WORLD WAR II1939-1945

ALLIANCES

1. ALLIES: United States, Great Britain, France, Soviet Union, Australia, Canada, China

2. AXIS POWERS: Germany, Japan, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria

3. BIG THREE: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (US), Winston Churchill (UK), Joseph Stalin (USSR)

BIG THREE

ORIGINS OF THE WAR

1. Adolf Hitler (Chancellor of Germany and leader of Nazi Party) defies Treaty of Versailles.

2. Hitler rebuilds the German armed forces

3. League of Nations did not stand up Hitler or Benito Mussolini of Italy (both fascist dictators)

4. March 1938 - Hitler annexed territories that he felt belonged to Germany

5. Munich Conference (September 1938) – British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, gave in to Hitler’s demands

6. Appeasement – granting concessions to an aggressor

7. Hitler annexes the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia

WORLD WAR II FLAGS

WORLD WAR II BEGINS

1. Invasion of Poland - Germany invaded Poland on September 1st, 1939 to take Danzig and the Polish Corridor

2. Blitzkrieg tactics – use of aerial fighters, bombers, artillery, tanks, troop divisions and carriers in order to advance into a territory and overrun it quickly

3. Two days later, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany

4. World War II begins in the European Theater

ADOLF HITLER

DEFEAT OF WESTERN EUROPE, INVASION OF FRANCE AND THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN

1. Spring 1940 – Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands

2. June 1940 – German invades France; French surrender

August 1940 – The Battle of Britain

1. Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, rallied the British people

2. He said the Germans would not take Britain regardless of the Luftwaffe’s constant bombing campaign

3. The bravery and skill of the RAF (Royal Air Force) and radar pushed back the Nazi invasion (Operation Sea Lion)

WINSTON CHURCHILL

BATTLE OF BRITAIN

LEND-LEASE ACT AND ATLANTIC CHARTER

Lend-Lease Act (March 1941)

1. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and Congress gave billions of dollars worth of aid in the form of weapons, tanks, airplanes, and food to the Allies

2. Justified because U.S. believed Allies were vital to our defense; we did not send troops

Atlantic Charter (August 1941)

1. Roosevelt and Churchill secretly met on a warship in the Atlantic Ocean to discuss wartime goals

2. First discussion of setting up a system of general security (United Nations)

INVASION OF PEARL HARBOR

1. December 7, 1941

2. The Japanese Empire attacked the U.S. naval base in Hawaii so they could secure control of East Asia

3. “A day that will live in infamy”, as proclaimed by FDR

4. U.S. declares war on Japan and Germany declared war on us

5. 2,400 Americans were killed

INVASION OF PEARL HARBOR

FDR

CAPTAIN AMERICA ISSUE 1 (MARCH 1941)

THE HOME FRONT

1. War Production Board (WPB) – set up to convert factories for war production

2. Businesses, citizens, and soldiers prepared for war

3. WWII brought new job opportunities for women and other minorities, such as African and Hispanic Americans

4. Many women fill factory positions and built war materials

5. People bought war bonds and rationed gasoline, rubber, shoes, food

6. Tuskegee Airmen – black pilots who trained in Alabama and flew thousands of successful combat missions in North Africa and Italy

“WE CAN DO IT!”

BUY WAR BONDS, CAPTAIN AMERICA STYLE

JAPANESE INTERNMENT

1. After Pearl Harbor, Americans distrusted Japanese Americans

2. FDR issues Executive Order 9066

3. Government placed 115,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps

4. They were evacuated from their jobs and homes

5. 33,000 Nisei (Americans born to Japanese immigrants) fought bravely in combat

6. Korematsu vs. U.S. (1944) – Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the internment camps for reasons of national security

RACISM AGAINST THE JAPANESE

WAR IN NORTH AFRICA AND ITALY (EUROPEAN THEATER)

The Battle of El Alamein (1942 and 1943)

1. In Egypt, British forces under General Bernard Montgomery, defeated General Irwin Rommel (The Desert Fox) and his Afrika Korps

The Italian Campaign (July 1943) – U.S. and British forces invade Sicily and take it within a month

1. U.S. forces led by General George S. Patton

2. Italians overthrew and executed Mussolini – armistice signed

3. Germans eventually lost control over the Italian peninsula

BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN

INVASION OF THE SOVIET UNION

Operation Barbarossa (June 1941)

1. Nazis invaded the Soviet Union to get more “living space”, or Lebensraum for the German people

2. vast amounts of resources throughout the region like wheat in the Ukraine  

Battle of Stalingrad (1941 to 1943)

