-
World War II
The SecondWorldWar and WWII redirect here. Forother uses, see
The Second World War (disambiguation)and WWII (disambiguation).
World War II (WWII or WW2), also known as theSecond World War
(after the recent Great War), wasa global war that lasted from 1939
to 1945, though re-lated conicts began earlier. It involved the
vast majorityof the worlds nationsincluding all of the great
pow-erseventually forming two opposing military alliances:the
Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread warin history, and
directly involved more than 100 millionpeople from over 30
countries. In a state of "total war",the major participants threw
their entire economic, in-dustrial, and scientic capabilities
behind the war eort,erasing the distinction between civilian and
military re-sources. Marked by mass deaths of civilians,
includingthe Holocaust (during which approximately 11 millionpeople
were killed)[1][2] and the strategic bombing of in-dustrial and
population centres (during which approxi-mately one million people
were killed, including the useof two nuclear weapons in combat),[3]
it resulted in an es-timated 50 million to 85 million fatalities.
These madeWorld War II the deadliest conict in human
history.[4]
The Empire of Japan aimed to dominate Asia and thePacic and was
already at war with the Republic of Chinain 1937,[5] but the world
war is generally said to have be-gun on 1 September 1939[6] with
the invasion of Polandby Germany and subsequent declarations of war
on Ger-many by France and the United Kingdom. From late1939 to
early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties,Germany conquered
or controlled much of continentalEurope, and formed the Axis
alliance with Italy andJapan. Following the MolotovRibbentrop Pact,
Ger-many and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed ter-ritories
of their European neighbours, including Poland,Finland and the
Baltic states. The United Kingdom andthe British Commonwealth were
the only Allied forcescontinuing the ght against the Axis, with
campaigns inNorth Africa and the Horn of Africa as well as the
long-running Battle of the Atlantic. In June 1941, the Eu-ropean
Axis powers launched an invasion of the SovietUnion, opening the
largest land theatre of war in history,which trapped the major part
of the Axis military forcesinto a war of attrition. In December
1941, Japan attackedthe United States and European territories in
the PacicOcean, and quickly conquered much of the Western
Pa-cic.The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the
crit-
ical Battle ofMidway, near Hawaii, and Germany was de-feated in
North Africa and then, decisively, at Stalingradin the Soviet
Union. In 1943, with a series of Germandefeats on the Eastern
Front, the Allied invasion of Italywhich brought about Italian
surrender, and Allied victo-ries in the Pacic, the Axis lost the
initiative and under-took strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944,
the WesternAllies invaded France, while the Soviet Union
regainedall of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and
itsallies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suered ma-jor reverses
in mainland Asia in South Central China andBurma, while the Allies
crippled the Japanese Navy andcaptured key Western Pacic
islands.The war in Europe ended with an invasion of Germany bythe
Western Allies and the Soviet Union culminating inthe capture of
Berlin by Soviet and Polish troops and thesubsequent German
unconditional surrender on 8 May1945. Following the Potsdam
Declaration by the Allieson 26 July 1945, the United States dropped
atomic bombson the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on
6August and 9 August respectively. With an invasion ofthe Japanese
archipelago imminent, the possibility of ad-ditional atomic
bombings, and the Soviet Unions decla-ration of war on Japan and
invasion of Manchuria, Japansurrendered on 15 August 1945. Thus
ended the war inAsia, and the nal destruction of the Axis
bloc.World War II altered the political alignment and
socialstructure of the world. The United Nations (UN) was
es-tablished to foster international co-operation and preventfuture
conicts. The victorious great powersthe UnitedStates, the Soviet
Union, China, the United Kingdom, andFrancebecame the permanent
members of the UnitedNations Security Council.[7] The Soviet Union
and theUnited States emerged as rival superpowers, setting thestage
for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46years. Meanwhile, the
inuence of European great pow-ers waned, while the decolonisation
of Asia and Africabegan. Most countries whose industries had been
dam-aged moved towards economic recovery. Political inte-gration,
especially in Europe, emerged as an eort to endpre-war enmities and
to create a common identity.[8]
1 Chronology
See also: Timeline of World War II
The start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1
1
-
2 2 BACKGROUND
September 1939,[9][10] beginning with the German inva-sion of
Poland; Britain and France declared war on Ger-many two days later.
The dates for the beginning of war inthe Pacic include the start of
the Second Sino-JapaneseWar on 7 July 1937,[11] or even the
Japanese invasion ofManchuria on 19 September 1931.[12][13]
Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, whoheld
that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe andits colonies
occurred simultaneously and the two warsmerged in 1941. This
article uses the conventional dat-ing. Other starting dates
sometimes used for World WarII include the Italian invasion of
Abyssinia on 3 Octo-ber 1935.[14] The British historian Antony
Beevor viewsthe beginning of the Second World War as the Battlesof
Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces ofMongolia and the
Soviet Union from May to September1939.[15]
The exact date of the wars end is also not universallyagreed
upon. It was generally accepted at the time thatthe war ended with
the armistice of 14 August 1945(V-J Day), rather than the formal
surrender of Japan(2 September 1945); it is even claimed in some
Euro-pean histories that it ended on V-E Day (8 May 1945).A peace
treaty with Japan was signed in 1951 to for-mally tie up any loose
ends such as compensation to bepaid to Allied prisoners of war who
had been victimsof atrocities.[16] A treaty regarding Germanys
future al-lowed the reunication of East and West Germany totake
place in 1990 and resolved other post-World WarII issues.[17]
2 BackgroundMain article: Causes of World War II
World War I had radically altered the political Europeanmap,
with the defeat of the Central PowersincludingAustria-Hungary,
Germany and the Ottoman Empireand the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of
power in Russia.Meanwhile, existing victorious Allies such as
France,Belgium, Italy, Greece and Romania gained territories,and
new Nation states were created out of the collapse
ofAustria-Hungary and the Ottoman and Russian Empires.To prevent a
future world war, the League of Nations wascreated during the 1919
Paris Peace Conference. The or-ganisations primary goals were to
prevent armed conictthrough collective security, military and naval
disarma-ment, and settling international disputes through
peacefulnegotiations and arbitration.Despite strong pacist
sentiment after World War I,[18]its aftermath still caused
irredentist and revanchistnationalism in several European
states.These sentimentswere especially marked in Germany because of
the sig-nicant territorial, colonial, and nancial losses incurredby
the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Germany
lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all ofits
overseas colonies, while German annexation of otherstates was
prohibited, reparations were imposed, and lim-its were placed on
the size and capability of the countrysarmed forces.[19] In
addition, the Russian Civil War hadled to the creation of the
Soviet Union.[20]
The German Empire was dissolved in the German Revo-lution of
19181919, and a democratic government, laterknown as the Weimar
Republic, was created. The inter-war period saw strife between
supporters of the new re-public and hardline opponents on both the
right and left.Italy, as an Entente ally, had made some post-war
territo-rial gains, however Italian nationalists were angered
thatthe promises made by Britain and France to secure
Italianentrance into the war were not fullled with the peace
set-tlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Fascist movement ledby Benito
Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nation-alist, totalitarian,
and class collaborationist agenda thatabolished representative
democracy, repressed socialist,left-wing and liberal forces, and
pursued an aggressiveexpansionist foreign policy aimed at forging
Italy as aworld power, promising the creation of a "New
RomanEmpire".[21]
The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva,
Switzerland,1930
In Germany, the Weimar Republic was attacked by right-wing
elements such as the Freikorps and the Nazi party,resulting in
events such as the Kapp Putsch and the BeerHall Putsch. With the
onset of the Great Depression in1929, domestic support for Nazism
and its leader AdolfHitler rose and, in 1933, he was appointed
Chancellorof Germany. In the aftermath of the Reichstag re,Hitler
created a totalitarian single-party state led by theNazis.[22]
The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched aunication campaign
against regional warlords and nom-inally unied China in the
mid-1920s, but was soon em-broiled in a civil war against its
former Chinese com-munist allies.[23] In 1931, an increasingly
militaristicJapanese Empire, which had long sought inuence
inChina[24] as the rst step of what its government saw asthe
countrys right to rule Asia, used the Mukden Inci-dent as a pretext
to launch an invasion of Manchuria and
-
3establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.[25]
Too weak to resist Japan, China appealed to the Leagueof Nations
for help. Japan withdrew from the Leagueof Nations after being
condemned for its incursion intoManchuria. The two nations then
fought several bat-tles, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until the
TangguTruce was signed in 1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteerforces
continued the resistance to Japanese aggression inManchuria, and
Chahar and Suiyuan.[26]
Adolf Hitler at a German National Socialist political rally
inWeimar, October 1930
Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrowthe
German government in 1923, eventually became theChancellor of
Germany in 1933. He abolished democ-racy, espousing a radical,
racially motivated revision ofthe world order, and soon began a
massive rearmamentcampaign.[27] It was at this time that multiple
politicalscientists began to predict that a second Great War
mighttake place.[28] Meanwhile, France, to secure its
alliance,allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy
de-sired as a colonial possession. The situation was aggra-vated in
early 1935 when the Territory of the Saar Basinwas legally reunited
with Germany and Hitler repudiatedthe Treaty of Versailles,
accelerated his rearmament pro-gramme and introduced
conscription.[29]
Hoping to contain Germany, the United Kingdom,France and Italy
formed the Stresa Front; however, inJune 1935, the United Kingdom
made an independentnaval agreement with Germany, easing prior
restric-tions. The Soviet Union, concerned due to Germanysgoals of
capturing vast areas of eastern Europe, wrotea treaty of mutual
assistance with France. Before tak-ing eect though, the
Franco-Soviet pact was requiredto go through the bureaucracy of the
League of Nations,which rendered it essentially toothless.[30] The
UnitedStates, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passedthe
Neutrality Act in August of the same year.[31] Twomonths later,
Italy invaded Ethiopia through Italian So-maliland and Eritrea;[32]
Germany was the onlymajor Eu-ropean nation to support the invasion.
