Download World War II - World History

World War II
1939-1945
Causes
Fascist Militarism &Aggression
Appeasement at Munich
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Germany Invades Poland
Hitler receives ovation after Munich Agreement
Czech Women,
1938
Phony War:
3 September 1939 -10 May 1940
Twilight War: Sitzkrieg
German Military and
Diplomatic Successes
in the West
1939-1941
Germans Control Western Europe
5.10.40: 3 Front Assault: Nazi Invasion of
Denmark, Norway, France (Sichelschnitt),
Belgium, Luxembourg & the Netherlands
May –June 1940: Evacuation of Dunkirk
6.16.40: Germans enter Paris: Vichy
Government signs armistice with Nazis
German Success?
• German doctrine/strategy
– Flexibility, speed, leadership
– Armored divisions
– Sichelshnitt: sickle stroke
• French Failure
– Underestimated Germans through
Ardennes forest
– Doctrine had not changed from wwi
(inflexible)
– No back-up plan
Evacuation of
Dunkirk,
June 1940
Fortress Europe
Nazi’s Enter Paris, June 1940
War with Britain (1940-1941)
•Battle of Britain
•Battle for the Atlantic
•Operation Sea Lion
•German Blitzkrieg
(42,000 civilians killed)
•Rommel’s Afrika Korps
German Blitzkrieg
Rommel’s Afrika Korps
The Desert Fox
General Bernard Montgomery
The Eastern Front
Invasion and defeat of
Yugoslavia and Greece
Middle Eastern Campaign:
Iraq, Syria and Lebanon
Operation Barbarossa
1941: New Participants &
Allied Expansion
June 22 1941:
Germans Invade Soviet Union
(Russians occupy Poland & Baltics)
December 11, 1941:
Germany declares War on US
Eastern Front
• Early German successes
• Wanted to avoid Napoleonic experience
– Northern assault to Leningrad
– Center assault Moscow
– Southern assault through Ukraine to
Stalingrad
• Plan to attack on flanks and encircle
Moscow
• Germans began outdistancing supply
lines
• Hitler diverted troops to Center to
drive for Moscow (Operation Typhoon)
• Fall/Winter 1941 rain, cold
– Germans reached outskirts of Moscow
• Soviets launch massive counterattack
Turning the Tide in the East
Battles of
Stalingrad & Kursk
• Germans hadn’t achieved any of its goals
• Summer 1942:Offensive in the South – oil
fields, Stalingrad
• Battle of Stalingrad (7/1942 - 2/1943)
– 250,000 German troops surrendered
• Summer 1943: Operation Citadel –
encircle Kursk – turning point
– One of the Largest Battles of WWII
– Germans not capable of launching another
offensive
• Eastern Front essentially over
Allied Successes
Operation Torch: Summer 1942
North West African Invasion
Rommel, Patton (Bradley)& Montgomery
Operation Husky: Invasion of Sicily
June 1943 Italian Government collapses
Operation Overlord: D-Day
June 1944 Invasion of Normandy
"Mes Amis", FDR said, "We come among you to repulse the cruel
invaders — have faith in our words — help us where you are
able— Vive La France eternelle".
The soft
underbelly
of Europe
Churchill
Mussolini and his mistress are hanged in Milan
June 1944
Collaborators
Punished!
Allied Bombing Campaign
• Winston Churchill, speech, 22nd June 1941.
We shall bomb Germany by day as well as night in ever
increasing measure, casting upon them month by month a
heavier discharge of bombs, and making the German people
taste and gulp each month a sharper dose of the miseries they
have showered upon mankind.
• Members of the RAF bombing crews became increasingly
concerned about the morality of area bombing. Roy
Akehurst was a wireless operator who took part in the raid
on Dresden.
It struck me at the time, the thought of the women and children
down there. We seemed to fly for hours over a sheet of fire - a
terrific red glow with thin haze over it. I found myself making
comments to the crew: "Oh God, those poor people." It was
completely uncalled for. You can't justify it.
Firestorms
Dresden, February 1945
est. 35,000 deaths
Allied Conferences
June 1943: Casablanca (FDR & Churchill)
Unconditional German surrender
November 1943: Tehran (Big 3)
Planned invasion of Europe
February 1945: Yalta (Big 3)
Plans for postwar Europe
July 1945: Potsdam (Truman & Atlee &Stalin)
Japan’s unconditional surrender
Beginning of Cold War Tensions…
Tehran Conference
Yalta Conference
Potsdam Conference
Statistics
Total
Deaths
Military
Civilian
USSR
20,600,000 13,600,000 7,000,000
GERMANY 6,850,000
3,250,000 3,600,000
FRANCE
810,000
340,000
470,000
US
500,000
500,000
BRITAIN
388,000
326,000
62,000
ITALY
410,000
330,000
80,000
Total Deaths: est. 52,200,000
Times Square Celebration
V-E Day 1945
The Holocaust
• 1933, Jewish population of Europe stood at over
nine million.
– By 1945, nearly two out of every three European Jews
had been murdered as part of the "Final Solution" (1941)
– Approx 6 million
• Other victims included
– 200,000 Roma (Gypsies)
– at least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients
(Euthanasia Program)
• 2-3 million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered
or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or
maltreatment.
• Also targeted
– non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia
– homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match
prescribed social norms
– political opponents (Communists, Socialists, and unionists)
Martin Niemöller
First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a
communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade
unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Scholarly Debate, Why?
• Christopher Browning,
Ordinary Men (1992, 1998)
• Daniel Goldhagen,
Hitler’s Willing Executioners (1996)
• Used same research materials – postwar judicial
interrogations of Police Battalion 101
Debated Question:
Was the Holocaust rooted in a long history of
European anti-Semitism, or a more complex set of
factors including a blind deference to authority?
Nuremberg Trials
•
•
•
•
Nuremberg, Germany
1945-1949
Arranged at Meetings during War
Legacy
– International criminal
courts
– Nuremberg Defendants
sources
• http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?
ModuleId=10005143