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World War II Summary
The Second World War was the most deadly, destructive and
consequential war in history. Seventeen million military personnel
died in the war. Civilian deaths in the Soviet Union and China
alone totaled 30 million.
Causes of the war can be traced back to the end of World War I.
Germany, Italy, and Japan suffered deep economic problems.
Inflation was rampant. However, by the late 1920s, economic order
was being restored. This trend reversed when the United States
entered the Great Depression. The citizens of what would be the
Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) supported nationalistic
organizations which offered hope in the face of these problems.
These organizations soon gave birth to tyranny, however.
Totalitarian dictatorships arose in the Soviet Union, Japan, Italy,
and Germany; these were led by Josef Stalin, Emperor Hirohito,
Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler, respectively. These leaders
seized power by promising reform through unity. Under the
dictatorships, however, terror reigned. Dictators used secret police,
threats, imprisonment and even executions to eliminate their
opposition.
Some consider the start of World War II to be Japan's invasion of
Manchuria, a region in eastern China. Japan continued to
demonstrate aggression, effectively conquering eastern China by
1938. Italy, meanwhile, conquered Ethiopia in 1936. Germany, in
1938, united Austria with itself. There was essentially no stopping
this aggression, since the League of Nations lacked the power to
enforce its treaties. (The League had been formed after World War
I as an international forum for disputes.) In 1936, German and Italy
allied. Japan joined in 1940, forming the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo
Axis.
During this time, Spain was in civil war. General Francisco Franco
led the rebellious army Nationalists against Spain's government.
Hitler and Mussolini supported the revolution. The Spanish Civil
War divided the world into those who supported Nazism and
Fascism, and those who were against it.
Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain held several
meetings to restore peace. They agreed that if Hitler took
Czechoslovakia, he would not try to acquire more territory. Hitler
defiantly broke his promise by invading Poland 11 months later, on
September 1, 1939. Germany's blitzkrieg (lightning war) quickly
overcame the large, but poorly equipped Polish Army. The
blitzkrieg relied on speed and surprise. It was carried out
flawlessly. Britain and France pledged their support for the Allied
cause, but stood by while Hitler swallowed Poland. Journalists
dubbed this the Phony War.
German forces then conquered Denmark and Norway, seizing vital
ports. Following these invasions, Chamberlain resigned. He was
replaced by Winston Churchill on May 10, 1940. Germany, on the
same day, created another blitzkrieg, immediately taking
Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The French hoped to
hold off the aggressive Germans by use of the Maginot Line, a
strip of defense along the French-German border. It proved futile,
however, as the Germans simply proceeded around it and into
France. The blitzkrieg once again made its appearance, this time
beginning on June 5. It proved effective once more. The French
signed an armistice on June 22. France had fallen.
In a massive air war, the Luftwaffe, the German air force, began to
mount assaults on British RAF (Royal Air Force) stations. By
September 1940, Germany thought it had destroyed the RAF, so it
proceeded to bomb London. This series of attacks on Britain's
capital was known as the Blitz. Great Britain remained great,
however, and survived Germany's most destructive efforts.
Germany halted its air efforts in May 1941.
Meanwhile, British forces in North Africa were fighting to repel
the invading Italians. Britain managed to keep Italy out of Egypt
and pushed them back to Libya. In the beginning of 1941, the
Afrika Korps, led by General Erwin Rommel, was sent to help the
Italian forces. Rommel's crafty methods eventually earned him the
famed moniker, "The Desert Fox." Britain held on. In May of
1941, Britain had regained control of northern Africa.
In March and April of 1941, the Germans quickly captured
Yugoslavia and Greece. When British soldiers retreated to the
island of Crete, Germany orchestrated the first ever airborne
invasion, dropping thousands of paratroopers who quickly took the
island. These conquests were an error on Hitler's part, however.
Hitler had been planning to invade the Soviet Union for some time.
But, with the delays, he would now have to fight an extended,
bitter winter war.
Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, began on
June 22, 1941. The Soviets soon suffered hundreds of thousands of
casualties. The invasion went well for the Germans. This lasted
briefly however. Instead of taking Moscow, Hitler opted for a dualflank approach, sending some forces north to Leningrad, and some
south towards the Black Sea. Meanwhile, the harsh weather began.
October rains caught the Germans in mud. In early December, as
German troops began to march into Moscow, winter began.
Temperatures fell to -40º. The German advance stopped as
abruptly as it began.
