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
“Will be on the war initiated by Germany in September 1939. It
attempts to cover it until the defeat of Germany and those who
became its associates, and since these came to include Japan, until
that country’s surrender in 1945 as well. The fighting of that war
ranged and raged over all the oceans, including even the Arctic
ones, and touched every continent. Although most of the combat
occurred in Europe, Asia, and Africa, such Australian cities as
Darwin were repeatedly bombed and the Western Hemisphere
was subjected not only to Japanese invasion in the north but to a
silent assault by thousands of balloons carrying incendiaries and
explosives to the western parts of Canada and the United States.
It was therefore, a war which reached further around the globe
than any which had ever preceded it.”
▪ - Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II
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The following slides have to do with the
problem of WWI peace.
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1. Peace was attained without total victory.
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2. Peace makers were afraid of German might
(after all it did take most of the world to stop
them.)
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3. They allowed the German state to exist.
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4. The United States had become a “world
power”.
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Came to power in 1933
 National Socialist (NAZI)
 Believed in German expansion
 Believed it could only be attained by war
 Hitler brought hope to Germany
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Hitler’s Germany “disregarded, first in secret
and then in the open, those restrictions
imposed on her by the peace settlement.”
(Weinberg)
 Rearmament
 Kept up with developments in air, armored, and
chemical weapons with Russia’s help
 Created a large air force, brought back
conscription, began a huge naval building
program
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One fight, one front at a time!
 “Such procedures would enable Germany to eat the
European and eventually the world artichoke from the
inside, leaf by leaf, strengthened by each meal for the
next, until world peace would be attained.”
(Weinberg)
 “one power, the racially best one, has attained
complete and uncontested supremacy.” Rudolf Hess,
associate of Hitler
 WITH YOUR SHOULDER PARTNER DISCUSS THE
MEANINGS OF THE TWO QUOTES.
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The first assault by the
Germans was against
Poland.
September 1939 German
and Soviet troops
completed invasion of
Poland.
“Hitler had emphasized
to his military leaders on
August 22, it was Poland
as a people that was to
be destroyed.”
(Weinberg)
Soviets helped the
Germans
 Why? (DISCUSS WITH
SHOULDER PARTNER)
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 Afraid of them
 Wanted to maintain
Poland as a buffer
between the two
countries in a defensive
effort.
 Already hostile with
Japan
British, and French
Declare war against
Germany on
September 3, 1939
 Highly outmatched
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 Did not rearm after WWI
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Defensive war
 Uneasy to attack
Hitler publicly spoke of
peace in the area.
 Privately he was
preparing to attack the
Western front.
 And attack he did
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Hitler now had subdued
France, Denmark,
Sweden, Poland.
Hitler now could hold off
the English with the
Northern shores.
The Western Front is a
buffer.
Hitler’s plan all along was
to invade Russia, who he
played like a fiddle.
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Room for the Germans
Pure race
Revenge for WWI
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Fall of 1940
 Sending aid to Europe
Germany not ready for full out war against the US.
But they really didn’t care.
“What does the US amount to anyway?”
- Goring, head of the German Air Force
German navy figured the Americans were no match.
Roosevelt determined to not get involved in the war
unless the US was attacked first.
 Lend-Lease Act - Congress authorized the sale, lease,
transfer, or exchange of arms and supplies to 'any
country whose defense the President deems vital to
the defense of the United States.
 Japan wanted to control and expand in the waters of
the south Pacific.
 The United States was their biggest threat.
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 US used economic means to attempt to control the
Japanese.
▪ Embargo oil/ freeze assets
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Japan needed to make a move against the
United States while in a weakened state.
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December 7, 1941
 TORA, TORA, TORA
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Why not concentrate entirely on Japan?
Why not concentrate on invading Europe?
Why Africa?
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Japan wanted to invade Hawaii, Australia,
and Ceylon
“Force the remaining United States fleet into
battle, that battle the Japanese would win
and thereupon make peace.”
Japan already added to their “empire”:
 Philippines, Hong Kong, Guam, Wake, the
Gilberts, Austrailian New Guinea, the Bismarck,
Solomon and Admiralty Islands.
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Wanted to add to the “empire”:
Australia
New Zealand
Ceylon
Most of India
Alaska
Western Canada
Washington
Central America
Colombia Ecuador
Cuba
Haiti
Jamaica
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After Pearl Harbor
 1 carrier (the Yorktown), 3 battleships, 1 destroyer
squadron, and 12 submarines moved from the
Atlantic to the Pacific.
 Plan was to secure Australia as a means to
establish bases.
 Bombing of Tokyo
Carrier battle: May 1942
Long distance, planes sought out carriers
UNITED STATES
Yorktown- Damaged
Returned to Pearl,
minimum repair back in
action in 3 days!
Lexington- Sunk
JAPAN
Shoho- Sunk (light carrier)
Shokaku- Damaged
Returned to base to be fixed
came back in 2 months
Zuikaku- Lost Planes
refitted and not back to duty
for a while.
Japan had issues with not enough
planes or crews.
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US lost a carrier, while Japan lost a light carrier.
Japan lost two carriers for two months, while the
Yorktown came back in 3 days.
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“The Japanese pretended in public and to their
German allies that they had won a great victory,
and at first they may themselves have believed
at least some of the tales of American
battleships and aircraft carriers sunk in this
battle, but the reality was very different.”
