World War II

History 112 David C. Hanson, Virginia Western Com. College
Lecture 10. World War II

World War II began in Europe at dawn on September 1, 1939, as units of the German Wehrmacht crossed the Polish border. Britain and France, honoring their pledge to Poland made earlier in the year, declared war on Germany on September 3. The war lasted nearly six years, and by the time it was over, much of the civilized world lay in ruins, more than 70 million people had been killed, great empires had been destroyed, and weapons of mass destruction has been unleashed upon the world.

Rise of the German Third Reich________________



Der Führer
      The effort of Germany to claim its place as the dominant power of Europe, and the origins of World War II, can be traced back to the end of World War I. For practical purposes, the two wars can be considered parts of one contest. The government of Germany between the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler is known as the Wiemar Republic, after the town where it was established. Its tenure was shaped by the Treaty of Versailles, which was widely unpopular in Germany because of the huge war indemnity and assignment of responsibility (the infamous war guilt clause). Once a great power, now the Germans had to face the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and their colonies, a weak and constrained military, French occupation of the Rhur, limitations on their personal freedom, and severe inflation. This was a breeding ground for frustration and extremism.
      By 1924 a debt payment plan eased some of the economic burden on Germany, and a year later part of the unpaid debt was forgiven. In the 1930s the problems of Germany were exacerbated by a worldwide economic depression. The Weimar government tried to alleviate the stress of inflation and unemployment while being battered from two sides by the German Communist Party on the left and the National Socialist Workers' Party (known as the Nazis), led by Hitler, on the right. The Nazis steadily gained seats in the Reichstag, and President Paul von Hindenburg was persuaded to appoint Hitler to the post of chancellor in January 1933.
      Hitler gradually increased the power of the Nazi government and himself, outlawing opposition groups and directing the infamous Gestapo to silence dissenters. On July 1, 1934, the so-called "Night of the Long Knives," he ordered the purge of powerful Nazi militia leaders. When Hindenburg died a month later, Hitler merged the powers of president and chancellor into a supreme post of Führer.
Heil Hitler
      Hitler was an electrifying speaker who aroused the German people by appealing to national pride and blaming all their problems on Jews and communists. His plan for ridding Germany of its enemies and reasserting its power was remilitarization. After withdrawing Germany from the League of Nations in 1933, Hitler began an intense rebuilding of the armed forces. Military production relieved unemployment and the German people's feeling of shame from the Treaty of Versailles. He reinstated universal military service in 1935, and the following year German soldiers entered the demilitarized Rhineland bordering France. in 1938 Hitler began the campaign of expansion that ultimately led to the outbreak of the Second World War.
      Hitler's forced union with Austria, which he justified as an effort to reintegrate German people into a single homeland, took place in March 1938. Europe's major powers, France and Britain, did nothing for fear of provoking a military confrontation, enhancing Hitler's reputation among the German people and deepening his contempt for the western democracies. The policy of "appeasement," intended to satisfy Hitler, served only to feed his appetite. In September he demanded cession of the Sudetenland, the western portion of Czechoslovakia, which was largely populated by ethnic Germans. At the Munich Conference, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that the sacrifice of Austria and Sudetenland was a guarantee of peace. Six months later Hitler took all of Czechoslovakia, and Chamberlain was compelled to promise defense guarantees to Poland, Romania and Greece.

