wwii - lomira300,000 allied forces land in first week, 1 million in a month july 25, 1944 –...
TRANSCRIPT
WWII
Europe in the 20’s
Europe is still devastated from WWI
The culture is violent and full of
demagogues
Russia
Communists take over
Russia – it becomes
the USSR.
Millions of Russians
killed and silenced
Joseph Stalin in
control
Italy
1919 communist uprisings
Economic problems
Benito Mussolini – powerful speaker formed Fascist Party, he becomes known as “Il Duce”
Said power should rest in one, strong leader
1922 leads his “Black Shirts” to Rome
“Either they will give
us Rome or we will
take it”
Was named prime
minister and outlawed
all Political Parties
except his own
Germany
Economy goes down, inflation hits
Weimer Republic blamed, Adolf Hitler
and his “Brown Shirts” take over
National Socialist German Workers party
or “Nazi” party
Hitler becomes “Der Fuhrer”
Once in power begins
massive rearmament
People are employed
Germans rejoice
Jews are put into
Ghettos – then
concentration camps
Japan
Japan was a Democracy but when the
Great Depression hits, militaristic groups
come out of background – took over by
bullying and murder
No demagogue but a small group of
military commanders
Japanese Imperialism
Islands the size of
Montana
70 million people
Lacked natural
resources
Afraid of attack from
Godzilla
1931 – Japan invades Manchuria (China)
League of Nations protests, but does nothing
Japan drops out of LON
1933 – Germany begins rearmament
League of Nations protests, but does nothing
1935 – Italy invades Ethiopia
League of Nations protests, but does nothing
Haile Selassie – “God and history will remember your judgment. It is us today. It will be you tomorrow”
Other countries pick up dictators, in Eastern Europe only Czechoslovakia is a democracy
1936 – Spanish Civil war
Germany & Italy support Fascist General Francisco Franco
Use it to test Blitzkrieg “Lightning War” (mobile ground forces supported by air power)
Meanwhile, Germany sends troops into Rhineland – Germany was not ready for actual confrontation but..
Other countries (France & Britain) did nothing
“Did you hear that someday France will have a president
named Jacque?”
Why Appeasement?
1) memory of WWI
2) fear of Soviet Communism
3) unease with Versailles treaty
4) hope for compromise with Germany
1938 – Hitler annexes Austria to “liberate”
the Germans there
Sept. ’38 – Says he wants to “liberate”
suedetenland in Czechoslovakia, Czechs
activate defense pact with France.
Munich Agreement
G.B. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain makes a deal
with Hitler; Germany gets Suedetenland if they promise
to not attack anyone. “Peace in our time”
1939 – Germany takes the rest of
Czechoslovakia
Great Appeasers in History
starring:
Neville Chamberlain
With Special
Guest: Jimmy
Carter
1939 – Hitler and Stalin sign a secret
nonaggression pact with the plan to split
Poland.
War is a comin’
Sept. 1, 1939 – Hitler Invades Poland,
crushes it in 3 weeks
Britain & France declare war –
World War II begins
Italy takes Albania
USSR takes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and
Finland
“Phony War” – Hitler makes no moves
until…
April 1940 –
Germany takes
Denmark, Norway,
Belgium, Netherlands,
all neutral countries
Germany takes
France, Maginot line
fails
May 1940, British do
a miracle escape from
Dunkirk – 350,000
British and French
soldiers escape.
June 17, 1940 France
surrenders
Battle of Britain
Britain stands alone – but has new Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Hitler sends waves of Bombers to decimate Britain
RAF vs. Luftwaffe – RAF outnumbered but fighting for their homeland
Both countries bomb one another, including civilians
"We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!"
June 4, 1940
USA
1939 – US declares neutrality but we still sold stuff to other countries
1940 – first peace time draft
FDR still promises “Your boys will not be sent into any foreign war”
Lend - Lease act – we could sell, lend, or lease supplies to any country vital to our national security
June 1941 – Germany blitzes into USSR,
they do well but…
USSR is huge & uses scorched earth policy
Soviets join USA and Britain, USA starts
supplying them
This is Hitler’s 1st big mistake
Japan
Wanted GEACPS
(Greater East Asian
Co-Prosperity Sphere)
By ’37 they had
invaded rest of China,
French Indochina
Dec 7, 1941 – Attack
Pearl Harbor
A day that will live in Infamy
2,403 dead
188 destroyed planes
8 damaged or
destroyed battleships
but…
missed our aircraft
carriers which were
not there
Dec 8 – FDR asks congress for a declaration of
war
Senate 82-0
House 388-1
Dec 11, Germany and Italy declare war on the
USA
Yamamoto “I fear we have awakened a sleeping
giant and filled him with a terrible resolve”
FF to 9/11 2001
A reporter in China says : “Look at the panic
in their faces as they wipe off the dust and crawl
out of their strong buildings - now just a heap of
rubble, we will never fear these people again.
They have been shown to be soft-bellied paper
tigers.”
“Those who do not remember the past are
condemned to repeat it”
Axis vs. Allies
Axis Powers – Germany, Japan, Italy
Allied Powers – USA, UK (Britain), USSR
Axis seems unstoppable
Allies plan to take Europe first and be defensive in Pacific, Dwight D. Eisenhower in command
Russian Theatre
Nazis push to Moscow.
