C HAPTER Twenty-six World War II. Introduction Threats to the balance of power A conflict among nations, peoples, and ideals The new methods of warfare.

CHAPTERTwenty-six

World War II

Introduction

• Threats to the balance of power

• A conflict among nations, peoples, and ideals

• The new methods of warfare

• The Holocaust and the atomic bomb

• The war of absolutes and the values of Western civilization

The Causes of the War: Unsettled Quarrels, Economic Fallout, and Nationalism

• The peace settlement• Created more problems than it solved• Eastern European satellite states• Allied naval blockade of Germany• German “war guilt”

The Causes of the War: Unsettled Quarrels, Economic Fallout, and Nationalism

• Peace and security• No binding standards created for peace and

security• The League of Nations

• Never a league of all nations• Germany and the Soviet Union were excluded• The United States never joined

The Causes of the War: Unsettled Quarrels, Economic Fallout, and Nationalism

• Economic conditions• Depression as last blow to Weimar

Germany• Power passed to the Nazis (1933)• Germany ignored provisions of Versailles

• Decline of Japanese exports played into the hand of Japan’s military

• Invasion of Manchuria (1931)

The Causes of the War: Unsettled Quarrels, Economic Fallout, and Nationalism

• Ideologies• Violent nationalism• Glorifying the nation and national destiny• Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany formed the

“Axis” (later joined by Japan)• Fascist regimes in Eastern Europe

• Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Romania

The 1930s: Challenges to the Peace, Appeasement, and the “Dishonest Decade”

• An atmosphere of fear and apprehension• Aggression as a challenge to civilization• Avoiding another war• The 1930s as “a low, dishonest decade” (W.

H. Auden, 1939)

The 1930s: Challenges to the Peace, Appeasement, and the “Dishonest Decade”

• Appeasement • Assumptions

• The outbreak of another world war was unthinkable

• British and American arguments that Germany had been mistreated at Versailles

• Fascist states were a bulwark against Soviet communism

The 1930s: Challenges to the Peace, Appeasement, and the “Dishonest Decade”

• The League of Nations• Japanese invasion of China turned into an

invasion of the whole country• The Rape of Nanking (1937)• The League expressed shock but did nothing

• Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935• Avenging the defeat of 1896• League imposed sanctions on Italy but without

enforcement

The 1930s: Challenges to the Peace, Appeasement, and the “Dishonest Decade”

• The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)• A weak republican government could not overcome

opposition• Extreme right-wing military officers rebelled• Francisco Franco (r. 1936–1975)• Hitler and Mussolini sent in troops and tested new weapons;

war was a dress rehearsal• The Soviets sided with the Republican government• Volunteers from England, France, and the United States

• Saw the war as a test of the West’s determination to resist fascism

• April 1937—the destruction of Guernica• Hitler’s lessons

• Britain, France, and the Soviet Union would have a hard time containing fascism

• Britain and France would do anything to avoid another war

The 1930s: Challenges to the Peace, Appeasement, and the “Dishonest Decade”

• German rearmament and the politics of appeasement• Hitler played on Germans’ sense of shame and

betrayal• Reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936

• France and Britain did nothing

• The annexation of Austria (1938)• Hitler declared his intention to occupy the

Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia)• Neville Chamberlain

• With the Sudetenland, Germany’s ambitions would be satisfied

• Believed Germany could not commit to a sustained war• Eastern Europe ranked low in British priorities

The 1930s: Challenges to the Peace, Appeasement, and the “Dishonest Decade”

• German rearmament and the politics of appeasement• Munich—September 29, 1938

• Daladier (France), Chamberlain, Mussolini, and Hitler met

• Chamberlain proclaimed “peace in our time”• March 1939—Germany invaded Czechoslovakia• Convinced public of the futility of appeasement

• Stalin’s response• Feared the West might strike a deal with Hitler• August 1939—the Nazi-Soviet pact of

nonaggression

The Outbreak of Hostilities and the Fall of France

• Poland• Hitler demanded the abolition of the Polish

Corridor• Poland stood firm, but Hitler attacked on

September 1, 1939• Britain and France declared war on

September 3, 1939• The Blitzkrieg (lightning war)• Poland fell in four weeks

The Outbreak of Hostilities and the Fall of France

• The phony war

• Scandinavia—Germans took Denmark in one day (spring 1940)

