•WORLD WAR II

3rd Year History

•Invasion of Poland

• SS dressed up 29th of August

• 1st September GB and France declare war.

• Blitzkrieg• Luftwaffe, then Panzers then motorised infantry. Poland defeated in 5 weeks.

•Phoney War >Denmark and Norway

• Fighting on sea only until….

• Spring 1940 Denmark defeated by Germans in a day.

• Norway invaded to protect neutral Sweden’s iron ore getting to Germany.

• Quisling installed as nazi puppet in Norway.

•France• Wrong to think the Ardennes would send the Germans through Belgium (Maginot Line).

• Dunkirk 300,000: British and French troops evacuated in ‘Operation Dynamo’

• France surrendered in the same railway carriage as Germans had.

• Vichy France and Occupied France.

• Resistance movement.

•Operation Sea Lion and The Battle of Britain

• German plan = Sea Lion

• Churchill ‘We shall never surrender’.

• RAF Spitfire and Hurricanes and Radar Vs Luftwaffe.

• The Blitz: Civilian cities targeted allows RAF recover.

•North Africa

• Libyan Oil crucial to war.• Italy incompetent.• Rommel’s Afrika corp successful at first.• Montgomery and El Alamein a turning point.

•Operation Barbarossa• June 1941: 3 pronged attack on Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev.

• Russian retreat. Scorched earth policy.

• Stalin’s ‘Great Patriotic War’• German troops and machines not able for Russian winter.

• Stalingrad (control of Caucasus oil fields) big turning point.

•USA Joins the War• USA had supplied food and weapons to GB. Allied convoys had tried to fend off U-Boat ‘Wolfpacks’.

• Japan’s Empire.• Dec 1941 Pearl Harbour. US navy lucky as only 18 ships sunk.

• Eventually Alllied ships, weapons (depth charges), sonar, code-breaking and air reconnaissance won.

•Allied Bombing& Allied Advance 1942-1945• US Flying Fortresses and GB Lancasters bombed German cities and factories.

• German retaliation with V1 and V2.

• GB and US troops up through Italy.

• Russians push Germans back.

• Battle of the Kursk (biggest tank battle)

•Operation Overlord (D-Day)• D-Day 6 June 1944 Normandy (shallow) Utah, Omaha, Juno, Gold and Sword.

• Mulberry Harbours. Gliders and parachutes.

• Pluto the pipeline.• Battle of the Bulge• Hitler’s suicide and VE day 15th August 1945

•Defeat of Japan

• US helped by Austalia and GB.

• Island hopping. Aircraft carriers. Kamakazi.

• Battles of Midway, Coral Sea and Iwo Jima.

• Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

•Why the Allies Won

•Bigger armies•USA wealth and weapons ‘the arsenal of democracy’•Oil

•Results of WW2

• Destruction (Marshall Aid)• Nuremberg trials• Germany divided• Cold War• Super powers• European Unity