Download WWII Canadian Battles Answers

WWII Canadian Battles Answers
pages 116-126
Identify and give the significance of the following W.W. II Battles:
Please note the red words (those are the ones that are key to significance)
Battle of Britain
Id
 1940
 Hitler bombed Britain to pave the way for direct invasion
 British and Canadian pilots repel the attack
Sig
 Postponed/prevented plans for invasion
 Germany’s first defeat
 First major victory for Britain
 Boosted the morale of the British people
o Remind students to also include info from Blitz video
Eastern Front
Id
 1941
 Hitler invades Russia (USSR)
 Wants to destroy communism and get natural resources (oil)
 Battle goes well for Germany until Dec 6 - USSR launches counter attack
Sig
 First retreat of German forces
 Undermined German soldier’s confidence in blitzkrieg
 Weakened German supply lines because they were stretched out too thinly
o Remind them to also include information from Blitz video
Dieppe
Id
 Test German readiness along the French coast
 Gather intelligence
 Canadian battle – August 1942
 Chance encounter with German convoy alerted their arrival
 Germans firing from the tops of cliffs onto the beach
Sig
 The significance of this attack is about the lessons learned from its
failure
 Failure caused by daylight attack (loss of surprise)
 Demoralized army because many soldiers taken as prisoners of war
 First major battle for Canadians on Western Front
 Delayed the timing for a full scale invasion of mainland Europe
 Changed the location of an invasion (Germany expected it in a deep water
port instead D-Day attack was in shallow port – Normandy)
 Changed the type of beach landing would occur at (sandy vs. rocky)
Battle of Ortona
Id
 1943
 A natural fortress – narrow twisting streets
 Impossible to use tanks
 Moved through on foot
 Fighting the Germans
Sig
 Canadians created new battle technique – mouse-holing
 Became a model for urban warfare for the duration of the war
 Succeeded in driving the Germans out of Ortona
ADD
 Canadians gained a reputation as elite street fighters
 Crucial ingredient to eventual Allied victory because it opened a second front
and took the pressure off the Soviets in the Eastern Front
D-Day
Id
June 6, 1944
 Mis-information campaign
 Multi-stage attack – paratroopers, bombers, troops
 Juno is Canada’s beach
Sig
 Secured beachhead (Canadians were the only Allied force to achieve ALL of
its objectives on that day)
 Applied lessons learned from Dieppe
 Created a third front in the war against Germany
Add
 Became Canada’s largest military operation
 Canada’s greatest achievement so far in the war because of the difficulty of
the mission (the coast was where the majority of the entrenched defensive
positions would be – and Canada succeeded despite this)
Battle of Hong Kong
Id:
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1941, Japanese troops invade Hong Kong
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill asks Canada to send troops to
help with the defence.
This was a controversial request as defending this area seemed to be
an impossible task.
P.M. King agreed and sent 2000 troops
Significance:
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The Allies were badly outnumbered and without an air force or navy, they
had little chance of defeating the Japanese.
This was a considerable loss for the Allies, as they surrendered
Christmas Day, 1941
Prime Minister King’s approval ratings went down in Canada.
Battle of the Scheldt
Id:
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a series of military operations by the Canadian First Army - consisting of
Canadian, British and Polish formations
to open up the port of Antwerp so that it could be used to supply the Allies
in north-west Europe.
Led by Guy Simonds, the battle took place in northern Belgium and
southwestern Netherlands during World War II from October 2 to
November 8, 1944.
Sig:
 September 1944, it had become urgent for the Allies to clear both banks of
the Scheldt estuary in order to open the port of Antwerp to Allied shipping,
thus easing logistical burdens in their supply lines stretching hundreds
of miles from Normandy eastward to the Siegfried Line.
 Since the Allied forces had landed in Normandy (France) on D-Day, June
6, 1944, the British Second Army had pushed forward into the Low
Countries and captured Brussels (3–4 September) and Antwerp. But the
advance halted with the British in possession of Antwerp, while the
Germans still controlled the Scheldt Estuary.
 The Battle of the Scheldt proved to be a challenging campaign in which
Canadians suffered the most losses
 It exacerbated another Conscription Crisis in Canada
 The Allies finally cleared the port areas on November 8 at a cost of
12,873 Allied casualties (killed, wounded, or missing), half of them
Canadians
Operation Market Garden
Id:

17–25 September 1944 was an unsuccessful Allied military operation,
fought in the Netherlands and Germany. It was the largest airborne
operation up to that time.
Sig:

Field Marshal Montgomery's (British General) goal was to force an entry
into Germany over the Lower Rhine. He wanted to circumvent the
northern end of the Siegfried Line and this required the operation to seize
the bridges across the Maas and two arms of the Rhine.

Crossing the Lower Rhine would allow the Allies to encircle Germany's
industrial heartland in the Ruhr from the north.

It made large-scale use of airborne forces, whose tactical objectives were
to secure the bridges and allow a rapid advance by armored units into
Northern Germany.

The failure of Market Garden ended Allied expectations of finishing the
war by Christmas 1944.
Peace Conference-Yalta
Id:
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First of two major conferences – Feb 1945
Roosevelt (USA), Churchill (Brit), Stalin (USSR)
Sig:
Allies agree to:
 Concentrate on political issues
 Ger. and Austria. -divided in to four occupational zones
 Capitals- Berlin and Vienna also jointly occupied by the Allied powers
 Soviets get control over Romania and Bulgaria in exchange for
British/American control over Greece
Postponed ideas:
 Stalin wants 20 billion in war reparations
 Also to keep the territory he got out of the Non-Aggression Pact (Poland)
About war with Japan:
 Stalin will declare war on Japan in exchange for territory
 Americans still feel uncertain about the atomic bomb, and they feel they
need help against Japan
 Churchill and Roosevelt want to ensure Soviet support for the United
Nations.
Potsdam Conference
Id:
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Sig:
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Held Palace, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 17 July to 2 August
1945 (In some older documents it is also referred to as the Berlin
Conference of the Three Heads of Government of the USSR, USA and
UK.
Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United
States. The three powers were represented by Joseph Stalin, Prime
Ministers Winston Churchill and President Harry S. Truman.
Stalin, Churchill, and Truman gathered to decide how to administer
punishment to the defeated Nazi Germany, which had agreed
to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier, on 8 May (V-E Day).
The goals of the conference also included the establishment of post-war
order , peace treaty issues, and countering the effects of the war.
issued the Potsdam Declaration which outlined the terms of surrender for
Japan during World War II in Asia.
Truman had mentioned an unspecified "powerful new weapon" to Stalin
during the conference.
Towards the end of the conference, Japan was given an ultimatum to
surrender (in the name of the Allies or meet "prompt and utter
destruction", which did not mention the new bomb.
Prime minister Kantarō Suzuki did not respond (which was interpreted as
a declaration that the Empire of Japan ignored the ultimatum).
Therefore, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima on
August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The justification was that both
cities were legitimate military targets, to end the war swiftly, and preserve
American lives
Start of the Cold War between USSR and United States
Other Peace Conferences and San Francisco
Id
 August 1941, the Atlantic Charter is signed by Allies proposing a set of
principles to maintain peace and security
 January 1, 1942 Twenty-six Allied nations pledge their support as United
Nations to fight against the Axis powers
 April 1945 Delegates of 50 nations meet in San Francisco for the United
Nations Conference on International Organization.
Significance
 The United Nations Charter was drawn up and adopted unanimously
 December 1948, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights is ratified by the
UN
 The UN defends peace and security through its agencies (UNICEF, UNHRC,
WHO, World Bank, ICC, and others)