World War 2

Yellow = important stuff

  • September 1939 - Nazi’s invade Poland

    • Blitzkreig warfare - lightning fast mechanized warfare

    • Axis Powers v.s Allies

  • Axis Powers

    • Nazi Germany - Adolf Hitler

    • Fascist Empire of Japan - Hirohito

    • Kingdom of Italy - Benito Mussolini

  • Allies Powers

    • Great Britain - Churchill

    • United States - Roosevelt

    • Soviet Union - Stalin

    • Republic of China - Chiang Kai-shek

  • Mid September 1939 - USSR invades Poland (take what they were promised in the non-aggression pact)

Hitlers Army Takes Most of Europe

WWII Conscription in Canada

  • PM was Mackenzie King

    • elected with the promise to NOT resort to conscription - had to find a way around this promise, asked for a referendum and was granted a yes to debate conscription in the House of Commons

The London Blitz (September 1940 - May 1941)

  • Nazi bombing of London 24/7 for 9 months

  • Sir Winston Churchill - speaks to the British on BBC radio from underground bunker, resolve to not surrender, worked

Hitler Breaks the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact

  • Operation Barbarossa (1941) - Nazi invade the USSR

  • Battle of Stalingrad (1942)

    • 2 million causalities

    • Soviets win, begin driving German armies out of the USSR

D-Day Invasions (June 1994)

  • Operation overload

  • Allies attack from Britain

    • Storm the beaches of Normandy France

    • Canadian divisions take Juno Beach

  • Germany is surrounded and Hitler and others commit mass suicide \

  • Largest amphibious invasion in history (water battle)

  • Victory in Europe - May 1945

    • German unconditional surrender

War to Defeat Japan

  • significant efforts to defeat Japan once victory in Europe was declared

  • Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor Hawaii brought the Americans out of isolationism and into WWII (1941)

WWII Internment in Canada

  • Internment of the Japanese in 1942 was result of fear, national security, paranoia, racism, and xenophobia

  • 22, 000 Japanese were interned and had their property confiscated and never returned to them

Defeating Japan

  • “Island hopping” - trying to liberate one island at a time

    • could take 20+ years

  • Manhattan Project

  • Secret development of a new super bomb

  • 2 atomic bombs had been developed

  • Decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan to spare lives of American soldiers

  • Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed - still no surrender, fate of Japan declared at Potsdam Conference

Victory over Japan (WWII is over)

  • Japan finally surrendered as the Americans and USSR had them surrounded, August 1945

Yalta Conference

  • Germany divided and occupied

  • Western countries control and occupy West Germany

  • USSR controls East Germany

  • Germany is de-Nazified

  • Nuremberg Trials to punish German war criminals