World War II
| World War II | |||||||
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| File:WW2 TitlePicture For Wikipedia Article.jpg Clockwise from top: Allied landing on Normandy beaches on D-Day, the gate of a Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, Red Army soldiers raising the Soviet flag over the Reichstag in Berlin, the Nagasaki atom bomb, the 1936 Nuremberg Rally | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
Allies: Soviet Union.svg){kind=small} United States United Kingdomand others |
Axis Powers:.svg){kind=small} GermanyFile:Flag of Japan - variant.svg Japan .svg){kind=small} Italyand others | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Josef Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek |
Adolf Hitler, File:Flag of Japan - variant.svg Hideki Tojo, Benito Mussolini | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
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Military dead: 17 million Civilian dead: 33 million Total dead: 50 million |
Military dead: 8 million Civilian dead: 4 million Total dead: 12 million | ||||||
The Second World War, also known as World War II (abbreviated WWII), was the largest and deadliest war in world history. It is generally regarded as taking place between 1939 and 1945, with roots in earlier conflicts. It was fought between the Allied Powers, led by the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States, who defeated the Axis Powers, led by Germany, Italy, and Japan.
The war was fought in response to the military aggression of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, and the imperial ambitions of Japan in Asia. The majority of the fighting took place in and around Europe, where Germany invaded and occupied much of Europe and later the Soviet Union, and in and around Asia and the Pacific, where Japan invaded many countries around the Northern and Western Pacific.
The main aim of the Nazi aggression was the conquest of Lebensraum (living space) for a greater German Empire at the expense of the peoples of Eastern Europe. During the war, Nazi Germany also pursued another aim, the elimination of European Jewry, which they believed had "biological base" in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. Although Nazi Germany failed in conquering Lebensraum, it was largely succesful in the destruction of the Jews.
It is believed that approximately 62 million people, or 2.5% of the world population, died in the war; estimates vary greatly. About 60% of all casualties were civilians, who died as a result of disease, starvation, genocide (in particular, the Holocaust), massacres, and aerial bombing.
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the war represent the only time that nuclear weapons have been used in warfare.
After World War II, Europe was informally split into Western and Soviet spheres of influence. There was a shift in power from Western Europe and the British Commonwealth to the two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. In Asia, the defeat of Japan led to its democratization. China's civil war continued through and after the war, resulting eventually in the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The former colonies of the European powers began their road to independence.
Causes
Commonly held general causes for WWII are the rise of nationalism, the rise of militarism, and the presence of unresolved territorial issues. Fascist movements emerged in Italy and Germany during the global economic instability of the 1920s, and consolidated power during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In Germany, resentment of the Treaty of Versailles — specifically article 231 (the "Guilt Clause"), the belief in the Dolchstosslegende, and the onset of the Great Depression — fueled the rise to power of the militarist National Socialist German Workers Party (the Nazi party) of which Adolf Hitler was a member. Meanwhile, the Treaty's provisions were laxly enforced from fear of another war. Closely related is the failure of the British and French policy of appeasement, which sought to avoid war but actually encouraged Hitler to become bolder and gave Germany time to re-arm, and the USSR's signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact which freed Germany of fear of reprisal from the Soviet Union when Germany invaded Poland. The League of Nations, despite its efforts to prevent the war, relied on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, and was unable to prevent the start of The Second World War.
Japan in the 1930s was ruled by a militarist clique devoted to becoming a world power. Japan invaded China to bolster its meager stock of natural resources. The United States and Great Britain reacted by making loans to China, providing covert military assistance, and instituting increasingly broad embargoes of raw materials against Japan. These embargoes would have eventually forced Japan to give up its newly conquered possession in China because the Japanese would not have enough fuel to run their war machine; Japan was faced with the choice of withdrawing from China or going to war with the United States in order to conquer the oil resources of the Dutch East Indies. It chose the latter, and went ahead with plans for the Greater East Asia War in the Pacific.
Chronology
War breaks out in Asia: 1937
The Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937 when Japan attacked deep into China from its foothold in Manchuria. On July 7, 1937, Japan, after occupying Manchuria in 1931, launched another attack against China near Beijing. The Japanese made initial advances but were stalled in the Battle of Shanghai. The city eventually fell to the Japanese in December 1937, and the capital city Nanking (now Nanjing) also fell. As a result, the Chinese government moved its seat to Chongqing for the remainder of the war. The Japanese forces committed brutal atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war in the Rape of Nanking, slaughtering as many as 300,000 civilians within a month. By 1940, the war had reached a stalemate with both sides making minimal gains. In time, this regional war would merge with the wider World War.
War breaks out in Europe: 1939
Appeasement and Pre-war alliances
The main aim of Nazi aggression was the acquisition of Lebensraum (living space) for a greater German Empire at the expense of the peoples of Eastern Europe. During the war, Nazi Germany was also to pursue another aim, the elimination of European Jewry (please refer to the category "Casualties, civilian impact, and atrocities"). Although Nazi Germany failed in conquering Lebensraum, it was more successful in the destruction of the Jewish population.
In an attempt to avoid another disastrous world war, the British and the French followed a policy of appeasement, in order to placate Hitler. This policy eventually lead to the Munich Agreement, in which Czechoslovakia was partitioned in 1938. British PM Neville Chamberlain, with the backing of the United States' ambassador to Great Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., returned to Britain, having given the Sudetenland to Germany, whilst famously declaring "peace in our time". But he was wrong. Less than a year later, there would be war. In March 1939, Germany invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia, killing appeasement and moving the world closer to the brink of war.
The failure of the Munich Agreement showed that deals made with Hitler at the negotiating table could not be trusted and that his aspirations for power and dominance in Europe went far beyond anything that the western democracies could tolerate. Poland and France pledged on May 19, 1939 to provide each other with military assistance in the event either was attacked. The British had already offered support to the Poles in March. Then, on August 23, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Pact included a secret protocol which would divide Central Europe into German and Soviet areas of interest, including a provision to partition Poland. Each country agreed to allow the other a free hand in its area of influence, including military occupation. Hitler was then ready to go to war with Poland and, if necessary, with Britain and France. He claimed there were German grievances relating to the issues of the "free city" of Danzig and the "Polish corridor", but he planned to conquer all Polish territory and incorporate it into the German Reich. The signing of a new alliance between Britain and Poland on August 25 did not significantly alter his plans.
- Enigma
On 25 July 1939 the Cipher Bureau revealed Poland's Enigma-decryption achievements to intelligence representatives of France and Britain. Former Bletchley Park mathematician-cryptologist Gordon Welchman has written: "Ultra would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military... Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use."
Invasion of Poland
On September 1, Germany invaded Poland, using the pretext of a "Polish attack" on German border posts, even though the "attack" was staged by German operatives to create a (rather flimsy) justification for the all-out German "response". Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. The French mobilized slowly, and then mounted only a token offensive in the Saar, which they soon abandoned, while the British could not take any direct action in support of the Poles in the time available (see Western betrayal). Meanwhile, on September 9, the Germans reached Warsaw, having slashed through the Polish defenses.
On September 17, the USSR, pursuant to its agreement with Germany, invaded Poland from the east, throwing Polish defences into chaos by opening the second front. A day later the Polish president and commander-in-chief both fled to Romania. On October 1, hostile forces, after a one-month siege of Warsaw, entered the city. The last Polish units surrendered on October 6. Poland never officially surrendered to the Germans, however. Some Polish troops evacuated to neighboring countries. In the aftermath of the September Campaign, occupied Poland managed to create a powerful resistance movement and contributed significant military forces to the Allies for the duration of World War II.
