1. Causes and Character:
- formation of the Rome - Berlin
- Tokyo Axis => globalization of the conflict
- Munich treaty => weakness of
European democracies facing totalitarian regimes
- Nazi - Soviet non - aggression
pact => confusion in the working class movement (esp. communists)
- new warfare:
* the role of armored divisions
in land war (tanks) (Kursk battle)
* introduction of aircraft carriers
in naval warfare => combination of forces (war in the Pacific)
* experiments with amphibious units
=> large scale landings (Normandy)
* use of para - troops => attacks
by surprise behind the enemy lines (Crete)
* use of radar for detection and
of computerized methods for breaking codes
* atomic bomb => total war
2. War in Europe:
September 1, 1939: Germany
attacked Poland from the West, followed by the Soviet Union from the East
November 1939: Soviet Union
attacked Finland => USSR expelled from the League of Nations
May 10, 1940: the yellow
plan => German troops attacked Netherlands,
Belgium, and France => June 1940: German troops seized Paris => a pro -
German government under marshal Petain
was formed in the South (Vichy),
the North was occupied by the Germans => formation of a French government
in exile (London) under general Charles de
Gaulle
May 1940: prime - minister Winston Churchill prepared Britain for war => Germany launched a sea and air war against Britain ( Battle of Britain)(July - October 1940)
1. Germany bombed cities and industrial
centers in southern England (destruction of Coventry)
in preparation for an invasion
2. royal air force and radar denied
German superiority
3. British industry turned into
war industry
1 - 3 => Germany failed to win the Battle of Britain
3. War in Africa:
June 10, 1940: Italy entered the
war => attack in Africa (from Libya to Egypt) => crushed by British armored
forces => German intervention in Africa
February 1941: Afrikakorps
led by Erwin Rommel
arrived in Africa => German troops occupied Egypt (1942)
4. Occupation of Eastern Europe:
England and France defeated =>
East European democracies without any allies, squeezed between Germany
and the Soviet Union
August 1940:
Soviet troops invaded the Baltic states (Latvia,
Estonia, Lithuania)
June 1940: Soviet
troops invaded Eastern Romania (Bessarabia)
August 1940:
pro - German Hungary occupied North - Western Romania (Transylvania)
=> power in Romania is seized by
a pro - German faction led by general Ion
Antonescu => Romanian oil fields fueled Germany's
war machine
October 1940:
Italian troops invaded Greece => Greek army pushed Italians back to Albania
=> German intervention against Yugoslavia and Greece => Germany annexed
Slovenia and Croatia proclaimed independent, under German influence and
with fascist leader Ante Pavelic (1941)
=> anti - serbian pogroms
March 1941:
Bulgaria joined the Axis
May 1941: German
para - troops occupied Crete
5. War in Russia:
Hitler viewed Bolshevism as an
outgrowth of Judaism => invasion of Soviet Russia was a racist war of annihilation
June 22, 1941: Germany and her
allies (Italy, Hungary, and Romania) attacked Soviet Russia => Red army
totally unprepared (Operation Barbarossa)
=> Germany occupied most of Ukraine, Belarus, Western Russia
September 1941: Leningrad besieged
=> Stalin sought the Anglo - American alliance => with the support of the
Allies, Russia prepared for the resistance:
1. large scale
partisan activities behind German lines using communist underground organizations
(Ukraine)
2. large scale
moving of industrial centers in Western Siberia and rapid growth of the
war industry
3. reuse of
Russian nationalist symbols and propaganda, as well as reopening of churches
to bolster religious mobilization against the enemy
5. Formation of the Coalition:
1941 - 1942: Britain, US, and USSR
supported each other against Germany
1941: Congress
passed the Lend Lease Act
to supply Britain and USSR with arms and long term credit (later turned
into gifts)
August 1941:
the Atlantic Charter
- US and Britain
Declare their aims in the war:
1. no territorial aggrandizement
2. free market, freedom for all
humanity
October 1941: German offensive halted at Moscow => counter attack by Soviet troops => Germany attacked in South Russia (Don Valley and Caucasus) to capture the grain and oil reserves
6. War in the Pacific:
December 7, 1941: Japanese attack
