1. The End of WW2 Do Now: Take out your task packet for stamps
Take out a piece of paper and something to write with
(Note book is fine)

2. Timeline Directions
Using the powerpoint packets around the room, create a descriptive timeline of the following 16 events. They ARE in order, you just need to design your timeline, add dates and describe each.
Battle of the Bulge
Iwo Jima (Island Hopping)
Mussolini is executed
Firebombing of Tokyo
Okinawa
Pearl Harbor
Berlin is surrounded by the Russians, Hitler commits suicide
Midway
Stalingrad
V-E day
Allies invade Sicily, Mussolini removed from power
First atomic bomb test
Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki
Italy signs Armistice, some parts fight for Germany, Mussolini escapes
V-J Day
D-Day

3. The Americans turn the tide
After Pearl Harbor, the arrival of American troops on all fronts of the war turned the tide against the Axis powers.
In Europe, Americans helped lead the charge on D-Day, liberating France from German control and slowly retaking land against a retreating Germany.
In the Pacific, Americans finally countered the Japanese at Midway and began to force them back to their own islands.

4. European Turning Points
D-Day – Allied troops take the French Coast in a surprise assault using landing craft and massive numbers of troops
Stalingrad – Soviets defeat the German army in Russia, ending the German push into the Soviet Union and humiliating Hitler (- why not to invade Russia in Winter part 3)
The Battle of the Bulge – Dec 16, 1944 – Jan 25, 1945
With a ferocious effort, German forces manage to push the allied lines back and cause significant casualties (particularly for Americans), but ultimately lose the battle anyway.
By mid-1945, the Allied army has surrounded Berlin and the Germans are on their last legs.

5. The End of Mussolini
In July of 1943, the Allies invaded the Italian island of Sicily and bombarded Rome.
Italians did not like this
Very quickly after that, the government strips Mussolini of his powers, he is removed from office and imprisoned.
The new Italian government began negotiating with the Allies (in secret) about switching sides. They signed an Armistice, but the Germans occupied Italy.
Allied armies advanced through Italy against the Germans.
The Germans eventually rescue Mussolini from imprisonment, he set up another Italian state in the north. Italians now fought Italians (some with Mussolini/the Germans and some with the Allies)
Final Victory came in 1945, as the Germans were also near surrender
Mussolini was executed by the Italian resistance and hung from the roof of a gas station in Milan in 1945.

6. The End of Hitler
During the battle of Berlin, with the Allies and Soviets closing in on all sides, Hitler married his long-time mistress Eva Braun.
The following day (April 30th, 1945), Hitler committed suicide by shooting himself in the head while simultaneously biting in to a cyanide capsule. Eva Braun also committed suicide by taking a cyanide capsule.

7. V-E Day
On May 7, 1945, General Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich from the German military. On May 9th, V- E Day (Victory in Europe) was celebrated. After nearly 6 years of fighting, the war in Europe had ended.

8. Pacific Turning Points
Pearl Harbor – Attack by the Japanese on an American base forces Americans to begin fighting in the War (Dec )
Midway – Americans decode Japanese plans to attack Midway and intercept the Japanese planes. From this point forward, the Americans begin pushing the Japanese back (June 1942)
Iwo Jima – feb-march 1945
Okinawa – April
Firebombing of Tokyo- March 1945

9. The War in the Pacific
After Midway, the United States Navy was beginning to get the upper hand in the war against the Japanese.
The honor of the Japanese military culture would not allow the soldiers to surrender, so Japan would have to be fought all the way back to their home islands.
The US military came up with a strategy known as island hopping. This called for US Marines and other land based forces to attack poorly defended Japanese bases that were still of strategic use. Eventually, a chain of these islands would lead right to Japan itself.

11. Attacking the mainland of Japan
The island hopping campaign ended with the bloody battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. From these islands the Allies would be able to launch bombing runs at Japan, whose air force and navy were in tatters.
Japanese resistance to American attacks soon convinced the military that an invasion of Japan might cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 American lives.
Firebombing of Japanese cities began, but the Japanese would still not surrender.

13. The Manhattan Project
Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt expressing concern that German scientists were perhaps capable of building an atomic bomb sometime during the 1940’s.
Not wanting Hitler to get the bomb first, FDR immediately ordered the top secret Manhattan Project to begin work on the research and development of an atomic weapon.
The Germans gave up on their bomb program very early, since Hitler felt that other projects were more important. America however, tested its first nuclear weapon Trinity at Alamogordo, New Mexico in July
By the time the first bomb was tested, FDR had died, and Germany had surrendered.

14. Dropping the Atomic Bomb
The new President, Harry Truman, ordered a nuclear bomb to be dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6,
80,000 people were either immediately killed or soon died due to the immense doses of radiation they endured.
Hiroshima had been a major industrial production center, and in under a minute it had ceased to exist. Still, the military government of Japan refused to surrender.
Three days later, the last bomb in our arsenal was dropped on Nagasaki (due to bad weather over Nagoya, the original target.)

16. V-J Day
On September 2, 1945 the Empire of Japan officially surrendered to General Douglas MacArthur on board the USS Missouri.
World War Two in the Pacific was finally over, V-J Day had come.