Germany's battleships struggled to cut off Allied sea supply routes.
But British task forces managed to destroy the bulk of Germany's
battleship fleet. The largest such attack was against the German
Navy's pride and joy, the Bismarck. A fleet of British warships
surrounded and sank the Bismarck in May of 1941. However, the
Germans still had a trick up their collective sleeve: the U-Boat. For
two years, U-Boats sank every Allied supply ship they could find.
But long-range torpedo bombers, warship escorts of supply ships,
and the new Allied technology of sonar curbed the threat of the
dreaded Unterseeboote.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt hoped to win the war by supplying
Allied nations with the weapons they needed, rather than sending
the United States into war. The Lend-Lease Act gave 38 nations
about $50 billion in U.S. aid.
Japan, stuck in China, decided to cut off vital Chinese supply lines
from Southeast Asia. Japan entered and controlled northern
Indochina. The U.S. responded by cutting Japan's supply of
American goods. Japan wanted to return to its expansion plans, so
it turned on the one force that could stop it: the United States
Navy. On December 7, 1941, a Japanese task force attacked the
Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. They sank four
battleships, and destroyed nearly 20 aircraft. The next day, the
U.S., Canada, and Great Britain declared war on Japan.
The Soviets, in December 1941, recovered and pushed the
Germans back 100 miles outside of Moscow. In spring 1942, the
Germans marched towards oil reserves in the Caucasus. Hitler
ordered the capture of Stalingrad. A five-month battle ensued. The
Soviets, in a counter-attack, captured and killed 300,000 German
soldiers, stopping Germany's eastward march.
In 1941, Allied defeats stopped in Europe. In Eastern Europe the
Soviets prevented the German advance in Eastern Europe. Soviets
defeated the Germans in a battle at Stalingrad in 1943. The allies
were soon on a roll. They won battles in Africa and forced Italy to
surrender in 1943. In 1944, the Allies prepared for an invasion in
northern France.
Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met together in 1943 in Teheran,
Iran to discuss the strategy and plans behind the invasion. They
talked to each other about a British and American large-scale
attack, called Operation Overlord, on the beach of Normandy
along the northern coast of France. This attack was to be known as
the D-Day Invasion. It will have been the largest seaborne invasion
in history. Hitler laughed and said his forces could resist any attack
on the coast. The invasion would deploy Allied soldiers ashore on
five beaches under the code names of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno,
and Sword. The Germans were not sure what beach the Allies were
going to attack so they built a chain of fortifications along the coast
called the Atlantic wall. Hitler left General Rommel in charge to
strengthen their defenses. Rommel put up barbed wire; he mined
the water, and concentrated his troops near the Calais, the
narrowest part of the English Channel. On June 6th, 2,700 Allied
ships carrying 176, 00 soldiers led by General Dwight Eisenhower
crossed the English Channel. Paratroops were dropped off behind
enemy lines to capture bridges and railroad tracks. D-Day caught
the Germans by surprise. Germans fought fiercely, but did not win
the battle. The Allies built a temporary harbor, to receive supplies,
and a pipeline across the British Channel for oil. Near the end of
June, about a million troops had accumulated in France.
The Allies advanced slowly in the beginning. The Americans
fought and capture Cherbourg on June 27, and the British and
Canadian forces fought and captured Caen on July 18. The Allied
forces had finally reached open country.
On July 25, 1944 bombers blasted a hole in the German front near
St-Lo. Lieutenant General George Patton plowed through the gap
and exterminated the Germans from northwest France. Patton
ordered his army toward Paris. On August 19, 1944, Parisians
heard the news and rose up against the German troops occupying
Paris. The German troops in Paris were ordered by Hitler to
destroy Paris, but they delayed and the Allies reached Paris on
August 25th to liberate France. Slowly, the Allied forces moved
toward Germany. The German Generals knew they were beat and
tried to tell Hitler, but he brought together his remaining forces for
one last attack at the Ardennes Forest (Belgium & Luxembourg).
He won this Battle of the Bulge, however, in two weeks; the
Americans stopped the German advance near the Meuse River
(Belgium).
