Transcript World War II

1939-1945
http://www.historyonthenet.com/Lessons/worksheets/ww2.htm
 Germany



used “Blitzkrieg” – or lightening war
Planes bombed airfields, factories, towns, etc.
Then tanks and troops roared into the country
Motorized high speed “keep enemy off balance
 Poland
was conquered within a month
 Soviet forces took control of

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and part of Finland
1939-1945
1939-1945
Two days later
Britain & France
declared war
• So begins the phase
of the war called the
“phony war”
• Coalition Forces wait
at the “impenetrable
defensive barrier”
Maginot Line where
all was quiet
• Why did the Allied
•
forces not go on the
offensive?
Maginot Line
http://www.history.com/shows/wwii-in-hd/interactives/inside-wwii-interactive
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
history/worldwars/wwt
wo/launch_ani_fall_fra
nce_campaign.shtml

1)
2)
3)
4)
April 1940, launched
blitzkrieg against:
Norway
Denmark
Netherlands
Belgium
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=FddKPGE19wA&fe
ature=relmfu
Miracle of Dunkirk


Germans pushed all
French/British troops to
the coastline
British sent an
improvised armada to
rescue trapped soldiers
in France
 Germany
heads toward Paris!
 Benito Mussolini of Italy put his Pact of Steel with
Hitler into action
 Italy declared war against France and Britain on June
10
 June 22, 1940 – French surrender
 a new government formed by Marshal Philippe Petain
(France's hero of World War I) requested an armistice
 France was divided into two zones, one under German
military occupation and the other under Petain's
government (south)
 Petain’s government was Hitler’s “puppet”

Becomes known as Vichy France
 Charles
de Gaulle – French
general, set up a
government in exile in
London.
 Committed to reconquering France.
 Organized Free French
military who battled the
Nazis until France was
liberated in 1944.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi7mcJCOWp4
 Air
power takes prominent role
 Luftwaffe- German air force
 Parachute troops role increases
 Tanks were much improved from WWI
 Deadlier bombs
 Radar – to detect planes
 Sonar – to detect submarines
 Hitler
now turned his attention to Britain,
 invasion (Operation Sea Lion) German planes bombed
Britain throughout the summer of 1940
 including night raids on London and other industrial
centers

Known as the “London Blitz”
 8/12/1940
– air attacks on southern England
 Germans bombed London for 57 nights
 Considered a failure because British did not quit
 Continued until May 10,1941
 The Royal Air Force (RAF) eventually defeated the
Luftwaffe (German Air Force)
 Hitler turns his attention out of Britain onto the
Eastern Front
Winston Churchill
What is
Churchill’s
prediction if they
lose to the Nazi
army?
-End of the free
world
Prime Minister who
rallied Britain to fight
against Nazi
aggression
“voice of calm”
Churchill rallies the British
http://www.history.com/shows/wwii-inhd/interactives/inside-wwii-interactive
Britain began receiving crucial
aid from the U.S. under the
Lend-Lease Act, passed by
Congress in early 1941.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/world_war2/
 Hitler’s
goal: continue expanding German
property….



East of the Balkans
Mediterranean Sea
SOVIET UNION
 Mussolini
takes North Africa in September
of 1940 while the Battle of Britain was
going on.
 Attacked British controlled Egypt.
 Egypt’s Suez Canal near Cairo = key to
reaching oil fields of the Middle East
 Britain strikes back in December and by
February 1941
 Italy needs help…
 Hitler
lends help to Mussolini
 Germans come in with the Afrika Korps
 German expeditionary force in Libya and
Tunisia
 its first commander Erwin Rommel “Desert
Fox”
 Seize Tobruk (Libya)= loss for the
Allies
http://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm
?guidAssetId=107BDA7D-6E12-4F41-9E4C7D21F651A6CC
The Axis power
grows..



Bulgaria
Hungary
Romania
 Greece
and Yugoslavia
had pro-British
governments
 Resist Hitler
 Hitler invades them
These nations mostly
devote resources and
political alliance to
the Nazis
• They deport Jews
to Poland
• The employ secret
police forces
• They become
puppet
governments
 1941
go get the USSR!!!
 The Soviet Union was their allies…Why invade?

Plentiful Soviet resources!
 Stalin
had the largest army in the world but it
wasn’t prepared!

3 million Germans caught Stalin’s 5 million unprepared
 Soviets

retreated
Used “torch-earth policy”
 Nazis
invade the
Soviet Union
 Jewish population of
3 million
 Hitler issues infamous
“Commissar Order”
 SS Einsatzgruppen
follow advance of
German Army
“Liquidate all Communist
officials you encounter!