Phony War
After Poland fell, Germany paused to regroup during the winter of 1939-1940 until April 1940, while the British and French stayed on the defensive. The period was referred to by journalists as "the Phony War," or the "Sitzkrieg," because so little ground combat took place. During this period the British and French governments began to re-arm with the French completing the Maginot Line. British citizens were also prepared, as rations were brought in and bomb shelters were given to the public. After the war, General Alfred Jodl commented that the Germans survived 1939 "only because approximately 110 French and English divisions in the West, which during the campaign on Poland were facing 25 German divisions, remained completely inactive".
Battle of the Atlantic
Meanwhile in the North Atlantic, German U-boats operated against Allied shipping. The submarines made up in skill, luck, and courage what they lacked in numbers. One U-boat sank the British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous, while another U-boat managed to sink the battleship HMS Royal Oak in its home anchorage of Scapa Flow. Altogether, the U-boats sank more than 110 vessels in the first four months of the war. The most damaging effect of the U-boats was in sinking transatlantic merchant shipping.
The battle of the Atlantic lasted for the majority of the war and was a decisive theatre of conflict. If the Atlantic had not been won, then the United Kingdom would have been unable to continue the war. Without England to serve as a base, the invasion of mainland Europe would have been much more difficult for the Western Allies.
As well as the U-boat threat the German Navy fought with fast, lightly armored surface ships known as Pocket Battleships, examples of which included the Scharnhorst and Admiral Graf Spee. In the South Atlantic, the Graf Spee sunk a number of British Merchant Navy vessels. She was then engaged by British cruisers Ajax, Achilles and Exeter in the Battle of the River Plate, and forced into Montevideo harbor. Rather than face battle again, Captain Langsdorff made for sea, and scuttled his battleship just outside the harbor.
Unlike the U-boat threat, which had a serious impact later in the war, German surface raiders had little impact because their numbers were so small.
War spreads: 1940
Soviet-Finnish War and occupation of Baltic Republics
The Soviet Union demanded territory exchange from Finland including part of the Karelian Isthmus, a naval base at Hanko (Hangö) peninsula and some strategically important islands in the Gulf of Finland in exchange of larger, but lower populated Karelia. When Finland rejected these demands, the Soviet Union attacked on November 30, 1939, which started the Winter War. Despite outnumbering Finnish troops by over 2.5:1, the war proved embarrassingly difficult for the Red Army, although it concluded with the Soviet annexation of strategically important border areas, particularly those to the immediate north of Leningrad. The war triggered an international outcry and on December 14 the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations. Finland surrendered in March 1940 and signed the Moscow Peace Treaty (1940) in which the Finns made the minor territorial concessions mentioned above.
Later that year, in June the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania.
Invasion of Denmark and Norway
Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940, in Operation Weserübung, in part to counter the threat of an impending Allied invasion of Norway. Denmark did not resist, but Norway fought back, and was joined by British, French, and Polish (exile) forces landing in support of the Norwegians at Namsos, Åndalsnes, and Narvik. By late June, the Allies were defeated, German forces were in control of most of Norway, and what remained of the Norwegian Army had surrendered.
Invasion of France and the Low Countries
On May 10, 1940, the Germans invaded Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, ending the Phony War. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French Army advanced into northern Belgium and planned to fight a mobile war in the north while maintaining a static continuous front along the Maginot Line further south. The Allied plans were immediately smashed by the most classic example in history of Blitzkrieg.
In the first phase of the invasion, Fall Gelb (CACA), the Wehrmacht's Panzergruppe von Kleist raced through the Ardennes, a heavily forested region which the Allies had thought impenetrable for a modern, mechanized army. They broke the French line at Sedan, then drove west across northern France to the English Channel, splitting the Allies in two. Meanwhile Belgium (including the fortifications at Liege), Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fell quickly against the attack of German Army Group B.
The BEF, encircled in the north, was evacuated from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. The operation was one of the biggest military evacuations in history as hundreds of thousands of British and French troops were transported across the English Channel, not just on warships but also on civilian vessels including fishing and rowing boats.
On June 10 Italy joined the war, attacking France in the south. German forces then continued the conquest of France with Fall Rot (Case Red), advancing behind the Maginot Line and near the coast. France signed an armistice with Germany on June 22 1940, leading to the direct German occupation of Paris and two thirds of France, and the establishment of a puppet state in southeastern France known as Vichy France. (Vichy France would later be part of the Axis Powers)
Battle of Britain
Following the defeat of France, Britain chose to fight on, so Germany began preparations in summer of 1940 to invade Britain in Operation Sea Lion, while Britain made anti-invasion preparations. The first step Germany saw necessary was to gain air control over Britain by defeating the Royal Air Force. The war between the two air forces became known as the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe initially targeted RAF Fighter Command, but the results were not as expected, so the Luftwaffe later turned to terror bombing London. These attacks were known as blitzkriegs, or lightning warfare. The Germans failed to defeat the Royal Air Force, and the Royal Navy was still firmly in control of the English Channel. Operation Sea Lion was postponed and eventually cancelled.
Italian Invasion of Greece
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had grown jealous of Hitler's conquests and decided to show the world that he too can conquer. He chose to invade Greece as it seemed to him a weak nation which he can easily conquer. Italy invaded Greece on October 28, 1940, from Italian occupied Albania after the Greek Premier John Metaxas rejected an ultimatum to hand over Greek territory. Despite the enormous superiority of the Italian forces, the Greek army forced the Italians into a massive retreat deep into Albania. By mid-December, the Greeks occupied one-fourth of Albania. Mussolini rushed in hundreds of thousands of reinforcements. The Italians eventually had 530,000 soldiers fighting the Greeks. In March 1941, with these new forces the Italians launched a full scale counterattack. The counterattack was a dismal failure and Mussolini left Albania with his repuatation and his prestige destroyed. The Greek army had inflicted upon the Axis Powers their first defeat in the war, and Germany would soon be forced to intervene.
North African Campaign
The Italian declaration of war in June 1940, challenging the British supremacy of the Mediterranean, hinged on Gibraltar, Malta, and Alexandria. Italian troops invaded and captured British Somaliland in August. In September, the North African Campaign began when Italian forces in Libya attacked British forces in Egypt. The aim was to capture the Suez Canal, a vital link between the United Kingdom and India. British, Indian and Australian forces counter-attacked in Operation Compass, but this offensive stopped in 1941 when much of the Australian and New Zealand forces were transferred to Greece to defend it from German attack. German forces (known later as the Afrika Korps) under General Erwin Rommel, however, landed in Libya and renewed the assault on Egypt.
War becomes global: 1941
European Theater
Lend-Lease
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act on March 11. This program was the first major step away from American isolationism, providing for substantial assistance to the UK, the Soviet Union, and other countries.
German Invasion of Greece and Crete
See Main Article: Battle of Crete
On April 6 1941 Germany invaded Greece after the failure of the Italian invasion of Greece in 1940. Germany invaded through Bulgaria, which had joined the Axis Powers. Greek troops put up an incredibly brave and tenacious fight but the outnumbered and outgunned Greek army collapsed. The stubborn Greek resistance, however, delayed the German invasion of the Soviet Union by six weeks, which proved disastrous when the German army froze on the outskirts of Moscow as a result of the Russian winter. The occupation of Greece would also be costly and difficult as guerilla warfare plagued the Axis Powers.
A month after the occupation of the Greek mainland, the Germans launched the first airborne invasion in history by invading the Greek island of Crete. Crete itself was defended by about 40,000 Greek, British, Australian, and New Zealand soldiers. The Germans attacked the three main airfields on the island using their most elite soldiers and were stunned to be met by fierce resistance by the Allied soldiers and by Cretan civilians. The first day of the battle proved to be the bloodiest day the German army had suffered in the war to date. The Germans rushed in considerable reinforcements and were able to overwhelm the western side of the island forcing the British and Anzacs off the island. Although a military success Crete was dubbed by German General Kurt Student as "the graveyard of the German parachutists." So heavy were the casualties that Hitler forbade further airborne operations. The 7th parachutist division, the elite of the Nazi army was decimated over Crete due to the fierce fight put up by the Anglo-Greek forces on the island and of the entire civilian population.
