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Day 1 Notes
Chapter 31 Lesson 2 Notes – World War II
from Sept. 3, 1939 to Sept. 2, 1945
BELLIGERENTS
(WARRING NATIONS)
OF WORLD WAR II
AXIS POWERS
• Germany led by dictator
[Adolf] Hitler
• Italy led by dictator
[Benito] Mussolini
• Japan led by Emperor
Hirohito [but Prime
Minister / Commander-inChief, Hideki Tojo, made
all decisions]
ALLIED POWERS
• Great Britain led first by
P.M. [Neville] Chamberlain;
followed by P.M. [Winston] Churchill;
followed by P.M. [Clement] Attlee
• France led by President Daladier
• The Soviet Union led by
[Communist] Dictator [Josef] Stalin
• The U. S. first led by
Pres. [F. D.] Roosevelt;
followed by Pres. [Harry] Truman
FUNDAMENTAL REASONS FOR
WORLD WAR II CAUSED BY THE
AXIS POWERS
•
Militarism:
countries as “war machines;” a build-up
of armament factories;
“War is a glorious adventure.” – Mussolini
•
Imperialism:
countries claimed need for “living
space” (as Germany’s “lebensraum”);
claimed to be “have-not” nations
• Nationalism:
chauvinism; death for homeland is
honorable; determination to reclaim
foreign-controlled population
•
Totalitarianism:
dictatorships that scorned civil
liberties, degraded individual
dignity, and displayed an open intent
to destroy world peace
SECONDARY REASONS FOR WORLD
WAR II CAUSED BY THE DEMOCRACIES
• Collective Security was missing: the
democracies failed to defend one another, or,
they failed to support
communism against fascism; the democracies
hoped for a Russo-German war to lessen the
threat to themselves
• Appeasement: examples are British PM
Chamberlain and the German city of Munich
• U. S. Neutrality: its isolationist policy failed; it
passed several Neutrality Acts forbidding the
sale of armaments to any WWII belligerent
FAILURE OF THE INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATION AND TREATIES MADE PRIOR
TO 1939
• League of Nations: had no means to physically
enforce resolutions against aggression
• Open-Door Policy: freedom to trade in China
was not enforced by the United States
• Kellogg-Briand Pact: outlawing war was too
idealistic
• Locarno Pacts: France and Germany agree to
never war against one another again; but France
had no means to prevent Hitler from militarizing
the
Rhineland as forbidden by the
Treaty of Versailles
U.S. Open-Door Policy of 1899 & 1900
U.S.: “I’m out for commerce not conquest.”
Locarno Pacts 1925
France on the left; Belgium in the middle;
and Germany on the right.
Day 2 Notes
MAJOR EVENTS LEADING TO WORLD WAR II
• Hirohito controlled by militarists;
1931
• invades Manchuria, a region in China
rich in coal & iron; region needed for
Japan’s growing population; a need to
glorify Japan’s divine emperor;
• Japan violates Kellogg-Briand Pact
and U.S.’s Open-Door Policy;
• 2/3 of China eventually falls to Japan
• Mussolini invades Ethiopia to continue to
1935
build an African colonial empire and plans
to make the Mediterranean area his
“Italian Lake;”
• [Ethiopian] Emperor Selassie begs the
League for sanctions against Italy;
• League appeases Italy
• Britain even allows Italian troops access
through the Suez Canal to reach Ethiopia
easier
• Mussolini invades and occupies
1936
Albania as part of his “Italian Lake”
empire
• Hitler openly defies the Treaty of
Versailles by militarizing the Rhineland
and violates the Locarno Pacts;
• British PM Chamberlain appeases
Hitler which leads to the Rome-Berlin
Axis, followed by the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo
Axis (also known as the Anti-Comintern
[Com-intern stands for “Communist
International”] Pact against the
Soviet Union)
• Spanish fascist Francisco Franco, “El
1936
Caudillo”, of the Falange Party, begins
to fight for power from the Spanish
Republic and is aided by Hitler and
Mussolini using Spain as a testing
ground for new and improved
weapons;
• Spain remains neutral during WW II
as its 3-year civil war destroys much
territory and people
• Austria becomes a German province
1938
when Hitler marches in, to not only defy
the Treaty of Versailles that forbade an
Anschluss, but to also secure a large
German population living there;
• Appeasement by Britain and France
encourages Hitler to continue his
aggressive moves in the Sudetenland
where Hitler reclaims the 3 million
Germans living there;
• the Munich Conference approves the
takeover from Czechoslovakia [no Czech
officials invited to meeting];
• Munich and British P.M. Chamberlain
become most associated with the failed
policy of appeasement
Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928
MAJOR EVENTS OF WORLD WAR
II
• Hitler, because of the policy of
1939
appeasement, continues his aggressive
moves and conquers Czechoslovakia,
Eastern Europe’s only
democracy;
• western democracies promise no
further appeasement and any further act
of aggression by the Axis Powers will be
met with resistance;
• Hitler and Stalin sign a 10-year
Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact publicly,
but secretly both agree to divide Eastern
Europe, starting with Poland
• Sept. 1 – German blitzkrieg
1939
(lightning war) by the Luftwaffe
(German air force) and panzer units
(armored tanks) begin attack of W.
