Joseph Stalin
While the U.S. was looking internally and creating civil service type work for the unemployed, other nations throughout the world were gripping with the Great Depression. In Russia, Vladimir Lenin was replaced by Joseph Stalin who named himself the communist dictator of Russia. Stalin set out a plan of ruthless warfare against anyone in Russia that was against the communist party or had managed to acquire land or wealth. He took all of the land in Russia and proclaimed it as property of the government. In the process, he killed millions of people that were suspected to be un-loyal to him or the communists.
Benito Mussolini
In Italy, it was fascism, a radical form of totalitarianism in which the dictator uses propaganda and force to seize all control of social and governmental life. Led by Benito Mussolini, the dictator took control of the economy, the armed forces, the press, legal and educational systems. Mussolini surrounded himself with fascist party guards called black shirts that would attack anyone the dictator ordered. He created a secret police to root out anyone who opposed him.
Adolf Hitler
Germany after WWI suffered under the sanctions created by the Treaty of Versailles. Many were bitter and believed that German Jews had sold the army out by surrendering. A young charismatic speaker began to make speeches that outlined why Germany had suffered and what it must do become a world power again as it had been in the 1800s. Adolf Hitler was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi party for short. In 1933 Hitler was elected as chancellor of Germany and set about his eventual Nazi takeover. Through a political and terroristic armed campaign he was able to become the dictator of Germany and declare himself, Fuhrer, taking over control of every aspect of German government and military matters. Like Mussolini, Hitler created a secret police that he called the Gestapo, and a special organization that acted as his "storm troopers," called the Brown Shirts.
In Japan, a group of militaristic aristocrats were able to get the attention of the Japanese emperor and convince him that the time was right to expand the Japanese empire in the Pacific Ocean. In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, a country that bordered China. In 1937 Japan invaded China and began a systematic terror campaign that resulted in millions of Chinese citizens murdered.
In 1937, Japan joined Germany and Italy in a establishing an alliance called the Axis Alliance. Hitler and Mussolini sought to create a new world order in Europe, while Japan vied to do the same in the Pacific.
War in Europe Erupts
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In 1939, Germany invaded Poland followed in 1940 by the invasion of Belgium, Denmark, Norway, and France. Using what Hitler called, Blitzkrieg, or lightening war, Hitlers tanks and men quickly invaded, destroying everything in their path. British and French forces tried to stop the German Army but were pushed back to the coast of the English Channel Dunkirk, where they barely succeeded in evacuating their forces. By the summer of 1940 Hitler controlled almost all of Western Europe.
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Meanwhile in the U.S. President Roosevelt watched with concern as Hitler rolled through France. While not ready to commit troops yet, he began the process of mobilization by activating the National Guard and approving a draft of military service to fill the ranks to larger numbers. Another step Roosevelt took in order to prepare for the coming war was to create the Manhattan Project. The famous physicist, Albert Einstein, a Jewish American refugee from Nazism, warned the government that Germany was working on an atomic bomb. Roosevelt created a study group to look into the creation of an atomic bomb for the U.S., called the Manhattan Project, it employed 200,000 employees, including Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led a team scientists at secret facilities in the U.S.
Germany Invades Russia, June 1941
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In 1941, Hitler controlled almost all of Europe, but his ambitions would not let him stop. On June 22, 1941, Hitler violated a secret truce he had with Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin, that he would not attack Russia. Called Operation Barbarossa, it was a large scale invasion of Russia. Hitler had planned all along to violate the agreement because he had a large hatred for communism. Hitler hurled 3 million troops into Russia marking a defining moment in the war, Germany would be fighting a two front war, again, as it had in WWI. All through the summer of 1941 Russian troops retreated under the German advance. By the winter of 1941/1942, the German advanced had stalled on the Volga River at Stalingrad. Things began to unravel from that time on for the German army in Russia. Not prepared for a brutal Russian winter (similar to Napoleon's troops in 1812), the Germans were eventually worn down until over 300,000 soldiers surrendered to the Russians at the battle of Stalingrad.
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The Storm Develops in the Pacific
Hideki Tojo
As the Japanese continued to invade the mainland of China and the surrounding areas, the U.S. became very concerned for its interests and those of its allies France and Britain. In a move to protest the Japanese invasion of French controlled Indochina (Vietnam today), Congress passed the Export Control Act of July 2, 1940, which authorized the president to restrict the export of military supplies and other strategic materials (mainly oil) to Japan. Three weeks later the president froze all Japanese assets in the U.S. and stopped ALL oil from being shipped to Japan (the U.S. was Japan's biggest source for oil). In October of 1941, the new Japanese prime minister, Hideki Tojo, believed that war was inevitable with the U.S. Japan began to prepare for secret attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor, HI. In November, in a last ditch effort to get the U.S. to lift the oil embargo, President Roosevelt said that he would if Japan withdrew from China.