SS “Special Action Groups”
organized in early years of
war by Reinhard Heydrich
Heydrich organized 4 large
groups (A,B,C,D) in Soviet
Union
Competition between group
leaders to see who could
kill the most Jews
1,300,000 Russian Jews
killed by end of war by
these “mobile killing units”
EINSATZ AREA OF OPERATIONS
 German’s


surrounded Leningrad
Starved them
USSR lost 2.5 million troops
 Next
moved towards Moscow, the capital of the
Soviet Union!


Germans were halted by Russia’s cold weather
October 1941
Germany fails to take Moscow!
 Germans
want oil fields in the Caucuses
“Liquidate all Communist
officials you encounter!
capital
oil
 End
of Neutrality Acts
 Lend-Lease Act (1941)


Selling or lending of war
materials to countries “Vital to
US defense”
United States of America
supplied Britain, Soviet Union,
China, Free France, and other
Allied nations
 Atlantic

Charter (Aug. 1941)
FDR and Churchill agree on:


Free trade and the right of people to
CHOOSE their government
“Final destruction of Nazi tyranny”











43 min Dunkirk
49 min Pearl Harbor
52 min Afrika Campaign
55 min Battle of Stalingrad
58 min D-day
1 hour France is free
1 hour 4 min The Big Three Meetagree invasion of mainland Japan
1 hour 7 min Germany surrenders
1 hour 11 min – May 13 1945
Churchill proclaims war is over
1 hour 13 min- July 16 1945 Robert
Oppenheimer tests atomic bomb
1 hour 19 min- dropping of the
atomic bomb in Japan
 http://player.discovery
education.com/index.c
fm?guidAssetId=7FA4128
B-D776-4C5E-BC2B91AE1AE844A3
 America
controlled Philippine Islands and Guam
 Japan had successfully grabbed Manchuria, China
and beyond…plans to take Southeast Asia

http://www.history.com/shows/wwii-in-hd/interactives/inside-wwii-interactive Japan invades
 America
sends aid to China
 1940 FDR bans the sale of iron, steel and airplanes
to Japan
 Tripartite
Pact : Japan joins Axis on September
27, 1940
 Japan felt that the US was interfering in their
plans to expand

Naval strategist Isoroku Yamamoto plans
 12/7/1941
– Japan surprise attacks American
fleet @ Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) 2,400 deaths
 US declares war on Japan (12/8/1941)

Germany, Italy declare war on US four days later!
Pearl Harbor
 Factories
stopped making cars
& refrigerators & made planes
& tanks
 Shoes and sugar were
rationed
 Use of propaganda
 War ended unemployment of
the depression
 Japanese people in US and
Canada
 Lost their jobs and property
 Forced into internment
camps
 Seen as a security risk
Nazi anti-British & American
propaganda
British anti-Nazi propaganda
British anti-Nazi propaganda
 Strikes





Seize Hong Kong
Invades Malaysia
Singapore surrenders
Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia)-- [rich in
resources]
Burma
 Other


towards the British and Dutch
Strikes towards the United States
Seize Guam and the Wake Island in western
Pacific
Attack on the Philippines to march into capital
Manila


June 1942
Midway Islands= West of Hawaii


Home to a key American airfield
Japanese secret plan to capture

The U.S. would make sure the Japanese Navy
would reach no further

Over 150 Japanese ships head towards American ships




Japan strikes first
Marked the beginning of “Island Hopping”
 The recapture some islands while bypassing others
Yamamoto himself on the largest ship
U.S. Pacific Fleet took down 332 planes, all 4 aircraft
carriers


Yamamoto withdraws!
retreats
http://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?guidAssetId=C
E0D53F2-C9EC-4DAF-A728-0BDFA9355B9D
Bypass heavily
fortified
Concentrate
on striking
important
weaker points
“Leapfrogging”
 Japanese
attempt to seize Guadalcanal in the
Solomon Islands to build large air base
 Access to Australia
 Aug 1942 Allied troops with Australia on their
side, attack!