Poland;
• Stalin invades E. Poland
• Sept. 3 – Britain & France declare
war on Germany:
World War II officially begins
1940
• Stalin invades, occupies, & reclaims
Finland but is expelled from League of
Nations (publicly humiliated for
becoming communistic)
• Hitler invades Norway, Denmark for
airfields and for a submarine basesoutlet to the Atlantic Ocean
• Churchill replaces Chamberlain
• Hitler invades the Low Countries for
surprise attack on France from the
north
• The French port, Dunkirk, is
evacuated successfully by Allies but
they unsuccessfully leave France
without Allies
French Gen. Pétain surrenders to
Germany and leads the Vichy Regime
that collaborates (works closely
together) with the Nazis
•
French Gen. De Gaulle, from his
headquarters in London, England,
leads the
Free French Movement (resistance
fighters) to struggle against the Nazis
in Occupied France
•
1940
1940
• Hitler’s Operation Sea Lion (Battle of
Britain) is abandoned
(Britain’s R. A. F. is badly outnumbered
by Germany’s Luftwaffe but Churchill
and
British people swear to “never
surrender”);
• Hitler turns his attention instead to
the
Soviet Union
• Neutral U.S.’s Cash & Carry and LendLease policies provide aid to Britain
Day 3
1941
• Hitler invades the Balkans to invade the
Soviet Union with his Operation
Barbarossa to gain Lebensraum,
wheat from the Ukraine, and the Caucasus
Mts. oil reserves, but Germany temporarily
retreats due to Soviet Union’s
scorched-earth policy
• Churchill, Roosevelt secretly meet to
state the war aims of the democracies and
sign the
Atlantic Charter
•German Gen. Rommel, (“the Desert Fox”),
takes most of N. Libya away from Britain
1941
• Hitler’s New Order Plan to conquer
Europe for his Aryan race; extermination
of undesirables with savagery; 6 million
massacred by use of genocide = of those
under his Final Solution Plan, another 6
million, those being Jews, are massacred
in what becomes known as the
Holocaust
1941
• Japan signs the Tripartite Pact (RomeBerlin-Tokyo Axis)
• Japan attacks U.S. naval base at
Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 (“a date that will
live in infamy” - Roosevelt) because of the
U.S. ban on scrap iron / oil shipments to
Japan
• U.S. declares war on Japan on Dec. 8
• U.S. forcibly houses Japanese Americans in
internment camps until war is over
• Battle of the Atlantic: with the Alliedsinking of the Bismarck, German surface
ships no longer capable of winning battles at
sea
1942
• Battle of Stalingrad: Soviet Union broke the
back of the Nazi military machine by capturing/
killing 200,000 Germans & taking needed
German military equipment
• Battle of El Alamein: Allied American
Commander Eisenhower and British Gen.
Montgomery secure Suez Canal & North
Africa using a pincer strategy to defeat German
Gen. Rommel
• Battle of Midway: Hawaii is
1942
saved from Japanese
• Battle of Guadalcanal: Australia
is saved, using U.S. strategy of
island-hopping (taking out only a
few of the more important islands
being used as supply depots by
the Japanese)
• Japan begins kamikaze attacks on
1943
&
1944
Allied bases/ships in the Pacific
• Allies conquer Sicily, leading to fall
of
•Mussolini but Italy continues to be
occupied by Germany
•Operation Overlord: Allied invasion
of Normandy known as D-Day (begins
June 6, 1944) to liberate France;
• Vichy Regime, led by Pétain in
France, falls, eventually leading to
Germany’s surrender
• Yalta Conference held on Crimean
1945
Pen.: Stalin declares war on Japan;
Allies Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin agree
to divide / occupy Germany once war is
over
• Roosevelt dies; Truman becomes
U.S. president
• Mussolini is captured / shot by Italian
partisans (fighters who attack an
enemy within their occupied territory)
• Hitler commits suicide
Eva Braun, Hitler’s wife of
one day, died of cyanide
poisoning on April 30,
1945 shortly before Hitler
shot himself.
Hitler, with his German
shepherd, Blondi, ordered a
doctor to give his “beloved” dog
a cyanide capsule to see if it
would kill her. It did.
1945
• V – E Day: WW II ends in Europe on
May 8
• Potsdam Conference: Truman,
Stalin, Attlee (Churchill was defeated
for his PM election bid) issue Japan an
ultimatum to surrender; kamikaze
attacks continue
• “Little Boy,” U.S. atomic bomb,
dropped on Japanese munitions
center, Hiroshima Aug. 6; no response
from Emperor Hirohito
“Little Boy”
More than 70,000 Japanese instantly killed
1945
• “Fat Man,” 2nd U.S. atomic
bomb, dropped on Japanese
port city, Nagasaki on Aug. 9
More than 40,000 Japanese
killed instantly
• The last Axis Power, Japan,
1945
surrenders in Tokyo Bay on American
warship, the USS Missouri on Aug. 14
• V–J Day: officially ends the 2nd World
War on Sept. 2
• A Cold War (a war of ideologies, with
the threat of [nuclear] warfare always
looming), begins soon afterwards
between the U. S. and the U. S. S. R.
(beginning with U. S. Pres.
Truman and communist dictator
Stalin to start the Cold War)