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The Mobilization of
Four Nations
Operation Barbarossa
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JUNE 1941 Hitler ignores the Nazi-Soviet NonAggression Pact and invades the Soviet Union
LARGEST German military operation of WWII
GOALS:
• Destruction of the Soviet military force
• Permanent elimination of Communism
• Seizure of prime land within Soviet borders (lebensraum)
Siege of Leningrad
• The siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) is the
most lethal siege in world history
• The 872 days of the siege caused unparalleled
famine in the Leningrad region through disruption of
utilities, water, energy and food supplies. This
resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000 soldiers
and civilians
• In the winter of 1941-42, rations were down to 50
grams of bread per person, per day
– 1 gram = 1 paper clip of weight
– 60% of this ‘bread’ was made of sawdust
• Starving, the people of Leningrad resorted to eating
leather briefcases, the paste behind wallpaper, dogs
and cats, and even human cannibalism.
Three men burying victims of Leningrad's siege in 1942
Germans ruthlessly executed Soviet partisans.
Soviets assembling tanks at a Soviet plant in the Urals. The factory
maintained day and night schedules during World War II.
Major Lyudmila Pavlichenko is
regarded as the most
successful female sniper in
history with 309 confirmed kills.
Pavlichenko was a 24 year old
university student when
Germany invaded Russia in
World War II. She was one of
the first sets of citizens to
volunteer for service and
specifically requested infantry
service. She refused an offer to
become a nurse. Due to her
accuracy with a rifle she
became one of the first 2,000
female snipers in the Soviet
Union. She was one of only 500
to survive the war.
Once the United States entered the
war after the attack on Pearl Harbor,
the Axis cause was largely doomed.
America mobilized 12 million soldiers
— about the same number as did the
Soviet Union, despite having a
population of about 40 million fewer
citizens.
American war production proved
astonishing. At the huge Willow Run
plant in Michigan, the greatest
generation turned out a B-24 heavy
bomber every hour. A single shipyard
could mass-produce an ocean-going
Liberty merchant ship from scratch in
a week.
In just four years, the United States
would produce more airplanes than
all of the major war powers
combined.
During World War II many men were sent off to war. This created lots of job
opportunities for women and African Americans. Women mostly did factory
work. In addition to factory work and other home front jobs, some 350,000
women joined the Armed Services, serving at home and abroad.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 110,000 Japanese- Americans
were relocated to internment camps for the duration of the war. Public officials
claimed this was necessary for national security reasons.
Prior To 1942, Germany blitzkrieged through Europe plundering food and raw materials from
conquered countries. This allowed them to avoid taking away resources from the civilian
economy. This will change however. After German defeats on the Russian front and the
American entry into the war, Hitler ordered a massive increase in armaments production
and in the size of the army.
Slave labor: Jewish slave workers in striped uniforms work in a
Nazi ammunition factory near Dachau concentration camp during
World War II.
Some of the S.S. women whose
brutality was equal to that of their
male counterparts at the BergenBelsen concentration camp in
Bergen, Germany, on April 21,
1945
Two women of the German
anti-aircraft gun auxiliary
operating field telephones
during World War II.
More and more girls are joining the
Luftwaffe under Germany's total
conscription campaign. They are replacing
men transferred to the army to take up
arms instead of planes against the
advancing allied forces. Here, German girls
are shown in training with men of the
Luftwaffe, somewhere in Germany, on
December 7, 1944.
Only about 1.4 million Japanese
women entered the labor force
(1940-44). The Minister of Welfare
even made propaganda on this
issue when he bragged, "In order to
secure its labor force, the enemy is
drafting women, but in Japan, out of
consideration for the family system,
we will not draft them."
School children were used to replace
male workers drafted for military
service. Here Japanese school girls
learn to use a lathe, probably to
produce shells so they can replace
workers drafted for military service.
Traditional Japanese habits
of obedience and hierarchy
were used to encourage
citizens to sacrifice their
resources, and sometimes
their lives, for the national
cause.
The calls for sacrifice
reached a high point in the
final years of the
war. Young Japanese were
encouraged to volunteer to
serve as pilots in suicide
missions against U.S.
fighting ships at sea. These
pilots were known as
kamikaze, or “divine wind.”