WORLD WAR II

World War II
Why was there another global conflict so soon after World War I?

Vocabulary

Glossary Vocabulary Cards

Axis Powers

appeasement

Munich Pact

Blitzkrieg

Atlantic Charter

D-Day

Holocaust

Introduction

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Neville Chamberlain mistakenly

believed that his compromise
with the Germans at the Munich
Conference had secured peace for
Europe.

Two important conferences—one in the 1920s and the other in the 1930s—tried
to preserve the fragile peace that existed after World War I. Both conferences
failed to achieve that goal.

From November 1921 to February 1922, representatives of the United States,

Great Britain, France, Japan, and five other nations met in Washington, D.C. Just
as the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 hoped to bring lasting peace to Europe
after World War I, the Washington Conference hoped to do the same for Asia. The
delegates agreed on several treaties during their weeks in Washington. In the
Nine Power Treaty, the nations pledged to respect China’s territory and
independence. Another treaty between the United States, Britain, France, Italy,
and Japan required them to limit the size of their navies. The United States,
Britain, France, and Japan also agreed to respect one another’s rights to the Pacific
islands and Asian territories that each possessed.

In September 1938, the prime ministers of Great Britain and France met with
Italy’s Benito Mussolini and German dictator Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany. The
British and French leaders feared that Hitler’s actions were pushing Europe toward

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another war. He had demanded parts of neighboring Czechoslovakia, which Britain
and France were pledged to defend. Instead, the two leaders agreed to Hitler’s
demands. Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared their
desire to resolve further differences through consultation rather than war.

Cheering crowds, relieved that the threat of war had passed, welcomed
Chamberlain home. Britain had achieved “peace with honor,” Chamberlain claimed.
“I believe it is peace for our time.” However, not everyone was convinced.
Chamberlain was challenged by his rival Winston Churchill, soon to be Britain’s
next prime minister, who declared “You were given the choice between war and
dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”

1. The Road to World War

Both Japan and Germany had a mixed history of military rule and democracy. Both
also began to industrialize in the decades before World War I. However, unlike
Germany, Japan lacked raw materials for its industries. Instead, it relied on a
strong military to obtain them from other nations.

Testing the League of Nations Japan and other imperialist powers had long held
spheres of influence in China. Japan's sphere of influence was in Manchuria, a
region in northeastern China that was rich in natural resources. In 1931, Japan's
army seized the entire region. When the League of Nations pressured Japan to
return Manchuria to China, Japan refused and withdrew from the League, turning
Manchuria into an industrial and military base for future expansion. By 1941,
Japan had added French Indochina to its Asian empire to go with Formosa (now
called Taiwan), Korea, large areas of China, the southern half of Sakhalin Island,
and several small Pacific islands. Japan's aggression tested the League of Nations.
The League was intended to serve as an instrument of international law. In theory,
it could impose boycotts and other economic sanctions or use the combined
military force of its members to keep unruly nations in line. In practice, however, it
was a weak organization, in part because the United States was not a member.
The League failed to respond effectively to Japan's challenge.

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Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935 as part of a quest to construct a New Roman

Empire under Mussolini. The Ethiopian forces were easily overwhelmed. They
appealed to the League of Nations for help, but the League’s response was weak
and ultimately had no effect.

Throughout the 1930s, Germany and Italy also tested the League's will. Like
Japan, Germany pulled out of the League of Nations in 1933. At the same time,
Hitler began rebuilding the German military. In 1935, he announced the formation
of an air force and the start of compulsory military service. Both actions were in
violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler's violation of the treaty boosted his
popularity in Germany.

The League of Nations lodged a formal protest, but it refused to consider

sanctions against Germany. The next year, Hitler challenged France and the
League by sending troops into the Rhineland, which the Treaty of Versailles had
stripped from Germany and placed under international control. This was another
test of the League's resolve to stand up to aggression.

Meanwhile, Mussolini began his quest to build a New Roman Empire. In October

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1935, the Italian army invaded the African nation of Ethiopia. The poorly equipped
Ethiopian forces could not stop the invaders. Ethiopia appealed to the League of
Nations, which voted to impose economic sanctions on the aggressor. The
sanctions were mild, and few League members seriously applied them. In May
1936, Italy officially annexed Ethiopia. Hitler heartily approved of the invasion. In
October 1936, Hitler and Mussolini joined in a treaty of friendship that forged an
alliance, known as the Rome–Berlin axis, between their countries. Because of this
alliance, Germany and Italy were called the Axis Powers.

With the Anschluss, Hitler took control of Austria and furthered his goal of
uniting all ethnic Germans in the German Reich. Austria did not oppose the
takeover. In this photo, jubilant crowds line the streets of Salzburg, Austria, and
salute the passing German army.

Britain and France Appease Hitler Encouraged by events in Italy and Spain, and
by his own successful occupation of the Rhineland, Hitler continued his campaign
of expansion. During this time, Great Britain and France did little to stop him,
choosing instead to follow a policy of appeasement.

Hitler next set his sights on neighboring Austria, the country of his birth. At the

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time, Austria had an unstable government with fascist elements. Hitler pressured
its leaders to join the German Reich, or "empire." Hitler issued an ultimatum to the
Austrian chancellor: he could hand over power to the Austrian Nazis or face an
invasion. The chancellor handed over power to the Nazis but Hitler's army invaded
anyway, crossing the border into Austria without opposition on March 12, 1938.
The next day he proclaimed Anschluss, or "political union," with Austria. Great
Britain and France remained spectators to this German expansion. One of the
reasons for Great Britain's and France's appeasement was that both countries
were facing financial crises brought on by the Great Depression.

