User:TomStar81/World War II
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| World War II | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Allies: Poland, British Commonwealth, France/Free France, Soviet Union, United States, China, and others |
Axis Powers: Germany, Italy, Japan, and others |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Military dead: 17 million Civilian dead: 33 million Total dead: 50 million |
Military dead: 8 million Civilian dead: 4 million Total dead: 12 million |
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World War II, also known as the Second World War and commonly abbreviated either WWII or WW2, was a global military conflict that took place between 1939 and 1945. To date it remains the largest and deadliest war in history.
Even though Japan had been fighting in China since 1937, the conventional view is that the war began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Within two days the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany, although the only European battles remained in Poland. Pursuant to a then secret provision of its non-aggression Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union, Germany was joined in the battle to conquer Poland and to divide Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939.
The Allies were initially made up of Poland, the British Empire, France, and others. In May, 1940 Germany invaded western Europe. Six weeks later, France surrendered to Germany. Three months after that, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed a mutual defense agreement, the Tripartite Pact, and were known as the Axis Powers. Then, nine months later, in June 1941, while still battling Britain, Germany betrayed and invaded its partner, the Soviet Union, forcing the Soviets into the Allied camp (although they still abided by their non-aggression treaty with Japan). In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States bringing it too into the war on the Allied side. China also joined the Allies, as eventually did most of the rest of the world. By the beginning of 1942, the major combatants were aligned as follows: the British Commonwealth, the United States, and the Soviet Union were fighting Germany and Italy; and the British Commonwealth, China, and the United States were fighting Japan. From then through August 1945, battles raged across all of Europe, in the North Atlantic Ocean, across North Africa, throughout Southeast Asia, throughout China, across the Pacific Ocean and in the air over Japan.
Italy surrendered in September 1943, Germany in May 1945. The surrender of Japan marked the end of the war, on September 2, 1945.
It is possible that around 62 million people died in the war; estimates vary greatly. About 60% of all casualties were civilians, who died as a result of disease, starvation, genocide, and aerial bombing. The former Soviet Union and China suffered the most casualties. Estimates place deaths in the Soviet Union at around 23 million, while China suffered about 10 million. Poland suffered the most deaths in proportion to its population of any country, losing approximately 5.6 million out of a pre-war population of 34.8 million (16%).
After World War II, Europe was informally split into western and Soviet spheres of influence. Western Europe later aligned as North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and Eastern Europe as the Warsaw Pact. There was a shift in power from Western Europe and the British Empire to the two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. These two rivals would later face off in the Cold War. In Asia, the United States's military occupation of Japan led to Japan's democratization. China's civil war continued through and after the war, resulting eventually in the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The former colonies of the European powers began their road to independence.
Due to the overwhelming amount of material published on, about, and pertaining to World War II it would be impossible for one article to adequately cover all aspects of the war, therefore this page gives a rough chronological overview of the war beginning with the general accepted causes of the war and concluding with the results of World War II. More detailed information about World War II can be found here.
Contents
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[edit] Causes
The exact causes of World War II vary for a variety of reasons, with ongoing debates as to what the major and minor causes were and what roles each cause played. Commonly held general causes for WWII are the rise of nationalism, the rise of militarism, and the presence of unresolved territorial issues after World War I.
In Germany, resentment of the harsh Treaty of Versailles, specifically article 231 (the "Guilt Clause"); the belief in the Dolchstosslegende; and the onset of the Great Depression fueled the rise to power of Adolf Hitler's militarist National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazi Party). Germany also acquired a large amount of wiggle room to get around the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles due in large part to the fact that the treaty's provisions were laxly enforced due to the fear of another war. Closely related is the failure of the British and French policy of appeasement, which sought to avoid war but actually gave Hitler time to re-arm.
Japan in the 1930s was ruled by a militarist clique devoted to Japan's becoming a world power; however, the Japanese home islands lack the natural resources that industrial nations possessed, and would need to acquire these raw materials in order to achieve the status of a world power. To that end Japan invaded China to bolster its meager stock of natural resources. This angered the United States, which reacted by making loans to China, providing covert military assistance, and instituting increasingly broad embargoes of raw materials against Japan. These embargoes would have eventually wrecked Japan's economy; Japan was faced with the choice of withdrawing from China or going to war in order to conquer the oil resources of the Dutch East Indies. It chose to go ahead with plans for the Greater East Asia War in the Pacific.
The League of Nations also failed in its mission of preventing war. When Japan withdrew from the leauge 1933 no serious effort was made to bring them back into the orginazation. Following Japan’s example, Hilter’s Germany and Mussolini’s italy withdrew from the league in 1933 and 1937, respectively. When World War II broke out it became aparent that the League had failed to prevent the war due in large part to the absence of an armed force of its own and its inability to demand that Japan, Italy, and Germany return to the League and abide by its resolutions.
[edit] Chronology
[edit] 1939: War breaks out in Europe
After the collapse of the Munich agreement in March 1939, when German armies entered Prague and proceeded to occupy the remainder of Czechoslovakia, Poland and France pledged on May 19, 1939 to provide each other with military assistance in the event either was attacked. The British had already offered support to the Poles when Poland and Britain signed the Polish-British Common Defence Pact, but then on August 23 Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The pact included a secret protocol, dividing eastern Europe into German and Soviet areas of interest. Each country agreed to allow the other a free hand in its area of influence, to include military occupation. Hitler was now ready to go to war in order to conquer Poland. The signing of a new alliance between Britain and Poland on August 25 deterred him for only a few days.
On September 1 Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. The French mobilized slowly, then mounted only a token offensive in the Saar, which they soon abandoned, while the British couldn't take any direct action in support of the Poles in the time available (see Western betrayal). Meanwhile, on September 9, the Germans reached Warsaw, having slashed through the Polish defenses.
On September 17 Soviet troops occupied the eastern part of Poland, taking control of territory that Germany had agreed was in the Soviet sphere of influence. A day later the Polish president and commander-in-chief both fled to Romania. The last Polish units surrendered on October 6, thus concluding the Polish September Campaign. Some Polish troops evacuated to neighbouring countries. In the aftermath of the September Campaign, occupied Poland managed to create a powerful resistance movement and contributed significant military forces to the Allies for the duration of World War II.
After Poland fell, Germany paused to regroup during the winter of 1939-1940 until April 1940, while the British and French stayed on the defensive. The period would be referred to by journalists as "the Phony War", or the "Sitzkrieg", because so little ground combat took place.
Meanwhile, in the North Atlantic German U-boats began intercepting and sinking Allied shipping, thus starting the Second Battle of the Atlantic. The submarines made up in skill, luck, and daring what they lacked in numbers. One U-boat sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous while another U-boat managed to sink the battleship HMS Royal Oak in its home anchorage of Scapa Flow. Altogether the U-boats sank more than 110 vessels in the first four months of the war.
In the South Atlantic German surface raiders like the Graf Spee began raiding Allied shipping, preventing vital dupplies from reaching Great Britain and other Allied Nations. Graf Spee was scuttled after the battle of the River Plate, while other ships of the Royal Navy began escorting shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. About a year and a half later, another German raider, the German battleship Bismarck, would suffer a similar fate in the North Atlantic. Unlike the U-boat threat, which had a serious impact a bit later in the war, German surface raiders had little impact due to the fact that their numbers were so small.
[edit] 1940: The war spreads
The Soviet Union attacked Finland on November 30, 1939, beginning the Winter War. Finland surrendered to the Soviet Union in March 1940 and signed the Moscow Peace Treaty (1940) in which the Finns made territorial concessions. Later that year, in June the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania and bagan the Occupation of the Baltic Republics.
