World War II

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World War II

• The Grand Alliance
• McKay 980-984, Palmer 21.107

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World War II1942-1945
Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
Grand Alliance Formed
Battle of Stalingrad ends (Feb)
Hiroshima Nagasaki A-Bombed (Aug. 6 9)
1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
D-Day June 6
Wannsee Conference declares Final Solution
Atlantic Charter
Yalta Conference (Feb)
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The Grand Alliance

• Grand Alliance led by (GB, US, USSR) 26 other
  nations formed to face the Axis Powers
• Formed after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and US
  declared war
• Unconditional Surrender
• Agreed to the total defeat of the Axis Powers
• All pledged to use all its resources and never
  make a separate peace
• The Big Three
• Stalin, FDR, and Churchill
• US and GB pooled resources under a Combined
  Chiefs of Staff
• Formed overall strategy early (unlike WWI)
• Europe First
• Decided that Germany must be defeated 1st
• Pacific theater would be defensive until Germany
  fell
• Divisive political questions would be postponed
  until the end of the war

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Strengths of Grand Alliance

• US industrial capacity unsurpassed, large
  population united
• Greater Production capacity than all other
  industrial nations combined
• British effectively mobilized economy for total
  war
• High morale
• Soviets had effectively relocated entire
  factories over Urals
• Extremely patriotic (Great Patriotic War of the
  Fatherland)
• Resistance from Nazi occupied territories

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Resistance to the Nazis

• Resistance varied from one occupied country to
  another
• Countries where German soldiers collaborators
  were prominent resistance was minimal
• French Resistance
• Led by General Charles De Gaulle (from England)
• Jean Moulin captured and tortured to death in
  July 43 without revealing names of French
  fighters
• Yugoslavian
• Communist Josip Broz (Tito) led a Serb-Croat
  resistance army of 20 thousand
• Used mountains to hide and harass Germans and
  Italian armies
• Valkyrie (July 44)
• Assassination plot led by Wehrmacht Colonel Claus
  von Stauffenberg to assassinate Hitler at the
  Wolfs Lair (Northern Poland)
• 15 thousand Germans sentenced to death for crimes
  against the state
• Included listening to the BBC
• But most Germans remained loyal to de Fuhrer

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Total War

• British were first government to thoroughly
  mobilize entire British economy society towards
  Total War
• British conscription law brought very little
  resistance
• British armed forces
• 500 thousand in 1939
• 5 million in 1945
• Ordinance Industry
• 7 thousand women in 1939
• 260 thousand in 1945
• British War Cabinet
• Established rationing, higher taxes
• Pants came without cuffs or zippers
• Utilized scientists and engineers to create
  weapons
• Cracked German High Commands communication codes
• British Psychological Warfare Division
• Used psychology to weaken the will of Axis
• Radio and leaflets
• Germany countered with Axis Sally and Tokyo
  Rose

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The War in North Africa

• Italian army invaded North Africa in June of 1940
• By December 1940 Italian army was reeling to
  British
• Hitler sent Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to save
  Italians
• Secondary purpose was to control Suez Canal
  (lifeline of British Empire path to oil fields
  of Middle East)
• Axis decisively defeated at El Alamein in October
  1942
• Operation Torch
• Invasion of Vichy North Africa led by Eisenhower
  (Algeria and Morocco)
• Montgomery launched final counter offensive from
  the east
• Germany was crushed by 5/1943 in Tunisia
• Almost 300 thousand surrendered
• By May 43 Africa was cleared of Axis
• Mediterranean and Suez reopened

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Stalingrad

• Turning point of the War
• Aug. 42 ¼ million German forces began all out
  assault on Stalingrad
• Key transport city of lower Volga
• By Sept. German forces were in the city
• Stalin ordered the city to be held at all costs
• Red Army under General Zhukov organized a
  counteroffensive and enveloped the German army
• Only 120,000 German soldiers were left to
  surrender in Feb 43
• Number of Russians killed is unknown
• Red Army was now an offensive army

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The Battle of Stalingrad
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Invasion of Italy