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During the early morning hours of December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, where the U.S. Pacific fleet lay in anchor. All eight battleships were sunk or badly damaged, 11 other ships were destroyed or damaged, and 180 airplanes were destroyed. The attack which lasted almost two hours killed 2,400 Americans. The Japanese also attacked American bases in the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island. Luckily the U.S. fleets aircraft carriers were not at Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack. The Japanese admiral who planned the attack at Pearl Harbor, Hirohito Yamamoto, said that, "I fear that we have only succeeded in awakening a sleeping tiger." On December 8, President Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war, which it agreed to. Three days later Italy and Germany declared war on the U.S. For the U.S., WWII had begun.
Women in the War
Rosie the Riveter
Realizing the scope and size the war would be, the U.S. looked to women to help fill the ranks in the military. 350,000 women served in the Women's Army Corps (WAC), the WAVES (the Navy version of WAC), the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, and Army Air Force (back then the air force was under army control). With men going enlisting in the ranks of the military, women stepped up to work in war industry related jobs, nearly eight million women worked in war related factories during WWII. The government launched the "Rosie the Riveter" campaign to attract women to work while men went off to war.
In the beginning of the war, black soldiers and sailors were excluded from combat units, but in 1944 when it became evident that it needed more fighting men, the military service branches began to change its policy. Soon army combat units made up of black soldiers were fighting across Europe and the Pacific. In Tuskegee, Alabama, 600 black recruits trained to combat pilots, called the Tuskegee Airmen, they flew over 15,000 missions, and their successful military service during WWII spurred military and civilian leaders to desegregate the armed forces after the war.
Japanese-American Internment
The nature of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor made many in the U.S. to suspect the loyalties of Japanese Americans that lived in the U.S. In what is probably one of the largest violations of civil liberties in American history, 120,000 Japanese Americans (called nisei, pronounced knee - see) were forcibly removed from their homes and communities and moved into ten Japanese Internment Camps, or "war relocation camps." They could only bring with them what they could carry. They lost their property and and their liberty. Few if any of the Japanese Americans that were imprisoned were ever disloyal to the U.S. Ironically, 39,000 Japanese Americans fought in the U.S. military during WWII, one unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, went on to become the most decorated unit of WWII.
The Fighting Begins
North Africa
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill knew that a new front had to be opened in order to give some relief to the Russians fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front. While Stalin wanted U.S. and British troops to invade France, Roosevelt knew there was no way the U.S. could mobilize quick enough to undertake such an attack. The Germans were well entrenched in France and the U.S. needed time to train and equip its army. Roosevelt and Churchill decided to settle on an invasion in North Africa, which had been taken over by Italian and then German forces in 1942. On November 8, 1942, British and American forces landed in Morocco and Algeria in North Africa, codenamed Operation Torch. The men were led by a then unknown general named Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower would later go up the ranks after success in North Africa and Italy and become the supreme Allied commander of all Allied forces in Europe.
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One major problem that Allied commanders worried about was a pack of German submarines, called a "wolfpack." Germans released submarines in small groups to strategically place themselves where the lead submarine would attack the leading ship in a convoy, with the enemy's attention turned to the attacked ship, the rest of the submarines in the wolfpack would attack those ships in the rear, while other U-boats were positioned on the sides to prevent enemy ships from escaping. Eventually later in 1942, U.S. codebreakers were able to break the German U-boat code which meant the end of the submarine threat.
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Sicily and Italy (Italian Campaign)
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After eight months of fighting across North Africa, the Germans retreated all of the way back to Egypt where they crossed the Mediterranean Sea and escaped to Sicily and Italy. On July 10, 1943, 250,000 British and American troops landed on Sicily and began to attack German forces there. On August 17, 1943, the island was in Allied hands and Eisenhower began the planning to invade the Italian mainland. Meanwhile, on July 25, the king of Italy in a bold move, had Benito Mussolini arrested and imprisoned in a castle on a mountain top. The new Italian government offered not only to surrender but to switch sides, this caused Hitler to panic and send more German troops to Italy. Slowly throughout the fall of 1943 until the summer of 1944, American and British troops marched up the Italian mainland fighting battle after battle. On June 4, 1944, the Italian capital city of Rome fell to American troops. It would take almost another year for American and British troops to push out the remaining Germans from Italy.
