Download World War II in Asia and the Pacific

Chapter 27
The Deepening of the European Crisis: World War II
Changes in Central Europe, 1936-Summer 1939
1. The announcement by Adolf Hitler in March 1935 of the creation of a new German air force and the introduction of a draft, both contravention of
the Versailles treaty, brought condemnation from France, Britain, and Italy but none took concrete action. Emboldened, German troops were sent
into the demilitarized Rhineland in March 1936. Britain viewed this simply as the reoccupation of German territory and without British support
France chose not to act.
2. In July 1934 Austrian Nazis tried to overthrow the Austrian government by murdering the chancellor. They were unable to take power, however,
when Mussolini threatened to use force to stop German troop movement intended to aid the insurrectionists. Hitler was more successful in March
1938 when threats of invasion forced the chancellor to put Austrian Nazis in charge of the government. The new government invited Germany to
send troops to maintain law and order.
3. Italy, under Benito Mussolini, embarked on imperialist expansion with the invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935. Roundly condemned by Britain
and France, Mussolini drew closer to Hitler. This relationship was solidified by their joint support of Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War
(1936-1939). In 1936 Hitler and Mussolini signed an agreement recognizing common economic and political interests. The Rome-Berlin Axis
was born.
4. The weakness demonstrated by the European states convinced Hitler he could move on Czechoslovakia with impunity. His initial demand in
1938 was autonomy for the Sudetenland, a mountainous area on the northwestern border containing about three million ethnic Germans. The
region contained Czechoslovakia's most important frontier defenses and industrial resources. On September 15, 1938, Hitler increased his
demand to cession of the Sudetenland to Germany. Two weeks later a hastily arranged conference at Munich gave in to Hitler. Under the pretext
of quelling internal disorder, Germany occupied the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939. Slovakia was declared independent and
became a puppet state of Germany.
5. The German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 sent the predominantly German people of Memel into a frenzy, forcing the
Lithuanian foreign minister to surrender the territory to Germany.
6. Annoyed by the occupation of Prague, Mussolini struck out with his own aggression in April 1939 by transforming the Italian protectorate over
Albania into full annexation into the Italian Empire.
7. German demands for the return of Danzig led Britain to openly declare protection of Poland. On September 1, 1939, Poland was invaded.
Questions:
1. What drove Hitler's quest for territory?
2. Why did France and Britain follow a policy of appeasement when dealing with Hitler?
Changes in Central Europe, 1936-Summer 1939
 Prelude to War, 1933-1939


Role of Hitler
 Objectives indicated in Mein Kampf
 Lebensraum
 Weakness of eastern Europe
The “Diplomatic Revolution”, 1933-1936
 Hitler becomes chancellor, January 30, 1933
 Slow rearmament
 Repudiation of disarmament clauses of Versailles Peace
Treaty, 1935
 Anglo-German Naval pact, June 18, 1935
 Italy attacks Ethiopia, October 1935
 Germany and Italy aid Franco in the Spanish Civil War

 Rome-Berlin Axis, October 1936
 Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany and Japan,
November 1936
 Occupation of the demilitarized Rhineland, March 7, 1936
The Path to War, 1937-1939
 Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940)
 Appeasement
 Annexation of Austria, March 13, 1938
 Demand the cession of the Sudetenland, September 15,
1938
 Munich Conference, September 29, 1938
 German dismemberment of Czechoslovakia
World War II in Europe and North Africa
1. The defeat of Poland took only four weeks. On September 28, 1939, it was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union according to the
terms of the non-aggression pact signed on August 23, 1939. In addition, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania went to the Soviets.
2. After a winter of waiting, Germany launched an offensive on Denmark and Norway in April 1940. The following month Germany attacked the
Netherlands, Belgium, and France. Striking through Luxembourg and the Ardennes Forest, the weakest part of the French defenses, Germany
raced across northern France. Trapped at Dunkirk, the mostly British force of 330,000 men had to be evacuated between May 27 and June 4,
1940. On June 5 the Germans began an offensive on southern France. Five days later, Italy declared war on France to assure itself some of the
spoils. France surrendered on June 22. The northern and western parts were to be occupied by Germany while the south, with its capital at
Vichy, would be under a puppet government loyal to Germany.
3. In August 1940 the German Luftwaffe was turned on Britain for the purpose of softening it up for an invasion. The Battle of Britain lasted until
June 1941 and though there was wholesale destruction and more than 40,000 deaths, Britain held firm. Frustrated, Hitler broke off the attack and
turned his attention to the Russia. In preparation for its invasion, Germany gained the political cooperation of Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania.
In addition, because the eastern flank had been exposed by Italy's failure to capture Greece, German forces were sent to Yugoslavia and
Greece in April 1941. On June 22, 1941, Russia was invaded and by November two million Soviet soldiers had been captured. The German
army swept into the Ukraine, besieged Leningrad (modern St. Petersburg), and reached within twenty-five miles of Moscow. An early winter
stopped the advance and in December the Russians began a counterattack. Between November 1942 and February 1943 German troops were
stopped and encircled at Stalingrad.
4. The Mediterranean strategy of Germany to capture Egypt and the Suez Canal with Italian troops failed and German forces had to be sent.
German advances to Alexandria were stopped at El Alamein in the summer of 1942. By May 1943 the Italians and Germans had surrendered.
When Tunisia was surrendered in May 1943 the Allies crossed into Italy to sweep into Germany from the south. In June 1944 Rome
surrendered.
5. On June 6, 1944, the Allies invaded Europe from Normandy in France. By the end of August they were in Paris and in March Allied troops had
crossed the Rhine. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union pushed into Germany from the east. At the tank battle at Kursk July 5-12, 1943, the Germans
were decisively defeated. By January 1945 Warsaw was occupied and in April Soviet troops entered Berlin.
Question:
1. With the advantage of interior lines and a powerful war machine, why was Germany unable to defeat the Allies?
World War II in Europe and North Africa
Non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, August
23, 1939
 Invasion of Poland, September 1, 1939
 Britain and France declare war on Germany,
September 3, 1939
 Soviet Union sends troops into eastern Poland,
September 17, 1939
 The Course of World War II
 Victory and Stalemate
 Blitzkrieg (lightening war)
 Maginot Line

 “Phoney War”, winter 1939-1940
 Germany resumes offensive, April 9, 1939, against
Denmark and Norway
 Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
 Attack on Netherlands, Belgium, and France, May 10, 1940
 Evacuation of Dunkirk
 Surrender of France, June 22, 1940
 Vichy France
 Battle of Britain, August-September 1940
 German Luftwaffe
 German Mediterranean strategy
 Germany invades the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941
World War II in Asia and the Pacific
1. The population of Japan had exploded from 30 million in 1870 to 80 million in 1937. The ability to feed the people and purchase raw materials
depended on the manufacturing of industrial goods and textiles. When Western nations hit by the depression sought to protect their economies by
erecting tariff barriers, Japan's economy was devastated. This, in turn, affected democratic growth.
2. Patriotic societies allied with the army and navy to push for expansion at the expense of China and Russia. The navy especially cast its eyes on
oil rich British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies.
3. Japan had controlled Manchuria (Manchuko) since its victory over Russia in 1905. Chinese nationalism, however, threatened Japan's warlord
puppets. In response, junior army officers in 1931 blew up the tracks of a Japanese owned railroad at Mukden. Citing the need for self-defense,
Manchuria was occupied. The following year, Japan proclaimed Manchuko an independent state with a Manchu puppet as emperor. Manchuria's
valuable raw materials had been guaranteed. When the League of Nations condemned Japan in 1933, it withdrew from the League. In July 1937
Japan invaded northern China. Two years later, from May to September 1939, an undeclared war was fought with the Russians on the Mongolian
border.
4. Following the German defeat of France in June 1940, Japanese troops pushed into northern French Indochina. By July 1941 the occupation
was completed when southern Indochina was seized. The United States responded by cutting off supplies of vital scrap iron and oil to Japan.
This action led the army to press for the occupation of the oil rich Dutch East Indies and Malaya. However, the military leaders feared this would
provoke the United States. Therefore, a preemptive strike was determined. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This was
quickly followed in succession by the capture of Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, and northern Burma between February and
May 1942.
5. The tide of battle turned on May 7-8, 1942, at the battle of the Coral Sea when naval and air power stopped the Japanese advance and also
relieved Australia from the pressure of Japan. The following month Japanese hopes of annihilating the rest of the American Pacific fleet were
dashed at the battle of Midway in which Japan lost four aircraft carriers. At this point the war became a defensive one for the Japanese. The
Americans initiated two island hoping campaigns. The first sought the recapture of the Philippines which was accomplished by June 1945. The
second struck out across the South Pacific beginning at the Gilbert Islands (Tarawa, November 1943). The two offensives converged at Okinawa
in April 1945. From Okinawa American bombers could strike Japan.
Question:
1. Why did Japan need an economic hegemony over Asia?
World War II in Asia and the Pacific

