Coming from behind September, 1939 By late 1940, Britain ...users.sisna.com/gjkids/PowerPoints/US History PPt/WWII.pdf•TOTAL NUMBER IN UNITED STATES FORCES DURING WW2 ARMY: 8,300,000

Coming from behind September, 1939

By late 1940, Britain was the only country fighting the

Nazis in Western Europe

Coming from behind

By late 1940, British navy and army pressed further and

further towards India by the Japanese

•Look at how the number of the deaths are divided

•What is a stunning number for this war that was not

true in any other modern war?

•Why would make this happen?Death Distribution

Military Dead Civilian Dead

WWI 95% 5%

WWII 33% 67%

WWII Death Count Per Country:

Country Military Civilian Total

USSR 12 million 17 million 29,000,000

Poland 597,000 5.86 million 6,270,000

Germany 3.25 million 2.44 million

5,690,000

Yugoslavia 305,000 1.35 million 1,660,000

Romania 450,000 465,000

915,000

Hungary 200,000 600,000

800,000

France 245,000 350,000 595,000

Italy 380,000 153,000 533,000

Great Britain 403,000 92,700 495,000

United States 407,000 6,000 413,000

Czechoslovakia 7,000 315,000 322,000

Holland 13,700 236,000 249,000

Greece 19,000 140,000 159,000

Overwhelmed British beginning to crumble, 1940-1941

Hong Kong

Sinagpore

Burma

New Guinea

Pacific and Indian Ocean

France has fallen in

Europe

Hitler invades and

overwhelms the Russians in

1941

Can they keep it going on

there own?

Why should the US care?

Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan: Too cocky or

striking at the best time

Operation: Barbarossa

Pearl Harbor: the

United States

enters the war

December 7, 1941

The US Pacific

Fleet was moved

to Pearl Harbor

from California in

late 1940. Why?

The Plan: 3 waves

1: battleships,carriers, airbases

2. Finish off the ships and

facilities

3. Destroy oil storage tanks

•Look at total

tonnage lost

•What

happened?

•How?

The allied Strategy: A two front war, with most

resources going to defeat Germany first. Why?

Stalin FDRChurchill

Soviet Union USA

Great Britain

Like all of the allied countries, the United States was

not ready

•Why not?

•Why would the US be able to quickly

organize for world war?

•What would the US have to start doing

•What will be one of the problems with

mobilizing so many people for so many

different needs?

•How will this effect traditional gender and

ethnic roles?

•Where will the government get the money?

•How will the government get the resources

to build what they need?

•TOTAL NUMBER IN UNITED STATES FORCES DURING WW2

ARMY: 8,300,000 NAVY: 4,204,662 MARINES: 599,693

GRAND TOTAL: 13,104,355

ARMY:

KILLED IN ACTION: 223,215

NAVY:

KILLED IN ACTION: 34,702

TOTAL NAVY DEATHS: 63,278

MARINES

TOTAL MARINE DEATHS: 24,486

GRAND TOTAL KILLED IN ACTION IN ARMY, NAVY, MARINES

273,377

DIED OF WOUNDS LATER: 4,946

OTHER DEATHS: 32,656

TOTAL DEATHS: 310,979

Fear at home leads to

extreme measures:

Japanese interment

camps

The offensive war against Japan began with the Americans,

taking and barely holding against continuous Japanese

attack against the airfield on Guadacanal island in the

Solomon Islands 1942

•After defeats at Pearl Harbor, in Alaska, at Wake Island

and the Phillipines, US forces in the Pacific were reeling.

•The Navy was given the task of taking the Central

Pacific back.

•MacArthur, now based in Australia, was to use army

units to drive towards Japan from the south

•Both the navy and MacArthur quickly learned the

importance of Airbases

•Island hoping strategy…why?

The War in the Pacific covers thousand of miles

What will be the challenges?

What new ways of doing things will have to be developed?

New Guinea 1943-1944

The War in Europe begins with Churchill insisting on a

“backdoor” approach through North Africa and Italy. The

US would rather build up for a direct attack through France.

The compromise: We will do both

European Campaign maps

Recovery