Invasion of Soviet Union
From the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August, 1939 through almost the end of the first half of 1941, Stalin and the USSR fed and equipped Hitler and Germany as Germany invaded Western Europe and then attacked Great Britain by air. Notwithstanding this support, Germany betrayed its partner. On June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa, the largest invasion in history, began. Three German army groups, an Axis force of over four million men, advanced rapidly deep into the Soviet Union, destroying almost the entire western Soviet army in huge battles of encirclement. Nevertheless, the Soviets dismantled as much industry as possible ahead of the advancing Axis forces, moving it to areas east of the Ural Mountains for reassembly to supply the Soviet armies which ultimately contributed mightily to the destruction of Germany. By late November, the Axis had reached a line at the gates of Leningrad, Moscow, and Rostov, at the cost of about 23 percent casualties. Their advance then ground to a halt as the harsh Russian winter set in. The German General Staff had underestimated the size of the Soviet army and its ability to draft new troops.
They were now dismayed by the presence of new forces, including fresh Siberian troops under General Zhukov, and by the onset of a particularly cold winter.
German forward units had advanced within distant sight of the golden onion domes of Moscow's Saint Basil's Cathedral, but then on December 5, the Soviets counter-attacked and pushed the Axis back some 150-250 kilometers (100-150 mi), which became the first major German defeat of World War II.
Meanwhile, on June 25, the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union began with Soviet air attacks shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa.
Allied conferences
The Atlantic Charter was issued as a joint declaration by Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt, at Argentia, Newfoundland, on August 14, 1941.
In December 1941, after America entered the war, Churchill met with Roosevelt again at the Arcadia Conference. They agreed that defeating Germany had priority over defeating Japan. The Americans proposed a 1942 cross-channel invasion of France which the British strongly opposed, suggesting instead a small invasion in Norway or landings in French North Africa. The Declaration by the United Nations was issued.
Mediterranean
In North Africa, Rommel's forces advanced rapidly eastward, laying siege to the vital seaport of Tobruk. Two Allied attempts to relieve Tobruk were defeated, but a larger offensive at the end of the year (Operation Crusader) drove Rommel back after heavy fighting.
In June 1941, Allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon and captured Damascus on June 17. Later, in August, British and Soviet troops occupied neutral Iran in order to secure its oil and a southern supply line to Russia.
Hunt for the Bismarck
On May 24, the German battleship Bismarck left port, threatening British shipping in the Atlantic. After the British battlecruiser HMS Hood was sunk in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the Royal Navy engaged in a massive hunt across the North Atlantic for the Bismarck. After an extensive chase, Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal struck the Bismarck, resulting in only minor damage to the ship, but causing her rudder to jam and allowing the pursuing Royal Navy Task Force to catch and sink her.
Enigma
On May 9, the British destroyer HMS Bulldog captures a German U-Boat and recovers a complete, intact Enigma Machine. This was a vital turn in favour of those Allies in the Battle of the Atlantic, and in their code-breaking efforts. The machine was taken to Bletchley Park where it was used to help decipher and understand German encryption techniques.
Pacific Theatre
Japan and United States enter the War
In the summer of 1941, the United States began an oil embargo against Japan, which was a protest of Japan's incursion into French Indo-China and the continued invasion of China. Japan planned an attack on Pearl Harbor to cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet before consolidating oil fields in the Dutch East Indies. On December 7, a Japanese carrier fleet launched a surprise air attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The raid resulted in two U.S. battleships sunk, and six damaged but later repaired and returned to service. The raid failed to find any aircraft carriers and did not damage Pearl Harbor's usefulness as a naval base. The attack strongly united public opinion in the United States against Japan. The following day, December 8, the United States declared war on Japan. On the same day, China officially declared war against Japan. Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, even though it was not obliged to do so under the Tripartite Pact. Hitler hoped that Japan would support Germany by attacking the Soviet Union. Japan did not oblige, and this diplomatic move by Hitler proved a catastrophic blunder which unified the American public's support for the war.
Japanese offensive
Japan soon invaded the Philippines and the British colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya, Borneo, and Burma, with the intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. Despite fierce resistance by American, Philippine, British, Canadian, and Indian forces, all these territories capitulated to the Japanese in a matter of months. The British island fortress of Singapore was captured in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats of all time.
Deadlock: 1942
European Theatre
- Western and Central Europe
In May, top Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated by Czech resistance agents in Operation Anthropoid. Hitler ordered severe reprisals. (See Lidice).
On August 19, British and Canadian forces launched the Dieppe Raid (codenamed Operation Jubilee) on the German occupied port of Dieppe, France. The attack was a disaster but provided critical information utilized later in Operation Torch and Operation Overlord.
- Soviet winter and early spring offensives
In the north, Soviets launched the Toropets-Kholm Operation January 9 to February 6 1942, trapping a German force near Andreapol. The Soviets also surrounded a German garrison in the Demyansk Pocket which held out with air supply for four months (February 8 until April 21), and established themselves in front of Kholm, Velizh and Velikie Luki.
In the south, Soviet forces launched an offensive in May against the German Sixth Army, initiating a bloody 17 day battle around Kharkov which resulted in the loss of over 200,000 Red Army personnel.
- Axis summer offensive
On June 28, the Axis began their summer offensive, Operation Blue, a planned drive southeast from the Don river to the Volga river toward the Caucasus mountains. German Army Group B planned to capture the city of Stalingrad which would secure the German left flank while Army Group A planned to capture the southern oil fields. In the Battle of the Caucasus, fought in the late summer and fall of 1942, the Axis forces captured the oil fields.
- Stalingrad
After two months of bitter street fighting, the Germans captured 90% of Stalingrad by November. The Soviets, however, had been building up massive forces on the flanks of Stalingrad. They launched Operation Uranus on November 19, with twin attacks that met at Kalach four days later and trapped the Sixth Army in Stalingrad. The Germans requested permission to attempt a break-out, which was refused by Hitler, who ordered Sixth Army to remain in Stalingrad where he promised they would be supplied by air until rescued. About the same time, the Soviets launched Operation Mars in a salient near the vicinity of Moscow. Its objective was to tie down Army Group Center and to prevent it from reinforcing Army Group South at Stalingrad.
In December German relief forces got within 50 kilometers (30 mi) of the trapped Sixth Army before they were turned back by the Soviets. By the end of the year, Sixth Army was in desperate condition, as the Luftwaffe was only able to supply about a sixth of the supplies needed.
- Eastern North Africa
At the beginning of 1942, the Allied forces in North Africa were weakened by detachments to the Far East. Rommel once again attacked and recaptured Benghazi. Then he defeated the Allies at the Battle of Gazala, and captured Tobruk with several thousand prisoners and large quantities of supplies. Following up, he drove deep into Egypt.
The First Battle of El Alamein took place in July 1942. Allied forces had retreated to the last defensible point before Alexandria and the Suez Canal. The Afrika Korps, however, had outrun its supplies, and the defenders stopped its thrusts. The Second Battle of El Alamein occurred between October 23 and November 3. Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery was in command of Allied forces known as the British Eighth Army. The Eighth Army took the offensive and was ultimately triumphant. After the German defeat at El Alamein, the Axis forces made a successful strategic withdrawal to Tunisia.
