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Mr. Schaber - US History - Ch. 24 Class Notes (WWII) *Section 1 - Prelude to Global War - In the ‘30s, while Americans faced personal hardships and political upheaval at home, conditions in other countries were even worse - The US watched warily as dictators in Europe and Asia sought to solve their nations’ problems by extending their power at the expense of other nations - Throughout the ‘20s and ‘30s brutal dictators came to power in Europe - in Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union totalitarian governments controlled every aspect of life - These governments used terror to suppress individual freedoms and to silence all forms of opposition - Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini based their governments on a philosophy called fascism - Fascism places the importance of the nation above the value of the individual - Hitler and Mussolini focused on the need to rebuild Germany and Italy - Unlike communism, which calls for all society to jointly own the nation’s means of production, fascism allows private business - According to Communist theory, conflicts between workers and owners will not exist in a Communist society, because the workers are the owners - In a Fascist system such conflicts are resolved by the government’s power - Under both systems, however, the result is the same - individual rights and freedoms are lost as everyone works for the benefit of society and the nation - Mussolini felt his country had been shortchanged in the peace settlement after WWI - in 1919 he joined with other dissatisfied war veterans to organize the revolutionary Fascist party - Calling himself Il Duce (“the leader”) , Mussolini organized Fascist groups throughout Italy - He relied on gangs of Fascist thugs, called Blackshirts because of the way they dressed, to terrorize and bring under control those who opposed him - By 1922 Mussolini had become such a powerful figure that when he threatened to march on Rome, the king panicked and appointed him prime minister - Mussolini and the Fascists claimed that efficiency and order were necessary to restore the nation’s greatness, so they suspended elections, outlawed all other political parties, and soon established a dictatorship - In October 1935 Mussolini invaded Ethiopia - by March 1936 Ethiopia was in Italian hands - While Mussolini was gaining control in Italy, a discontented Austrian painter was rising to power in Germany - Like Mussolini, Adolf Hitler had been wounded while serving in WWI - he also was enraged by the outcome of the war and by the terms of the peace settlement - In 1919 Hitler joined a small political party which soon took the name National Socialist German Workers’ party, or Nazi party - His powerful public-speaking abilities quickly made him a leader - in November 1923, with some 3,000 followers, Hitler tried to overthrow the German government - authorities easily crushed the uprising, and Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison - he ended up only serving 9 months - Most of Hitler’s time in prison was devoted to writing the first volume of an autobiography titled Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) - In it Hitler outlined the Nazi philosophy, his views of German problems, and his plans for the nation - according to Mein Kampf, Germany had been weakened by certain groups who lived within its borders - he was highly critical of the nation’s Jewish population, which he blamed for Germany’s defeat in WWI - In Mein Kampf, Hitler proposed strengthening the nation’s military and expanding its borders to include Germans living in other nations - He also called for purifying the so-called Aryan “race” (blond, blue-eyed Germans) by removing from Germany those groups he considered undesirable - in time, removal came to mean the mass murder of millions of Jews and other peoples - Saddled with huge debts because of WWI, Germany suffered high unemployment and massive inflation during the 1920s - in the early ‘30s, the effects of the Great Depression further ravaged the German people - Hitler and the Nazis promised to stabilize the country, rebuild the economy, and restore the lost empire - Because of such promises, Hitler gradually won a large following - by January 1933 the Nazi party was the largest group in the Reichstag (the German parliament) and Hitler became head of the German state - He soon silenced his opposition, suspended civil liberties, and convinced the Reichstag to give him dictatorial powers - Hitler then took for himself the title Der Fuhrer, or “the leader” - On March 9, 1936, German troops moved into the Rhineland, a region in western Germany along the borders of France and Belgium - The Treaty of Versailles, signed after WWI, had expressly excluded German military forces from the region - the invasion of the Rhineland was an enormous gamble for Hitler because it clearly violated the Versailles treaty - But, neither Britain or France resisted Hitler in this move - Also in 1936, Hitler signed an alliance with the Italian dictator, Mussolini - this created what Mussolini called an “axis” between Rome and Berlin, the capitals of the two nations - Germany and Italy, joined later by Japan, became known as the Axis Powers - Encouraged by his success in the Rhineland, in March 1938 Hitler sent German troops into the neighboring nation of Austria and annexed it - Several months later, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland, a region of eastern Czechoslovakia with a heavily German population - In an effort to avoid war, representatives from England, France, Germany, and Italy met in Munich, Germany, in September 1938 - Britain and France followed a policy of appeasement (giving in to someone’s demands in order to keep the peace) - Neither Britain or France was prepared for war - at the Munich Conference, therefore, Britain and France agreed to let Hitler have the Sudetenland, hoping that his appetite for territory would be satisfied - “Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor,” said Winston Churchill, a member of Parliament, of this action. “They chose dishonor. They will have war.” - In March 1939, only six months after occupying the Sudetenland, Hitler annexed the rest of Czechoslovakia - British and French leaders warned him that any further German expansion risked war - on March 31, 1939, they formally pledged their support to Poland, agreeing to come to its aid if invaded by Germany - Hitler was unconcerned about such threats, so on September 1, 1939, he invaded Poland two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany - In invading Poland, the German military unveiled a tactic called blitzkrieg, or “lightning war” - Tanks, artillery, and soldiers, moving by truck instead of on foot, rapidly struck deep into enemy territory before the foe had time to react - Using this tactic, German troops overran Poland in less than a month - In mid-September, under the terms of the agreement he’d made with Hitler, Stalin of Russia attacked and seized eastern Poland for the Soviet Union - After Poland fell, the war entered a quiet period - for the next several months, German troops sat and watched French forces on the Maginot Line (a system of defenses that France had built along its border with Germany) - The American press called this “the phony war” - On April 9, 1940, the phony war came to an end as Hitler launched an attack on Denmark and Norway - On May 10, German troops moved and launched a blitzkrieg on Belgium, the Netherlands, and France - All three countries were quickly overwhelmed - In the face of this savage German attack, British forces in France retreated to the coastal city of Dunkirk - There, over a nine-day period in late May and early June, one of the greatest rescues in the history of warfare took place - while other troops fought to slow the advancing Germans, some 900 vessels were hastily assembled - The makeshift fleet consisted mainly of tugboats, yachts, and other small private craft - Braving merciless attacks by the Luftwaffe (the German air force), they carried nearly 340,000 soldiers across the English Channel to Great Britain - On June 14, German troops entered the city of Paris and a few days later France surrendered - In less than three months Hitler had conquered most of western Europe - Of the Allies (those who fought against the Axis), Great Britain now stood alone - As France was falling, Hitler massed troops on the French coast - his next target was Great Britain, just 20 miles away across the English Channel - Winston Churchill, now Britain’s prime minister, said: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” - Hitler turned to the Luftwaffe to destroy Britain’s ability and will to resist - thus, in the Battle of Britain, he launched the greatest air assault the world had yet seen - As many as 1,000 planes a day rained bombs on Britain - The Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots sometimes flew six and seven missions a day, inflicting heavy losses on the attacking Germans - The British people were equally brave - in December 1940, German bombing of London started some 1,500 fires, setting the center of the city ablaze - By June 1941, when Hitler finally ended the bombing, nearly 30,000 Londoners had been killed and 120,000 injured - Many Japanese were as unhappy with their situation in Asia in the 1920s as Italians and Germans were with their status in Europe - Japan lacked sufficient raw materials and markets for its industries - it also needed land for its rising population - Thus, some Japanese were eager and ready to establish an empire of their own - The Great Depression added to Japan’s economic woes - In 1931 Japan shocked everyone when its army seized Manchuria, a mineral-rich region in northern China - In 1937 Japan resumed its aggression in China - despite American help, the Chinese army of General Chiang Kai-shek was no match for the invaders - An ongoing battle between Chiang’s army and the Communist guerrilla fighters led by Mao Zedong contributed to the weakness of China - by 1940 the Japanese controlled most of eastern China - Japan became an ally of Germany and Italy in the Tripartite Pact of September 1940 - then in April 1941 the Japanese signed a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union - The stage was now set for Japan to challenge the Europeans and Americans for supremacy in Asia - American officials watched Japan’s actions in Asia with growing concern - in 1938 President FDR began a naval buildup in the Pacific - The following year he moved the American Pacific Fleet from San Diego, California, to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii - Americans did not want to fight a war in Asia any more than they did in Europe - Most remained disillusioned by WWI - many believed the nation already had enough problems at home, as the American economy remained trapped in the Great Depression - these people supported the policy of isolationism - In the mid-1930s, Congress had responded to isolationist sentiment by passing a series of Neutrality Acts - These laws declared that the US would withhold weapons and loans from all nations at war - Further, they required that nonmilitary good sold to nations at war be paid for in cash and transported by the purchaser - this policy became known as “cash and carry” - After the war began, Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1939 - this law permitted Britain and France to purchase weapons on a cash-and-carry basis - A later amendment allowed American merchant ships to transport these purchases to Britain - German aggression scared many Americans - in 1940, Congress authorized the first peacetime draft in the nation’s history - The Selective Service Act required all males ages 21 to 36 to register for military service - In November 1940 Roosevelt won reelection to a third term as President - his easy victory encouraged him to push for greater American involvement in the war - In January 1941 he proposed to provide war supplies to Great Britain without any payment in return - Congress responded by passing the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941, which authorized the President to aid any nation whose defense he believed was vital to American security - Roosevelt immediately began sending aid to Britain, and the US became, as FDR had said in a speech in 1940, “the great arsenal of democracy” - Soon after France fell to the Germans, the Japanese demanded control of French colonies in Indochina - In mid-1941 Japanese forces occupied the region - in response, Roosevelt froze Japanese financial assets in the US and cut off all trade with Japan - Also, the US government had cracked secret Japanese codes and had been intercepting messages - American officials knew that Japan was planning to seize more territory - In October 1941, General Hideki Tojo, who supported war with the US, became prime minister of Japan - Yet