Hitler's Conquest of Europe__________________

Blitzkrieg
      In August 1939 Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Josef Stalin, nullifying the risk of the Soviet Union coming to the defense of neighboring Poland, thereby opening the door to German demands for territory in the "Polish Corridor." Early in the morning on September 1, the first wave of 1.2 million German troops invaded Poland. Following heavy aerial bombardment by the Luftwaffe, fast-moving mechanized armored "Panzer" divisions, supported by combat aircraft, overpowered Polish resistance. Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3. On September 5, United States President Franklin Roosevelt issued a proclamation of neutrality, although two months later he convinced Congress to begin shipping weapons to Britain and France.
      Aside from the conquest of Poland, there was little fighting in Europe until April 9, 1940, when the German "blitzkrieg" (lightning war) tore across Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Allied forces were rapidly killed, captured or withdrawn. On May 10, Chamberlain was forced to resign as a result of his failure to prevent German occupation of large areas of Western Europe [see map 01], and Winston Churchill took over as British Prime Minister.
Battle of Britain
      Following the British evacuation of Dunkirk in May 1940, Hitler made plans for "Operation Sea Lion," the invasion of Britain. The Luftwaffe (2,800 aircraft stationed in France, Belgium, Holland and Norway, outnumbering the Royal Air Force 4:1) would clear the skies to prepare for a German amphibious landing on September 15. German Messerschmitt fighters failed to rid the British skies of pesky Spitfires, however, and Hitler was forced to call off the invasion. Instead, the Luftwaffe concentrated on a relentless series of aerial attacks on London and other major cities known as the Blitz. In November the city of Coventry was bombed, destroying a medieval cathedral and killing many civilians. The RAF retaliated with intense bombing of German cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. Equipped with night radar, RAF bombers carried out devastating raids on German industrial centers.
      After the surrender of France on June 22, despite the failure of Germany to force Britain to its knees, while the aerial bombardment continued there was also an intense battle for control of the Atlantic. German submarine "wolf packs" preyed on British and American merchant ships in an effort to cut off imports to Britain. As the war progressed, the development of radar, sonar, radio intercepts, and air cover gradually reduced the Germany navy and preserved the maritime lifeline.
Operation Barbarossa
      The non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin gave both Germany and the Soviet Union time to prepare for the inevitable outbreak of war in Eastern Europe. Stalin took advantage of the opportunity to establish a buffer zone against a German invasion by sending the Soviet Red Army into eastern Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in the summer of 1940.
      Having easily overrun and occupied Western Europe, Hitler was confident that he could take Russia. Germany's attack on the Soviet Union, code-named Operation Barbarossa, began on 21 June 1941 when 100 divisions of the Wehrmacht invaded across a front that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The German blitzkrieg overran the Red Army and Panzer divisions pushed through the Russian city of Minsk toward Moscow. By September, Leningrad was surrounded and under siege, Kiev fell in October, and German troops reached the outskirts of Moscow in November.
      To slow the German blitzkrieg, Stalin had ordered a "scorched earth" policy, whereby everything of value to the invading army was destroyed, including bridges, railways, and fields of crops. Hitler understood that the success of Operation Barbarossa depended on rapid movement before the Russian winter would threaten the long supply lines of his advancing army. Sure enough, sub-zero temperatures grounded the Luftwaffe aircraft and froze the Panzer divisions. The Red Army held on through the winter of 1941-42. The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point.
      In the first six months, the Germans had killed 3,000,000 Russian soldiers in combat, taken 4,000,000 prisoner, and executed at least 500,000. Slowed by a weak but courageous Russian counterattack, the German army launched a new offensive in the spring of 1942. Stalingrad became the Verdun of what the Soviets would later name the Great Patriot War. Hitler was determined to take the city, and Stalin was equally determined to hold it.
      Stalin personally assumed overall command of the war effort. He ordered soldiers to fight for the homeland; those who retreated were shot; those who surrendered were not to be forgiven; their wives were arrested and imprisoned.  (His own son was captured by the Germans, and Stalin refused to make a prisoner exchange. His son's wife was arrested and sent to a labor camp for two years.) By January 1943 the Germans were surrounded and out of supplies. Hitler refused to allow the commander to surrender, but Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus disobeyed the Führer's order. Stalingrad was the German army's greatest defeat.
      For the Soviets, defense of their homeland came at a heavy price. Eventually at least 7,000,000 civilians were murdered and an additional 4,000,000 died from starvation and sickness as a result of the German invasion. The Germans destroyed more than 70,000 towns, leaving more than 25,000,000 Soviet people homeless. The Germans captured and deported another 5,000,000 people from Soviet territory to labor camps. Overall, the Soviet Union suffered at least 9,000,000 military casualties and perhaps as many as 24 million people in total.