Western North Africa
Operation Torch was launched by the United States and Free French forces on November 8, 1942. It aimed to gain control of North Africa through simultaneous landings at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, followed a few days later with a landing at Bône, the gateway to Tunisia. The local forces of Vichy France put up minimal resistance before submitting to the authority of Free French General Henri Giraud. In retaliation, Hitler invaded and occupied Vichy France. The German and Italian forces in Tunisia were caught in the pincers of Allied advances from Algeria in the west and Libya in the east. Rommel's tactical victory against inexperienced American forces at the Battle of the Kasserine Pass only postponed the eventual surrender of the Axis forces in North Africa.
Pacific Theatre
Central and South West Pacific
_burning_and_sinking_on_8_May_1942_(NH_51382).jpg)
On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed United States Executive Order 9066, leading to the internment of thousands of Japanese, Italians, and German Americans for the duration of the war.
In April, the Doolittle Raid, the first U.S. air raid on Tokyo, boosted morale in the U.S. and caused Japan to shift resources to homeland defense, but did little physical damage.
In early May, a Japanese naval invasion of Port Moresby, New Guinea, was thwarted by Allied navies in the Battle of the Coral Sea. This was both the first successful opposition to a Japanese attack and the first battle fought between aircraft carriers.
A month later, on June 5, American carrier-based dive-bombers sank four of Japan's best aircraft carriers in the Battle of Midway. Historians mark this battle as a turning point and the end of Japanese expansion in the Pacific. Cryptography played an important part in the battle, as the United States had broken the Japanese naval codes and knew the Japanese plan of attack.
In July, a Japanese overland attack on Port Moresby was led along the rugged Kokoda Track. An outnumbered and untrained Australian battalion defeated the 5,000-strong Japanese force, the first land defeat of Japan in the war and one of the most significant victories in Australian military history.
On August 7, United States Marines began the Battle of Guadalcanal. For the next six months, U.S. forces fought Japanese forces for control of the island. Meanwhile, several naval encounters raged in the nearby waters, including the Battle of Savo Island, Battle of Cape Esperance, Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, and Battle of Tassafaronga.
In late August and early September, while battle raged on Guadalcanal, an amphibious Japanese attack on the eastern tip of New Guinea was met by Australian forces in the Battle of Milne Bay.
Sino-Japanese War
Japan launched a major offensive in China following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The aim of the offensive was to take the strategically important city of Changsha which the Japanese had failed to capture on two previous occasions. For the attack, the Japanese massed 120,000 soldiers under 4 divisions. The Chinese responded with 300,000 men, and soon the Japanese army was encircled and had to retreat.
War turns: 1943
European Theatre
German and Soviet spring offensives
After the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, the Red Army launched eight offensives during the winter. Many were concentrated along the Don basin near Stalingrad, which resulted in initial gains until German forces were able to take advantage of the weakened condition of the Red Army and regain the lost territory.
German summer offensive
On July 4, the Wehrmacht launched a much-delayed offensive against the Soviet Union at the Kursk salient. Their intentions were known by the Soviets, and they hastened to defend the salient with an enormous system of earthwork defenses. Both sides massed their armor for what became a decisive military engagement. The Germans attacked from both the north and south of the salient and hoped to meet in the middle, cutting off the salient and trapping 60 Soviet divisions. The German offensive was ground down as little progress was made through the Soviet defenses. The Soviets then brought up their reserves, and the largest tank battle of the war occurred near the city of Prokhorovka. The Germans had exhausted their armored forces and could not stop the Soviet counter-offensive that threw them back across their starting positions.
Soviet fall and winter offensives
In August, Hitler agreed to a general withdrawal to the Dnieper line, and as September proceeded into October, the Germans found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew. Important Dnieper towns started to fall, with Zaporozhye the first to go, followed by Dnepropetrovsk.
Early in November the Soviets broke out of their bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and recaptured the Ukrainian capital.
First Ukrainian Front attacked at Korosten on Christmas Eve. The Soviet advance continued along the railway line until the 1939 Polish-Soviet border was reached.
Italy
The surrender of Axis forces in Tunisia on May 13, 1943 yielded some 250,000 prisoners. The North African war proved to be a disaster for Italy, and when the Allies invaded Sicily on July 10 in Operation Husky, capturing the island in a little over a month, the regime of Benito Mussolini collapsed. On July 25, he was removed from office by the King of Italy, and arrested with the positive consent of the Great Fascist Council. A new government, led by Pietro Badoglio, took power and declared that Italy would stay in the war. Badoglio had actually begun secret peace negotiations with the Allies.
The Allies invaded mainland Italy on September 3, 1943. Italy surrendered to the Allies on September 8, as had been agreed in negotiations. The royal family and Badoglio government escaped to the south, leaving the Italian army without orders, while the Germans took over the fight, forcing the Allies to a complete halt in the winter of 1943-44 at the Gustav Line south of Rome.
In the north, the Nazis let Mussolini create what was effectively a puppet state, the Italian Social Republic or "Republic of Salò", named after the new capital of Salò on Lake Garda.
Atlantic
The turning point of the Battle of the Atlantic took place in early 1943 as the Allies refined their naval tactics effectively while making use of new technology to counter the U-Boats. Although two convoys suffered heavy losses, the U-Boats were also taking increasingly heavy casualties, and were forced to abandon their main offensive in the mid-Atlantic.
The Allies had also resumed running the Arctic convoys to Russia. In December the last major sea battle between the Royal Navy and the German Navy took place. At the Battle of North Cape, Germany's last battlecruiser, the Scharnhorst, was sunk by HMS Duke of York, HMS Belfast and several destroyers.
Pacific Theatre
Central and South West Pacific
On January 2, Buna, New Guinea was captured by the Allies. This ended the threat to Port Moresby. By January 22, 1943, the Allied forces had achieved their objective of isolating Japanese forces in eastern New Guinea and cutting off their main line of supply.
American authorities declared Guadalcanal secure on February 9. Australian and U.S. forces undertook the prolonged campaign to retake the occupied parts of the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, experiencing some of the toughest resistance of the war. The rest of the Solomon Islands were retaken in 1943.
In November, U.S. Marines won the Battle of Tarawa. This was the first heavily opposed amphibious assault in the Pacific theater. The high casualties taken by the Marines sparked off a storm of protest in the United States, where the large losses could not be understood for such a tiny and seemingly unimportant island. This led to the adoption of the "Island hopping" strategy, where the Allies bypassed some Japanese island strongholds and let them "wither on the vine".
Sino-Japanese War
A vigorous, fluctuating battle for Changde in China's Hunan province began on November 2, 1943. The Japanese threw over 100,000 men into the attack on the city, which changed hands several times in a few days but ended up still held by the Chinese. Overall, the Chinese ground forces were compelled to fight a war of defense and attrition while they built up their armies and awaited an Allied counteroffensive.
South East Asia
The Nationalist Kuomintang Army, under Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist Chinese Army, under Mao Zedong, both opposed the Japanese occupation of China but never truly allied against the Japanese. Conflict between Nationalist and Communist forces emerged long before the war; it continued after and, to an extent, even during the war, though more implicitly.
The Japanese had captured most of Burma, severing the Burma Road by which the Western Allies had been supplying the Chinese Nationalists. This forced the Allies to create a large sustained airlift from India, known as "flying the Hump". Under the American General Joseph Stilwell, Chinese forces in India were retrained and re-equipped, while preparations were made to drive the Ledo Road from India, to replace the Burma Road. This was to prove an enormous engineering task.
Beginning of end: 1944
European Theatre
Soviet winter and spring offensives
In the north, a Soviet offensive in January 1944 had relieved the siege of Leningrad. The Germans conducted an orderly retreat from the Leningrad area to a shorter line based on the lakes to the south.
In the south, in March, two Soviet fronts encircled Generaloberst Hans-Valentin Hube's First Panzer Army north of the Dniestr river. The Germans escaped the pocket in April, saving most of their men but losing their heavy equipment.