Meanwhile, the Soviets had slowly pushed back the Germans after
the Battle at Stalingrad. The Soviets were producing and importing
war supplies from Britain and America, preparing for another
offensive by the Germans at Kursk. The Soviet forces waited for
them with tanks, mines, anti-tank guns and aircraft; completely
obliterating the oncoming German troops and tanks. The rest of the
3,000 German tanks were ordered to retreat during the battle. The
Soviet forces, then, moved toward Leningrad. They defeated the
Germans there and move onward to Poland. When they reach the
outskirts of Warsaw, Stalin refused to come to polish aid resulting
in a German onslaught of 200,000 Polish soldiers. Afterwards, the
Soviets entered in and destroyed the Germans in 1945. Another
series of Soviet troops began to move towards Hungary crushing
all German forces in their path. Soviet troops reached Budapest
and drove the German forces out in February of 1945. After their
strong advance, the Soviets had occupied almost all of Eastern
Europe.
The Allies began their final assault in 1945. Soviet forces were
advancing from the East to Berlin, British and Canadian forces
came from the North, and American and French forces neared
central Germany. In all, the Allies had almost surrounded the
Germans. Prior to closing in on the Germans, those Allies passing
through previously occupied areas were terrified at the sights at the
concentration camps.
Hitler committed suicide before the Allied forces took Berlin. On
May 7, 1945, Colonel General Alfred Doenitz, Hitler's
replacement, signed a declaration of unconditional surrender,
ending the war in Europe.
In the Pacific
The war with the Japanese was a personal vendetta for the U.S.,
after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Japan won
several early victories including: taking over Hong Kong, Guam,
and Wake Island, defeating the British in Singapore, the Battle of
the Java Sea, and the conquest of the Philippines. MacArthur's
troops were ordered to Australia after leaving the Philippines in
March 1942. On April 9, about 75,000 exhausted troops on Bataan
surrendered to the Japanese. Most of them were forced to march 65
miles to prison camps, but most of them died. This march was
called the Bataan Death March. After the Philippines were
captured, Japan moved toward India and Australia.
In 1942, there were 3 events that helped turn the tide on the
Japanese. One of them was the Doolittle raid in which 16 B-52
bombers surprised Tokyo with minor bombing. The 2nd event was
the Battle of the Coral Sea which halted the Japanese attack on
Port Moresby. The 3rd event was the Battle of Midway, in which
Japan sent a large fleet to capture one of the Hawaiian Islands, but
the Americans intercepted the plan and prepared for a surprise
attack. The battle began on June 4, 1942 when the Japanese
bombed the island of Midway. Old U.S. bombers launched
bombers on Japanese warships, but most of them were shot down.
Next, American dive bombers dropped down on Japanese aircraft
carriers while they were refueling. The e Japanese had lost 4
aircraft carriers and at least 200 planes along with many skilled
pilots. Japan had only sunk 1 U.S. aircraft carrier and shot down
150 planes. The Battle of Midway was a clear victory for the
Allies.
Meanwhile, the Allies battled to regain most of the islands in the
Pacific. In 1942, MacArthur attacked New Guinea with a series of
brilliant operations, but fighting continued until 1944. On August
7, 1942, marines invaded Guadalcanal. This attack caught the
Japanese by surprise, but they fought strong. This battle proved to
be one of the most vicious campaigns in WWII. By February 1943,
Japan left Guadalcanal. In 1943, Allied military leaders canceled
the invasion of Rabaul; instead, they bombed it. After beating back
the Japanese, the Allies finally liberated the Philippines in 1944.
Superiority in air and sea combat enabled the Allies to move onto
Japan itself.
Allied forces first attack Iwo Jima. The marines landed on
February 19, 1945. The marines successfully won the battle, but
with a struggle. Okinawa was the next stop. Japan sent kamikazes
to attack the marine landing force, but they still defeated Japan at
Okinawa.
On August 6, 1945 due their refusal to give into the US's
ultimatum, the B-29 American bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped
the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, America
dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, after Japanese leaders
failed to respond to the first bombing. On September 2, 1945,
Japan finally gave in and signed a statement of surrender ending
WWII.
Podcast quiz
1.
What can the origins of WW II be traced to?
WWI
2.
What do some consider being the start of WW II? Why this
event and not Pearl Harbor?
Japan invades Manchuria
3.
The series of attacks on England by Germany was referred to
as the__________.
Blitz
4.
What was the Lend-Lease Act?
The Lend-Lease Act gave 38 nations about $50 billion in U.S. aid.
5.
When did the war officially end in Europe?
When Hitler committed suicide. (May 7 ,1945)
6.
When did the war officially end in the Pacific?
September 2 ,1945