Transcript World War II 1941-1945

World War II
1941-1945
Chapter 11
The Allies Turn the Tide
Chapter 11 Section 1
Britain's New Best Friend
• December 22, 1941 Churchill meets with FDR at the
White House
• They agree that Hitler is their #1 priority, why?
– Soviet Union needed help
– Only after Germany was defeated could Britain and USSR
help defeat Japan
– FDR and Churchill also decided they would only accept an
unconditional surrender from the Axis
War in the Atlantic
• U-Boats immediately attack US shipping off of the
east coast
– Seven months into 1942 U-Boats had sunk 681 Allied ships
in the Atlantic
– These losses could have made the Allies lose the war
• Organized ships into convoys and sent Navy along for
protection
• Used sonar and radar to find and sink the U-Boats
• Produced more ships
– 1939-1940 US produced 102 ships
– 1943 US produced 140 ships a month
• This turns the tide in the Atlantic
The Eastern Front
• Brutal fighting between Germans and Russians
– Millions of men involved
• First great turning point of the war comes at
Stalingrad
• Stalingrad was on the Germans way to the
Russian oil fields
• Battle lasts over 6 months
• House to house, hand-to-hand combat
• Stalin refuses to let his soldiers retreat
– It is Stalingrad after all!!!
• Russians launch a huge counter attack
– Hitler will not let his men retreat either
• February 1943 91,000 Germans finally
surrender
– Started the battle with 330,000
• Russians lose 1,250,000 men
• Russians are on the offensive from this point
on in the war
Operation Torch
• The allied invasion of North Africa
• Why were they fighting for Africa?
• 107,000 Allied troops, mostly Americans
invade
• Tough desert fighting against the Afrika Corps
led by Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox
• General George Patton and Montgomery led
the Allies
• May 1943 Allies conquer North Africa
Invasion of Italy
• Churchill wants to attack the “soft underbelly of the
Axis”
• Invade Sicily in summer of 1943
• Mussolini is stripped of power and arrested
• Italy joins Allies in September 1943
• Hitler occupies Italy and places Mussolini back
in power
• Takes Allies 18 months of hard fighting to
conquer Italy
Bombing Germany
• England and USA bombed Germany night and
day
– England did saturation bombing at night
• Dropping tons of bombs to cause massive damage
– USA did strategic bombing by day
• Bombing specific military targets
• Bombing crews suffered a 20% casualty rate
• Tuskegee Airmen
– African-American fighter pilots
– Would escort bombers
– Never lost a single bomber in over 1,500 missions
Battle of Midway
• Massive naval battle
• Japan had 5 carriers to America’s 3
– Japan ~300 planes, America 180
• First 3 waves of American planes destroyed
• 4th wave of dive bombers finds Japanese
– In 5 minutes most of the fleet is destroyed
– Japan lost 4 carriers, 3,500 men, and 300 planes
• Turns the tide of the war in the Pacific in favor of America
Battle of Guadalcanal
• August 7, 1942 19,000 marines landed on Guadalcanal
– Fierce land and naval fighting for the next 6 months
– Fighting ends in February 1943
• 1,600 American deaths, 4,000 wounded
• 15,000 Japanese deaths, 9,000 deaths from disease, 1,000
captured
• First Island taken in the march to Japan
The Home Front
• Chapter 11 Section 2
Womanpower
• ~15 million men joined the
military
• US needed people to fill
these men’s jobs
• 6,000,000 women entered
the workforce
– Rosie-the-Riveter
– 2/3 returned to the home
after the war
– Laid ground work for the
feminist movement of the
1960’s and 1970’s
Wartime Migrations
• WWII caused many people to move around the US
• Again African-Americans left the South for Northern war jobs
– A. Philip Randolph
– African-American civil rights leader
– Demanded the right for Blacks to work and fight for their country
– Threatened to organize a massive protest in Washington DC
– FDR issued Executive Order 8802 forbidding discrimination in
defense industries
– Why?