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The Normandy Invasion
In early 1944, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower decided that America was finally prepared for the invasion of France and the conquering of Hitler's Atlantic Wall. The Atlantic Wall was a vast line of concrete bunkers and gun emplacements along the northern French coast. An amphibious attack (an attack that started on sea and ended on land) would be dangerous and costly. Called Operation Overlord, Eisenhower's plan to invade the northern French Coast Normandy called for an all out bombardment by Army Air Corps bombers and large naval guns to soften the defenses. Then, on the night before the infantry would attack the beaches, two division of airborne troops would be dropped a couple miles inland. The next morning when the infantry hit the beaches from the landing craft, the airborne troops were to fight their way to the coast and link up with the infantry. The attack was scheduled for June 6, 1944, and it was labeled, D-Day.
At dawn on June 6, 1944, 5,300 ships carrying 370,000 troops began hitting two beaches assigned to the Americans at Normandy. Utah Beach would be attacked by members of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. Omaha Beach was to be attacked and secured by members of the 29th Infantry Division, a national guard unit out of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the 1st Infantry Division. The Germans originally believed the Americans would attack further to the West, and were surprised when the Americans showed up on the Normandy coastline. German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had assumed the weather made the sea too dangerous to cross and decided to travel home for his wife's birthday, just a few short hours after he had arrived home, he was racing back to the Normandy coastline. Rommel, in charge of all of the German defenses knew that failure meant he would lose his life.
The losses on Omaha Beach were higher than anywhere else along the coast. The 29th Infantry Division suffered heavy casualties, the German machine guns were trained on likely landing sites and it showed. In one battalion, 197 of 205 men were killed or wounded in the first five minutes of fighting. U.S. troops secured the beach inch by inch until nightfall came and they were in control of most of the German defenses. D-Day was over, but fight inland and across France had just begun. The Normandy invasion was a turning point in the war. It took U.S. and British forces seven weeks to control all of Normandy, in July of 1944, American forces broke through the German lines and began the push to take Paris which they did on August 15.
The Last Year of the War in Europe - Fall of 1944 to May 1945.
In 1944, Roosevelt was elected to his fourth term as president, the country did not want to take a chance on a new president that did not have the experience Roosevelt had in dealing with the war. In November and December of 1944, the Americans were only a couple days drive from the western German border, to the East, the Russians were in the same position. On December 16, 1944, in a last ditch effort to defeat the Allied forces just to the west of Germany, German forces attacked in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg. While a set back of a few weeks, Americans were able to break through the German lines when skies cleared up and American planes could attack German positions. The days of the German Reich were numbered.
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February 4 to February 11, 1945, Joseph Stalin hosted a meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta in the Crimea (near Ukraine), called the Yalta Conference, the leaders agreed that when Germany finally lost the war, the Soviets would occupy eastern Germany, and the Americans and British would occupy Western Germany. Berlin which fell in the Soviet zone, would be subject to joint occupation. Stalin wanted control of all the countries east of Germany, Roosevelt gave in to him because he needed Russian support for a new international peacekeeping organization he wanted to create called the United Nations. The Russians agreed to allow eastern European countries to have a free and open elections, a deal he would go back on as soon as the war was over.
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Yalta Conference, 1945
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President Roosevelt would never the see the end of the war though, on April 12, 1945, he complained of a terrible pain in the back of his head and then went into a coma, he died two hours later. The entire country mourned his death, even his critics.
Hitler's Germany kept shrinking and shrinking until Hitler and his staff were trapped in his underground headquarters in Berlin. On April 28, 1945 in a short ceremony, Hitler finally married his long time girlfriend, Eva Braun in his underground bunker. On that same day, Mussolini and his mistress were shot and hung by angry Italians. On April 30, Hitler and Eva committed suicide, their bodies were taken outside and burned to keep the Russians from being able to use it for propaganda. On May 2, Berlin fell and Italy surrendered. On May 7, the remaining German armed forces generals signed an unconditional surrender effective the next day. May 8, 1945 became V-E Day, or Victory in Europe. People celebrated all over the U.S.
Hitler's bunker in Berlin.
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Underground layout of Hitler's bunker.
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The Holocaust
The Nazi's developed the idea of Jews as a race instead of a religious group. Had the Nazi's labeled them as a religious group they could have simply "converted" them, had they been labeled a political group, they could have been kicked out or "reprogrammed," but but by defining them in terms of race, they were led to annihilation.
Hitler took power on January 30, 1933
-April 1, 1933 boycott began on Jewish businesses.
-April 8, 1933 Germans fired from government jobs
-April 30, 1933 number of Jewish teacher reduced to a small number
-May 10, 1933, Nazi party members remove tens of thousands of books from circulation that were written by non-aryans.
