A day World Civ Due May 15, 2:58 PM Week of 5/11 Assignment 9 points Ms. Romero

World Civilizations-Period 8-9
B 8-9
Due May 15, 2:58 PM
Week of 5/11 Assignment
9 points

Ms.  Romero
8:06 AM
Please read and answer the questions. All of the answers are in the text. You should pace yourself doing a little every "class day" until Friday. It is due by the end of the day. Please do not google answer because not only is it usually wrong but it does not help anyone.

Allied Victory in World War II

I.             Europe at War

How does Nazi Germany gain control over mainland Europe?

Hitler stunned Europe with the speed of his attack on Poland. His blitzkrieg, or “lightening war,” used panzer divisions, supported by airplanes. Each panzer division was a strike force of about three hundred tanks with accompanying forces and supplies. Within four weeks, Poland had surrendered. On September 28, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland. Hitler attacked again on April 9, 1940, with a blitzkrieg against Denmark and Norway. On May 10, Germany launched an attack on the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. The Germans split the Allied armies, trapping French troops and the entire British army on the beaches of Dunkirk. The British managed to evacuate 338,000 Allied troops through the heroic efforts of the Royal Navy and civilians in private boats, however the French government was forced to surrender to Germany on June 22, 1940.

Germany was now in control of western and central Europe, but Britain had still not been defeated. After Dunkirk, the British appealed to the United States for help. The United States followed a strict policy of isolationism after the 1^st World War though. Congress had even passed Laws in the 1930s preventing the United States from taking sides or becoming involved in any European wars. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was convinced that these Neutrality Acts were actually encouraging Axis aggression and wanted the laws repealed. However now that mainland Europe was under Nazi control the laws were gradually relaxed. The United States could now begin supplying much needed food, ships, planes, and weapons to Britain to keep the last remaining Allied power in Europe from falling.

1.     How are the Axis powers able to conquer mainland Europe so quickly?

2.     Why does the United States begin to help Great Britain in the early 1940’s?

II.           The Battle of Britain & Invasion of the U.S.S.R.

How does Great Britain & the Soviet Union resist the Nazi Blitzkrieg?

Because of Great Britain’s island location, Hitler realized that an invasion of Britain could only succeed if Germany gained control of the air. At the beginning of August 1940, the Luftwaffe—the German air force—launched a major offensive. German planes bombed British air and naval bases, harbors, communication centers, and war industries. The British fought back. But by the end of August, the British air force had suffered critical losses. In retaliation for a British attack on Berlin, the Luftwaffe began bombing British cities instead of military targets. This 9 month civilian bombing campaign became known as the Battle of Britain. Instead of demoralizing the British people, this allowed the British air force to rebuild quickly. The British were able to inflict major losses on Luftwaffe bombers after developing radar technology to detect oncoming German attacks. At the end of September, Hitler was forced to postpone the planned invasion of Britain.

Hitler became convinced that Britain was remaining in the war only because it expected Soviet support. He thought that if the Soviet Union could be smashed, Britain’s last hope would be eliminated. Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was scheduled for the spring of 1941, but the attack was delayed for almost 3 months because of problems in the Balkans. Mussolini’s invasion of Greece had failed in 1940. To secure his southern flank, Hitler seized Greece and Yugoslavia in April 1941.  On June 22, 1941, Hitler finally began the invasion of the Soviet Union. German troops advanced rapidly, capturing two million Russian soldiers. However, an early winter and fierce Soviet resistance slowed the Germans using the same Scorched Earth policy that had defeated Napoleon the century before. The Germans also had no winter uniforms, because they had originally planned to invade in the spring. For the first time in the war, the German blitzkrieg had been stopped.

3. Which geographic factors aided Great Britain & the U.S.S.R. in halting the Germany’s advance?

Great Britain:

Soviet Union:

III.        The Japanese Advance in the Pacific

How does Japanese Aggression provoke the United States?

On December 7, 1941 the empire of Japan entered a new phase of military aggression. Japanese aircraft launched a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. The same day, the Japanese also began assaults on the Philippines and advanced toward the British colony of Malaya. Soon after, the Japanese invaded the Dutch East Indies and occupied a number of islands in the Pacific Ocean. By the spring of 1942, almost all of Southeast Asia and much of the western Pacific were in Japanese hands. Japan quickly announced its intention to liberate the colonial areas of Southeast Asia from Western rule in an attempt to gain popularity among the native people of the area.

For the time being, however, Japan needed the resources of the region for its war machine, and it treated the countries under its rule as conquered lands. Japanese leaders had hoped that their attack on American bases would destroy the U.S. fleet in the Pacific. They also thought that the Roosevelt administration would accept Japanese domination of the Pacific in order to focus on Hitler in Europe. But the Japanese miscalculated. The attack on Pearl Harbor did destroy most of the U.S. Pacific fleet, but it also unified American opinion about becoming involved in the war. The surprise attack had also missed all 4 of the United States’ Aircraft Carriers, which later inflict major losses on the Japanese navy and air force. The United States now joined with European nations and Nationalist China in an effort to defeat Japan. Hitler believed that American involvement in the Pacific would make the United States ineffective in Europe, so he declared war on the United States four days after Pearl Harbor.  This was another miscalculation as the United States will send large military forces into Southern Europe and North Africa before focusing on the Pacific War. Another European conflict had now turned into another major World War.