Italy subsequentlydropped its objections to Germanys goal of
absorbingAustria.[33]
Hitler deed the Versailles and Locarno treaties byremilitarising
the Rhineland in March 1936. He receivedlittle response from other
European powers.[34] When theSpanish Civil War broke out in July,
Hitler and Mussolinisupported the fascist and authoritarian
Nationalist forcesin their civil war against the Soviet-supported
Spanish Re-public. Both sides used the conict to test new
weaponsand methods of warfare,[35] with the Nationalists winningthe
war in early 1939. In October 1936, Germany andItaly formed the
RomeBerlin Axis. A month later, Ger-many and Japan signed the
Anti-Comintern Pact, whichItaly would join in the following year.
In China, after theXi'an Incident, the Kuomintang and communist
forcesagreed on a ceasere to present a united front to
opposeJapan.[36]
3 Pre-war events
3.1 Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)Main article: Second
Italo-Abyssinian WarThe Second ItaloAbyssinian War was a brief
colonial
Italian soldiers recruited in 1935, on their way to ght the
SecondItalo-Abyssinian War
war that began in October 1935 and ended in May 1936.The war
began with the invasion of the Ethiopian Em-pire (also known as
Abyssinia) by the armed forces of theKingdom of Italy (Regno
d'Italia), which was launchedfrom Italian Somaliland and
Eritrea.[32] The war resultedin the military occupation of Ethiopia
and its annexationinto the newly created colony of Italian East
Africa(Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI); in addition, it ex-posed
the weakness of the League of Nations as a forceto preserve peace.
Both Italy and Ethiopia were mem-ber nations, but the League did
nothing when the formerclearly violated the Leagues own Article
X.[37]
3.2 Spanish Civil War (193639)Main article: Spanish Civil
WarDuring the Spanish Civil War, Hitler and Mussolini lentmilitary
support to the Nationalist rebels, led by General
-
4 3 PRE-WAR EVENTS
The bombing of Guernica in 1937, sparked Europe-wide fearsthat
the next war would be based on bombing of cities with veryhigh
civilian casualties
Francisco Franco. The Soviet Union supported the ex-isting
government, the Spanish Republic. Over 30,000foreign volunteers,
known as the International Brigades,also fought against the
Nationalists. Both Germany andthe USSR used this proxy war as an
opportunity to testin combat their most advanced weapons and
tactics. Thebombing of Guernica by the German Condor Legion inApril
1937 heightened widespread concerns that the nextmajor war would
include extensive terror bombing at-tacks on civilians.[38][39] The
Nationalists won the civilwar in April 1939; Franco, now dictator,
bargained withboth sides during the Second World War, but never
con-cluded any major agreements. He did send volunteers toght on
the Eastern Front under German command butSpain remained neutral
and did not allow either side touse its territory.[40]
3.3 Japanese invasion of China (1937)Main article: Second
Sino-Japanese WarIn July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese
impe-
Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during the Battle of
Shanghai,1937
rial capital of Beijing after instigating the Marco PoloBridge
Incident, which culminated in the Japanese cam-paign to invade all
of China.[41] The Soviets quickly
signed a non-aggression pact with China to lend materielsupport,
eectively ending Chinas prior co-operationwith Germany.
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployedhis best army to defend
Shanghai, but, after three monthsof ghting, Shanghai fell. The
Japanese continued to pushthe Chinese forces back, capturing the
capital Nankingin December 1937. After the fall of Nanking, tens
ofthousands if not hundreds of thousands of Chinese civil-ians and
disarmed combatants were murdered by theJapanese.[42][43]
In March 1938, Nationalist Chinese forces won their rstmajor
victory at Taierzhuang but then the city of Xuzhouwas taken by
Japanese in May.[44] In June 1938, Chineseforces stalled the
Japanese advance by ooding the Yel-low River; this manoeuvre bought
time for the Chinese toprepare their defences at Wuhan, but the
city was takenby October.[45] Japanese military victories did not
bringabout the collapse of Chinese resistance that Japan hadhoped
to achieve; instead the Chinese government relo-cated inland to
Chongqing and continued the war.[46][47]
3.4 Japanese invasion of the Soviet Unionand Mongolia (1938)
See also: Nanshin-ron and SovietJapanese borderconicts
Japanese forces in Manchukuo had sporadic borderclashes with the
Soviet Union, culminating in theJapanese defeat at Khalkin Gol.
After this, Japan andthe Soviet Union signed a Neutrality Pact in
April 1941,and Japan turned its focus to the South Pacic.
3.5 European occupations and agreements
Further information: Anschluss, Appeasement, MunichAgreement,
German occupation of Czechoslovakia andMolotovRibbentrop PactIn
Europe, Germany and Italy were becomingmore bold.
Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano picturedjust
before signing the Munich Agreement, 29 September 1938
-
5InMarch 1938, Germany annexed Austria, again provok-ing little
response from other European powers.[48] En-couraged, Hitler began
pressing German claims on theSudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia
with a predomi-nantly ethnic German population; and soon Britain
andFrance followed the counsel of prime minister NevilleChamberlain
and conceded this territory to Germanyin the Munich Agreement,
which was made against thewishes of the Czechoslovak government, in
exchange fora promise of no further territorial demands.[49] Soon
af-terwards, Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia tocede
additional territory to Hungary and Poland.[50]
Although all of Germanys stated demands had beensatised by the
agreement, privately Hitler was furiousthat British interference
had prevented him from seiz-ing all of Czechoslovakia in one
operation. In subse-quent speeches Hitler attacked British and
Jewish war-mongers and in January 1939 secretly ordered a
majorbuild-up of the German navy to challenge British
navalsupremacy. In March 1939, Germany invaded the re-mainder of
Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it intothe German
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia anda pro-German client state,
the Slovak Republic.[51] Hitleralso delivered an ultimatum to
Lithuania, forcing the con-cession of the Klaipda Region.
German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop signing the
NaziSovietnon-aggression pact. Standing behind him are Molotov and
theSoviet leader Joseph Stalin, 1939
Alarmed, and with Hitler making further demands onthe Free City
of Danzig, France and Britain guaranteedtheir support for Polish
independence; when Italy con-quered Albania in April 1939, the same
guarantee wasextended to Romania and Greece.[52] Shortly after
theFranco-British pledge to Poland, Germany and Italy for-malised
their own alliancewith the Pact of Steel.[53] Hitleraccused Britain
and Poland of trying to encircle Ger-many and renounced the
Anglo-German Naval Agree-ment and the GermanPolish Non-Aggression
Pact.In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union
signedtheMolotovRibbentrop Pact,[54] a non-aggression treatywith a
secret protocol. The parties gave each other rightsto spheres of
inuence (western Poland and Lithuania
for Germany; eastern Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latviaand
Bessarabia for the USSR). It also raised the ques-tion of
continuing Polish independence.[55] The agree-ment was crucial to
Hitler because it assured that Ger-many would not have to face the
prospect of a two-frontwar, as it had in World War I, after it
defeated Poland.The situation reached a general crisis in late
August asGerman troops continued to mobilise against the Pol-ish
border. In a private meeting with the Italian for-eign minister,
Count Ciano, Hitler asserted that Polandwas a doubtful neutral that
needed to either yield to hisdemands or be liquidated to prevent it
from drawingo German troops in the future unavoidable war withthe
Western democracies. He did not believe Britain orFrance would
intervene in the conict.[56] On 23 AugustHitler ordered the attack
to proceed on 26 August, butupon hearing that Britain had concluded
a formal mutualassistance pact with Poland and that Italy would
maintainneutrality, he decided to delay it.[57] In response to
Britishpleas for direct negotiations, Germany demanded on 29August
that a Polish plenipotentiary immediately travel toBerlin to
negotiate the handover of Danzig and the PolishCorridor to Germany
as well as to agree to safeguard theGerman minority in Poland. The
Poles refused to complywith this request and on the evening of 31
August Ger-many declared that it considered its proposals
rejected.[58]
4 Course of the warFurther information: Diplomatic history of
World WarII
4.1 War breaks out in Europe (193940)
Main articles: Invasion of Poland, Occupation of Poland(193945),
Nazi crimes against the Polish nation, Sovietinvasion of Poland and
Soviet repressions of Polish citi-zens (193946)On 1 September 1939,
Germany invaded Poland underthe false pretext that the Poles had
carried out a seriesof sabotage operations against German
targets.[59] Twodays later, on 3 September, France and the United
King-dom, followed by the fully independent Dominions[60]of the
British Commonwealth[61]Australia (3 Septem-ber), Canada (10
September), New Zealand (3 Septem-ber), and South Africa (6
September)declared waron Germany. However, initially the alliance
providedlimited direct military support to Poland, consistingof a
small French attack into the Saarland.[62] TheWestern Allies also
began a naval blockade of Germany,which aimed to damage the
countrys economy and wareort.[63] Germany responded by ordering
U-boat war-fare against Allied merchant and war ships, which was
tolater escalate in the Battle of the Atlantic.