For the first time, Japan’s aggressive assault on
the Pacific had been stalled.
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The Japanese plan was to lure the United
States' aircraft carriers into a trap.The
Japanese also intended to occupy Midway as
part of an overall plan to extend their
defensive perimeter in response to
the Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. This operation
was also considered preparatory for further
attacks against Fiji, Samoa, and Hawaii itself.
UNITED STATES

Strengths
 3 carriers
7 heavy cruisers
1 light cruiser
15 destroyers
233 carrier-based aircraft
127 land-based aircraft
16 submarines
JAPAN
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Strengths
 4 carriers
2 battleships
2 heavy cruisers
1 light cruiser
12 destroyers
248 carrier-based aircraft
16 floatplanes
Did not participate in battle:
2 light carriers
5 battleships
4 heavy cruisers
2 light cruisers
~35 support ships
UNITED STATES
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1 carrier sunk
1 destroyer sunk
~150 aircraft destroyed
307 killed
JAPAN
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DECISIVE AMERICAN VICTORY
Japan was hard pressed to recoup from this loss.
4 carriers sunk
1 heavy cruiser sunk
1 heavy cruiser damaged
248 aircraft destroyed
3,057 killed
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Victory at Sea.
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“The United States was transformed by WWII
in ways of which some were recognized at
the time but others only came under scrutiny
decades later.” Weinberg
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Government directly financed:
 Maritime Commissioned Shipyards
 Synthetic rubber factories
 Production of atomic materials and weapons
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Government indirectly financed:
 Using contracts with private companies
 Everything from airplanes to combat boots
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Infrastructure:
 Old factories from the American industrial center
in the East and mid West were used and
retrofitted.
 New factories sprouted in California, the South,
and the Northwest
▪
▪
▪
▪
California- Shipyards
South- Training camps and bases
Northwest- Lumber
Colorado- ????
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Close to Home
 Critical and strategic materials
▪ Needed to make the machines of war
What did Colorado have?
Anti -Semitism
This is the term given to
political, social and
economic agitation
against Jews. In simple
terms it means ‘Hatred of
Jews’.
Aryan Race
This was the name of what Hitler
believed was the perfect race. These
were people with full German blood,
blonde hair and blue eyes.
For hundreds of years Christian Europe had regarded the Jews as the Christ -killers. At one
time or another Jews had been driven out of almost every European country. The way
they were treated in England in the thirteenth century is a typical example.
In 1275 they were made to wear a yellow badge.
In 1287 269 Jews were hanged in the Tower of London.
This deep prejudice against Jews was still strong in the twentieth century, especially in
Germany, Poland and Eastern Europe, where the Jewish population was very large.
After the First World War hundreds of Jews were blamed for the defeat in the War.
Prejudice against the Jews grew during the economic depression which followed. Many
Germans were poor and unemployed and wanted someone to blame. They turned on the
Jews, many of whom were rich and successful in business.
Between 1939 and 1945
six
million Jews were
murdered, along with hundreds
of thousands of others, such as
Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses,
disabled and the mentally ill.
Percentage of Jews killed in each country
A MAP OF THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND DEATH CAMPS USED BY THE NAZIS.
16 of the 44 children taken
from a French children’s
home.
They were sent to a
concentration camp and later
to Auschwitz.
ONLY 1 SURVIVED
A group of children at
a concentration camp
in Poland.
Part of a stockpile of Zyklon-B poison gas pellets
found at Majdanek death camp.
Before poison gas was used , Jews were
gassed in mobile gas vans. Carbon
monoxide gas from the engine’s exhaust
was fed into the sealed rear compartment.
Victims were dead by the time they
reached the burial site.
Smoke rises as the
bodies are burnt.
Jewish women, some holding infants, are forced to wait in a line before their execution
by Germans and Ukrainian collaborators.
A German policeman shoots individual Jewish women who remain alive in the ravine after the
mass execution.
Portrait of two-year-old Mania
Halef, a Jewish child who was
among the 33,771 persons shot by
the SS during the mass
executions at Babi Yar,
September, 1941.
Nazis sift through a huge pile of clothes
left by victims of the massacre.
Two year old Mani Halef’s clothes are somewhere amongst these.
Bales of hair shaven from
women at Auschwitz, used to
make felt-yarn.
After liberation, an Allied soldier
displays a stash of gold wedding rings
taken from victims at Buchenwald.
In 1943, when the number of murdered Jews exceeded 1 million. Nazis ordered the bodies of
those buried to be dug up and burned to destroy all traces.
Soviet POWs at forced labor in 1943 exhuming bodies in the ravine at Babi Yar, where the Nazis
had murdered over 33,000 Jews in September of 1941.
“Until September 14, 1939 my life
was typical of a young Jewish boy
in that part of the world in that
period of time.
I lived in a Jewish community
surrounded by gentiles. Aside
from my immediate family, I had
many relatives and knew all the
town people, both Jews and
gentiles. Almost two weeks after
the outbreak of the war and
shortly after my Bar Mitzvah, my
world exploded.
WHY?
In the course of the next five and
a half years I lost my entire family
and almost everyone I ever knew.
Death, violence and brutality
became a daily occurrence in my
life while I was still a young
teenager.”
Leonard Lerer, 1991
EVA KORR
http://www.ktvq.com/story/28607491/holocaust-survivor-eva-kor-speaksforgiveness-to-packed-billings-crowd