Transcript World War II

Allied Victory & Post-War Europe
The Tide of War Turns
• Stalin wanted to open a second front in the west
– France or North Africa?
• 1492 – Battle of El Alamein
British Gen.
Bernard
Montgomery
(“Monty”) &
American Gen.
Dwight D.
Eisenhower
vs.
German Gen. Erwin
Rommel (“Desert Fox”)
Allies defeat Rommel’s
Afrika Korps in May
1943
The Battle for Stalingrad
• German advance in Moscow at standstill in 1941
• Aug. 1942 – Hitler sent Sixth Army to capture
Stalingrad (major industrial center)
• Luftwaffe bombed & burned much of the city
• Nov. 19, 1942 – Soviets launched counterattack
• Feb. 2, 1942 – Germans surrendered to Soviets
Italy Surrenders
• FDR & Churchill attacked Italy on July 10, 1943
– Mussolini lost power, arrested
• Sept. 3, 1943 – Italy surrendered
– BUT Germans took northern Italy & put Mussolini
in charge
– Germans later fell to Allies
– Mussolini shot & his body
hung in Milan for all to see
The Home Fronts
• Mobilization for war
• Wartime production of weapons & military
equipment
• Rationing of consumer goods
• Propaganda campaigns
Japanese in the U.S.
• Prejudice against Japanese in U.S. after Pearl
Harbor – Seen as threat to country
• FDR called for Japanese internment camps
Victories in Europe
• 1943 – Allies secretly built up
invasion force = “Operation
Overlord”
– Thousands of planes, ships, tanks
– Three million troops
• Gen. Eisenhower planned to
strike coast of Normandy in
France
– Allies confused Hitler by setting up
make-believe army
Operation Overlord = D-Day Invasion
• June 6, 1944 – largest land & sea attack in history
– Heavy Allied casualties
• Allies eventually succeeded
– Gen. George Patton led Allies against Germans
– Allies marched into Paris & liberated France,
Belgium & Luxembourg from Germany
Battle of the Bulge
• Hitler faced war on two fronts
“This battle is to decide whether we shall live or die…All
resistance must be broken in a wave of terror.”
• Dec. 16, 1944 – Battle of the Bulge
– Allied victory
Germany Surrenders
• Allied marched into Berlin from the east & west
• April 29, 1945 – Hitler & new wife Eva Braun
committed suicide
• May 7, 1945 – Unconditional surrender of the
Third Reich
Victory in the Pacific
• Allies still fighting the Japanese in the Pacific
Theater
• Kamikazes = Japanese suicide pilots
• U.S. victorious at Iwo Jima & Okinawa
Manhattan Project
• Pres. Harry S Truman learned of the
development of a new weapon known as
the atomic bomb
Japanese Surrender
• Aug. 6, 1945 – A-bomb
dropped on Hiroshima
• Aug. 9, 1945 – A-bomb
dropped on Nagasaki
Japanese Surrender
• Japanese surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945
• War had finally ended
Postwar Governments & Politics
• Nuremberg Trials – Nazi war criminals put on trial
before the International Military Tribunal
• U.S. occupied Japan
– Demilitarization – disbanding Japanese armed forces
– Democratization – creating a gov’t elected by the
people (became constitutional monarchy)
Occupation & Reform of Japan
• Emperor not divine, power reduced
• Two-house parliament = the Diet (est. in the Meiji
restoration)
• Citizens over 20 (including women) had right to
vote
• Prime minister chosen by majority in Diet
• Supreme Court
• Constitutional bill of rights protected freedoms
• Formal peace treaty with Japan