WWII

media type="custom" key="6248391" =Intro to WWII=

__//**Ch. 28 sec. 3**//__
**Mussolini's Rise To Power** Italy agreed to join allies in 1915. They were promised territories when they won but never obtained them. Benito Mussolini is the son of a socialist blacksmith and a teacher. During WWII, he rejected socialism for intense nationalism. In 1919, he organized veterans and other discontented Italians into the Fascist Party. He was a fiery, charismatic speaker. He spoke of reviving roman greatness, pledging to turn the Mediterranean into a "Roman Lake" once again
 * A Leader Emerges**

Mussolini organized his supporters into "Combat Squads". The squads wore black shirts to emulate an earlier nationalist revolt. These Black Shirts, or party militants rejected the democratic process. In 1922, the fascist made a bid for power. In the "March On Rome", tens of thousands of Fascist swarmed towards the capital. King Victor Emmanuel III entered the city on Oct, 30th, 1922 to try and prevent a civil war catastrophe. He then Gained the right to lead Italy as king.
 * Mussolini Gains Control**

By 1925, Mussolini had assumed more power than the Fascist. He supressed rival parties, muzzeld the press, rigged elections and replaced elected officials with Fascist supporters. In 1929, Mussolini recieved support from Pope Pius XI in return for recognizing Vatican City as an independent state.
 * Mussolini's Rule**

To spur economic growth, Mussolini brought the economy under state control. His systems favored the upper class and industrial leaders. Although production increased, success came at the expense of the workers. They were forbidden to strike and there wages came low.
 * State Control of The Economy**

Under Mussolini's system, the state and higher positions were all important and the individual was unimportant. Men, women, and children were all bombarded by slogans glorifying the state and Mussolini. Women were also pushed out of there jobs. According to the fascist and Mussolini himself, "Mussolini is ALWAYS right". __//**Ch 29. Sec 3**//__
 * The Individual State**


 * The Allies Turn the Tide**

As 1942 began, the Allies were in trouble. German bombers flew unrelenting raids over Britain, and the German army advances deep into the Soviet Union. In the Pacific, the Japanese onslaught seemed unstoppable.


 * All-Out War**

To defeat the Axis war machine, the Allies had to commit themselves to total war. Total war means nations devote all of their resources to the war effort.


 * Governments Increase Power**

To achieve maximum war production, democratic governments in the United States and Great Britain increased their political power. They directed economic resources into the war effort, ordering factories to stop making cars or refrigerators and to turn out airplanes or tanks instead. They raised money by holding war bond drives, in witch citizens lent their government certain sums of money that would be retuned with interest later. While the war brought some shortages and hardships, the increase in production ended the unemployment of the depression era.

Under pressures of the war, even democratic governments limited the rights of citizens, censored the press, and used propaganda to win public support for the war. In the United States and Canada, many citizens of the Japanese decent lost their jobs, property, civil rights.


 * Women Help Win War**

As men joined the military, millions of women around the world replaced them in essential war industry jobs. Women, symbolized by the character “Rosie the Riveter” in the United States, built ships and planes and produced mutations.

British and American women served in the armed forces in many auxiliary roles- driving ambulances, delivering airplanes, and decoding messages. Soviet women served in combat roles.


 * The Allies Forge Ahead**

The years 1942-1943 marked the turning point of the war. The Allies won victories on four fronts - the Pacific, North Africa and Italy, the Soviet Union and France- to push back Axis tide.


 * Japanese Navy Battered**

In the Pacific, the Japanese suffered their first serious set back at the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Japanese were prevented from seizing several important islands. The Americans sank one of the Japanese aircraft carriers and several cruisers and destroyers.

This Allied victory was fallowed by an even more impressive win at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, witch was also fought entirely from the air. After Midway, Japan was unable to launch any more offensive operations.


 * The Big Three Plot Their Strategy**

In 1942, the “Big Three”- Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin- agreed to focus on finishing the war in Europe before trying to end the war in Asia.

Churchill and Roosevelt feared that Stalin wanted to dominate Europe. Stalin believed that the West wanted to destroy communism. At the conference in Tehran, Iran, In the late 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt yielded to Stalin by agreeing to let the borders outlined in the Nazi-Soviet Pact stand, against the wishes of Poland’s government-in-exile. Roosevelt and Churchill replied that they did not yet have the resources. Stalin saw the delay as a deliberate policy to weaken the Soviet Union.


 * Allied Victory in The Africa**

After the fierce Battle of El Alamein in November 1942, the Allies finally halted the Desert Fox’s advances. Later in 1942, American General Dwight Eisenhower took command of a joint British and American force in Morocco and Algeria.


 * Allies Advance Through Italy**

In July 1943, a combined British and American army landed first in Sicily and then in southern Italy. They defeated the Italian forces there in about a month.

After the defeats, the Italians overthrew Mussolini and signed an armistice, but fighting did not end. For the next 18 months, the Allies pushed slowly up the Italian peninsula, suffering heavy losses against strong German resistance.


