Supporting or Opposing Country's Participation in War: Circumstances and Consequences

1. Warm up: What circumstances would lead you to support or oppose your country’s participation in a war?

2. Take 5 minutes to look over and review your Road to War notes

3. Invasion of Poland Battle France Mussolini Declares War Sep. 1 1939 May 10, 1940 June 10, 1940 European Wars April 9, 1940 August, 1940 Invasion of Scandinavia Battle of Britain

4. Stalin’s Military Strategy World War II Rages on Operation Barbarossa

5. Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat 1. Who is Churchill addressing? 2. Why was Churchill’s speech titled, “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat”? 3. What is their policy? 4. What is their aim? 5. What was the main idea of Churchill’s speech? Vichy France 1. What is Vichy France? 2. Why did France sign an armistice with Germany? 3. What did France have to give up in the armistice? 4. What advances was Vichy France able to make in WWII? 5. What happened to the leaders of Vichy France at the end of the war? World War II Rages on The German Advance to the Gates of Moscow 1. How did Hitler want the Russian people to be treated? 2. What were three animals used by the Russians? 3. Why did the Russians use the animals in war? 4. What groups did most of the work in the Russian Factories and why? 5. Was the German drive into Russia in 1941-42 doomed to fail? Why/why not? The Nazi Nightmare at Stalingrad 1. What was produced at Stalingrad that made it an important target? 2. Why was the Luftwaffe of little help over Stalingrad? 3. How many casualties did the Germans suffer at Stalingrad? 4. How did Hitler let down his army at Stalingrad? 5. Did Hitler make a good decision in attacking Stalingrad & Sebastapol rather than Moscow? Why/why not?

6. Invasion of Poland After years of appeasement failed to satisfy German ambitions, it invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and defeated it by Sept. 27. Stalin forced the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to house the Soviet Union’s military bases. Finland refused. Stalin declared war and defeated the Finns 6 months later. Blitzkrieg: “lightning war” A Germany fighting technique aimed at taking the enemy by surprise. Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants USSR Germany Finland Poland

7. The Invasion of Scandinavia Germany was not satisfied by its defeat of Finland. On April 9th Germany defeated Denmark and moved on to defeat Norway. As a result Germany lost a large portion of its navy. Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain steps down after loosing its countries confidence. Winston Churchill is asked to replace him. Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants Norway

8. Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants The battle of France The Maginot Line was built to keep the Germans out of France. Unfortunately for France, German forces invaded through the Ardennes on May 10, 1940 where the terrain was believed to be too difficult for an invading force and was therefore only lightly defended. The British and French armies retreated to Dunkirk in the North of France. Every available fishing boat, pleasure boat and private yacht from the south of England came to rescue 338,000 troops from the beach at Dunkirk and bring them home. Meanwhile the main French forces to the south tried to defend themselves, but the German forces were superior and on June 22, 1940 an armistice was agreed between France and Germany.

9. The battle of Britain Hitler knew that unless Britain's RAF (Royal Air Force) was kept out of the skies, his invasion fleet could not cross the English Channel in safety. So he ordered his own air force, the Luftwaffe, to destroy British air bases and and aircraft factories. This campaign was not successful because the RAF beat off the German assault during the summer of 1940. This saved Britain from Nazi invasion. Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants

10. THE ITALIAN INVASION In 1939 Italy invaded Albania and declared war on Britain and France on June 10, 1940. In October 1940, Mussolini declared war on Greece and his attempts to invade Greece failed. The British were outnumbered in Northern Africa (Libya and Egypt). They counter attacked on December 7, 1940. By January 22, 1941 British troops captured the port of Tobruk in Libya from the Italians. Meanwhile… Germans had invaded Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary and were threatening Greece. Britain took most of its forces out of North Africa to stop the invasion. It did not work, by April 1941 Germans had taken Yugoslavia and Greece. Hitler sent troops to Libya to assist the Italians and were able to push the British out of Libya. Britain forces came back and in May 1941 they prevailed in Ethiopia and Somaliland. Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants Croatia Greece Yugoslavia

11. Operation Barbarossa Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants Poland Romania Hungary On June 22, 1941, the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa, a three-pronged attack on the Soviet Union. The German offensive contained the largest force in European history: almost 3.6 million Axis soldiers. Several battles were fought and the Nazis were advancing. It was now September and winter was approaching fast. As German troops moved deeper into the Soviet Union, supply lines became longer. David Low, Someone is taking someone for a walk (2nd November, 1939) Stalingave instructions that when forced to withdraw, the Red Army should destroy anything that could be of use to the enemy. The scorched earth policy created severe problems for the Germans and by December 1941 the Germans reached the outskirts of Moscow but were unable to take the city and were forced to retreat.