The War against Japan in Asia
 Japanese Empire
 Population growth
 The Depression ends democratic development
 Emergence of patriotic societies
 Construction of a modern navy, 1935
 Japanese invasion of Asia, 1937
 Occupation of Indochina, July 1941
 United States responds by cutting off oil and scrap
iron sales
 Attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

The Turning Point of the War, 1942-1943
 Defeat of Germany the first priority
 Military aid to Russia and Britain
 Allies ignore political differences
 German success in 1942 in Africa and Soviet Union
 Allies invade French North Africa, victory in May 1943
 Battle of Stalingrad, November 1942-February 1943
 Battle of the Coral Sea, May 7-8, 1942
 Battle of Midway, June 4, 1942
 Solomon Islands, November 1942

Last Years of the War
 Invasion of Sicily, 1943
 Tank Battle of Kursk, Soviet Union, July 5-12, 1943
 Invasion of Italy, September 1943
 Rome falls June 4, 1944
 D-Day invasion of France, June 6, 1944
 Russians enters Berlin, April 1945
 Hitler’s suicide, April 30, 1945
 Surrender of Germany, May 7, 1945
 Difficulty of invading the Japanese homeland
 Hiroshima, August 6, 1945
 Nagasaki, August 14, 1945
 Human losses in the war: 17 million military dead, 18 million
civilians dead
 The New Order

German racial considerations
 Resettlement plans of the East
 2 million ethnic Germans settled Poland, 1942
 Slave labor
 Resistance Movements
 Charles de Gaulle leader of the Free French
government-in-exile in London
 Tito in Yugoslavia
 Communists organized
 White Rose movement in Germany
 Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg (1907-1944)
attempts to assassinate Hitler, July 20, 1944
The Holocaust
1. Early in 1939, Nazi policy focused on a policy of "emigration" of German Jews from Germany. Once the war began, discussion switched to the
Madagascar Plan that sought the mass shipment of Jews to the island of Madagascar on the east coast of southern Africa. When implementation
proved unfeasible a more drastic solution was conceived. The Jewish people were to be annihilated in what was called the Final Solution.
Administrative responsibility was given to Reinhard Heydrich, head of the S.S.'s Security Service.
2. After the defeat of Poland in 1939, Heydrich ordered the Polish Jews to be rounded up by the special strike forces called Einsatzgruppen
(emergency squads). The Jews were concentrated in ghettos established in a number of Polish cities.
3. In June 1941 the Einsatzgruppen was given added responsibility as mobile killing units. They followed the army into Russia where they executed
about 1.4 million of the Soviet Union's 5 million Jews.
4. The Einsatzgruppen was responsible for killing perhaps one million Jews but even this was too slow for the Nazi leadership. The Nazi's now
opted for systematic annihilation of the European Jewish population. Jews in countries occupied by Germany would be rounded up and shipped to
six extermination centers in Poland which were specially built for their purpose. The largest of these centers was Auschwitz-Birkenau where
ultimately about two million people would be exterminated. Here gas chambers designed to look like shower rooms would utilize hydrogen cyanide
to kill its victims. After gassing, the corpses would be burned in crematorias.
5. By the spring of 1942, the death camps were completed and in the summer the ghettos in Poland were eliminated. Shipments of Jews followed
from France, Belgium, and Holland and beginning in 1943 victims arrived from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Greece, southern France, Italy, and
Denmark.
6. Not all Jews sent to the camps were killed. At Auschwitz, about thirty percent of the arrivals were sent to a labor camp while the remainder were
gassed. At the labor camps they would be worked to death and starved.
7. Extermination was not limited to the Jews. Gypsies were regarded like the Jews to be inferior and they too were systematically exterminated.
About forty percent of the one million European Gypsies were killed in the death camps. The "subhuman" Slavic people were also deliberately
killed. Perhaps four million Poles, Ukranians, and Byelorussians died as slave laborers. Some three to four million Soviet prisoners were killed in
captivity.
8. All told, about 6 million Jews, about 75 percent of the European Jewish population, were killed. More than three million of these died in the death
camps. Estimates are that 90 percent of the Jewish populations of Poland, the Baltic countries, and Germany were exterminated.
Questions:
1. Why did the Nazi's abandon their early policy regarding the Jews?
2. What would be the post-war impact on the West when the facts of the Holocaust were learned?
The Holocaust

