Transcript Invasion of Western Europe - Valley View School District

Invasion of Western
Europe
Operation Overlord
Marshall, top American General and Chief
of Staff to FDR wanted a massive attack
on Germany through France.
 The invasion code name was Operation
Overlord, the Allies began a massive
military buildup in southern England. They
were supported by French, Polish, Dutch
and Belgian troops. The operation was
kept top secret.

D-Day, my B-Day






Took place on June 6, 1944
Surprise attack started at night
RAF pounded German defenses in Normandy
Allies parachuted behind enemy lines
More than 150,000 soldiers landed on the
beaches
Allies suffered heavy casualties, but the
operation was a success
France is Liberated!!
A month after the D-Day millions of allied
troops occupied France.
 General Patton and his troops destroyed
bridges stopping German troops from
bringing in reinforcements.
 With the Allied forces and internal
resistance in France, the country would be
liberated by the end of August.

The day of the bulge
Hitler was intense on keeping and defending his
conquests
 He reinforced his army with 1,000’s of draftees,
some as young as 15.
 Hitler’s troops trounced on the allies forcing
them back and causing a bulge in the allied
lines.
 Many American forces were cut off from the rest
of the army, but in weeks the allied forces would
restart their drive.

Battle of the Bulge
The Battle of the Bulge was the largest
battle in western Europe during WW II,
and the largest fought by Americans. It
involved more than 600,000 GI’s of which
80,000 were killed
 After the battle, Nazi leaders recognized
that the war may be over

Soviet forces push on
Like the battle of Stalingrad, Soviet
soldiers fought hard for he capture of
Berlin.
 As the Soviet troops surrounded the city
of Berlin, Hitler refused to take the advice
and flee the city. Instead he commits
suicide in an underground bunker.
 A few days later the rest of the German
soldiers will retreat

The Yalta Yalta Conference
Months before the fall of Berlin Churchill, Stalin
and FDR met at Yalta, a city in the Soviet Union
 At the conference they discussed post war
Germany. Decided to split Germany into 4 zones
each under the control of the major allies as well
as Berlin
 Stalin goes against the agreement and refuses
to hold open and democratic elections, FDR and
Churchill get a lot of slack for the agreement

The Holocaust
Anti-Semitism is hatred and hostility
against the Jews. They were blamed for
the countries economic problems and
hardships
 The Holocaust was the systematic murder
of European Jews, roughly 6 million, about
2/3rds of Europe’s Jewish population
would lose their lives.

Who’s a Jew??
Nuremberg laws stripped Jews of their
citizenry
A Jew was defined as a person who had
three or four Jewish grandparents
regardless of their religion.
Jews were forced to sew yellow stars on
their clothes to represent being a Jew.

Hitler’s Police
The Gestapo was Hitler’s secret police
 The SS were an elite guard group
responsible for guarding the concentration
camps
 Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass,
almost every synagogue was destroyed,
all Jewish shops etc.

Jews seek refuge
As the violence grew against Jews some 130,000
fled Germany seeking refuge in neighboring
European countries.
 As the numbers grew, many sought refuge in
the US, and Latin America
 FDR held the Evian Conference in France to
discuss the infiltration of Jews. Of the 32 nations
present, only the Dominican Republic agreed to
open their doors to immigrants.

The first method
Many of the Jews that fled Germany would
end up in the control of Hitler when he
invaded other countries, mostly Poland.
 Plans for dealing with the Jews first
started with the establishment of ghettos,
usually surrounded by barbed-wired
fences, Jews were forced to pick up their
lives and live in these cruel conditions.

The Warsaw Ghetto
In Warsaw, 400,000 Jews were rounded
up, almost 30% of the capital’s population
in a living area of only 3%
 They received little food, were subjected
to overcrowding and lack of sanitation
 Thousands died in the Ghetto, but the
Nazi’s were looking for a more proficient
way to get rid of the problem.

Murder moves to Genocide
Hitler ordered the Einsatzgruppen, a
mobile killing squad to shoot communist
officials and Jews living in Germanoccupied territory
 They were rounded up and drove to
freshly dug graves, and shot there. In
Babi Yar alone, 33,000 Jews were
murdered in two days, the genocide
begins!

The final solution to the Jewish
question
At the Wannsee Conference, Nazi officials
met to discuss a better method to come to
the final solution.
 They came up with genocide, or deliberate
destruction of an entire ethnic group, this
would lead to the construction camps.

Most effective way to kill
Zyklon B proved the most efficient killer,
the first “shower” was built at Auschwitz in
Poland, they were known as death camps,
not concentration camps.
 Prisoners were told they were going to the
east to work, rounded in cattle cars, put in
lines, did hard labor or were gassed. Life
expectancy in the camp was a few months

The Horror of the camps
Hard labor included taking the bodies from
the gas chambers to the crematoriums
 They were tattooed, malnourished, and
tortured.
 The amounts of death at these camps
were staggering. In one day at Auschwitz,
12,000 could be gassed and cremated

Fighting Back
There were some uprisings in the camps,
however they were quickly crushed by the
Germans. The most successful was the riot at
Treblinka, that caused it to close down from all
the damage.
 Every so often someone would escape and
return to the ghettos to give word of the death
camps. At the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jews held off
Germans for 27 days armed with little more than
hand guns and homemade grenades.