-July 14, 1933 Eastern Euro Jews who lived in Germany stripped of citizenship
1934
August 2, Hitler proclaims himself Fuhrer, armed forces now swear allegiance to him
1935
May 31, Jews barred from military service
September 15, Anti-Jewish laws enacted, Jews no longer citizens of Germany, could not marry non-Jews, could not fly German
flag.
November 15, Germany defines a "Jew" as anyone with three Jewish grandparents
1936
March 3, Jewish doctors barred from practicing medicine in Germany
July - Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens
1937
July 15, Buchenwald concentration camp opens
1938
April 26 - Jews must register all of their property with government
August 1 - Germany speeds up Jewish expulsion from the country.
October 5 - Germany marks all Jewish passports with letter "J" and do not allow them to migrate to Switzerland.
October 28 - Polish Jews living in Germany booted out of the country
November 9-10 "Night of Broken Glass," 200 synagogues destroyed, 7,500 Jewish shops looted, 30,000 male Jews sent to
concentration camps.
November 12 - all Jewish businesses are transferred to non-Jewish people.
November 15 - all Jewish children kicked out of schools
December 12 - One Billion Dollars charged to German Jews to fix destruction the Germans caused by looting and burning their
businesses.
1939
October 28 - Polish Jews rounded up and put in neighborhoods
November 23 - Polish Jews forced to wear yellow star or yellow armbands
1940
May 20 - Auschwitz established
November 16 - Warsaw Jewish Ghetto sealed with 500,000 Jews inside.
1941
July 31 - "Final Solution" officially began
September 1 - German Jews must wear yellow star of David patch
September 28-29 - 34,000 Jews massacred in Russia
October - Auschwitz II (also called Birkenau), specifically for killing Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and Russians.
December 8 - Chlmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp began.
1942
March 17 - Extermination begins in Belzec, 600,000 murdered there by end of the year.
May - extermination by gas began in Sobibor killing center, by fall of that year 250,000 murdered
July 22 - Treblinka concentration camp established.
1943
June - all Jews ordered to be murdered
Hitler took power on January 30, 1933
-April 1, 1933 boycott began on Jewish businesses.
-April 8, 1933 Germans fired from government jobs
-April 30, 1933 number of Jewish teacher reduced to a small number
-May 10, 1933, Nazi party members remove tens of thousands of books from circulation that were written by non-aryans.
-July 14, 1933 Eastern Euro Jews who lived in Germany stripped of citizenship
1934
August 2, Hitler proclaims himself Fuhrer, armed forces now swear allegiance to him
1935
May 31, Jews barred from military service
September 15, Anti-Jewish laws enacted, Jews no longer citizens of Germany, could not marry non-Jews, could not fly German
flag.
November 15, Germany defines a "Jew" as anyone with three Jewish grandparents
1936
March 3, Jewish doctors barred from practicing medicine in Germany
July - Sachsenhausen concentration camp opens
1937
July 15, Buchenwald concentration camp opens
1938
April 26 - Jews must register all of their property with government
August 1 - Germany speeds up Jewish expulsion from the country.
October 5 - Germany marks all Jewish passports with letter "J" and do not allow them to migrate to Switzerland.
October 28 - Polish Jews living in Germany booted out of the country
November 9-10 "Night of Broken Glass," 200 synagogues destroyed, 7,500 Jewish shops looted, 30,000 male Jews sent to
concentration camps.
November 12 - all Jewish businesses are transferred to non-Jewish people.
November 15 - all Jewish children kicked out of schools
December 12 - One Billion Dollars charged to German Jews to fix destruction the Germans caused by looting and burning their
businesses.
1939
October 28 - Polish Jews rounded up and put in neighborhoods
November 23 - Polish Jews forced to wear yellow star or yellow armbands
1940
May 20 - Auschwitz established
November 16 - Warsaw Jewish Ghetto sealed with 500,000 Jews inside.
1941
July 31 - "Final Solution" officially began
September 1 - German Jews must wear yellow star of David patch
September 28-29 - 34,000 Jews massacred in Russia
October - Auschwitz II (also called Birkenau), specifically for killing Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and Russians.
December 8 - Chlmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp began.
1942
March 17 - Extermination begins in Belzec, 600,000 murdered there by end of the year.
May - extermination by gas began in Sobibor killing center, by fall of that year 250,000 murdered
July 22 - Treblinka concentration camp established.
