Download Victory in Europe

Joining the War
Ike speaks to soldiers in Britain prior
to D-Day
Section 12.3
June 6, 1944
Capture: Americans in landing
craft, June 6, 1944
What events led these Americans to end up
in Normandy, France?
Capture: Americans pull up to beach at Normandy
Describe December 7, 1941.
• “A date which will live
in infamy.”
• Japanese planes
attacked Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii (naval base)
• Destroyed 19
battleships, 188 planes
• Killed 2, 400 Americans
• United Americans in
call for war
– “Remember Pearl
Harbor”
Above: Pearl Harbor burning;
Below: FDR asks Congress for
declaration of war on Japan
Mobilizing America
Capture: Times Square
Times Square: Summer of 1941
Who were the Allies/the Axis Powers?
Allies
• United States
• Great Britain
• Soviet Union
• And many others
Axis Powers
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
Left to Right: Stalin, Roosevelt,
Churchill
“The Big Three
What was the Allied strategy for fighting
WWII?
• Defeating Germany
is most important
• Unconditional
surrender of Axis
powers
• “Closing the Ring”
– Plan to encircle
Nazi Germany on
all sides
• Defensive war in
Pacific
World map showing areas of German
and Japanese control
Barbarossa
Barbarossa: Hitler’s invasion
of Soviet Union
Describe the invasion of the Soviet Union.
• Began June 22, 1941 (Summer)
• Blitzkrieg tactics and surprise
• Surrounded Leningrad for 900
days
• 300 thousand Germans attacked
Stalingrad
• Access to oil
• Russians stopped advance
• Marks to turning point of the war
• Stalin bitter about lack of Allied
support
Above: German tanks
Below: Hitler heads in three
directions
Siege of Stalingrad
Capture: Siege of Stalingrad
Axis Powers by September of 1942
Map shows the peak of Axis Power
Hitler’s Plan: Operation Barbarossa
Capture the wheat fields of Ukraine, then advance east across North
Africa and South from Russia to capture the oil fields of the Middle East.
Oil Fields
Stopping Hitler’s Advance
• The Allies Finally Stopped Hitler’s Advance
at Three Key Areas:
• Battle of Britain
• El Alamein in Egypt
• Stalingrad in Russia
See Map on Next Slide
In spite of these losses, Hitler was firmly
entrenched in Western Europe. (Map shows
Allied counter-offensive)
Russian Advance
After Stalingrad
Allied Invasion of
N. Africa 11/42
To complete the encirclement of Hitler -‘Closing the Ring’the Allies needed to land somewhere in France. (Map shows
location of Normandy Invasion)
Normandy Beach, France June 6, 1944
Old Glory finally planted on Omaha Beach
Place the following events in order from 1st
to last. Now put the year they occurred.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
• Event
Operation Barbarossa
Treaty of Versailles
Hitler named
Chancellor
Munich Pact
D-Day
Invasion of Poland
Pearl Harbor
• Year
What was Operation Overlord?
• Allied invasion of Europe
• Began with D-Day
– Deliverance Day/ Disembarkment
Day) June 6, 1944
• Bad weather delayed invasion by
one day
• Was it successful?
– 10 thousand casualties in two
weeks
– Allies built man-made harbor
– Allowed hundreds of
thousands of soldiers and
equipment to gain foothold in
western Europe
View from Higgins boat
D-Day
Military funeral
of D-Day dead
What was the Battle of the Bulge?
• Hitler’s last major
offensive
• Caught Allies off
guard
• Goal was to capture
Antwerp
• Germans surrounded
town of Bastogne
asked for surrender
– “Nuts” was the reply
• Weather broke in
January and supplies
replenished
Top: Map of the Ardennes; Bottom:
corpses at Bastogne
Bastogne
Video capture: Americans at
Bastogne
The Progress of the War
Axis Nations
Allied Nations
Neutral Nations
Communist Nations
World map showing the
relative size and location
of Axis and Allied nations
The Camps
Capture from ‘Band of
Brothers’: Liberating the Camps
What was the Holocaust?
• Genocide or systematic
murder of Jews, Gypsies,
Slavs, and others the
Nazis considered
undesirable
• Final Solution
– Nazi decision to
attempt to exterminate
the Jewish race from
Europe
• 6 million Jews murdered
(66% of the population in
Europe)
Entrance to the death camp at
Auschwitz II
Describe the process of the Final Solution.
• Occurred gradually over time
• Nuremberg Laws of 1935
– German laws used to
identify and discriminate
against Jews in Germany
• Could not attend schools,
hold public office, sit on
park benches
• Must wear yellow star
• Ghettos (1939)
– Jews were forced to reside in
overcrowded, unsanitary
areas of conquered cities
Above and below: Nazis
persecuting Jews
The “Liquidation of the Ghetto”
Video capture: German troops
enter the Warsaw Ghetto
“Wall of Death” for Polish political prisoners, before Auschwitz was
turned into a death camp. Under the building on the right, Nazis first
used poison gas to kill.
Describe the process of the Final Solution
• Wannsee conference
– Meeting in Berlin in 1942
– decision to systematically kill
the Jews of Europe
• Einsatzgruppen (1940)
– Killing squads
– Rounded up Jews from
conquered areas and executed
them
• Concentration Camps
– 1st for “political reeducation”
– slave labor, medical
experiments, starvation,
murder by gas chamber
Above: Auschwitz from the air
Mr. Morris by tracks at
Birkenau station near
Auschwitz
Crematoria with tourists and memorial candle
Clockwise from left, Gas Chamber, Zyklon B pellets, famous entrance
with “Arbeit Macht Frei” arch, random line of doomed people
Dear Fellow Party Member [Parteigenosse] Luther!
Enclosed I am sending you the minutes of the proceedings that
took place on January 20,1942.
Since the basic position regarding the practical execution of
the final solution of the Jewish question has fortunately
been established by now, and since there is a full agreement
on the part of all agencies involved. I would like to ask you
at the request of the Reich Marshal to make one of your
specialist officials available for the necessary discussion of
details in connection with the completion of the draft that
shows the organizational, technical and material
prerequisites bearing on the actual starting point of the
projected solutions.
I want to schedule the first discussion along these lines for
10:30 a.m. on March 6, 1942 at 116 Kurfürstenstrasse,
Berlin. I therefore ask you that for this purpose your
specialist official contact my functionary in charge there,
SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann.
Reinhard Heydrich
What was V-E Day?
• “Victory in Europe”
• May 8, 1945
• Germany surrendered
unconditionally to the
Allies
• FDR had died April 12
• Hitler had committed
suicide April 30
• US still at war with
Japan
Above and below: newspapers
proclaim Victory in Europe
VE Day
Capture: V-E Day