Roosevelt still hoped for peace - he proposed to his advisers that trade could be resumed if Japan halted any further troop movements - On November 25, the American government learned that a Japanese fleet was moving toward Southeast Asia - The US demanded that Japan withdraw from all conquered territory and from its Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy - Even as this tough message was being sent, a second Japanese fleet of 6 aircraft carriers and more than 20 other ships was under way - Japan’s leaders had decided that their goals in Asia could not be achieved as long as the American fleet remained in Hawaii - that threat had to be destroyed - Shortly after 7:00 A.M. on December 7, 1941 an American army radar operator on the Hawaiian island of Oahu reported to his headquarters that planes were headed toward him - The only officer on duty that Sunday morning decided they were American - “Don’t worry about it,” the officer told the radar operator, as he hung up the phone - Less than an hour later more than 180 Japanese warplanes streaked overhead - most of the Pacific fleet lay at anchor in Pearl Harbor, crowded into an area less than three miles square - Japanese planes bombed and strafed (attacked with machine-gun fire) the fleet and the airfields nearby - By 9:45 it was over - in less than two hours some 2,400 Americans had been killed and nearly 1,200 wounded - Nearly 300 American warplanes were damaged or destroyed - 18 warships had been sunk or heavily damaged, including 8 of the fleet’s 9 battleships - Japan lost just 29 planes - The attack on Pearl Harbor stunned the American people - calling December 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy,” Roosevelt the next day asked Congress to declare war on Japan - Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the US - for the second time in the century, Americans were part of a world war - their contributions would make the difference between victory and defeat for the Allies *Section 2 - The Road to Victory in Europe - In August 1941, unknown to the rest of the world, two warships quietly lay at anchor off the coast of Newfoundland - Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Pres. FDR were aboard, and they both believed the US would soon be allied with Great Britain in war, so they were meeting to agree on the war’s goals - Roosevelt and Churchill put their beliefs and ideas into writing in the Atlantic Charter - the agreement reached at this meeting would form the basis for the United Nations - As the US prepared for war, thousands of American men received official notices to enter the army or navy - afer the bombing of Pearl Harbor, tens of thousands more volunteered to serve - FDR spoke of 4 essential freedoms he wanted all in the world to have: speech/expression, religion, all needs filled, freedom for fear - WWII greatly changed the lives of millions of Americans - the 15 million Americans who served as soldiers, sailors, and aviators made their way through distant deserts, jungles, swamps, turbulent seas, and tough skies - Americans soldiers called themselves Gis, after the “Government Issue” stamp that appeared on all shoes, clothes, weapons, and other equipment provided by the military - As soldiers fought in filthy foxholes overseas, they dreamed of home and a cherished way of life - Americans from all ethnic and racial backgrounds fought during WWII - *300,000 Mexican Americans; * 25,000 Native Americans (the Marines recruited about 300 Navajos to serve as radio operators, and they developed a code based on their language that the Japanese couldn’t break - became known as ‘code talkers’) *17,000 Japanese Americans (most were Nisei, or citizens born in the US of Japanese immigrant parents) - the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat team won so many commendations for bravery while fighting in Europe that it became the most decorated military unit in American history *Almost 1 million African American troops volunteered or were drafted for the war - like Japanese American troops, African Americans fought in segregated units - the African American 761st Tank Battalion captured 30 major towns from the Germans in a grueling 183-day campaign - the Army Air Force 99th Fighter Squadron, known as the Black Eagles, shot down more than 110 enemy planes over Italy *Also, by the war’s end, nearly 275,000 American women had volunteered for military service they served as clerks, typists, airfield control tower operators, mechanics, photographers, and drivers - some of the 1,200 WASPs (Women Air Force Service Pilots) ferried planes around the country and towed practice targets for antiaircraft gunners - When the US entered the war in 1941, the situation was critical - London and other major British cities had suffered heavy damage during the Battle of Britain - The Germans’ blitzkrieg had extended Nazi control across most of Europe - In North Africa a German army led by General Erwin Rommel, known as the “Desert Fox” for his shrewd tactics, was equally successful - many people feared that Germany could not be stopped - At sea a desperate struggle developed in the effort to keep German submarines from isolating Great Britain - they’d blocked it off so supplies couldn’t easily come in - US ships traveled in convoys, but Germans still sunk many ships trying to get to Great Britain - Since August 1940, a British army had been battling Italian and German troops in North Africa - but in November 1942 the British, under General Bernard Montgomery, won a decisive victory at El Alamein in Egypt - The Germans began to retreat west - a few days later, British and American troops commanded by American general Dwight D. Eisenhower landed in Morocco and Algeria and quickly pushed eastward - In May 1943 the two Allied armies came together in Tunisia, trapping Rommel’s forces despite Hitler’s instructions to fight to the death, nearly 240,000 Germans and Italians surrendered - Churchill and FDR met once again in January 1943, this time at Casablanca, Morocco - at this Casablanca Conference they planned strategy for fighting much of the rest of the war - The decision was made to continue concentrating Allied resources on Europe before trying to win the war in the Pacific - Churchill and FDR also agreed to accept only the unconditional surrender of Italy, Germany, and Japan - In July 1943, American troops under General George S. Patton attacked Sicily, just south of the Italian mainland - When the island