General MacArthur
 US Marines captured a huge Japanese Air Force
base
 Japanese lost 24,000 troops
 Japans
goal: Establish a new order in
Southeast Asia and the Pacific
 Puppet
governments
in Western Europe run
by “Aryans”
 Eastern Europeans
“inferior”, shoved
aside for more living
space
 Nazis stripped
conquered nations of
art, factories and
resources
 Used Eastern
Europeans as slave
laborers; shot and
tortured prisoners
 Battle
of El Alamein, Egypt
 Operation Torch
 British takes down Rommel

Rommel’s army retreats
http://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?guidAssetId=2
C522DC6-BF0F-4430-B520-22282FFFEF25
Allies had regained possession of
Tobruk
 Allies finally brought German
Panzers to a halt
 107,000 Allied troops invade
 land in Algeria and Morocco
 Mussolini orders Italians to invade
Egypt
 Battle of El Alamein


October 1942
Egypt – The battle halted the
second (and final) advance by
the Axis forces going into Egypt
 ended Axis hopes of occupying
Egypt, taking control of the Suez
Canal, and gaining access to the
Middle Eastern oil fields.

Operation Torch
 8 November 1942; ended on 11 November. American
and British Commonwealth landed in French North
Africa
 under the assumption that there would be little to
no resistance
 British led by Gen. Bernard Montgomery
 US led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur
 invasion of northwestern Africa — Morocco, Algeria
and Tunisia,
 African territory was in the hands of Petain’s Vichy
French “Nazi puppet” government
 Successful completion of these operations was to be
followed by an advance eastwards into Tunisia.



Allies advance into Tunisia
Rommel is outflanked, outmanned and outgunned.
• Rommel gets the infamous "victory or death" stand-fast order
from Hitler
• demanded the impossible
• virtually ensured the destruction of Panzer Army Africa,
• Rommel could not bring himself to disobey a direct order from his
Führer

Allies trap Rommel’s army and force surrender in May of 1943
 led to all Italian colonies in Africa being captured.
• Rommel named a “disgrace”
• Hitler says face court of people that will scorn your legacy or
commit suicide quietly
• Rommel takes cyanide pill and dies 1944

Turning Point: Battle of
Stalingrad
Street by street and house by
house battles
 Nightly bomb raids by the Germans


Nov 1942 Germans controlled 90
% of the city


ANOTHER RUSSIAN WINTER SETS IN
February 1943 Germans
surrender !
Stalingrad is now called Volgograd
300,000 killed or injured
 Over one million Soviet soldiers
died
 City was 99% destroyed


Soviets then drive Germans back
westward
http://player.discoveryedu
cation.com/index.cfm?guid
AssetId=29091B7E-0A464353-AA49-960E4229AFA1
 Turning


9 month campaign for the Allies to regain France
D-Day June 6th 1944


 To

Point in Europe
Allied paratroopers and ferried troops (176,000)
Fought against heavy gunfire and snipers
invade the beaches of Normandy
Largest Land and Sea attack in history
 Battle



of Normandy
August Allies made their way to Paris
By September France was free
AND had liberated Belgium, Luxembourg, and
much of the Netherlands
 France
named 4th republic and on the road to
peace

Now Allies push towards Germany!!
http://player.discoveryeducation.com/ind
ex.cfm?guidAssetId=B94DB811-9CEE-48A9A18B-942CF10F1C6F
July 1943 British and American forces land in Sicily and
defeat the Italians in 1 month
 King Victor Emmanuel III fired Mussolini
 Allied forced landed in Sicily in 1943
 Controlled Sicily in one month
 Italy surrendered within two months
 Sept 1943 Italy surrenders
 Hitler uses his control over the North to put Mussolini
back in charge

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/launch_ani_i
taly_campaign.shtml
Allies enter Rome in June, pushing Nazis up
 Although Italy had surrendered, Germany
continued to battle the allies in Italy until the
end of the war
 Mussolini is found disguised as a German
general in April 1945
 He was shot and hung in Milan town square

 TIME
TO ATTACK GERMANY!
 Germany was facing a war on three fronts



US to the west (coming from France)
Soviet Union to the east
US and UK to the south (coming from Italy)
 Germany



on the offensive for the last time
85-mile front in the Ardennes Forest
Germans able to push into Allied lines
Ultimately unsuccessful push because the Allies pushed
back and won!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSxnvwxsAm8
 Soviets
have control of the capital: Berlin,
Germany

Hitler had an underground headquarters there
 Hitler
commits suicide (4/30/1945), in his
underground bunker w/ wife Eva Braun
 May 7th Germany surrenders
 May 8th surrender was officially signed in
Berlin

V-E Day or Victory in Europe Day
Hitler’s Bunker
Surrender in
France
Surrender in USSR