 * Germans Defeated at Stalingrad**

The major turning point occurred in the Soviet Union. After their lighting advance in 1941, the Germans were stalled outside Moscow and Leningrad. In 1942, Hitler launched a new offensive.

The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the costliest of the war. Hitler was determined to capture Stalin’s namesake city, and Stalin was equally determined to defend it. Trapped, without food or Ammunition and with no hope of rescue, the German commander finally surrendered in January 1943. After the Battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army took the offensive and drove the invaders out of the Soviet Union entirely. By early 1944, Soviet troops were advancing into Eastern Europe.


 * The Allies Push Toward Germany**

By 1944, the Western Allies were at last ready to open a second front in Europe by invading France. Allied leaders under Eisenhower faced the enormous task of planning the operation and assembling troops and supplies.


 * The D-Day Assault**

The Allies chose June 6, 1944 known as D-Day for the invasion of France. Just before midnight on June 5, Allied planes dropped paratroops behind enemy lines. Then, at dawn, thousands of ships ferried 156,000 Allies troops across the English Channel. The troops fought their way to shore amide underwater mines and ranking machine-gun fire.

Still, the Allied troops clawed their way inland through the tangled hedges of Normandy. In Paris, French resistance forces rose up against the occupying Germans. Under pressure from all sides, the Germans retreated. On August 25, the Allies entered Paris. Within a month, all of France was free.


 * Allies Continue to Advance**

By this time, German was reeling under incessant, round-the-clock bombing. For two years, Allied bombers had hammered military, factories, railroad, oil deposits, and cities. In a 10-day period, bombing almost erased the huge industrial city of Hamburg, killing 40,000 civilians and forcing one million to flee their homes. After fleeing France, Allied forces battled toward Germany. At the Battle of the Bulge, witch lasted more than a mouth, both sides took terrible losses. By early 1945, the defeat of Germany seemed inevitable.


 * Uneasy Agreement at Yalta**

In February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met again at Yalta, in the southern Soviet Union. Stalin insisted that the Soviet Union needed to maintain control of Eastern Europe to be able to protect itself from future aggression. Roosevelt and Churchill favored self-determination for Eastern Europe, witch would give people the right to choose their own form of government.

At the Yalta Conference, the three leaders agreed the the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan within thee months of Germany’s surrender.

//__**Ch. 28 Sec. 4**__//

 * The Soviet Union Under Stalin**

In January 1924 Vladamir Lenin the former leader of the Soviet Union died. The following day his body was put on display in the historic Red Square. By preserving Lenin’s body Stalin wanted to show that he would carry on the goals of the revolution. However in the years that followed he used ruthless measures to control the Soviet Union and it’s people.


 * A Totalitarian State**

Karl MArx had predicted that under communism the state would eventually wither away. Under Stalin the opposite occurred. He turned the Soviet Union into a totalitarian state controlled by a powerful and complex bureaucracy.


 * Stalin’s Five Year Plans**

Once in power Stalin imposed government control over the Soviet Union’s economy. In 1928, he proposed the first of several “five year plans” aimed at building heavy industry, improving transportation, and increasing farm output. The government owned all businesses and distributed all resources. The Soviet Union developed a command economy, in which government officials made all basic economic decisions.
 * Mixed Results in Industry**

Stalin’s five year plans set high production goals especially for heavy industry and transportation. Between 1928 and 1939 large factories, hydroelectric power stations, and huge industrial complexes rose across the Soviet Union. Oil, coal, and steel production grew. Mining expanded and new railroads were built.

Some former peasants did become skilled factory workers or managers. Overall though the standard of living remained low. Many managers concerned only with meeting production quotas turned out large quantities of low quality goods. Wages were low and workers were forbidden to strike.


 * Forced Collectivization in Agriculture**

Stalin also brought agriculture under government control but at a horrendous cost. As you have read under Lenin’s New Economic Plan peasants had help on to small plots of land. Stalin saw that system as being inefficient and a threat to state power. Stalin wanted all peasants to farm on either state-owned farms or collectives, large farms owned and operated by peasants as a group.

Some peasants did not want to give up their own land and sell their crops at the state’s low prices. They resisted collectivization by killing farm animals, destroying tools and burning crops. In 1929 Stalin declared his intention to liquidate the wealthy farmers land and sent them to labor camps. THousands were killed or died from overwork. Even after they did that to the wealthy farmers peasants resisted by growing just enough to feed themselves. In response the government seized all of their grain to meet industrial goals, purposely leaving the peasants to starve. In 1932, this ruthless policy combined with poor harvests led to a terrible famine. The famine caused between five and eight million people to die of starvation in the Ukraine alone. During the 1930’s grain production inched upward, but meat, vegetables and fruits remained in short supply. Feeding the population would remain a major problem in the Soviet Union.


 * Stalin’s Terror Tactics**

Stalin tightened his grasp on every aspect of Soviet life even stamping out any signs of dissent within the Communist elites.


 * Terror as a Weapon**

He perpetrated crimes against humanity and systematically violated his people’s individual rights. Police spies did not hesitate to open private letters or plant listening devices. There was no free press and no safe method of voicing protest. Grumblers or critics were rounded up and sent to the Gulag, a system of brutal labor camps where many died.