Worldwide War___________________________



Axis of Evil
      Germany had a number of allies throughout the war. Some were puppet states, like Vichy France, but the major European ally was Italy. Like Germany, Italy was ruled by a fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. In May 1939 the two countries had signed the Pact of Steel, forming a political and military alliance. In June 1940 Mussolini declared war on Britain and France. Italian troops invaded North Africa (British Somaliland and Egypt) and Greece. During a civil war that lasted from 1936 to 1939, Spain had fallen under the control of fascist general Francisco Franco. Spain remained officially neutral, as it had in the First World War, but Franco maintained a friendly relationship with the German Führer.
      The principal ally of Germany and Italy was in the Far East. In September 1940 the Imperial government of Japan signed a ten-year pact with Germany and Italy. Hitler's main intention in signing this pact was to distract the United States from entering the war in Europe. The Japanese army had been slowly taking control of China since 1931, and in early 1941 Japan began to expand its empire into French Indochina and beyond, threatening American economic interests in the Pacific.

The Sleeping Giant
      Throughout the first two years of the war, the United States used diplomatic and economic pressure to aid the Allies and contain Japanese expansion. President Roosevelt pledged to help Churchill and Stalin any way possible short of military engagement. He declared that American industry would serve as the "Arsenal of Democracy" in a determined effort to aid in the defeat of fascism. Roosevelt devised clever strategies to evade strict neutrality laws, such as lend-lease and cash-and-carry. Roosevelt was elected to a third term in November 1940 with a campaign promise to do everything possible to keep "American boys" from fighting on foreign soil.
      That promise became moot on the morning of December 7, 1941. Just before 8:00 on a quiet Sunday morning, Japanese warplanes launched from an aircraft carrier task force attacked the United States Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, roughly 4,000 miles from Japan. Caught off guard, the Americans were nearly defenseless. The Japanese attack severely damaged eight battleships, destroyed nearly 200 planes, and killed over 2,000 soldiers and sailors in the worst naval disaster in U.S. history. That same morning, Gen. George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, had sent a cable to military commanders in Hawaii and the Philippines warning that an attack might be imminent, but the attack was already underway when the message arrived. (U.S. military intelligence had been monitoring Japanese radio communication, having broken the Japanese code, but the precise time and place of the attack was unknown.)
      In early 1941, Roosevelt had frozen Japanese assets and cut off exports. A diplomatic ultimatum urged Japan to give up her aggressive plans and pull out of China. Instead, the Japanese government hoped to extend a strong defensive perimeter along a line of western Pacific islands and then negotiate a peace [see map 2]. As historian James Stokesbury explains, The Japanese "enjoyed the inestimable advantages of interior strategic position, homogeneity of units, unity of command, and single-mindedness of war aims. They knew what they wanted and they knew what they had to do to get it." The first step was destruction of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
      The attack on Pearl Harbor was a stunning success; but Japan had "awakened a sleeping giant" by angering and uniting the American people. From that moment on, Americans were determined to not only defend their nation but to pay back Japan. In London, Winston Churchill's first thought upon hearing the news was "we have won the war." That night, he wrote, "I slept the sleep of the saved and the thankful." The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, both the U.S. and Britain declared war on Japan. Hitler responded by declaring war on the U.S. The conflict suddenly had become a worldwide war.
      Since 1930, Americans had been mired in the Great Depression, struggling with dispiriting joblessness, disillusionment, and political discord. "After Pearl Harbor," a worker in a General Motors factory in Flint, Michigan, later recalled, "there was an immediate change in people's attitude: their sense of urgency, dedication, and team work."
      As military service drained the supply of male workers, women entered the industrial workforce in unprecedented numbers. Automobile plants stopped making cars and began turning out tanks, army trucks, jeeps, and airplanes. The National War Labor Board was created to prevent strikes, manage labor relations, and freeze wages. War contracts energized the economy, causing the U.S. gross national product to double during the war years. Demand for agricultural products soared to meet the needs of the millions of men serving in the military. To pay the bills, federal spending rose to $320 billion between 1940 and 1945.
      At full production, the American economy managed to produce and equip huge armed forces and still generate surplus for home consumption. By the end of 1942, the U.S. was producing more war materials than all of its allies and enemies combined. (At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin toasted "American production, without which this war would have been lost.")