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6 4 COURSE OF THE WAR
Soldiers of the German Wehrmacht tearing down the bordercrossing
between Poland and the Free City of Danzig, 1 Septem-ber 1939
German Panzer I tanks near the city of Bydgoszcz, during
theInvasion of Poland, September 1939
On 17 September 1939, after signing a cease-re withJapan, the
Soviets invaded Poland from the east.[64] ThePolish army was
defeated and Warsaw surrendered to theGermans on 27 September, with
nal pockets of resis-tance surrendering on 6 October. Polands
territory wasdivided between Germany and the Soviet Union,
withLithuania and Slovakia also receiving small shares. Af-ter the
surrender of Polands armed forces, the Polish re-sistance
established an Underground State and a partisanHome Army.[65] About
100,000 Polish military person-nel were evacuated to Romania and
the Baltic countries;many of these soldiers later fought against
the Germans inother theatres of the war.[66] Polands Enigma
codebreak-ers were also evacuated to France.[67]
On 6 October Hitler made a public peace overture tothe United
Kingdom and France, but said that the futureof Poland was to be
determined exclusively by Germanyand the Soviet Union. Chamberlain
rejected this on 12October, saying Past experience has shown that
no re-liance can be placed upon the promises of the presentGerman
Government.[58] After this rejection Hitler or-dered an immediate
oensive against France,[68] but badweather forced repeated
postponements until the springof 1940.[69][70][71]
German and Soviet army ocers pictured shaking handsafter Nazi
Germany and Soviet Union annexed new territoriesin Eastern Europe,
1939
After signing the GermanSoviet Treaty of Friendship,Cooperation
and Demarcation, the Soviet Union forcedthe Baltic
countriesEstonia, Latvia and Lithuaniatoallow it to station Soviet
troops in their countries un-der pacts of mutual
assistance.[72][73][74] Finland re-jected territorial demands,
prompting a Soviet invasionin November 1939.[75] The resulting
Winter War endedin March 1940 with Finnish concessions.[76] The
UnitedKingdom and France treating the Soviet attack on Finlandas
tantamount to its entering the war on the side of theGermans,
responded to the Soviet invasion by supportingthe USSRs expulsion
from the League of Nations.[74]
In June 1940, the Soviet Union forcibly annexed Es-tonia, Latvia
and Lithuania,[73] and then annexed thedisputed Romanian region of
Bessarabia. Meanwhile,Nazi-Soviet political rapprochement and
economic co-operation[77][78] gradually stalled,[79][80] and both
statesbegan preparations for war.[81]
4.2 Western Europe (194041)
Map of the French Maginot Line
In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norwayto protect
shipments of iron ore from Sweden, which theAllies were attempting
to cut o by unilaterally mining
-
4.2 Western Europe (194041) 7
neutral Norwegian waters.[82] Denmark capitulated aftera few
hours, and despite Allied support, during whichthe important
harbour of Narvik temporarily was recap-tured by the British,
Norway was conquered within twomonths.[83] British discontent over
the Norwegian cam-paign led to the replacement of the British Prime
Minis-ter, Neville Chamberlain, with Winston Churchill on 10May
1940.[84]
Germany launched an oensive against France and, forreasons of
military strategy, also attacked the neutral na-tions of Belgium,
the Netherlands, and Luxembourg on10 May 1940.[85] That same day
the United Kingdomoccupied the Danish possessions of Iceland,
Greenlandand the Faroes to preempt a possible German invasionof the
islands.[86] The Netherlands and Belgium wereoverrun using
blitzkrieg tactics in a few days and weeks,respectively.[87] The
French-fortied Maginot Line andthe main body the Allied forces
which had moved intoBelgium were circumvented by a anking
movementthrough the thickly wooded Ardennes region,[88] mistak-enly
perceived by Allied planners as an impenetrable nat-ural barrier
against armoured vehicles.[89] As a result, thebulk of the Allied
armies found themselves trapped inan encirclement and were beaten.
The majority weretaken prisoner, whilst over 300,000, mostly
British andFrench, were evacuated from the continent at Dunkirkby
early June, although abandoning almost all of
theirequipment.[90]
On 10 June, Italy invaded France, declaring war on bothFrance
and the United Kingdom.[91] Paris fell to the Ger-mans on 14 June
and eight days later France surrenderedand was soon divided into
German and Italian occupa-tion zones,[92] and an unoccupied rump
state under theVichy Regime, which, though ocially neutral, was
gen-erally aligned with Germany. France kept its eet but theBritish
feared the Germans would seize it, so on 3 July,the British
attacked it.[93]
View of London after the German Blitz, 29 December 1940
On 19 July, Hitler again publicly oered to end the war,saying he
had no desire to destroy the British Empire.
The United Kingdom rejected this, with Lord Halifaxresponding
there was in his speech no suggestion thatpeace must be based on
justice, no word of recogni-tion that the other nations of Europe
had any right toselfdetermination ...[94]
Following this, Germany began an air superiority cam-paign over
the United Kingdom (the Battle of Britain)to prepare for an
invasion.[95] The campaign failed, andthe invasion plans were
cancelled by September.[95] Frus-trated, and in part in response to
repeated British air raidsagainst Berlin, Germany began a strategic
bombing oen-sive against British cities known as the Blitz.[96]
However,the air attacks largely failed to disrupt the British war
ef-fort.
German Luftwae, Heinkel He 111 bombers during the Battle
ofBritain
Using newly captured French ports, the German Navyenjoyed
success against an over-extended Royal Navy, us-ing U-boats against
British shipping in the Atlantic.[97]The British scored a signicant
victory on 27 May 1941by sinking the German battleship
Bismarck.[98] Perhapsmost importantly, during the Battle of Britain
the RoyalAir Force had successfully resisted the Luftwaes as-sault,
and the German bombing campaign largely endedin May 1941.[99]
Throughout this period, the neutral United States tookmeasures
to assist China and the Western Allies. InNovember 1939, the
American Neutrality Act wasamended to allow cash and carry
purchases by theAllies.[100] In 1940, following the German capture
ofParis, the size of the United States Navy was
signicantlyincreased. In September, the United States further
agreedto a trade of American destroyers for British
bases.[101]Still, a large majority of the American public
continuedto oppose any direct military intervention into the
conictwell into 1941.[102]
Although Roosevelt had promised to keep the UnitedStates out of
the war, he nevertheless took concrete stepsto prepare for war. In
December 1940 he accused Hitlerof planning world conquest and ruled
out negotiations
-
8 4 COURSE OF THE WAR
as useless, calling for the US to become an arsenal fordemocracy
and promoted the passage of Lend-Lease aidto support the British
war eort.[94] In January 1941 se-cret high level sta talks with the
British began for thepurposes of determining how to defeat Germany
shouldthe US enter the war. They decided on a number ofoensive
policies, including an air oensive, the earlyelimination of Italy,
raids, support of resistance groups,and the capture of positions to
launch an oensive againstGermany.[103]
At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact unitedJapan,
Italy and Germany to formalise the Axis Powers.The Tripartite Pact
stipulated that any country, with theexception of the Soviet Union,
not in the war which at-tacked any Axis Power would be forced to go
to waragainst all three.[104] The Axis expanded in November1940
when Hungary, Slovakia and Romania joined theTripartite Pact.[105]
Romania would make a major contri-bution (as didHungary) to theAxis
war against theUSSR,partially to recapture territory ceded to the
USSR, par-tially to pursue its leader Ion Antonescu's desire to
com-bat communism.[106]
4.3 Mediterranean (194041)
Australian troops of the British Commonwealth Forces man
afront-line trench during the Siege of Tobruk; North African
Cam-paign, August 1941
Italy began operations in the Mediterranean, initiating asiege
of Malta in June, conquering British Somaliland inAugust, and
making an incursion into British-held Egyptin September 1940. In
October 1940, Italy started theGreco-Italian War due to Mussolinis
jealousy of Hitlerssuccess but within days was repulsed and pushed
backinto Albania, where a stalemate soon occurred.[107] TheUnited
Kingdom responded to Greek requests for assis-tance by sending
troops to Crete and providing air sup-
port to Greece. Hitler decided that when the weather im-proved
he would take action against Greece to assist theItalians and
prevent the British from gaining a foothold inthe Balkans, to
strike against the British naval dominanceof the Mediterranean, and
to secure his hold on Roma-nian oil.[108]
In December 1940, British Commonwealth forces be-gan
counter-oensives against Italian forces in Egypt andItalian East
Africa.[109] The oensive in North Africa washighly successful and
by early February 1941 Italy hadlost control of eastern Libya and
large numbers of Ital-ian troops had been taken prisoner. The
Italian Navy alsosuered signicant defeats, with the Royal Navy
puttingthree Italian battleships out of commission by a
carrierattack at Taranto, and neutralising several more warshipsat
the Battle of Cape Matapan.[110]
The Germans soon intervened to assist Italy. Hitler sentGerman
forces to Libya in February, and by the end ofMarch they had
launched an oensive which drove backthe Commonwealth forces which
had been weakened tosupport Greece.[111] In under a month,
Commonwealthforces were pushed back into Egypt with the exceptionof
the besieged port of Tobruk.[112] The Commonwealthattempted to
dislodge Axis forces in May and again inJune, but failed on both
occasions.[113]
By late March 1941, following Bulgaria's signing of
theTripartite Pact, the Germans were in position to intervenein
Greece. Plans were changed, however, due to devel-opments in
neighbouring Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav gov-ernment had signed the
Tripartite Pact on 25 March, onlyto be overthrown two days later by
a British-encouragedcoup. Hitler viewed the new regime as hostile
and imme-diately decided to eliminate it. On 6 April Germany
si-multaneously invaded both Yugoslavia and Greece, mak-ing rapid
progress and forcing both nations to surren-der within the month.