Hitler claimed that he wanted to bring all ethnically German areas in eastern
Europe back into the German Reich. By signing the Munich Pact in September
1938, he acquired the Sudetenland, a German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia.
He told Chamberlain that this would be his "last territorial demand." Just six
months later, however, Hitler revealed that he wanted more than to bring all
ethnic Germans into the German Reich. In March 1939, he annexed Bohemia, an
ethnically Czech region. When Britain and France failed to act, Mussolini invaded
nearby Albania in April 1939. It took just a few days to conquer this small nation
across from Italy on the Adriatic Sea.

In their 1939 non-aggression

treaty, Hitler promised Stalin a
part of Poland, and guaranteed
Russia a sphere of influence in
eastern Europe. In return, Stalin
pledged not to attack Germany.
This political cartoon from 1939
shows Hitler and Stalin scheming
to divide the world between
them.

U.S. Neutrality Like Great Britain and France, the United States did little to

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thwart Japanese, German, and Italian aggression. When Mussolini invaded
Ethiopia, for example, the League of Nations considered an oil embargo against
Italy. With no fuel, the Italian army's offensive would have ground to a halt. The
League asked the United States, a major oil supplier, if it would join the embargo.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt refused, pointing out that he had just signed the
Neutrality Act of 1935. This act prevented the United States from supplying
"arms, ammunition, or implements of war" to nations in conflict. Because the law
said nothing about oil, Roosevelt chose not to block oil shipments to Italy.

Congress passed additional neutrality acts in 1936 and 1937, all designed to keep
the country out of the conflicts brewing in Europe, such as the Spanish Civil War.
Americans passionately supported policies of isolationism, agreeing that as long as
American lives or interests were not at stake, the country should not be involved
in any war. Also, like Europeans, they recalled the horrors of World War I and
wanted to avoid being drawn into a new conflict. Supporting isolationist policy,
Congress also held off investigations of possible malicious business interests that
had led the country to enter World War I.

2. The Return of War, 1939–1941

As Winston Churchill predicted after the Munich Conference of 1938,
appeasement only made Hitler bolder. However, Germany's takeover of Bohemia
in March 1939 finally caused Great Britain and France to draw a line in the sand.
Hitler had been demanding the return of Danzig, an ethnically German city in the
Polish Corridor that lay on the Baltic Sea. The Polish Corridor, a strip of land that
cut through and divided Germany, had been created by the Treaty of Versailles to
give Poland a seaport. Britain and France now warned Hitler that any aggression
against Poland would result in war.

Germany Reduces the Soviet Threat Hitler already planned to attack Poland and
risk a general war in Europe. Part of his planning for this war involved the Soviet
Union. He intended to eventually conquer the Soviet Union, which had vast
farmlands and other resources that could fulfill Hitler's quest for Lebensraum, or
"living space," for a German racial utopia. Lebensraum assumed the right of white,
"Aryan" Germans to remove other racial groups in order to expand their own living
space. However, Hitler needed the Soviet Union to remain neutral if Britain and
France went to war. The geography of such a war concerned him. The Soviet
Union lay to the east of Germany, while Britain and France lay to the west. Hitler
did not want to fight on two fronts, east and west, at the same time. For that
reason, Soviet neutrality was vital.

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The Nazis and Communists despised and distrusted each other, so the world was
shocked when Hitler and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin signed a nonaggression
treaty in August 1939. The pact served the interests of both leaders. Hitler no
longer had to worry about going to war with the Soviets before he was ready. For
Stalin, the pact satisfied his desire for more power and for secure borders. In
return for Stalin's pledge not to attack Germany, Hitler secretly promised him a
part of Poland and a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

The War Begins On September 1, 1939, with the Soviet Union neutralized,
Hitler announced that Germany was annexing Danzig. As he spoke, German
forces were invading Poland. Two days after the invasion of Poland, France and
Britain declared war on Germany.

Hitler's attack on Poland introduced a new kind of warfare—theBlitzkrieg, or

"lightning war." It consisted of swift, massive, and highly coordinated attacks by
waves of warplanes, tanks, and infantry. Communications by radio, a new
technology perfected in the 1920s, allowed such attacks to be coordinated and
carried out. As German planes rained bombs and bullets on the enemy, motorized
infantry units quickly swept toward and around them. Then, the foot soldiers
moved in to finish the job. Faced with such overwhelming force, the Polish army
quickly collapsed. By early October 1939, all of Poland was under German or
Soviet control.

Hitler then switched his focus to the west. He moved 2 million soldiers to
Germany's border with France and the Low Countries—Belgium, the Netherlands,
and Luxembourg. As its main defense, France relied on the Maginot Line, a string
of heavily armed fortresses along the German border. British forces crossed the
English Channel and prepared to aid France and the Low Countries. For the next
few months, not much happened. Newspapers began referring to this as the
"Phony War."

Suddenly, Hitler struck in a series of lightning actions.In April 1940, German

forces launched surprise attacks on Denmark and Norway. Within a few weeks,
they had conquered these two Scandinavian countries. Then on May 10, the
Germans invaded the Low Countries. In 18 days, those three nations were in
German hands.

Using Blitzkrieg tactics, the German army burst through Luxembourg and southern
Belgium into France in just four days. Skirting the Maginot Line, the Germans sped
westward toward the French coast. Hundreds of thousands of French and British
troops found themselves trapped in a shrinking pocket of French countryside.
They retreated toward the port of Dunkirk on the northwest coast of France.
Britain sent every boat it could find across the English Channel to evacuate the
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soldiers. The daring rescue saved some 338,000 men.

Paris soon fell to the Germans as well. Mussolini took this opportunity to declare
war on Great Britain and France. On June 22, France surrendered to Germany.
Under the terms of the armistice, Germany occupied three-fifths of the country. A
puppet government ruled the unoccupied region. It was called Vichy France, for
the town that was its capital.

The Battle of Britain The fall of France left Great Britain to face Hitler alone.
Britain's new prime minister, Winston Churchill, vowed to continue the fight. "We
shall defend our island whatever the cost may be," he declared. "We shall fight on
the beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never
surrender."