1943
June - all Jews ordered to be murdered
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The end of the war revealed the horrific extent of Hitler's "final solution" or Holocaust of the Jews and other ethnic minorities in Europe. Hitler's SS troops had rounded up communists, religious leaders, Jews, homosexuals, gypsy's, the mentally ill, and any other group of people he felt were inferior to his plans of an ethnically German empire. The Holocaust had killed an estimated 9 million people in concentration camps across eastern Europe. Churchill called the crimes committed in the Holocaust the worst ever committed in the history of the world.
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The War in the Pacific
For months after Pearl Harbor, the news from the Pacific was all bad. The Japanese were taking islands that were lightly defended and invading any territory they wanted at will. In April 1942, the Japanese took the American occupied Philippines and with it, they captured 12,000 American soldiers. Already underfed and weak from diseases found in the jungle, the Japanese marched the Americans six days to prisoner of war and labor camps. Called the Bataan Death March, those who fell out on the road were killed, others were beaten and tortured for no reason.
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The first good news to come from the Pacific theater came from the Navy. At the battle of the Coral Sea, May 2-6, 1942, U.S. naval warplanes sank a Japanese aircraft carrier and forced the Japanese navy to retreat. A few weeks later, the main Japanese battle fleet of 86 warships, moved toward Midway Island, the westernmost of Hawaii's inhabited islands. Their plan was to strike Pear Harbor again. Americans managed to break the Japanese code which allowed U.S. Admiral Chester Nimitz, to learn of Japanese admiral Yamamoto's fleet location. The first Japanese attack to hit Midway on June 4, 1942 resulted in the loss of a third of their warplanes. Naval planes from the Yorktown and Enterprise carriers struck at the Japanese crippling the Japanese fleet. The Battle of Midway was the first major defeat for the Japanese navy in 350 years and was a turning point in the war in the Pacific. It stopped the Japanese advance in the Pacific and bought time for the U.S. to prepare to go on the offensive.
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Gen. Douglas MacArthur
In August of 1942, General Douglas MacArthur, the overall commander in the Pacific Theater, landed 16,000 U.S. Marines on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The battle of Guadalcanal ended in an American victory in February 1943 and cost the Japanese 20,000 men killed or wounded, opposed to American killed and wounded at 1,752. It was the first Japanese defeat in the Pacific and stopped any idea of a Japanese invasion of Australia.
U.S. and British forces began a campaign of island hopping in the Pacific. This meant that the Navy would show up, bombard the Japanese defenses, then land U.S. Marines who would take and hold the beaches about a mile inland. The Army would then land and takeover for the Marines and finish taking the island. Engineers would follow up and build American landing strips for airplanes to be able to supply attack on future islands further out. This process was repeated over and over again in the Pacific. In 1944, showing desperation, the Japanese began a new type of attack in order to sink crucial men and supplies aboard Navy ships. At the battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines in October of 1944, the Japanese began kamikaze attacks, or suicide attacks where pilots would fly their bomb loaded airplanes into ships. In less than a year, over 4,000 kamikaze pilots lost their lives in suicide attacks. One in seven actually hit an American ship, which totaled thirty-four ships sunk by kamikaze pilots.
Iwo Jima and Okinawa
The closer the Americans got to Japan, the more fierce the resistance became. On the tiny island of Iwo Jima, 760 miles from Japan, 7,000 Americans died and 22,000 Japanese died. All so the Americans could build an airstrip there, which they never ended up doing. This is where the famous picture of the flag raising was taken atop of Mt. Suribachi.
On the island of Okinawa, which began on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, it was only 350 miles from Japan, Americans landed and began fighting a fierce two month long campaign to be able to secure an airstrip. This particular island was important because this would be the airstrip that a B-29 flying fortress would take off from to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.
On the island of Okinawa, which began on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, it was only 350 miles from Japan, Americans landed and began fighting a fierce two month long campaign to be able to secure an airstrip. This particular island was important because this would be the airstrip that a B-29 flying fortress would take off from to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.
When President Roosevelt died, Vice President, Harry S. Truman was made president of the United States. Truman only learned about the Manhattan Project just after Roosevelt's death. Since the Japanese refused to surrender and the loss of lives predicted to take Japan were huge, Truman made the decision to drop two bombs on Japan. If the Japanese did not surrender after the dropping of the first, it would drop another. The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a port city and army headquarters in southern Japan. Truman believed that he had no choice but to drop the bomb because an invasion would cost half a million American lives. On August 6, 1945, a B-29 dropped the first atomic bomb. The bomb's shockwave and explosion killed 78,000 people, and would later kill another 70,000 from the effects of radiation. When the Japanese again refused to surrender, Truman ordered the dropping of the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Five days after that the Japanese surrendered, it was made official on September 2, 1945. WWII was over.