 * The Great Purge**

In 1934, Stalin launched the Great Purge. During this reign of terror Stalin and his secret police cracked down especially on Old Bolsheviks or party activists from the early days of revolution. His net soon widened to target army heroes, industrial managers, writers, and ordinary citizens.

Between 1936 and 1938, Stalin staged a series of spectacular public “show trials” in Moscow. Communist leaders confessed to all kinds of crimes after officials tortured them or threatened their families or friends. Secret police files reveal that at least four million people were purged during the Stalin years.


 * Results of the Purge**

All soviet citizens were now well aware of the consequences of disloyalty. However, Stalin’s government also paid a price. Among the purged were experts in industry, economics, and engineering many of the Soviet Union’s most talented writers and thinkers. The victims included most of the nation’s military leaders and about half of its military officers a loss that would weigh heavily on Stalin in 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.


 * Communist Attempts to Control Thought**

At the same time he was purging and elements of resistance in Soviet society, Stalin also sought to control the hearts and minds of Soviet citizens.


 * Propaganda**

Stalin tried to boost morale and faith in the communist system by making himself a godlike figure. He used propaganda as a tool to build up a “cult of personality” around himself. Using modern technology, the party bombarded the public with relentless propaganda. Radios and loudspeakers blared into factories and villages.


 * Censorship and the Arts**

At first, the Bolshevik Revolution had meant greater freedom for Soviet artist and writers. Under Stalin, however, the heavy hand of state control also gripped the arts. The government controlled what books were published, what music was heard, and witch works in a life style called socialism realism. In theory, socialist realism followed in the footstep of Russian greats Tolstoy and Chekhov; in practice it was rarely allowed to be realistic. Popular themes for socialist-realist visual artist were peasants, workers, heros of the revolution, and of course Stalin. If they refused to conform to government expectations, writers, artists, and composers faced government persecution.


 * Russification**

Yet another way Stalin controlled the cultural life of the Soviet Union was by promoting a policy of russification, or making a nationality’s culture more Russian. By 1936 U.S.S.R was made up of 11 Soviet Socialist Republics. The other SSRs, such as Uzbek and the Ukraine, were the homelands of other nationalities and had their own languages, historical traditions, and cultures. At first Stalin encouraged the autonomy, or independence, of these cultures. However, in the late 1920’s, Stalin turned this policy on its head and systematically tried to make the cultures of the non-Russian SSRs more Russian.


 * War on Religion**

The Communist party also tried to strengthen its hold on the minds of the people by destroying their religious faith. In accordance with the ideas of Marx atheism, or the belief that there is no god, became an official state policy. The communist tried to replace religion with their own ideology. Like a religion, communist ideology had its own “sacred” texts the writings of Marx and Lenin and its own shrines such as the tomb of Lenin.


 * Soviet Society Under Stalin**

The terror and cultural coercion of Stalin’s rule made a mockery of the original theories and promises of communism. The lives of most Russians have changed.


 * The New Elite Takes Control**

The communists destroyed the old social order of landowning nobles at the top and peasants at the bottom. But instead of creating a society of equals as they promised, they created a society where a few elite groups emerged as a new ruling class. The Soviet elite also included industrial managers, military leaders, scientist, and some artists and writers. The elite enjoyed benefits denied to most people.


 * Benefits and Drawbacks**

Although excluded from party membership, most people did enjoy several new benefits. The party required all children to attend free Communist- built schools. The state supported technical schools and universities as well. Schools served many important goals. The communist party also set up programs for students outside of school. These programs included sports, cultural activities, and political classes to train teenagers for the party membership. The classes also taught communist values, such atheism, the glory of collective farming, and love of Stalin. The state also provided free medical care, day care for children, inexpensive housing, and public recreation. Many people still lacked vital recreation. The state built massive apartments and still had families packed in single rooms. Bread was plentiful, but meat, fresh fruit, and other food remained in short supply.


 * Women in the Soviet Union**

Long before 1917, women such as Nadezhda Krupskaya and Alexandra Kollontai worked for the revolution, spreading radical ideas among peasants and workers. Under the Communists, women won equality under the law. They gained access to education and a wide range of jobs. By 1930’s, many Soviet women were working in medicine, engineering, or sciences. Within the family, their wages were needed because men and women earned the same low salaries.


 * Soviet Foreign Policy**

Between 1917 and 1939, the Soviet Union pursued two very different goals in foreign policy. As Communists, both Lenin and Stalin wanted to bring worldwide revolution that Marx had predicted. In 1919, Lenin formed the Communist International, or Comintern. The purpose was of the Comintern was to encourage world-wide revolution. To this end, it aided revolutionary groups around the world and urged colonial peoples to rise up against imperialism powers. In the United States, fear of Bolshevik plots led to the “Red Scare” in the early 1920’s. Britain broke off relations with the Soviet Union when evidence revealed Soviet schemes to turn a 1926 strike into a revolution. The Soviet Union also won recognition from the Western powers and increased trade with capitalist countries. It also joined the League of Nations.