Hitler, however, was determined to conquer Britain, the last holdout against Nazi
rule. Yet, he realized that Britain's navy could keep his army from crossing the
English Channel. To counter that threat, Germany had to control the air. Hitler set
up bases in conquered lands from France to Norway and moved some 2,500
bombers and fighter planes to them.

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From these bases, German planes flew thousands of air raids over Great Britain in
the summer and fall of 1940. They bombed ports, airfields, radar stations, and
industrial centers. Fighter planes of the Royal Air Force (RAF) countered this
onslaught in what became known as the Battle of Britain. Between July and
October, the RAF lost 915 aircraft. However, RAF pilots had downed more than
1,700 German aircraft.

Germany had great military success in the first year and a half of the war. Poland,
Denmark, Norway, the Low Countries, and France all quickly fell under German
control. Only England was able to successfully fend off the German war machine.

In September 1940, Britain launched its first bombing raid on Berlin. After that,
Hitler shifted his targets to British cities. Bombing attacks over a period of several
months devastated parts of London and other large cities. Londoners called this
period the Blitz, a shortening of Blitzkrieg. By spring 1941, the number of raids
dwindled. German industry simply could not replace the lost planes fast enough.
The British had successfully defended their homeland. Britain's victory raised
hopes that Hitler could be stopped.

The United States Prepares for War When war broke out in Europe, isolationism
lost some of its appeal for Americans. Most wanted to help the Allies, but they did
not want the United States to become involved in the fighting. Yet France and
Britain needed weapons, and the Neutrality Acts banned arms sales to belligerent
nations. So in November 1939, Congress passed another Neutrality Act that

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repealed the arms embargo. However, the new law included a "cash-and-carry"
provision. Nations had to pay cash for materials and carry them away in their own
ships.

Two young Royal Air Force pilots

concentrate on flying their
bomber. During the Battle of
Britain in 1940, British RAF pilots
downed so many German aircraft
that German production of new
planes could not keep up with the
losses. Despite widespread
destruction, the British
successfully defended their
country from the German attack.

After the fall of France, the United States finally began to prepare for war.
Defense spending soared, as did the size of the army. In September 1940,
Congress enacted the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history. Yet during the
1940 election campaign, President Roosevelt assured Americans, "Your boys are
not going to be sent into any foreign wars." Still hoping to avoid war, Americans
elected him to an unprecedented third term.

In December 1940, with the Battle of Britain still raging, Churchill declared that his
country was nearly bankrupt. Roosevelt was determined to provide Britain "all aid
short of war." He urged Congress to adopt a plan to lend, not sell, arms to Britain.
This legislation, the Lend-Lease Act, passed in March 1941, but only after heated
public and congressional debate.

In June 1941, Hitler broke his pact with Stalin by attacking the Soviet Union. The
Soviet army retreated in the face of the invasion. With Churchill's support, the

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United States began sending supplies to the Soviets under the Lend-Lease Act. In
August, Churchill and Roosevelt secretly met aboard warships in Canadian waters
of the North Atlantic. There they prepared a declaration of post-war aims known
as the Atlantic Charter, which later influenced the charter of the United Nations.
Both agreed to not use the war to seek new territory or to make peace with the
Axis Powers separately. They also asserted the right of all peoples to self-
government. Three months later, Congress voted to allow American merchant
ships to arm themselves and sail to Britain.

The attack on American territory

at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, rallied
American support for joining the
war. This image shows the
wrecked remains of the USS
Arizona battleship, destroyed by
Japanese bombs in Pearl Harbor.

The United States Enters the War Japan took advantage of the raging war in
Europe to continue its expansion in Asia. After Hitler conquered France, Japanese
troops pushed into French Indochina in Southeast Asia. Japan also set its sights on
the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) that were colonies of German-occupied
Netherlands, and on British Malaya. These regions would provide the oil, rubber,
and other raw materials needed by Japanese industries.

Meanwhile, hoping to keep the United States out of the war, Hitler sought to
expand his alliance. In September 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the
Tripartite Pact, making Japan a member of the Axis Powers. The three nations
agreed to provide mutual support in the event that any one of them was attacked

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by a country not yet in the war. The attacker they had in mind was the United
States. Japan viewed the United States as a threat to its imperialist plans. If the
United States entered the war, it would be forced to fight in both Asia and Europe.
Hitler hoped that the threat of a two-front war would ensure American neutrality
for a while longer. However, events caused his Japanese allies to pursue different
plans.

The United States reacted strongly to Japan's actions in Indochina. In August

1941, it froze Japanese assets in the United States and banned the export of
American oil and other vital resources to Japan. When efforts to peacefully obtain
oil from the Dutch East Indies failed, Japanese leaders decided that war with the
United States could not be avoided. In October 1941, General Hideki Tojo became
prime minister of Japan, replacing a civilian leader. Tojo, an aggressive militarist,
prepared the nation for war.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese aircraft carriers approached Hawaii, where the

U.S. Pacific Fleet was anchored at Pearl Harbor. From these carriers, more than
300 bombers and fighter planes launched an attack on Pearl Harbor. In just over
two hours, the Japanese damaged or destroyed 18 American warships and about
300 military aircraft. More than 2,400 Americans were killed and some 1,200
wounded. However, the Japanese failed to sink any American aircraft carriers,
which had been out to sea during the attack. This failure would prove critical in
the Pacific war that followed.

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The Afrika Korp was the German force sent to Africa during World War II. Here,
a German tank and troops fight in the Battle of Torbruk in 1941.

3. The War in Europe, 1942–1945

In late December 1941, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in
Washington, D.C. Their purpose was to devise a strategy to help the Allies defeat
the Axis Powers. They knew they could not afford to fight an offensive war on
two fronts—Europe and the Pacific—at the same time. So they decided to
concentrate most of their forces on first winning back Europe, while fighting only
a defensive war against Japan in the Pacific.