The British were driven from theBalkans after Germany conquered the
Greek island ofCrete by the end of May.[114] Although the Axis
victorywas swift, bitter partisan warfare subsequently broke
outagainst the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, which contin-ued
until the end of the war.The Allies did have some successes during
this time. Inthe Middle East, Commonwealth forces rst quashed
anuprising in Iraq which had been supported byGerman air-craft from
bases within Vichy-controlled Syria,[115] then,with the assistance
of the Free French, invaded Syria andLebanon to prevent further
such occurrences.[116]
4.4 Axis attack on the USSR (1941)Further information: Operation
Barbarossa,Einsatzgruppen, World War II casualties of the So-viet
Union and Nazi crimes against Soviet POWsWith the situation in
Europe and Asia relatively stable,Germany, Japan, and the Soviet
Union made prepara-tions. With the Soviets wary of mounting
tensions with
-
4.4 Axis attack on the USSR (1941) 9
Animation of the WWII European Theatre
Soviet civilians in Leningrad leaving destroyed houses, after
aGerman bombardment of the city; Battle of Leningrad, 10 De-cember
1942
Germany and the Japanese planning to take advantageof the
European War by seizing resource-rich Europeanpossessions in
Southeast Asia, the two powers signed theSovietJapanese Neutrality
Pact in April 1941.[117] Bycontrast, the Germans were steadily
making preparationsfor an attack on the Soviet Union, massing
forces on theSoviet border.[118]
Hitler believed that Britains refusal to end the war wasbased on
the hope that the United States and the SovietUnion would enter the
war against Germany sooner orlater.[119] He therefore decided to
try to strengthen Ger-manys relations with the Soviets, or failing
that, to at-tack and eliminate them as a factor. In November
1940,negotiations took place to determine if the Soviet Unionwould
join the Tripartite Pact. The Soviets showed someinterest, but
asked for concessions from Finland, Bul-garia, Turkey, and Japan
that Germany considered un-acceptable. On 18 December 1940, Hitler
issued the di-rective to prepare for an invasion of the Soviet
Union.On 22 June 1941, Germany, supported by Italy and
Romania, invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Bar-barossa, with
Germany accusing the Soviets of plot-ting against them. They were
joined shortly by Fin-land and Hungary.[120] The primary targets of
this sur-prise oensive[121] were the Baltic region, Moscow
andUkraine, with the ultimate goal of ending the 1941 cam-paign
near the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, from theCaspian to the White
Seas. Hitlers objectives wereto eliminate the Soviet Union as a
military power, ex-terminate Communism, generate Lebensraum
(livingspace)[122] by dispossessing the native population[123]and
guarantee access to the strategic resources needed todefeat
Germanys remaining rivals.[124]
Although the Red Army was preparing for
strategiccounter-oensives before the war,[125] Barbarossa forcedthe
Soviet supreme command to adopt a strategic defence.During the
summer, the Axis made signicant gains intoSoviet territory,
inicting immense losses in both person-nel and materiel. By the
middle of August, however, theGerman Army High Command decided to
suspend theoensive of a considerably depleted Army Group Centre,and
to divert the 2nd Panzer Group to reinforce troops ad-vancing
towards central Ukraine and Leningrad.[126] TheKiev oensive was
overwhelmingly successful, resultingin encirclement and elimination
of four Soviet armies,and made further advance into Crimea and
industriallydeveloped Eastern Ukraine (the First Battle of
Kharkov)possible.[127]
The diversion of three quarters of the Axis troops and
themajority of their air forces from France and the
centralMediterranean to the Eastern Front[128] prompted Britainto
reconsider its grand strategy.[129] In July, the UK andthe Soviet
Union formed a military alliance against Ger-many[130] The British
and Soviets invaded Iran to securethe Persian Corridor and Irans
oil elds.[131] In August,the United Kingdom and the United States
jointly issuedthe Atlantic Charter.[132]
By October Axis operational objectives in Ukraine andthe Baltic
region were achieved, with only the sieges ofLeningrad[133] and
Sevastopol continuing.[134] A majoroensive against Moscow was
renewed; after two monthsof erce battles in increasingly harsh
weather the Ger-man army almost reached the outer suburbs of
Moscow,where the exhausted troops[135] were forced to suspendtheir
oensive.[136] Large territorial gains were made byAxis forces, but
their campaign had failed to achieve itsmain objectives: two key
cities remained in Soviet hands,the Soviet capability to resist was
not broken, and the So-viet Union retained a considerable part of
its military po-tential. The blitzkrieg phase of the war in Europe
hadended.[137]
By early December, freshly mobilised reserves[138] al-lowed the
Soviets to achieve numerical parity with Axistroops.[139] This, as
well as intelligence data which es-tablished that a minimal number
of Soviet troops inthe East would be sucient to deter any attack by
the
-
10 4 COURSE OF THE WAR
Japanese Kwantung Army,[140] allowed the Soviets to be-gin a
massive counter-oensive that started on 5 Decem-ber all along the
front and pushed German troops 100250 kilometres (62155 mi)
west.[141]
4.5 War breaks out in the Pacic (1941)
Mitsubishi A6M2, Zero ghters on the Imperial Japanese
Navyaircraft carrier Shkaku, just before the attack on Pearl
Harbor
In 1939 the United States had renounced its trade treatywith
Japan and beginning with an aviation gasoline banin July 1940 Japan
had become subject to increasing eco-nomic pressure.[94] During
this time, Japan launched itsrst attack against Changsha, a
strategically importantChinese city, but was repulsed by late
September.[142] De-spite several oensives by both sides, the war
betweenChina and Japan was stalemated by 1940. To increasepressure
on China by blocking supply routes, and to bet-ter position
Japanese forces in the event of a war withthe Western powers, Japan
had occupied northern In-dochina.[143] Afterwards, the United
States embargoediron, steel and mechanical parts against
Japan.[144] Othersanctions soon followed.In August of that year,
Chinese communists launchedan oensive in Central China; in
retaliation, Japan insti-tuted harsh measures in occupied areas to
reduce humanand material resources for the communists.[145]
Contin-ued antipathy between Chinese communist and national-ist
forces culminated in armed clashes in January 1941,eectively ending
their co-operation.[146] In March, theJapanese 11th army attacked
the headquarters of the Chi-nese 19th army but was repulsed during
Battle of Shang-gao.[147] In September, Japan attempted to take the
cityof Changsha again and clashed with Chinese
nationalistforces.[148]
German successes in Europe encouraged Japan to in-crease
pressure on European governments in SoutheastAsia. The Dutch
government agreed to provide Japansome oil supplies from the Dutch
East Indies, but nego-tiations for additional access to their
resources ended infailure in June 1941.[149] In July 1941 Japan
sent troops
to southern Indochina, thus threatening British and
Dutchpossessions in the Far East. The United States, UnitedKingdom
and other Western governments reacted to thismove with a freeze on
Japanese assets and a total oilembargo.[150][151]
Since early 1941 the United States and Japan had beenengaged in
negotiations in an attempt to improve theirstrained relations and
end the war in China. Dur-ing these negotiations Japan advanced a
number ofproposals which were dismissed by the Americans
asinadequate.[152] At the same time the US, Britain, and
theNetherlands engaged in secret discussions for the jointdefence
of their territories, in the event of a Japanese at-tack against
any of them.[153] Roosevelt reinforced thePhilippines (an American
possession since 1898) andwarned Japan that the US would react to
Japanese attacksagainst any neighboring countries.[153]
USS Arizona during the Japanese surprise air attack on
theAmerican pacic eet, 7 December 1941
Frustrated at the lack of progress and feeling the pinchof the
American-British-Dutch sanctions, Japan preparedfor war. On 20
November it presented an interim pro-posal as its nal oer. It
called for the end of Amer-ican aid to China and the supply of oil
and other re-sources to Japan. In exchange they promised not
tolaunch any attacks in Southeast Asia and to withdrawtheir forces
from their threatening positions in south-ern Indochina.[152] The
American counter-proposal of 26November required that Japan
evacuate all of China with-out conditions and conclude
non-aggression pacts withall Pacic powers.[154] That meant Japan
was essentiallyforced to choose between abandoning its ambitions
inChina, or seizing the natural resources it needed in theDutch
East Indies by force;[155] the Japanese military didnot consider
the former an option, and many ocersconsidered the oil embargo an
unspoken declaration ofwar.[156]
Japan planned to rapidly seize European colonies in Asiato
create a large defensive perimeter stretching into theCentral
Pacic; the Japanese would then be free to ex-ploit the resources of
Southeast Asia while exhausting
-
4.6 Axis advance stalls (194243) 11
the over-stretched Allies by ghting a defensive war.[157]To
prevent American intervention while securing theperimeter it was
further planned to neutralise the UnitedStates Pacic Fleet and the
American military presencein the Philippines from the outset.[158]
On 7 December(8 December in Asian time zones), 1941, Japan
attackedBritish and American holdings with
near-simultaneousoensives against Southeast Asia and the Central
Pa-cic.[159] These included an attack on the American eetat Pearl
Harbor, landings in Thailand andMalaya[159] andthe battle of Hong
Kong.These attacks led the United States, Britain, China,
Aus-tralia and several other states to formally declare waron
Japan, whereas the Soviet Union, being heavily in-volved in
large-scale hostilities with European Axis coun-tries, preferred to
maintain its neutrality agreement withJapan.[160] Germany, followed
by the other Axis states,declared war on the United States in
solidarity with Japan,citing as justication the American attacks on
Germansubmarines and merchant ships that had been ordered
byRoosevelt.[120]
4.6 Axis advance stalls (194243)
Seated at the Casablanca Conference; US President Franklin
D.Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill, January 1943
In January 1942, the United States, Britain, Soviet Union,China,
and 22 smaller or exiled governments issued theDeclaration by
United Nations, thereby arming theAtlantic Charter,[161] and
agreeing to not to sign separatepeace with the Axis powers.During
1942, Allied ocials debated on the appropri-ate grand strategy to
pursue. All agreed that defeatingGermany was the primary objective.