– Afraid a protest will hurt the war effort by making Americans look disunited
• African-Americans drafted into the military
– Military still segregated
– Fighting for a “Double V”
• Victory over dictators and racism
• Bracero Program, 1942
– US brought people from
Mexico in to work in
agriculture
• Zoot Suit Riots
– Mexicans discriminated
against in the West
• Dressed in Zoot Suits
– 1943 American sailors on
leave went around Los
Angeles and started attacking
Mexicans
– Mexicans then arrested for
starting fights
Executive Order 9066
• Japanese Americans
– 110,000 interned (placed in)
in concentration camps
– Afraid they were spies
– Happened on West Coast
– Most were born in US, known
as Nisei
– Korematsu v. US in 1944
• US Supreme Court upheld
constitutionality of
internment
WWII Internment Camps
442nd Regimental Combat Team
• Made up of all JapaneseAmericans (~3,800)
• Fought in Italy, France, and
Germany
• Most decorated unit in
American history
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21 Medals of Honor
560 Silver Stars
4,000 Bronze Stars
9,486 Purple Hearts
Costs of War
• War cost $330 billion
– Debt went from $49 billion to $259 billion
• People bought war bonds to help pay for the
war
• War Production Board created
– Oversaw the economy
– Told factories what to build
– Placed rations on certain items
• Gas, rubber, meat…
• People given “ration stamps”
– Ceilings placed on prices and wages
Office of War Information (OWI)
• America’s propaganda office that worked
closely with the media and entertainment
industries
– Tried to “sell” important ideas about the war to
American people
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Victory
Democracy
Rationing
War Bonds
Victory in Europe and the Pacific
•Chapter 11 Section 3
A Second Front
• 1943 Stalin, FDR, and Churchill meet
at the Tehran Conference
–It was decided that England and USA
would open a “second front” by
invading France
Operation Overlord
• The Allied invasion of France
D-DAY June 6, 1944
• 3 airborne divisions dropped behind enemy
lines in the night
– American 101st & 82nd
– British 6th
• 156,000 troops storm the beaches
– Light resistance everywhere except Omaha beach
Omaha Beach
• 1st division and 29th division landed in waves
• ~3,000 casualties on Omaha beach
• Pointe-Du-Hoc
– German artillery on top of vertical cliffs
overlooking Omaha beach
– US 2nd Rangers’ job to take them out
– Climbed vertical cliffs while being attacked to take
the guns out
Allies Advance
• Despite Omaha Allies hold beachheads
• Within a month 1 million Allied troops had
landed in France
• Patton led US troops across France
Paris
• August 25, 1944 Paris was liberated
• Later that year FDR wins 4th term
Battle of the Bulge
• Hitler’s last offensive
• December 16, 1944
– 29 German divisions (~500,000 men) broke
through American lines
• First week of battle goes bad for the Allies
– Fog kept air force out of the battle
– Many new recruits manning the front line
– Many Americans surrender
• German offensive literally runs out of gas
• After a month Germans are pushed back
– Loose 120,000 troops, 600 tanks, 1,600 planes
• Germany on defensive for rest of war
End Game for Hitler
• American decide to let Russians
capture Berlin
– Why?
• Fierce street fighting throughout
Berlin
– Russians lose 305,000
– Germans lose 325,000
• April 30, 1945 Hitler shot himself
blaming the Jews for starting the war
V-E Day
• May 8, 1945 America accepts Germany’s
unconditional surrender
• The war in Europe was over
Advancing in the Pacific
• America went on the offensive after Midway
• Island hopping
– Taking over strategically less protected islands
Navajo Code Talkers
• Marines recruited over 200 Navajos and used their language
as a code
– Made up words for military terms
– "besh- lo" (iron fish) (Submarine)
– "dah-he- tih-hi" (hummingbird) (fighter plane)
• Code declassified in 1968
– Code talkers honored in 1969
Leyte Gulf
• Battle to retake Philippines
– 178,000 Allied troops
– 738 ships
• Japanese start using kamikazes (suicide bombers)
– 16 ships sunk, 80 damaged
• Huge victory for Allies
– Japan lost 3 battleships, 4 aircraft carriers, and 400 planes
Iwo Jima
• US needed Iwo Jima as a base for bombing
Japan
• 20,000 Japanese defending, only 200 survive
• 6,000 Marines die, most in any pacific battle
to that point
• 27 Medals of Honor handed out
Okinawa
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FDR died of a stroke in April 1945
Harry Truman takes over as President of the USA
Okinawa last stop before invading Japan
Okinawa lasts from March until June 1945
• 1,900 kamikazes attack US ships, sinking 30 and
killing 5,000 sailors
• Fierce fighting onshore
– 7,600 Americans killed
– 110,000 Japanese killed
• Could this be an indication of the fighting to come on
mainland Japan?
The Manhattan Project
• The project was the construction of an atomic
bomb
– Led by Robert J. Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, New
Mexico
• July 16, 1945 the first atomic bomb was detonated in
Alamogordo, New Mexico
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Force of 21,000 tons of TNT
Heard 100 miles away
Flash was visible 250 miles away
Only took 2 yrs, 3 months, and 16 days to create the
Atomic Bomb
Hiroshima
• August 6, 1945
– Enola Gay, a B29 bomber, dropped “little boy”
over the Japanese city Hiroshima
– Less than a minute later Hiroshima no longer
existed
– 80,000 people died instantly
– The temperature was 7,000 degrees
– Thousands more died over the years from
radiation exposure
Nagasaki
• Japan still would not surrender
• Three days after Hiroshima another atomic
bomb (Fat Man) was dropped on Nagasaki
• Half the city destroyed and ~60,000 killed
Victory (VJ Day)
• September 2, 1945 Japan officially surrenders
on the deck of the battleship Missouri in
Tokyo Bay