• Allies used North Africa as launching pad for
  invasion of Europes Soft Underbelly
• Took Sicily (July-Aug. 43)
• King Victor Emmanuel III fired Mussolini and
  ordered his arrest
• Rescued by German commandos in Sept.
• Set up Italian Social Republic in northern
  Italy but only existed with German soldiers
• Marshal Badoglio made peace overtures to the
  Allies but German army occupied Italy
• Allies invaded Italy in Sept. 1943
• Monte Cassino
• German army well fortified inside a 6th century
  monastery
• Combined American, Polish, and Canadian forces
  finally overtook them in May 1944
• US troops took Rome June 4, 1944
• Mussolini fell 4/1945 was captured trying to
  flee the country and executed

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Normandy Invasion

• Stalin had clamored for a second front since
  1942
• Believed USSR was taking brunt of German attacks
• Hitler believed attack would be on Pas- de-Calais
  (closest French port)
• Festung Europa
• Beaches around France were heavily fortified
• Atlantic Wall
• Included underwater mines, Belgian Sticks,
  reinforced pill boxes, Rommel Asparagus
• Amphibious attack posed exceptional challenges
• German victory hinged on rapid reinforcement of
  tanks and troops
• Allies utilized feinting tactics
• Other challenges
• air superiority, 4, 000 transport ships, 10
  thousand aircraft, engineering materials
  (artificial harbors, pontoon ramp system),
  unpredictable weather of English Channel

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D-Day (June 6, 1944)

• Massive amphibious invasion (Second Front) on
  beaches of Normady France
• Germans expected main thrust of invasion at
  Calais
• Under the command of Eisenhower 130 thousand
  Canadian, British, American forces landed 1st day
• Built 3 makeshift harbors
• 1.3 million troops landed within a 7 weeks
• Paris liberated on August 25
• French, Italian, and Belgian Resistance movements
  emerged

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D-Day
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Battle of the Bulge

• Hitlers last offensive
• Battle of the Bulge
• Hitler threw remaining armored forces against the
  Allies in the Ardennes in Dec. 44
• Successful at 1st but Allies rebounded
• V1 and V2 rockets (Buzz Bomb) and new
  Messerschmitt jet terrorized London
• But Germanys time was running out
• 3/1945 Allied forces crossed the Rhine

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The Eastern Front

• Soviet army was pushing west and reclaiming
  territory lost early in the war
• Allowed youth of Warsaw Uprising (Aug. 44) and
  democracy to be crushed by Nazis
• 66 Day house-to-house fighting by Polish youth
• Stalin had already destroyed Polish army
  leadership at Katyn forest in 43
• Feb 45 General Zhukov reached the Oder River
• Red army was 50 miles from Berlin

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The Final Drive on Germany

• April 1945 American troops reached the Elbe
• 60 miles from Berlin
• Soviets were permitted to take Berlin, Prague,
  and other central and eastern European capitals
• Eisenhower
• Directed troops south in case of guerilla attacks
• Gesture of goodwill to Soviets for their
  sacrifice
• Hitler married Eva Braun and committed suicide
  April 30, 1945
• Admiral Doenitz, Hitlers successor offered
  Germanys unconditional surrender (5/8/1945)

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The Final Solution

• Final Solution was Hitler and Nazi high command
  decision to eliminate Jews and other untermenchen
  in Europe
• Part of Hitlers New Order program
• Began in late 30s with the murder by lethal
  injection, and gas truck of Germans who were
  mentally deficient and handicapped (70 thousand)
• 350 thousand other Germans considered deficient
  were sterilized (alcoholics, homosexuals,
  schizophrenics)
• Heinrich Himmler
• carried out Final Solution
• Leader of the SS
• special army of 1 million ardent Nazi soldiers
  used to carry out the Holocaust
• Former chicken farmer who was obsessed with
  medieval Germany
• Slavs included in Himmlers untermenchen
  category
• Planned to clear Eastern Europe of at least 30
  million slavs to make room for Germans