fell in just 38 days, Mussolini was overthrown - in September, as Allied troops threatened the rest of Italy, its new government surrendered - German troops in Italy, however, continued to resist, and they retreated up the Italian peninsula - By November, German defenses stiffened and the Allied advance stalled - In January, to get it moving again, the Allied force landed behind the German lines at Anzio, just south of Rome - For the next 4 months Allied soldiers fought to move more than a few miles beyond the beach before they finally broke through German defenses in May 1944, some 72,000 American soldiers had been killed or wounded - After winning the Battle of Anzio, the Allies quickly captured Rome - however, many more months of heavy fighting were required before the Germans in northern Italy finally surrendered in April 1945 - The Americans suffered nearly 190,000 casualties during the Italian campaign - German losses approached half a million troops - Meanwhile, as the Allies battled their way across northern Africa and southern Europe, a struggle came about in eastern Europe - As early as 1924 Hitler had called for the conquest of the Soviet Union, claiming that Germany needed lebensraum (living space) to the east - After losing the Battle of Britain, he broke his pact with Stalin and launched an attack against the Soviet Union - In June 1941, nearly 3.6 million German and other Axis troops poured across the length of the Soviet border, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south - The nearly 3 million Red Army soldiers opposing this onslaught were poorly equipped and not well trained - The Soviets were unprepared for the intensity and brutality of the German attack - the Luftwaffe quickly gained control of the air, and German ground troops drove deep into Soviet territory - In lands they occupied, German troops began rounding up and executing large numbers of civilians - The Soviets adopted a scorched earth policy, destroying everything useful to the enemy as they retreated - In the meantime, Stalin asked Roosevelt for help through the Lend-Lease program - Congress blocked this request for many months - American aid didn’t flow into Russia until June 1942 - By that summer, German armies threatened major cities deep inside the Soviet Union - Stalin urged his allies to launch an attack on Western Europe - this would take off some pressure by forcing Hitler to fight on two fronts - Churchill, however, hesitated to make such a risky invasion - at Casablanca he persuaded FDR instead to invade Italy, which he called the “soft underbelly” of Europe - the Soviets had to confront the German army on their own - The Red Army decided to make its stand at Stalingrad, a major industrial railroad center - In mid-September 1942 the Germans began a campaign of bombing and shelling that lasted more than two months - The Soviets took up positions in the rubble that remained of Stalingrad and engaged the advancing German troops in bitter house-to-house fighting - In mid-November, taking advantage of the harsh Russian weather, Soviet forces counterattacked and surrounded the German army - In late January, the Red Army launched a final assault on the freezing enemy - On January 31, 1943, more than 90,000 surviving Germans surrendered - In all, Germany lost some 330,000 troops at Stalingrad - the Soviet Union never released official data on its casualties - The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point of the war in the east - after their victory, Soviet forces began a long struggle to regain the territory lost to the Germans - As the Red Army slowly forced the German invaders back, Stalin continued to push for the invasion of Western Europe - FDR chose General Dwight D. Eisenhower to lead the invasion - People thought it would be General George Marshall - he was America’s top general & FDR’s Chief of Staff - As Army Chief of Staff, Marshall pushed the President to prepare for war by strengthening the army - Soon after America’s entry in the war, Marshall called for an invasion of western Europe Winston Churchill later credited Marshall with being “the true organizer of (the Allies’) victory” - After the war ended in 1945, Marshall resigned - however, President Harry Truman quickly called him back to public service - as Secretary of State, Marshall launched a massive effort to rebuild postwar Europe - today that program is known as the Marshall Plan - for his work, Marshall received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 - At every conference of Allied leaders after the US entered the war, Marshall pushed for an attack on the German forces occupying France - Allied planes were already bombing Germany - In late 1943 the British finally agreed to go along with Marshall’s proposal to launch a land invasion as well - The RAF had begun bombing Germany in 1940 - however, the Luftwaffe quickly forced the British to give up daylight missions for safer but less accurate nighttime raids - When the Germans started to target cities during the Battle of Britain, the RAF responded in kind - It abandoned attempts to pinpoint targets and developed a technique called carpet bombing (large numbers of bombs are scattered over a wide area) - German cities suffered huge damage as a result - Allied bombing of Germany had intensified after the US entered the war - In spring 1943 the bombing campaign was stepped up yet again in order to soften Germany for the planned Allied invasion - By 1944 British and American commanders were conducting coordinated air raids - American planes bombing by day and the RAF by night - at its height, some 3,000 planes were involved in this campaign - A massive buildup of troops began in southern England as American, British, and Canadian forces were joined by Polish, Dutch, Belgian, and French troops - In response, the Germans strengthened their defenses along the French coastline - As they waited for the invasion to begin, German soldiers added machine-gun emplacements, barbed wire fences on beaches, land and water mines, and underwater obstructions - Shortly after midnight on June 6, 1944, the largest landing by sea in history began as some 4,600 invasion craft and warships slipped out of their harbors in southern England - As the ships crossed the English Channel, about 1,000 RAF bombers pounded German defenses at Normandy - Meanwhile, some 23,000 airborne British and American soldiers, in a daring nighttime maneuver, were dropped behind enemy lines - At