The Americansfavoured a straightforward, large-scale attack on
Ger-many through France. The Soviets were also demandinga second
front. The British, on the other hand, arguedthat military
operations should target peripheral areas tothrow a ring around
Germany which would wear out
German strength, lead to increasing demoralisation, andbolster
resistance forces. Germany itself would be sub-ject to a heavy
bombing campaign. An oensive againstGermany would then be launched
primarily by Allied ar-mour without using large-scale armies.[162]
Eventually,the British persuaded the Americans that a landing
inFrance was infeasible in 1942 and they should instead fo-cus on
driving the Axis out of North Africa.[163]
At the Casablanca Conference in early 1943, the Alliesissued a
declaration declaring that they would not negoti-ate with their
enemies and demanded their unconditionalsurrender. The British and
Americans agreed to continueto press the initiative in the
Mediterranean by invadingSicily to fully secure theMediterranean
supply routes.[164]Although the British argued for further
operations in theBalkans to bring Turkey into the war, in May 1943,
theAmericans extracted a British commitment to limit Al-lied
operations in the Mediterranean to an invasion of theItalian
mainland and to invade France in 1944.[165]
4.6.1 Pacic (194243)
Map of Japanese military advances, until mid-1942
By the end of April 1942, Japan and its ally Thailand hadalmost
fully conquered Burma, Malaya, the Dutch EastIndies, Singapore, and
Rabaul, inicting severe losses onAllied troops and taking a large
number of prisoners.[166]Despite stubborn resistance at Corregidor,
the US pos-session of the Philippines was eventually captured in
May1942, forcing its government into exile.[167] On 16 April,in
Burma, 7,000 British soldiers were encircled by theJapanese 33rd
Division during the Battle of Yenangyaungand rescued by the Chinese
38th Division.[168] Japaneseforces also achieved naval victories in
the South ChinaSea, Java Sea and Indian Ocean,[169] and bombed the
Al-lied naval base at Darwin, Australia. The only real
Alliedsuccess against Japan was a Chinese victory at Changshain
early January 1942.[170] These easy victories over un-prepared
opponents left Japan overcondent, as well asoverextended.[171]
In early May 1942, Japan initiated operations to capture
-
12 4 COURSE OF THE WAR
Port Moresby by amphibious assault and thus sever
com-munications and supply lines between the United Statesand
Australia. The Allies, however, prevented the in-vasion by
intercepting and defeating the Japanese navalforces in the Battle
of the Coral Sea.[172] Japans nextplan, motivated by the earlier
Doolittle Raid, was to seizeMidway Atoll and lure American carriers
into battle to beeliminated; as a diversion, Japan would also send
forces tooccupy the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.[173] In early
June,Japan put its operations into action but the Americans,having
broken Japanese naval codes in late May, werefully aware of the
plans and force dispositions and usedthis knowledge to achieve a
decisive victory at Midwayover the Imperial Japanese Navy.[174]
US Marines during the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the Pacictheatre,
1942
With its capacity for aggressive action greatly diminishedas a
result of the Midway battle, Japan chose to focus ona belated
attempt to capture Port Moresby by an overlandcampaign in the
Territory of Papua.[175] The Americansplanned a counter-attack
against Japanese positions in thesouthern Solomon Islands,
primarily Guadalcanal, as arst step towards capturing Rabaul, the
main Japanesebase in Southeast Asia.[176]
Both plans started in July, but bymid-September, the Bat-tle for
Guadalcanal took priority for the Japanese, andtroops in New Guinea
were ordered to withdraw fromthe Port Moresby area to the northern
part of the island,where they faced Australian and United States
troops inthe Battle of Buna-Gona.[177] Guadalcanal soon becamea
focal point for both sides with heavy commitments oftroops and
ships in the battle for Guadalcanal. By thestart of 1943, the
Japanese were defeated on the islandandwithdrew their troops.[178]
In Burma, Commonwealthforces mounted two operations. The rst, an
oensiveinto the Arakan region in late 1942, went
disastrously,forcing a retreat back to India by May 1943.[179] The
sec-ond was the insertion of irregular forces behind
Japanesefront-lines in February which, by the end of April,
hadachieved mixed results.[180]
4.6.2 Eastern Front (194243)
Red Army soldiers on the counterattack, during the Battle of
Stal-ingrad, February 1943
Despite considerable losses, in early 1942 Germany andits allies
stopped a major Soviet oensive in central andsouthern Russia,
keeping most territorial gains they hadachieved during the previous
year.[181] In May the Ger-mans defeated Soviet oensives in the
Kerch Peninsulaand at Kharkiv,[182] and then launched their main
summeroensive against southern Russia in June 1942, to seizethe oil
elds of the Caucasus and occupy Kuban steppe,while maintaining
positions on the northern and centralareas of the front. The
Germans split Army Group Southinto two groups: Army Group A
advanced to the lowerDon River and struck south-east to the
Caucasus, whileArmy Group B headed towards the Volga River.
TheSoviets decided to make their stand at Stalingrad on
theVolga.[183]
By mid-November, the Germans had nearly taken Stal-ingrad in
bitter street ghting when the Soviets begantheir second winter
counter-oensive, starting with anencirclement of German forces at
Stalingrad[184] and anassault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow,
though the lat-ter failed disastrously.[185] By early February
1943, theGerman Army had taken tremendous losses; Germantroops at
Stalingrad had been forced to surrender,[186] andthe front-line had
been pushed back beyond its positionbefore the summer oensive. In
mid-February, after theSoviet push had tapered o, the Germans
launched an-other attack on Kharkiv, creating a salient in their
frontline around the Russian city of Kursk.[187]
4.6.3 Western Europe/Atlantic & Mediterranean(194243)
Exploiting poor American naval command decisions, theGerman navy
ravaged Allied shipping o the AmericanAtlantic coast.[188] By
November 1941, Commonwealthforces had launched a counter-oensive,
Operation Cru-sader, in North Africa, and reclaimed all the gains
theGermans and Italians had made.[189] In North Africa,the Germans
launched an oensive in January, push-ing the British back to
positions at the Gazala Line byearly February,[190] followed by a
temporary lull in com-bat which Germany used to prepare for their
upcomingoensives.[191] Concerns the Japanese might use bases
-
4.7 Allies gain momentum (194344) 13
An American B-17 bombing raid, by the 8th Air Force, on theFocke
Wulf factory in Germany, 9 October 1943
in Vichy-held Madagascar caused the British to invadethe island
in early May 1942.[192] An Axis oensive inLibya forced an Allied
retreat deep inside Egypt untilAxis forces were stopped at El
Alamein.[193] On the Con-tinent, raids of Allied commandos on
strategic targets,culminating in the disastrous Dieppe Raid,[194]
demon-strated the Western Allies inability to launch an invasionof
continental Europe without much better preparation,equipment, and
operational security.[195]
In August 1942, the Allies succeeded in repelling asecond attack
against El Alamein[196] and, at a highcost, managed to deliver
desperately needed supplies tothe besieged Malta.[197] A few months
later, the Alliescommenced an attack of their own in Egypt,
dislodg-ing the Axis forces and beginning a drive west
acrossLibya.[198] This attack was followed up shortly after
byAnglo-American landings in French North Africa, whichresulted in
the region joining the Allies.[199] Hitler re-sponded to the French
colonys defection by ordering theoccupation of Vichy France;[199]
although Vichy forcesdid not resist this violation of the
armistice, they man-aged to scuttle their eet to prevent its
capture by Germanforces.[200] The now pincered Axis forces in
Africa with-drew into Tunisia, which was conquered by the Allies
inMay 1943.[201]
In early 1943 the British and Americans began the Com-bined
Bomber Oensive, a strategic bombing campaignagainst Germany. The
goals were to disrupt the Germanwar economy, reduce German morale,
and "de-house"the German civilian population.[202]
4.7 Allies gain momentum (194344)
Following the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Allies initi-ated
several operations against Japan in the Pacic. InMay 1943, Allied
forces were sent to eliminate Japaneseforces from the
Aleutians,[203] and soon after began ma-jor operations to isolate
Rabaul by capturing surround-
US Navy Douglas SBDDauntless ies patrol over theUSSWash-ington
and USS Lexington during the Gilbert and Marshall Is-lands
campaign, 1943
ing islands, and to breach the Japanese Central Pacicperimeter
at the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.[204] By theend of March 1944,
the Allies had completed both ofthese objectives, and additionally
neutralised the majorJapanese base at Truk in the Caroline Islands.
In April,the Allies then launched an operation to retake WesternNew
Guinea.[205]
In the Soviet Union, both the Germans and the Sovi-ets spent the
spring and early summer of 1943 makingpreparations for large
oensives in central Russia. On4 July 1943, Germany attacked Soviet
forces around theKursk Bulge. Within a week, German forces had
ex-hausted themselves against the Soviets deeply echelonedand
well-constructed defences[206] and, for the rst timein the war,
Hitler cancelled the operation before it hadachieved tactical or
operational success.[207] This decisionwas partially aected by the
Western Allies invasion ofSicily launched on 9 July which, combined
with previousItalian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest
of Mus-solini later that month.[208] Also, in July 1943 the
Britishrebombed Hamburg killing over 40,000 people.
Red Army troops following T-34 tanks, in a counter-oensive
onGerman positions, at the Battle of Kursk, August 1943
On 12 July 1943, the Soviets launched their own
counter-oensives, thereby dispelling any hopes of the GermanArmy
for victory or even stalemate in the east. The
-
14 4 COURSE OF THE WAR
Soviet victory at Kursk marked the end of
Germansuperiority,[209] giving the Soviet Union the initiativeon
the Eastern Front.[210][211] The Germans attemptedto stabilise
their eastern front along the hastily fortiedPanther-Wotan line,
however, the Soviets broke throughit at Smolensk and by the Lower
Dnieper Oensives.[212]
On 3 September 1943, the Western Allies invaded theItalian
mainland, following an Italian armistice withthe Allies.[213]
Germany responded by disarming Ital-ian forces, seizing military
control of Italian areas,[214]and creating a series of defensive
lines.[215] German spe-cial forces then rescued Mussolini, who then
soon estab-lished a new client state in German occupied Italy
namedthe Italian Social Republic,[216] causing an Italian civilwar.
