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The World at War - W.W. II
part 1
In the first few months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the
– Germany, Italy and Japan seemed unstoppable.
-Japan quickly occupied most of Southeast Asia and seized strategic islands in the
Pacific.
-In the Atlantic, German submarines sank three or four ships a day. Hitler’s
forces had stormed into the Soviet Union and had pushed deep into the country.
To fight back the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union formed a strong alliance.
They called themselves the
-They believed that Germany and Italy posed a stronger threat that Japan, so
agreed on a “Europe first” policy and devoted their resources to the European
War.
-Once Europe was back under control, they agreed to switch over to the Pacific
war.
Hitler invaded Russia in June of 1941. His forces swept quickly and advanced up
to the capital of Moscow. The Russians were able to counter-attack and stop the
Germans. The Russians were aided in this by the fact that the Germans were not
prepared for the snow and frigid temperatures in the winter.
Farther north in Russia the German army had reached the city of Leningrad. The
Germans held it under siege for four months. During the assault 4000 Russians starved
each day. By the time the Russian “Red Army” broke the German siege on Leningrad,
600,000 civilians had died.
The Battle of Stalingrad –The German assault on the Soviet Union came to a halt at the
city of Stalingrad. German and Russian troops fought a bloody hand to hand, building to
building battle which turned the city to rubble.
A Russian General stated – “The streets are not measured by meters, but by corpses”.
After months of fighting the Germans surrendered in Stalingrad.
Losing 300,000 troops, Germany would never again attack against the Eastern front.
However, in the fight for Stalingrad, Russia lost 500,000 soldiers and civilians.
*-More than the U.S. would lose in the whole war.*
Russia asked the U.S. and Britain to attack Germany from the West, to make him
split his troops and fight a two front war. The U.S. and Britain were not ready for an
attack in Europe so they attacked the Axis armies that were in Africa. Germany and Italy
controlled most of North Africa.
Leading the Axis forces was the Nazi’s most skillful general,
“The Desert Fox”, and were making their way to the
Suez Canal.
At the Battle of El Alamein, British forces were able to stop the Axis advances to
control the Suez Canal. With this Allied victory, the tide of the war began to change.
“Up to Alamein we survived, After Alamein, we conquered.”
While the British were pushing the Axis powers west from Alamein, the U.S., led by
General Dwight D. Eisenhower led a U.S. and British invasion in West Africa and
pushed east.
-The Axis armies were trapped in the middle and surrendered.
349,000 German and Italian soldiers were killed or captured.
The Allied victory in Northern Africa meant that the southern coast of Europe was open
for an Allied attack.
After Japan hit Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, Japanese troops seized the capital of the
Philippines, Manila, in Jan. 1942.
American and Filipino troops had to withdraw to the Bataan peninsula. They fought but
took heavy losses. Outnumbered and cut off from outside support, 12,000 Americans and
65,000 Filipino soldiers surrendered to the Japanese.
– The Japanese led the prisoners on a 65 mile march to a prisoner-of-war
camp. Between 7,000 and 10,000 of the prisoners were clubbed, shot, or
starved to death.
Japan had control of most of the Pacific and I looked as if they were going to
attack Australia. America was nervous and kept a look out on the West Coast for attack.
We were just getting ready for war and Japan had many more warships than we did.
-------------Two battles stopped the Japanese expansion in the Pacific ----------------At the
the Allies were able to stop the Japanese attempt to
invade Australia. -This battle was fought entirely by aircraft and the ships did not see
each other.
At the
100 Japanese ships attacked an American Naval
base. The Japanese had 5 aircraft carriers loaded with planes. The Americans were able
to win he battle when American dive-bombers attacked and sank 4 Japanese carriers in a
matter of minutes. The Japanese fleet was forced to retreat and Midway stayed in
American hands.
American victory over the Japanese at Midway marked a turning point in the Pacific war.
-The Americans began to force the Japanese towards their homeland.
As the Allies advanced on Japanese held islands, the battles were held in the jungle.
