1939-1945

European and Pacific Theaters

WW Dos

The BelligerentsAxis Powers

Japan, Italy, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet UnionWhy will the S.U. leave

this treaty?

Treaties/PactsPact of Steel

Italy and Nazi GermanyRome-Berlin-Tokyo

Axis Non-Aggression Pact

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union

Allied PowersFrance and Great

BritainAgree to protect the

sovereignty of Poland

When does the US join?

Why isn’t the United States involved?

Operation White and Blitzkrieg

German ground forces overwhelmed the Polish defenses.

Invaded on September 1st Warsaw capitulated on

September 28th.Military opposition ended

October 6th, 1939. 65,000 Polish troops were

killed in the invasion.Hundreds of thousands

were captured/wounded.

Concept of Blitzkrieg is

born

What does Blitzkrieg

involve?

BLITZKRIEG

• Lightening War

•Combine tanks,

planes, trucks,

and infantry in

concentrated

attacks

• How is this a

different form of

warfare than

WWI?

Role of Technology…and the winner is…

Nazi Tactics in Occupied Poland – Diary of Polish Doctor Zygmunt Klukowski October 11, 1939

The town is crowded with Germans. They are quartered in all the larger houses. Most of them are from Austria and some from Vienna. In general the Germans are trying to clean up the city. For this work they are using only Jews. Jews must sweep the streets, clean all the public latrines, and fill all the street trenches. Plastered everywhere are German notices giving an idea of what we can expect in the future.

We must return all arms. We must record all contagious diseases. The police curfew is from 10 P.M. until 5:30 A.M. The restrictions applying to Jewish shops change from day to day. Sometimes the Jews are allowed to open their shops, and sometimes they are not. It seems that most of the orders are aimed at the Jews.

February 18, 1940

I met a woman, an official of the Zamoyski estate. She had just arrived from Chelmo. For some time I've been receiving alarming information about the execution of the mentally ill patients of the psychiatric ward at Chelmo Hospital. I asked her if this happened. She verified that it was true.

All the mentally ill were shot with machine guns, but under penalty of death the hospital personnel are forbidden to talk about this crime.

It is so hard to believe anything as terrible as this.What are the Nazis doing in occupied territories?

After the defeat of Poland in 1939 Hitler turned his focus Westward in 1940

Battles in the WestPhony War

Period of no fighting between Oct. 1939 and June 1940

Why wouldn’t the Allies attack?

Invasion of France 1940Dunkirk – Over

300,000 Allied soldiers evacuated

France defeated in 6 weeks

Battle of Britain Hitler’s attempt to

defeat GB RAF and Radar

saved the British from invasion

Hitler’s plans for Western dominance put on hold

Invasion of France

Evacuation of Dunkirk – Germans drive British to the Sea

The Fall of FranceNorthern France and its

government under complete control of the NazisTurn in Jews to Nazis

Vichy (Free) France led by Marshall PetainWWI hero Treason

Resistance movement led by Charles de Gaulle PM post WWII

What do you think this map shows?

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.“What is the purpose or intention of Churchill’s

speech?

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Who is Churchill referring to?

Churchill during the Battle of Britain

Enigma Machine

“The Wizards War” and the role of technology

Radar Unit

Why would people go to the subway tunnels? World War II has become a

total war with the bombing of London

Why would Hitler bomb London?

Europe 1941

• Hitler’s invasion

of the Soviet Union

• Need for

Lebensraum

• Why would his

invasion ultimately

fail?

• What are his

three targets

or objectives?

Western Theater - Operation Barbarossa

The Germans had the city Leningrad captive and starved the people and bombed the warehouses. The people of Leningrad ate the cow and horse food, and cats, dogs, and even crows and rats. A million people

or more died in Leningrad

Soviet citizens trying to survive by melting ice into potable water

The first deaths from starvation were recorded

only a few weeks after the ring of the siege closed,

and by midwinter it was common to see corpses

lying in the streets. A dance teacher at the

Mariinsky ballet school noted a dead man who

leant for months against a lamppost opposite the

Philharmonia: 'With his back to the post a man

sits in the snow, wrapped in rags, wearing a

knapsack ... For two weeks I passed him every

day as I went back and forth to the hospital. He

sat 1. Without his knapsack 2. Without his rags 3.