dawn on D-Day (the code name for the day the invasion began), Allied warships in the Channel began a massive shelling of the coast - Some 1,000 American planes continued the RAF’s air bombardment - then around 150,000 Allied troops and their equipment began to come ashore along 60 miles of Normandy coast - Despite the advice of his generals to launch a counterattack, Hitler hesitated - he feared a larger invasion at the narrowest part of the English Channel near Calais - Nevertheless, German resistance at Normandy was fierce - at Omaha Beach the Allies suffered 2,000 casualties - In spite of the heavy casualties of D-Day, within a week a half million men came ashore - by late July the Allied force in France numbered some 2 million troops - Bitter fighting followed as the Allies broke through German defenses at Normandy and pushed across France - In late August 1944, American troops liberated Paris - British and Canadian forces freed Brussels and Antwerp in Belgium a few days later - In mid-September, a combined Allied force attacked the Germans occupying Holland - At about the same time, Americans crossed the western border of Germany - The Nazis fought desperately to defend their homeland - after reinforcing the army with thousands of additional draftees, some as young as 15, they launched a counterattack in Belgium and Luxembourg in December 1944 - This battle came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge - As the German attack overwhelmed the American forces and pushed them back, many small units became cut off from the rest of the army - the soldiers of these isolated units fought gallantly - From his headquarters near Paris, Eisenhower ordered more troops to the scene - The most spectacular of these reinforcement actions was carried out by General Patton - in just a few days he moved his entire army of 250,000 soldiers from western France to help stop the German advance - The Battle of the Bulge was the largest battle in western Europe during WWII and the largest ever fought by the US Army - It involved some 600,000 GI s, of whom about 80,000 were killed, wounded, or captured - German losses totaled about 100,000 troops - after this battle, most Nazi leaders saw that the war was lost - In March 1945, as Allied bombers continued to hammer German cities, American ground forces crossed the Rhine River and advanced toward Berlin from the west - meanwhile, the Soviets pushed into Germany from east - The fighting between Germany and Soviet forces from 1941 to 1945 was the greatest conflict ever fought on a single front - At any given time it involved more than 9 million troops - The costs of this struggle were horrific - the 13.6 million Soviet and 3 million German military killed accounted for more than two-thirds of the total dead for all WWII - Current research in records of the former Soviet Union places the total of Soviet civilian and military deaths at 27 million people - After the hardships their nation had endured, Soviet leaders considered the capture of Berlin, Germany’s capital, a matter of honor - In late April 1945 the Soviets fought their way into Berlin - they found the city more than 80 percent destroyed by Allied bombing - While some Soviet troops attacked Berlin, other elements of the Red Army continued to drive west - on April 25, they met American troops at the Elbe River - In Berlin, Hitler had refused to take his generals’ advice to flee as the Soviets closed in on the city - Instead he fulfilled a vow he had made in 1939: “I shall stand or fall in this struggle. I shall never survived the defeat of my people.” - On May 1, the German government announced that Hitler had committed suicide - a few days later, on May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered - American soldiers rejoiced and civilians celebrated V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day) at home as the war in Europe came to an end - The war was not over yet, however, as Japan was still to be defeated - In February 1945, two months before the fall of Berlin, FDR, Churchill, and Stalin met at Yalta, a city in the Soviet Union near the Black Sea - The purpose of the Yalta Conference was to plan for the postwar world - the leaders agreed to split Germany into four zones, each under the control of one of the major Allies - the city of Berlin would be similarly divided - And, Stalin promised to enter the war against Japan soon after Germany surrendered *Section 3 - The War in the Pacific - The bombing of Pearl Harbor was only the first of several Japanese offensives across the Pacific - After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese warplanes based in China hit Clark Field, the main American base in the Philippine Islands - The American planes sat neatly parked along the runways at Clark Field - as Japanese planes swept over the airfield, strings of bombs fell towards their targets - planes and buildings were blown to pieces - Although news of Pearl Harbor had reached Douglas MacArthur, the commanding general, the Americans at Clark Field had not expected an immediate attack - about half of MacArthur’s force was destroyed as it sat on the ground - Within days, a large Japanese force landed in the Philippines - MacArthur withdrew most of his troops to the Bataan Peninsula on Manila Bay - there he set up defenses, hoping the navy could evacuate the army to safety - For some four months, American and Filipino troops held out on the Bataan Peninsula - In March, Pres. Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to escape to Australia - the general was reluctant to abandon his soldiers to the Japanese, but promised, “I shall return” - When the peninsula’s gallant troops surrendered to Japanese forces in early April, about 2,000 soldiers and nurses escaped to the fortified island of Corregidor in Manila Bay - joining the fort’s defenders, they fought for another month - Finally, running low on ammunition and food, over 11,000 Americans and Filipinos surrendered on May 6, 1942 - As the Bataan Peninsula fell, some 76,000 Filipinos and Americans became prisoners of war Japanese soldiers split the prisoners into groups of 500 and 1,000 and marched them some 60 miles to a railroad - Already weakened from weeks without enough food or medicine, at least 10,000 prisoners died during the 6- to 12-day march - many were executed by the guards when they could not keep up - This incident became known as the Bataan Death March - after the war the general blamed for organizing