12. Stalin’s Military Strategy Stalin's military strategy was basically fairly simple. He believed it was vitally important to attack the enemy as often as possible. He was particularly keen to use new, fresh troops for these offensives. Stalin argued that countries in western Europe had been beaten by their own fear of German superiority. His main objective in using new troops in this way was to convince them that the German forces were not invincible. By pushing the German Army back at Moscow, Stalin proved to the Soviet troops that Blizkrieg could be counteracted; it also provided an important example to all troops throughout the world fighting the German war-machine. German soldiers battle the Soviets after the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. (Photo credit: U.S. National Archives)

13. Attack At Pearl Harbor

14. Japanese Expansion Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants Manchukuo China Japan had begun to conquer lands in Asia even before World War II. When the United States cut off vital supplies for Japan’s war effort, it attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, causing America to declare war on Japan and Germany. “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” Japan’s goal of replacing European domination of world control with that of Asian powers . September 18, 1931 Empire of Japan invades Manchuria, China. July 7, 1937 Japan launches a major assault on China.  

15. Attack At Pearl Harbor Japanese forces carried out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941 leaving 2,400 people dead and 1,100 people wounded. Resentment towards the US had been building in the eyes of the Japanese for several reasons: one the US placed a stop on the oil supplied to Japan because of Japanese invasion of Indochina, two the Washington Navel Conference (5:5:3) and three the Japanese believed the US stood in its way of expanding in the East. “December 7, 1941 - A day that will live in infamy” - Franklin Roosevelt Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants

16. War in the Pacific Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants Manchukuo China The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 8, 1941, Japan seized the Philippines. Several other Asian Nations fell to the Japanese that same year. The turning point in the Pacific war came with the American naval victory in the Battle of Midway in June 1942. American forces attacked the island of Guadalcanal in February 1943. This led to a series of “island hopping” where the Allied forces slowly gained naval and air supremacy in the Pacific. The Japanese, however, successfully defended their positions on the Chinese mainland until 1945. Guadalcanal, 1943 General Douglas MacArthur Credited with coming up with the famous "island hopping" strategy. Kamikazes: Japanese pilots who volunteered for suicide missions. Nov. 1943

17. WWII Coming to an End Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants Poland Romania Hungary Soviet Union The Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942 - February 1943) was the decisive World War II Soviet victory that stopped the German southern advance and turned the tide of the war. At Stalingrad Soviet armies began the series of offensives that were to take them to Berlin. Italy The final Allied offensive in Italy began in April 1945, and by the end of the month the German armies had been completely smashed. Mussolini, his mistress, and several high-ranking colleagues were captured by Italian partisans ... and executed. Croatia

18. WWII Coming to an End France On June 6, 1944, a force of about 152,000 Allied soldiers from the United States, Britain, and Canada stormed the beaches of Normandy in northern France, where they were supported by about 23,000 paratroopers. D-Day, as it was called by the Allies, was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The invasion at Normandy took the Germans by surprise, because they expected an invasion to come from farther north, near Calais, at the narrowest part of the English Channel. The Germans fought the invasion fiercely, but by the end of the day, all five beaches were secured by the Allies. General Dwight D. Eisenhower became supreme Allied commander in Europe and organized the largest sea-to-land invasion in history, dubbed “Operation Overlord.” Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants

19. WWII Coming to an End Germany Japan On August 6, 1945, President Harry S. Truman instructed the United States Air Force to drop an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Tens of thousands of people died in the initial explosion, and many more died later from radiation exposure. Three days later, for maximum psychological impact, the United States dropped a bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Approximately 120,000 civilians died as a result of the two blasts. Japan formally surrendered to the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union on September 2, 1945. The Battle of the Bulge lasted from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 28, 1945, and was the largest battle in which the United States participated. This battle was Hitler's last attempt to gain the upper hand in a losing war. On April 30, 1945; hours before he would have been captured by the Russians in Berlin, Hitler and his wife Eva Braun commits suicide and the German army surrenders to the Allies. Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945 Primary Allied Combatants Primary Axis Combatants Manchukuo China

20. Soviet Union

21. Italy

22. France

23. Germany

24. Japan

25. The Battle of Stalingrad (August 1942 - February 1943) Allied victory that stopped the German southern advance and turned the tide of the war. Allied armies began the series of offensives that were to take them to Berlin. The German army attempted to save this nation and the final Allied offensive began in April 1945, and by the end of the month the German armies in this country had been completely smashed. This leader, his mistress, and several high-ranking colleagues were captured by partisans ... and executed.

