Transcript The Beginning of WWII

The Beginning of WWII
Causes of WWII
 WWI
 The Great
Depression
 Italian, Japanese,
and German
aggression
 Appeasement:
giving in to an
aggressor to
keep peace
Nonaggression Pact
 August 23, 1939: Stalin and
Hitler signed a nonaggression
pact, agreeing not to attack
one another
 Also agreed to divide
Poland, and that the USSR
could take Finland, Latvia,
Lithuania, and Estonia
Germany Sparks a New War in Europe
 Sept 1, 1939: Hitler invaded
Poland
 Sept 3: France and GB
declared war on Germany
but too late for Poland
Hitler’s Lighting War
 Germany’s newest military strategy: blitzkrieg
 lightning war
 moving fast to take enemy by surprise, overwhelm them
 worked efficiently
The Soviets Make their Move
 Sept 17 USSR sent troops to occupy Eastern half of Poland,
annexed Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia
 Finland resisted-Stalin sent almost 1 million troops.
 Finns able to hold them off for a while, but in March 1940
they surrendered
The Phony War
 GB and France stationed
troops along the Maginot
Line, system of
fortifications along
France’s border with
Germany, waited for
Germans to attack but
nothing happened
 German soldiers waited
from their Siegfried Line
a few miles away; called
the sitzkrieg, “sitting war”
or “phony war”
Denmark and Norway Fall
 April 9, 1940 Hitler launched surprise invasion of Denmark
(fell in 4 hours) and Norway (fell in 2 months)
 now Germany could build bases along coast to attack GB
The Fall of France
 May 1940 Hitler began attacking through Netherlands,
Belgium, and Luxembourg in order to reach France
 He sent tanks and troops through the Ardennes, a wooded
area in Northern France, Luxembourg and Belgium
 German troops were able to squeeze between Maginot Line,
move across France
 By End of May 1940 Germans had trapped Allied forces
around northern French city of Lille-outnumbered,
outgunned, retreated to beaches of Dunkirk, a French port
city near Belgian border-trapped there
The Fall of France
 May 1940 Hitler began attacking through Netherlands,
Belgium, and Luxembourg in order to reach France
 He sent tanks and troops through the Ardennes, a wooded
area in Northern France, Lux and Belgium
 German troops were able to squeeze between Maginot Line,
move across France
Rescue at Dunkirk
 GB set out to rescue the army: fleet of ships sent across
English channel to Dunkirk; May 26-June 4 it sailed back and
forth rescued about 338,000 soldiers
France Falls
 France surrendered on June
22, 1940
 Germans took control of
northern part, left southern
part to a puppet gov’t led by
Marshal Philippe Petain
 Headquarters in city of Vichy
(Vichy gov’t)
 Charles de Gaulle: a French general, set up gov’t-in-exile in
London, committed to reconquering France
The Battle of Britain
 GB stood alone against the Nazis!
 Winston Churchill new Prime Minister in May 1940
 Summer 1940 Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe, began
bombing GB, focusing on airfields, factories, and cities
 GB’s airforce known as the Royal Air Force (RAF)
 badly outnumbered but began to fight back with help of 2
new technologies:
 Radar: an electronic tracking system, could tell number, speed,
and direction of incoming warplanes
 Enigma: German code-making machine, enabled them to
decode German secret messages
End of Battle of Britain
 Oct 1940 Germany gave up daylight raids
 Battle of Britain continued until May 10, 1941
 Hitler called off attacks, shifted focus to Mediterranean, E. Europe
 Showed Hitler’s attacks could be blocked!