Germany began its Norwegian Campaign when it invaded Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940 in Operation Weserübung, in part to counter the threat of an impending Allied invasion of Norway. Denmark did not resist, but Norway fought back, and was joined by British, French, and Polish (exile) forces landing in support of the Norwegians at Namsos, Åndalsnes, and Narvik. By late June the Allies were defeated, German forces were in control of most of Norway, and what remained of the Norwegian Army had surrendered. Hitler then turned his attention to the western European countries.
On May 10, 1940 the Germans invaded Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, ending the Phony War and beginning the Battle of France. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French Army advanced into northern Belgium, planning on fighting a mobile war in the north while maintaining a static continuous front along the Maginot Line further south. The Allied plans were immediately smashed by the most classic example in history of Blitzkrieg.
In the first phase of the invasion, Fall Gelb (CACA), the Wehrmacht's Panzergruppe von Kleist raced through the Ardennes, broke the French line at Sedan, then slashed across northern France to the English Channel, splitting the Allies in two. Meanwhile Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fell quickly against the attack of German Army Group B. The BEF, encircled in the north, was evacuated from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo.On June 10 Italy joined the war attacking France in the south. German forces then continued the conquest of France with Fall Rot (Case Red), advancing behind the Maginot Line and near the coast. France signed an armistice with Germany on June 22, 1940, leading to the establishment of the Vichy France puppet government in the unoccupied part of France.
The defeat of France left Britain as the last major country unoccupied by the Nazis, so Germany began preparations in summer of 1940 to invade Britain under the code name Operation Sea Lion. The first step necessary was for the Luftwaffe to secure control of the air over Britain by defeating the Royal Air Force (RAF). The war between the two air forces became known as the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe initially targeted RAF Fighter Command but thinking the results poor the Luftwaffe later turned to terror bombing London. The Germans failed to defeat the Royal Air Force, and Operation Sea Lion was postponed and eventually cancelled.
The Italian declaration of war in June 1940 challenged the British supremacy of the Mediterranean, hinged on Gibraltar, Malta, and Alexandria. Italian troops invaded and captured British Somaliland in August 1940. In September 1940 the North African Campaign began when Italian forces in Libya attacked British forces in Egypt. The aim was to make Egypt an Italian possession, especially the vital Suez Canal east of Egypt. British, Indian and Australian forces counter-attacked in Operation Compass, but this offensive stopped in 1941 when much of the Commonwealth forces were transferred to Greece to defend it from German attack. However, German forces (known later as the Afrika Korps) under General Erwin Rommel landed in Libya and renewed the assault on Egypt.
Italy invaded Greece on October 28, 1940 from bases in Albania after the Greek Premier John Metaxas rejected an ultimatum to hand over Greek territory. Despite the enormous superiority of the Italian forces, the Greek army forced the Italians into a massive retreat deep into Albania. By mid-December the Greeks occupied one-fourth of Albania. The Greek army had inflicted upon the Axis Powers their first defeat in the war and Nazi Germany would soon be forced to intervene in the Balkans Campaign.
[edit] 1941: The war becomes global
[edit] European Theatre
As the situation in Europe worsened U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt reliesed that the United States would eventually become involved in the War, and began taking steps to prepare for this inevitability. With Winston Churchill’s Great Britain now the only major Allied power present in Europe, Roosevelt decided to send as much help as he could to England without officially entering the war. To that end, Roosevelt began signing various deals, acts, and policies with Great Britain; among them Cash and Carry, the Destroyers for Bases Agreement, and the Lend-Lease Act. These programs were the first large steps away from American isolationism by providing substantial assistance to the U.K. Before long the Soviet Union and other Allied countries began taking advantage of US Lend-Lease policies for their own war efforts.
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During 1941 the Axis powers continued to apply pressure to various European countries. Yugoslavia's government succumbed to the pressure of the Axis and signed the Tripartite Treaty on March 25 but the government was overthrown in a coup which replaced it with a pro-Allied one prompting the Germans to invade Yugoslavia on April 6. In the early morning 6th of April Germans bombarded Belgrade with around 450 aircraft. Yugoslavia was occupied in a matter of days and the army surrendered on April 17 but the partisan resistance would last throughout the war. The rapid downfall of Yugoslavia however, allowed German forces to enter Greek territory through the Yugoslav frontier. The 58,000 British and Commonwealth troops who had been sent to help the Greeks were driven back and soon forced to evacuate. On April 27, German forces entered Athens which was followed by the end of organized Greek resistance. The occupation of Greece would prove costly as guerilla warfare would continually plague the Axis occupiers.
On June 22, 1941 Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in history, began. Three German army groups, an Axis force of over four million men, advanced rapidly deep into the Soviet Union, destroying almost the entire western Soviet army in huge battles of encirclement. The Soviets dismantled as much industry as possible ahead of the advancing Axis forces, moving it to the Ural mountains for reassembly. By late November the Axis had reached a line at the gates of Leningrad, Moscow, and Rostov, at the cost of about 23 percent casualties, but now their advance ground to a halt. The German General Staff had badly under-estimated the size of the overall Soviet army and its ability to draft new troops and were now dismayed by the presence of new forces, including fresh Siberian troops under General Zhukov, and by the onset of a particularly cold winter. German forward units had advanced within distant sight of the golden onion domes of Moscow's Saint Basil's Cathedral, but then on December 5 the Soviets counter-attacked and pushed the Axis Eastern Front back some 100-150 miles, the first major German defeat of World War II. On June 25 the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union began with Soviet air attacks shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa.
It was against this backdrop that President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met in secret on the Atlantic ocean to discuss both leaders’ visions for the end of World War II. The result of this meeting was the Atlantic Charter, a joint declaration by Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt issued at Argentia, Newfoundland on August 14, 1941. Originally the Atlantic Charter only applied to the United Kingdom and the United States; however, as 1941 drew to a close other allied powers —noatbly the Soviet Union— had agrred to the points set forth in the charter.
In late December 1941 Churchill met with Roosevelt again at the Arcadia Conference. They agreed that defeating Germany had priority over defeating Japan. The Americans proposed a 1942 cross-channel invasion of France which the British strongly opposed, suggesting instead a small invasion in Norway or landings in French North Africa. The Declaration by the United Nations was issued.
[edit] The Mediterranean
Rommel's forces advanced rapidly eastward, laying siege to the vital seaport of Tobruk. Two Allied attempts to relieve Tobruk were defeated, but a larger offensive at the end of the year (Operation Crusader) drove Rommel back after heavy fighting.
On May 20, the Battle of Crete began when elite German parachute and glider-borne mountain troops launched a massive airborne invasion of the Greek island. Crete was defended by Greek and Commonwealth troops. The Germans attacked the island simultaneously on the three airfields. Their invasion on two of the airfields failed, but they successfully captured one, which allowed them to reinforce their position and capture the island in a little over one week.
In June 1941, Allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon, capturing Damascus on June 17. Later, in August, British and Soviet troops occupied neutral Iran in order to secure its oil and a southern supply line to Russia.
[edit] Pacific Theatre
A war had begun in East Asia before World War II started in Europe. On July 7, 1937, Japan, after occupying Manchuria in 1931, launched another attack against China near Beijing. The Japanese made initial advances, but were stalled at Shanghai. The city eventually fell to the Japanese and in December 1937, the capital city, Nanking (now Nanjing), fell and the Chinese government moved its seat to Chongqing for the rest of the war. The Japanese forces committed brutal atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war when Nanking was occupied, slaughtering as many as 300,000 civilians within a month. By 1940 the war had reached a stalemate with both sides making minimal gains. The Chinese had successfully defended their land from oncoming Japanese on several occasions while strong resistance in areas occupied by the Japanese made a victory seem impossible to the Japanese.
