WW II (1939-1945)

INTRODUCCION ·This was a war of motion, dramatic conquests, terrible

destructive power and a conflict among nations and opposing ideals.

·The killing power was aimed at civilians (artillery, aerial bombing, the extermination of gypsies, homosexual and other “deviants” by the Nazi, the United States´ use of the atomic bomb…).

·The scale of destruction provoked questions about the values of Western civilization.

CAUSES OF THE WAR• Peace Settlement 1919-1920 German humiliation - Naval blockade by Allied Powers. - Deprived of power in Europe ,and saddled economy .

Failure to create standards for peace and security

- 1920s, European treaties for peace fail. - League of Nations fails

Economy - Germans pay reparations, inflation makes their money worthless. - 1930s Depression = economic & political Nationalism.

PRECEDENTS: APPEASEMENT

1930s , New Fascist and Nationalist governments.

Divided opinions in Europe:

Some want to react to the aggressors ´challenge.

Others hope to avoid premature or unnecessary conflict.

Governments try to negotiate with the Fascists. Policy of “appeasement” is created with 3 assumptions:

1 Doing anything to provoke another war is unthinkable.

2 Germany, mistreated by the Versailles Treaty, is essential against the advance of Soviet Communism

3 Nazi Germany presents the true threat to European stability.

PRECEDENTS3 crises: China, Ethiopia and Spain.

·China invaded in Manchuria by the Japanese.

·Ethiopia invaded by Mussolini.

· Spanish Civil- (Most relevant)

The civil war in Spain: Extreme right-wing officers rebelled against the Republic. Hitler and Mussolini assist Franco. April 1937, German bombers destroyed Guernica.

THE SPANISH CIVIL WARBoth sides committed atrocities; War ends with victory for Franco in 1939. Hitler drew two lessons from Spain:

1 If Britain, France and Soviet Union ever tried to contain fascism, they, Germany, would have a hard time coordinating their efforts.

2 Britain and France averse to fighting another war.

THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

Nazis could use all their war power because nobody would stop them.

THE GERMAN REARMENT

- Reoccupation of Rhineland in 1936 and annexing Austria in 1938.

-Tried to occupy part of Czechoslovakia with the help of Britain.

- Other nations made pacts with Hitler.

-1939 Germany invaded Czechoslovakia with France, Britain and Italy.

- Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with the Nazis in 1939: they wouldn’t attack them if Germany didn’t attack them.

THE OUTBREAK Hitler wanted German population united with the Reich through the Polish Corridor.

Britain and France declared war. Hitler finally invaded Poland with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union attacked Finland. In 1940, Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway Hitler’s next target: France

1940-1941 Battle of Britain. Nazis dropped bombs on London.

German 1 They focused on civilian targets so Royal Air Force was still mistakes: controlled the air. 2 Hitler focussed on Russia.

Churchill convinced president Roosevelt to send American troops to Europe

THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

Germany launched a submarine campaign against Britain.

With their technology (And United States entry to the war in 1941 )Britain sunk German submarines .

THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

THE WAR IN NORTH AFRICABritain protected the Suez Canal, (with Indian, South African and West African troops)expelled the Italians that from Ethiopia.

The Soviets and the British invaded Iran and nearly capture Italy’s colony of Libya.

Germany sent the Afrika Korps, leaded by Rommel.

Britain defeated the Italian navy and took control of the Mediterranean.

THE WAR WITH JAPANJapan bombed the American base at Pearl Harbour on December 1941.

USA joined the Allies

Japanese troops sunk the pacific squadrons of British and Dutch navies.

British and Indian defeated a Japanese invasion of India In 1942.

By 1943 the Japanese lost most of its ships.

GERMANY’S OCCUPATION OF EUROPE

In 1941 Germany took over Yugoslavia and Greece.Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria joined the Nazis as allies. By 1941(except Sweden & Switzerland) whole of Europe involved.

In 1941Operation BarbarossaThe Nazis attacked Red Army with two goals: Destruction of communism and racial purification

When German forces were on their way to Moscow, they were diverted south to attack Russia’s industrial area. The Russian began to organize in Moscow.

In each occupied country a small group of Nazis governed in the name of the Germans while well organized resistance movements gathered information for the Allies.

RACIAL WAR:THE HOLOCAUSTNazis saw the conflict as a racial war. ethnics Germans were moved from elsewhere into the borders of the Reich, while Poles and Jews were deported. The Nazis transported Jews by the thousand to the south or Warsaw

. They killed 100.000 Jews in 1940. Even though this campaign to eliminate European Jewry started in the 1930s, the war made it harder. Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Soviet Union, brought changes and this attack transformed in a war of extermination. Nazis would take Jewish ghettos in the occupied cities, forbidding the entry of food and other products.

1941, Nazi made plans for mass killings in concentration camps. Between 1942 and 1944 over 1 million people were killed at Auschwitz.The Jews and other victims were not simply killed but tortured as well.

They killed up to 12.000 Hungarian Jews per day at Auschwitz in 1944. The largest Jewish resistance, however, happened in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943

. The Holocaust took between 4.1 and 5.7 million Jewish lives. It was unique and part of a

racial war and of a period of ethnical mass murder.

