World War II

Terms

• 1937 Sino-Japanese War

• Blitzkrieg

• Nazi definition of Jewish

• Lebensraum

• Ghettos

• Battle of Britain and The Blitz

• Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941)

• Nazis invasion of Russia

• Holocaust

– The Final Solution

• Battle of Midway (June 1942)

• Atomic Bomb

– Hiroshima and Nagasaki

• D-Day

• VE Day May 8, 1945

• VJ Day September 9, 1945

• Yalta Conference (Feb. 1945)

• Potsdam Conference (July 1945)

• Marshall Plan 1947

Path to War 1935-1939

• 1935 – ignores Treaty of Versailles, remilitarizes Germany

• Nuremburg Law 1935

• 1936 – Four-year-plan for German self-sufficiency

• Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

Maginot Line

Outbreak of War – European Theater

• Appeasement Policy 1938 – Anschluss with Austria – Sudetenland

• March 1939 – Hitler declares Slovakia independent and allied with Germany

• August 1939 – Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact 1939

• September 1, 1939 – Germany invades Poland – Beginning of WWII in Europe – Blitzkrieg

Bbc.co.uk

Outbreak of War – Eastern/Pacific Theater

• Sino-Japanese War 1937

– Beginning of WWII in the Pacific

• Japan declares war on Russia 1938

Hitler’s Ideology

• Laid out his ideology and goals in his book Mien Kampf – including the extermination of the Jews

• Myth of the Aryan race

• Lebensraum – “living space” depopulating an area so the “correct race” could repopulate it.

• First step -The Ghettos -> The Warsaw ghetto

Warsaw Ghetto wall

Warsaw ghetto in 1943

1940

• Blitzkrieg War

• Summary:

– April 1940 – Germany takes Norway then Denmark

– May 1940 – Luxemburg, Belgium, Netherlands, and starts on France

– June 1940 – Nazi takes Paris

– End of Summer 1940 – Nazi controls France except southern France – called Vichy

– July 1940 – “Battle for Britain” begins

Battle of Britain and The Blitz

• Battle of Britain – Nazi air raids of mostly military targets

– July 1940- October 1940

– Hitler “postpones” the invasion of Britain

• The Blitz – continuous bombing of civilian targets in Britain, particularly London

– September 1940 – May 1941

• British and Allied forces retaliate with air raids of German cities.

Coventry in London, 1940

Second Great Fire of London – December 1940 during the Blitz Seen here: St. Paul’s Cathedral

1941

• Germans refocus attention to USSR

– Nazi’s invade Russia – 1941

• December 7, 1941 - Japanese attack Pearl Harbor

• December 11, 1941 – US declares war on Japan, Germany declares war on US, US declares war on Germany

Axis and Allies

Axis Powers

• Germany

• Japan

• Italy

Allies

• EVERYONE ELSE

• US

• Britain

• French resistance

• China

• Norway

• USSR

• Yugoslavia

• Netherlands

• Etc

http://gadabyte.com/ww-ii/images/map.jpg

Hitler versus Stalin

• Germany taking over Eastern bloc

• 45% of USSR under German control (Operation Barbarossa)

• Germany advances on Stalingrad (Operation Blue) in 1942 but then surrounded by Red Army

• Nazi troops surrender in 1943

• Hitler refocuses resources on genocide – the Holocaust

The Holocaust • 1935 – Nuremburg Laws • 1938 – Jews begin to try and flee

– Night of the Broken Glass

• 1930s – other people targeted such as those in mental hospitals and “malformed infants”

• 1939-1942 – Labor camps, ghettos, and mass executions

• January 1942- 1945 – The Final Solution – Concentration camps – 1944 – US and some Allies knew about concentration

camps, particularly Auschwitz – Liberated in 1945 – ~10+ million people dead (New research since 2013

claims 15-20million dead)

Auschwitz

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?ModuleId=10005144&MediaId=354

Copyright © United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

Europe 1942

European Front: 1942-1945

• Late 1942-43- Eisenhower invades Morocco and Algeria, opening up the Northern African front

• Becomes clear that Germany has lost at Stalingrad

• Mussolini falls- (executed in 1945)

• June 6th, 1944 - D-Day (invasion of Normandy)

• February 1945 - Fire-bombing of Dresden – 50,000 dead

• April 30, 1945 - Hitler kills himself

• May 8th, 1945 - Germany surrenders, V-E Day

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Utah Beach

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May 8, 1945 – VE Day

Pacific Theater • December 7th, 1941: Surprise attack on Pearl Harbor

brings US into the war • June 4-7th, 1942: Battle of Midway slowly starts turning

the tide toward the Allies, who begin island-hopping toward Japan – Australia functions as the Allied base in the Pacific

Theater • August 6, 1945: US drops the first atomic bomb on

Hiroshima • August 9th, 1945: US drops the second atomic bomb in

Nagasaki • September 2, 1945: Japan officially signs the surrender • WWI: 10 million dead • WWII: 15 million military dead, 30+ million civilian

casualties, 25 million wounded

Attack on Pearl Harbor

Aftermath

• February 1945: Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt meet at Yalta to discuss postwar Europe – April, 1945: Roosevelt dies, Truman replaces him

as president

– Creation of the United Nations

• Summer, 1945: Potsdam Conference divides Germany

• 1947: Marshall Plan

• 1947-1951 – Cold War

Europe 1949