1. German forces could not advance

2. Red Army successfully pushed Germans back due to lack of reinforcements, provisions and rations

3. Germans were also defeated by the harsh Russian winter

JOSEPH STALIN

BATTLE OF STALINGRAD

BATTLE OF STALINGRAD

WAR IN ASIA (PACIFIC THEATER)

Japanese Victories

1. Europeans and Americans present in the Pacific (Hong Kong, Malaya, the Philippines, and Burma) were quickly overrun by the Japanese in 1941

American Victories

1. Battle of Coral Sea (May 1942) - Americans crippled a huge portion of the Japanese fleet

2. Battle of Midway (June 1942) - the excellent communications intelligence and skill of American sailors and pilots destroyed four Japanese carriers

3. Midway was the turning point; the U.S. was now on the offensive in the Pacific

4. Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 1944) – largest naval battle in history; Allies crushed the Japanese

Island hopping = Allies took only the most strategically important islands and used each one as a base

Kamikaze = Japanese pilots who purposely crashed planes into our ships

BATTLES OF IWO JIMA AND OKINAWA

Iwo Jima (February 1945)

1. U.S. Marines invaded this island and after a month of fighting, we lost 6,800 men and the Japanese lost almost 20,000

Okinawa (April 1945)

1. After 3 months of fighting, the Allies lost 12,000 men with 36,000 wounded and the Japanese lost 110,000 troops and 80,000 civilians

2. 2,500 kamikaze missions killed over 4,000 Allied sailors

These were 2 of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific

IWO JIMA

IWO JIMA

OKINAWA

BATTLE OF MIDWAY

THE INVASION OF FRANCE(D-DAY)

D-Day Invasion (June 6th, 1944)

1. Operation: Overlord = largest amphibious invasion in history

2. 176, 000 Allied troops as well as thousands of destroyers, naval vessels and aircraft

3. Supreme Allied Commander – General Dwight D. Eisenhower

4. U.S., British, and Canadian (Allied forces) troops landed on the beaches of northern France (Normandy) in order to push back the German forces and end their occupation

5. Bombers and fighters helped to soften up German defensive fortifications

6. August 1944 – the Allies free Paris

GENERALS EISENHOWER AND MONTGOMERY

CAPTAIN AMERICA AT D-DAY

ALLIED VICTORY IN EUROPE

1. Battle of the Bulge – final German counter-offensive against Allies in Belgium (Ardennes Forest)

2. Created a “bulge” through Allied lines and stopped our advance

3. Allies eventually crushed German forces in January 1945; Allies suffered almost 80,000 casualties

4. Allied forces continued to advance and the Soviet Union attacked the Germans from the east

5. Germans surrendered and Berlin was taken on May 7th, 1945 (V-E Day)

6. Allies were victorious in Europe

BATTLE OF THE BULGE

BATTLE OF THE BULGE

THE HOLOCAUST

1. Final Solution = the codename for the Nazi plan to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe in the name of Aryan supremacy

2. When Hitler and the Nazis conquered huge sections of Europe and the Soviet Union, captured Jews were sent to ghettos, concentration camps to be used as slave labor, and eventually to death camps

3. Genocide = the extermination of an entire group of people

4. Largest death camps were Auschwitz and Treblinka

5. Over 6 million Jews (2/3 of Europe’s Jewish population) had been killed during the Holocaust

6. Allied forces liberated death camps after we gained victories after D-Day

THE HOLOCAUST

FUTURE OF THE POSTWAR WORLD

February 1945; Ukraine FDR, Churchill, Stalin Goal = free elections for countries

liberated from Germany Goal = support for creating an

international peacekeeping organization (United Nations)

July 1945; Germany Truman (U.S.), Attlee (U.K.), Stalin Goal = Germany would be divided

into four occupation zones (U.S., Britain, France, and the Soviet Union)

DEFEAT OF JAPAN

The Atomic Bomb

1. Manhattan Project = Allied scientists worked on a secret program to develop an atomic bomb

2. Atomic bomb = weapon that produces tremendous power by splitting atoms

3. It was estimated that over a million American soldiers would be killed or wounded invading the Japanese mainland

4. President Harry Truman gave the order to use the atomic bomb

5. August 6, 1945 – the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima – 80, 000 Japanese civilians were killed instantly  

6. August 9, 1945 – the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki – 40, 000 people were killed instantly

7. August 15, 1945 – Japan surrenders and World War II ends

8. September 2nd, 1945 – Japan surrenders to the U.S. aboard the USS Missouri – peace treaty signed

ATOMIC BOMB EXPLODES