-
Douglas MacArthur
- Fall 1942, commanded one operation of the Allied forces
- -Would move into Philippines through New Guinea and South Pacific Islands
- The other operation would move across the Pacific w/ a combination of US Army, Marine, and Navy attacks on the Jap-held islands
-
Island Hopping
- The policy of the second operation (above) was to capture some Jap-held islands and bypass others, "island hopping" to Japan
- August to November 1942, battles were fading Japs fourtune
-
Winston Churchill
- 1943, battle had turned against Germany, Italy, and Japan (Axis Powers)
- Allies had crossed the Mediterranean and carried the war in Italy (the "soft underbelly" of Europe)
- Allied troops began to invade the mainland of Italy in September
-
Normandy
- June 6, 1944, history's greatest naval invasion
- Led by US general, Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Heavy German resistance, even though Germans thought it was a diversion of an invasion happening elsewhere
- Allied forces pushed inland and broke German defense lines
- Afterwards, Allies moved south and east
-
Harry Truman
- He had to choose whether to use the untested atomic bomb or another way to defeat the Jap forces
- Became president after Roosevelt died in April
- Decided to use atomic bomb to invade Japan
- -First bomb was used on Hiroshima August 6th
- -Second was used three days later on Nagasaki
-
Hiroshima
- August 6th, both cities were leveled and thousands died immediately, then thousands died later of radiation
- August 14, Emperor Hirohito forced Jap military leaders to surrender unconditionally
- WWII was finally over
-
Heinrich Himmler
- Leader of the SS and put in charge of German resettlement plans
- Was to move the Slavic peeps out and replace them w/ Germans
- -Included Czech, Polish, Serb-Croatian, Slovene, and Ukrainian
- 1942, two million ethnic Germans had been settled in Poland
- Invasion of the Soviet Union made Nazis more excited for the colonization of eastern Germany
- Poles, Ukrainians, Russians became slave labor, and German peasants settled on abandoned lands to "Germanize" them
-
Final Solution
- Reinhard Heydrich was head of SS's Security Service and was to administer the Final Solution
- Einsatzgruppen (special strike forces) would carry out the Nazi plans fir the extermination of the Jews
- Polish Jews were in ghettos set up in a number of Polish cities
- Some tried to adjust and some created resistance against the Nazis
- 1942, Einsatzgruppen ordered to act as mobile killing units
- They rounded up Jews in their villages, executed them, and buried them in mass graves
- Graves were often giant pits dug by the victims before they were shot
-
Auschwitz
- 1942, Jews from countries occupied by Germany were rounded up, packed like cattle onto trains, and shipped to Poland
- Auschwitz was the largest of six Polish extermination camps
- 30% were sent to labor camps where they starved or worked to death, remainder sent to gas chambers, some where subjected to cruel "medical" experiments
- 1942, death camps were in full operation
- First priority was to get rid of the ghettos in Poland, and by summer 1942, Jews were shipped from France, Belgium, and Holland
- Even though Allies were winning the war, Jews were also being shipped from Greece and Hungary
- Final Solution had priority in using railroad cars to ship Jews to death camps
-
The Holocaust
- Germans killed between 5-6 million Jews, over 3 million in death camps
- 90% of Jewish populations in Poland, Baltic countries, and Germany were killed
- Nazis were responsible for the deaths by shooting, starving, or overworking of at least 9-10 million Jews
- Leading citizens of Slavic peeps were arrested and killed
- 4 million Poles, Ukrainians, and Belorussians died as slave laborers for Germany
- Some Jews escaped by help of friends and even strangers, hidden in villages or smuggled into safe areas
- Denmark saved almost its entire Jewish population
-
Collaborators
- Those who helped the enemy
- Some didn't believe the accounts of death camps because the Allies had exaggerated German atrocities to create enthusiasm for the war
- Collaborators helped the Nazis hunt down Jews
- Allies were aware of the camps, but had concentrated on ending the war
-
Nanjing
- 1937, after their conquest of Nanjing, Japs spent several days killing, raping, and looting
- After conquest of Korea, almost 800,000 Koreans were sent to Japan, most as forced laborers
- Jap behavior created a dilemma for nationalists in occupied countries
- Japs had no desire to see the return of the colonial powers
- Some turned against the Japs while others did nothing
- Indonesian patriots pretended to support the Japs while sabotaging the Jap administration
- Commies agreed to provide info on Jap troop movements and rescue downed American fliers in the area
-
Mobilization
- Act of assembling and preparing for war
- Affected women far more than in other wars
- The number of civilians killed (almost 20 million) was far higher and many were children
- WWII had an enormous impact on civilian life in the Soviet Union, US, and Japan
-
Kamikaze
- "Divine wind"
- Young Jap men were encouraged to volunteer to serve as pilots in suicide missions against US fighting ships at sea
-
General Tojo
- Prime minister from 1941-1944 in Japan
- Opposed to female employment
- The number of women working outside of the home increased during the war, but only in areas like textiles and farming
- The Jap govn brought in Korean and Chinese laborers as an alternative
-
Dresden
- Germans especially feared bombing raids
- Feb 13-15, 1945, bombing of Dresden created a firestorm that may have killed as many as 100,000 inhabitants and refugees
- Germans suffered enormously from the Allied bombing raids
- Possibly 500,000 civilians died
- Likely bombing sapped German morale
- Germans, whether pro- or anti-Nazi, fought on stubbornly, driven simply by the desire to live
- Bombing didn't destroy Germany's industry capacity
- Destruction of trans systems and fuel supplies made it extremely difficult for new materials to reach the German military
-
Tehran Conference
- Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill (The Big Three Powers) were the leaders of the Allies (Soviet Union, US, Great Britain)
- Met at Tehran in Nov 1943 to decide the future course of the war
- Stalin and Roosevelt argued for an American-British invasion through France
- They would meet in defeated Germany along a north-south dividing line
- Likely Eastern Europe would be liberated by Soviet forces
- Allied agreed to a partition of postwar Germany
-
Yalta Conference
- Feb 1945, Big Three Powers met again at Yalta in southern Russia
- Stalin was suspicious of Western powers and wanted a buffer to protect the Soviet Union from possible Western aggression
- Roosevelt favored idea of self-determination for Europe
- Involved a pledge to help liberated Europe in the creation of "democratic institutions of their own choice"
- Liberated countries would hold free elections to determine their political systems
- Roosevelt wanted Soviet military help against Japan
- Roosevelt wanted the Big Three Powers to pledge to be part of an international organization before difficult issues divided them into hostile camps, and both Churchill and Stalin agreed
- Decided Germany must surrender unconditionally
- Germany would be divided into four zones, and would be governed by military forces of the US, Great Britain, and Soviet Union
- Stalin agreed to free elections in the future to determine a new govn in Poland
- The cause a split between Soviets and Americans as soon as it became evident at the next conference
-
Potsdam Conference
- July 1945, began under a could of mistrust
- Roosevelt died April 12 and was succeeded by Truman
- Truman demanded free elections in Eastern Europe
- Stalin sought absolute military security
- Only the presence of Commies states in Eastern Europe could guarantee this
-
Nuremberg Trials
- Summer 1945, Allies agreed to hold a trial of war leaders for committing aggressive war and crimes against humanity
- Nazi leaders were tried and condemned as war criminals at the Nuremberg war crimes trials in Germany
- War crimes trials were also held in Japan and Italy
|
|