Allied Victory_____________________________

Liberation of Europe
      As the Battle of Britain raged in the skies during the summer of 1940, Mussolini pursued his campaign in North Africa. The Italian army was forced into retreat by British forces until March 1941, when German Gen. Erwin Rommel led his Afrika Korps on the offensive in Libya and Egypt. In October 1942, American forces led by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and Gen. George Patton joined with British forces under Gen. Bernard Montgomery. Allied victories pushed the Axis forces out of North Africa by the end of 1942 and took control of Italy in the summer of 1943. Prime Minister Mussolini was deposed and imprisoned. (He was freed from his remote mountain prison in an audacious glider raid sent by Hitler. He was captured in the final days of the war and executed.)
The D-Day Landing
      The liberation of France began with the Allied landing at Normandy on 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day). In the early morning light, troop barges deposited thousands of American, British and Canadian forces on the beaches of Normandy despite heavy artillery and machine gun fire from the Germans. The Germans had the advantage of fighting on the defensive with established communication and supply, mobile armored transport, and fixed fortifications (elaborate concrete bunkers, gun placements, razor wire, mines, ditches, tunnels, trenches, and steel barriers).
      Careful preparation and the element of surprise were the keys to successful penetrating the Atlantic Wall constructed by General Rommel. First, Operation Overlord was preceded by an elaborate deception to convince the Germans that the invasion would take place up the coast at Pas de Calais. Second, Allied warships and bombers pounded German fortifications in advance of the invasion; and the French underground, aided by airborne American commandos who parachuted behind enemy lines, sabotaged the German's communication and transportation infrastructure.
      Operation Overlord was a colossal effort and, despite some serious mistakes, an amazing success. In one night and day, 175,000 men and their equipment, including 50,000 vehicles, were transported across 100 miles of open water and landed on a heavily fortified shore, at a cost of less than 9,000 casualties. They were carried or supported by over 5,300 ships and boats of all types and almost 11,000 airplanes.
      Building on the success of D-Day in the following days was an immense and costly undertaking. The Allies engaged in fierce combat for several weeks. Finally, German resistance was broken in July and Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944.
The Holocaust
      As the Allies pushed into German-held territory, the horror of what the Nazi concentration camps truly meant was revealed to a shocked world. The existence of the camps had been known for several years, as were Hitler's views on Germany's so-called "Jewish problem." Initially the camps were used to house "undesirable" people relocated from occupied territory--Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, Communists, gypsies, homosexuals, Poles, Slavs, Russians--and inmates were used for slave labor. Infection, disease, and starvation took a horrible toll. A majority of the 6,000,000 Jews who died in the Holocaust were murdered as a part of a policy of genocide, Hitler's "Final Solution" to the Jewish problem. Families were killed with poison gas and their bodies were incinerated in specially-made ovens.
German Defeat
      From the beginning, the destruction of Nazi Germany had been the primary goal of the Allies. In March, American and British troops crossed the Rhine. From the east, the Soviet Red Army crossed the Oder in April and surrounded Berlin. As they stormed the city, Hitler committed suicide on April 30. Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler also avoided justice by taking their own lives. General Alfred Jodl accepted the Allied demand for unconditional surrender on May 7, 1945. Germany was temporarily occupied and divided between the victorious Allies. Captured Nazi leaders were brought before an international war crimes court at Nuremberg in November 1946. Most of the 21 defendants were sentenced to death and hanged.