Rescue and Liberation
The United States knew of the death camps as
early as 1942. Many were uninterested at first.
 FDR would create the WRB (War Refugee
Board) to help people fighting persecution.
Although it was late funding from the WRB
enabled Sweden to issue special Swedish
passports to the Jews and saved 200,000 lives.
The US however refused to open their borders
wider, in fact their immigration quota was not
even met

Liberation finally comes
When the news of liberation came to the camps,
Nazi soldiers marched the prisoners on death
marchers back onto German territory.
Thousands died too weak to even walk.
 The United States was first witnessed to this
horror
 Prior to liberation, Belzec and Treblinka were
closed the annihilation of the Jews was almost
complete
 Days before Hitler commits suicide (may 7 1945)
FDR will die of a cerebral hemorrhage and
Truman will take over

Years later
Treblinka and Belzec were burned and
turned into farm land but soldiers still
found bodies protruding from the ground
 Those who were liberated normally died
days later
 The Nazis had killed 12 million people

Responsible for your own actions
The Nuremburg Trials were composed of
members from the US, France, GB and SV
 There were 24 defendants, 12 received
the death penalty
 Most important thing it did was hold
people responsible for their actions, could
not just say “I was Following Orders.”

War in the Pacific
The Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, Clark
Field were efforts to remove the US from the
war so they could gain the needed natural
resources in Southeast Asia.
 In 1942 there was the Battle of the Coral Sea,
northeast of Australia. The battle was a draw
between America and Japanese forces but
stopped Japan from taking Australia

The Battle of Midway
Japanese forces tried to take the Midway
Islands, it resulted in the first major
defeat of the Japanese navy
 Even with the success of Midway,
Japanese had a strong hold on the Pacific
 In an effort to cut this the United States
utilized island hopping, a strategy in which
captured key islands and cut off Japanese
supply lines

Battle in the Pacific
The first step for the Allies in taking Tokyo was
the Battle of Guadalcanal, located on the
Solomon Islands, where Japanese were building
an airfield.
 The battle lasted six months, when 11,000
Marines landed on the island, the 2,200
Japanese soldiers retreated into the jungle
 First time for jungle warfare for Marines,
became easy targets for Japanese snipers
 The battle would be fought by land, air and sea,
and be a US victory

Kamikazes and Iwo Jima
The war became deadlier as Allied troops made
their way to Japan.
 Japanese implemented kamikazes, suicide pilots
who flew bomb-laden planes into American
ships, they scored 279 US vessels and American
Marines suffered 20,000 casualties
 One of the bloodiest battles took place on Iwo
Jima, for 74 days the US pounded the island
with bullets and bombs, Marines landed on the
beaches with 110,000 troops yet it took a month
to secure the island. Japanese fought almost
until the last man, 216 were left, from 25,000

Battle of Okinawa






Fought from April to June was just as bloody as Iwo
Jima
Little than 350 miles from Japan, it was the last obstacle
to the Allies invasion of Japan
Many of the 100,000 Japanese soldiers pledged to fight
until death
Allies gathered over 180,000 ground troops, thousands
of warships
They were attacked by kamikazes, and attacks were
soldiers would kill as many defenders as possible before
dying themselves
US lost 50,000 soldiers while the Japanese only had
7,000 left
The Manhattan Project
The US knew that the end of the war
would be costly to US lives, the Manhattan
Project was a top secret organized by FDR
to develop an atomic bomb, the idea was
sent by a physicist who fled Germany
 In 1945 the first atomic bomb was
dropped in the desert of New Mexico

Alternatives to dropping the bomb
The bomb was completed now the decision was
to be made on if they should drop it on Japan
 Alternatives:

– 1. massive invasion of Japan costing millions of US
lives
– 2. a naval blockade starving Japan along with
conventional bombing
– 3. a demonstration of the bomb on a deserted island
to pressure Japan into surrender
– 4. a softening of unconditional surrender of Japan
Final Decision
It was ultimately up to Truman who had
only been in office 3 months
 Japan had continually refused surrender
throughout the war, and the US had
already lost thousands of casualties
 He had no problem deciding to drop the
bomb, he said “You should do your
weeping at Pearl Harbor,” meant for the
critics

The Devastation





August 6, 1945 an atomic bomb destroyed 60
percent of Hiroshima, a major industrial city
Even after the first bomb was dropped, Japan
refused to surrender
On August 9th, dropped a second bomb on
Nagasaki, causing almost as much destruction
as the first
Took 150,000 Japanese lives
Japan will accept American terms of surrender
and asks for peace, the surrender will take place
on the Missouri, a battleship in the Pacific
The War at Home





In the US African Americans were fighting
desperately to gain equality
Laws were passed in the North to open
employment to all people regardless of race, or
ethnicity
African Americans experienced violent
discrimination, riots etc.
People were afraid of losing jobs or having to be
equal
African American soldiers were also victim to
discrimination
Africans and Mexicans
African Americans set up the Double V
campaign, first V for victory against the axis
powers and the other against equality at home
 Congress of Racial Equality-nonviolent methods
to end racism, such as sit-ins
 A shortage in farm help brought on immigration
from Mexico

– Braceros were Mexican farm laborers who lived in
barrios, or Spanish speaking neighborhoods. They
were called “Zoot-suiters” because of their dress and
were normally beat up by sailors and locals
Japanese Americans
After Pearl Harbor, 110,000 Japanese
Americans were moved from their homes
to detention centers
 They had only 48 hours to pack their lives
up and move
 Most did not rebel
 They were put in internment camps, or
confined to camps in remote areas far
from the coast

Challenges of Treatment
Some Japanese challenged these actions
Korematsu v. United States, where they said it
was a military necessity
 Later, almost 40 years, surviving internees were
given 20,000 dollars for their losses
 Up until 1943, Japanese Americans were not
allowed into the military, when they finally were
they volunteered in the thousands to prove their
patriotism
 They won more medals for bravery than any
other unit in the US


New Inventions
DDT- an agent to control insects and
made jungle fighting more tolerable was
developed, bazookas were developed to
help destroy tanks, as well as radar
 The economy was jump started from the
war effort, thousands of jobs were created