the march was one of six Japanese executed for war crimes - As Japanese forces spread across the Pacific, the battered American navy fought desperately to stop them - In May 1942, a largely American naval group fought against a superior enemy fleet in the Coral Sea - The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first naval combat carried out entirely by aircraft - planes launched from aircraft carriers bombed and strafed the enemy forces more than 70 miles away - The costs of the five-day battle were high - both sides lost more than half their aircraft - The US lost the carrier Lexington, and the Yorktown was badly damaged - But one Japanese carrier sank, another lost most of its planes, and a third was put out of action - Militarily the battle was probably a draw, but it prevented the Japanese from establishing the bases they needed to bomb Australia, thus blocking the invasion of that nation - There were two critical battles that took place in the Pacific at the height of the war in Europe Midway Island, near Hawaii, and Guadalcanal, in the western Pacific near the Coral Sea, were small but strategic islands - In mid-1942, the battles for these islands changed the course of the war in the Pacific - Despite his success at Pearl Harbor, Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto believed that American naval power still held the key to victory or defeat in Asia - He hoped to destroy what remained of the Pacific Fleet by luring it into battle at Midway Island, NW of Hawaii - Yamamoto committed a large part of Japan’s navy to this plan - he correctly believed that American admiral Chester Nimitz would use all his resources to protect Midway, which was vital to the defense of Hawaii - The Battle of Midway erupted on June 4, 1942 - it was fought entirely from the air - The American planes found the Japanese carriers at a vulnerable time - the Japanese were still loading bombs onto their planes - The Americans swiftly demolished three of four Japanese carriers as bombs stacked up on their decks exploded in the attack - the fourth was destroyed trying to escape - The sinking of these carriers, plus the loss of some 250 planes they carried, was a devastating blow to Japanese naval power - after the Battle of Midway, Japan was unable to launch any more offensive operations - The victory at Midway allowed the Allies to take the offensive in the Pacific - their first goal was to capture Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands - When more than 11,000 marines landed on the island in August 1942, some 2,200 Japanese fled into the jungle - Months of brutal fighting followed - The Battle of Guadalcanal provided the marines with their first taste of jungle warfare - as they slogged through swamps, forded rivers, and hacked through tangles of vines, they frequently encountered enemy units - The marines made easy targets for Japanese snipers hidden in the underbrush or in the tops of palm trees - When Japan’s forces finally slipped off the island in February 1943, their withdrawal went undetected until the marines discovered their empty boats on the beach - From Guadalcanal, American forces began island-hopping (a strategy of selectively attacking or bypassing specific enemy-held islands) - Both sides suffered heavy casualties before the Allies won the war in 1945 - In 1943 and 1944 the Allies pushed north from Australia and west across the central Pacific - As forces under General MacArthur and Admiral William Halsey leapfrogged through the Solomon Islands, other Americans led by Admiral Nimitz began a similar campaign in the Gilbert Islands - After seizing the island of Tarawa, Nimitz used it to launch bombing raids on Japan’s bases in the Marshall Islands - by February 1944, these attacks had crippled Japanese air power - From the Marshalls, Nimitz captured parts of the Mariana Islands in June - American long-range bombers were able to reach Japan from this location - by the end of 1944, American planes were dropping tons of explosives on Japanese cities - In mid-October, some 160,000 American troops invaded the Philippine island of Leyte - after the beach was secure, General MacArthur dramatically waded ashore from a landing craft - as news cameras recorded the historic event, MacArthur proclaimed, “People of the Philippines, I have returned.” - While American troops fought their way inland, the greatest naval battle in world history developed off the coast - More than 280 warships were engaged during the 3-day Battle of Leyte Gulf - This battle saw the first use of kamikazes (suicide planes) - Japanese pilots deliberately crashed their aircraft, which were heavily loaded with bombs, into their targets - The Japanese were badly beaten and their navy was virtually destroyed - Japanese land forces continued to resist - in the more than two months it took American forces to control Leyte, some 80,000 Japanese defenders were killed - fewer than 1,000 Japanese surrendered - The battle for Manila, the Philippines’ capital city, on the island of Luzon, was equally hard fought - The nearly month-long struggle left most of Manila in ruins and some 100,000 Filipino civilians dead - Not until June 1945 were the Philippines securely in Allied hands - The Battle of Iwo Jima was one of the bloodiest of the war - the island’s steep rocky slopes were honeycombed with caves and tunnels - more than 600 guns, many encased in concrete bunkers, were naturally protected by land - In November 1944 American bombers began to pound Iwo Jima from the air - for 74 days American planes and warships poured nearly 7,000 tons of bombs and more than 20,000 shells onto Iwo Jima’s defenders - In mid-February 1945, marines stormed the beaches from the ships offshore - they encountered furious resistance - After 3 days of combat, the marines had advanced only about 700 yards inland - eventually nearly 110,000 American troops were involved in the campaign - Although fewer than 25,000 Japanese opposed the Americans, it took almost a month for the marines to secure the island - the enemy fought virtually to the last defender - only 216 Japanese were taken prisoner - The American forces suffered an estimated 25,000 casualties in capturing this 14-square-mile island - 27 Medals of Honor were awarded for actions on Iwo Jima, more than in any other single operation of the war - Admiral Nimitz described the island as a place where “uncommon valor was a common virtue” - The Battle of Okinawa , fought from April