Japanese Defeat
      While prosecuting the war in Europe, the United States had not been ignoring Japan. In April 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle led an airborne bombing attack on Tokyo from the aircraft carrier Hornet. The raid was essentially psychological, unnerving the Japanese and giving Americans a morale boost after the Pearl Harbor attack. In May 1942, an American carrier fleet won an important victory in the Battle of the Coral Sea. A month later Japan attacked the island of Midway; but the carrier Yorktown launched a surprise counterattack and four Japanese carriers were destroyed. Japan was put on the defensive for the remainder of the war.
      In a strategy known as "island-hopping," American naval forces embarked on a series of amphibious assaults across the Pacific (e.g., Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, the Philippines, and Okinawa) until they came within striking range of Japan. [Personal note: In January 1945 the carrier Ticonderoga was hit by two Kamikaze planes. Onboard was seaman first class George L. Hanson. The badly damaged ship underwent repairs and returned to the Philippines for action in May.]
      With the war in Europe over, Americans were anxious for victory in the Pacific. President Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945, and Harry Truman represented the United States at the "Big Three" conference at Potsdam in July. Truman, Churchill and Stalin issued a joint declaration, warning Japan to surrender immediately and unconditionally or face "prompt and utter destruction." The Japanese military high command was determined to fight on, but as early as June 1945 the civilian leaders were frantically seeking an honorable surrender (a fact known to the U.S. from intercepted communications).
      Around the time of the Potsdam Conference in July, President Truman approved the use of a powerful new "weapon of mass destruction," and on August 6 and atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later the Russians declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria; that same day, August 9, the city of Nagasaki was devastated by a second atomic bomb. Truman proudly announced that Japan had been "repaid many fold" for the attack on Pearl Harbor and ensuing war.
      On August 10, Japan offered to surrender on the condition that Emperor Hirohito would remain the sovereign ruler. His cabinet was divided until August 14, when the U.S. announced through diplomatic channels that the emperor could stay on the throne. That day the decision was made to surrender. Japanese army officers attempted a coup that night but the palace guard stopped it. (The leader of the failed coup, Major Kenji Hatanaka, committed suicide.) On the morning of August 15, Hirohito's surrender message was played over Japanese radio.

"Despite the best that has been done by everyone... the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration."
            --Radio Broadcast of Emperor Hirohito

      Former Prime Minister Hideki Tojo was convicted and executed for war crimes along with several other Japanese leaders. The official surrender ceremony took place on September 2 aboard the battleship Missouri. General Douglas MacArthur was appointed American occupation commander of Japan. Emperor Hirohito helped with the transition, encouraging cooperation by the Japanese people. He died in 1989.
      The two atomic bombs killed roughly 100,000 Japanese people instantly; mostly civilian women, children, and old men. An additional 200,000 casualties of the atomic bombing died later from injuries and radiation poisoning. Allied strategic bombing had taken a toll throughout the war--80,000 killed in Hamburg; 60,000 killed in Dresden; 90,000 killed in Tokyo--but the terror of what a single atomic bomb could do sent a chill across the world.
      Total war deaths for Japan, military and civilian, were 2,700,000. (Death counts for the other principle participants: 23,100,000 Soviets; 20,000,000 Chinese; 7,233,000 Germans; 567,000 French; 545,000 Italians; 454,700 British; and 418,000 Americans. These figures include millions of deaths due to famine and disease resulting from the war and victims of the Holocaust.)
      American military occupation, economic reconstruction and political rehabilitation of Japan continued until the Treaty of San Francisco, ratified in 1952. Germany, meanwhile, was temporarily divided in 1945 into four military occupation zones: British (northwest), French (southwest), American (south), and Soviet (east). Millions of ethnic Germans were expelled from surrounding countries liberated by the Allies--Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary--and resettled primarily in the western sectors. In 1949 the three western sectors were merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany (known as West Germany). The Soviet Union established the German Democratic Republic (known as East Germany) with a communist regime answering to Stalin. Germany was peacefully unified in 1990.