Protesting Japan's incursion into French Indo-China and Japan's continued invasion of China, in the summer of 1941 the United States began an oil embargo against Japan. To counter this threat Japan planned an attack on Pearl Harbor to cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet before consolidating oil fields in the Dutch East Indies. On December 7, a Japanese carrier fleet launched a surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The raid resulted in two U.S. battleships sunk, and six damaged but later repaired and returned to service. The raid failed to find any aircraft carriers, nor damage Pearl Harbor's usefulness as a naval base. The attack strongly united public opinion in the United States against Japan. The following day, December 8, Roosevelt addressed both houses of the United States Congress, asking for Congress to grant a declaration of war against the Japanese.
| “ | Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. ... It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.[1] |
” |
In a near unanimous vote Congress aproved the Preseident’s request, issueing a formal Declaration of war against Japan. On the same day, China officially declared war against Japan. Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, even though it was not obliged to do so under the Tripartite Pact. Hitler hoped that Japan would support Germany by attacking the Soviet Union, which would force the Soviets to send troops east to meet the Japanese threat. This would help ease the pressure on Hitler’s western front, which had bogged down to to Soviet resistance and an unusually early and cold winter. Japan did not oblige and this diplomatic move by Hitler proved a catastrophic blunder, unifying the American public's support for the war.
Japan soon invaded the Philippines and the British colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya, Borneo, and Burma, with the intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. Despite fierce resistance by American, Philippine, British, Canadian, and Indian forces, all these territories capitulated to the Japanese in a matter of months. The British island fortress of Singapore was captured in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats of all time.
Japan attacked the Philippines on December 8, 1941, just ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Initial aerial bombardment was followed by landings of ground troops both north and south of Manila. The defending Philippine and United States troops were under the command of United States General Douglas MacArthur. The aircraft of his command were destroyed on the ground, for which he was later criticized by military historians; the naval forces were ordered to leave; and because of the circumstances in the Pacific region, reinforcement and resupply of his ground forces were impossible. Under the pressure of superior numbers, the defending forces withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula and to the island of Corregidor at the entrance to Manila Bay. Manila, declared an open city to prevent its destruction, was occupied by the Japanese on January 2, 1942.
The Philippine defense continued until the final surrender of United States-Philippine forces on the Bataan Peninsula in April 1942 and on Corregidor in May. Most of the 80,000 prisoners of war captured by the Japanese at Bataan were forced to undertake the infamous "Death March" to a prison camp 105 kilometers to the north. It is estimated that as many as 10,000 men, weakened by disease and malnutrition and treated harshly by their captors, died before reaching their destination.
[edit] 1942: Deadlock
[edit] European Theatre
- Western and Central Europe
In May, top Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated by Allied agents in Operation Anthropoid. Hitler ordered severe reprisals. (See Lidice).
On August 19 British and Canadian forces launched the Dieppe Raid (codenamed Operation Jubilee) on the German occupied port of Dieppe, France. The attack was a disaster but provided critical information utilized later in Operation Torch and Operation Overlord.
- Soviet winter and early spring offensives
In the north, Soviets launched the Toropets-Kholm Operation January 9 to February 6 1942, trapping a German force near Andreapol. The Soviets also surrounded a German garrison in the Demyansk Pocket which held out with air supply for four months (February 8 until April 21, and established themselves in front of Kholm, Velizh and Velikie Luki.
In the south, Soviet forces launched an offensive in May against the German Sixth Army, initiating a bloody 17 day battle around Kharkov which resulted in the loss of over 200,000 Red Army personnel.
- Axis summer offensive
On June 28, the Axis began their summer offensive. German Army Group B was to capture the city of Stalingrad which would secure the German left while Army Group A was to capture the southern oil fields. The Battle of the Caucasus, fought in the late summer and fall of 1942, saw the Axis forces capturing the oil fields.
- Stalingrad
After bitter street fighting which lasted for a couple of months, the Germans captured 90% of Stalingrad by November. The Soviets however had been building up massive forces on the flanks of Stalingrad launched Operation Uranus on November 19, with twin attacks that met at Kalach four days later trapping the Sixth Army in Stalingrad. The Germans requested permission to attempt a break-out, which was refused by Hitler, who ordered Sixth Army to remain in Stalingrad where he promised they would be supplied by air until rescued. About the same time, the Soviets launched Operation Mars in a salient near the vicinity of Moscow. Its objective was to tie down Army Group Center and to prevent it from reinforcing Army Group South at Stalingrad.
In December German relief forces got within 30 miles of the trapped Sixth Army before being turned back by the Soviets. By the end of the year, Sixth Army was in desperate condition, as the Luftwaffe was only able to supply about a sixth of the supplies needed.
- Eastern North Africa
At the beginning of 1942, the Allied forces in North Africa were weakened by detachments to the Far East. Rommel once again attacked and recaptured Benghazi. Then he defeated the Allies at the Battle of Gazala, and captured Tobruk with several thousand prisoners and large quantities of supplies. Following up, he drove deep into Egypt but with overstretched forces.
The First Battle of El Alamein took place in July 1942. Allied forces had retreated to the last defensible point before Alexandria and the Suez Canal. The Afrika Korps, however, had outrun its supplies, and the defenders stopped its thrusts. The Second Battle of El Alamein occurred between October 23 and November 3. Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery was in command of the Commonwealth forces, now known as the British Eighth Army. The Eighth Army took the offensive, and was ultimately triumphant. After the German defeat at El Alamein, the Axis forces made a successful strategic withdrawal to Tunisia.
Western North Africa
Operation Torch was launched on November 8, 1942 and aimed to gain control of Morocco and Algiers through simultaneous landings at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, followed a few days later with a landing at Bône, the gateway to Tunisia. It was hoped that the local forces of Vichy France would put up no resistance and submit to the authority of Free French General Henri Giraud. In response Hitler invaded and occupied Vichy France and Tunisia, but the German and Italian forces were caught in the pincers of a twin advance from Algeria and Libya. Rommel's victory against American forces at the Battle of the Kasserine Pass could only hold off the inevitable.
[edit] Pacific Theatre
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor Japan began an aggressive series of ofensives in the Asia Pacific region. The ferosity of the raids had forced the United States, Britain, and other allied contries to take a defensive position in an effort to save as many men as was possible. This changed somewhat in April, when US commander James Harold "Jimmy" Doolittle combined US Army Air Force bombers and US Navy carriers to execute an attack against the Japanese Home Islands. The Doolittle Raid, the first U.S. air raid on Tokyo, boosted morale in the U.S. and caused Japan to shift resources to homeland defence, but did little actual damage.
In early May, a Japanese naval invasion of Port Moresby, New Guinea, was thwarted by Allied navies in the Battle of the Coral Sea. This was both the first successful opposition to a Japanese attack and the first battle fought between aircraft carriers. Both Japan and the United States considered the operation a success, for the Japanese this arose from the fact elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy had sunk a US carrier while the US Navy had not harmed the Japan’s carrier force. The United States considered the battle a success in that the US and other Allied powers had prevented the Japanese from invading Australia.
Japan’s next offensive was aimed at at taking Midway Atoll, a small air base roughly halfway between Pearl Harbor and Japan. Japanese forces intended to catch the remaining US Pacific fleet carriers off balance by launching a feint attack before taking Midway, fully expecting US forces to be surprised by the capture of Midway. Unbeknownst to the Japanese the United States had broken the Japanese naval codes and knew the Japanese plan of attack, and reacted by sending the remaining Pacific Fleet carriers to Midway. On June 4, American and Japanese dive bombers met in the Battle of Midway. In the ensuing three day battle US carrier-based dive-bombers sank four of Japan's best aircraft carriers. Historians mark this battle as a turning point, the end of Japanese expansion in the Pacific. [2]
From here the US began planning the counter offensive to the Japanese invasion. This involved a technique known as "island hopping", or alternatively, "leap frogging". Under this strategy the United States armed forces — particularly the Navy and the Marine Corps — would bypass heavily fortified Japanese positions and instead concentrate on a limited number of strategically important islands that were not well defended but capable of supporting the drive to the main islands of Japan. By obtaining a chain of islands leading to Japan the United States hoped to strengthen its power in the Pacific Theatre, with the ultimate goal being an eventual attack the Japanese Home Islands. This strategy was possible because the United States had submarine forces, which provided an effective blockade, preventing the Japanese from moving troops from island to island. Thus troops on islands which had been bypassed were useless to the Japanese war effort and left to "wither on the vine."