In early May, the Red Army's 3rd Ukrainian Front engaged German Seventeenth Army of Army Group South which had been left behind after the German retreat from the Ukraine. The battle was a complete victory for the Red Army, and a botched evacuation effort across the Black Sea led to over 250,000 German and Romanian casualties.
During April 1944, a series of attacks by the Red Army near the city of Iaşi, Romania aimed at capturing the strategically important sector. The German-Romanian forces successfully defended the sector throughout the month of April. The attack at Târgul Frumos was the final attempt by the Red Army to achieve its goal of having a spring-board into Romania for a summer offensive.
With Soviet forces approaching, German troops occupied Hungary on March 20. Hitler thought that Hungarian leader Admiral Miklós Horthy might no longer be a reliable ally.
Finland sought a separate peace with Stalin in February 1944, but would not accept the initial terms offered. On June 9, the Soviet Union began the Fourth strategic offensive on the Karelian Isthmus that, after three months, forced Finland to accept an armistice.
Italy and the Balkans
During the winter the Allies tried to force the Gustav line on the southern Apennines of Italy, but they could not break enemy lines until the landing of Anzio on January 22, 1944, on the southern coast of Latium. This was named Operation Shingle.
The Gustav line was anchored by Germans holding the Rapido, Liri and Garigliano valleys and certain surrounding peaks and ridges, but not the abbey of Monte Cassino, a historic monastery founded in 524 by St. Benedict. On February 15 the Monastery, high on a peak overlooking the town of Cassino, was destroyed by American B17 and B26 bombers. Two days after the bombing crack German paratroopers poured into the ruins to defend it. From January 12 to May 18, it was assaulted four times by Allied troops, for a loss of over 54,000 Allied and 20,000 German soldiers.
Only after some months, the Gustav line was broken and the Allies marched north. On June 4, Rome was liberated, and the Allied army reached Florence in August. They then were held at the Gothic Line on the Tuscan Apennines during the winter.
Germany withdrew from the Balkans and held Hungary until February 1945.
Romania turned against Germany in August 1944, threatening German lines of retreat from the Ukraine. Bulgaria surrendered in September.
Soviet summer offensive
Operation Bagration, a Soviet offensive involving 2.5 million men and 6,000 tanks, was launched on June 22. Its objective was to clear German troops from Belarus. The subsequent battle resulted in the destruction of German Army Group Centre and over 800,000 German casualties, the greatest defeat for the Wehrmacht during the war. The Soviets swept forward, reaching the outskirts of Warsaw on July 31.
Soviet fall and winter offensives
After the destruction of Army Group Center, the Soviets attacked German forces in the south in mid-July 1944, and in a month's time they cleared the Ukraine of German presence.
The Red Army's 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts engaged German Heeresgruppe Südukraine, which consisted of German and Romanian formations, in an operation to occupy Romania and destroy the German formations in the sector. The result of the battle was complete victory for the Red Army and a switch of Romania from the Axis to the Allied camp.
In October 1944, General der Artillerie Maximilian Fretter-Pico's Sixth Army encircled and destroyed three corps of Marshal Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky's Group Pliyev near Debrecen, Hungary. This was to be the last German victory in the Eastern front.
The Red Army's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Baltic Fronts engaged German Army Group Centre and Army Group North to capture the Baltic region from the Germans. The result of the series of battles was a permanent loss of contact between Army Groups North and Centre, and the creation of the Courland Pocket in Latvia.
From December 29, 1944 to February 13, 1945, Soviet forces laid siege to Budapest, which was defended by German Waffen-SS and Hungarian forces. It was one of the bloodiest sieges of the war.
Warsaw Uprising
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The proximity of the Red Army led the Poles in Warsaw to believe they would soon be liberated. On August 1, they revolted as part of the wider Operation Tempest. Nearly 40,000 Polish resistance fighters seized control of the city. The Soviets, however, were unable to advance any further[citation needed]. The only assistance given to the Poles was artillery fire as German army units moved into the city to put down the revolt. The resistance ended on October 2. German units then destroyed most of what was left of the city.
V Rockets
In June 1944 the Germans used the world's first cruise missile; the V-1 flying bomb to attack British targets. Later they would employ the V-2 rocket, a liquid-fuelled guided ballistic missile.
Allied invasion of Western Europe
On "D-Day" (June 6, 1944), the western Allies of mainly Britain, Canada and America invaded German-held Normandy.[1] German resistance was stubborn, especially on Omaha Beach and in the city of Caen. During the first month, the Allies measured progress in hundreds of yards and bloody rifle fights in the Bocage. An Allied breakout (Operation Cobra) was effected at St.-Lô, and German forces were almost completely destroyed in the Falaise pocket when they mounted a counter-attack. Allied forces stationed in Italy invaded the French Riviera on August 15 and linked up with forces from Normandy. The clandestine French Resistance in Paris rose against the Germans on August 19, and a French division under General Jacques Leclerc, pressing forward from Normandy, received the surrender of the German forces there and liberated the city on August 25.
Allied fall offensive
Logistical problems plagued the Allies' advance east as the supply lines still ran back to the beaches of Normandy. Allied paratroopers and armor attempted a war-winning advance through the Netherlands and across the Rhine River with Operation Market Garden in September, but they were repulsed. A decisive victory by the Canadian First Army in the Battle of the Scheldt secured the entrance to the port of Antwerp, which freed it to receive supplies by late November 1944. Meanwhile, the Americans launched an attack through the Hurtgen Forest in September but the Germans despite having smaller numbers were able to use the difficult terrain and find good defensive positions. In October, the Americans captured Aachen, the first major German city to be occupied.
Winter offensive
In December 1944, the German Army made its last major offensive in the West, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler sought victory similar to the 1940 Ardennes offensive, which he envisioned would drive back the Western Allies and force them to agree to a separate peace. At first, the Germans scored successes against the unprepared Allied forces. Poor weather during the initial days of the offensive favoured the Germans because Allied aircraft were grounded. Stubborn American resistance at St. Vith and by the surrounded 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne, an important crossroads, blunted the German advance. The arrival of the United States Third Army under General George Patton ended the German threat, and further counterattacks trapped many German units in the resulting pocket. The remaining Germans were forced to retreat back into Germany. It was the bloodiest battle in U.S. military history.
Pacific Theatre
Central and South West Pacific
The American advance continued in the southwest Pacific with the capture of the Marshall Islands before the end of February. 42,000 U.S. Army soldiers and U.S. Marines landed on Kwajalein atoll on January 31. Fierce fighting occurred, and the island was taken on February 6. U.S. Marines next defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Eniwetok.
The main objective was the Mariana Islands, especially Saipan and to a lesser extent, Guam. The Japanese in both places were strongly entrenched. On June 11, Saipan was bombarded from the sea and a landing was made four days later; it was captured by July 9. The Japanese committed much of their declining naval strength in the Battle of the Philippine Sea but suffered severe losses in both ships and aircraft. After the battle, the Japanese aircraft carrier force was no longer militarily effective. With the capture of Saipan, Japan was finally within range of B-29 bombers.
Guam was invaded on July 21 and taken on August 10, but the Japanese fought fanatically. Mopping up operations continued long after the Battle of Guam was officially over. The island of Tinian was invaded on July 24 and was conquered on August 1. This was the first use of napalm in the war.[citation needed]
General MacArthur's troops liberated the Philippines, landing on the island of Leyte on October 20. The Japanese had prepared a rigorous defense and used the last of their naval forces in a failed attempt to destroy the invasion force in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, October 23 through October 26, 1944, arguably the largest naval battle in history. The Japanese battleship Musashi, one of the two largest battleships ever built, was sunk. This was the first battle that had kamikaze attacks.