26. General Dwight D. Eisenhower became supreme Allied commander in Europe and organized the largest sea-to-land invasion in history, dubbed “Operation Overlord.” On June 6, 1944, a force of about 152,000 Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy. D-Day, as it was called by the Allies, was the largest seaborne invasion in history, which took the Germans by surprise. The Battle of the Bulge lasted from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 28, 1945, and was the largest battle in which the United States participated. This battle was this country’s last attempt to gain the upper hand in a losing war.

27. On April 30, 1945; hours before he would have been captured by the Russians, this leader and his wife commits suicide. This country surrendered on May 8, 1945 On August 6, 1945, President Harry S. Truman instructed the United States Air Force to drop an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later, for maximum psychological impact, the United States dropped a bomb on the city of Nagasaki. Approximately 120,000 civilians died as a result of the two blasts leaving this country to formally surrender to the Allied powers on September 2, 1945.

28. Attempts at Peace Yalta The Yalta Conference (February, 1945) attended by FDR, Churchill & Stalin agreed to 4 actions: 1. to divide Germany into four ‘zones’, which Britain, France, the USA and the USSR would occupy after the war. 2. hold free elections in the countries of eastern Europe. 3. set up a government in Poland which would contain both Communists and non-Communists. 4. set up the United Nations. Potsdam More issues were raised than were settled: 1. the details of how to divide Germany. 2. the size of reparations Germany ought to pay. 3. Soviet policy in eastern Europe. In July 1945 the Allied leaders met again. The key leaders had changed. For the United States, Harry Truman had replaced Roosevelt after his death, and Clement Attlee for Britain, replaced Churchill after Churchill’s political party had been voted out of Parliament. The Conference agreed the following: 1. to set up the four ‘zones of occupation’ in Germany 2. to bring Nazi war-criminals to trial.

29. General Timeline of conquered lands: • March 1936: Took back the Rhineland from France • October 1936: Military alliance with Italy • November 1936: Military support of Spain • March 1938: Annexed Austria • April 1938: "Sudetenland" of Czechoslovokia given to Germany at the Munich Conference. (Hitler stated this was all the territory he wanted in Europe after this agreement.) • March 1939: Invaded the rest of Czechoslovokia. • September 1st, 1939: Invades Poland after signing the Non-Agression Pact. Great Britain and France declare war. • April 1940: Conquers Norway and Denmark • May 1940: Conquers the Netherlands • June 1940: Conquers France and Belgium • July 1940: With Italy conquers Middle East and North Africa Although historians would argue several mistakes Hitler made that cost him the war, we will look at three specifically. Be prepared to explain them in class. • August 1941: Mistake One: Invasion of the Soviet Union. Hitler doesn't prepare his troops for winter and loses a large number of troops and equipment in Russia. Creates a two front war and Germany is unable to maintain supplies. • December 1941: Mistake Two: Declares war on the United States after the US declares war on Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Hitler was honoring the agreement that he made with Japan that brought them into the Axis Powers. This brings an unlimited supply of US war materials into the war. • June 1940---June 1941: Mistake Three: Failed to use superior weapons and troops to conquer Great Britain. Hitler's scientists believed they could have created an atomic bomb by 1943, and he did not invade Britain. This would allow the US a "drop off point" for the war materials that would be used for the eventual invasion of Europe. By 1942, the war was lost for Hitler. His troops were in retreat in Russia and France. On June 6, 1944, the largest army ever assembled invaded Europe at Normandy, France successfully putting millions of Allied troops in Europe. By April 1, 1945 Germany was completely surrounded by Allied troops. On April 30, 1945; hours before he would have been captured by the Russians in Berlin, Hitler commits suicide and the German army surrenders to the Allies.

30. Hitler's first mistake At this time, Hitler believed that the Soviet Union was weak; that they could not sustain a barrage from his troops. "We only have to kick in the front door and the whole rotten edifice will come tumbling down" - Adolf Hitler The plan was somewhat simple. Using blitzkreig tactics, Army Group North would invade from East Prussia and Finland to capture Latvia and Minsk, eventually to Leningrad/St. Petersburg; Army Group Centre would invade from Poland to capture Belorosia, eventually to Minsk and Smolensk; and Army Group South, invading from Hungary, would proceed through the Ukraine and eventually capture Onepropetrovsk, deep in the Russian frontier.Their eventual target: Moscow.Their problem here is that Hitler spent literally no resources on reconnaisence or intelligence. The general Hitler picked didn't even speak Russian! Hitler's second and fatal mistake Due to this lack of intelligence, Hitler did not realize the logistics needed to achieve such an objective as capturing Moscow. One such blunder is the lack of physical preparedness Hitler gave his soldiers. In Russia, almost any time is winter, for the temperatures are often below zero. The bitter cold prevented the German army from rearming and deploying efficiently, and lost strength in this zone.Another blunder is the lack of hard intelligence on the Russian army, equipment, deployment tactics, economic situation and communication networks. They had not invested much time and intelligence agents in collecting information from a country which was inherently secretive by nature and kept extremely tight security. The Germans even knew that the Russian roads were inferior for their vehicles and that the Russian railway tracks were of a different size than what they were using, yet no department or planning logistics ever took these factors into account before the invasion took place.The final blunder was creating multiple fronts. Not only did the German army have to fight on the western front, but they now had Rommel in Tunisia, attempting to secure oil fields in northeast Africa, and the Arabian peninsula, along with the eastern front in Russia. This spread Germany's armies so thin, that support was virtually non-existant.

