1 / 17

The War for Europe and North Africa

Explore the strategies and events that led to the Allies' victory in Europe and North Africa during World War II. Learn about the Lend-Lease Act, the North Atlantic Charter, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Eastern Front, Operation Torch, the Italian Campaign, D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of death camps, and the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich.

bmelvin
Download Presentation

The War for Europe and North Africa

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The War for Europe and North Africa Unit 4 Part 2 Section 2

  2. The Allies’ Plans for Victory • Lend Lease Act -March 11, 1941 • North Atlantic Charter-14 August 1941 • 1. Defeat of Germany was top priority. • 2. Only unconditional surrender of Axis powers would be accepted. • 3. Must preserve life, liberty, religious freedom, and human rights.

  3. The Big Three: • Churchill • Roosevelt • Stalin

  4. The Battle of the Atlantic • After Pearl Harbor, Hitler ordered raids against US East coast. • German Wolf Pack destroyed 681 ships in 7 months. • Allies used convoys like in WWI. • Allies could find and destroy German U-boats faster than they could build them. • By mid-1943, the Battle of the Atlantic had turned in the Allies’ favor.

  5. The Bismarck The Bismark Song

  6. The Eastern Front and the Mediterranean • The Battle of Stalingrad, 1942 • Germans lost 239,000 soldiers • Soviets lost 1,250,000 soldiers and civilians in defending Stalingrad • Enemy at the Gate

  7. Operation Torch • The North African Front, November 1942 • Intended to divert Axis troops away from Soviet Union. • American general Dwight D. Eisenhower vs. General Erwin Rommel. • General Rommel surrendered in May, 1943.

  8. The Generals General Eisenhower vs. General Rommel

  9. The Eastern Front and the Mediterranean, cont. • The Italian Campaign, summer 1943 • Churchill’s idea – to attack “the soft underbelly of the Axis” • Captured Sicily • 18 months of miserable fighting. • Bloody Anzio • Mussolini captured, shot, and hung in Milan squareEnd of Mussolini

  10. The Allies Liberate Europe • D-Day (Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower) • Normandy France, June 6, 1944 • Prior to the invasion, Allies bombed France’s supply routes • By September, 1944, The Allies freed France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands

  11. Tribute in sand.

  12. Battle of the Bulge December 16,1944 Month-long battle Germans caught Allies off guard, but in end, little changed German military is permanently weakened.

  13. Liberation of Death Camps • July 1944, Soviet troops come upon Nazi death camps. • “We started smelling a terrible odor and suddenly we were at the concentration camp at Landsberg. Forced the gate and faced hundreds of starving prisoners…We saw emaciated men whose thighs were smaller than wrists, many had bones sticking out through their skin…Also we saw hundreds of burned and naked bodies…That evening I wrote to my wife that for the first time I truly realized the evil of Hitler and why this war HAD to be waged.” Robert T. Johnson Majdanek concentration camp

  14. Unconditional Surrender • April 25,1945, Soviets stormed Berlin. • April 29, 1945, Hitler shot himself and wife swallowed poison to avoid surrender…still maintained Jews blame for war. • One week after Hitler’s suicide, General Eisenhower accepts unconditional surrender of the Third Reich. • May 8, 1945, V-E Day– Victory in Europe

More Related