Throughout 1944, American submarines and aircraft attacked Japanese merchant shipping and deprived Japan's industry of the raw materials it had gone to war to obtain. The effectiveness of this stranglehold increased as U.S. Marines captured islands closer to the Japanese mainland. In 1944, submarines sank over two million tons of cargo,[2] while the Japanese were only able to replace less than one million tons.[3]
Sino-Japanese War
In April 1944, the Japanese launched Operation Ichigo. The aim was to secure the railway route across Japanese occupied territories of northeast China, Korea, and South East Asia, and to destroy airbases in the area which serviced United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) aircraft. In June 1944, the Japanese deployed 360,000 troops to invade Changsha for the fourth time. The operation involved more Japanese troops than any other campaign in the Sino-Japanese war, and after 47 days of bitter fighting, the city was taken, but at a very high cost. By November, the Japanese had taken the cities of Guilin and Liuzhou which served as USAAF airbases from which it conducted bombing raids on Japan. Despite having destroyed the airbases in this region, however, the USAAF could still strike at the Japanese main islands from newly acquired bases in the Pacific. By December, the Japanese forces reached French Indochina and achieved the purpose of the operation, but only after incurring heavy losses.
South East Asia
While the Americans steadily built the Ledo Road from India to China, in March 1944, the Japanese began their their own offensive into India. This "march to Delhi" was instigated by local commanders, and the leadership of the Japanese auxiliaries, the Indian National Army. The Japanese attempted to destroy the main British and Indian forces at Imphal, resulting in some of the most ferocious fighting of the war. While the encircled allied troops were reinforced and resupplied by transport aircraft until fresh troops broke the siege, the Japanese ran out of supplies and starved. They eventually retreated losing 85,000 men, one of the largest Japanese defeats of the war.
End of war: 1945
European Theatre
Soviet winter offensive
On January 12, the Red Army was ready for its next big offensive. Konev's armies attacked the Germans in southern Poland and expanded out from their Vistula River bridgehead near Sandomierz. On January 14, Rokossovsky's armies attacked from the Narew River north of Warsaw. They broke the defences covering East Prussia. Zhukov's armies in the centre attacked from their bridgeheads near Warsaw. The German front was now in shambles.
On January 17, Zhukov took Warsaw. On January 19, his tanks took Łódź. That same day, Konev's forces reached the German pre-war border. At the end of the first week of the offensive, the Soviets had penetrated 160 kilometers (100 mi) deep on a front that was 650 kilometers (400 mi) wide. By February 13, the Soviets took Budapest. The Soviet onslaught finally halted on the Oder River at the end of January, only 60 kilometers (40 mi) from Berlin.
Allied Winter Offensive
On January 14th the XII Corps / 2nd British Army launched Operation Blackcock in order to clear the Roer Triangle, a German held salient between the rivers Maas and Roer south of Roermond. By January 27th the enemy was driven east of the Roer.
Yalta Conference
Meanwhile, Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt made arrangements for post-war Europe at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. Their meeting resulted in many important resolutions:
- An April meeting would be held to form the United Nations;
- Poland would have free elections;
- Soviet nationals were to be repatriated;
- The Soviet Union was to attack Japan within three months of Germany's surrender.
Soviet spring offensive
The Red Army (including 78,556 soldiers of the 1st Polish Army) began its final assault on Berlin on April 16. By April 24, three Soviet Army groups completed the encirclement of the city. As a final resistance effort, Hitler called for civilians, including teenagers and the elderly, to fight the oncoming Red Army in the Volkssturm militia. Those forces were augmented by the battered German remnants that had fought the Soviets in Seelow Heights. The urban fighting was heavy, with house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat. The Soviets sustained 305,000 dead; the Germans sustained as many as 325,000, including civilians. Hitler and his staff moved into the Führerbunker, a concrete bunker beneath the Chancellery, where on April 30 1945, he committed suicide, along with his bride, Eva Braun.
Allied spring offensive
The Allies resumed their advance into Germany once the Battle of the Bulge officially ended on January 27, 1945. The final obstacle to the Allies was the river Rhine which was crossed in late March 1945, aided by the fortuitous capture of the Ludendorff Bridge.
Once the Allies had crossed the Rhine, the British fanned out northeast towards Hamburg crossing the river Elbe and on towards Denmark and the Baltic Sea. The U.S. Ninth Army went south as the northern pincer of the Ruhr encirclement and the U.S. First Army went north as the southern pincer of the Ruhr encirclement. On April 4, the encirclement was completed and the German Army Group B commanded by Field Marshal Walther Model was trapped in the Ruhr Pocket. 300,000 soldiers became prisoners of war. The Ninth and First U.S. armies then turned east. They halted their advance at the Elbe river where they met up with Soviet forces in mid-April.
Italy
Allied advances in the winter of 1944-45 up the Italian peninsula had been slow because of troop re-deployments to France. But by April 9, the British/American 15th Army Group, which was composed of the U.S. Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army, broke through the Gothic Line and attacked the Po Valley gradually enclosing the main German forces. Milan was taken by the end of April. The U.S. 5th Army continued to move west and linked up with French units. The British 8th Army advanced towards Trieste and made contact with the Yugoslav partisans.
A few days before the surrender of German troops in Italy, Italian partisans intercepted a party of Fascists trying to make their escape to Switzerland. Hiding underneath a pile of coats was Mussolini. The whole party, including Mussolini's mistress, Clara Petacci, was summarily shot on April 28, 1945. Their bodies were taken to Milan and hung upside down on public display.
Germany surrenders
Admiral Karl Dönitz became leader of the German government after the death of Hitler, but the German war effort quickly disintegrated. German forces in Berlin surrendered the city to the Soviet troops on May 2, 1945.
The German forces in Italy surrendered on May 2, 1945, at General Alexander's headquarters, and German forces in northern Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands surrendered on May 4. The German High Command under Generaloberst Alfred Jodl surrendered unconditionally all remaining German forces on May 7 in Reims, France. The western Allies celebrated "V-E Day" on May 8.
The Soviet Union celebrated "Victory Day" on May 9. Some remnants of German Army Group Center continued resistance until May 11 or May 12 (See Prague Offensive). [1]
Potsdam
The last Allied conference of World War II was held at the suburb of Potsdam, outside Berlin, from July 17 to August 2. During the Potsdam Conference, agreements were reached between the Allies on policies for occupied Germany. An ultimatum was issued calling for the unconditional surrender of Japan.
Pacific Theatre
Central and South West Pacific
In January, the U.S. Sixth Army landed on Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. Manila was re-captured by March. U.S. capture of islands such as Iwo Jima in February and Okinawa (April through June) brought the Japanese homeland within easier range of naval and air attack. Amongst dozens of other cities, Tokyo was firebombed, and about 90,000 people died from the initial attack. The dense living conditions around production centres and the wooden residential constructions contributed to the large loss of life. In addition, the ports and major waterways of Japan were extensively mined by air in Operation Starvation, which seriously disrupted the logistics of the island nation.
The last major offensive in the South West Pacific Area was the Borneo campaign of mid-1945, which was aimed at further isolating the remaining Japanese forces in South East Asia and securing the release of Allied prisoners of war.
South East Asia
In South-East Asia, during the monsoon from August to November 1944, the Japanese were pursued to the Chindwin River in Burma after their failed attack on India. With the onset of the dry season in early 1945, while the American and Chinese forces finally completed the Ledo Road although too late to have any decisive effect, the British Fourteenth Army, consisting mainly of Indian units, launched an offensive into Central Burma. The Japanese forces were heavily defeated and the Allies pursued them southward. On May 2, 1945, an amphibious assault codenamed Operation Dracula captured Rangoon, the capital city, which had already been abandoned by the Japanese.