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The Final Solution

• A gradual process of bureaucratized,
  industrialized mass murder
• Nuremberg Laws had stripped Jews of civil rights
• Germanys invasion of Poland brought Nazis in
  contact with 3 million Eastern Jews
• Ghettoization
• After WWII began Jews were systematically
  deported to small sections of Polish cities
  (Warsaw, Krakow)
• Rancid and extremely overcrowded conditions
• Einsatzgruppen
• SS-led death squads followed German regular army
  and systematically murdered Jews, Gypsies, and
  Slavs by machine gun, starvation, etc.
• Whole villages in Eastern Europe were razed and
  inhabitants murdered or deported

Source German Soldier who witnessed Kaunas
pogrom was the so-called "Death dealer of Kaunas
in June 1941 "A young man--he must have been a
Lithuanian-...with rolled up sleeves was armed
with an iron crowbar. He dragged out one man at a
time from the group and struck him with the
crowbar with one or more blows on the back of his
head. Within three-quarters of an hour he had
beaten to death the entire group of forty to
fifty people in this way. I had a series of
photographs of the victims...After the entire
group had been beaten to death, the young man put
the crowbar to one side, fetched an accordion and
went and stood on the mountain of corpses and
played the Lithuanian national anthem. I
recognized the tune and was informed by
bystanders that this was the national anthem. The
behaviour of the civilians present (women and
children) was unbelievable. After each man had
been killed, they began to clap and when the
national anthem started up they joined the
singing and clapping. In the front row there were
women with small children in their arms who
stayed there right until the end of the whole
proceedings. I found out from some people who
knew German what was happening here. They
explained to me that the parents of the young man
who had killed the other people had been taken
from their beds two days earlier and immediately
shot, because they were suspected of being
nationalists, and this was the young man's
revenge.".34
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The Final Solution

• The Final Solution was decided by Nazi
  executives at Wannsee, Poland in Jan. 42
• Rate of murder dramatically rose as German army
  began to lose battles
• Auschwitz
• Most horrific concentration camp
• Both a work and death camp
• Jews and others transported on cattle cars
• Selection Process
• Nazi doctors inspected arrivals and quickly
  decided who went left or right
• Left immediate death in gas chamber
• Right slow death as a slave laborer
• 12 thousand gassed per day
• Bodies were checked for silver, gold and then
  burned in crematoria
• Gallows stood in open courtyard where prisoners
  stood for hours everyday during roll call
• 6 million Jews
• 3 million Poles
• 80 Russian POW

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The Final Solution

• Auschwitz Is Block 10 was used to conduct
  horrific experiments
• Headed Dr. Josef Mengele
• The Angel of Death
• Performed grotesque experiments on over 3
  thousand twins
• Performed autopsies on life patients without
  anesthesia
• Tried to change eye color
• Injected patients with various chemicals
• Only 100 pairs survived

Block 10 of Auschwitz I where medical experiments
were performed
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Auschwitz-Birkenau
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Push towards Japan

• From Guadalcanal Americans began to Island Hop
  northward toward Japan
• March 1945 took 8 square mile strategic island of
  Iwo Jima after heavy loses
• Took Okinawa after brutal 2.5 months in spring of
  45
• Only 300 miles from Japanese main islands
• Japanese fought harder the closer Americans came
  to Japan
• Began all-out air campaign from newly won
  territory to destroy Japanese industry
• Plan for full-scale invasion of Japan were being
  drawn up

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The Atomic Bomb

• Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima 8/6/45
• 78 thousand killed and thousands of others were
  wounded or suffered radiation exposure
• Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded
  Manchuria 8/8
• Nagasaki was struck 8/9
• 9/2/45 Japan signed unconditional surrender on
  the Missouri
• Emperor Hirohito remained head of state but Japan
  under occupation of US army under MacArthur

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World War II (1939-1945)

• Greatest conflict in human history
• 50-70 million total deaths
• 25 million wounded
• 15 million military deaths
• USSR- 6
• German- 3.5
• Chinese- 2.2
• Japanese- 1.3
• Polish 700 thousand
• GB- 400
• US 300
• French 200
• 40-50 million civilian deaths
• 25 million Russian