4. Where did the Japanese launch a surprise attack against the United States, their main rival in the Pacific? 

5. What did Japan hope to accomplish by attacking the main U.S. naval base in the Pacific Ocean?  Do you believe the attack successful? (use evidence from the reading!!!)

IV.        The Tide of War begins to turn

How does the entry of the United States & Soviet Union created new problems for Germany & Japan?

The entry of the United States into the war created a new coalition, the Grand Alliance. The three major Allies—Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union—agreed to stress military operations and ignore political differences. At the beginning of 1943, the Allies agreed to fight until the Axis Powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—surrendered unconditionally.  Defeat was far from Hitler’s mind at the beginning of 1942 though. In North Africa, German forces under General Erwin Rommel broke through the British defenses in Egypt and advanced toward Alexandria. A new German offensive into the Soviet Union led to the capture of the entire Crimea in the spring of 1942. 

But by the fall of 1942, the war had turned against the Germans. In North Africa, British forces had stopped Rommel’s troops at El Alamein in the summer of 1942. In November 1942, British and American forces invaded French North Africa and forced the German and Italian troops there to surrender. On the Eastern front, against the advice of his generals, Hitler decided that the city of Stalingrad should be taken for strategic and symbolic purposes. As expected Stalin and the Red Army reacted ferociously against this new attack.  Between November 1942 and February 2, 1943, the Soviets launched a massive counterattack in what became known as the Battle of Stalingrad. German troops were stopped and then encircled. Supply lines were cut off, in frigid winter conditions. The freezing and starving Germans were forced to surrender at Stalingrad. The entire German Sixth Army, considered the best of the German troops, was lost.  Either killed or taken as prisoners of war.

In 1942, the tide of battle in Asia also changed dramatically. In the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 7 and 8, 1942, American naval forces stopped the Japanese advance and saved Australia from the threat of invasion. The turning point of the war in Asia came on June 4, at the Battle of Midway Island. U.S. planes destroyed all four Japanese aircraft carriers. The United States defeated the Japanese navy and established naval superiority in the Pacific. By the fall of 1942, Allied forces in Asia were gathering for two chief operations. One, commanded by U.S. general Douglas MacArthur, would move into the Philippines through New Guinea and the South Pacific Islands. The other would move across the Pacific with a combination of U.S. Army, Marine, and Navy attacks on Japanese-held islands. The policy was to capture some Japanese-held islands and bypass others, “island hopping” up to Japan’s homeland. 

6. Which battle was the turning point in Eastern Europe? 

7. What was the turning point of the war in Asia?

V.           World War II comes to a Violent End

How are the Axis Powers brought to defeat by 1945?

By the beginning of 1943, the war had turned against Germany, Italy, and Japan. The Allies carried the war to Italy. After taking Sicily, Allied troops began an invasion of mainland Italy in September. After the fall of Sicily, German forces were forced to move in and occupy much of Italy. The Germans set up new defensive lines in the hills south of Rome. The Allies advance up the Italian Peninsula was difficult, with very heavy casualties. Rome did not fall to the Allies until June 4, 1944. By that time, the Italian war had assumed a secondary role, as the Allied forces opened their “second front” in western Europe.

On June 6, 1944, Allied forces under U.S. general Dwight D. Eisenhower invaded and landed on the Normandy beaches of France in what is known as D-Day. Within three months, the Allies had landed two million men and a half-million vehicles. Allied forces then pushed inland and broke through German defensive lines. The Allied troops moved south and east. In Paris, resistance fighters rose up against the occupying Germans. The Allies liberated Paris by the end of August. In March 1945, they crossed the Rhine River and advanced into Germany. At the end of April 1945, Allied armies in northern Germany moved toward the Elbe River, where they linked up with the Soviets.

By January 1945, Adolf Hitler had moved into a bunker under the city of Berlin to direct the final stages of the war. Hitler continued to blame the Jews for the war. He committed suicide on April 30, two days after Mussolini had been shot by Italian resistance fighters. On May 7, 1945, German commanders surrendered. The war in Europe was finally over. The war in Asia however continued. 

Beginning in 1943, U.S. forces had gone on the offensive and advanced, slowly at times, across the Pacific. There was a new U.S. president, Harry S Truman, who had become president on the death of Roosevelt in April. Truman had a difficult decision to make. Should he use newly developed atomic weapons to bring the war to an end or find another way to defeat the Japanese forces? Truman decided to use the bombs. The first bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Both cities were leveled. 

Thousands of people died immediately after the bombs were dropped. Thousands more died in later months from radiation. Scientist estimate that around 250,000 Japanese civilians were vaporized by the 2 atomic bombs or died due to health problems caused by the world’s first and only nuclear attacks. Japanese Emperor Hirohito had no choice left, but to surrender to the United States on August 14. World War II was finally over. Seventeen million had died in battle. Perhaps twenty million civilians had died as well. Some estimates place total loss of life at fifty million humans.

8. Which U.S. led invasion allows the Allies to surround Germany?

9. How did U.S. President Harry Truman bring a destructive end to history’s most destructive war?