Transcript The United States and World War II

The United States and World War II
Chapter 17 Section 2
The War for Europe and North Africa
The United States and Britain Join Forces
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“On the same boat”
Remarkable alliance
Churchill spent three weeks at White House
working out war plans
Germany and Italy posed a bigger threat
Strike first against Hitler
 More resources for Pacific
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Relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill
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“It is fun to be in the same decade as you.”
Roosevelt and Churchill
Battle of the Atlantic
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After Pearl Harbor, Hitler ordered submarine
raids against American ships along the east coast
Germans wanted to prevent food and supplies
from reaching Britain and Soviet Union
Within first 7 months of 1942, Germans sank
681 Allied ships off the Atlantic
Battle of the Atlantic continued…
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Convoys for mutual protection
Escorted with destroyers equipped with sonar
and airplanes with radar
Allies could now find and destroy German Uboats faster
At same time, building ships (140 Liberty ships)
By mid 1943, the tide had turned
Battle of the Atlantic continued…
Battle of Stalingrad
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Germans had been fighting in the Soviet Union
since 1941
Winter stopped Germans outside Leningrad and
Moscow
When spring came, Germans were ready to roll
Hitler wanted to wipe out Stalingrad, a major
industrial center
Battle of Stalingrad continued…
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Luftwaffe prepared the way with nightly
bombing raids over the city
Nearly every building in Stalingrad was set on
fire
Soviet officers in Stalingrad suggested blowing
up city’s factories and abandoning
Stalin wanted his namesake defended no matter
the cost
Battle of Stalingrad continued…
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For weeks, German pressed on in Stalingrad, conquering it
house by house in brutal hand-to-hand combat
By end of September, they controlled nine-tenths of the city
Another winter set in, the Soviets saw this opportunity to begin a
massive counterattack
Trapped Germans in the city, cutting off their supply. Hitler
ordered them to stay.
Germans surrendered
Soviets lost 1,100,000 soldiers defending Stalingrad
Turning point of the war; Soviets began to move toward
Germany
Battle of Stalingrad continued…
The North African Front
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Operation Torch, an invasion of Axis-controlled North
Africa
Commanded by Dwight D. Eisenhower
Chased German forces led by General Erwin Rommel,
the legendary Desert Fox
After months of fighting, the last of the Afrika Korps
surrendered
It was a colossal defeat of the Germans, now the Allies
could focus all attention of German troops in Europe
The North African Front continued…
The Italian Campaign
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Captured Sicily in summer of 1943
Stunned by their army’s defeat, the Italian government
forced Mussolini to resign
Mussolini arrested and executed
Hitler still determined to stop Allies in Italy, rather than
fight on German soil
“Bloody Anzio” 40 miles from Rome
Lasted four months
55,000 casualties
Italy did not collapse until the Germans did in 1945
The Italian Campaign continued…
Heroes In Combat
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Italian campaign
All-black 99th Pursuit Squadron-Tuskegee
Airmen
First victory in Sicily
Won two distinguished Unit Citations for
outstanding aerial combat against the Luftwaffe
Many other decorated black, Mexican and
Japanese American units
D-Day
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Nearly 3 million American, British and Canadian troops
under Eisenhower’s direction
Eisenhower planned to attack Normandy in northern
France
To keep plans secret, the Allies set up a huge phantom
army with its own headquarters and equipment
In radio messages they knew Germans could read, the
commanders send orders to this make-believe army to
attack the French port of Calais (150 miles away)
Therefore, Hitler kept a large army at Calais
D-Day continued…
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First day of D-Day invasion was June 6, 1944
Three divisions of paratroopers parachuted
down behind enemy lines
Followed by thousands of seaborne soldiers; the
LARGEST land-sea-air operation in army
history
German retaliation was brutal; particularly at
Omaha Beach (Saving Private Ryan)
D-Day continued…
“People were yelling, screaming, dying, running
on the beach, equipment was flying everywhere,
men were bleeding to death, crawling, lying
everywhere, firing coming from all directions.
We dropped down behind anything that was the
size of a golf ball.”
Felix Branham 116th Infantry 29th Division
D-Day continued…
The Allies Gain Ground
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Despite heavy casualties, the Allies held the beaches
After seven days of fighting, the Allies regained control
of an 80 mile strip in France
After one month, they had landed one million troops,
567,000 tons of supplies and 170,000 vehicles in France
At the end of July, General Omar Bradley unleashed a
massive air and land attack in St. Lô to help General
George Patton’s Third Army advance
With the help of a French resistance movement, The
Third Army liberated Paris after four years of
occupation
The Allies Gain Ground continued…
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By September 1944, Allies freed France,
Belgium and Luxemburg
Roosevelt elected to a fourth term with Senator
Harry S. Truman as running mate
“Change horses in the middle of a race”
Battle of the Bulge
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October 1944, Americans captured their first German
town (Aachen)
Hitler responded with a last-gasp offensive
Ordered troops to break through the Allied lines and
recapture a Belgian port to block Allied supplies
December, under a dense fog, eight German tanks
broke through American lines
Tanks drove sixty miles, creating a bulge in Allied lines
Battle of the Bulge
Captured and executed 120 American GIs
Battle raged for a month: Germans lost 120,000
soldiers, 600 tanks and 1,600 planes—a decisive turn in
the war—Nazis retreated
Battle of the Bulge continued…
Battle of the Bulge continued…
Liberation of the Death Camps
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Allies continued to press into the German heartland,
while Soviets pushed into Poland toward Berlin
Soviet troops were the first to liberate the concentration
camps
SS guards worked to cover up all evidence in Majdanek
They found starving prisoners barely alive, the world’s
largest crematorium and storehouse containing nearly
one million shoes
Liberation of the Death Camps
“We started smelling a terrible odor and suddenly
we were at the concentration camp. Forced the
gate and faced hundreds of starving prisoners.
We saw emaciated men whose thighs were
smaller than wrists, many had bones sticking out
of their skin. Also we saw hundreds of burned
and naked bodies. That evening I wrote my wife
that ‘For the first time I truly realized the evil of
Hitler and why this war had to be waged.’
Quoted in voices
letters from World War II
Liberation continued…
Unconditional Surrender
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By April of 1945, The Soviet army had stormed Berlin
Hitler prepared for the end in his bunker
Wrote a letter to the German people blaming the Jews for
starting the war and his generals for losing it
Shot himself, wife took poison
In accordance with his orders, the bodies were carried
outside, soaked with gasoline and burned
One week later, General Eisenhower accepted the
unconditional surrender of the Third Reich
May 8, 1945 is V-E Day
President Roosevelt did not live to see V-E Day
Harry S. Truman became the nation’s 33rd president
Roosevelt’s Death