Transcript Pushing the Axis Back

Pushing the Axis Back
Striking Back at The Third Reich
• After the first large Allied invasion of the war
in North Africa were very successful,
Roosevelt decided it was time to meet with
Churchhill again to plan the next phases of
the war
• At the Casablanca Conference, Roosevelt
and Churchhill agreed to step up the
bombing of Germany. The goal of this
bombing was to destroy the infrastructure of
Germany and crush the peoples morale.
Churchill called Italy the “soft underbelly” of
Europe and was convinced the Italians would
surrender if their homeland was invaded.
Strategic Bombing
• The allies had been bombing Germany for three
years by this point in the war dropping 2,300 tons
of explosives every month-the United States joined
and dropped an additional 1,500 tons by the end of
the year
• This bombing was minor compared to the new
campaign. Between January 1943 and May 1945,
the Royal Air Force and the United States dropped
approximately 53,000 tons of explosives on
Germany every month. It did not destroy the
economy or the peoples morale, but it did cause oil
shortages and destroyed so many aircraft factories
that Germany was unable to re-supply its airforcethis would create air supremacy for the allies
Striking at the Soft Underbelly
• As the bombing campaign increased against
Germany, the invasion of Sicily moved
ahead as well.
• General Dwight D. Eisenhower was placed in
overall command of the invasion. General
Patton and General Montgomery of England
controlled the troops on the ground.
• In July of 1943, despite bad weather the
Allied troops made it ashore with few
causalties. A new vehicle the DUKW an
amphibious truck-proved to very effective at
bringing in supplies nad artillery to troops on
beaches
Striking at the Soft Underbelly
• Eight days later Patton’s troops smashed through enemy lines
and captured the western half of the country-while his troops
advanced Montgomery’s took the southern half-by August the
Germans had evacuated
• Soon the Italian government collapsed-Mussolini was arrestedin September the Italian government announced their
surrender
• However Hitler was not ready to surrender and his troops
attacked from the North taking Rome and putting Mussolini
back into power
• The allies would have to take this territory back. Allied troops
landed behind enemy lines in Anzio. The German troops were
not surprised and surrounded the allies. It took five months to
break through the German lines at Cassino and Anzio.
Fighting would continue until May of 1945. This campaign was
one of the bloodiest of the war costing the allies 300,000 lives.
Roosevelt Meets Stalin at Tehran
• Roosevelt met with Stalin before the
invasion of France. In late 1943
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met in
Tehran, Iran
• They agreed to several things-Soviets
would attack German’s after invasion
of France; Break up Germany after the
war; Defeat Japan; create organization
to keep peace
Landing in France
• Churchill and Roosevelt met in Egypt to
plan the invasion-the first decision was
to chose the leader of the campaign.
Most expected George Marshall to lead
the invasion, however Roosevelt
depended on him for military advice.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was chosen to
lead the greatest military invasion in
history. This invasion would be named
Operation Overlord
Planning Operation Overlord
• The Germans realized that eventually the
Allies would invade-they heavily fortified the
coast of France
• However the allies advantage was surprisethe Germans did not know when or where
the invasion would be-they considered the
most reasonable place was Pas-de-Calaisthe area closest to France-to convince the
Germans they were right the allies placed
inflated tanks, tents and landing craft along
the coast of Calais-to German spy planes the
decoys looked real-the Germans were fooled
and would not realize the actual target was
Normandy
Planning Operation Overlord
• By the spring of 1944 everything was ready-over
1.5 million soldiers, 12,000 airplanes and more than
5 million tons of equipment had been sent to
England.
• The only thing left was to pick the date and give the
command to go. The invasion would begin at night
and arrive at low tide so that beach obstacles could
be seen. The low tide had to come at dawn so the
gunners bombarding the coast could see their
target. Before the landing paratroopers would be
dropped behind enemy lines. A date would have to
be chosen when all of the conditions could be met.
Bad weather would be disastorous to the mission.
Planning Operation Overlord
• Given all of these conditions there were only
a few days each month that the mission
could be launched. The first opportunity was
between June 5-7, 1944. Eisenhower’s staff
referred to any day that a mission began by
the letter D. The date for invasion became
known a D-Day. Bad weather made June 5th
impossible, the next day the weather
improved slightly. Eisenhower had to make
a difficult decision and finally decided to
move forward with the invasion.
The Longest Day
• Nearly 7,000 ships carried more than 100,000 troops torwards
the beaches, while 23,000 paratroopers were dropped behind
enemy lines on June 6, 1944. Allied bomber and fighter
planes raced up and down the coast hitting bridges, bunkers,
and radar sites. As dawn broke warships let loose with a
massive barrage of shells down on five beaches code namedGold, Omaha, Juno, Sword, Utah
• The landing went well at Utah with only 200 troops being lostwithin three hours the beach had been taken-however at
Omaha things went horribly wrong-An evacuation was almost
ordered at this beach as men were killed by the thousandsAmazingly the tide slowly turned and when reinforcements
arrived the German defenses broke and the beach was taken.
By the end of the day over 100,000 allied troops had landed
and the invasion was a major success.