The Mobilization of Four Nations

Operation Barbarossa JUNE 1941 Hitler ignores the Nazi-Soviet Non- Aggression Pact and invades the Soviet Union LARGEST German military operation of WWII GOALS: Destruction of the Soviet military force Permanent elimination of Communism Seizure of prime land within Soviet borders (lebensraum)

The siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) is the most lethal siege in world history The 872 days of the siege caused unparalleled famine in the Leningrad region through disruption of utilities, water, energy and food supplies. This resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000 soldiers and civilians In the winter of , rations were down to 50 grams of bread per person, per day –1 gram = 1 paper clip of weight –60% of this ‘bread’ was made of sawdust Starving, the people of Leningrad resorted to eating leather briefcases, the paste behind wallpaper, dogs and cats, and even human cannibalism. Siege of Leningrad

Three men burying victims of Leningrad's siege in 1942

Germans ruthlessly executed Soviet partisans.

Soviets assembling tanks at a Soviet plant in the Urals. The factory maintained day and night schedules during World War II.

Major Lyudmila Pavlichenko is regarded as the most successful female sniper in history with 309 confirmed kills. Pavlichenko was a 24 year old university student when Germany invaded Russia in World War II. She was one of the first sets of citizens to volunteer for service and specifically requested infantry service. She refused an offer to become a nurse. Due to her accuracy with a rifle she became one of the first 2,000 female snipers in the Soviet Union. She was one of only 500 to survive the war.

Once the United States entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Axis cause was largely doomed. America mobilized 12 million soldiers — about the same number as did the Soviet Union, despite having a population of about 40 million fewer citizens. American war production proved astonishing. At the huge Willow Run plant in Michigan, the greatest generation turned out a B-24 heavy bomber every hour. A single shipyard could mass-produce an ocean-going Liberty merchant ship from scratch in a week. In just four years, the United States would produce more airplanes than all of the major war powers combined.

During World War II many men were sent off to war. This created lots of job opportunities for women and African Americans. Women mostly did factory work. In addition to factory work and other home front jobs, some 350,000 women joined the Armed Services, serving at home and abroad.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, 110,000 Japanese- Americans were relocated to internment camps for the duration of the war. Public officials claimed this was necessary for national security reasons.

Prior To 1942, Germany blitzkrieged through Europe plundering food and raw materials from conquered countries. This allowed them to avoid taking away resources from the civilian economy. This will change however. After German defeats on the Russian front and the American entry into the war, Hitler ordered a massive increase in armaments production and in the size of the army.

Slave labor: Jewish slave workers in striped uniforms work in a Nazi ammunition factory near Dachau concentration camp during World War II.

Some of the S.S. women whose brutality was equal to that of their male counterparts at the Bergen- Belsen concentration camp in Bergen, Germany, on April 21, 1945 Two women of the German anti-aircraft gun auxiliary operating field telephones during World War II. More and more girls are joining the Luftwaffe under Germany's total conscription campaign. They are replacing men transferred to the army to take up arms instead of planes against the advancing allied forces. Here, German girls are shown in training with men of the Luftwaffe, somewhere in Germany, on December 7, 1944.

Only about 1.4 million Japanese women entered the labor force ( ). The Minister of Welfare even made propaganda on this issue when he bragged, "In order to secure its labor force, the enemy is drafting women, but in Japan, out of consideration for the family system, we will not draft them." School children were used to replace male workers drafted for military service. Here Japanese school girls learn to use a lathe, probably to produce shells so they can replace workers drafted for military service.

Traditional Japanese habits of obedience and hierarchy were used to encourage citizens to sacrifice their resources, and sometimes their lives, for the national cause. The calls for sacrifice reached a high point in the final years of the war. Young Japanese were encouraged to volunteer to serve as pilots in suicide missions against U.S. fighting ships at sea. These pilots were known as kamikaze, or “divine wind.”