Some of the toughest fighting was on the island of Guadalcanal and the Solomon islands.
-20,000 Marines stormed the island of Guadalcanal to root out the Japanese and take
control of the island. The American Navy was forced to withdraw by a Japanese attack.
The Marines were left without supplies, “ammo & food” and were attacked for four
months by the Japanese from the sea, land, and air.
Some of the toughest fighting of the war took place, most of it “hand to hand”.
Yet the Marines were able to get the upper hand. The Japanese finally fled the
island, but he war was not near over in the Pacific.
When America prepared for War, millions of men were drafted for military
service, large numbers of women also volunteered.
The shift from peacetime goods to wartime production was the job of the :
The nations industry jumped to meet he need for supplies, guns, ships, planes, and goods.
This industrial boom put an end to the Great Depression.
To pay for the war the U.S. raised the income tax and sold war bonds“V for Victory” became everybody’s slogan.
Yet many of the jobs that opened up only opened for whites. Black Americans were
considered only for jobs at the lower levels, rear-end jobs, or as janitors.
Blacks in the military were never allowed to forget their “second class” status.
About 1 million black men and women served in the military during W.W. II.
-The military was segregated and most black units had non-combat duties.
-Yet some black units distinguished themselves.
had a hard time in the U.S.
The Governor of Idaho said – “A good solution to the Jap problem would be to send
them all back to Japan, then sink the island.”
Many Americans believed the Japanese Americans would act as spies.
Yet most of the Japanese Americans in America were born in America.
FEAR caused this Feb. 1942 – Pres. Roosevelt ordered the army to round up 110,000 people in America of
Japanese ancestry. These people were put in “relocation camps”.
Those relocated could not take any of their possessions.
Many lost their homes and businesses during this period of imprisonment.
In 1988, Congress apologized for this and gave $20,000 to anyone alive that was
imprisoned.
part II
In the Atlantic, German submarines hunted any ship that might be carrying food or
supplies to Great Britain or the Soviet Union.
The Soviet submarines tracked down and sank these ships in “Wolf Packs”
These subs almost stopped all shipping in the Atlantic.
In 1942 alone these subs sank 900 allied ships.
New inventions like the radar and sonar were used radio and sound
waves to locate these enemy subs. By 1943 the Allies had control of the
Atlantic any had only an occasional ship lost.
The United States and Britain agreed that they would continue to fight
until they won an unconditional surrender from the Axis powers.
“The enemy has to accept any terms of agreement once they surrendered.”
Taking Italy
In July 1943 having control of Africa, The U.S. and British forces attacked Italy
from Africa. They met little resistance and overthrew Mussolini’s government.
--The new government offered to help the Allies defeat Hitler.
This assault on Italy helped the Russians since Hitler split hit troops and fought
against the Allied troops in Italy so that they would not advance up into Germany.
“The Big Three” national leaders met in 1943 and agreed on a plan to invade France.
The code name for this invasion was called “Operation Overlord”
Nearly 3 million Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen crowded into southern England
and on June 6, 1944 “D-Day” the largest invasion force in history landed in the
Normandy region of northwestern France.
During the night paratroopers jumped behind enemy lines and cut off
Germany’s communication lines.
At dawn 11,000 planes provided cover for the landing force on the beach.
The first week, 300,000 Allied soldiers landed on Normandy beach.
The Allies huge force quickly marched to Paris and ended the four long years
of Nazi occupation of the French capital.
Within four months the Allied forces had liberated France and were massed along Germany’s border.
The Allied forces were closing in on Germany from both sides :
The U.S. and Britain from the West
The Soviet Union from the East
Germany tried a last-ditch counteroffensive by attacking the Allies in Belgium. The
Allies were caught off guard, but the Allies were able to drive the Germans back.
This counteroffensive is known as the Battle of the Bulge.
On April 25, 1945 American and Soviet troops along the Elbe River, 60 miles from the German capital of Berlin.