In July a Japanese overland attack on Port Moresby was led along the rugged Kokoda Track. An outnumbered and untrained Australian battalion defeated the 5,000-strong Japanese force, the first land defeat of Japan in the war, and one of the most significant victories in Australian military history.
On August 7, United States Marines began the Battle of Guadalcanal. For the next six months, US forces fought Japanese forces for control of the island. Meanwhile, several naval encounters raged in the nearby waters, including the Battle of Savo Island, Battle of Cape Esperance, Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, and Battle of Tassafaronga. In late August and early September, while battle raged on Guadalcanal, an amphibious Japanese attack on the eastern tip of New Guinea was met by Australian forces in the Battle of Milne Bay.
Japan launched a major offensive in China following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The aim of the offensive was to take the strategically important city of Changsha which the Japanese had failed to capture on two previous occasions. For the attack the Japanese massed 120,000 soldiers under 4 divisions. The Chinese responded with 300,000 men and soon the Japanese army was encircled and had to retreat.
[edit] 1943: The war turns
[edit] European Theatre
German and Soviet spring offensives
After the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, the Red Army launched eight offensives during the winter, many concentrated along the Don basin near Stalingrad, which resulted in initial gains until German forces were able to take advantage of the weakened condition of the Red Army and regain the territory it lost.
Operation Citadel
On July 4, the Wehrmacht launched a much-delayed offensive against the Soviet Union at the Kursk salient. Their intentions were known by the Soviets who had hastened to defend the salient with an enormous system of earthwork defenses. Both sides massed their armor for what became a decisive military engagement. The Germans attacked from both the north and south of the salient and hoped to meet in the middle, cutting off the salient and trapping 60 Soviet divisions. The German offensive got ground down as little progress was made through the Soviet defenses. The Soviets then brought up their reserves and the largest tank battle of the war occurred near the city of Prokhorovka. The Germans had exhausted their armored forces and could not stop the Soviet counter-offensive that threw them back across their starting positions.
Soviet fall and winter offensives
In August Hitler agreed to a general withdrawal to the Dnieper line and as September proceeded into October, the Germans found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew, and important Dnieper towns started to fall, with Zaporozhye the first to go, followed by Dnepropetrovsk.
Early in November the Soviets broke out of their bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and recaptured the Ukrainian capital.
First Ukrainian Front attacked at Korosten on Christmas eve. The Soviet advance continued along the railway line until the 1939 Polish-Soviet border was reached.
Italy
The surrender of Axis forces in Tunisia on May 13, 1943 yielded some 250,000 prisoners. The North African war proved to be a disaster for Italy and when the Allies invaded Sicily on July 10 in Operation Husky, capturing the island in a little over a month, it caused the regime of Benito Mussolini to collapse. On July 25 he was removed from office by the King of Italy, and arrested with the positive consent of the Great Fascist Council. A new government, led by Pietro Badoglio, took power but declared that Italy would stay in the war. Badoglio actually had begun secret peace negotiations with the Allies.
The Allies invaded mainland Italy on September 3, 1943. Italy surrendered to the Allies on September 8, as had been agreed in negotiations. The royal family and Badoglio government escaped to the south, leaving the Italian army without orders, while the Germans took over the fight, forcing the Allies to a complete halt in the winter of 1943-44 at the Gustav Line south of Rome.
In the north the Nazis let Mussolini create what was effectively a puppet state, the Italian Social Republic or "Republic of Salò", named after the new capital of Salò on Lake Garda .
Mid-1943 brought the fifth and final German Sutjeska offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans.
[edit] Pacific Theatre
Central and South West Pacific
On January 2 Buna, New Guinea was captured by the Allies. This ended the threat to Port Moresby. By January 22, 1943, the Allied forces had achieved their objective of isolating Japanese forces in eastern New Guinea and cutting off their main line of supply.
American authorities declared Guadalcanal secure on February 9. Australian and U.S. forces undertook the prolonged campaign to retake the occupied parts of the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, experiencing some of the toughest resistance of the war. The rest of the Solomon Islands were retaken in 1943.
In November U.S. Marines won the Battle of Tarawa. This was the first heavily opposed amphibious assault in the Pacific theater. The high casualties taken by the Marines sparked off a storm of protest in the United States, where the large losses could not be understood for such a tiny and seemingly unimportant island.
Sino-Japanese War
A vigorous, fluctuating battle for Changde in China's Hunan province began on November 2, 1943. The Japanese threw over 100,000 men into the attack on the city, which changed hands several times in a few days but ended up still held by the Chinese. Overall, the Chinese ground forces were compelled to fight a war of defense and attrition while they built up their armies and awaited an Allied counteroffensive.
South East Asia
The Nationalist Kuomintang Army, under Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist Chinese Army, under Mao Zedong, both opposed the Japanese occupation of China but never truly allied against the Japanese. Conflict between Nationalist and Communist forces emerged long before the war; it continued after and, to an extent, even during the war, though more implicitly. The Japanese and its auxiliary Indian National Army had captured most of Burma, severing the Burma Road by which the Western Allies had been supplying the Chinese Nationalists. This forced the Allies to create a large sustained airlift, known as "flying the Hump". U.S.-led and trained Chinese divisions, a British division and a few thousand U.S. ground troops cleared the Japanese forces from northern Burma so that the Ledo Road could be built to replace the Burma Road.
[edit] 1944: The beginning of the end
[edit] European Theatre
Soviet winter and spring offensives
In the north, a Soviet offensive in January 1944 had relieved the siege of Leningrad. The Germans conducted an orderly retreat from the Leningrad area to a shorter line based on the lakes to the south.
In the south, in March, two Soviet fronts encircled Generaloberst Hans-Valentin Hube's First Panzer Army north of the Dniestr river. The Germans escaped the pocket in April saving most of their men but losing their heavy equipment.
In early May, the Red Army's 3rd Ukrainian Front engaged German Seventeenth Army of Army Group South which had been left behind after the German retreat from the Ukraine. The battle was a complete victory for the Red Army, and a botched evacuation effort across the Black Sea led to over 250,000 German and Romanian casualties.
During April 1944, a series of attacks by the Red Army near the city of Iaşi, Romania was aiming at capturing the strategically important sector. The German-Romanian forces successfully defended the sector throughout the month of April. The attack aiming at Târgul Frumos was the final attempt by the Red Army to achieve its goal of having a spring-board into Romania for a summer offensive.
With Soviet forces approaching, German troops occupied Hungary on March 20 as Hitler thought that the Hungarian leader, Admiral Miklós Horthy, might no longer be a reliable ally.
Finland sought a separate peace with Stalin in February 1944, but the terms offered were unacceptable. On June 9, the Soviet Union began the Fourth strategic offensive on the Karelian Isthmus that after three months would force Finland to accept an armistice.
Soviet summer offensive
Operation Bagration, a Soviet offensive involving 2.5 million men and 6,000 tanks, was launched on June 22 and was intended to clear German troops from Belarus. The subsequent battle resulted in the destruction of German Army Group Centre and over 800,000 German casualties, the greatest defeat for the Wehrmacht during the war. The Soviets swept forward, reaching the outskirts of Warsaw on July 31.
Soviet fall and winter offensives
After the destruction of Army Group Center, the Soviets attacked German forces in the South in mid-July 1944 and in a month's time cleared the Ukraine of German presence.