Nazis Invade the Soviet Union and North Africa The Axis powers controlled
much of Europe and North Africa at the start of 1942. Great Britain had saved
itself, but the Nazis had invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, using Blitzkrieg tactics
to overcome Soviet troops massed at the border. One large German force nearly
reached Moscow before the onset of winter froze it in its tracks. Another force
marched toward the Soviet Union's oil-rich Caucasus region.

Oil played a key role in Axis strategy. Hitler already controlled oil fields in

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Romania, but he sought more oil to keep his war machine running. He also hoped
to cut off Allied oil from the Middle East. But first, he had to secure North Africa
by pushing the British out of Egypt. In 1941, Hitler sent the Afrika Korps, a tank-
based army division commanded by Erwin Rommel, to bolster the Italian army
struggling against the British in North Africa. By June 1942, Rommel's force had
taken much of the region and driven deep into Egypt.

Nazis Continue to Persecute the Jews Conquered nations suffered greatly under
Nazi rule. Millions of Europeans were forced to work in the German arms industry.
The Germans treated Russians, Poles, and other Slavs with special contempt,
partly because Hitler claimed that Slavs were subhuman. The Nazis worked them
to death and murdered large numbers of them outright. Hitler referred to the
Armenian Genocide as a blueprint for the Nazi's persecution of these groups. On
the eve of the Nazi's invasion of Poland, Hitler remarked, "Who, after all, speaks
today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Although many groups were persecuted by the Nazis, no group suffered under
Nazi Germany more than Jews. Many Jews tried to flee, but most countries,
including the United States, refused to admit more than a token number of
refugees. Anti-Semitism had already been prevalent throughout the United States
and in Europe. Hitler blamed Germany's economic problems specifically on Jews
by drawing on existing anti-Semitism. This anti-Semitism fueled Hitler's obsession
with what he considered the "Jewish question"—how to rid Germany of Jews.
Using propaganda, he further spread anti-Semitism in order to ostracize and
ultimately dehumanize Jews. In Eastern Europe, the Nazis forced Jews into
overcrowded ghettos, small sections of cities that could be walled off and guarded.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews in these ghettos died from starvation, disease, and
exposure to the elements. In just two of the hundreds of Jewish ghettos, more
than 112,000 Jews died between 1941 and 1942 alone.

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At first, the Nazi invasion of the

Soviet Union was quite
successful, as the Germans used
brutal blitzkrieg tactics to drive
farther and farther into Russia.
However, they were stopped by
the frigid Russian winter before
they reached Moscow. In this
1942 photo, the German army
struggles through wintry
conditions outside of Moscow.

Eventually, Hitler decided on what the Nazis called the "Final Solution"—a plan to
systematically murder all Jews in Europe and North Africa. In the Soviet Union,
shortly after the invasion in 1941, the Nazis began massacring populations.
Between 1941 and 1944, the Einsatzgruppen, or Nazi mobile killing squads,
worked with local collaborators to forcibly remove and massacre more than 2
million Soviet Jews. In early 1942, the Nazis built the first of six death camps in
Poland. Jews, many from ghettos, were sent to these camps by rail, often packed
into locked and windowless cattle cars.

Unlike regular concentration camps, death camps were equipped with gas
chambers. Camp operators sealed groups of Jews and other prisoners inside these
rooms and turned on the deadly poison gas, usually carbon monoxide or hydrogen

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cyanide. Pregnant women, young children, the elderly, and the sick were gassed as
soon as they arrived. Prisoners that were able-bodied were kept alive as long as
they could work, often at a nearby factory. Through the gas chambers and other
methods, German SS and police systematically murdered nearly 3 million Jews in
the death camps.

This photo taken at the Belzec

death camp in Poland shows piles
of discarded shoes that once
belonged to the people murdered
by the Nazis. Out of the 430,000
Jews who entered Belzec, only 2
survived.

The Allies Debate War Strategies When Roosevelt and Churchill met in
Washington in December 1941, they had reliable evidence of the extent of Hitler's
murderous plans. However, the focus of their meeting was not on stopping the
Nazis' mass murder, but on winning the war in Europe. To do this, they had to
choose from a number of possible strategies.

Invading occupied France was a possibility, because the French people would
support such an invasion. Also, nearby Britain could serve as a staging area for the
massing of troops and resources before the assault. But the German army had a
strong presence in France that would make such an invasion extremely difficult.
Some thought a direct attack on Italy made more sense. The Italian army was
fairly weak, and Italy would provide a good base for securing the rest of Europe.
Others wanted to launch the Allied offensive in North Africa, which was not as
well defended and could serve as a gateway to Europe. But it was far from the
final target, Germany, and would also test the Allies' ability to transport and
supply their forces.

Great Britain's choice of strategy was clear. Already caught up in the battle for
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North Africa, Churchill wanted the Allies to strike there first. In contrast, Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin wanted an invasion of France to take pressure off his army.
The USSR, now one of the Allies, greatly needed help. Roosevelt eventually was
convinced to support the British plan. In June 1942, he made the decision to
invade North Africa in the fall.

The Allies' counteroffensive mobilized massive civilian resources to combat the

Axis Powers. Civilians rationed supplies so that the military could meet the needs
of its troops. In addition, many civilians worked in factories to provide the
equipment, vehicles, and planes that the war effort required.

Allied Gains in North Africa and Italy, Middle East Campaign In November
1942, Allied forces made sea landings in Morocco and Algeria. Led by American
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, they swept east into Tunisia. The Germans quickly
sent reinforcements across the Mediterranean. Meanwhile, British forces stopped
Rommel and forced him out of Egypt. Rommel's Afrika Korps retreated west
toward Tunisia, with the British in hot pursuit.

