Chapter 32 - World War II

32.1 - Hitler’s Lightning War

• Hitler soon proceeded forward with plans to seize Poland after signing this non-aggression pact. 

  • On September 1, 1939, he launched a surprise attack at dawn. Tanks and army trucks from Germany rumbled through Poland's border. 
  • At the same time, German aircraft and artillery began a ruthless bombing campaign against Warsaw, Poland's capital.

• On September 17, Stalin dispatched Soviet forces to capture Poland's eastern half. Stalin then began an annexation campaign in the nations to the north of Poland. 

  • Finland resisted the fall of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia without a fight.

• North Africa was Germany's primary target in the Mediterranean, owing to Hitler's close ally Mussolini. 

  • Italy had stayed neutral at the start of the war, despite its relationship with Germany. 
  • With Hitler's conquest of France, Mussolini realized he needed to act. Mussolini invaded France after declaring war on France and the United Kingdom.

• Other German generals were fighting in the Balkans while Rommel was fighting in North Africa. 

  • As early as the summer of 1940, Hitler began plotting an attack on his ally, the Soviet Union.
  •  Hitler's invasion strategy relied heavily on the Balkan republics of southeastern Europe. 
  • For the invasion on the Soviet Union, Hitler sought to create bases throughout southeastern Europe. He also sought to avoid any interference from the British.

  

32.2 - Japan’s Pacific Campaign

• The next objective for Japan was Midway Island, 1,500 miles west of Hawaii and home to a vital American airport. 
  • Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander in charge of the United States Pacific Fleet, was aware of a massive Japanese force approaching Midway thanks to Allied code breakers. 
  • The Japanese fleet was commanded by Admiral Yamamoto himself. 
  • He thought that the attack on Midway would draw the entire United States Pacific Fleet from Pearl Harbor to the island to protect it.
• The sound of explosions roused American sailors at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, early on the morning of December 7, 1941. 
  • An onslaught by the Japanese was beginning! A clandestine Japanese telegram had warned US military leaders that an attack was imminent. 
  • They didn't know when or where it would happen, though.

32.3 - The Holocaust

• When Hitler realized he couldn't get rid of Jews through emigration, he devised a new strategy. 

  • He ordered that Jews in all of the countries he ruled be relocated to specific cities. 
  • The Nazis forced the Jews into desolate, overcrowded ghettos, or segregated Jewish districts, in those cities. 
  • The ghettos were then walled off with barbed wire and stone walls by the Nazis. They hoped that the Jews within would perish from starvation or disease.

• Six million European Jews were killed in concentration camps and Nazi murders. Only about four million people survived. 

  • With the help of non-Jewish people, some Jews were able to escape the horrors of the extermination camps. 
  • At tremendous personal risk, these heroes concealed Jews in their homes or assisted them in escaping to neutral nations.

• Jews were gathered up and sent to concentration camps or slave labor prisons in villages not reached by the murdering squads. 

  • These concentration camps were mostly in Germany and Poland. Hitler hoped that the appalling circumstances in the camps would hasten the Jews' complete annihilation.

  

32.4 - The Allied Victory

• German armies met their match in the Soviet Union, just as Rommel did in North Africa. Late in 1941, the German march paused in Leningrad and Moscow. The harsh winter only aggravated the situation. 

  • When the summer of 1942 approached, Hitler dispatched his Sixth Army, led by General Friedrich Paulus, to conquer the Caucasus Mountains' oil deposits.

• Stalin continued to urge the British and Americans to invade France as the Battle of Stalingrad raged. 

  • Roosevelt and Churchill, on the other hand, opted to attack Italy first. Allied soldiers landed on Sicily on July 10, 1943, and took the island from Italian and German forces a month later.

• To defeat the Axis forces, the Allies had to prepare for total war. Factory operations in the United States were transformed to wartime manufacturing, and everything from machine guns to boots was produced. 

  • Tanks were built at automobile factories. Armor-piercing shells were manufactured by a typewriter firm.

• Government propaganda had a negative impact as well. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, a wave of anti-Japanese prejudice swept the United States. 

  • The majority of them lived in Hawaii or on the West Coast. Americans were terrified after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. 
  • This dread, which had been instilled by official propaganda, was directed against Japanese Americans.

• While Allied forces advanced westward toward Germany, the Soviet army advanced eastward toward Germany. 

  • Hitler was now fighting on two fronts. He opted to counterattack in the west in a desperate bet. 
  • Hitler anticipated that by winning, he would be able to split American and British forces and disrupt Allied supply lines.
  • After Okinawa, the Allies' next stop had to be Japan.

• According to President Truman's experts, an assault of Japan's heartland may cost the Allies half a million casualties.

• Truman had to decide whether or not to deploy the atomic bomb, or A-bomb, a formidable new weapon. 

  • The majority of his advisers believed that using it would bring the conflict to a close as quickly as feasible.

  

32.5 - Europe and Japan in Ruins

• Only a few of Europe's big cities—Paris, Rome, and Brussels—were mostly unaffected by the war. Many, on the other hand, had been completely destroyed. 
  • Huge swaths of London were reduced to charred ruins during the Battle of Britain. Poland's capital, Warsaw, was almost completely destroyed. 
  • Warsaw had a population of almost 1.3 million people in 1939.
• After the war, Europe's sorrow lasted for years. The fighting had wreaked havoc on Europe's countryside, utterly disrupting agriculture. 
  • The majority of the men had served in the military, and the women had worked in the defense industry. Only a few people survived to cultivate the crops. 
  • Because the transportation system had been decimated, the few harvests did not always make it to the cities.
• General Douglas MacArthur gained command of the American occupation of Japan after accepting the Japanese surrender. 
• MacArthur was adamant about being fair and not sowing the seeds of a future conflict. 
• Nonetheless, he launched a process of demilitarization, or disbanding the Japanese armed forces, to ensure that peace would prevail.

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