Lecture 11

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Rise of the German Third Reich________________

	Der Führer The effort of Germany to claim its place as the dominant power of Europe, and the origins of World War II, can be traced back to the end of World War I. For practical purposes, the two wars can be considered parts of one contest. The government of Germany between the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler is known as the Wiemar Republic, after the town where it was established. Its tenure was shaped by the Treaty of Versailles, which was widely unpopular in Germany because of the huge war indemnity and assignment of responsibility (the infamous war guilt clause). Once a great power, now the Germans had to face the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and their colonies, a weak and constrained military, French occupation of the Rhur, limitations on their personal freedom, and severe inflation. This was a breeding ground for frustration and extremism. By 1924 a debt payment plan eased some of the economic burden on Germany, and a year later part of the unpaid debt was forgiven. In the 1930s the problems of Germany were exacerbated by a worldwide economic depression. The Weimar government tried to alleviate the stress of inflation and unemployment while being battered from two sides by the German Communist Party on the left and the National Socialist Workers' Party (known as the Nazis), led by Hitler, on the right. The Nazis steadily gained seats in the Reichstag, and President Paul von Hindenburg was persuaded to appoint Hitler to the post of chancellor in January 1933. Hitler gradually increased the power of the Nazi government and himself, outlawing opposition groups and directing the infamous Gestapo to silence dissenters. On July 1, 1934, the so-called "Night of the Long Knives," he ordered the purge of powerful Nazi militia leaders. When Hindenburg died a month later, Hitler merged the powers of president and chancellor into a supreme post of Führer. Heil Hitler Hitler was an electrifying speaker who aroused the German people by appealing to national pride and blaming all their problems on Jews and communists. His plan for ridding Germany of its enemies and reasserting its power was remilitarization. After withdrawing Germany from the League of Nations in 1933, Hitler began an intense rebuilding of the armed forces. Military production relieved unemployment and the German people's feeling of shame from the Treaty of Versailles. He reinstated universal military service in 1935, and the following year German soldiers entered the demilitarized Rhineland bordering France. in 1938 Hitler began the campaign of expansion that ultimately led to the outbreak of the Second World War. Hitler's forced union with Austria, which he justified as an effort to reintegrate German people into a single homeland, took place in March 1938. Europe's major powers, France and Britain, did nothing for fear of provoking a military confrontation, enhancing Hitler's reputation among the German people and deepening his contempt for the western democracies. The policy of "appeasement," intended to satisfy Hitler, served only to feed his appetite. In September he demanded cession of the Sudetenland, the western portion of Czechoslovakia, which was largely populated by ethnic Germans. At the Munich Conference, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that the sacrifice of Austria and Sudetenland was a guarantee of peace. Six months later Hitler took all of Czechoslovakia, and Chamberlain was compelled to promise defense guarantees to Poland, Romania and Greece.