on the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor
=> US entered the war
- Japan occupied Malaysia, Singapore,
Philippines, Indonesia, North and South China and Western Oceania
September 1942 - February 1943:
Stalingrad -
the first counterblow - 300,000 Germans and German allies surrendered
(only 93,000 remained alive)
1943: massive counter offensive
by soviet troops (Kursk, Orel, Kharkov)
=> Germans pushed back beyond the Dnieper river
November 1942: US and Britain landed
troops in North Africa (under general Dwight
Eisenhower) => German troops crushed at El
Alamein => the axis lost North Africa (May
1943)
July 1943: Assisted by the Mafia,
the Allies landed in Sicily => Mussolini's regime crumbled
7. The Final Solution:
1941: SS troops rounded up and
shot 4.7 million Jews in occupied Russia => Jews in already occupied Europe
were deported to Poland and Western Russia
- camps designed
for labor turned into death camps (gas chambers and crematoria) => the
final solution (1941 - 1944) led to the mass murder of 6 million
Jews (Holocaust)
at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Lublin, Sobibor,
Belzec, Chelmno
- together with the Jews, the final
solution was also applied to gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, and
German mental patients and handicapped
Organization of partisan activities:
Yugoslavia -
Partisan Army (led by Iosip Broz Tito)
France, Czechoslovakia,
USSR, Poland, Philippines, Korea, Indonesia
8. Victories of the Allies:
September 1943: Italy surrendered
=> intensive bombing od German cities from nearby airfields
July - August 1943: Royal Air Force
devastated cities of Western and Central Germany (Lubeck, Dresden, Cologne,
Essen, Bremen, Hamburg) => Hitler demanded mobilization of the entire population
of Germany for total war
1943: US troops landed at Guadalcanal
and forced the Japanese out of the Solomon islands => US submarine warfare
against the Japanese
November - December 1943: Conference
at Teheran between
Stalin, F.D. Roosevelt and W. Churchill:
1. Stalin is given promises that
Poland would move westwards in to Germany to secure Soviet gains
after the Nazi - Soviet Pact of 1939
2. Anglo - American invasion of
France
3. Soviet involvement in the Pacific
war after the defeat of Germany
1944: US troops conquer the Philippines and New Guinea
9. Reconquest of Europe:
June 1944: British, Canadian, and
US forces (command: general Dwight Eisenhower) landed in Normandy (Northern
France) => German troops pushed back into France
August 1944: Allied and French troops reconquered Paris
1944 - 1945: massive Soviet offensive
beyond Soviet borders, into Poland => Romania abandoned the Axis and joined
the Allies
> August 1944: with Stalin's tacit
assistance, the Germans crushed the resistance movement in Warsaw
> Red Army invaded Romania, Bulgaria,
Hungary, Austria
October 1944: Churchill met Stalin at Moscow => division of Europe into spheres of influence:
a. British preponderance in Greece
b. Soviet preponderance in Poland,
Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary
c. Equal split of Yugoslavia
February 1945: Big Three
conference at Yalta
(Crimea):
- further concessions to the Soviet
Union: firm establishment of a communist government in Poland; annexation
of Southern Sakhalin and the Kurile islands North of Japan
March 1945: US Ninth Army reached the Elbe River, 60 miles away from Berlin => Hitler's capital is abandoned to the Red Army
May 9, 1945: Germany surrendered
April - June 1945: huge amphibious
landings by US troops in Iwo Jima
and Okinawa =>
Japan extended the use of kamikaze
pilots
July - August 1945: Big Three
conference at Potsdam:
a. Stalin agreed
to declare war to Japan
b. Harry Truman
disclosed US military supremacy by announcing that the secret atomic bomb
was produced
August 1945: two atomic weapons were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki => 120,000 casualties in addition to long term consequences => Japan surrendered (September 1945)
10. Consequences:
- heavy losses:
17 million in
Soviet Union
6.2 million
in Germany
6 million in
Poland
4 million in
China
2 million in
Japan
- the most destructive conflict
in history (50 million people perished)
- organization for peace => 1945
(San Francisco) USSR, US, Britain, France, and China founded the United
Nations
- the end of Europe's independence
and the beginning of the Cold War