The Red Army's 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts engaged German Heeresgruppe Südukraine, which consisted of German and Romanian formations, in an operation to occupy Romania and destroy the German formations in the sector. The result of the battle was complete victory for the Red Army, and a switch of Romania from the Axis to the Allied camp.
In October 1944 General der Artillerie Maximilian Fretter-Pico's Sixth Army encircled and destroyed three corps of Marshal Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky's Group Pliyev near Debrecen, Hungary. This was to be the last German victory in the Eastern front.
The Red Army's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Baltic Fronts engaged German Army Group Centre and Army Group North to capture the Baltic region from the Germans. The result of the series of battles was a permanent loss of contact between Army Groups North and Centre, and the creation of the Courland Pocket in Latvia.
From December 29, 1944 to February 13, 1945, Soviet forces laid siege to Budapest which was defended by German Waffen-SS and Hungarian forces. It was one of the bloodiest sieges of the war.
Warsaw Uprising
The proximity of the Red Army led the Poles in Warsaw to believe they would soon be liberated. On August 1 they rose in revolt as part of the wider Operation Tempest. Nearly 40,000 Polish resistance fighters seized control of the city. The Soviets however stopped outside the city and gave the Poles no assistance, as German army units moved into the city to put down the revolt. The resistance ended on October 2. German units then destroyed most of what was left of the city.
Allied invasion of Western Europe
On "D-Day" (June 6, 1944) the western Allies of mainly Britain, Canada and America invaded German-held Normandy. German resistance was stubborn and during the first month, the Allies measured progress in hundreds of yards and bloody rifle fights in the Bocage. An Allied breakout was effected at St.-Lô, and German forces were almost completely destroyed in the Falaise pocket while counter-attacking. Allied forces stationed in Italy invaded the French Riviera on August 15 and linked up with forces from Normandy. The clandestine French Resistance in Paris rose against the Germans on August 19, and a French division under General Jacques Leclerc, pressing forward from Normandy, received the surrender of the German forces there and liberated the city on August 25.
Operation Market Garden
Allied paratroopers attempted a fast advance into the Netherlands with Operation Market Garden in September but were repulsed. Logistical problems were starting to plague the Allies' advance west as the supply lines still ran back to the beaches of Normandy. A decisive victory by the Canadian First Army in the Battle of the Scheldt secured the entrance to the port of Antwerp, freeing it to receive supplies by late November 1944.
German winter offensive
In December 1944, the German Army made its last major offensive in the West, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler sought to drive a wedge between the western Allies, causing them to agree to a favourable armistice, after which Germany could concentrate all her efforts on the Eastern front and have a chance to defeat the Soviets. The mission was doomed to failure, since the Allies had no intention of granting an armistice under any conditions. At first, the Germans scored successes against the unprepared Allied forces. Poor weather during the initial days of the offensive favoured the Germans because it grounded Allied aircraft. However, with clearing skies allowing Allied air supremacy to resume, the German failure to capture Bastogne, and with the arrival of the United States Third Army, the Germans were forced to retreat back into Germany. The offensive was defeated but was the bloodiest battle in U.S. military history.
Italy and the Balkans
During the winter the Allies tried to force the Gustav line on the southern Apennines of Italy but they could not break enemy lines until the landing of Anzio on January 22, 1944, on the southern coast of Latium, named Operation Shingle. Only after some months the Gustav line was broken and the Allies marched towards the north of the peninsula. On June 4 Rome fell to Allies, and the Allied army reached Florence in August, then stopped along the Gothic Line on the Tuscan Apennines during the winter.
Germany withdrew from the Balkans and held Hungary until February 1945.
Romania turned against Germany in August 1944 and Bulgaria surrendered in September.
[edit] Pacific Theatre
Central and South West Pacific
The American advance continued in the southwest Pacific with the capture of the Marshall Islands before the end of February. 42,000 U.S. Army soldiers and Marines landed on Kwajalein atoll on January 31. Fierce fighting occurred and the island was taken on February 6. U.S. Marines next defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Eniwetok.
The main objective was the Marianas, especially Saipan and to a lessor extent, Guam. The Japanese in both places were strongly entrenched. On June 11 Saipan was bombarded from the sea and a landing made four days later; it was captured by July 9. The Japanese committed much of their declining naval strength in the Battle of the Philippine Sea but suffered severe losses in both ships and aircraft and after the battle the Japanese aircraft carrier force was no longer militarily effective. With the capture of Saipan, Japan was finally within range of B-29 bombers.
Guam was invaded on July 21 and taken on August 10, but Japanese fought fanatically and mopping up operations continued long after the Battle of Guam was officially over. The island of Tinian was invaded on July 24 and saw the first usage of napalm. The island fell on August 1.
General MacArthur's troops invaded the Philippines, landing on the island of Leyte on October 20. The Japanese had prepared a rigorous defense and then used the last of their naval forces in an attempt to destroy the invasion force in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, October 23 through October 26, 1944, arguably the largest naval battle in history. The battle saw the first use of kamikaze attacks.
Throughout 1944 American submarines and aircraft attacked Japanese merchant shipping, depriving Japan's industry of the raw materials it had gone to war to obtain. The effectiveness of this stranglehold increased as U.S. Marines captured islands closer to the Japanese mainland. In 1944 submarines sank three million tons of shipping while the Japanese were only able to replace less than one million tons.
Sino-Japanese War
In April 1944, the Japanese launched Operation Ichigo whose aim was to secure the railway route across Japanese occupied territories of North East China and Korea and those in South East Asia and to destroy airbases in the area which serviced USAAF aircraft. In June 1944 the Japanese deployed 360,000 troops to invade Changsha for the fourth time. The Operation involved more Japanese troops than any other campaign in the Sino-Japanese war and after 47 days of bitter fighting, the city was taken but at a very high cost. By November, the Japanese had taken the cities of Guilin and Liuzhou which served as USAAF airbases from which it conducted bombing raids on Japan. However, despite having destroyed the airbases in this region, the USAAF could still strike at the Japanese main islands from newly acquired bases in the Pacific. By December, the Japanese forces reached French Indochina and achieved the purpose of the operation but only after incurring heavy losses.
South East Asia
In March 1944, the Japanese began their "march to Delhi" by crossing the border from Burma into India. On March 30, they attacked the town of Imphal which involved some of the most ferocious fighting of the war. The Japanese soon ran out of supplies and withdrew resulting in a loss of 85,000 men, one of the largest Japanese defeats of the war. The Anglo-Indian forces were constantly re-supplied by the RAF.
[edit] 1945: The end of the war
[edit] European Theatre
Soviet winter offensive
On January 12 the Red Army was ready for its next big offensive. Konev's armies attacked the Germans in southern Poland, expanding out from their Vistula River bridgehead near Sandomierz. January 14, Rokossovsky's armies attacked from the Narew River north of Warsaw. They broke the defences covering East Prussia. Zhukov's armies in the centre attacked from their bridgeheads near Warsaw. The German front was now in shambles.
On January 17, Zhukov took Warsaw. On January 19 his tanks took Lódz. That same day Konev's forces reached the German pre-war border. At the end of the first week of the offensive the Soviets had penetrated 100 miles deep on a front that was 400 miles wide. By February 13 the Soviets took Budapest. The Soviet onslaught finally halted at the end of January only 40 miles from Berlin, on the Oder river.
Yalta Conference
Meanwhile, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt made arrangements for post-war Europe at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Their meeting resulted in many important resolutions:
- An April meeting would be held to form the United Nations;
- Poland would have free elections (though in fact they were heavily rigged by Soviets);
- Soviet nationals were to be repatriated;
- The Soviet Union was to attack Japan within three months of Germany's surrender.
Soviet spring offensive
The Red Army (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st Polish Army) began its final assault on Berlin on April 16. By now, the German Army was in full retreat and Berlin had already been battered due to preliminary air bombings.