Hitler's Conquest of Europe__________________

	Blitzkrieg In August 1939 Hitler signed a non-aggression pact with Josef Stalin, nullifying the risk of the Soviet Union coming to the defense of neighboring Poland, thereby opening the door to German demands for territory in the "Polish Corridor." Early in the morning on September 1, the first wave of 1.2 million German troops invaded Poland. Following heavy aerial bombardment by the Luftwaffe, fast-moving mechanized armored "Panzer" divisions, supported by combat aircraft, overpowered Polish resistance. Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3. On September 5, United States President Franklin Roosevelt issued a proclamation of neutrality, although two months later he convinced Congress to begin shipping weapons to Britain and France. Aside from the conquest of Poland, there was little fighting in Europe until April 9, 1940, when the German "blitzkrieg" (lightning war) tore across Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Allied forces were rapidly killed, captured or withdrawn. On May 10, Chamberlain was forced to resign as a result of his failure to prevent German occupation of large areas of Western Europe [see map 01], and Winston Churchill took over as British Prime Minister. Battle of Britain Following the British evacuation of Dunkirk in May 1940, Hitler made plans for "Operation Sea Lion," the invasion of Britain. The Luftwaffe (2,800 aircraft stationed in France, Belgium, Holland and Norway, outnumbering the Royal Air Force 4:1) would clear the skies to prepare for a German amphibious landing on September 15. German Messerschmitt fighters failed to rid the British skies of pesky Spitfires, however, and Hitler was forced to call off the invasion. Instead, the Luftwaffe concentrated on a relentless series of aerial attacks on London and other major cities known as the Blitz. In November the city of Coventry was bombed, destroying a medieval cathedral and killing many civilians. The RAF retaliated with intense bombing of German cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich. Equipped with night radar, RAF bombers carried out devastating raids on German industrial centers. After the surrender of France on June 22, despite the failure of Germany to force Britain to its knees, while the aerial bombardment continued there was also an intense battle for control of the Atlantic. German submarine "wolf packs" preyed on British and American merchant ships in an effort to cut off imports to Britain. As the war progressed, the development of radar, sonar, radio intercepts, and air cover gradually reduced the Germany navy and preserved the maritime lifeline. Operation Barbarossa The non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin gave both Germany and the Soviet Union time to prepare for the inevitable outbreak of war in Eastern Europe. Stalin took advantage of the opportunity to establish a buffer zone against a German invasion by sending the Soviet Red Army into eastern Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in the summer of 1940. Having easily overrun and occupied Western Europe, Hitler was confident that he could take Russia. Germany's attack on the Soviet Union, code-named Operation Barbarossa, began on 21 June 1941 when 100 divisions of the Wehrmacht invaded across a front that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The German blitzkrieg overran the Red Army and Panzer divisions pushed through the Russian city of Minsk toward Moscow. By September, Leningrad was surrounded and under siege, Kiev fell in October, and German troops reached the outskirts of Moscow in November. To slow the German blitzkrieg, Stalin had ordered a "scorched earth" policy, whereby everything of value to the invading army was destroyed, including bridges, railways, and fields of crops. Hitler understood that the success of Operation Barbarossa depended on rapid movement before the Russian winter would threaten the long supply lines of his advancing army. Sure enough, sub-zero temperatures grounded the Luftwaffe aircraft and froze the Panzer divisions. The Red Army held on through the winter of 1941-42. The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point. In the first six months, the Germans had killed 3,000,000 Russian soldiers in combat, taken 4,000,000 prisoner, and executed at least 500,000. Slowed by a weak but courageous Russian counterattack, the German army launched a new offensive in the spring of 1942. Stalingrad became the Verdun of what the Soviets would later name the Great Patriot War. Hitler was determined to take the city, and Stalin was equally determined to hold it. Stalin personally assumed overall command of the war effort. He ordered soldiers to fight for the homeland; those who retreated were shot; those who surrendered were not to be forgiven; their wives were arrested and imprisoned. (His own son was captured by the Germans, and Stalin refused to make a prisoner exchange. His son's wife was arrested and sent to a labor camp for two years.) By January 1943 the Germans were surrounded and out of supplies. Hitler refused to allow the commander to surrender, but Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus disobeyed the Führer's order. Stalingrad was the German army's greatest defeat. For the Soviets, defense of their homeland came at a heavy price. Eventually at least 7,000,000 civilians were murdered and an additional 4,000,000 died from starvation and sickness as a result of the German invasion. The Germans destroyed more than 70,000 towns, leaving more than 25,000,000 Soviet people homeless. The Germans captured and deported another 5,000,000 people from Soviet territory to labor camps. Overall, the Soviet Union suffered at least 9,000,000 military casualties and perhaps as many as 24 million people in total.