• May 10, 1939—Germans moved through Belgium toward France

The Outbreak of Hostilities and the Fall of France

• The fall of France• French army overwhelmed by the German

advance• French army poorly organized• Dunkirk—300,000 British and French troops

evacuated to England• June 22, 1939—French surrendered

• Germans occupied northern France• Southern France fell under the Vichy regime,

headed by Marshal Pétain

Not Alone: The Battle of Britain and the Beginnings of a Global War

• The Battle of Britain (July 1940–June 1941)• Forty thousand civilians dead• Stalemate in the air• British resistance

Not Alone: The Battle of Britain and the Beginnings of a Global War

• Winston Churchill (1940–1945, 1951–1955)• Language and personal diplomacy• Convinced FDR to break with American

neutrality• Lend-Lease

Not Alone: The Battle of Britain and the Beginnings of a Global War

• A global war• The battle of the Atlantic

• German submarines (“wolf packs”) sank millions of tons of merchant shipping

Not Alone: The Battle of Britain and the Beginnings of a Global War

• A global war• North Africa

• British needed to protect the Suez• British humiliated Italian invasion force in Libya

• Forced Germany to intervene

• Afrika Korps and Erwin Rommel• Rommel’s army defeated at El Alamein in Egypt

(1942)• United States landed in French territories of

Algeria and Morocco

Not Alone: The Battle of Britain and the Beginnings of a Global War

• A global war• Japan

• December 7, 1941—Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

• Set out to destroy U.S. fleet• Most American ships were out to sea

• Japanese swept through British protectorate of Malaya

• Singapore fell in December 1941• The invasion of the Philippines

Not Alone: The Battle of Britain and the Beginnings of a Global War

• A global war• The American navy

• Chester Nimitz and William Halsey• Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal

• “Island hopping”

The Rise and Ruin of Nations: Germany’s War in the East and the Occupation of Europe

• German victories• 1941—Germany took Yugoslavia

• Established a Croatian puppet state

• Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria sided with Germany

• Greece ultimately fell to the Germans

The Rise and Ruin of Nations: Germany’s War in the East and the Occupation of Europe

• Hitler’s ultimate goal• Nazi-Soviet pact as a matter of convenience for

Hitler• On June 22, 1941, Hitler authorized Operation

Barbarossa—the invasion of the Soviet Union• Stalin’s purges had gotten rid of Russia’s most capable

commanders

• War against the Soviets pitted one ideology against another

• Racial hatred• Cleansing occupied territories of “undesirable elements”

• Hitler diverted his attack from Moscow to the industrial south

The Rise and Ruin of Nations: Germany’s War in the East and the Occupation of Europe

• The Nazi New Order• A patchwork affair• Occupied countries paid “occupation costs”

in taxes, food, industrial production, and manpower

• Puppet regimes• Norway and the Netherlands

• Dedicated party of Nazis governed• At the same time, well-organized resistance

movement

The Rise and Ruin of Nations: Germany’s War in the East and the Occupation of Europe

• The Nazi New Order• France

• Collaboration ranged from simple survival tactics to active Nazi support

• The isolation or deportation of French Jews

• Communist activists• Had a long tradition of smuggling and resisting

government• Became active guerillas and saboteurs

• The Free French and Charles de Gaulle

The Rise and Ruin of Nations: Germany’s War in the East and the Occupation of Europe

• The Nazi New Order• Yugoslavia

• Fascist Croats against most Serbs• Josip Broz (Tito) emerged as the leader of the

Yugoslav resistance• Communist guerrilla army• Gained support of the Allies

Racial War, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Holocaust

• World War II as a racial war• Fall 1939—Himmler directed massive

population transfers• Ethnic Germans moved into the Reich• Poles and Jews were deported

• A campaign of terror• Poles deported to forced-labor camps• Special death squads shot Jews in the streets

Racial War, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Holocaust

• World War II as a racial war• Rassenkampf (racial struggle)

• Radicalized by the war itself• June 1941 (Barbarossa) marked a turning point

in the path to the Holocaust• A “war of extermination”

Racial War, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Holocaust

• From systematic brutality to atrocities to murder• More than 5 million military prisoners

marched to camps to work as slave labor• The Einsatzgruppen (death squads)

• 1943—2.2 million Jews killed

Racial War, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Holocaust

• The Holocaust• Nazis discussed plans for mass killings in

death camps• Auschwitz-Birkenau

• Systematic annihilation of Jews and Gypsies• 1942–1944: one million killed

• Anonymous slaughter?• People were tortured, beaten, and executed

publicly• Death marches

Racial War, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Holocaust

• The Holocaust• Who knew?

