Joining the War

Section 12.3

Ike speaks to soldiers in Britain prior to D-Day

June 6, 1944

Capture: Americans in landing craft, June 6, 1944

What events led these Americans to end up in Normandy, France?

Capture: Americans pull up to beach at Normandy

Describe December 7, 1941.• “A date which will live

in infamy.”• Japanese planes

attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (naval base)

• Destroyed 19 battleships, 188 planes

• Killed 2, 400 Americans• United Americans in

call for war– “Remember Pearl

Harbor”

Above: Pearl Harbor burning; Below: FDR asks Congress for declaration of war on Japan

Mobilizing America

Capture: Times Square

Times Square: Summer of 1941

Who were the Allies/the Axis Powers?Allies

• United States

• Great Britain

• Soviet Union

• And many others

Axis Powers

• Germany

• Italy

• Japan

“The Big Three

Left to Right: Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill

What was the Allied strategy for fighting WWII?

• Defeating Germany is most important

• Unconditional surrender of Axis powers

• “Closing the Ring”– Plan to encircle

Nazi Germany on all sides

• Defensive war in Pacific

World map showing areas of German and Japanese control

Barbarossa

Barbarossa: Hitler’s invasion of Soviet Union

Describe the invasion of the Soviet Union.• Began June 22, 1941 (Summer)• Blitzkrieg tactics and surprise• Surrounded Leningrad for 900

days• 300 thousand Germans attacked

Stalingrad• Access to oil• Russians stopped advance• Marks to turning point of the war• Stalin bitter about lack of Allied

support

Above: German tanks

Below: Hitler heads in three directions

Siege of Stalingrad

Capture: Siege of Stalingrad

Axis Powers by September of 1942Map shows the peak of Axis Power

Oil Fields

Whea

t Fiel

ds

Hitler’s Plan: Operation Barbarossa

Capture the wheat fields of Ukraine, then advance east across North Africa and South from Russia to capture the oil fields of the Middle East.

Stopping Hitler’s Advance

• The Allies Finally Stopped Hitler’s Advance at Three Key Areas:

• Battle of Britain

• El Alamein in Egypt

• Stalingrad in Russia

See Map on Next Slide

In spite of these losses, Hitler was firmly entrenched in Western Europe. (Map shows

Allied counter-offensive)

Russian AdvanceAfter Stalingrad

Allied Invasion of N. Africa 11/42

Allied Invasion of

Italy Summer ‘43

To complete the encirclement of Hitler -‘Closing the Ring’- the Allies needed to land somewhere in France. (Map shows

location of Normandy Invasion)

Normandy 6/’44D Day

Normandy Beach, France June 6, 1944

Old Glory finally planted on Omaha Beach

Place the following events in order from 1st to last. Now put the year they occurred.

• Event• Operation Barbarossa• Treaty of Versailles• Hitler named

Chancellor• Munich Pact• D-Day• Invasion of Poland• Pearl Harbor

• Year

What was Operation Overlord?• Allied invasion of Europe• Began with D-Day

– Deliverance Day/ Disembarkment Day) June 6, 1944

• Bad weather delayed invasion by one day

• Was it successful?– 10 thousand casualties in two

weeks– Allies built man-made harbor– Allowed hundreds of

thousands of soldiers and equipment to gain foothold in western Europe

View from Higgins boat

D-Day

Military funeral of D-Day dead

What was the Battle of the Bulge?• Hitler’s last major

offensive• Caught Allies off

guard• Goal was to capture

Antwerp• Germans surrounded

town of Bastogne asked for surrender – “Nuts” was the reply

• Weather broke in January and supplies replenished

Top: Map of the Ardennes; Bottom: corpses at Bastogne

Bastogne Video capture: Americans at Bastogne

The Progress of the War

Allied Nations

Neutral Nations

Axis Nations Communist Nations World map showing the relative size and location of Axis and Allied nations

The Camps

Capture from ‘Band of Brothers’: Liberating the Camps

What was the Holocaust?• Genocide or systematic

murder of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and others the Nazis considered undesirable

• Final Solution– Nazi decision to

attempt to exterminate the Jewish race from Europe

• 6 million Jews murdered (66% of the population in Europe)

Entrance to the death camp at Auschwitz II

Describe the process of the Final Solution.• Occurred gradually over time

• Nuremberg Laws of 1935– German laws used to

identify and discriminate against Jews in Germany

• Could not attend schools, hold public office, sit on park benches

• Must wear yellow star• Ghettos (1939)

– Jews were forced to reside in overcrowded, unsanitary areas of conquered cities

Above and below: Nazis persecuting Jews

The “Liquidation of the Ghetto”

Video capture: German troops enter the Warsaw Ghetto

“Wall of Death” for Polish political prisoners, before Auschwitz was turned into a death camp. Under the building on the right, Nazis first used poison gas to kill.

• Wannsee conference

– Meeting in Berlin in 1942

– decision to systematically kill the Jews of Europe

• Einsatzgruppen (1940)– Killing squads

– Rounded up Jews from conquered areas and executed them

• Concentration Camps

– 1st for “political reeducation”

– slave labor, medical experiments, starvation, murder by gas chamber

Describe the process of the Final Solution

Above: Auschwitz from the air

Mr. Morris by tracks at Birkenau station near Auschwitz

Crematoria with tourists and memorial candle

Clockwise from left, Gas Chamber, Zyklon B pellets, famous entrance with “Arbeit Macht Frei” arch, random line of doomed people

Dear Fellow Party Member [Parteigenosse] Luther!Enclosed I am sending you the minutes of the proceedings that

took place on January 20,1942.Since the basic position regarding the practical execution of

the final solution of the Jewish question has fortunately been established by now, and since there is a full agreement on the part of all agencies involved. I would like to ask you at the request of the Reich Marshal to make one of your specialist officials available for the necessary discussion of details in connection with the completion of the draft that shows the organizational, technical and material prerequisites bearing on the actual starting point of the projected solutions.

I want to schedule the first discussion along these lines for 10:30 a.m. on March 6, 1942 at 116 Kurfürstenstrasse, Berlin. I therefore ask you that for this purpose your specialist official contact my functionary in charge there, SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann.

Reinhard Heydrich

What was V-E Day?• “Victory in Europe”

• May 8, 1945

• Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies

• FDR had died April 12

• Hitler had committed suicide April 30

• US still at war with Japan

Above and below: newspapers proclaim Victory in Europe

VE Day

Capture: V-E Day