WORLD WAR II through the Gulf War

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WORLD WAR II through the Gulf War

• IN PICTURES

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• World War II began when German troops invaded
  Poland. Freed from the threat of invasion at his
  back by Russian troops, Hitler moved swiftly to
  invade Poland on September 1, 1939 . On September
  3, France and Britain declared war on Germany,
  honoring their treaty obligations to Poland.
  Poland fell quickly, with German forces advancing
  as much as 40 miles in a single day

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• A ship burns during the Japanese attack on
  the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, December 7,
  1941. That surprise attack propelled the country
  into World War II. The next day, President
  Franklin Roosevelt would call it, a day that
  would live in infamy.

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• President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking the
  Congress to declare war on Japan, which it did on
  December 8, 1941. Adhering to the Tripartite
  Pact, Hitler then declared war on the U.S.,
  making it truly a world at war. The Japanese
  attack on the American naval and air bases
  brought the U.S. into World War II and shifted
  the balance of power in favor of the Allies.

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The Allied Powers

• The main Allied Powers were
• The United States
• Great Britain (United Kingdom)
• France
• Soviet Union

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• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR, was the U.S.
  president for most of WWII. He died in Warm
  Springs, Georgia a month before Germany
  surrendered.

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• Winston Churchill, was the prime minister of
  Great Britain during the war. Great Britain was
  one of the few countries in Europe that Hitler
  was not able to conquer, although he bombed the
  country heavily.

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Most of France was taken over by Germany early in
World War II, although a French resistance force
fought alongside the Allies throughout the war.
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The Soviet Union, led by dictator Joseph Stalin,
joined the war on the side of the Allies after
Hitler broke his non-aggression pact and invaded
the Soviet Union
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The Axis Powers

• The main Axis Powers in World War II were
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan

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• Germany was led by dictator Adolf Hitler.
  After Hitler took power in Germany in 1933, he
  soon became a dictator who gained support among
  the German people by promising to make Germany a
  powerful country once again.

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• Italy was lead by fascist dictator Benito
  Mussolini.

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• Japan was led by Emperor Hirohito who was a
  monarch, although Japan also had a prime
  minister, General Hideki Tojo.

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• One way Americans at home helped the war
  effort was by rationing, or using less of certain
  products. This picture shows a line for sugar
  rationing.

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• Many materials were in short supply and
  citizens were asked to conserve and turn in tires
  and metal to be reused by the growing defense
  industry.

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• Another way Americans at home helped the war
  effort was by buying War Bonds. By buying bonds,
  Americans were loaning money to the U.S.
  Government for the war and would be repaid with
  interest.

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• Women helped the war effort by taking over
  factory jobs. This poster features a fictional
  character called Rosie the Riveter that
  represents the women who took over factory jobs
  during WWII.

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• While women were not allowed to fight in
  combat, they joined the military as clerks and
  nurses.

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• Propaganda posters were an important tool for
  all the countries in World War II. This Russian
  poster says, Death to the Fascist Serpent!

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• Most Japanese citizens were forced to live in
  internment camps during World War II, because the
  government was worried they might fight against
  the United States, even though there was no
  evidence of this.

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• The Holocaust
• After their victory, the Allies discovered the
  extent of the hideous Nazi attempt to exterminate
  the Jews and other social "undesirables" such as
  people who were mentally or physically
  handicapped in an effort to purify the German
  "master race." This Nazi policy had been extended
  to all of the countries occupied by German
  armies.

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• The horrors of the Holocaust and the 12
  million killed, including 6 million Jews, was not
  fully known until after the war ended.

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• Tuskegee Airmen-An African-American squadron
  of pilots formed in 1941 they were based in
  Tuskegee, Alabama, and trained at Tuskegee
  Institute.

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• The D-Day invasion across the English
  Channel, June 6, 1944, along the Normandy coast
  in France. In addition to this frontal assault,
  parachute and glider troops were dropped behind
  the German lines during the night before the
  invasion. Hitler, having been tricked into
  believing initially that the Normandy strike was
  a deceptive move to cover a true assault planned
  for Calais, did not at first send reinforcements.
  

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• The three Allied leaders, Winston Churchill
  from Great Britain, Franklin Roosevelt from the
  U.S., and Joseph Stalin from Russia meet at Yalta
  shortly before the end of the war.

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• General Douglas MacArthur going ashore in
  Lingayen Gulf on January 22, 1945. When MacArthur
  landed in Australia after his flight from the
  Philippines in March 1942, he made his famous
  promise, "I will return," and he did return in
  October 1944.

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• Members of the United States Marine Corps raise
  the American flag on Mount Suribachi on February
  23, 1945 after the Battle of Iwo Jima, one of the
  most costly battles of the Pacific campaign
  during World War II. More than 6,000 United
  States Marines fell during the capture of the
  island.

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• It is estimated that at least 100,000 people
  died when the atomic bomb was dropped on
  Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 at least 60,000 died
  when a second bomb exploded over Nagasaki three
  days later, and on August 14 the Japanese agreed
  to surrender.

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• The war finally came to end on August 15, 1945
  when Truman accepted the Japanese surrender.
  This was known as V-J day for Victory over Japan.

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• As with World War I, many places in Europe
  were devastated after the war. This shows the
  aftermath of the war in a city in Germany.