 * Looking Ahead**

By the time Stalin died in 1953, the Soviet Union had become a military superpower and a world leader in heavy industry. The Soviet people were dominated by a totalitarian system based on terror.


 * //Ch. 28 Sec 5//**

**Hitler and the Rise if Nazi Germany** IN November, 1923, a german army veteran and leader of an extremist party, Hitler, tired to follow Mussolini’s examples by staging a small scale coup in Munich. The coup failed, and Hitler was soon behind bars, but he proved to be a ignored, IN the next decade he made a new bid for power. This time, he succeeded by legal means. Hitler’s rise to power raises disturbing question that we we still debate today.

**The Weimar Republic’s Rise and Fall** As WW1 drew closer to end germany tottered on the brink of chaos. Moderate leader signed the armistice and later, under protest, the Versailles treaty. IN 1919 Germany leaders drafted a constitution in the city of weimar. It created a democratic government know as the Weimar republic. The constitution set up a parliamentary system lead by a chancellor or a prime minister.

**Political Struggles** The republican faced severe problems from the start. Politically, it was weak because Germany, like France, had many small parties. The government lead by democratic socialist, cam under contest fire form the right and the left. Communists demanded huge changes likes those that Lenin had brought to Russia. The lunged for another strong leader like Bismarck. Germanys of all classes blamed the weimar for the republic for the treaty.

**Runaway Inflation** Economic disaster fed unrest. In 1923, when germany fell behind in reparations payments, France occupied the coal rich Ruhr valley roor. Germans worker in the ruhr protested using passive resisting and they refused to work. To support the worker the government continued to give them money. The prices of goods and everything went up pretty high. Inflation soon went our of control spreading misery and despair. The germans mark became almost worthless. Prices when up drastically.

**Recovery and collapse** With help from the western powers, the government did bring inflation under control. In 1924 the US gained British and French approval for a plane to reduce german reparations payments.

**Weimar Culture** Culture flourished in the Weimar republic even as the government struggled through crisis and after crustiest. The german play wright Bartlett Brett Sharply criticized mid class values with the three penny Opera. The artist george gross, through scathing drawings and paintings, blasted the failings of the gross republic. **The Nazi party’s rise to power** Hitler was born in Austria in 1889. When he was 18 he went to Vienna then the capital of the Hapsburd empire. German Austrians made up one of the many ethnic groups in Vienna. When Hitler was liven in vienna he developed the fanatical anti semitism or the prejudiced against guessed people that later played a major role in his rise to power. Hitler went to Germany and fought in the germany army during world war one. He joined a small group if right wing extremists in 1919. With in a year he was the unquestioned leader of the national socialist german workers or Nazi party’s. Hitler organized his supporters into fighting squads, Nazi storm troopers fought in the streets against there political armies.

**Hitlers Manifesto** In 1923 hitler made a failed attempt to size power in Munich. He was arrested and found guilty of treason. While he was in prison hitler wrote Mein Kampf. It would letter become the basic book of Nazis. Hitler’s ideas were rooted in a long tradition of anti Semitism. Christians procoquited jews for different belief. The rise of nationalist in the 1800’s caused people to identify jews as ethnic outsiders. Hitler viewed the jews not as members of a religion but as aseparate race. He identified a jew as any one with one jewish grandparent. Hitler urged Germans every were to knight into one great nation. He said Germany must expand to gain Lebensraum, or living space for its people. Germany needed a strong leader, or Furrier to achieve it greatness. Hitler was determined to become that leader.

**Hitler comes to power** Less then a year later Hitler was released from prison. He soon reined his table thumping speeches. The great depression played into Hitlers hands. As unemployment rose Nazi memberships grew to almost a million. Hitlers program appealed to veterans, workers, the lower middle class, small town Garments, and business people. Hitler promised to end reparations, create jobs, and defy the Versailles treaty by rearming Germany. With the government paralyzed by divisions both Nazi and communist one more seats in the Reich stage, or the lower house of the legislature. Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933 through legal means under the weimar. With in a year Hitler was the dictator of Germany. Hitler purged his own party’s brutally exacting Nazis he felt were disloyal.

**Nazi Youth** Hitler wanted to builded the future so he taught young germans to destroy there enemies with out Mercy. In camps and on hikes the Hitler youth plaged absolute loyalty to germany and undertook physical fitness programs to prepare for war. School courses and text books were rewritten to reflect Nazi racial views. Nazis thought it was okay to limit women's roles. women were dismissed from upper level jobs and turned away from universities. Nazis offered “pure blooded aryan” women rewards for having more children. Even as how factory workers were needed Hitlers goal was still to keep them away at home.

**Purging Germany culture** The Nazis thought to purify german culture. They condemned jazz because of its African roots. Hitler disposed Christianity as week and flappy. They closed Catholic schools and muzzled the Catholic clergy.