31. On May 24, 1940, the retreating allied forces (the good guys) were trapped at Dunkirk, but inexplicably, the Germans ordered a halt. Why the German forces just stopped, when they were on the verge of completely crushing the allied army, is a great mystery. The reasoning behind this halt order has been much debated by historians. Some have argued Hitler did it on purpose, hoping that a show of leniency would encourage the British to make peace. Some have believed that with the Allies already beaten, Hitler could afford to turn his attentions on Paris. Others think that the Panzers had moved too far too quickly, so they had to stop to allow the rest of the army to regroup before the final push. The most likely explanation is that the wetland conditions around Dunkirk were not suitable for tanks. Whatever the reasoning behind the decision, however, this delay allowed the Allies to establish a defensive perimeter around Dunkirk, giving them time to put Operation Dynamo into action and allowing them to escape what could have been a slaughter.

34. Japan had begun to conquer lands in Asia even before World War II. When the United States cut off vital supplies for Japan’s war effort, it attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, causing America to declare war on Japan and Germany. After early losses in Pacific sea battles, the Allies won victories at The Battle of the Coral Sea and at Midway, turning the tide of war in their favor. In North Africa, the United States and Britain won a decisive victory. The Nazis suffered further setbacks when the Russians took advantage of the winter to defeat the Germans at Stalingrad and followed with other defeats of German troops. The Allies then invaded Italy, but the Nazi defeat was sealed when, on June 6, 1944, the Allies landed at Normandy in France. The Allied forces pushed the Germans east as the Soviet Union pushed German troops west. The two sides met at Berlin where Germany surrendered. Meanwhile, the Japanese held off allied forces until President Truman decided to end the war quickly with the atomic bomb. Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed 120,000 nearly instantly, and the Japanese surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945. Overall, more than 40 million people died in the war, including about 405,000 Americans. Of that number, about 670 were from St. Louis, Lake, Cook and Carlton counties.

36. Late in 1944, American forces liberated the Philippines and began massive air attacks on Japan. British forces recaptured Burma. In early 1945, American forces suffered heavy losses during the invasions of Iwo Jima (February) and Okinawa (April), an island of strategic importance off the coast of the Japanese home islands. Despite these casualties and suicidal Japanese air attacks, known as Kamikaze attacks, American forces conquered Okinawa in mid-June 1945 On August 6, 1945, the United States Air Force dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Tens of thousands of people died in the initial explosion, and many more died later from radiation exposure. Three days later, the United States dropped a bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Approximately 120,000 civilians died as a result of the two blasts. On August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria. After Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945, American forces began to occupy Japan. Japan formally surrendered to the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union on September 2, 1945. Dwight D. Eisenhower As the top American general and later Allied Supreme Commander in the European theater, he directed Allied forces in World War II to victories in North Africa and Italy and coordinated the massive and successful D-Day invasion of France.

37. (1884-1972) Harry S. Truman was active in Democratic Party politics for many years before first being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1934. During the Second World War he headed the Senate war investigating committee. As President Roosevelt's Vice President he knew nothing of the development of the atomic bomb. But within months of assuming the office of President of the United States on April 12, 1945, he became the first and only American leader to authorize the use of atomic weapons against an enemy target. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th; on August 9th a second A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Although publicly Truman always defended his decision to use atomic weapons against Japan, by the end of his presidency he was voicing concerns about the impact the bombs would have on future wars. In his last State of the Union address, he said: "For now we have entered the atomic age and war has undergone a technological change which makes it a very different thing from what it used to be. War today between the Soviet empire and the free nations might dig the grave not only of our Stalinist opponents, but of our own society, our world as well as theirs...The war of the future would be one in which man could extinguish millions of lives at one blow...Such a war is not a possible policy for rational men."