The planned amphibious assault on the western side of Malaya was cancelled after the dropping of the atomic bombs, and Japanese forces in South East Asia surrendered soon afterwards.
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
President Harry Truman, advised by the U.S. military, decided to use the new super-weapon to bring the war to a swifter end. The battle for Okinawa had shown that an invasion of the Japanese mainland (planned for November), seen as an Okinawa-type operation on a far larger scale, would result in more casualties than the United States had suffered so far in all theatres since the war began. It would also result in many more Japanese deaths than use of the atomic bomb would cause.
On August 6, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress, the "Enola Gay", piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets, dropped a nuclear weapon dubbed "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, destroying the city. After the destruction of Hiroshima, the United States again called upon Japan to surrender. No response was made, and accordingly on August 9, a B-29, "Bockscar", piloted by Major Charles Sweeney, dropped a second atomic bomb dubbed "Fat Man" on the port city of Nagasaki.
Soviet offensive in the Far East
On August 8, two days after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Soviet Union, having renounced its nonaggression pact with Japan, attacked the Japanese in Manchuria, fulfilling its Yalta pledge to attack the Japanese within three months after the end of the war in Europe. The attack was made by three Soviet army groups. In less than two weeks, the Japanese army in Manchuria consisting of over a million men had been destroyed by the Soviets. The Red Army moved into North Korea on August 18. Korea was subsequently divided at the 38th parallel into Soviet and U.S. zones.
Japan Surrenders
The American use of atomic weapons against Japan prompted Hirohito to bypass the existing government and intervene to end the war. The entry of the Soviet Union into the war may have also played a part, but in his radio address to the nation, Emperor Hirohito did not mention it as a major reason for his country's surrender.
The Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945 (V-J day), signing the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri (BB-63) anchored in Tokyo Bay. The Japanese troops in China formally surrendered to the Chinese on September 9, 1945. This did not fully end the war, however, as Japan and the Soviet Union never signed a peace agreement. In the last days of the war, the Soviet Union occupied the southern Kuril Islands, an area claimed by the Soviets and still contested by Japan (see Kuril Islands dispute).
Aftermath
Europe in ruins
At the end of the war, millions of refugees were homeless, the European economy had collapsed, and 70% of the European industrial infrastructure was destroyed. The Soviet Union had been heavily affected, with 30% of its economy destroyed. The effects lasted for decades as a price for being the forefront in defeating the Axis Powers.
British malaise
Britain ended the war in great financial debt to America and exhausted by the war effort. Rationing and some other wartime conditions continued until 1954. The wartime coalition government was dissolved immediately after the end of the war in Europe. To the surprise of many, Churchill was defeated in a landslide general election by the Labour Party under Clement Attlee, who introduced universal healthcare and social security, nationalised many industries, and started the dismantling of the empire.
Partitioning of Germany and Austria
Germany was partitioned into four zones of occupation, coordinated by the Allied Control Council. The original divide of Germany was between America, Soviet Union and Britain. Stalin agreed to give France a zone but it had to come from the American or British zones and not the Soviet zone. The American, British, and French zones joined in 1949 as the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic.
Austria was once again separated from Germany and it, too, was divided into four zones of occupation, which eventually reunited in 1955 and became the Republic of Austria.
Reparations
Germany paid reparations to France, Britain and Russia, in the form of dismantled factories, forced labour, and shipments of coal. The U.S. settled for confiscating German patents and German owned property in the U.S., mainly subsidiaries of German companies.
In accordance with the Paris Peace Treaties, 1947, payment of war reparations was assessed from the countries of Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland.
Morgenthau Plan
The initial occupation plans proposed by the United States were considered harsh. The Morgenthau Plan of 1944 called for dividing Germany into two independent nations and stripping it of the industrial resources required for war. All heavy industry was to be dismantled or destroyed, and the main industrial areas (Upper Silesia, Saar, Ruhr, and the German speaking parts of Alsace-Lorraine) were to be annexed.
While the Morgenthau Plan itself was never implemented per se, its general economic philosophy did end up greatly influencing events. Most notable were the toned-down offshoots, including the Potsdam Conference, Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 (April 1945 - July 1947), and the industrial plans for Germany.
Marshall Plan
Germany had long been the industrial giant of Europe, and its poverty held back the general European recovery. The continued scarcity in Germany also led to considerable expenses for the occupying powers, which were obligated to make up the most important shortfalls.
In view of the continued poverty and famine in Europe, and with the onset of the Cold War, a change of policy was required. The most notable example of this change was a plan established by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall, the "European Recovery Program", better known as the Marshall Plan, which called for the U.S. Congress to allocate billions of dollars for the reconstruction of Europe. Also as part of the effort to rebuild global capitalism and spur post-war reconstruction, the Bretton Woods system was put into effect after the war.
Border revisions and population shifts
- Main article: Expulsion of Germans after World War II
As a result of the new borders drawn by the victorious nations, large populations suddenly found themselves in hostile territory. The main benefactor of these border revisions was the Soviet Union, which expanded its borders at the expense of Germany, Finland, Poland, and Japan. Poland was compensated for its losses to the Soviet Union by receiving most of Germany east of the Oder-Neisse line, including the industrial regions of Silesia. The German state of the Saar was temporarily a protectorate of France but it later returned to German administration.
The number of Germans expelled totalled roughly 15 million, including 11 million from Germany proper and 3.5 million from the Sudetenland. Estimates of number of deaths in connection with expulsion range from 0.5 million to 3 million.
Cold War begins
The end of World War II marked the end of the United Kingdom's position as a global superpower and the emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as the dominant powers in the world. Friction had been building up between the two before the end of the war and after the collapse of Nazi Germany, relations spiralled downward.
In the areas occupied by Western Allied troops, pre-war governments were re-established or new democratic governments were created; in the areas occupied by Soviet troops, including the territories of former Allies such as Poland, communist states were created. These became satellites of the Soviet Union.
As the relationship between the victors deteriorated, the military lines of demarcation became the de facto country boundaries. Korea was divided in half along the 38th parallel by the Soviets and Americans. In 1950, communist North Korea, backed by the Soviets, invaded U.S.-supported South Korea and the Korean War broke out.
United Nations
Because the League of Nations had failed to actively prevent the war, the United Nations was created in 1945.
The UN operates within the parameters of the United Nations Charter, and the reason for the UN’s formation is outlined in the Preamble to the United Nations Charter. Unlike its predecessor, the United Nations has taken a more active role in the world, such as fighting diseases and providing humanitarian aid to nations in distress. The UN also served as the diplomatic front line during the Cold War.
The UN also was responsible for the initial creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, in part as a response to the Holocaust.
Casualties, civilian impact, and atrocities
Casualties
Possibly 62 million people lost their lives in World War II—about 25 million soldiers and 37 million civilians, with estimates varying widely. This total includes the estimated 12 million lives lost in the Holocaust. Of the total deaths in World War II approximately 80% were on the Allied side and 20% on the Axis side.
Allied forces suffered approximately 17 million military deaths, of which about 10 million were Soviet and 4 million Chinese. Axis forces suffered about 8 million, of which more than 5 million were German. The Soviet Union suffered by far the largest death toll of any nation in the war; perhaps 23 million Soviets died in total, of which more than 12 million were civilians. Some modern estimates double the amount of Chinese casualties.
Genocide
The Holocaust was the organized murder of at least nine million people, about two-thirds of whom were Jewish. Originally, the Nazis used killing squads, Einsatzgruppen, to conduct massive open-air killings, shooting as many as 33,000 people in a single massacre, as in the case of Babi Yar. By 1942, the Nazi leadership decided to implement the Final Solution (Endlösung), the genocide of all Jews in Europe, and increase the pace of the Holocaust. The Nazis built six extermination camps specifically to kill Jews. Millions of Jews who had been confined to massively overcrowded Ghettos were transported to these "Death-camps" where they were gassed or shot, usually immediately after arriving.