The Western Allies fought through several linesuntil reaching the
main German defensive line in mid-November.[217]
German operations in the Atlantic also suered. ByMay 1943, as
Allied counter-measures became increas-ingly eective, the resulting
sizeable German submarinelosses forced a temporary halt of the
German Atlanticnaval campaign.[218] In November 1943, Franklin
D.Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo
and then with Joseph Stalin in Tehran.[219]The former conference
determined the post-war returnof Japanese territory,[220] while the
latter included agree-ment that the Western Allies would invade
Europe in1944 and that the Soviet Union would declare war onJapan
within three months of Germanys defeat.[221]
Ruins of the Benedictine monastery, during the Battle of
MonteCassino; Italian Campaign, May 1944
From November 1943, during the seven-week Battle ofChangde, the
Chinese forced Japan to ght a costly war ofattrition, while
awaiting Allied relief.[222][223][224] In Jan-uary 1944, the Allies
launched a series of attacks in Italyagainst the line at Monte
Cassino and attempted to out-ank it with landings at Anzio.[225] By
the end of January,a major Soviet oensive expelled German forces
from theLeningrad region,[226] ending the longest and most
lethalsiege in history.The following Soviet oensive was halted on
the pre-war Estonian border by the German Army Group Northaided by
Estonians hoping to re-establish national inde-
pendence. This delay slowed subsequent Soviet oper-ations in the
Baltic Sea region.[227] By late May 1944,the Soviets had liberated
Crimea, largely expelled Axisforces from Ukraine, and made
incursions into Romania,which were repulsed by the Axis
troops.[228] The Alliedoensives in Italy had succeeded and, at the
expense ofallowing several German divisions to retreat, on 4
June,Rome was captured.[229]
The Allies experienced mixed fortunes in mainland Asia.In March
1944, the Japanese launched the rst of two in-vasions, an operation
against British positions in Assam,India,[230] and soon besieged
Commonwealth positionsat Imphal and Kohima.[231] In May 1944,
British forcesmounted a counter-oensive that drove Japanese
troopsback to Burma,[231] and Chinese forces that had
invadednorthern Burma in late 1943 besieged Japanese troops
inMyitkyina.[232] The second Japanese invasion of Chinaattempted to
destroy Chinas main ghting forces, securerailways between
Japanese-held territory and capture Al-lied airelds.[233] By June,
the Japanese had conqueredthe province of Henan and begun a renewed
attack againstChangsha in the Hunan province.[234]
4.8 Allies close in (1944)
American troops approaching Omaha Beach, during the Invasionof
Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944
On 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day), after three years ofSoviet
pressure,[235] the Western Allies invaded northernFrance. After
reassigning several Allied divisions fromItaly, they also attacked
southern France.[236] These land-ings were successful, and led to
the defeat of the GermanArmy units in France. Paris was liberated
by the localresistance assisted by the Free French Forces, both
ledby General Charles de Gaulle, on 25 August[237] and theWestern
Allies continued to push back German forces inwestern Europe during
the latter part of the year. Anattempt to advance into northern
Germany spearheadedby a major airborne operation in the Netherlands
endedwith a failure.[238] After that, the Western Allies
slowlypushed into Germany, unsuccessfully trying to cross theRur
river in a large oensive. In Italy the Allied advance
-
4.9 Axis collapse, Allied victory (194445) 15
also slowed down, when they ran into the last major Ger-man
defensive line.[239]
On 22 June, the Soviets launched a strategic oensivein Belarus
(known as "Operation Bagration") that re-sulted in the almost
complete destruction of the Ger-man Army Group Centre.[240] Soon
after that, anotherSoviet strategic oensive forced German troops
fromWestern Ukraine and Eastern Poland. The successfuladvance of
Soviet troops prompted resistance forces inPoland to initiate
several uprisings. Though, the largestof these in Warsaw, where
German soldiers massacred200,000 civilians, as well as a national
Slovak Uprisingin the south did not receive Soviet support, and
were putdown by German forces.[241] The Red Armys strategicoensive
in eastern Romania cut o and destroyed theconsiderable German
troops there and triggered a suc-cessful coup d'tat in Romania and
in Bulgaria, followedby those countries shift to the Allied
side.[242]
German SS soldiers from the Dirlewanger Brigade, tasked
withsuppressing partisan uprisings against Nazi occupation,
August1944
In September 1944, Soviet Red Army troops advancedinto
Yugoslavia and forced the rapid withdrawal of theGerman Army Groups
E and F in Greece, Albania andYugoslavia to rescue them from being
cut o.[243] By thispoint, the Communist-led Partisans under Marshal
JosipBroz Tito, who had led an increasingly successful guer-rilla
campaign against the occupation since 1941, con-trolled much of the
territory of Yugoslavia and were en-gaged in delaying eorts against
the German forces fur-ther south. In northern Serbia, the Red Army,
with lim-ited support from Bulgarian forces, assisted the
Partisansin a joint liberation of the capital city of Belgrade on
20October. A few days later, the Soviets launched a massiveassault
against German-occupied Hungary that lasted un-til the fall of
Budapest in February 1945.[244] In contrastwith impressive Soviet
victories in the Balkans, the bitterFinnish resistance to the
Soviet oensive in the KarelianIsthmus denied the Soviets occupation
of Finland and ledto the signing of Soviet-Finnish armistice on
relativelymild conditions,[245][246] with a subsequent shift to the
Al-lied side by Finland.By the start of July, Commonwealth forces
in Southeast
Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges in Assam, push-ing the
Japanese back to the Chindwin River[247] whilethe Chinese captured
Myitkyina. In China, the Japanesewere having greater successes,
having nally capturedChangsha in mid-June and the city of Hengyang
by earlyAugust.[248] Soon after, they further invaded the
provinceof Guangxi, winning major engagements against Chineseforces
at Guilin and Liuzhou by the end of November[249]and successfully
linking up their forces in China and In-dochina by the middle of
December.[250]
In the Pacic, American forces continued to press backthe
Japanese perimeter. In mid-June 1944 they begantheir oensive
against the Mariana and Palau islands, anddecisively defeated
Japanese forces in the Battle of thePhilippine Sea. These defeats
led to the resignation ofthe Japanese Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo,
and providedthe United States with air bases to launch intensive
heavybomber attacks on the Japanese home islands. In lateOctober,
American forces invaded the Filipino island ofLeyte; soon after,
Allied naval forces scored another largevictory during the Battle
of Leyte Gulf, one of the largestnaval battles in history.[251]
4.9 Axis collapse, Allied victory (194445)
Yalta Conference held in February 1945, withWinston
Churchill,Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin
On 16 December 1944, Germany attempted its last des-perate
measure for success on the Western Front by us-ing most of its
remaining reserves to launch a massivecounter-oensive in the
Ardennes to attempt to split theWestern Allies, encircle large
portions of Western Alliedtroops and capture their primary supply
port at Antwerpto prompt a political settlement.[252] By January,
the of-fensive had been repulsed with no strategic
objectivesfullled.[252] In Italy, the Western Allies remained
stale-mated at the German defensive line. In mid-January1945, the
Soviets and Poles attacked in Poland, pushingfrom the Vistula to
the Oder river in Germany, andoverran East Prussia.[253] On 4
February, US, British, and
-
16 4 COURSE OF THE WAR
Soviet leaders met for the Yalta Conference. They agreedon the
occupation of post-war Germany, and on when theSoviet Union would
join the war against Japan.[254]
In February, the Soviets entered Silesia and Pomerania,while
Western Allies entered western Germany andclosed to the Rhine
river. By March, the Western Alliescrossed the Rhine north and
south of the Ruhr, encirclingthe German Army Group B,[255] while
the Soviets ad-vanced to Vienna. In early April, the Western Allies
-nally pushed forward in Italy and swept across westernGermany,
while Soviet and Polish forces stormed Berlinin late April. The
American and Soviet forces linkedup on Elbe river on 25 April. On
30 April 1945, theReichstag was captured, signalling the military
defeat ofthe Third Reich.[256]
Several changes in leadership occurred during this period.On 12
April, President Roosevelt died and was succeededby Harry Truman.
Benito Mussolini was killed by Italianpartisans on 28 April.[257]
Two days later, Hitler commit-ted suicide, and was succeeded by
Grand Admiral KarlDnitz.[258]
The German Reichstag after its capture by the Allies, 3 June
1945
German forces surrendered in Italy on 29 April. Totaland
unconditional surrender was signed on 7 May, to beeective by the
end of 8 May.[259] German Army GroupCentre resisted in Prague until
11 May.[260]
In the Pacic theatre, American forces accompanied bythe forces
of the Philippine Commonwealth advancedin the Philippines, clearing
Leyte by the end of April1945. They landed on Luzon in January 1945
andcaptured Manila in March following a battle which re-duced the
city to ruins. Fighting continued on Luzon,Mindanao, and other
islands of the Philippines until theend of the war.[261] On the
night of 910 March, B-29bombers of the US Army Air Forces struck
Tokyo withincendiary bombs, which killed 100,000 people within
a
few hours. Over the next ve months, American bombersrebombed 66
other Japanese cities, causing the destruc-tion of untold numbers
of buildings and the deaths of be-tween 350,000500,000 Japanese
civilians.[262]
Japanese foreign aairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs
theJapanese Instrument of Surrender on board the USS Missouri,
2September 1945
In May 1945, Australian troops landed in Borneo, over-running
the oilelds there. British, American, and Chi-nese forces defeated
the Japanese in northern Burma inMarch, and the British pushed on
to reach Rangoon by 3May.[263] Chinese forces started to
counterattack in Battleof West Hunan that occurred between 6 April
and 7 June1945. American forces also moved towards Japan, takingIwo
Jima by March, and Okinawa by the end of June.[264]At the same time
American bombers were destroyingJapanese cities, American
submarines cut o Japaneseimports, drastically reducing Japans
ability to supply itsoverseas forces.[265]
On 11 July, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany.They conrmed
earlier agreements about Germany,[266]and reiterated the demand for
unconditional surrender ofall Japanese forces by Japan, specically
stating that thealternative for Japan is prompt and utter
destruction.[267]During this conference, the United Kingdom held
its gen-eral election, and Clement Attlee replaced Churchill
asPrime Minister.[268]
The Allies called for unconditional Japanese surrenderin the
Potsdam declaration of 27 July, but the Japanesegovernment was
internally divided on whether to makepeace and did not respond. In
early August the UnitedStates dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese
cities ofHiroshima and Nagasaki. Like the Japanese cities
pre-viously bombed by American airmen, the US and its al-lies
justied the atomic bombings as military necessity toavoid invading