to June 1945, was equally bloody - Nearly 100,000 defenders occupied this island, which was little more than 350 miles from Japan itself - The Japanese troops on Okinawa knew they were the last obstacle to an Allied invasion of the Japanese home islands - many had pledged to fight to the death to prevent their homeland from falling - The American and British forces amassed at Okinawa was second in size only to the Normandy invasion in Europe - some 1,300 warships and more than 180,000 combat troops were gathered to drive the enemy off the isle - Japanese pilots flew nearly 2,000 kamikaze attacks against this fleet - on the island, defenders made equally desperate banzai charges (attacks designed to kill as many of the enemy as possible while dying in battle) - In June, when the Japanese resistance finally ended after almost three months, only 7,200 defenders remained to surrender - for American forces, nearly 50,000 casualties made the Battle of Okinawa the costliest engagement of the Pacific war - but now finally the way was open for an invasion of Japan - After the grueling battles at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, American soldiers began to prepare themselves for the invasion of Japan - they knew how costly such an invasion would be - Unknown to them however, work was nearly done on a bomb that would make the invasion unnecessary - The story begins in August 1939, when FDR received a letter from Albert Einstein, a brilliant Jewish physicist who had sought refuge in America from the Nazis - In his letter, Einstein suggested that an incredibly powerful new type of bomb could be built he hinted that the Germans were already at work on such a weapon - FDR, concerned that Germany not develop this weapon first, organized the top secret Manhattan Project to develop such a bomb - Scientists had already succeeded in splitting the nucleus of the uranium atom - however, to make an atomic bomb they had to create a controlled chain reaction - In such a reaction, particles released from the splitting of one atom would cause another atom to break apart, and so on - The theory was that the energy released when so many atoms were split would produce a massive explosion - In 1942, Enrico Fermi, a scientist who had left Fascist Italy, accomplished such a chain reaction in a laboratory at the University of Chicago - On July 16, 1945, Manhattan Project scientists field-tested Fermi’s work - in the desert of New Mexico they detonated the world’s first atomic bomb - With a blinding flash of light, the explosion blew a huge crater in the earth and shattered windows some 125 miles away - As he watched, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the building of the bomb, remembered the words of the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu holy book: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” - Once the bomb was ready, the question became whether or not to use it - other courses of action existed for bringing an end to the war - A massive invasion of Japan, a naval blockade, continued conventional bombing, or even a demonstration of the new weapon on some deserted island might show the Japanese the atomic bomb’s awesome power - An Interim Committee, formed in the spring on ‘45, debated the issue - but, the heavy American casualties at Iwo Jima and Okinawa were a factor in the committee’s support for using the bomb - The final decision, however, rested with the President - that burden fell on Harry S. Truman, President for barely three months after FDR’s sudden death in April 1945 - Truman had no difficulty making up his mind on the decision, and he never regretted dropping the bomb - “You should do your weeping at Pearl Harbor,” he said to his critics in later years - On August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a city in southern Japan and the site of a large army base - no one knows for sure how many people were killed, but the official Japanese estimate is that 140,000 died in the explosion or within a few months from burns or radiation poisoning - Thousands of others survived, but with horrible burns - some 90 percent of the city’s buildings were damaged or totally destroyed - Three days later a second bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, produced similar devastation, disfigurement, and death - The Japanese people were stunned by these developments - On August 14, the government of Japan accepted the American terms for surrender - The next day Americans celebrated V-J Day (Victory in Japan Day) - The formal surrender agreement was signed on September 2, 1945, in a ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay - the long and destructive war had finally come to an end *Section 4 - The Holocaust - When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, chief among his goals was the removal of so-called “non-Aryans,” and in particular Jews - No persecution of Jews in world history equals the extent and brutality of the Holocaust (Nazi Germany’s systematic murder of European Jews) - In all, some 6 million Jews, about 2/3 of Europe’s Jewish population, had been massacred by end of WWII - Some 5 to 6 million other people also died in Nazi captivity - Theories that European peoples, so-called Aryans, were superior to Middle Eastern peoples called Semites had developed in Germany in the mid-1800s - By the 1880s anti-Semitism had come to mean hostility toward Jews - when the Nazi party gained control of Germany’s government in 1933, anti-Semitism became the official policy of the nation - Under Nazi rule, German citizens were encouraged to stop patronizing Jewish businesses - In 1935, the Nazis passed the Nuremberg Laws, stripping Jews of their German citizenship and forbidding marriage between Jews and non-Jews - In 1937 and 1938 the Nazis began a program to “Aryanize” Jewish businesses - they required Jews to register their property and dismissed Jewish employees and managers - Jewish doctors were banned from treating non-Jews - All German people had to carry identity cards - the Nazi government marked Jews’ cards with a red letter ‘J’ and gave all Jews new middle names (“Sarah” for women and “Israel” for men) - When the Nazis came to power, they organized the SA (a police unit charged with silencing opposition to Nazis) - Later, Hitler formed the SS (an elite guard that became the private army of the Nazi party) - In addition, a Secret State Police, or Gestapo, was formed to identify and pursue those people who did not