**Authoritarian Rule in Eastern Europe** Like, Germany most of the new nations in Eastern Europe slid from Democratic to authoritarian rule in the postwar era. IN 1919 about dozen countries were craved out of the old Russian, Austro Hungarian, Ottoman and the German empires. They faced the sam common problems even thought they were different in many ways. They were small countries whos rural agricultural economic inequalites separated poor pheasants from wealthy landlords. This region was hit hard by the Great Depression.

**Ethnic Conflict** Old rivalries between ethic and religious groups created severe tensions. In Poland, Hungary, and Romania, conflict flared among various ethic groups.

=WWII= **//Ch. 29 Sec. 2//**


 * The Axis Advances**

Western democracies had hoped that appeasement would help establish a peace world order. But Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and imperial Japan plunged ahead with their plans for conquest.

**The Axis Attacks**

On September 1, 1939, Nazi forces stormed into Poland revealing the enormous power of Hitler’s blitzkrieg or “lightning war.” First the Luftwaffe, or German air force, bombed airfields, factories, towns, and cities, and screaming dive bombers fired on troops and civilians. Then, fast-moving tanks and troop transports pushed their way into the defending Polish army, encircling whole divisions of troops and forcing them to surrender.

While Germany attacked from the west, Stalin’s forces invaded from the east, grabbing lands promised to them under the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Because of Poland’s location and the speed of the attacks, Britain and France could do nothing to help beyond declaring war on Germany.

Stalin’s armies forced the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to host bases for the Soviet military. Soviet forces also seized part of Finland.

**The Miracle of Dunkirk**

During that first winter the French hunkered down behind the Maginot Line. Then in April 1940 Hitler launched a blitzkrieg against Norway and Denmark, both of which soon fell. Next his forces slammed into the Netherlands and Belgium.

In May German forces surprised the French and British by attacking through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium, an area that was considered invasion proof. Bypassing the Maginot Line German troops poured into France. Retreating British troops were soon trapped between the Nazi army and the English Channel. In a desperate gamble the British sent all available naval vessels, merchant ships, and even fishing and pleasure boats across the channel to puck stranded troops off the beach of Dunkirk. Despite German air attacks, the improvised armada ferriedmore than 300,000 troops to safety in Britain.

**France Falls**

German forces headed south toward Paris. Italy declared war on France and attacked from the south. On June 22, 1940, Hitler forced the French to sign the surrender documents in the same railroad car in which Germany had signed the armistice ending WWI. Following the surrender Germany occupied northern France.

Some French officers escaped to England and set up a government-in-exile. Led by Charles de Gaulle these “Free French” worked to liberate their homeland.

**Operation Sea Lion**

With the fall of France, Britain stood alone in Western Europe. Hitler was sure that the British would sue for peace. But Winston Churchill who had replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister had other plans. Faced with his defiance Hitler made plans for Operation Sea Lion-the invasion of Britain.

Beginning in August 1940, German bombers began a daily bombardment of England’s southern coast. For a month Britain’s Royal Air Force valiantly battled the Luftwaffe. Then the Germans changed their tactics. Instead of bombing military targets in the south they began to bomb London and other cities. **Germany Launches the Blitz**

German bombers first appeared over London late on September 7, 1940. The bombing continued for 57 nights in a row and then sporadically until the next May. Much of London was destroyed and thousands of people lost their lives. London did not break under the blitz. Citizens continued their daily lives seeking protection in shelters and then emerging to resume their routines when the all-clear sounded.

**Hitler Fails to Take Britain**

German planes continued to bomb London and other cities off and on until May 1941. But contrary to Hitler’s hopes the Luftwaffe could not gain air superiority over Britain and British morale was not destroyed. Operation Sea Lion was a failure.

**Africa and the Balkans**

Axis armies also pushed into North Africa and Balkans. In September 1940, Mussolini ordered forces from Italy’s North African colony of Libya into Egypt. When the British army repulsed these invaders Hitler sent one of his most brilliant commanders General Erwin Rommel to North Africa. The “Desert Fox” as he was called chalked up a string of successes in 1941 and 1942.

In October 1940, Italian forces invaded Greece. They encountered stiff resistance and in 1941 German troops once again provided reinforcements. Both Greece and Yugoslavia were added to the growing Axis empire. Meanwhile, both Bulgaria and Hungary had joined the Axis Alliance. By 1941, the Axis powers or their allies controlled most of Europe.

**Germany Invades the Soviet Union**

After the failure in Britain, Hitler turned his military might to a new target-the Soviet Union. The decision to invade the Soviet Union helped relieve Britain. It also proved to be one of Hitler’s costliest mistakes.

**An Unstoppable German Army Stalls**

In June 1941, Hitler nullified the Nazi-Soviet Pact by invading the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, a plan which took its name from the medieval Germanic leader Frederick Barbarossa. “If I had the Ural Mountains with their incalculable store of treasures in raw materials,” Hitler declared, “Siberia with its vast forests and the Ukraine with its tremendous wheat fields, Germany under National Socialist leadership would swim in plenty.”

About three million German soldiers invaded the Soviet Union. The Germans caught Stalin unprepared. His army was still suffering from the purges that had wiped out many of its top officers.