By April 24 the three Soviet army groups had completed the encirclement of the city. Hitler had sent the main German forces which were supposed to defend the city to the south as he believed that was the region where the Soviets would launch their spring offensive and not in Berlin. As a final resistance effort, Hitler called for civilians, including teenagers, to fight the oncoming Red Army in the Volkssturm militia. Those forces were augmented by the battered German remnants that had fought the Soviets in Seelow Heights. But even then the fighting was heavy, with house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat. The Soviets sustained 305,000 dead; the Germans sustained as many as 325,000, including civilians. Hitler and his staff moved into the Führerbunker, a concrete bunker beneath the Chancellery, where on April 30, 1945, he committed suicide, along with his bride, Eva Braun.
Western Europe
The Allies resumed their advance into Germany once the Battle of the Bulge officially ended on January 27, 1945. The final obstacle to the Allies was the river Rhine which was crossed in late March 1945.
Once the Allies had crossed the Rhine, the British fanned out northeast towards Hamburg crossing the river Elbe and on towards Denmark and the Baltic. The U.S. Ninth Army went south as the northern pincer of the Ruhr encirclement and the U.S. First Army went north as the southern pincer of the Ruhr encirclement. On April 4 the encirclement was completed and the German Army Group B commanded by Field Marshal Walther Model was trapped in the Ruhr Pocket and 300,000 soldiers became POWs. The Ninth and First U.S. armies then turned east and then halted their advanace at the Elbe river where they met up with the Soviet forces in mid-April and letting them take Berlin.
Italy
Allied advances in the winter of 1944-45 up the Italian peninsula had been slow due the troop re-deployments to France. But by April 9, the British/American 15th Army Group which was composed of the U.S. Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army broke through the Gothic Line and attacked the Po Valley gradually enclosing the main German forces. Milan was taken by the end of April and the US 5th Army continued to move west and linked up with French units while the British 8th Army advanced towards Trieste and made contact with the Yugoslav partisans.
A few days before the surrender of German troops in Italy, Italian partisans intercepted a party of Fascists trying to make their escape to Switzerland. Hiding underneath a pile of coats was Mussolini. The whole party, including Mussolini's mistress, Clara Petacci, were summarily shot on April 28, 1945. Their bodies were taken to Milan and hung up on public display, upside down.
Germany Surrenders
Admiral Karl Dönitz became leader of the German government after the death of Hitler, but the German war effort quickly disintegrated. German forces in Berlin surrendered the city to the Soviet troops on May 2, 1945.
The German forces in Italy surrendered on May 2, 1945 at General Alexander's headquarters and German forces in northern Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands surrendered on May 4; and the German High Command under Generaloberst Alfred Jodl surrendered unconditionally all remaining German forces on May 7 in Reims, France. The western Allies celebrated "V-E Day" on May 8.
The Soviet Union celebrated "Victory Day" on May 9. Some remnants of German Army Group Center continued resistance until May 11 or 12 (See Prague Offensive).
Potsdam
The last Allied conference of World War II was held at the suburb of Potsdam, outside Berlin, from July 17 to August 2. The Potsdam Conference saw agreements reached between the Allies on policies for occupied Germany. An ultimatum was issued calling for the unconditional surrender of Japan.
[edit] Pacific Theatre
In January the U.S. Sixth Army landed on Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. Manila was re-captured by March. The U.S. capture of islands such as Iwo Jima in February and Okinawa (April through June) brought the Japanese homeland within easier range of naval and air attack. Amongst dozens of other cities, Tokyo was firebombed, and about 90,000 people died from the initial attack. The dense living conditions around production centres and the wooden residential constructions contributed to the large loss of life. In addition, the ports and major waterways of Japan were extensively mined by air in Operation Starvation which seriously disrupted the logistics of the island nation.
The last major offensive in the South West Pacific Area was the Borneo campaign of mid-1945, which was aimed at further isolating the remaining Japanese forces in South East Asia and securing the release of Allied prisoners of war.
In South-East Asia, from August 1944 to November 1944, 14th Army pursued the Japanese to the Chindwin River in Burma after their failed attack on India. The British Commonwealth forces launched a series of offensive operations back into Burma during late 1944 and the first half of 1945. On May 2, 1945, Rangoon, the capital city of Myanmar (Burma) was taken in Operation Dracula. The planned amphibious assault on the western side of Malaya was cancelled after the dropping of the atomic bombs and Japanese forces in South-East Asia surrendered soon afterwards.
While US servicemen were fighting the Japanese in the Pacific President Harry S. Truman, who succeeded President Roosevelt when the latter died in office in 1945, learned that scientists and physicists working on the Manhattan Project had successfully created an atomic bomb. With this completion the United States now had a powerful new weapon that it could use against the Japanese. Truman was presented with two separate options: use the newly developed atomic bomb and avoid massive US casualties, or approve plans for Operation Downfall, the planned allied invasion of the Japanese home islands set to commence in November 1945. Truman ultimately elected to use the bomb.
On August 6, 1945, the B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay", piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets, dropped a nuclear weapon named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, destroying the city. After the destruction of Hiroshima, the United States again called upon Japan to surrender. No response was made, and accordingly on August 9, the B-29 "BOCKS CAR", piloted by Maj. Charles Sweeney, dropped a second atomic bomb named "Fat Man" on Nagasaki.
On August 8, two days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Soviet Union, having renounced its nonaggression pact with Japan, attacked the Japanese in Manchuria, fulfilling its Yalta pledge to attack the Japanese within three months after the end of the war in Europe. The attack, codenamed Operation August Storm, was made by three Soviet army groups. In less than two weeks the Japanese army in Manchuria consisting of over a million men had been destroyed by the Soviets. The Red Army moved into North Korea on August 18. Korea was subsequently divided at the 38th parallel into Soviet and U.S. zones.
The use of the atomic bombs by the United States prompted Emperor Hirohito to bypass his cabinet and accept the terms of unconditional surrender. When the council reconvened on August 13th the highest ranking members of the cabinet made one last push for a decisive battle on the Home Islands, to which Hirohito responded:
| “ | I have listened carefully to each of the arguments presented in opposition to the view that Japan should accept the Allied reply as it stands and without further clarification or modification, but my own thoughts have not undergone any change. ...
In order that the people may know my decision, I request you to prepare at once an imperial rescript so that I may broadcast to the nation. Finally, I call upon each and every one of you to exert himself to the utmost so that we may meet the trying days which lie ahead. |
” |
The entry of the Soviet Union to the war may have also played a part, but in his radio address to the nation Hirohito did not mention it as a major reason for his country's surrender. The decision to accept surrender had mixed results. Several members of the armed forces committed seppuku, while other attempted to stage a coup. The coup attempt failed, and the Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945 (V-J day), signing the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on September 2, 1945, aboard the battleship USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. The Japanese troops in China formally surrendered to the Chinese on September 9, 1945. This did not fully end the war, however, as Japan and the Soviet Union never signed a peace agreement.
[edit] Aftermath
The effects of World War II were very profound: At the end of the war, millions of refugees were homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and 70% of the European industrial infrastructure was destroyed.
[edit] Europe in ruins
At the conclusion of the Second World War Europe lay in utter ruin. Between the devastating effects of Hitler’s blitzkrieg tactics and the relentless drive by the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States to push Hitler’s army back into Germany very little of the European countryside had been left uneffected. In some case the battle damage was so severe that entire cities had been completely wiped of the map. None-the-less the Allied powers set about the monumental task of rebuilding Europe, its industries, and its economy.
The first order of business was to secure Germany; to that end, Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation. An Allied Control Council was created to co-ordinate the zones. The original divide of Germany was between America, Soviet Union and Britain. Stalin agreed to give France a zone but it had to come from the American or British zones and not the Soviet zone. The American, British, and French zones joined in 1949 as the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic.