They lay siege to
Leningrad
(St. Petersburg)
1941-1944
At one point 4000
civilians died of
starvation every day
600,000 died total, but
they held it
African Theatre
Erwin Rommel “the
Desert Fox”
Swept toward Suez
Canal and Oil Fields
middle east
Stopped by British
General Montgomery
at El Alamein
Atlantic Theatre
Germans used lots of
U-Boats again
US used convoys to
transport supplies
Sept. 1942 Battle of
Stalingrad
house to house
fighting
Feb ’43 Germans
surrendered
Germans lost 300,000
Russians lost 500,000
Pacific Theatre
Japanese have 3 times as many ships as US
May 1942 Battle of Coral Sea – total air battle
US victory
Stopped push toward Australia
Battle of Midway
We had broken their
codes so we knew
they were coming
In a matter of minutes
we sunk 4 of their
Carriers
Turning point in
Pacific
Aug 1942 – Battle of Guadalcanal
by the Solomon Islands
lasts until 1943 (US victory)
1943 things start turning around
General Patton
deployed in Morocco
Patton and
Montgomery squeeze
Rommel out of Africa
They move into Sicily
to try to go up
through the “soft
underbelly” of Europe
Summer of 1943, Italians want to stop
fighting and turn against Mussolini, but
Hitler seizes control of Italy.
18 months of very difficult fighting for
Allies
Anzio – lasted 4 months, ended May 1944
25,000 Allied & 30,000 Axis soldiers died
Big three meet (FDR, Churchill, Stalin)
Churchill wanted to invade Eastern Europe
to cut off the Russians
FDR underestimates “Uncle Joe” and
agrees to invade France
D-Day
Operation Overlord
Invasion of Normandy
June 6, 1944
Attack across the English Channel into France
Largest amphibious invasion in history
3 divisions parachute behind enemy the night before
156,000 American, British, Canadian troops
4,000 landing craft
600 warships
11,000 planes
300,000 allied forces land in first week, 1 million in a month
July 25, 1944 – General Omar Bradley launches massive attack on German forces
Patton pushes to Paris, liberates it Aug 25
“Dear Ike: today I spat in the Seine.”
Allies liberate France
Soviets come from the East
Dec 16, Hitler launches massive counterattack – Battle of the Bulge
Germany loses 120,000 troops, 600 tanks, 1,600 planes in BoB – Germany no longer capable of large offensive
Death Camps start to be liberated, SS tries to hide evidence
“We started smelling a terrible odor and suddenly we were at the concentration camp at Landsberg. Forced the gate and faced hundreds of prisoners … We saw emaciated men whose thighs were smaller than wrists, many had bones sticking through their skin … Also we saw hundreds of burned naked bodies” Robert T. Johnson
“...my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews.”
Adolf Hitler, 1922
“We came to the question: what to do with the women and children? I decided to
find a clear solution here as well. I did not consider
myself justified to exterminate the men - that
is, to kill them or have them killed - and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the form of their children to grow up.
The difficult decision had to be taken to make this
people disappear from the earth.” /Heinrich Himmler,
October 1943/
“I freed Germany from the
stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience,
morality... we will train young
people before whom the whole world will
tremble. I want young people capable of violence,
imperious, relentless and cruel.” Adolf Hitler
April 12, 1945 – FDR
dies of stroke
Harry S Truman takes
over
May 7, 1945
Germany surrenders
May 8, VE Day
Back to the Pacific
Gen. Douglas MacArthur
Island Hopping
Japanese fight to the death
Kamikaze – sunk 300 ships, killed 15,000 US troops
Asia – communist forces helped us against Japanese
China – Mao Zedong
Indochina – Ho Chi Minh
Iwo Jima
Okinawa – 110,000
Japanese killed,
12,000 Americans
The Bomb
1938 – Lisa Meitner discovers a way to
split Uranium Atoms
1939 – Albert Einstein writes FDR about
the possibility of an Atom Bomb
Historical Irony – these two (as well as
many others) were German Jews who had
to flee Germany.
The Manhattan Project
Germany rumored to
have started research
into A-Bomb in 1939
We started in 1942
beneath University of
Chicago football field
J. Robert Openheimer
takes over in Los
Alamos NM
1945 We create two
bombs – Fat Man and
Little Boy
Truman warns
Japanese of new
weapon, asks them to
surrender
They didn’t
Hiroshima
Aug 6, 1945
Enola Gay dropped
bomb on Hiroshima
killed 80,000
instantly, 200,000
eventually
Nagasaki
Aug 9, 1945
Instantly killed about
45,000
Japan surrendered
August 14
Results of WWII
About 55 million dead
Soviet Union – 18-20 million
Germans – 6 million
Japanese – 2 million
China – 2 million
British – 400,000
USA – 291,000 killed + 100,000 died in accidents
Holocaust – 6 million Jews, 12,000 a day in Auschwitz, 1/3 of total Jewish pop in world
massive material damage
trials in Tokyo and Nuremberg
some Nazis escape through Catholic Ratlines to South America
United Nations formed
National borders redrawn; 2 superpowers in the world – soon enemies
USA
USSR
Japanese Internment Camps
USA 1942 – many
Japanese put in
internment camps
Supreme Court
upheld
1988 Congress
apologized, paid
$20,000 to anyone
still alive
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