The Soviets lost two and a half million soldiers trying to fend off the invaders. As they were forced back, Soviet troops destroyed factories and farm equipment and burned crops to keep them out of enemy hands. By autumn, the Nazis had smashed deep into the Soviet Union and were poised to take Moscow and Leningrad.

There however the German advance stalled. Hitler’s forces were not prepared for the fury of “General Winter.” By early December temperatures plunged to -40 degrees fahrenheit. Thousands of German soldiers froze to death.

**Germany’s Siege of Leningrad**

In September 1941, the two-and-a-half-year siege of Leningrad began. Although more than a million Leningraders died during the siege, the city did not fall to the Germans. Hoping to gain some relief for his exhausted people, Stalin urged Britain to open a second front in Western Europe. Although Churchill could not offer much real help, the two powers did agree to work together.

**Life Under Nazi and Japanese Occupation**

While Nazi forces rampaged across Europe, the Japanese military conquered an empire in Asia and the Pacific. Each set out to build a “new order” in the occupied lands.


 * Hitler’s New Order**

Hitler’s new order grew out of his racial obsessions. As his forces conquered most of Europe, Hitler set up puppet governments in Western European countries that were peopled by Aryans, or light skinned Europeans whom hItler and his followers believed to be a “master race.” The Slavs of Eastern Europe were considered to be an inferior “race.”

To the Nazis, occupied lands were an economic resource to be plundered and looted. The Nazis systematically stripped conquered nations of their works of art, factories, and other resources. To counter resistance movements that emerged in occupied countries, the Nazis took savage revenge, shooting hostages and torturing prisoners. But the Nazi’s most sinister plans centered on the people of the occupied countries. During the 1930’s the Nazi’s had sent thousands of Jewish people and political opponents to concentration camps, detention centers for civilians considered enemies of the state. Over the course of the war the Nazis forced these people, along with millions of Polish and Soviet Slavs and people from other parts of the Europe, to work as slave laborers.

**The Nazis Commit Genocide**

At the same time, Hitler pursued a victorious program to kill all people he judged “racially inferior” particularly Europe’s Jews. The Nazis also targeted other groups who did not meet the Aryan racial ideal including Slavs, Romas, homosexuals, and the disabled. Political and religious leaders who spoke out against Nazism also suffered abuse. Starting in 1939 the Nazis forced Jews in Poland and other countries to live in ghettos, or sections of cities where Jewish people were confined. By 1941, however German leaders had devised plans for the “Final Solution of the Jewish problem” the Genocide of all European Jews.

To accomplish this goal, Hitler had six special “death camps” built in Poland. The Nazis shipped “undesirables” from all over occupied Europe to the camps. There Nazi engineers designed the most efficient means of killing millions of men, women, and children.

As the prisoners reached the camps, they were stripped of their clothes and valuables. Their heads were shaved. Guards separated men from women and children fro their parents. The young, elderly, and sick were targeted for immediate killing. By 1945, the Nazis had massacred some six million Jews in what became known as the Holocaust.

In July 1942, the NAzis began sending Polish Jews form the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka death camp at a rate of about 5,000 per day. In the spring of 1943, knowing that their situation was hopeless, the Jews took over the ghetto and used a small collection of guns and homemade bombs to damage the Nazi forced as much as possible. On May 16, the Nazis regained control of the ghetto and eliminated the remaining Warsaw Jews.

Many people pretended no to notice what was happening. Some even became collaborators and cooperated with the Nazis. In France, the Vichy government helped ship thousands of Jewish people to their deaths.

**Japan’s Brutal Conquest**

Japanese forces took control across Asia and the Pacific. Their self-proclaimed mission was to help Asians escape Western colonial rule.The Japanese invaders treatd the Chinese, Filipinos, Malaysians, and other conquered people with great brutality, killing and torturing civilians throughout East and Southeast Asia. Whatever welcome the Japanese had first met as “liberators” was soon turned to hatred. In the Philippines, Indochina, and elsewhere, nationalists groups waged guerrilla warfare against the Japanese invaders.

**Japan Attacks the United States**

When the war began in 1939, the United States declared its neutrality. Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked for ways around the Neutrality Acts to provide warships and other aid to Britain as it stood alone against Hitler.

**American Involvement Grows**

In March 1941, FDR persuaded Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Act. It allowed him to sell or lend war materials to “any country whose defense th President deems vital to the defense of the United States.” The United States said Roosevelt wouldn’t be drawn into the war, but it would become “the arsenal of democracy,” supplying arms to those who were fighting for freedom.

To show further support Roosevelt met secretly with Churchill on a warship in the Atlantic in August 1941. The two leaders issued the Atlantic Charter which set goals for the war-”the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny”- and for the postwar world.

**Japan and the United States Face Off**

When war broke out in Europe in 1939, the Japanese saw a chance to grab European possessions in Southeast Asia. In 1940, Japan advanced into French Indochina and Dutch East Indies.To stop Japanese aggression the United States banned the sale of war materials such as iron, steel, and oil to Japan. Japan and the United States held talks to ease the growing tension.