Adolf Hitler committed suicide in German bunker as Soviet troops were battling to capture the
capital. Germany’s commander signed an unconditional surrender, ending the war in Europe.
May 8, 1945 : People around the world celebrated V-E Day “Victory in Europe”.
Island-Hopping in the Pacific
The Allies were pushing the Japanese back to their homeland from the South and from the East using a strategy
called island-hopping.
Instead of invading every Japanese island, the Allies captured only a few strategic ones.
In doing so the Allies were able to cut the rest of the rest of the islands off from supply.
The other islands, without supplies would not be a threat to attack.
Once the Allied forces took over an island they built airfields from which our bombers could attack Japan.
The largest naval engagement in history……….
The U.S. won a smashing victory over the Japanese and wiped out their fleet once and for all.
The Japanese resorted to attacks by suicide pilots who intentionally crashed their
planes into American ships. Kamikaze means “divine wind”.
During the final days of the war, kamikaze pilots sank more than 300 ships and
killed more than 15,000 servicemen.
Allied victories in the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa brought the U.S. within striking distance of Japan.
Once the U.S. had control of Okinawa, the U.S. forces were within 350 miles of the Japanese coast. American
planes began to fire-bomb Japanese cities, but the Japanese refused to surrender.
The Atomic Age
The U.S. had been developing a weapon. The Atomic bomb.
This weapon was developed in a top-secret and was named the :
Manhattan Project.
“How could the U.S. use its awesome new weapon to end the war?”
The use of the bomb might make an invasion of Japan unnecessary,
thereby saving millions of Japanese and American lives.
Rather than risk the lives of more American soldiers by invading Japan, President Truman decided to use the
newly developed atomic bomb against Japan.
Aug. 6, 1945 a U.S. bomber named the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on
Hiroshima had a population of 245,000 and the bomb killed an estimated 200,000.
-Tens of thousands more suffered from radiation sickness
The Japanese military leaders still refused to surrender so one day later on Aug. 9, 1945 a U.S. plane dropped a
second Atomic bomb on the city of
This city also disappeared into an inferno of pulverized buildings and bodies.
After the second atomic bomb was dropped Japan finally surrendered.
It is estimated that 40 – 60 million people lost their lives in W.W. II
It is certain that of the 20 million people that died from the Soviet Union.
10 million were non-combatants, and killed by the Germans.
Japan lost more than 2 million people.
Germany lost more than 6 million.
While the U.S. lost an estimated 290,000 people during the war.
In Europe and Asia the cities were reduced to rubble, roads, factories, and railroads were destroyed.
Yet the U.S. escaped such damage.
He worst horrors of the war went beyond the battlefield and the shattered cities.
As Allied forces entered territories held by the Nazis, they discovered that the Germans
had carried out the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews. Millions of Jews had
been taken to dozens of Nazi concentration camps. The Jews were rounded up, enslaved,
and murdered. This program of mass murder has become known as the Holocaust.
-People were so emaciated that they looked like corpses.
-Bodies were found burned, in gas chambers, stacked in piles, and dumped in pits.
Obsessed with the desire to rid the world of Jews, Hitler had practiced a policy of
genocide against all Jews. “ridding the earth of all Jews”
In Hitler’s army he had groups that killed as many civilians as possible,
mainly Jews. But Hitler said this was too slow for him so he created
death camps to kill masses of people more efficiently.
Hitler s troops rounded up Jews and sent them by loaded train to these camps.
Age or gender did not matter.
Nazis killed men, women, children, infants, and the elderly.
The Nazis herded them in from the train, stripped them naked, and forced them into the gas chamber.
At Auschwitz the Nazis killed more than 12,000 a day.
Of the 12 million civilians that the Nazis killed, 6 million were Jews.
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The U.S. and the Soviet Union emerged from the war as the world’s two superpowers.
Although they had been allies during the war, many differences divided them.
A new peace keeping organization that was set up to take the place of the useless “League of Nations” was
set up. Its purpose was to build cooperation among the great nations of the world.
It is called the :