Transcript A Second World War History 104 / April 18, 2005 I. Why another war

A Second World War
History 104 / April 15, 2013
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (Aug. 23, 1939)
The Pact divides Poland…
… and acknowledges a Russian sphere of influence (dark blue)
Sept. 1, 1939: Germany invades Poland
Sept. 3, 1939: Britain & France declare war on Germany
“Phony War”: after Poland falls, Britain & France hesitate
Here: French prime minister Éduard Daladier consults warily with officers
France’s Maginot Line: a bunker mentality
The course of the
Maginot Line
Hitler seizes the initiative
April 1940: German occupation of Denmark & Norway
Hitler seizes the initiative
May 1940: the offensive against the Netherlands, Belgium, France
The German advance through the Ardennes forest (right)…
… and the British retreat (left)
Vichy France
WW I hero
Marshal Pétain
(1856-1951)
The Battle of Britain (summer 1940): the RAF prevails
Operation Barbarossa: Hitler
re-orients the war
(June 1941)
Anti-Bolshevik propaganda urging (l.) French workers to
produce, and (r.) Dutch men to fight
Stalingrad: Germany’s Sixth Army encircled
Heaps of German soldiers at Stalingrad
Singapore, 1942: Japan crushes Britain’s imperial power in Asia
Fall 1941: two million Soviet POWs die in German captivity
Germans vs. “partisans”
- punishing individuals
- collective reprisals: entire
villages slaughtered
German soldiers shoot
villagers in
Yugoslavia,
April 1941
German bombings:
Rotterdam, Coventry, London
(and many, many more)
Allied fire-bombing:
many cities, including
Dresden (Feb. 1945)
Allied fire-bombing in Japan: dozens of cities; here: Kobe
The next level: atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki