The World at War Turn of the Tide The Axis powers enjoyed nearly unbroken military success between September 1939 and the summer of 1942. Then the tide began to turn in favor of the Allies, both in Europe and in the Pacific. By 1944, the end of the war was in sight. The Great Mobilization Although over 40 nations had joined the Allies by 1945, three-britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States played the decisive roles in defeating the Axis These nations, led by Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt, determined most Allied strategy during the war. The war effort required a total commitment. Britain mobilized fully for war after the German invasion of France in 1940. Production of consumer goods fell as industry converted to war production. Scarce items such as soap and gasoline were rationed. Parliament gave the government the power to assign civilian workers to jobs vital to the war effort. Women played an important role in the British war effort. They served in even larger numbers t an in World War I, both in industry and in the armed services. Women were largely responsible for antiaircraft defences, and they ran the radar stations that helped win the battle of Britain. The Soviet Union also transformed its economy to fight the war. Even before the German invasion, the Soviets had begun building industrial plants in the remote east. After the German attack in June 1941, the Soviets dismantled some 1,500 factories in western Russia and reassembled them east of the Ural Mountains. Like people in the other Allied nations, Soviet citizens made great personal sacrifices in support of the war effort. The government appealed to feelings of Russian nationalism to win much support. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States also geared up for war. Production of planes, tanks, and weapons increased dramatically. Through rationing and price controls, the government allocated scarce goods., A special burden was borne by Japanese Americans, however. Because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, many other Americans feared that Japanese Americans living on the west coast might sabotage the war effort. As a result, in 1942, the government moved more than l00,000 Japanese Americans - two thirds of them born in the United States - to huge inland relocation camps. They were detained in the
camps for the rest of the war. Turning Points in North Africa and Europe After months of Axis triumphs, two A lied victories signalled a change in the course of the war. One occurred in North Africa; the other, in the Soviet Union. In North Africa, a brilliant German tank commander, General Erwin Rommel known as the "Desert Fox," had begun a powerful offensive against the Allies in the spring of 1942. After forcing the British out of Libya, his tank s pushed toward the British position at El Alamein in Egypt. If the Germans captured this strategic city, they could seize the Suez Canal and cut the British lifeline to India. The British, commanded by General Bernard Montgomery, blocked the Nazi thrust at El Alamein and launched a counteroffensive. They drove Rommel back into Tunisia and captured 9000 German soldiers. In the fall, a combined British-American force under General Dwight Eisenhower landed in Morocco and Algeria. The two Allied forces converged on Tunisia, trapping Rommel s forces. In mid-may 1943, the Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. Churchill later called-the battle of El Alamein "the turning point in British military fortunes" during the war. "Up to Alamein, we survived," he said. "After El Alamein we conquered." Allied fortunes also improved on the Russian front. In the fall of 1942, Hitler had launched a massive offensive against the city of Stalingrad. Fierce house-to-house fighting raged for two months but the defenders held out. This gave Soviet forces time to organize a counteroffensive, which began in November. Over 80,000Germans were forced to surrender, and over 200 000 Germans lost their lives in the battle. After their victory at Stalingrad Soviet armies began to drive the Germans westward out of Soviet territory. Allied Offensives in Europe For months, Stalin had been urging Britain and the United States to attack the Axis on a second European front in order to relieve some of the pressure on the Soviet Union. He wanted an invasion of France from Britain, but the other Allied leaders decided to strike first in Italy because they considered it a weaker spot. The invasion of Italy. On July 10, 1943, a combined British-American force landed on Sicily. They subdued Italian forces
there in about a month. Meanwhile, Musso m was forced out of power by other officials within the Fascist party. Pietro Badoglio took control of the government and had Mussolini arrested. But Mussolini was rescued by German parachutists and taken to northern Italy. Badoglio joined forces with the Allies, but thousands of German troops remained in Italy. From the time the Allies landed on the Italian mainland in early September 1943, they encountered tough resistance. But they pushed northward up the Italian peninsula. On June 4, 1944, Allied troops marched into Rome, the first capital to be freed from Nazi control. However parts of Germany remained under German control until the spring of 1945. The invasion of France. While British and American forces were struggling through Italy, Allied generals were preparing for the invasion of France under the leadership of General Eisenhower. A huge invasion force assembled in Britain. Thousands of ships stood ready to ferry the troops-british, Canadian, American, Free French, and others-across the English Channel. D-Day, the day of the invasion, was June 6, 1944. Within 24 hours 120,000 troops were landed at five different beachheads on the Normandy coast. They were joined by over 800,000 more men within three weeks. Although the invading force was met by heavy German artillery fire it fought its way through the coastal region of northern France by mid-august. By this time, another Allied force had invaded Southern France and was pushing northward. The first Allied troops entered Paris on August 25, with cheering crowds lining the boulevards. Nazi rule of France had finally ended. The Allies were poised for an invasion of Germany itself. Advance on Berlin More than a year before the invasion of Normandy, the Allies had begun heavy bombings of Germany. In the summer of 1943, for example, six raids by British and American planes all but wiped out the city of Hamburg. Air attacks on Germany increased in 1944. Berlin and other major cities were hit repeatedly, as were aircraft factories and oil refineries. By the end of 1944, German oil production was down 75 percent. Allied armies crossed into Germany in mid-september 1944, but the Germans stopped their advance. The Allies were forced to withdraw, but they made plans for another invasion. These plans were disrupted in December 1944 when the Germans launched an attack on American positions in Belgium and Luxembourg near the German border. In the battle of the Bulge, the Allies at first lost ground but