American soldiers did their first fighting of the war in a series of battles in the
winter of 1942–1943 in Tunisia. They helped the combined Allied armies launch a
final offensive in May 1943. Axis resistance collapsed in North Africa, leaving
about 250,000 German and Italian soldiers in the hands of the Allies.

Using North Africa as a staging area, the Allies crossed the Mediterranean into
Sicily, a large island in southern Italy. The massive invasion in July 1943 met little
opposition at first. Its success alarmed many Italians. Mussolini's North Africa
campaign and several other failures had caused them to lose faith in Il Duce. The
Fascist Grand Council met on July 24 and voted to restore the king and parliament
to power. Mussolini resigned the next day. Italy soon surrendered to the Allies. In
October, it declared war on Germany.

German troops remained in Italy, however. As the Allies pushed north, the
Germans battled them every step of the way. By October, the Allied army had
taken about a third of the Italian peninsula, but they did not get much farther that
year. A solid German defensive line completely stopped the Allies about 60 miles
south of Rome, the Italian capital.

The Middle East was a key region for both the Axis and Allied powers. The British
were concerned with maintaining control of the Suez Canal, and the Allies hoped
to prevent the Axis powers from gaining access to the oilfields in Iraq, Iran, Saudi
Arabia, and the Caucasus. However, the Middle East, namely Iran, also served a
critical role during the war as a route for supplying the Allies. Called the Persian
Corridor, the route originated in the United States or Britain where supplies were
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loaded onto cargo ships, and the ships sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to
the Persian Gulf. There, Soviet troops received the much-needed supplies. In order
for the route to be efficient and effective, Iranian ports had to be developed and
better facilities constructed. Better roads leading from the ports were also
required. American and British forces executed this construction and
development. After the war, the ports and roads were used for oil transport,
benefiting the local population.

The Allied forces took around 250,000 German and Italian soldiers prisoner after
Axis defenses collapsed during the North Africa campaign. Here, Axis prisoners
are shaving and standing around in a temporary prison camp in Tunisia in May
1943.

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The British bombed German cities

to try to weaken civilian morale.
The German city of Dresden was
firebombed into absolute ruin. In
this image, bodies lay in the street
among the smoldering rubble of
Dresden.

The Battle of Stalingrad The decision to invade North Africa left the Soviet
Union on its own. In June 1942, Axis troops began to push farther into Soviet
territory. Hitler split his forces so they could seize the rest of the Caucasus and
also take Stalingrad, a large city on the Volga River. At Stalingrad, German
firebombs set most of the city ablaze, but Stalin ordered his soldiers not to retreat.
By mid-September, Axis troops had a large Soviet force trapped in a strip of the
city along the Volga.

Fierce street-by-street fighting followed for two months. Then, in November, the
Soviet Red Army began a counterattack, sending its troops forward against the
Nazi assault. In a few days, the Soviets had encircled the German troops. Hitler
insisted that his soldiers fight to the death, which most of them did. In January
1943, the remains of Hitler's army, starving and frozen in the bitter Russian winter,
surrendered. The Battle of Stalingrad cost Germany more than 200,000 troops,
while more than one million Soviet soldiers died. However, the Soviet victory
forced the Germans to retreat, giving up all they had gained since June 1942.

Allied Bombing Campaigns Hitler's losses in the Soviet Union left Germany with
only one major source of oil—Romania. The Romanian oil fields became a prime
target of Allied bombing. However, the Allies' main target in their air campaign
was Germany.

American pilots typically launched daytime raids. They favored aiming at specific
targets such as oil refineries, railroads, and factories with the intent of disrupting

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Germany's ability to supply and equip its fighting forces. By the end of the war,
Germany's infrastructure and economy were in ruins.

British pilots relied mainly on saturation bombing, or the rapid release of a large
number of bombs over a wide area. They usually flew nighttime raids over enemy
cities. The strategy behind bombing cities, with its appalling loss of life, was to
destroy civilian morale and force a surrender. This tactic turned German cities like
Dresden and Hamburg into rubble-strewn graveyards. However, it did not bring
an early end to the war.

In August 1944, American planes dropped more than a thousand bombs on an oil-
production facility in Poland. Five miles to the west stood Auschwitz, the largest
Nazi death camp. Jewish organizations and others urged the United States to
bomb Auschwitz. If the gas chambers or nearby rail lines were destroyed, they
said, thousands of lives could be saved. American military officials denied these
appeals. They said they could not afford to divert resources from military targets.
Their main goal was to hasten the end of the war.

The Allies Liberate France To meet that goal, Allies focused most of their
resources in 1944 on an invasion of France. General Eisenhower directed the
effort. To prepare for the invasion, he gathered more than 1.5 million troops in
southern England. Also at his command were some 1,200 warships, 800 troop
transport ships, 4,000 landing craft, 10,000 airplanes, and hundreds of tanks.
Troops would cross the English Channel by ship to Normandy, in northern France.

D-Day—the day the invasion began—came on June 6, 1944. Allied planes

overhead and warships offshore provided covering fire, while landing craft
delivered some 50,000 soldiers and 1,500 tanks to five Normandy beaches.
German forces with well-entrenched guns put up a fierce resistance. However, by
the end of the day nearly 150,000 Allied troops had come ashore and controlled a
59-mile section of the Normandy coast. Over the next few weeks, the rest of the
Allies' huge army followed them into France.

In July, an American army under General Omar Bradley and a British army under
General Bernard Montgomery began a rapid sweep across France. In August, the
Allies liberated Paris. In September, the first American troops crossed the French
border into Germany.

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At the start of 1942, the Axis powers controlled much of Europe and North
Africa. The Allied strategy for reversing the course of the war called for massive
invasions of Axis-controlled territory. Allied troop movements ultimately
converged in Germany, where the Allies captured Berlin, the capital city, in May
1945.