Worldwide War___________________________

	Axis of Evil Germany had a number of allies throughout the war. Some were puppet states, like Vichy France, but the major European ally was Italy. Like Germany, Italy was ruled by a fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini. In May 1939 the two countries had signed the Pact of Steel, forming a political and military alliance. In June 1940 Mussolini declared war on Britain and France. Italian troops invaded North Africa (British Somaliland and Egypt) and Greece. During a civil war that lasted from 1936 to 1939, Spain had fallen under the control of fascist general Francisco Franco. Spain remained officially neutral, as it had in the First World War, but Franco maintained a friendly relationship with the German Führer. The principal ally of Germany and Italy was in the Far East. In September 1940 the Imperial government of Japan signed a ten-year pact with Germany and Italy. Hitler's main intention in signing this pact was to distract the United States from entering the war in Europe. The Japanese army had been slowly taking control of China since 1931, and in early 1941 Japan began to expand its empire into French Indochina and beyond, threatening American economic interests in the Pacific. The Sleeping Giant Throughout the first two years of the war, the United States used diplomatic and economic pressure to aid the Allies and contain Japanese expansion. President Roosevelt pledged to help Churchill and Stalin any way possible short of military engagement. He declared that American industry would serve as the "Arsenal of Democracy" in a determined effort to aid in the defeat of fascism. Roosevelt devised clever strategies to evade strict neutrality laws, such as lend-lease and cash-and-carry. Roosevelt was elected to a third term in November 1940 with a campaign promise to do everything possible to keep "American boys" from fighting on foreign soil. That promise became moot on the morning of December 7, 1941. Just before 8:00 on a quiet Sunday morning, Japanese warplanes launched from an aircraft carrier task force attacked the United States Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, roughly 4,000 miles from Japan. Caught off guard, the Americans were nearly defenseless. The Japanese attack severely damaged eight battleships, destroyed nearly 200 planes, and killed over 2,000 soldiers and sailors in the worst naval disaster in U.S. history. That same morning, Gen. George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, had sent a cable to military commanders in Hawaii and the Philippines warning that an attack might be imminent, but the attack was already underway when the message arrived. (U.S. military intelligence had been monitoring Japanese radio communication, having broken the Japanese code, but the precise time and place of the attack was unknown.) In early 1941, Roosevelt had frozen Japanese assets and cut off exports. A diplomatic ultimatum urged Japan to give up her aggressive plans and pull out of China. Instead, the Japanese government hoped to extend a strong defensive perimeter along a line of western Pacific islands and then negotiate a peace [see map 2]. As historian James Stokesbury explains, The Japanese "enjoyed the inestimable advantages of interior strategic position, homogeneity of units, unity of command, and single-mindedness of war aims. They knew what they wanted and they knew what they had to do to get it." The first step was destruction of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a stunning success; but Japan had "awakened a sleeping giant" by angering and uniting the American people. From that moment on, Americans were determined to not only defend their nation but to pay back Japan. In London, Winston Churchill's first thought upon hearing the news was "we have won the war." That night, he wrote, "I slept the sleep of the saved and the thankful." The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, both the U.S. and Britain declared war on Japan. Hitler responded by declaring war on the U.S. The conflict suddenly had become a worldwide war. Since 1930, Americans had been mired in the Great Depression, struggling with dispiriting joblessness, disillusionment, and political discord. "After Pearl Harbor," a worker in a General Motors factory in Flint, Michigan, later recalled, "there was an immediate change in people's attitude: their sense of urgency, dedication, and team work." As military service drained the supply of male workers, women entered the industrial workforce in unprecedented numbers. Automobile plants stopped making cars and began turning out tanks, army trucks, jeeps, and airplanes. The National War Labor Board was created to prevent strikes, manage labor relations, and freeze wages. War contracts energized the economy, causing the U.S. gross national product to double during the war years. Demand for agricultural products soared to meet the needs of the millions of men serving in the military. To pay the bills, federal spending rose to $320 billion between 1940 and 1945. At full production, the American economy managed to produce and equip huge armed forces and still generate surplus for home consumption. By the end of 1942, the U.S. was producing more war materials than all of its allies and enemies combined. (At the Teheran Conference in 1943, Stalin toasted "American production, without which this war would have been lost.")