• Extermination involved the knowledge and cooperation of many not directly involved in killing

• Most who suspected the worst were terrified and powerless

• The Jewish “problem”• Many Europeans believed problem needed to be solved• Nazis tried to conceal the death camps

• Little resistance was possible• Rebellions at Auschwitz and Treblinka• Warsaw ghetto uprising (1943)

• Eighty percent of the residents had been deported• Small Jewish underground movement

Racial War, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Holocaust

• The Holocaust• Human costs

• 4.1–5.7 million Jews killed• Some long-standing Jewish communities were

annihilated

• A new Europe?

Total War: Home Fronts, the War of Production, Bombing and “the Bomb”

• War demanded massive resources and a national commitment to industry• United States, Britain, and Soviet Union

• Long work shifts• Effects on women and the family

• Production• Propaganda campaigns encouraged the production of war

equipment• Patriotism, communal interests, and a common stake in

winning the war• Allies built tanks, ships, and airplanes by the tens of

thousands• Germany was less efficient in the use of workers and

resources

Total War: Home Fronts, the War of Production, Bombing and “the Bomb”

• New targets• Centers of industry as military targets• American and British strategic bombing• Dresden firebombed

Total War: Home Fronts, the War of Production, Bombing and “the Bomb”

• The race to build the bomb• Nuclear fission• German experiments

• Best specialists were Jews or anti-Nazis now working for the Allies

• Lacked crucial bits of technical information

• The Manhattan Project• Managing the effort to build an American atomic bomb

• Los Alamos, New Mexico (1943)• Laboratory that brought together most capable nuclear

physicists

• First atomic test on July 16, 1945, near Los Alamos

The Allied Counterattack and the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

• The Nazi penetration of the Soviet Union

• The siege of Leningrad

The Allied Counterattack and the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

• The Eastern Front• Changes in the character of war

• War to save the Russian motherland (rodina)• Victory during the “General Winter,” which took

its toll on Nazi supplies• Astonishing recovery of Soviet army

• Whole industries were rebuilt• Whole populations moved to work in new factories

• Soviets found the Blitzkrieg predictable

The Allied Counterattack and the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

• The Eastern Front• The turning point—1943

• Germans aimed an all-out assault on Stalingrad• January 1943—German surrender

• Six thousand of 250,000 Germans survived• One million Soviet deaths

• Soviet offensives• The leadership of Grigorii Zhukov• Ukraine back in Soviet hands, Romania knocked

out of the war• Soviet victories in Yugoslavia and

Czechoslovakia

The Allied Counterattack and the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

• The Western Front• Stalin pressured the Allies to open a second

front in the west• The Allied invasion of Sicily

• Mussolini surrendered in summer 1943

• The Normandy invasion (June 6, 1944)• The liberation of Paris (August 14, 1944)• The Battle of the Bulge (December 1944)

The Allied Counterattack and the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

• The Western Front• Allies crossed the Rhine in April 1945

• Germans preferred to surrender to the Americans or British rather than face the Russians

• Soviets entered Berlin on April 21, 1945• Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945• Germany surrendered unconditionally on

May 7

The Allied Counterattack and the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

• The war in the Pacific• Okinawa fell to the Americans (June 1945)• Chinese communists and nationalists

pushed the Japanese back on Hong Kong• Soviet forces marched through Manchuria to

Korea

The Allied Counterattack and the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

• The war in the Pacific• United States, Britain, and China called on

Japan to surrender or be destroyed on July 26

• B-29s began systematic bombing of Japanese cities

• Japan refused to surrender

• The decision to drop the bomb• Was it necessary? Japan had already been

beaten• Harry Truman

The Allied Counterattack and the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb

• The war in the Pacific• August 6, 1945—Hiroshima, August 9—

Nagasaki• Japan surrendered unconditionally on

August 14, 1945

Conclusion

• A new world ravaged by war

• Western imperialism

• Mass killing

• Technology, genocide, and global war

This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint for Chapter 26.

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