In his underwear 4. Naked 5. A skeleton with

ripped out entrails.'

Battle of Stalingrad

• Why would

Hitler order

Army Group

South to attack

Stalingrad?

• Over 1.1 million

Soviet casualties

• Over 800,000

German

causalities

•Hitler’s war

machine

permanently

crippled

Stalingrad through the eyes of the combatants German Account Panzergrenadier officer - "We

have fought for fifteen days for a single house, with mortars, machine guns, grenades and bayonets.  The front is a corridor between burnt-out rooms...The street is no longer measure in metres, but in corpses.  Stalingrad is no longer a town.  By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames.  And when night arrives -- one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights -- the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately for the other bank.  The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them.  Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure"

Russian Account Nikolai Nikulin, Russian soldier:

"During the night I crawled twice to a shell crater for water.  It was as thick and brown as coffee, and smelt of explosives and something else.  In the morning, I saw a black crooked hand protruding from that crater.  My tunic and trousers are as stiff as cardboard with mud and blood, the knees and elbows holed by crawling on them.  I have thrown away my helmet -- not many people wear them here; one normally shits into a helmet, then throws it out of the trench.  The corpse near me stinks unbearably; there are so many of them around, old and new.  Some turn black as they dry, and lie in all sorts of postures.  Here and there in the trench one sees body parts trampled into the mud - a flattened face, a hand, all as brown as the soil.  We walk on"

2 million Soviet and Axis causalities

Bombers flying a sortie and street fighting

1941-1945

Nazi persecution and elimination of Jews in the

Eastern Front

Gas extermination van

The progression of Nazi extermination

“The Last Jew in Vinnitsa”

SS Mobile Killing Squads

Einsatzgruppen- A – B – C – D

Undressing prior to execution

Wannsee Conference January 1942

Liberation of Concentration Camps – click me!

Western Front - 1944

• Offensive to

reestablish an

offensive in

Europe

• Stalin needed it

– why?

• Largest

amphibious

invasion in

history

•Why was it so

risky?

•I SPY – What do

you see?

Invasion of Normandy

Yalta Conference – February 1945

“The Big Three”

Points of Discussion

Poland – Communist buffer

Free elections in Eastern Europe

• Division of Germany• United Nations

Race to Berlin – 1945 – click me!

British and American forces sweep through France toward Germany from the West

Soviet forces sweep through Eastern Europe toward Germany from the East

War in the PacificJapanese occupation of

Manchuria – 1931

Invasion of China – 1937

Policy of Island-HoppingWhat is it?War of attrition

What does Japan acquire when it takes over territory?

War in the Pacific

Battle of

MidwayTurning

point

Japanese lose multiple aircraft carriers

Outer Ring of Japanese Empire

Iwo JimaSmashed by Japanese mortar and shellfire and trapped by Iwo Jima's soft black sands, amtracs and other vehicles lay

wrecked on the beach. Feb 1945.

Effects of Kamikaze bombers

Island Hopping…Closing in on Japan

Okinawa – click meThe last stop before the Japanese home islands

Dresden, Germany

“The fire storm transformed thousands of individual blazes into a sea of flames, ripping off the roofs, tossing trees, cars and lorries into the air, and simultaneously sucking the oxygen out of the air-raid shelters.

  ”Most of those who remained below ground were to die painlessly, their bodies first brilliantly tinted bright orange and blue, and then, as the heat grew intense, either totally incinerated or melted into a thick liquid sometimes three or four feet deep.”    “Seventy percent of the Dresden dead either suffocated or died from poison gases that turned their bodies green and red. The intense heat melted some bodies into the pavement like bubblegum, or shrunk them into three-foot long charred carcasses. Clean-up crews wore rubber boots to wade through the ‘human soup’ found in nearby caves. In other cases, the superheated air propelled victims skyward only to come down in tiny pieces as far as fifteen miles outside Dresden.”

Allied Fire bombing

Tokyo, Japan – 100,000

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

EFFECTS OF WWIIDemilitarization of Japan

Rise of communism in Eastern EuropeSoviet Bloc

Increase in weapons spendingCold War

Decrease in colonialism Independence

movements