The Holocaust
 The Final Solution
 Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942)
 Wannsee Conference, January 20, 1942
 Einsatzgrupen
 Extermination camps
 Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide)
 Auschwitz
 Death of 2 out of 3 European Jews
 The other Holocaust
 Death of 9 to 10 million
 40 percent of European Gypsies
 The Home Front

Mobilization of Peoples: Four Examples
 Great Britain
 “Dig for Victory”
 Food rationing
 Planned economy
 The Soviet Union
 Enormous losses, 2 of every 5 killed in World War II
were Russians
 Siege of Leningrad
 Factories moved to the interior
 Women
 Peasants


The United States
 Partial mobilization until mid-1943
 Social problems
 African-Americans
 Japanese Americans
Germany
 Continued production of consumer goods first two years of
the war
 Plunder conquered countries
 Albert Speer
 Total mobilization of the economy, 1944
 Women

The Frontline Civilians: The Bombing of Cities
 General Giulio Douhet, 1930
 Arthur Harris of Britain, bombing raids, 1942
 Cologne, Germany
 British Bomber Command nighttime saturation bombings,
Americans daytime bombing
 Hamburg
 Dresden
 Success or failure of bombing raids?
 Atomic bomb
 Hiroshima, August 6, 1945
 Nagasaki, August 9, 1945
Territorial Changes after World War II
1. Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met at Teheran, Iran, in November 1943 to discuss the future direction of the war. Churchill wanted a campaign
through the Balkans, apparently believing that this would give the Western Allies a better position in post-war Europe. He was overridden,
however, and it was decided to invade the Continent. This would mean that American and British forces would meet the Soviets in a defeated
Germany after they had liberated Eastern Europe. The Allies also agreed to partition Germany until denazification was completed. Churchill and
Stalin would met again in October 1944 and agreed to share power in the Balkans with the Soviet Union having predominance in Romania and
Bulgaria and the West predominance in Greece. Both would have equal influence in Yugoslavia and Hungary. In essence, the Balkans were
being divided into spheres of influence.
2. At Yalta in February 1945 it was agreed that Germany was to be divided into four zones of occupation. While the Western leaders wanted the
Eastern European states to be independent, autonomous, and democratic, Stalin feared that such conditions could mean an unfriendly attitude
toward the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, rather than risk confrontation, Stalin signed the Declaration on Liberated Europe promising selfdetermination and free democratic elections.
3. The Potsdam Conference in July 1945 resulted in moving the Soviet frontier west into what had been Poland and giving Russia part of German
East Prussia. In return, Poland was given temporary control over the remainder of East Prussia and Germany east of the Oder-Neisse Rivers.
This became a permanent demarcation line.
4. By the end of the war Russia had territorially gained the Baltic States and lands from Poland and Romania. In addition, by 1948 the Soviets
had established governments loyal to themselves in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia, though
communist, sought a course unallied to either East or West.
5. As disagreements over Germany's economic and political future became heated, the Western Allies went forward in 1948 with uniting their
sectors economically and politically. In the summer, Russia sought to drive the West out of Berlin, located in the Russian sector, by closing
railroads and highways. The Berlin Blockade failed and access was reopened in May 1949. The split of Germany became formal in September
1949 with the granting of a constitution to the western German Federated Republic. In October, the eastern German Democratic Republic was
granted a constitution by the Soviets.
6. In a speech at Westminister College in Fulton, Missouri, (see the text) on March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill proclaimed that "... an iron curtain
has descended across the continent."
Questions:
1. What were the future implications of Soviet gains after the war?
2. Why did the Soviet Union believe that it needed to control eastern Europe?
Territorial Changes after World War II
 The Aftermath of the War: The Emergence of the Cold War

The Conferences at Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam
 Conference at Tehran, November 1943
 Future course of the war, invasion of the continent for
1944
 Agreement for the partition of postwar Germany
 Declaration on Liberated Europe
 Conference at Yalta, February 1945
 Soviet military assistance for the war against Japan
 Creation of a United Nations
 German unconditional surrender
 Free elections in Eastern Europe
 Conference at Potsdam, July 1945
 Truman replaces Roosevelt
 Stalin refuses to allow free elections in Eastern
Europe, a security maneuver