TOTAL WARWorld War II involved the efforts of whole populations. They were in constant battle with equally well-armed opponents, and they needed massive resources. The standards of living changed. For example, Latin America obtained a lot of profits due to the big amount of raw materials they supplied to the Allies. Women and the elderly had to work more hours. The diet changed due to the rationalization of the food. Production was essential to winning the war. Britain, the Soviet Union and America started propaganda campaigns to encourage the production of war equipment. Actually, the Allies destined more of their economies to war production that any nations in history. They built thousands of tanks, ships and planes. Germany, on the other hand, wasn’t so efficient in its use of workers and material.Because industry was essential to winning, centres of industry became vital military targets and so the Allies began bombing German ports and factories. After bombing the military and industry in German, the Allies would bomb German’s civilian population. The Allies killed tens of thousands of German civilians, ports such as Hamburg and the industrial city of the Ruhr. At the same time German planes shot down hundreds of Allied bombers causing heavy losses. Even though German industry was slowly degraded, the German wouldn’t surrender.While all this bombing was going on, Allied scientist in America were working on the most powerful bomb of all: the atomic bomb. British scientists had started working in the idea before, but they didn’t have enough resources or radioactive material, so the British passed on their theories and technical information to the United States, who did have those resources. But the government of the United States wasn’t the only one trying to build the atomic bomb. The Germans were trying that too and it turned out to be like a race towards the same end. The Germans, however, didn’t have enough resources or crucial technical information and after Norwegian commandos destroyed the Germans’ heavy water facility (used to separate the uranium needed for the bomb) the German project had to end. Anyway, American officials didn’t trust that the German project had not been destroyed so they kept going with theirs. After nearly two years they came up with a working design. The tryout was a success which meant that America possessed the most destructive weapon ever created.

THE EASTERN FRONTThe early successes of the Germans were fading, and this was motivated but four changes. The first one was that what had begun as a war between Nazi invaders and Russian became a war to save the Russian motherland, and that is how the Russians got the strength and motivation to drive the Germans out of their homeland. The second change was the Russian victory called “General Winter”. Successive winters had affected the Nazi’s lives and supplies and their morale was low. The third change was the astonishing recovery of Soviet industry. The Soviets received some American and British help but they also rebuilt their whole industry behind the Ural Mountains, a safe place. The forth change was that Germans became victims of their own military tactics. At the beginning of the war theses tactics were very innovative but they became predictable and the Russian learn them and were able to exploit them catching the Nazis by surprise. The crucial year in this front, which can be considered as a fifth change, was 1943, when the battle of Stalingrad took place. It was the most destructive battle the world has ever seen. This battle started when the Germans tried to break the back of Soviet industry. After Stalingrad the Germans were out of the centre of Russia and by 1944 Ukraine was in Soviet hands. The Soviet forces also retook large parts of Czechoslovakia.

THE WESTERN FRONTThe Soviet Union pressured its Allies to open a second front in the West. The Allies first invaded Sicily and then the rest of Italy. Mussolini then surrendered in 1943. This attack became a civil war because most Italians sided with the Allies but some of them continued fighting for the exiled Mussolini with the help of the Germans. The fighting in Italy cost Germany much more than it did the Allies, which entered Austria by the spring of 1945. The most important “second front”, however, was opened on June 1944 when the Allies disembarked in Normandy. The Germans established there fought fiercely but the Allies were superior in men, material and air force. During July and August the Allies swept through France, liberating Paris and pushing into Belgium. Over the winter they destroyed German forces in the Rhineland and Holland. In April 1945, the Allies crossed the Rhine. The German collapsed and American tanks went south as British and Canadian forces went north. Most Germans preferred to surrender to Americans or British than face the Russian to the east. At the same time the Russian troops were approaching fast. By late April they had taken Prague and Vienna. As a consequence, Adolf Hitler killed himself on April 30 and on May 2, the heart of the city was captured and the Soviet’s red flag flew from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. On May 7 the Germans signed a document of unconditional surrender. By the next day the war in Europe was over.

THE WAR IN THE PACIFIC AND THE DROPPING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

The war in the Pacific came to an end four moths later. The U.S. Navy had won one of its greatest victories when they destroyed most of Japan’s ships in the gulfs of the Philippine islands. Japanese pilots outnumbered in the air, mounted suicide attacks on American ships. In June 1945, the Japanese island of Okinawa fell. The Soviets marched through Manchuria and into Korea. On July the heads of the U.S., British and Chinese governments demanded Japan to surrender or be destroyed. Japan refused to surrender so the United States decided to use the atomic bomb. Contrary to public opinion, President Truman, Roosevelt’s successor decided to use it. On August 6 a single atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and three days later a second one was dropped on Nagasaki. Truman warned the Japanese that the United States would use as many atomic bombs as necessary to make Japan surrender. On August 14 Japan surrendered. The atomic bomb, apart from destruction, had as consequence that the world had now a weapon that could destroy not just cities and peoples bit humanity itself.

CONCLUSIONIn 1945, after the World War II was over, many Europeans faced a world that hardly existed anymore. The product of war industry had destroyed factories, ports and railroads. Much of Europe lay destroyed and vulnerable to the rivalry of the post-war superpowers: the Unites States and the Soviet Union.The human losses were unbelievable: nearly 50 million people died. This happened as a consequence of the advanced technology used in the attacks and the ambitions of the Nazis for pure race. Also, World War II devolved into smaller conflicts: civil war in Greece, religious conflicts in Yugoslavia and political battles in France. Hitler’s empire and the people involved in it were recriminated for years.