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One GI described the recently

freed inmates of Dachau: “Many
of them were Jews. They were
wearing black and white striped
prison suits and round caps. A few
had shredded blanket rags draped
over their shoulders . . . The
prisoners struggled to their feet
[and] shuffled weakly out of the
compound. They were like
skeletons—all skin and bones.”

The Horror of the Holocaust As American, British, and other Allied troops
carried out the invasion of France, the Red Army chased a retreating German
force out of the Soviet Union and into Poland. The Nazis frantically tried to hide
evidence of their concentration camps in Poland. They cleared out many of the
forced-labor camps, marching victims miles without adequate clothing or food
westward and shooting any who fell behind. Many also died of hunger, cold, or
exhaustion. The Nazis also tried to dismantle some of the death camps, quickly
murdering the remaining prisoners. With the Soviet army closing in on Auschwitz,
the Nazis forced 60,000 victims, most of whom Jews, to march west into
Germany. As many as 15,000 perished during the death march. The survivors
ended up in camps such as Buchenwald and Dachau.

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Allied forces invading Germany from France discovered concentration camps and
were shocked at what they found. Concentration camps such as Buchenwald held
thousands of slave laborers, starved to near death. Many of these Holocaust
victims, too sick to even eat, died in the weeks after they were liberated. At
Dachau, the smell of decomposing bodies led American GIs to 28 railway cars
packed with dead bodies. They also uncovered evidence of unethical medical
research. Nazi doctors at the camp had carried out inhumane medical experiments
on more than 7,000 victims.

The Nazis committed crimes so reprehensible that no word existed to describe

them. In 1944, a Polish Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin coined the term
genocide to refer to the systematic killing of a racial, ethnic, religious, political, or
cultural group.

The Nazis murdered 6 million Jews, one-third of the world's Jewish population. An
existing word that means "sacrifice by fire"—holocaust—was capitalized to give a
name to this terrible slaughter. The Holocaust was the systematic, state-
sponsored, persecution and murder of Jews by the Nazis. The Nazis also murdered
Roma peoples, Serbs, Polish intellectuals, resistance fighters from all the nations,
German opponents of Nazism, gay men, Jehovah's Witnesses, people with
disabilities, political activists, and poor people.

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, Jewish author, and Nobel Prize for Peace
winner, was subjected to the horrors of the Holocaust. He was 15 when he and his
family were deported from Romania and taken to Auschwitz. His mother and
younger sister were murdered there. Wiesel and his father were later taken to
Buchenwald, where his father perished. Night is Wiesel's memoir of this time in
these camps. In the following excerpt, Wiesel, now deceased, begins to describe
his first night at Auschwitz:

NEVER SHALL I FORGET that night, the first night in camp, that turned
my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw
transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget those
flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all
eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul
and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long
as God Himself.

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Never.

This photo shows the barracks

inside the Buchenwald
concentration camp after the
liberation of the camp by the
Allies in 1945. Victims at the
German concentration camps,
including Elie Wiesel (in the
second row of bunks, seventh
person from the left), performed
slave labor in terrible conditions,
and one-quarter of the people
died there, many starving to
death.

The War in Europe Ends When the Allies crossed from France into Germany,
they met fierce resistance. By December 1944, their offensive had stalled. Hitler
made plans to burst through the Allied lines in the wooded Ardennes region of
Belgium, where the American forces were weakest. He launched his
counteroffensive on December 16. Eight German armored divisions smashed into
the surprised Americans, creating a huge bulge in the American line. Allied air
support and quick action by General George Patton's Third Army forced the
Germans to withdraw by mid-January. The Battle of the Bulge was the last
German offensive on the western front.

By April 1945, the Red Army had fought its way through Poland and into
Germany, to the outskirts of Berlin. On April 30, with advancing Soviet soldiers
just half a mile from his Berlin bunker, Hitler killed himself. German forces quickly

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began surrendering. On May 8—Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day—the war in
Europe officially ended.

4. The War in Asia, 1942–1945

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, was the first in a series of
strikes against Allied territory in the Pacific. Within hours, Japanese planes had
also attacked U.S. bases in the Philippines and British forces in Hong Kong, and
Japanese troops landed in Malaya. By the end of March 1942, the Japanese had
captured Hong Kong and Singapore, the American islands of Guam and Wake, and
the oil-rich Dutch East Indies. Japan had also invaded several larger possessions of
the Allies, including the American-held Philippine Islands and the British colony of
Burma.

In the Philippines, Americans and Filipinos under General Douglas MacArthur

resisted a fierce Japanese onslaught. Disease and malnutrition killed many of the
defenders. In March 1942, President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to leave the
islands. "I shall return," MacArthur promised the Americans and Filipinos he left
behind. Two months later, Japan completed its conquest of the Philippines. On the
largest island, the Japanese marched 70,000 American and Filipino defenders 63
miles up the Bataan Peninsula to a prison camp. Japanese soldiers beat and
bayoneted those who could not keep up. More than 7,000 died on the brutal
Bataan Death March.

The fall of Burma, in May 1942, had serious consequences. Japan controlled most
of coastal China, so no supplies could reach the Chinese army by sea. China had
relied on British and American supplies carried in from India over the Burma Road.
Now Japan had cut this lifeline. If Japan defeated China, hundreds of thousands of
Japanese soldiers would be free to fight elsewhere. To help China keep fighting,
the Allies set up an airborne supply route over the Himalayas.

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American forces fought the Battle

of the Coral Sea using planes
based on aircraft carriers. In this
photo, the flight deck crew of the
USS Lexington aircraft carrier
helps maneuver a Hellcat fighter
plane.

The Pacific War Begins Japan's string of victories in the Pacific hurt the Allies'
confidence. To boost morale, President Roosevelt asked for a strike on the
Japanese home islands. Military strategists came up with a plan to fly B-25
bombers off an aircraft carrier. The B-25 could make a short takeoff. It also had
the range to reach Japan and then land at Allied airfields in China.