Austria was once again separated from Germany and it, too, was divided into four zones of occupation, which eventually reunited and became the Republic of Austria.
Reparations
Germany paid reparations to France, Britain and Russia, in the form of dismantled factories, forced labour, and shipments of coal. The U.S. settled for confiscating German patents and German owned property in the U.S., mainly subsidiaries of German companies.
In accordance with the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, payment of war reparations was assessed from the countries of Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland.
[edit] The Morgenthau Plan and The Marshall Plan
The initial occupation plans proposed by the United States were harsh. The Morgenthau Plan of 1944 called for dividing Germany into two independent nations and stripping her of the industrial resources required for war. All heavy industry was to be dismantled or destroyed, the main industrial areas (Upper Silesia, Saar, Ruhr, and the German speaking parts of Alsace-Lorraine), were to be annexed.
While the Morgenthau Plan itself was never implemented per se, its general economic philosophy did end up greatly influencing events. Most notable were the toned-down offshoots, including the Potsdam Conference, Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 (April 1945 - July 1947), and the industrial plans for Germany.
Germany had long been the industrial giant of Europe, and its poverty held back the general European recovery. The continued scarcity in Germany also led to considerable expenses for the occupying powers, which were obligated to try and make up the most important shortfalls.
In view of the continued poverty and famine in Europe, and with the onset of the Cold War, a change of policy was required. The most notable example of this change was a plan established by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan, which called for the U.S. Congress to allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Europe. Also as part of the effort to rebuild global capitalism and spur post-war reconstruction, the Bretton Woods system was put into effect after the war. The Marshall Plan was notable in that it offered the same aid to the Soviet Union and its allies, if they would make political reforms and accept certain outside controls.
[edit] Acquired Territorial Possessions
At the end of World War II many nations that fought the Axis powers found themselves in control of several countries and territories that had been occupied by the Axis during World War II. By far the largest of the newly acquired territories belong to the United States, which had the largest role of any nations engaged in the Pacific Theatre of World War II and had played a big part in the liberation of Europe. While the European countries were undergoing reconstruction to help get them back on their feet the United States created Trust Territories for the Pacific Islands, which the United States oversaw under United Nations supervision. In 1986, many of these territories were formally granted independence, although the United States still maintains a limited number of incorporated territories (which the United States officially classifies as "unincorporated unorganized territories") in the Pacific. A handful of territories in the Pacific chose to become associated states: they possess international sovereignty and ultimate control over their territory; however, the governments of these areas have agreed to allow the United States to provide defense, funding grants, and access to US social services for citizens of these areas.
The Soviet Union chose to turn its fourteen European countries into satellite states, installing Communist governments in each country and closing all of them off to any form of contact the west. Within these 14 satellite states the Soviet Union undertook a mass deportation of people considered Germans from Soviet-occupied areas outside the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. This was a major part of the German exodus from Eastern Europe after World War II. In addition to the European contries the Soviet Union also managed to acquire four of the Kuril Islands from Japan before the Japanese surrendered to the Allied powers. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 the European nations under Soviet control reorganized into the Commonwealth of Independent States, some of which have since joined the European Union, while the four Kuril Islands seized by the Soviets near the end of WWII came under Russian control. Russia and Japan have since been involved in an ongoing dispute over which country has official control of the islands.
[edit] The United Nations
With the end of World War II came a need to replace the League of Nations, which had failed to prevent the war. In 1945 a new international body was considered and then created, the United Nations.
The structure of the United Nations was intended to make it more effective than the League. The principal Allies in World War II (UK, USSR, France, U.S., and China) became permanent members of the UN Security Council, giving the new "Great Powers" significant international influence, mirroring the League Council. Decisions of the UN Security Council are binding on all members of the UN; however, unanimous decisions are not required, unlike the League Council. Permanent members of the UN Security Council were given a veto to protect their vital interests, which has prevented the UN acting decisively in many cases. Similarly, the UN does not have its own standing armed forces, but the UN has been more successful than the League in calling for its members to contribute to armed interventions, such as the Korean War, although the UN has at times been forced to rely on economic sanctions. The UN has also been more successful than the League in attracting members from the nations of the world, making it more representative.
The UN was also responsible for the initial creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, in part as a response to the Holocaust. The UN also served as the diplomatic front line during the Cold War.
[edit] The Cold War Commences
As the Second World War drew to a close the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the dominant powers in the world. During the war both nations had cooperated with each other in the interest of defeating a common enemy, but friction had been building up between the two before the end of the war and after the collapse of Nazi Germany, relations spiralled downward.
In the areas occupied by Western Allied troops, pre-war governments were re-established or new democratic governments were created; in the areas occupied by Soviet troops, including the territories of former Allies such as Poland, communist states were created. These became satellites of the Soviet Union. Winston Churchill famously remarked about the creation of these Soviet satellites during an address delivered on March 6, 1948, in which he stated:
| “ | From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "Iron Curtain" has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.[3] | ” |
As the relationship between the victors deteriorated, the military lines of demarcation became the de facto country boundaries. Elsewhere, Korea was divided in half along the 38th parallel by the Soviets and Americans. The first major test of the Cold War came in June 1948, when the Soviet Union initiated the Berlin Blockade in protest to plans by the United States, Great Britain, and France to reunify Germany. The Cold War had begun, and would not end until the early 1990s.
[edit] Casualties, civilian impact, and atrocities
[edit] World War II casualties
[[Image:Leningraddiorama.gif|Diorama of the Siege of Leningrad. At least 641,000 Soviet citizens died during the 900 day siege.]] For a number of interrelated reasons the exact number of people killed during World War II remains unknown. Generally accepted casualty numbers usually place the fatalities of the Second World War at about 62 million people. This number breaks down into about 25 million soldiers and 37 million civilians, with estimates varying widely. This total includes the estimated 12 to 15 million lives lost due to The Holocaust. Of the total deaths in World War II approximately 80% were on the Allied side and 20% on the Axis side.
Allied forces suffered approximately 17 million military deaths, of which about 10 million were Soviet and 4 million Chinese. Axis forces suffered about 8 million, of which more than 5 million were German. The Soviet Union suffered by far the largest death toll of any nation in the war; perhaps 23 million Soviets died in total, of which more than 12 million were civilians. The figures include deaths due to internal Soviet actions against its own people. The statistics available for Soviet and Chinese casualties are only rough guesses, as they are poorly documented. Some modern estimates double the amount of Chinese casualties. The United States by comparison lost roughly 330,000 men in both theatres of World War II.
[edit] Genocide
The Holocaust was the organized murder of at least nine million people, about two-thirds of whom were Jewish. Originally, the Nazis used killing squads, Einsatzgruppen, to conduct massive open-air killings, shooting as many as 33,000 people in a single massacre, as in the case of Babi Yar. By 1942, the Nazi leadership decided to implement the Final Solution (Endlösung), the genocide of all Jews in Europe, and increase the pace of the Holocaust. The Nazis built six extermination camps specifically to kill Jews. Under the codename Operation Reinhard millions of Jews who had been confined to massively overcrowded Ghettos were transported to these "Death-camps" where they were gassed or shot, usually immediately after arriving. Those not immediately executed were pressed into service as slave labourers for the Nazis. Most interered in these camps died from starvation or from maltreatment.
[edit] Concentration camps, labour camps and internment
In addition to the Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet Gulag, or labor camps, led to the death of many citizens of occupied countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as German prisoners of war and even Soviet citizens themselves: opponents of Stalin's regime and large proportions of some ethnic groups (particularly Chechens). Japanese POW camps also had high death rates; many were used as labour camps, and starvation conditions among the mainly U.S. and Commonwealth prisoners were little better than many German concentration camps. Sixty percent (1,238,000 ref. Krivosheev) of Soviet POWs died during the war. Vadim Erlikman puts it at 2.6 million Soviet POWs that died in German Captivity.
