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Paths to War The Course of World War II The New Order and the Holocaust The Home Front and the Aftermath of the War
Paths to War
As chancellor, Hitler, posing as a man of peace, stressed that Germany wished to revise the unfair provisions of the treaty by peaceful means March 9, 1935Hitler announced the creation of a new air force military draft100,000 to 550,000 troopsa direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles France and Great Britain was distracted by their own internal problems
March 7, 1936, he sent German troops into the *Rhineland, the *demilitarized area Great Britain did not resist the force against Germany Great Britain thus began to practice a policy of *appeasement
New Alliances
Hitler gained new allied *Benito Mussolini wanted to create the new Roman Empire and invaded Ethiopia (1935) Both Germany and Italy sent troops to Spain to help in the Spanish Civil War (1936) *Rome-Berlin Axis Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Communist Pacta common front against communism
Union with Austria By 1937, Germany was once more a world power In 1938, he decided to pursue one of his goals: Anschluss, or union, with Austria, his native land Austrian Nazis were soon placed in-charge of the government and annexed it
Demands and Appeasement Hitlers next objective was the destruction of Czechoslovakia, seizing the *Sudetenland (the Northwestern region) Munich Conferencethe hight of of Western appeasement of Hitler Neville Chamberlin peace for our time
Great Britain and France React Hitler was more convinces than ever that the Western democracies were weak Hitler invaded and took control of Bohemia and Moravia in western Czechoslovakia Great Britain saw the danger and offered to protect Poland in the event of war; They began negotiations with *Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator
Hitler and the Soviets Hitler made his own agreement with Joseph Stalin Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (1939)the two nations promised not to attack each other The treaty gave Hitler the freedom to attack Poland
The Japanese Path to War Japanese soldiers seized Manchuria (1931) Worldwide protests against the Japanese led the League of Nations to send investigators to Manchuria Japan withdrew from the league and strengthened its hold on *Manchukuo (former Manchuria) and expanded Northward
War with China *Chiang Kai-shek tried to avoid a conict with communism so that he could deal with the greater threat Japan
Chiang ended his military efforts against the Communists and formed a new united front against the Japanese However, the Japanese seized the Chinese capital of Nanjing in December
The New Asian Order Japanese military leaders had hoped to force Chiang to agree to join a New Order in East Asia, comprising Japan, Manchuria, and China Part of Japans plan was to seize Soviet Siberiabut Japan did not have the resources to do this alone; moving south instead, Japan demanded economic resources in French Indochina
The US threatened Japan with *economic sanctions Japan badly needed the oil and scrap iron from the US but sought it elsewhere, launching attacks in the colonies of Southeast Asia
Europe at War Hitlers attack on Europe *blitzkrieg lighting war using armored columns (panzers), and airplanes Each division was a strike force of about three hundred tanks with accompanying forces and supplies Within four weeks, Poland had surrendered
Vichy Francethe remaining portion of France led by the WWI hero Marshal Petain The British appealed to the United States for help but Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) followed a policy of isolationism but denounced the aggressors
Hitler invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 An early winter and erce Soviet resistance halted the German advance The Germans had no winter uniforms and not enough supplies
Japan at War
On December 7, 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands Japanese forces invaded the Dutch East Indies and occupied a number of islands in the Pacic Ocean By 1942, almost all of Southeast Asia and much of the western Pacic had fallen into Japanese hands
Japan needed the resources of the region for its war machine, and it treated the counties under its rule as conquered lands The American people had been made soft by material indulgence The attack on Pearl Harbor unied American opinion about becoming involved in the war both in the Pacic and in Europe
The Allied Advance *The Grand Alliance Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union They agreed to stress military operations and ignore political differences and became known as the Allies The Axis Powers Germany, Italy, and Japan
Last years of the War By the beginning of 1943, the tide of battle had turned against Germany, Italy, and Japan The Allies attacked Italy, what *Winston Churchill called the soft underbelly of Europe
Last years of the War By the beginning of 1943, the tide of battle had turned against Germany, Italy, and Japan The Allies attacked Italy, what *Winston Churchill called the soft underbelly of Europe
The European Theater After the fall of Sicily, Mussolini was removed from ofce and placed under arrest and the Italian government surrendered to the Allied forces Mussolini was rescued by German forces and established a stronghold in the north
After taking the north, the Allies planed to invade France from Great Britain June 6th, 1944 (D-Day), Allied forces landed on the *Normandy beaches2 million men and 500,000 vehicles Troops moved south and east and liberated French forces as they went
German forces were soundly defeated by the Soviets at the Battle of Kursk, the greatest tank battle of World War II By January 1945, Adolf Hitler had moved into a bunker 55 feet under the city of Berlin Hitler committed suicide on April 30, two days after Mussolini had been shot by Italian *partisans, or resistance ghters
The Asian Theater The war in Asia continued *Harry S. truman, who had become president after the death of Roosevelt in April decided to drop the newly developed atomic bomb on *Hiroshima and later on Nagasaki rather than an invasion of JapanThousands died immediately and later from radiation In total, some 50 million died during this global conict
Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians were removed from their lands and became slaves By the summer of 1944, seven million European workers were laboring in Germany
The Holocaust Extermination of the Jews as parasites who destroy the Aryan race Himmler and the SS closely shared Hitlers racial ideas Final Solution was *genocide of the Jewish people
The Einsatzgruppen *Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SSs Security Service, was given the task of administering the Final Solution Special strike forces, called Einsatzgruppen they rounded-up all Polish Jews and put them in ghettos
The nazis attempted to starve residents by allowing only minimal amounts of food They became mobile killing units and death squadsthey rounded up Jews in their villages, execute them, and bury them in mass graves
The Death Toll The Germans killed between ve and six million Jews, over three million in the death camps The Nazis also considered the Roma (Gypsies) as an alien race and were rounded up for mass killing
Slavic peoples were also arrested and killed and four million Soviet prisoners of war were killed Most people pretended not to notice what was happening. Still other *collaborators helped the Nazis hunt down Jews Not until after the war did they learn the full extent of the horror and inhumanity of the Holocaust
Even more than World War I, WWII was a total wareconomic *mobilization was more extensive Particularly Soviet Union, The United States, Germany, and Japan
110,000 Japanese Americans were removed to camps surrounded by barbed wire and required to take loyalty oaths
Germany
To maintain the morale of the home front during the war, Hitler refused to cut consumer goods production to increase armaments Early in 1942, Hitler nally ordered a massive increase in armaments production and in the size of the army *Albert Speer was able to triple the production of armaments between 1942-43 A total mobilization of the economy was put into effect in 1944
Japan
Wartime Japan was a highly mobilized society The government created a planning board to control prices, wages, labor, and resources Young Japanese were encouraged to volunteer to serve as pilots in suicide mission against US ghting ships*kamikaze, divine wind
Frontline Civilians: The Bombing of Cities The bombing of civilians in World War II made the home front a dangerous place The bombings and the reaction to them had given rise to the argument that bombing civilian populations would be an effective way to force governments to make peace
Peace and A New War The total victory of the Allies in World War II was followed by a real peace but by a period of political tensions, known as the *Cold War an ideological conict between the United States and the Soviet Union
The creation of the United Nations was a major American concern at Yalta Both Churchill and Stalin accepted Roosevelts plans for the establishment of a United Nations organization and met in 1945 Germany was divided into four zones and Berlin itself was devised into four sections
A New Struggle
A new struggle was already beginning. Many in the West thought Soviet policy was part of a worldwide Communist conspiracy The Soviets viewed Western policy as global capitalist expansionism Churchill and the Iron Curtain