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• Millions of soldiers and civilians were killed
  in World War II

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• The United Nations, or the UN, was officially
  brought into being in 1945. Fifty-one member
  countries approved its charter by October of that
  year. The UN has almost 200 countries now that
  work together to try to keep peace between
  countries.

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• The capital of Germany, Berlin, was divided
  after WWII, with the eastern (communist) half
  controlled by the Soviet Union, and the western
  (free) half controlled by the US, UK, and France.
  In 1948, Russia announced a blockade, cutting off
  all ground access to the city of Berlin. Being
  wholly within Russian-controlled East Germany,
  West Berlin depended upon American supplies for
  its survival. Truman answered this threat by an
  airlift, which began in July 1948 and lasted
  until May 1949, at its height flying in 12,000
  tons of food, fuel and other supplies daily.

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• In the aftermath of the Berlin crisis, the
  U.S. solidified its commitment to containment of
  communism by joining with ten other western
  democracies in the creation of the North Atlantic
  Treaty Organization, NATO, on August 24, 1949

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• A map of Europe after WW II. Territory gained
  by the Soviet Union is in purple territory lost
  by Germany in dark blue and the areas occupied
  by the Allies after the war, red. During the war,
  the Allied powers had agreed only on
  unconditional surrender by Germany. Truman had
  demanded free elections in Eastern Europe, but
  Stalin refused, saying "A freely elected
  government in any of these Eastern European
  countries would be anti-Soviet, and that we
  cannot allow." Neither the U.S. nor its allies
  were willing to go to war over this, so the Iron
  Curtain (a term coined by Winston Churchill)
  divided both Germany and Europe

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• Senator Joseph R. McCarthy raised the
  anti-communist fever in a campaign of
  "red-baiting" has been known since as
  "McCarthyism." Beginning in February 1950,
  McCarthy accused many people of being communists,
  using guilt by association and documentation
  taken out of context to accuse people at all
  levels of government of communism. His
  accusations were made in the public forum of a
  committee hearing where normal courtroom
  protections for witnesses were not observed.

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• In 1945, after World War II, Korea was
  partitioned along the 38th parallel into
  communist and non-communist zones. The communist
  North, supported by the Soviet Union, invaded the
  South in 1950, and under the leadership of the
  United States the UN responded by authorizing its
  member states to aid South Korea. The war ended
  with the country of Korea staying divided into
  North South Korea.

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• The Soviet Union was Cuba's ally, sending
  missiles and other military supplies to Cuba.
  When U.S. spy planes photographed this missile
  site under construction in Cuba in October, 1962,
  Pres. John F. Kennedys advisors suggested that
  the president order a preemptive strike to
  destroy it instead, he informed Soviet premier
  Nikita Khrushchev that the U.S. had established a
  blockade against the shipment of military
  equipment to the island. From October 26 to 28,
  as the U.S.S.R.'s ships headed toward Cuba, it
  looked as if the two superpowers were on the
  brink of nuclear war. Then Khrushchev offered a
  compromise in exchange for a U.S. promise not to
  invade Cuba, he ordered the ships to return to
  Russia and agreed to the removal of the missiles
  and the crisis was averted.

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• The assassinations of Pres. John F. Kennedy in
  1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights
  leader, and Sen. Robert Kennedy, who was running
  for president, in 1968 shocked the nation.

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• The Vietnam War
• American troops were withdrawn in 1973, and
  hostilities ended in 1975 after North Vietnam
  captured the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon,
  ending twelve years of warfare.

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• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the
  leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. The March
  on Washington, shown here, was one of many
  peaceful protests and demonstrations working to
  get equal rights and treatment for African
  Americans.

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• When Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus
  seat to a white man, African Americans in
  Montgomery, Alabama boycotted the bus system,
  often walking instead. A little over a year
  later, the boycott was successful and the bus
  company stopped forcing African Americans to sit
  at the back of the bus.

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• In 1954, the Supreme Court in the Brown vs.
  Board of Education case unanimously ruled that
  segregation in public schools is
  unconstitutional.

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• The NAACP's chief counsel (lawyer), Thurgood
  Marshall, won the case of Brown vs. the Board of
  Education. In 1967, he became the first
  African-American Supreme Court Justice.

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• In the postwar period, beginning in the 1950s,
  television became the world's most popular medium
  for entertainment and education.

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• On July 20, 1969, many families gathered
  around their televisions to watch American
  astronaut Neil Armstrong become the first man to
  walk on the moon. During the Cold War, the United
  States and the U.S.S.R. had been in a space
  race. A Soviet astronaut had been the first
  person in space, so the U.S. was excited to be
  the first to land on the moon.

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• The first personal computers came out in the
  late 1970s-early 1980s. Those early computers
  cost around 10,000.

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• Computers have become more and more powerful
  and prices have dropped as technology improves.
  The Internet, where many people get much of their
  information today, did not become accessible to
  most people until the 1990s.

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• The Persian Gulf War
• In August of 1990, Saddam Hussein of Iraq
  invaded the neighboring oil-rich state of Kuwait,
  but was forced to withdraw after a military
  coalition led by the U.S. defeated Iraqs army
  with a month-long air war and a four-day ground
  campaign in January-February 1991