On April 18, 1942, 16 bombers took off from the U.S. carrierHornet, which had
sailed to within 650 miles of Japan, to bomb Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
Although the surprise attack did little damage, it thrilled Americans as much as it
shocked the Japanese. Japan reacted by putting more precious resources into
defending the home islands.

The Americans also learned of Japanese activity far to the south in the Coral Sea.
The Japanese were moving into position to isolate Australia, a key ally. To stop
them, the United States sent two aircraft carriers, several cruisers, and a few
destroyers—all that could be spared at the time—to face a larger Japanese force
that included three carriers.

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Crew members have difficulty walking along the sloping deck of the USS
Yorktown aircraft carrier, after it was hit by Japanese torpedoes at the Battle of
Midway. The ship survived the onslaught, but was soon torpedoed again and sank
on June 7, 1942.

The resulting Battle of the Coral Sea, in early May 1942, was fought entirely by
carrier-based aircraft. It was the first naval battle in history in which the enemies'
warships never came within sight of each other. Japanese aircraft sank one U.S.
carrier and damaged the other. American planes sank one Japanese carrier and
damaged the other two. Despite the fairly even losses, the Americans gained a
strategic victory and blocked Japanese expansion to the south.

The Allies Stop Japanese Expansion The United States led the Allied forces in
the Pacific and did most of the fighting. The "Europe First" approach to the war
put Pacific commanders at a disadvantage. Because they had fewer ships, planes,
and soldiers than the Japanese, a defensive strategy made sense. U.S. naval forces
would try to contain the Japanese by stopping their expansion in the Central and
South Pacific.

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American forces achieved this goal at the Battle of Midway in June 1942.The
Americans intercepted a Japanese message telling of plans for a major offensive.
They figured out that the target was the U.S. base at Midway, a pair of islands
about 1,200 miles northwest of Pearl Harbor. With this knowledge, the navy sat in
wait for the Japanese fleet. When it was in striking distance, American planes
from Midway and from three aircraft carriers demolished the enemy force. All four
Japanese carriers and about 300 aircraft were destroyed. Japan never recovered
from these losses. The Battle of Midway was Japan's last offensive action.

The Allies began their offensive in the Pacific in August 1942 with the invasion of
Guadalcanal. As the Allies captured islands, they then used these islands as bases
for attacks on other islands. They gradually drove the Japanese forces back
toward Japan.

The Allies Turn the Tide After the Battle of Midway, the Allies went on the
offensive. They followed a strategy of capturing Japanese-held islands using them
as stepping-stones. Each captured island became a base for attacks on other
islands. A tactic known as leapfrogging—bypassing or "jumping over" certain
islands—allowed them to carry out this strategy with limited resources. Cut off

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from reinforcements and supplies, Japanese forces on the bypassed islands were
left to wither.

The Allied offensive began August 1942, when 11,000 U.S. Marines invaded
Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands northeast of Australia. After months of
resistance, Japanese troops abandoned the island in February 1943. They left
behind more than 25,000 dead defenders.

Despite the success of leapfrogging, many of the island invasions came at a

terrible cost. Thousands of soldiers died in the jungles of Guadalcanal, New
Guinea, Tarawa, and Saipan. But the Americans kept pushing the Japanese back,
closer and closer to the home islands of Japan. In October 1944, MacArthur made
his triumphant return to the Philippines, where his forces would battle the
Japanese until the end of the war. In August 1944, the Marines finished retaking
the Mariana Islands. The Marianas campaign was a landmark victory. It gave the
Allies secure bases from which U.S. B-29s could make long-range bombing raids
on Japan.

The Allies Push Toward Japan The Allied push through the Pacific steadily
shrank the defensive perimeter the Japanese had established around Japan. That
perimeter disappeared after the Allies captured the key islands of Iwo Jima and
Okinawa in early 1945. Iwo Jima's airfields provided a base for fighter planes to
escort bombers over Japan. Control of Okinawa, just 310 miles south of Japan,
gave Americans a staging area for an invasion of Japan itself.

On the small volcanic island of Iwo Jima, the defenders dug caves, tunnels, and
concrete-lined bunkers. Three months of Allied bombardment before the February
1945 invasion did little to soften these defenses. The month-long land battle was
among the bloodiest of the war. Nearly all of the 22,000 Japanese troops fought
to their deaths. More than 6,800 American troops died.

To take the much larger Okinawa, the Allies mounted a huge invasion in April
1945. More than 1,200 American and British ships, including 40 aircraft carriers,
supported a force of 182,000 American troops. As on Iwo Jima, the 120,000
troops defending Okinawa fiercely resisted the invaders. The Battle of Okinawa
continued for two months. It claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Japanese
people and some 12,000 American soldiers.

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The Battle of Iwo Jima was a major battle in the Pacific to capture the island of
Iwo Jima from the Japanese Army. The battle lasted over a month and resulted in
the deaths of over 100,000 people.

Developing the First Nuclear Weapon The capture of Okinawa set the stage for
a final invasion of Japan. However, American scientists were working on another
option. In 1939, German-born Jewish scientist Albert Einstein, a refugee in the
United States, had written to President Roosevelt explaining that scientists might
be able to turn uranium into a new form of energy. That energy, he said, could be
harnessed to build "extremely powerful bombs." The power would come from the
energy suddenly released by splitting the nuclei of uranium or plutonium atoms.
Einstein expressed his fear that Germany was already engaged in experiments to
create such a weapon.

Three years after Einstein sent his letter, the U.S. government established a top-
secret program to develop an atomic weapon. A team of scientists, many of whom
had fled fascism in Europe, carried out this work. By the summer of 1945, their
efforts had produced the first atomic bomb, or A-bomb. On July 16, a test bomb
was exploded in the New Mexico desert.

