Download World War II – Victory for the United Nations (1939

WWII divided into two periods
• 1939-1942 – Hitler and Axis Domination
• 1943-1945 Allies on the Offensive
Major Turning Points during WWII
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Stalingrad, November, 1942
El Alamein, Summer 1942
Battle of the Coral Sea, May 1942
Midway, June, July 1943
World War II – Victory for the United
Nations (1939-1945)
• May 1940, France out of the War – Vichy
France
• Battle of Britain – an obvious strategy would
have been for a landing, but the Germans had
made no preparations for amphibious warfare
• The decision was then made by Hitler and Air
Marshall Goring to do the job solely with air
power
Two Main Phases to the Battle of
Britain
• August and September 1940, daylight bombing
raids to wipe out merchant convoys, airports and
fighter planes
• Almost a success for the Germans, but losses
were so high that on September 17 Hitler
postponed any invasion
• Shift in German strategy to bombing British cities
• Winston Churchill; -- “The nations finest hour”
• Air attacks continued until 1942, but the aerial
battle of Britain was over
Equally Critical was the Battle of the
Atlantic
• Importance of convoys getting through to
Britain
• After the sinking of the Bismarck the British
controlled the ocean’s surface, the Germans
beneath the waters with their submarines
The fateful decision to invade Russia –
Spring, 1941
• The idea that Russia could be conquered by
winter
• Russia would add considerable lebensraum or
space to the German Reich
• The plan almost worked
• Millions of Russians captured or killed
• But when winter closed in, neither Leningrad nor
Moscow was captured
• Between December 1941 and May 1942 the
German army in Russia literally froze to death
U.S. Enters WWII
• American government took steps to freeze
Japanese credits in the U.S. to halt access of
raw materials – summer and autumn of 1941
• Force Japan to withdraw from China
• Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, a “day of
infamy”
• Because of treaty with Japan, Germany
declared war on America on December 11,
1941
Japan had many initial advances
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Philippines
Guam
Wake Island
Malaya
Indonesia
Borneo
The last two years of the war the Axis
was on the defensive
• Attack on Germany and Italy came from three
directions
• By the Russians from the east
• By the British, French and Americans from the
South and West
Finishing the War in the Pacific
• “Island Hopping”
– Tarawa
– Eniwetok
– Guam
– Okinawa
– Iwo Jima
China Theater
Larger Islands – Solomons, New Guinea,Phillippines
The Sudden End – the Manhattan
Project
• Hiroshima and Nagaski, August 6 and 9, 1945
• September 2, 1945 Japanese Surrender, Tokyo
Bay