follow the new laws of the Nazi regime - Political enemies were thrown into hastily built “camps” in empty warehouses and factories guarded by SS troops - Typically, concentration camps are places where prisoners of war and political prisoners are confined, usually under harsh conditions - but, the Nazi camps soon held many other people considered by them to be “undesirable,” including the homeless, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and persons w/ mental & physical disabilities - By the late 1930s, Gypsies were also being imprisoned - On the night of November 9-10, 1938, Nazi thugs throughout Germany and Austria looted and destroyed Jewish stores, houses, and synagogues - the incident became known as Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”) - Mass arrests of Jews in the area followed - From 1933 through 1937 about 130,000 Jews fled Germany - the Nazis encouraged this emigration because it helped to achieve their plan - At first, most refugees merely moved to other European nations - as the numbers grew, however, Jews began to go to Palestine, Latin America, and the United States - In 1939, the invasion of Poland brought some 2 million Jews under German control - in Warsaw over 350,000 Jews, about 30% of the Polish capital’s population, were rounded up and confined in less than 3% of the city’s area - The Warsaw ghetto was sealed off by a wall topped with barbed wire - guards prevented movement between the ghetto and the rest of the city - Hunger, overcrowding, and a lack of sanitation brought on disease - the death rate soared as Jews were placed in ghettos throughout Poland and Eastern Europe - Special forces called the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) were sent to Poland in 1939 - There they systematically murdered members of Poland’s upper class, along with intellectuals, priests, and influential Jews - In 1941 the Einsatzgruppen carried out Hitler’s orders to eliminate Communist political leaders and Jews during the invasion of the Soviet Union - While Hitler accepted mass murder by firing squad as appropriate for a war zone, he felt the method was not suitable for nations already conquered - In January 1942, government officials met at the Wannsee Conference outside Berlin to announce a plan for what one Nazi leader called the “final solution to the Jewish question” - The plan called for establishing a number of special concentration camps in rural areas of Germany & elsewhere - There, the genocide (deliberate destruction of Europe’s Jewish population) was to be carried out - In 1941 the Nazis had begun experimenting on Jews and Soviet prisoners of war to determine the most efficient way of killing people - they chose a poison gas, called Zyklon B, to be administered in specially designed chambers disguised as showers - December 1941 a “model” operation was opened in western Poland - the first day some 2,300 Jews were killed - Eventually the Nazis built six camps in Poland - these death camps existed only for mass murder - Jews were crammed into trains and transported to these extermination centers - most Jews did not know where they were going when they boarded these trains - On arrival at the camps, prisoners were organized into a line and quickly inspected - the elderly, most women with children, and those who looked too weak to work were herded into gas chambers and killed - Guards forced prisoners to carry the dead to the crematoria, where the bodies were burned in huge ovens - Those who escaped immediate death at the extermination camps endured almost unbearable conditions - men and women alike had their heads shaved and a registration number tattooed on their arms - Given only one set of clothes, prisoners were interred in crowded, unheated barracks there were no bathrooms or beds - food was usually a thin, foul-tasting soup made with rotten vegetables - Diseases swept through the camps and claimed many who were weakened by harsh labor and the lack of food - Periodic “selections” took place where the weak and ill were sent to the gas chamber - About 43,000 prisoners perished at Germany’s Buchenwald labor camp, between 1937 and 1945 - At Auschwitz, a death camp in Poland, more victims were murdered than anywhere else - as many as 1.5 million people, some 90 percent of them Jews - Some Jews, both in and outside the camps, fiercely resisted the Nazis - In April 1943, the Warsaw ghetto revolted against deportation to the death camp Treblinka - For some 27 days about 700 Jews armed with little more than pistols and homemade bombs held out against more than 2,000 Germans with tanks - Revolts also erupted in the camps themselves - in August 1943, rioting Jews damaged Treblinka so badly that it had to be closed - Escape was the most common form of resistance - most attempts failed, but a few people managed to bring word of the death camps to the outside world - American newspapers showed little interest in the Holocaust during the war years - Finally, in January 1944, over the objection of the State Department, FDR created the War Refugee Board (WRB) to try to help people threatened with murder by the Nazis - In a short time, its programs helped save some 200,000 lives - with WRB funding, for example, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews by issuing them special Swedish passports - Wallenberg disappeared into Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe after the war - after he disappeared, Congress made him an honorary U.S. citizen for his humanitarian war work - As Allied armies advanced in late 1944, the Nazis abandoned concentration camps outside Germany and moved their prisoners to camps on German soil - In May 1945, as Germany collapsed, camp guards fled and American troops for the first time were able to witness the horrors of the Holocaust - A young soldier described the conditions he discovered as he entered the barracks at Buchenwald: “The odor was so bad I backed up, but I looked at a bottom bunk and there I saw one man. He was too weak to get up; he could just barely turn his head...He looked like a skeleton; and his eyes were deep set. He didn’t utter a sound; he just looked at me with those eyes, and they still haunt me today.” - Sickened by the death camps, in November 1945 the Allies placed 24 leading Nazis on trial for crimes against humanity - at the Nuremberg Trials 12 of them received the death sentence - No longer could war criminals escape punishment by saying they were only “following orders”