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The physicist J. Robert

Oppenheimer was the director of
the Los Alamos laboratory in New
Mexico that developed the atomic
bomb. Here Oppenheimer (left)
stands on the charred ground at
the site of the first atomic bomb
test explosion with U.S. General
Leslie Groves.

The U.S. Decides to Drop the Bomb New U.S. president Harry Truman faced a
difficult decision. He had taken office just weeks earlier, when President Roosevelt
died. Truman now had to decide whether to drop an atomic bomb on Japan or to
launch an invasion. After Iwo Jima and Okinawa, he knew an invasion would
produce enormous casualties. The number of Allies killed and wounded might
reach half a million, he was told.

Truman faced an enemy that was unwilling to give up. American B-29s were
already destroying Japan with conventional bombs, including firebombs. This
bombing campaign had killed hundreds of thousands of people and turned large
areas of Japan's cities, with their masses of wooden buildings, into cinders. At the
same time, a naval blockade had cut off the supply of raw materials to Japan.
Many of Japan's leaders realized that it could not possibly win the war. Yet the
Japanese refused to accept Truman's demands for an unconditional surrender.
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Some U.S. strategists believed only the shock of the still secret A-bomb would end
the Japanese resistance. Others opposed it, insisting that the current bombing
campaign would soon bring surrender. Some A-bomb opponents claimed that the
Japanese would give up if Truman would agree to let them keep their beloved
emperor. However, Truman stuck to his demand for an unconditional surrender.
He warned Japan that the alternative was "prompt and utter destruction."

Nagasaki was reduced to complete rubble after the United States dropped an
atomic bomb on the Japanese city in August 1945.

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During the war, posters and

magazine ads encouraged women
to fill jobs left by men who joined
the armed forces. Millions of
women answered the call—some
for patriotic reasons, others for
higher pay. In the United States,
women made up about one-third
of new workers hired during the
war.

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After Japan surrendered, the

American General Douglas
MacArthur was put in charge of
the country. The Allies did not
directly govern Japan, but
MacArthur was given the power
to overrule any decisions made by
the Japanese government.

Two A-bombs End the War in the Pacific On August 6, 1945, an American B-29
named Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, a city of 300,000
people. Within seconds of the explosion, up to 80,000 people died. The blast's
shock wave toppled nearly 60,000 structures. Hundreds of fires consumed the
rest of the city. Three days later, the United States dropped a second bomb,
wiping out the city of Nagasaki and instantly killing some 40,000 people. As many
as 250,000 Japanese may have died from the two bombs, either directly or as the
result of burns, radiation poisoning, or cancer.

The destruction of Nagasaki brought a Japanese surrender. Truman received it on

August 14, Victory over Japan Day, or V-J Day. The terms of the surrender
allowed the emperor to keep his office but only in a ceremonial role. In September,
the Allies officially accepted the surrender aboard the American battleship
Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

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The Cost of World War II Millions worldwide celebrated V-J Day, which marked
the end of the World War II. But they also mourned the loss of life. As many as 60
million people died in World War II—about half of them civilians. The Soviet Union
had the highest losses. Perhaps 20 million or more Soviet soldiers and civilians
were killed, although an accurate count was never made. Poland was also hard hit,
suffering about 6 million deaths, nearly all of them civilians. Nearly 2 million
Japanese were killed and more than 4 million Germans. Britain, France, and the
United States each lost several hundred thousand people.

More than 20 million Europeans were made homeless by the fighting. The huge
number of dead and homeless in China and the rest of Asia will probably never be
known. Nor can the cost of all the property destroyed, resources depleted, and
economic activity disrupted by the war. Just the money governments paid to fight
the war totaled more than a trillion dollars.

While World War I introduced new technologies to war, such as tanks, World War
II expanded on the use of these technologies. Submarines, airplanes, and tanks
were used more extensively in World War II than in World War I, resulting in mass
destruction of military and civilian populations. President Roosevelt claimed that
World War II was, "a new kind of war … It is warfare in terms of every continent,
every island, every sea, every air lane in the world."

Summary
In this lesson, you learned about events that resulted in World War II between
1939 and 1945, the course of the fighting in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East,
and Asia, and the war’s final outcome.

Cultural Interaction As other European nations came under German control, the
Nazis began a program to annihilate all Jews and other groups they falsely viewed
as inferior. By the end of the war, 6 million Jews had been murdered in a
systematic mass-murder campaign that became known as the Holocaust.

Political Systems After World War I, Germany rearmed and seized ethnically
German territories, but German ambitions to control wider territories soon
became known. Britain and France did not resist these moves at first. When they
did, Germany went to war. Soon, most of western Europe was under Nazi control.
In the east, Germany invaded the Soviet Union to destroy communism and gain oil.

Economic Systems As Japan industrialized in the early 1900s, the small island
nation did not have the natural resources its industries needed. To get them,
Japan relied on its military to conquer other lands. In 1931, Japan began a long war
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to take control of China. By 1940, it was also eyeing Southeast Asia and the East
Indies for the oil, rubber, and other raw materials these regions contained. When
American leaders tried to block Japan’s expansion, Japan went to war against the
United States.

Human-Environment Interaction German warplanes waged a ferocious bombing

campaign to conquer Britain in 1940 and 1941. Despite suffering great
destruction, Britain did not fall. Soon, British and American long-range bombers
were bringing similar destruction to Germany and its cities. In Asia, Allied forces
captured Pacific islands ever closer to Japan and used them as bases to launch
damaging air attacks on the Japanese home islands. In August 1945, American
bombers dropped two tremendously powerful atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Conservative estimates show that 150,000 Japanese civilians perished
in Hiroshima and another 75,000 perished in Nagasaki. Each city was almost
totally destroyed. The tremendous destruction and high loss of life caused Japan
to surrender, bringing World War II to an end.

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