history.
Hitler’s original title for Mein Kampf was “Four and a Half Years of Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.” It was
his editor who suggested a title change.
In the 1932 election, Hitler made his first important step toward his goal of assuming power in
Germany. Indeed, his timing couldn’t have been better. The established coalition between socialists
and middle-class parties in the Reichstag, the German parliament, had been all but destroyed by the
Depression, opening the door for new leadership. In April, the Nazi Party won control of four state
governments, and Hitler finished a distant second (with only 37 percent of the popular vote) after
conservative president Paul von Hindenburg. Centrist chancellor Heinrich Brüning, who had grown
increasingly unpopular as a result of the austerity measures he had imposed on the already suffering
nation, resigned as a result of the election; his successor, Franz von Papen, called for Reichstag
elections in July.
Nazis Consolidate Power
Spurred by Hitler’s growing popularity, the election gave the Nazis 230 seats, making the party the
largest and most influential in the Reichstag. The Nazi delegates, recognized by their brown uniforms,
acted more like bullies than legislators, and debates with opposing delegates usually turned into
brawls. Meanwhile, the nation’s political conflict poured into the streets as Nazi storm troopers
engaged Communist paramilitary fighters in almost nightly battles.
Hitler Rises to Power
Chancellor Papen hated the Nazis but needed their support to govern, so he reluctantly extended the
hand of partisan friendship by offering Hitler the position of vice chancellor. But Hitler refused,
demanding the chancel-lorship. A panicked Papen tried to bolster his own position by dissolving the
Reichstag and calling for fresh elections again in November. The Nazi Party lost thirty-four seats but
still retained its superior position.
Figure 1-1 A Sudeten woman weeps as she is forced to salute Hitler in 1938.
Photo courtesy of the National Archives (208-PP-10A-2)
Papen tried briefly to convince Hindenburg to declare his own dictatorship in a desperate bid to
keep Hitler from power, but both men quickly realized that such a move would be foolhardy because
of the strength and number of Nazi storm troopers and because too many of the nation’s military
officers supported Hitler. Hindenburg dismissed Papen and replaced him with Defense Minister Kurt
von Schleicher, who then offered the position of vice chancellor to the leader of the Nazi Party’s left
wing. However, the gesture only served to unite party members more strongly behind Hitler.
What were the three reichs?
According to Hitler, the First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, a group of Germanic tribes united by Charlemagne in the
ninth century. The Second Reich was Germany unified under Otto von Bismarck and carved up after World War I. Hitler
proclaimed the inauguration of the Third Reich, which he said would conquer all of Europe and last 1,000 years.
After failing to form a government with either the socialists or the conservative nationalists,
Schleicher resigned as chancellor on January 23, 1933. Both he and Papen remained powerful
members of the Reichstag and had convinced themselves that if they couldn’t keep Hitler out, they
could at least control him by surrounding him with more moderate cabinet ministers. After a frenzy of
negotiations, Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933.
However, Hitler was not about to be appeased. He and his followers quickly set to work making him
supreme and absolute ruler of the German republic by brutally eliminating all who might oppose him
politically and making friends with the rich industrialists whose support Hitler desperately needed.
When the long-ailing Hindenburg finally died on August 2, 1934, Hitler quickly abolished the office
of president and with the cry “One race, one realm, one leader!” proclaimed himself der Führer—the
Leader.
Fascism Takes Hold of Italy
Yet another match was held to the fuse that would ignite World War II with the rise of Italian fascist
leader Benito Mussolini. A former newspaper editor and a gifted orator, Mussolini fanned the fires of
political nationalism by convincing his beleaguered countrymen that Italy had emerged victorious
from World War I. In truth, the sections of Austria that ended up under Italy’s control had been given
to it as part of several secret agreements and were not the result of military might. Nonetheless, the
Italian people, swollen with national pride, took Mussolini’s words to heart.
Mussolini also capitalized on the attempts by Communists to seize control of Italy after the war.
With many people starving and the economy still in shambles, the Communists thought their timing
was perfect for another “people’s revolution” and instigated a number of strikes and shutdowns. Prime
Minister Francesco Nitti, shaky and unsure of how to react, opened the door to a Communist takeover.
In March 1919, Mussolini and several other war veterans formed the Fasci di Combattimento, a
right-wing, anti-Communist movement that quickly swept the country. Wearing signature black shirts,
Mussolini’s Fascist militia did all it could to strengthen national pride while dismantling labor and
socialist groups—often with violence.
In 1922, Mussolini’s followers stormed Rome, intimidating King Victor Emmanuel III into offering
Mussolini the position of prime minister in what was supposed to be a coalition government. It was
then that Mussolini adopted his famous title of Il Duce—the Leader.
Within four years, Mussolini turned the supposed coalition government into a dictatorship with
himself at the helm. Thus, his rise to power was complete. Even though many personal freedoms were
gradually withdrawn, including the right to strike, Mussolini managed to preserve some aspects of
capitalism and expand social services. He also ended decades of conflict with the Vatican by signing
the Lateran Pact of 1929, a compromise that recognized Rome as the capital of Italy but granted
sovereignty to the Vatican.
Once Italy was in his grasp, Mussolini, like most dictators, began looking to expand his empire with
an aggressive foreign policy. First to fall was Ethiopia, which Italy conquered in 1935 and 1936
despite protests from the League of Nations. Though condemned by the international community, the
conquest was celebrated by the Italian people, and Mussolini’s popularity skyrocketed. He soon
decided to align Italy with Nazi Germany in what became known as the Axis.