the Japanese home islands which wouldcost the lives of between
250,000500,000 Allied troopsand millions of Japanese troops and
civilians.[269] Be-tween the two bombings, the Soviets, pursuant to
theYalta agreement, invaded Japanese-held Manchuria, andquickly
defeated the Kwantung Army, which was the
-
17
largest Japanese ghting force.[270][271] The Red Armyalso
captured Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. On15 August 1945,
Japan surrendered, with the surrenderdocuments nally signed aboard
the deck of the Ameri-can battleship USS Missouri on 2 September
1945, end-ing the war.[272]
5 AftermathMain articles: Aftermath of World War II
andConsequences of NazismThe Allies established occupation
administrations in
Ruins of Warsaw in January 1945, after the deliberate
destruc-tion of the city by the occupying German forces
Austria and Germany. The former became a neutralstate,
non-aligned with any political bloc. The latterwas divided into
western and eastern occupation zonescontrolled by the Western
Allies and the USSR, accord-ingly. A denazication program in
Germany led to theprosecution of Nazi war criminals and the removal
of ex-Nazis from power, although this policy moved towardsamnesty
and re-integration of ex-Nazis into West Ger-man society.[273]
Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war (1937) territory.Among the
eastern territories, Silesia, Neumark and mostof Pomerania were
taken over by Poland, East Prussiawas divided between Poland and
the USSR, followedby the expulsion of the 9 million Germans from
theseprovinces, as well as the expulsion of 3 million Germansfrom
the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to Germany. Bythe 1950s, every
fth West German was a refugee fromthe east. The Soviet Union also
took over the Polishprovinces east of the Curzon line, from which 2
millionPoles were expelled;[274] north-east Romania,[275][276]parts
of eastern Finland,[277] and the three Baltic stateswere also
incorporated into the USSR.[278][279]
In an eort to maintain peace,[280] the Allies formed theUnited
Nations, which ocially came into existence on24 October 1945,[281]
and adopted the Universal Dec-
Post-war Soviet territorial expansion; resulted in Central
Euro-pean border changes, the creation of a Communist Bloc, and
startof the Cold War
laration of Human Rights in 1948, as a common stan-dard for all
member nations.[282] The great powers thatwere the victors of the
warthe United States, SovietUnion, China, Britain, and Franceformed
the perma-nent members of the UNs Security Council.[7] The
vepermanent members remain so to the present, althoughthere have
been two seat changes, between the Republicof China and the Peoples
Republic of China in 1971,and between the Soviet Union and its
successor state, theRussian Federation, following the dissolution
of the So-viet Union. The alliance between the Western Allies
andthe Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before thewar was
over.[283]
Germany had been de facto divided, and two indepen-dent states,
the Federal Republic of Germany and theGerman Democratic
Republic[284] were created withinthe borders of Allied and Soviet
occupation zones, ac-cordingly. The rest of Europe was also divided
intoWestern and Soviet spheres of inuence.[285] Most east-ern and
central European countries fell into the Sovietsphere, which led to
establishment of Communist-ledregimes, with full or partial support
of the Soviet occupa-tion authorities. As a result, Poland,
Hungary, East Ger-many,[286] Czechoslovakia, Romania, and
Albania[287]
-
18 6 IMPACT
became Soviet satellite states. Communist Yugoslaviaconducted a
fully independent policy, causing tensionwith the USSR.[288]
Post-war division of the world was formalised by
twointernational military alliances, the United States-ledNATO and
the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact;[289] the long pe-riod of political
tensions and military competition be-tween them, the Cold War,
would be accompanied by anunprecedented arms race and proxy
wars.[290]
In Asia, the United States led the occupation of Japanand
administrated Japans former islands in the West-ern Pacic, while
the Soviets annexed Sakhalin and theKuril Islands.[291] Korea,
formerly under Japanese rule,was divided and occupied by the US in
the South and theSoviet Union in the North between 1945 and 1948.
Sep-arate republics emerged on both sides of the 38th paral-lel in
1948, each claiming to be the legitimate govern-ment for all of
Korea, which led ultimately to the KoreanWar.[292]
In China, nationalist and communist forces resumed thecivil war
in June 1946. Communist forces were vic-torious and established the
Peoples Republic of Chinaon the mainland, while nationalist forces
retreated toTaiwan in 1949.[293] In the Middle East, the Arab
re-jection of the United Nations Partition Plan for Pales-tine and
the creation of Israel marked the escalationof the Arab-Israeli
conict. While European colo-nial powers attempted to retain some or
all of theircolonial empires, their losses of prestige and
resourcesduring the war rendered this unsuccessful, leading
todecolonisation.[294][295]
The global economy suered heavily from the war, al-though
participating nations were aected dierently.The US emerged much
richer than any other nation; ithad a baby boom and by 1950 its
gross domestic prod-uct per person was much higher than that of any
of theother powers and it dominated the world economy.[296]The UK
and US pursued a policy of industrial disarma-ment in Western
Germany in the years 19451948.[297]Due to international trade
interdependencies this led toEuropean economic stagnation and
delayed European re-covery for several years.[298][299]
Recovery began with the mid-1948 currency reform inWestern
Germany, and was sped up by the liberalisa-tion of European
economic policy that the Marshall Plan(19481951) both directly and
indirectly caused.[300][301]The post-1948 West German recovery has
been calledthe German economic miracle.[302] Italy also
experiencedan economic boom[303] and the French economy
re-bounded.[304] By contrast, the United Kingdom was ina state of
economic ruin,[305] and although it received aquarter of the total
Marshall Plan assistance, more thanany other European country,[306]
continued relative eco-nomic decline for decades.[307]
The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and mate-rial losses,
also experienced rapid increase in production
in the immediate post-war era.[308] Japan experiencedincredibly
rapid economic growth, becoming one of themost powerful economies
in the world by the 1980s.[309]China returned to its pre-war
industrial production by1952.[310]
6 Impact
6.1 Casualties and war crimesMain articles: World War II
casualties, War crimes dur-ing World War II, War crimes in occupied
Poland dur-ing World War II, German war crimes, War crimes ofthe
Wehrmacht, Japanese war crimes, Allied war crimesduring World War
II and Soviet war crimesEstimates for the total casualties of the
war vary, because
Allie
d Fo
rces
Axis
World War II Deaths
0 12 24
Allied Civilians58%
Axis Civilians 4%
Allied Military25%
Military deaths (millions)Civilian deaths (millions)
Total deaths (millions)Total deaths as % of 1939 population
OtherItaly
JapanRomaniaHungary
FranceUnited KingdomUnited
StatesLithuaniaCzechoslovakiaGreeceBurmaLatvia
Soviet UnionChinaPolandIndonesiaIndiaYugoslaviaFrench
Indochina
Germany
Axis Military13%
0 12 24
World War II deaths
many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 75million
people died in the war, including about 20 millionmilitary
personnel and 40 million civilians.[311][312][313]Many of the
civilians died because of deliberate genocide,massacres,
mass-bombing, disease, and starvation.The Soviet Union lost around
27 million people duringthe war,[314] including 8.7 million
military and 19 millioncivilian deaths. The largest portion of
military dead were5.7 million ethnic Russians, followed by 1.3
million eth-nic Ukrainians.[315] A quarter of the people in the
SovietUnion were wounded or killed.[316] Germany sustained5.3
million military losses, mostly on the Eastern Frontand during the
nal battles in Germany.[317]
Of the total deaths in World War II, approximately
85percentmostly Soviet and Chinesewere on the Al-lied side and 15
percent on the Axis side. Many of thesedeaths were caused by war
crimes committed by Ger-man and Japanese forces in occupied
territories. An es-timated 11[318] to 17 million[319] civilians
died as a director indirect result of Nazi ideological policies,
includingthe systematic genocide of around 6 million Jews dur-ing
the Holocaust, along with a further 5 to 6 millionethnic Poles and
other Slavs (including Ukrainians andBelarusians)[320]Roma,
homosexuals, and other ethnicand minority groups.[319]
-
6.2 Concentration camps, slave labour, and genocide 19
Chinese civilians being buried alive by soldiers of the
ImperialJapanese Army, during the Nanking Massacre, December
1937
Roughly 7.5 million civilians died in China underJapanese
occupation.[321] Hundreds of thousands (vary-ing estimates) of
ethnic Serbs, along with gypsies andJews, weremurdered by
theAxis-aligned Croatian Ustaein Yugoslavia,[322] with
retribution-related killings ofCroatian civilians just after the
war ended.The best-known Japanese atrocity was the Nanking
Mas-sacre, in which several hundred thousand Chinese civil-ians
were raped and murdered.[323] Between 3 millionto more than 10
million civilians, mostly Chinese, werekilled by the Japanese
occupation forces.[324] MitsuyoshiHimeta reported 2.7 million
casualties occurred duringthe Sank Sakusen. General Yasuji Okamura
imple-mented the policy in Heipei and Shantung.[325]
Axis forces employed biological and chemical weapons.The
Imperial Japanese Army used a variety of suchweapons during their
invasion and occupation of China(see Unit 731)[326][327] and in
early conicts againstthe Soviets.[328] Both the Germans and
Japanese testedsuch weapons against civilians[329] and, sometimes
onprisoners of war.[330]
The Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn mas-sacre of
22,000 Polish ocers,[331] and the imprisonmentor execution of
thousands of political prisoners by theNKVD,[332] in the Baltic
states, and eastern Poland an-nexed by the Red Army.The
mass-bombing of civilian areas, notably the citiesof Warsaw,
Rotterdam and London; including the aerialtargeting of hospitals
and eeing refugees[333] by theGerman Luftwae, along with the
bombing of Tokyo,and German cities of Dresden, Hamburg and
Cologneby the Western Allies may be considered as war crimes.The
latter resulted in the destruction of more than 160cities and the
deaths of more than 600,000 Germancivilians.[334] However, no
positive or specic customaryinternational humanitarian law with
respect to aerial war-fare existed before or during World War
II.[335]
6.2 Concentration camps, slave labour,and genocide
Further information: Genocide, The Holocaust, Naziconcentration
camps, Extermination camp, Forcedlabour under German rule during
World War II,Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany and Nazi hu-man
experimentationThe German Government led by Adolf Hitler and
Female SS camp guards remove bodies from lorries and carrythem
to a mass grave, inside the German Bergen-Belsen concen-tration
camp, 1945
the Nazi Party was responsible for the Holocaust, thekilling of
approximately 6 million Jews (overwhelminglyAshkenazim), as well as
2.7 million ethnic Poles,[336] and4 million others who were deemed
"unworthy of life" (in-cluding the disabled and mentally ill,
Soviet prisoners ofwar, homosexuals, Freemasons, JehovahsWitnesses,
andRomani) as part of a programme of deliberate extermi-nation.
