1. The Global Struggle
World War II Part II

2. Leadership of World War II
Axis Powers
Adolf Hitler-Nazi Germany
Benito Mussolini-Italy
General Tojo-Japan
Allied Powers
Franklin Roosevelt-United States
Josef Stalin-Soviet Union
Winston Churchill-Great Britain

5. War in Africa and Europe
Europe First Policy: Allied leaders (Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin) decided to focus their attention on defeating Hitler and then focusing their attention on defeating Japan.
At the end of August 1942, American and British forces landed in Algeria and Morocco in North Africa.
Moving swiftly eastward, they joined British forces advancing west from Egypt to close in on the German forces.
In May 1943, the Allies drove the Germans out of North Africa.

7. Allied troops then advanced into southern Europe, landed on the Italian island of Sicily and landed on Italy’s mainland by September of 1943 under the direction of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. General George Patton and British General Bernard Montgomery led the troops during the invasion.
As the Allied forces advanced in Italy, the Italian people overthrew Mussolini and Fascist Italian government surrendered. German forces continued to fight in Italy but cannot stop the Allied advances.
June 1944, the Allied forces enter Rome, Italy’s capital.

9. While the Americans and British fought the Germans in North Africa and Italy, the Soviets battled the Germans in Soviet territory.
In Spring 1942, German forces advanced on the industrial city of Stalingrad, located in southeastern Russia.
Soviet troops fought back against the Germans and the Soviets surrounded the city, cutting off most of the Germans soldiers from their supplies and in February 1943 the Germans surrendered and became prisoners of war..
The German defeat at Stalingrad was a major setback for the Nazis and the tide of the war began to change for the Allied forces.

14. The Tehran Conference
Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill attended a conference in Tehran, Iran and determined that Germany will be divided after the war.
Stalin agrees to help the United States defeat Japan.
Stalin also offers to join an international peace-keeping organization when the war is over.

16. The Holocaust
In the 1930’s, the Nazi Germany began to take away the personal and political rights of the Jewish Germans.
Kristallnacht: August 9, “The Night of the Broken Glass”
-Jewish synagogues are burned, many Jewish businesses are destroyed , and many Jews were killed in German cities all throughout the country.
-30,000 Jews are sent to the concentration camps.
In other parts of Eastern Europe, Jews are separated from the rest of society and placed into ghettos.
Ghetto: Areas set aside in cities and towns for minorities to live.

19. The Death Camps
The Nazis begin the mass killing of Jews in 1941 during their invasion of the Soviet Union.
In 1942, the Nazi leadership agreed upon the “final solution” to the Jewish issue in Europe.
Millions of Jews and other ethnic groups are rounded up, crammed into railroad cars and sent to concentration camps.
Many Jews were killed by poisonous gas chambers, work to death, starvation and others were victims of cruel medical experiments in the concentration camps.
The concentration camps began to be liberated as the Soviets retook Eastern Europe in 1944.

22. About two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe perished in the Holocaust.
Governments and international organizations began to work to stop further genocides from happening.

23. D-Day June 6 1944 aka Operation Overlord
The day of the Allied invasion of the northern French province of Normandy.
American and British battleships pounded the German positions with their large guns.
When Allied soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy, they faced heavy machine gun fire from the German positions.
Despite the determined German resistance, the invasion was a success and the Allied forces will begin to retake Europe from the Nazi Germans.
Within a few weeks, a million Allied soldiers had landed in France.

26. War in the pacific
As World War II raged in Europe, the Allied forces of Great Britain and the United States fought against the Japanese in the Pacific.
By mid-1942, the Japanese had driven the United States forces out of the Philippines and controlled most of the Pacific islands.
Japan is the most dominate military in Asia at this time in history.
The United States defeated the Japanese navy and air force at the Battle of Midway, ending the Japanese advancement in the Pacific.
Island-hopping strategy: plan called for attacking certain key Pacific Islands and uses these islands as “stepping stones” towards invading Japan.

28. By 1945, the United States has recaptured the Philippines and had destroyed much of the Japanese navy and air force.
In desperation, the Japanese military sent suicide pilots packed with explosives crash into American ships. These pilots are called Kamikazes.
April 1945: Franklin Roosevelt dies and Harry S Truman becomes President of the United States.
Truman had to make a decision to invade Japan with countless causalities or use the newest technology built by American engineers and scientists to end the war.

30. The atomic age
In 1941, the United States government had a secret laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico to build an atomic bomb.
The projects code name was the Manhattan Project.
Some officials disagreed with using an atomic weapon to defeat the Japanese, but the decision was Truman’s to make.
He believed it was his duty to use every weapon possible to save the lives of American servicemen.

32. The United States demanded the Japanese leadership surrender immediately, but the Japanese never responded.
August 6, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city Hiroshima in Japan and killed an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 people.
Three days later, the United States bombed the city of Nagasaki and killed an estimated 35,000 to 74,000 people.
Thousands more died from radiation sickness and from burns suffered from the explosion.
The Japanese government surrendered on August 15, 1945.

34. Effects of world War II
More than 70 million people fought in World War II and while 55 million people died during the conflict.
Two new “superpowers” arose from the conflict: The United States and the Soviet Union.
50 countries became members of the United Nations and the United Nation had the power to investigate international problems and propose settlements.