regained it by early January 1945. Now Allied air attacks on Germany became fiercer than ever. In mid-february, British and American bombers attacked the city of Dresden with fire bombs, killing over 100,000 civilians. Factories and railroad lines were pounded into rubble. In late April American units approached Berlin from the west, and Soviet units approached from the east. Meanw ile, German resistance in Italy was collapsing. Mussolini tried to escape to Switzerland but was caught and killed by members of the Italian resistance. As Allied troops approached Berlin, Hitler too took refuge in an underground bunker. Realizing that Germany faced certain defeat, he committed suicide on April 30. A week later, on May 7, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. The war in Euroae was over. Turning Points in the Pacific For six months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese won a series of uninterrupted victories in Asia and the Pacific. In the summer of 1942, they were planning an attack on Port Moresby, New Guinea. From there, they planned to move on the Allied nation of Australia. However, in May, a Japanese fleet in the Coral Sea, east of Australia, was attacked by planes launched from American carriers. The planes destroyed several ships and checked th e Japanese advance. This was Japan's first major defeat of the war. A second Japanese defeat occurred a month late at Midway, about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) from Hawaii. A large Japannese fleet on its way to attack the American fleet at Midway was badly damaged by American planes, and the Japanese withdrew. After the battle of Midway, the United States took the offensive in the Pacific. Its goal was to recapture the Philippines and invade Japan. The Americans devised an island hopping campaign. They decided not to try take every Japanese held island but rather to bypass some and occupy others. The captured islands would serve as stepping stones to their objectives. The Americans advanced slowly and with heavy casualties. The Japanese fought with tremendous determination, but they had to give up one strategic outpost after another. In October 1944, General MacArthur returned to the Philippines, taking Manila in February 1945. On the Asian mainland, the Allies supported nationalist forces who resisted the Japanese. In China, the United States aided Chiang Kai-shek. In Indochina, the Allies supplied Ho Chi Minh, leader of a
coalition of communists and nationalists known as the Viet Minh. Japan suffered few defeats on the mainland, but resistance there tied up many Japanese troops. Defeat of Japan On April 1, 1945, United States forces landed on Okinawa, a small Japanese island about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) from Tokyo. American casualties there were especially heavy. Japanese pilots carried out kamikaze attacks, suicide missions in which they crashed planes loaded with explosives into American ships. Kamikaze means "divine wind" in Japanese. When the Mongols threatened Japan in the thirteenth century, the Mongol fleet was destroyed by a typhoon, which the Japanese named kamikaze. Japanese infantry fought with equal fanaticism. American troops finally captured Okinawa at the end of June. By this time, Allied planes were bombing Japan with ferocity. In a single raid on Tokyo in March 1945, 100,000 people died and over 60 percent of the commercial buildings were wiped out. By the summer of 1945, most of the Japanese navy and air force had been destroyed. Yet Japan still had an army of 2 million men. Just as important, the Japanese retained the will to fight. The road to final victory for the Allies appeared long and difficult. In the United States Harry S. Truman had succeeded president Roosevelt, who had died in April 1945. In mid-july 1945, the United States successfully tested an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. The atomic bomb was much more devastating than conventional bombs. Truman hesitated to use this new weapon, but conventional bombing had not been enough to force Japan to surrender. Also Truman's military advisers warned that an American invasion of Japan might result in as many as one million American casualties. Truman decided to use the atomic bomb on Japan if necessary. From mid-july to early August, Truman met with Stalin and Churchill at Potsdam, Germany. The three Allied leaders warned the Japanese, without being specific, that if they did not agree to unconditional surrender they would suffer "complete and utter destruction." The Japanese ignored this warning. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The blast levelled 42 square miles (109 square kilometres) of the city and killed at east 80,000 people immediately. Almost 40,000 others were seriously injured, and countless thousands were stricken with radiation sickness. Despite the destruction at Hiroshima, Japan still refused to surrender. Three days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing 40,000. Japan could hold out no longer. On August 14, the Japanese surrendered, ending World War II.
1. Locate: El Alamein, Stalingrad, Normandy, Coral Sea, Midway, Okinawa, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. 2. Identify: Erwin Rommel, Bernard Montgomery, Dwight Eisenhower, D-Day. 3. What action did the United States government take against Japanese Americans after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? 4. How was Stalingrad a turning point in World War II? 5. Why did the Allies decide to open a second front in Italy? 6. Describe the "island hopping" campaign of the United States. Was it successful? Explain. 7. What factors contributed to President Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb in Japan?