Concentration camps, labour camps and internment
In addition to the Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet Gulag, or labor camps, led to the death of citizens of occupied countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, as well as German prisoners of war (POW) and even Soviet citizens themselves: supporters of Nazi Germany. Japanese POW camps also had high death rates; many were used as labour camps, and starvation conditions among the mainly U.S., British, Australian and other Commonwealth prisoners were little better than many German concentration camps. Sixty percent (1,238,000 ref. Krivosheev) of Soviet POWs died during the war. Vadim Erlikman puts it at 2.6 million Soviet POWs that died in German Captivity.[4] Richard Overy gives the number of 5.7 million Soviet POW and out of those 57% died or were killed.[5]
Furthermore, hundreds of thousands of Japanese North Americans were interned by the U.S. and Canadian governments. Many of the inmates of these camps were subjected to physical and verbal abuse due to their ethnic Asian similarities.
War crimes
From 1945 to 1951, German and Japanese officials and personnel were prosecuted for war crimes. Top German officials were tried at the Nuremberg Trials and many Japanese officials at the Tokyo War Crime Trial and other war crimes trials in the Asia-Pacific region.
None of the alleged allied war crimes—such as the bombing of Dresden, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the Red Army mayhem on the Eastern front—were ever prosecuted.
Resistance and collaboration
Resistance during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation, and propaganda to outright warfare.
Among the most notable resistance movements were the Polish Home Army, the French Maquis and the Yugoslav Partisans and the Italian Resistance in the German-occupied Northern Italy after 1943. Germany itself also had an anti-Nazi movement. The Communist resistance was among the fiercest, since they were already organised and militant even before the war and they were ideologically opposed to the Nazis.
Before D-Day, there were many operations performed by the French Resistance to help with the forthcoming invasion. Communications lines were cut; trains were derailed; roads, water towers and ammunition depots were destroyed; and some German garrisons were attacked.
The home fronts
"Home front" is the name given to the activities of the civilians of a nation that is in a state of total war.
In the United Kingdom, women joined the work force doing jobs that the men did. Food, clothing, petrol and other items were rationed. Access to luxuries was severely restricted, though there was also a significant black market. Families grew small home vegetable gardens to supply themselves with food, and the Women's Land Army recruited or conscripted over 80,000 women to work on farms. Civilians also served as Air Raid Wardens, volunteer emergency services and other critical functions. Schools and organizations held scrap drives and money collections to help the war effort. Many things were conserved to turn into weapons later such as fat to turn into nitroglycerin.
In the United States and Canada, women also joined the workforce. In the United States, these women were called "Rosies" for Rosie the Riveter. President Roosevelt stated that the efforts of civilians at home to support the war through personal sacrifice were as critical to winning the war as the efforts of the soldiers themselves. Rationing began, limiting things like sugar and gasoline. In Canada, the government established three military compartments for women: the Canadian Women's Auxiliary Air Force, Canadian Women's Army Corps and the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Services.
In Germany, until 1943 there were few restrictions on civilian activities. Most goods were freely available. This was because of the reduced access to certain luxuries already experienced by German civilians prior to the beginning of hostilities; the war served to make some commodities less available. It was not until comparatively late in the war that the civilian population was effectively organised to support the war effort. For example, women's labour was not mobilised as thoroughly as in the United Kingdom or the United States. Foreign slave labour substituted for the men who served in the armed forces.
American production was the major factor in keeping the Allies better supplied than the Axis. For example, in 1943 the United States produced 369 warships (1.01 per day). In comparison, Japan produced 122 warships and Germany only built three. The United States also succeeded in rebuilding the Merchant Marine, reducing the build time of a Liberty or Victory ship from 105 days to 56 days. Much of this improved efficiency came from technological advances in shipbuilding. Hull plates were being welded rather than bolted, plastics were beginning to take the place of certain metals, and modular construction was being used.
Technologies
Weapons and technology improved rapidly during World War II and played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the war. Many major technologies were used for the first time, including nuclear weapons, radar, jet engines and electronic computers. Enormous advances were made in aircraft and tank design such that models coming into use at the beginning of the war were long obsolete by its end.
More new inventions, as measured in the U.S. by numbers of patent applications and weapon contracts issued to private contractors, were deployed to the task of killing humans more effectively (and to a lesser degree, avoiding being killed) than ever before.
The massive research and development demands of the war had a great impact on the growth of the scientific community. After the war ended, these developments led to new sciences like cybernetics and computer science and created entire new institutions of weapons design.
See also
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References
- Second World War. Phoenix. 1995. ISBN 1857993462.
- The Second World War. Hutchinson. 1989. ISBN 0091740118.
- History of the Second World War. London: Cassell. 1970. ISBN 0304935646.
- A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War. Harvard University Press. ISBN 067400163X.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|Year=ignored (|year=suggested) (help) - Why the Allies Won. Pimlico. 1995. ISBN 0712674535.
- Smith, J. Douglas and Richard Jensen (2003). World War II on the Web: A Guide to the Very Best Sites. ISBN 0842050205.
- A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge University Press. 1994. ISBN 0521443172.
- Poteri narodonaseleniia v XX veke : spravochnik. 2004. ISBN 5931651071.
Footnotes
- ^ Overy, Richard
- ^ King, Admiral Earnest J. "Naval Operations in the Pacific from March 1944 to October 1945". Sam Houston State University. Retrieved 2006-07-26.
- ^ Parshall, Jon. "Why Japan Really Lost The War". Imperial Japanese Navy Page. Retrieved 2006-07-26.
- ^ Erlikman, Vadim
- ^ Richard Overy The Dictators Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia p.568-569
External links
- General
- Chronology Poland World War II + Gdańsk
- Chronology France World War II
- Chronology Germany World War II
- Chronology Great Britain World War II
- Chronology Italy World War II
- Chronology Japan World War II
- Chronology Poland World War II
- Chronology Russia World War II
- Chronology Turkey World War II
- Chronology USA World War II
- BBC History: World War Two
- Deutsche Welle special section on World War II created by one of Germany's public broadcasters on World War II and the world 60 years after.
- Directory of Online World War II Indexes & Records
- Halford Mackinder's Necessary War An essay describing the geopolitical aspects of World War II
- World War II Secret History
- World War II Military Situation Maps. Library of Congress
- Officially Declassified U.S. Government Documents about World War II
- End of World War II in Germany
- World War 2 Pictures In Colour
- Haagse Bunker Ploeg : Photo site about the atlantikwall in the Netherlands
- WWW-VL: History: WWII
- Media
- US National Archives Photos
- Multimedia map - Presentation that covers the war from the invasion of Russia to the fall of Berlin
- Thousands of World War II Photographs & Movies
- Virtual Museum of World War II - pictures & info
- World War II Poster Collection hosted by the Universtity of North Texas Libraries' Digital Collections
- Stories
- Voices in the Dark - Descriptions of life in Nazi-occupied Paris
- WW2 People's War - A project by the BBC to gather the stories of ordinary people from World War II
- Memories of Leutnant d.R. Wilhelm Radkovsky 1940-1945 Experiences as a German soldier on the Eastern and Western Front
- The Warsaw Uprising of 1944 — "a heroic and tragic 63-day struggle to liberate World War 2 Warsaw from Nazi/German occupation."
- Documentaries
- The World at War (1974) is a 36-part BBC series that covers most aspects of World War II from many points of view. It includes interviews with many key figures (Karl Dönitz, Albert Speer, Anthony Eden etc.) (Imdb link)
- The Second World War in Colour (1999) is a three episode documentary showing unique footage in color (Imdb link)
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