With talks at a standstill General Tojo ordered a surprise attack. Early on December 7, 1941, Japanese airplanes bombed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The attack took the lives of about 2,400 people and destroyed battleships and aircraft. The nest day a grim faced President Roosevelt told the nation that December 7 was “was a date which will live in infamy.” He asked Congress to declare war on Japan. On December 11, Germany and Italy, as Japan’s allies, declared war on the United States.
 * Attack on Pearl Harbor**

**Japanese Victories**

In the long run the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would be as serious a mistake as Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The Japanese captured the Philippines and other islands held by the United States. They overran the British colonies of Hong Kong, Burma, and Malaya and advanced deeper in the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina.

**//Ch. 29 Sec. 4//**

**Victory in Europe and the Pacific** In early spring of 1945, the war was coming to it’s end and all of the allies focused there attention on winning the war in the Pacific.There were still many bloody battles ahead.

**Nazis Defeated** In March 1945, the Lies had crossed the Rhinr into western germanys. From the east, Soviettroops closed in on Berlin, In late April, American and Russians soldiers met and shook hands at the Elbe river. Hilter committed suicide in his under ground bunker when Soviet troops fought there way into Berlin. On May 7, Germany surrendered. The next day May 8 the war officially ended, which is called V-E day. The allies were able to defeat the Axis powers in Europe for a number of reasons. Because of the location of Germany and it’s allies, they had to fight on several fronts simultaneously. Hitler, who took almost complete control over military decisions, they made some bad ones. He underestimated the ability of the Soviet Union to fight his armies. The enormous productive capacity of the United States was another on of the factors. By 1944, the United States was producing twice as much as the Axis powers combined. Mean while Allied bombing hindered German production. Oil became so scarce because of bombing that the Luftwaffe was almost grounded bt the time of the D-Day invasion. With Victory in Europe achieved, the allies now had to triumph over Japan in the Pacific.

**Struggle for the Pacific** Until the 1942 the Japanese had won an uninterrupted series of victories. They controlled much of the South east Asia and many Pacific islands. By may 1942, the japanese had gained control of the Philippines, killing several hundred American soldiers and as many as 10,000 Filipino soldiers during the 65 mile Bataan Death March. One survivor described the ordeal as a macabre litany, corpses, and wholesale brutality that numbs the memory. Many Filipino civilians risked and sometimes lost their lives to give food and water to captives on the march. After the battles of MIdway and the Coral Sea, however, the United States took the offensive. That summer, United States Marines landed at Guadalcanal in the Solomon islands. Victory Guadalcanal marked the beginning of an “island hopping” campaign. The goal of the campaign was to recapture some Japanese held islands while bypassing other. The captures islands served as stepping stones to the next objective. In this way, AMerican forces, led by General Douglas MacArthur, gradually moved north towards Japan. By 1944 the United States Navy, commanded by Admiral Chester Nimitz, was blockading Japan, and American bombers pounded Japanese cities and industries. In October 1944, MacArthur began the fight to retake the PHilippines. The British, meanwhile, were pushing Japanese forces back into the jungles of Burma and Malaya.

**Defeat for Japan**

With the war in Europe won, the Allies poured their resources into defeating Japan. By mid 1945 most of the Japanese navy and air force had been destroyed. Yet the Japanese still had an army of 2 million men. The road to victory, it appeared, would be long and costly.

**Invasion of the Bomb** In bloody battles on the island of Iwo Jima from February to March 1945 and Okinawa from April to July 1945, the Japanese had shown that they would fight to the death rather than surrender. Beginning in 1944, some young Japanese men chose to become Kamikaze pilots who undertook suicide missions crashing their explosive laden airplanes into American warships. While allies military leaders planned for invasions, scientist offered another way to end the war. Scientists understood that by splitting the atom, they could create and explosion far more powerful than any yet know. In 1945 they first successfully tested the first atomic bomb at Alsmogordo, New Mexico. News of this test was brought to the new American president, Harry Truman. had taken office after Franklin Roosevelt died unexpectedly on April 12. He realized that the atomic bomb was a terrible new forces for destruction. Still, after consulting with his advisors, and determining that it would save american lives, he decided to use the new weapon against Japan. At the time, Truman was meeting with other allied leaders in the city of Potsdam.

**The end Of World War Two** Evan as the allies celebrated victory, the appealing costs of the war began to emerge. The war had killed as many as 50 million people around the world, in Europe alone was just 30 million there. The soviet Union suffered the worst causalities with over 20 million dead.

**The war’s Aftermath** “Give me ten years and you will not be able to recognize Germany” said Hitler in 1933. And the then by 1945 Germany was all messed up. Parts of poland and the soviet Union, Japan, china and other countries also lay in ruins, total war had gutted cities and also factory’s, harbors, bridges, railroads, farms, and homes. Then after the fight ended diseases and other illnesses took over and wiped a lot more out.