Japanese Aggression
Ruled by an emperor but controlled by militarists, Japan—desperate for raw materials—was ready to
continue the expansion it had started nearly forty-five years earlier with the acquisition of the island
of Burile, the Bonin and Ryukyu Islands, and the Volcano group. In war with China in 1894 and 1895,
Japan took Formosa (now Taiwan) and the Pescadores. Soon afterward, it seized Port Arthur and the
southern half of the island of Sakhalin from Russia and took control of Korea, which it officially
annexed in 1910. After World War I, Japan received mandates over the Marshall, Caroline, and
Mariana Islands, which had formerly belonged to Germany.
Following the Naval Disarmament Conference of 1920, which weakened the American and British
presence in the Pacific, Japan strengthened its powerful navy, fortified its mandates in violation of
international treaty, and set its eyes on China while conditioning its people for the inevitability of war.
American Isolationism
The United States was condemned on many fronts for dragging its feet in entering World War I, but in
truth the nation’s isolationist policies were as old as the republic itself.
America’s first political leaders encouraged commercial treaties and expansion of trade with other
nations but discouraged political or military alliances because of their inherent dangers. One such
view was expressed by George Washington, who in his 1796 farewell address advised the nation that
he had helped to promote good relations with all the world’s countries, particularly in regard to trade,
but warned strongly against becoming involved in Europe’s complicated and ever-changing political
affairs.
The United States maintained an isolationist attitude for many years, preferring to expand into the
sparsely populated land that spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific rather than become involved in
global politics. Such an attitude also helped protect the fledgling country from European domination
— always a risk when dealing with older, more established nations.
With only a few exceptions, isolationism remained a steadfast policy throughout the nineteenth
century and well into the twentieth. When hostilities finally broke out in Europe in 1914, the United
States assumed a stance of neutrality, despite the fact that many of its most important economic allies
were fighting for their lives.
The war raged for nearly three years before U.S. troops went to Europe in the spring of 1917,
provoked by attacks on merchant ships by German submarines. American anger was aggravated by the
discovery of what became known as the Zimmerman note—a secret message from German foreign
minister Arthur Zimmerman to his ambassador in Mexico City, instructing him to offer Mexico
financial aid in exchange for an invasion of the United States. Declaring that, “the world must be
made safe for democracy,” President Woodrow Wilson finally asked Congress for a declaration of
war. The United States entered World War I four days later.
At the war’s conclusion, America once again put up an isolationist wall. Even after just one year,
the country had grown weary of fighting overseas and the Red Scare at home, and wanted nothing
more to do with international politics. The men who served as president after World War I understood
this sentiment and did all they could to keep the nation out of conflict. As President Warren G.
Harding noted, the nation needed “not submergence in internationality but sustainment in triumphant
nationality.”
The League of Nations was established in 1920 in an effort to make sure another world war would never happen. Though
the League was suggested by President Woodrow Wilson, the United States did not join. The U.S. Senate, angry over being
left out of treaty negotiations by Wilson, and concerned about congressional war powers, refused to ratify the Treaty of
Versailles, which governed the League’s covenant.
Isolationism Following the First World War
President Calvin Coolidge, who assumed office after Harding’s death in 1923, maintained his
predecessor’s position of international neutrality, preferring to concentrate on the growth and
maintenance of his own country. The only issue that managed to penetrate the nation’s staunch
isolationism was the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which the United States signed along with sixty-one other
countries, including Germany, Japan, and Italy. In so doing, the nations promised never to resort to
war as an instrument of national policy. But as future events would show, the pact, merely a promise
with nothing to back it up, ultimately proved to be worthless (as did the League of Nations, which, in
the end, was unable to stop the Axis powers from taking the actions that led to world war).
Map 1-1 U.S. foreign trade routes. The thickets of the trading veins extending from the United States will
soon be cut off due to the war.
Map courtesy of the National Archives (Travel and Ship under the American Flag, Record Group 178,
Maritime Commission)
Sadly, America’s isolationist attitude served only to benefit those nations that made war a part of
their expansionist policies. For example, when Japan finally decided to invade a nearly helpless China
in 1931, President Herbert Hoover, a Quaker by faith, immediately ruled out military force to stop
Japan’s aggression. Instead, he expressed “moral condemnation” and told the world the United States
would not recognize any international changes that conflicted with its Open Door policy or the
Kellogg-Briand Pact. Faced with moral censure but little else, Japan’s militarists continued their
vicious assault against China, which included the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and, a year later, a
shocking bombing attack on Shanghai, one of China’s most important trade centers, which killed
thousands of civilians.
Similar problems soon occurred in Europe and Africa. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia in
Mussolini’s quest for a contemporary Roman Empire. The League of Nations tried to quell the
aggression with economic sanctions, but they did little good. Mussolini, like his counterparts in Japan,
assumed that no one would try to stop his bully tactics, and he was right.
The Japanese pulled out of Shanghai in May 1932 following a truce brokered by the Western powers, most of which had
important holdings in the area. However, the Japanese maintained control of Manchuria (which they renamed Manchukuo).
Germany also began stretching its militaristic wings in 1935, when, in direct violation of the Treaty
of Versailles, it began to create its powerful air force, the Luftwaffe, and a new navy. The following
year, German troops occupied the Rhineland, which had been designated a demilitarized zone. This,
too, was in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. As with Italy and Japan, however, no one—
least of all the United States, which continued to be bound by its isolationist attitudes—did anything
to halt Germany’s increasing aggression.