About 12 million, most of whom were EasternEuropeans, were employed
in the German war economyas forced labourers.[337]
In addition to Nazi concentration camps, the Sovietgulags
(labour camps) led to the death of citizens of oc-cupied countries
such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, andEstonia, as well as German
prisoners of war (POWs) andeven Soviet citizens who had been or
were thought tobe supporters of the Nazis.[338] Sixty percent of
SovietPOWs of the Germans died during the war.[339] RichardOvery
gives the number of 5.7 million Soviet POWs.Of those, 57 percent
died or were killed, a total of 3.6million.[340] Soviet ex-POWs and
repatriated civilianswere treated with great suspicion as potential
Nazi collab-orators, and some of them were sent to the Gulag
uponbeing checked by the NKVD.[341]
Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, many of which wereused as labour
camps, also had high death rates. The
-
20 6 IMPACT
Prisoner identity photograph taken by the German SS of afourteen
year old Polish girl, sent as forced labour to Auschwitz,December
1942
International Military Tribunal for the Far East found thedeath
rate of Western prisoners was 27.1 percent (forAmerican POWs, 37
percent),[342] seven times that ofPOWs under the Germans and
Italians.[343] While 37,583prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the
Netherlands, and14,473 from the United States were released after
thesurrender of Japan, the number of Chinese released wasonly
56.[344]
According to historian Zhifen Ju, at least ve million Chi-nese
civilians from northern China and Manchukuo wereenslaved between
1935 and 1941 by the East Asia Devel-opment Board, or Kain, for
work in mines and war in-dustries. After 1942, the number reached
10 million.[345]The US Library of Congress estimates that in Java,
be-tween 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: manual la-borers),
were forced to work by the Japanese military.About 270,000 of these
Javanese labourers were sent toother Japanese-held areas in South
East Asia, and only52,000 were repatriated to Java.[346]
On 19 February 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Or-der 9066,
interning about 100,000 Japanese living onthe West Coast. Canada
had a similar program.[347][348]In addition, 14,000 German and
Italian citizens whohad been assessed as being security risks were
alsointerned.[349]
In accordance with the Allied agreement made at theYalta
Conference millions of POWs and civilians wereused as forced labour
by the Soviet Union.[350] In Hun-garys case, Hungarians were forced
to work for the So-viet Union until 1955.[351]
6.3 Occupation
Main articles: German-occupied Europe, Lebensraum,Untermensch,
Collaboration with the Axis Powers dur-ing World War II, Resistance
during World War II andNazi plunderIn Europe, occupation came under
two forms. In West-ern, Northern andCentral Europe (France, Norway,
Den-mark, the Low Countries, and the annexed portions
ofCzechoslovakia) Germany established economic policiesthroughwhich
it collected roughly 69.5 billion reichmarks(27.8 billion US
Dollars) by the end of the war, this g-
Blindfolded Polish citizens just before execution by German
sol-diers in Palmiry, 1940
ure does not include the sizeable plunder of industrialproducts,
military equipment, raw materials and othergoods.[352] Thus, the
income from occupied nations wasover 40 percent of the income
Germany collected fromtaxation, a gure which increased to nearly 40
percent oftotal German income as the war went on.[353]
In the East, the much hoped for bounties of Lebensraumwere never
attained as uctuating front-lines and Sovietscorched earth policies
denied resources to the Germaninvaders.[354] Unlike in the West,
the Nazi racial policyencouraged excessive brutality against what
it consideredto be the "inferior people" of Slavic descent; most
Ger-man advances were thus followed bymass executions.[355]Although
resistance groups did form in most occupiedterritories, they did
not signicantly hamper German op-erations in either the East[356]
or the West[357] until late1943.In Asia, Japan termed nations under
its occupation as be-ing part of the Greater East Asia
Co-Prosperity Sphere,essentially a Japanese hegemony which it
claimed was forpurposes of liberating colonised peoples.[358]
AlthoughJapanese forces were originally welcomed as liberatorsfrom
European domination in some territories, their ex-cessive brutality
turned local public opinion against themwithin weeks.[359] During
Japans initial conquest it cap-tured 4,000,000 barrels (640,000 m3)
of oil (~5.5105tonnes) left behind by retreating Allied forces, and
by1943 was able to get production in the Dutch East In-dies up to
50 million barrels (~6.8106 t), 76 percent ofits 1940 output
rate.[359]
6.4 Home fronts and production
Main articles: Military production during World War IIand Home
front during World War IIIn Europe, before the outbreak of the war,
the Allieshad signicant advantages in both population and
eco-nomics. In 1938, the Western Allies (United Kingdom,France,
Poland and British Dominions) had a 30 percentlarger population and
a 30 percent higher gross domesticproduct than the European Axis
(Germany and Italy); if
-
6.5 Advances in technology and warfare 21
1938 19401939 1941 1942 1943 1944 19450.00
1.00
2.00
3.00
4.00
5.00
6.00
Year
Allie
s / A
xis
GDP
Allies / Axis GDP
2.382.15
1.581.75
2.062.31
2.86
5.02
Allied to Axis GDP ratio
colonies are included, it then gives the Allies more thana 5:1
advantage in population and nearly 2:1 advantagein GDP.[360] In
Asia at the same time, China had roughlysix times the population of
Japan, but only an 89 percenthigher GDP; this is reduced to three
times the populationand only a 38 percent higher GDP if Japanese
coloniesare included.[360]
Though the Allies economic and population advantageswere largely
mitigated during the initial rapid blitzkriegattacks of Germany and
Japan, they became the deci-sive factor by 1942, after the United
States and SovietUnion joined the Allies, as the war largely
settled into oneof attrition.[361] While the Allies ability to
out-producethe Axis is often attributed to the Allies having more
ac-cess to natural resources, other factors, such as Germanyand
Japans reluctance to employ women in the labourforce,[362] Allied
strategic bombing,[363] and Germanyslate shift to a war
economy[364] contributed signicantly.Additionally, neither Germany
nor Japan planned to ghta protracted war, and were not equipped to
do so.[365]To improve their production, Germany and Japan
usedmillions of slave labourers;[366] Germany used about 12million
people, mostly from Eastern Europe,[337] whileJapan used more than
18 million people in Far EastAsia.[345][346]
6.5 Advances in technology and warfareMain article: Technology
during World War IIAircraft were used for reconnaissance, as
ghters,
bombers, and ground-support, and each role was ad-vanced
considerably. Innovation included airlift (the ca-pability to
quickly move limited high-priority supplies,equipment, and
personnel);[367] and of strategic bomb-ing (the bombing of enemy
industrial and population cen-tres to destroy the enemys ability to
wage war).[368] Anti-aircraft weaponry also advanced, including
defences suchas radar and surface-to-air artillery, such as the
German88 mm gun. The use of the jet aircraft was pioneeredand,
though late introduction meant it had little impact, itled to jets
becoming standard in air forces worldwide.[369]
B-29 Superfortress strategic bombers on the Boeing assembly
linein Wichita, Kansas, 1944
Advances were made in nearly every aspect of naval war-fare,
most notably with aircraft carriers and submarines.Although
aeronautical warfare had relatively little successat the start of
the war, actions at Taranto, Pearl Harbor,and the Coral Sea
established the carrier as the dominantcapital ship in place of the
battleship.[370][371][372]
In the Atlantic, escort carriers proved to be a vital partof
Allied convoys, increasing the eective protection ra-dius and
helping to close the Mid-Atlantic gap.[373] Car-riers were also
more economical than battleships due tothe relatively low cost of
aircraft[374] and their not requir-ing to be as heavily
armoured.[375] Submarines, whichhad proved to be an eective weapon
during the FirstWorld War,[376] were anticipated by all sides to be
im-portant in the second. The British focused developmenton
anti-submarine weaponry and tactics, such as sonarand convoys,
while Germany focused on improving itsoensive capability, with
designs such as the Type VIIsubmarine and wolfpack tactics.[377]
Gradually, improv-ing Allied technologies such as the Leigh light,
hedgehog,squid, and homing torpedoes proved victorious.Land warfare
changed from the static front lines ofWorldWar I to increased
mobility and combined arms. Thetank, which had been used
predominantly for infantrysupport in the First World War, had
evolved into the pri-mary weapon.[378] In the late 1930s, tank
design was con-siderably more advanced than it had been during
WorldWar I,[379] and advances continued throughout the warwith
increases in speed, armour and repower.At the start of the war,
most commanders thoughtenemy tanks should be met by tanks with
superiorspecications.[380] This idea was challenged by the
poorperformance of the relatively light early tank guns
againstarmour, and German doctrine of avoiding tank-versus-tank
combat. This, along with Germanys use of com-bined arms, were among
the key elements of theirhighly successful blitzkrieg tactics
across Poland andFrance.[378] Many means of destroying tanks,
includ-ing indirect artillery, anti-tank guns (both towed and
-
22 7 SEE ALSO
A V-2 rocket launched from a xed site in Peenemnde, 1943
self-propelled), mines, short-ranged infantry antitankweapons,
and other tanks were utilised.[380] Even withlarge-scale
mechanisation, infantry remained the back-bone of all forces,[381]
and throughout the war, most in-fantry were equipped similarly to
World War I.[382]
Nuclear gadget being raised to the top of the detonation
tower,at Alamogordo Bombing Range; Trinity nuclear test, July
1945
The portable machine gun spread, a notable example be-ing the
German MG34, and various submachine gunswhich were suited to close
combat in urban and junglesettings.[382] The assault rie, a late
war development in-corporating many features of the rie and
submachinegun, became the standard postwar infantry weapon formost
armed forces.[383][384]
Most major belligerents attempted to solve the prob-
lems of complexity and security involved in usinglarge codebooks
for cryptography by designing cipheringmachines, the most well
known being the GermanEnigma machine.[385] Development of SIGINT
(signalsintelligence) and cryptanalysis enabled the
counteringprocess of decryption. Notable examples were the Al-lied
decryption of Japanese naval codes[386] and BritishUltra, a
pioneering method for decoding Enigma benet-ing from information
given to Britain by the Polish Ci-pher Bureau, which had been
decoding early versi