**Horrors Of The Holocaust** Numbers alone did not tell the story of the Nazi nightmare in Europe or the japanese brutality in Asia. During the war, the Allies were aware of the existence of Nazi concentration camps and death camps. But only at war’s end did they learn the full extent of the inhumanity of the camps, was stunned to come face to face with indisputable evidence.

**War Crimes Trials** At wartime meetings, the Allies had agreed that Axis leaders should be tried for “crimes against humanity”. In Germany the Allies held war crimes trials in Nuremberg, where Hitler had staged mass rallies in the 1930’s. Nearly 200 Germans and Austrians were tried, and most were found guilty. Many of those that were caught for war crimes were never brought to trial.

**Occupying Allies** The war crimes trials further discredited the totalization ideologies that had led to the war. Yet disturbing questions remain. Why had ordinary people in Germany, Poland, France, and elsewhere accepted and even collaborated in Hitler’s “Final Solution”. The Untied Sates felt that strengthening democracy would ensure tolerance and peace. In Japan the occupying forces under General Mac-Arthur helped Japanese politicians to create a new constitution.

**Establishing The Untied Sates** In April 1945, delegated from 50 nations convened in San Francisco to draft a charter for the United Nations. Under the UN Charter, each of the member nations has one vote in the General Assembly. A much smaller body called the security council has greater power. Each of its five permanent members the Untied States, the soviet Union, Britain, France and china has the right to veto any council decision. The goal was to give these great powers the authority to ensure the peace. Differences among the nation on the Security council, most notably the United States. The UN work would go far beyond peacekeeping, the organization would take on many world problems from preventing the outbreak of nations to develop economically.

**The Alliances Breaks Apart** Amid the rubble of war a new power structure emerged. In Europe germany was defeated. France and Britain were exhausted two powers the United States and the soviet Union, emerged as the new world leaders.

**Differences Grow Between The Allies** During the war, the Soviet Union and the nations of the west had cooperated to defeat Nazi Germany. After the war ends the Allies set up councils made up ministers from Britain, France, China the United States conferences during the war. Germany and the nature of the government of eastern europe ideologies and mutual distrust soon led to the conflict known as the cold war. The Cold war was a state of tension and hostility between nations aligned with the United States on one side and the Soviet Union on the other.

**The Cold War Begins** Stalin had two goals in Eastern Europe. First he wanted to spread communism in the area. Second he wanted to create a buffer zone of friendly governments as a defense against Germany, which had invaded Russia during World War one and again in 1941. As the red army had pushed German forces out of Eastern Europe it had left behind occupying forces. The soviet Union dictator pointed out that the United States was not consulting the Soviet Union about peace terms for Italy Japan, both of which were defeated and occupied by American and British troops. Roosevelt and Churchill rejected Stalin’s view, making him promise “free elections” in Eastern Europe. By 1948 pro Soviet communist governments were in place through out Eastern Europe.

**New Conflicts** Stalin so showed his aggressive intensions outside of Eastern Europe. In greece, Stalin backed communist rebels who were fighting to overturn a right wing monarchy supported by Britain.

**The Truman Doctrine** Truman took action. On march 12, 1947, Truman outlined a new policy to Congress. “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure” The Truman doctrine would guide the United States for decades. It made clear that Americans would resist Soviet expansion in Europe or elsewhere in the world.

**The Marshall Plan** Postwar hunger and poverty made western Europe lands fertile ground for communist ideas. To strengthen democratic governments, the United States offered a massive aid package, called the Marshall Plan. President Truman also offered aid to the Soviet Union and its satellites or dependent states, in Eastern European countries to accept American aid.

**Germany Stays Divided** Defeated Germany became another focus of the Cold War. The Soviet Union took reparations for its massive war losses by dismantling and moving factories and other resources in its occupation zone to help rebuild the Soviet Union. France, Britain and the United States also took some reparations out of there portions of Germany. Then they extended the Marshall plan to western Germany. The Soviets were furious at western moves to rebuild the German economy and deny them further reparations. Germany though became a divided nation. In West Germany, the democratic nations allowed the people to write their own constitution and regain self government.

**The Berlin Airlift** Stalin’s resentment at Western moves to rebuild Germany triggered a crisis over Berlin. Even though it lay deep within the Soviet zone, the former German capital was occupied by all four victorious Allies. In june 1948 stalin tried to force the western allies out of Berlin by sealing off every railroad and highway into the Western sectors round the clock airlift.

**Opposing Alliances** Tensions continued to grow. In 1949, the United States, Canada and ten other countries formed a new military alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Members pledged to help one another if any one of them were attacked. In 1955,m the soviet union responded by forming its own military alliance the Warsaw Pact. It included the soviet union and seven satellites in Eastern Europe. Unlike NATO, however, the Warsaw pact was often invoked by the Soviets to keep its satellites in order.

**The Propaganda War** Both sides participated in a propaganda war. The United States spoke of defending capitalism and democracy against communism and totalitarianism. The soviet Union claimed the moral high ground in the struggle against Western Imperialism. Yet linked those stands, both sides sought world power.

Era 7 Europe Before WWI WWI End and Consequences of WWI Making The Peace Inter War Years
 * Links to other pages**