In the United States President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the internment of several thousand Japanese citizens with United States Executive Order 9066, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones", from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used forthwith to declare most of the Pacific coast as "Military Area Number One", and all people with Japanese ancestry were then declared "Excluded". However, residents of German and Italian descent were not excluded. Concurrent with this declaration hundreds of thousands of Japanese North Americans were forcably removed from their homes and interned by the U.S. and Canadian governments. Though these camps did not involve heavy labour, forced isolation and sub-standard living conditions were the norm.
[edit] War crimes and attacks on civilians
From 1945 to 1951 German and Japanese officials and personnel were prosecuted for war crimes. Top German officials were tried at the Nuremberg Trials and many Japanese officials at the Tokyo War Crime Trial and other war crimes trials in the Asia-Pacific region. Several members of the Nazi Party and of the Empire of Japan were found guilty of various crimes and received sentences ranging from fines and imprisonment up to death.
None of the alleged allied war crimes such as the bombing of Dresden, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the alleged Red Army atrocities on the Eastern front were ever prosecuted.
[edit] Resistance and collaboration
Resistance during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation, and propaganda to outright warfare.
Among the most notable resistance movements were the Polish Home Army, the French Maquis and the Yugoslav Partisans. Germany itself also had an anti-Nazi movement. The Communist resistance was among the fiercest since they were already organised and militant even before the war and they were ideologically opposed to the Nazis.
Before D-Day there were also many operations performed by the French Resistance to help with the forthcoming invasion. Communications lines were cut, trains derailed, roads, water towers and ammunition depots were destroyed and some German garrisons were attacked.
Although Great Britain did not suffer invasion in World War II, the British made preparations for a British resistance movement, called the Auxiliary Units. Various organisations were also formed to establish foreign resistance cells or support existing resistance movements, like the British SOE and the American OSS.
[edit] The home fronts
"Home front" is the name given to the activities of the civilians of a nation that is in a state of total war.
In the United Kingdom, women joined the work force doing jobs that the men did. Food, clothing, petrol, and other items were rationed. Access to luxuries was severely restricted, though there was also a significant black market. Families grew small home vegetable gardens to supply themselves with food, and the Women's Land Army recruited or conscripted over 80,000 women to work on farms. Civilians also served as Air Raid Wardens, volunteer emergency services and other critical functions. Schools and organisations held scrap drives and money collections to help the war effort. Many things were conserved to turn into weapons later, such as fat to turn into nitroglycerin.
In the United States and Canada women also joined the workforce. In the United States these women were called "Rosies" for Rosie the Riveter. President Roosevelt stated that the efforts of civilians at home to support the war through personal sacrifice were as critical to winning the war as the efforts of the soldiers themselves. In Canada, the government established three military compartments for women: the CWAAF (Canadian Women's Auxiliary Air Force), CWAC (Canadian Women's Army Corps) and WRCNS (Women's Royal Canadian Naval Services).
In Germany, until 1943 there were few restrictions on civilian activities. Most goods were freely available. This was due in large part to the reduced access to certain luxuries already experienced by German civilians prior to the beginning of hostilities; the war made some less available, but many were in short supply to begin with. It was not until comparatively late in the war that the civilian population was effectively organised to support the war effort. For example, women's labour was not mobilised as thoroughly as in the United Kingdom or the United States. Foreign slave labour substituted for the men who served in the armed forces.
American production was the major factor in keeping the Allies better supplied than the Axis. For example, in 1943 the United States produced 369 warships (1.01/day). In comparison, Japan produced 122 warships, and Germany only built three. The United States also succeeded in rebuilding the Merchant Marine, reducing the build time of a Liberty or Victory ship from 105 days to 56 days. Much of this improved efficiency came from technological advances in shipbuilding. Hull plates were being welded rather than bolted, plastics were beginning to take the place of certain metals, and modular construction was being used.
[edit] Technologies
Weapons and technology improved rapidly during World War II and played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the war. Many major technologies were used for the first time, including nuclear weapons, radar, jet engines, and electronic computers. Enormous advances were made in aircraft, and tank design such that models coming into use at the beginning of the war were long obsolete by its end.
More new inventions, as measured in the U.S. by numbers of patent applications and weapon contracts issued to private contractors, were deployed to the task of killing humans more effectively and to a lesser degree, avoiding being killed, than ever before.
The massive research and development demands of the war had a great impact on the growth of the scientific community. After the war ended, these developments led to new sciences like cybernetics and computer science, and created entire new institutions of weapons design.
[edit] See also
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[edit] References
- ^ "Day of Infamy" speach excerps taken from the University of Oklahoma Collage of Law website
- ^ Although the Battle of Midway has often been called "decisive", and a "turning point", it clearly did not win the Pacific War overnight for the Americans (Dull, p. 166; Prange, p. 395)
- ^ Taken from Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s "Sinews of Peace" address March 5, 1946
[edit] External links
- General
- Easington ww2 bunkers
- BBC History: World War Two
- Deutsche Welle special section on World War II created by one of Germany's public broadcasters on World War II and the world 60 years after.
- Directory of Online World War II Indexes & Records
- Halford Mackinder's Necessary War An essay describing the geopolitical aspects of World War II
- World War II Secret History
- World War II Military Situation Maps. Library of Congress
- Officially Declassified U.S. Government Documents about World War II
- Specific
- WWII US women's service organizations — History and uniforms in color (WAAC/WAC, WAVES, ANC, NNC, USMCWR, PHS, SPARS, ARC and WASP)
- Germany's surrender documents.
- Online Newspaper Archive
- Veterans Of The US Armed Forces Services, information, resources, and image gallery for veterans of the United States Armed Forces.
- Front page of the 6 June, 1944 edition of The New York Times.
- Royal Engineers Museum Royal Engineers and Second World War
- Royal Engineers Museum Royal Engineers and Operation Overlord
- Speech delivered by premier Benito Mussolini (Rome, Italy, February 23, 1941)
- Daily reports - Extremely detailed daily action reports from the German side
- Juno Beach - An indepth examination of one of Canada's greatest WWII contributions: Juno Beach.
- Media
- US National Archives Photos
- The Canadian Letters and Images Project, World War II
- Multimedia map - Presentation that covers the war from the invasion of Russia to the fall of Berlin
- Thousands of World War II Photographs & Movies
- Virtual Museum of World War II - pictures & info
- 1975 audio interview of James Jones by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio
- 1980 audio interview of William Manchester by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio
- Virtual View of the WWII Memorial
- Stories
- WW2 People's War - A project by the BBC to gather the stories of ordinary people from World War II
- WWII, divisive memories (en) - from an online issue from www.cafebabel.com
- Workers' War: Home Front Recalled - A project by London Metropolitan University, TUC and the National Pensioners Convention to document the history of workers during World War II
- Memories of Leutnant d.R. Wilhelm Radkovsky 1940-1945 Experiences as a German soldier on the Eastern and Western Front
- http://www.stvincent.edu/napp17 They Say There Was A War. Oral Histories. European Pacific Theatre. Saint Vincent College Center for Northern Appalachian Studies. Richard Wissolik.
- http://www.stvincent.edu/napp14 The Long Road From Oran to Pilsen. Oral Histories. European Theatre. Saint Vincent College Center for Northern Appalachian Studies. David Wilmes. Richard Wissolik.
- Russian Experience Documentary
- Documentaries
- The World at War (1974) is a 36-part BBC series that covers most aspects of World War II from many points of view. It includes interviews with many key figures (Karl Dönitz, Albert Speer, Anthony Eden etc.) (Imdb link)
- The Second World War in Colour (1999) is a three episode documentary showing unique footage in color (Imdb link)
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