Transcript The War Ends

The War Ends
The Third Reich Collapses
• Battle of the Bulge
– Winter of ’44 & early ‘45
– Antwerp, Belgium/Cut off supplies
– Hitler’s last attempt
– Capture Bastogne
– Allied aircraft began hitting German fuel
depots
– Lasted more than 3 weeks
– German losses:
• 100,000 causalities & several tanks & aircraft
• Little protection left
V-E Day
“Victory in Europe”
• American & British forces
– Liberate France
• Soviet forces
– Massive attack on Germans in Russia
– February 1945, 35 miles from Berlin
• Together:
– Germany attacked on both fronts
– Rhine River
• Hitler commits suicide April, 1945
– Doenitz surrendered May 7, 1945
– V-E Day May 8, 1945
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV-go1cuzgE
Ludendorff Bridge
Across the Rhine
Japan is Defeated
• April 12, 1945
– Harry S. Truman replaces FDR
– War still raging with Japan
• Invading Japan
– Location of Japan
– B-29s
– Iwo Jima
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Rugged terrain
Rocky cliffs
Concrete bunkers
February 19, 1945
Marines died with greatest violence
“…uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y0gdFisD9k
Firebombing Japan
• B-29s missing targets
– Napalm
– Controversial
– Effort to destroy war production
– March, 1945
– 67 Japanese cities
– No signs of surrendering
– Invade Okinawa
• Closer & bigger
• May, 1945
• Captured by June, 1945
Emperor urged his government to surrender
Manhattan Project
• 1938 Leo Szilard learned that German scientist
had split the uranium atom
• Convinced Einstein to sign a letter to President
Roosevelt
• Skeptical until 1941/met with British
• Leslie Groves & Robert Oppenheimer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfEMnx-Nz-w&feature=fvwrel
Decision to Drop the Bomb
• Mixed feelings
• Truman
– His duty as president to use every available weapon
• August 6th, 1945
– B-29 Bomber Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” on
Hiroshima
– 120 ,000 people died instantly
• August 9th
– “Fat Man” dropped on Nagasaki
– 35,000-74,000 died instantly
– Continuous radiation deaths
• August 15, V-J Day
United Nations
• 1944, 39 countries met
• General Assembly
– Everyone would have one vote
• Security Council
– 11 members
• International peace and security
• Can use military force to uphold resolutions
– 5 permanent members
• G.B, U.S., France, China and Russia
• Veto Power
• Charter created in April, 1945
– Could investigate any international
problem
Putting the Enemy on Trial
• Allied forces created the International Military
Tribunal (IMT)
• Nuremburg Trials in Nuremburg, Germany,
IMT put leaders suspected of war crimes on
trial
• Sentenced to death by hanging
• Prison sentences
• Similar trials in Tokyo
• Part of the plan to create a better world
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsOpcMFkrFs