Megan Mallory
World History E-Core
Period 5
6 May 2005
Chapter 31 Outline
- Early
Challenges to World Peace
- Dictators
took aggressive action but met only verbal protests and pleas for peace
from the democracies.
- Mussolini
and Hitler viewed that desire for peace as weakness and responded with
new acts of aggression.
- People
at the time strongly believed that the democracies policies would
work.
- The
Spanish Civil War
- In
1936 Spain
plunged into a civil war
- Although
the Spanish war took place in Spain
itself, it drew other European countries into the war as well
- At
the time, Spain
was ruled by the Catholic Church and the military while most Spaniards
were poor peasants or urban workers
- German
Aggression Continues
- Hitler
pursued his goal of bringing all German-speaking people into the Third
Reich
- Hitler,
who believed in the superiority of the German race, thought that Germany
had the right to conquer the inferior Slavs to the east to gain “living
space” for the Germans
- Winston
Churchill judged the Nazis by saying, “They had to choose between war and
dishonor. They chose to dishonor; they will have war.”
- The
Plunge Toward War
- As
Churchill predicted, Europe plunged rapidly into
war by 1939
- In
August of 1939, Hitler announced to the world a nonaggression pact with
Joseph Stalin-his great enemy.
- They
agreed on the pact because they were afraid of one another; Hitler did
not want communism, and Stalin did not want fascism.
- Why
War Came
- The
Versailles Treaty divided Europe into two sections
- The
countries that were not satisfied with the treaty wanted to change it,
and all the countries who disagreed with it came together as one large,
powerful force.
- With
the rise of new forms of government such as communism, political leaders
took advantage of their people and wanted to expand their borders with
the help of their new power.
- The
First Onslaught
- Nazi
forces first entered into Poland
in September of 1939
- Within
a month, Poland
ceased to exist with the indescribable power of both the Nazis and
Russian powers.
- With
new technology (airplanes), the Nazis advanced rapidly and air power took
a prominent role
- The Battle
of Britain
- With
the fall of France,
Britain
stood alone to fight against Germany
and Russia
- Hitler
launched massive air strikes against Britain
to weaken its air power and break the British will to resist.
- The
official battle against Britain
began on August 12, 1940.
- Charging
Ahead
- In
September 1940, Mussolini sent forces from Italy’s
North African colony of Libya
into Egypt
- When
British repulsed the invaders, Hitler sent a brilliant commander, General
Erwin Rommel, to North Africa.
- In
1940, Italian and German forces invaded and Greece
and Yugoslavia.
- Operation
Barbarossa
- In
June 1941, Hitler embarked on Operation Barbarossa-the conquest of the Soviet
Union
- He
wanted to gain “living space” for the Germans and to win control of
regions rich in resources.
- About
3 million Germans poured into Russia
while Russia’s
soldiers were weak from previous battles in Western Europe
- Growing
American Involvement
- The United
States declared neutrality when the
war began in 1939
- President
Roosevelt found ways around the Neutrality Act to provide aid to Britain
in the war
- In
August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill met secretly on a warship in the Atlantic
and created the “Atlantic Charter” which set goals for the war to bring
about the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny.
- Japan
Attacks
- In
December 1941, Japan
launched an attack on the United States
that pitched the US
into the war
- General
Tojo ordered a surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii.
- On December 7, 1941, Japanese
airplanes struck and destroyed 19 ships which killed about 2,400 people
- Occupied
Lands
- While
the Germans rampaged across Europe, the Japanese
conquered an empire in Asia and the Pacific
- Hitler
set up “puppet governments” in Western European countries that were
populated by “Aryans” or related races.
- The
Slavs of Eastern Europe were viewed as an inferior race and were pushed
aside to make “living space” for the Germans
- The
Allied War Effort
- In
1942, the Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) agreed to finish
the war in Europe first before turning their
attention to Asia and Japan
- Churchill
thought that Stalin wanted to dominate Europe
- Roosevelt
felt that Churchill had ambitions to expand British imperial power
- Stalin
believed that the western powers wanted to destroy communism.
- Turning
Points
- The
Allies won several victories that would turn the tides of the battle
between 1942 and 1943
- The
American general Dwight took command of a joint in Morocco
and Algeria
- Victory
in North Africa let the Allies leap across the Mediterranean
into Italy
- The
Red Army Resists
- The
Battle of Stalingrad was one of the costliest of the war
- Hitler
was determined to capture Stalin’s namesake city
- Stalin
was just as determined to protect it
- Invasion
of France
- By
1944, the Allies were at last ready to open the long-awaited second front
in Europe-the invasion of France
- The Allies chose D-Day to be June 6th, 1944
- About
176,000 Allied troops were ferried across the English Channel
- War in
the Pacific
- In
May and June 1942, American Warships and airplanes severely damaged two
Japanese fleets during the battles of the Coral Sea
and Midway Island
- These
victories greatly weakened Japanese naval power and stopped the Japanese
invasion
- The
captured islands served as stepping stones to help the Americans
gradually move closer toward Japan
itself
- The
Nazis Defeated
- To
win assault on the “Fortress of Europe”, the Allies had to use
devastating force
- As
the Allies launched into Belgium
in December 1944, Germany
set forth a massive counter-attack; Hitler was throwing all he had into a
final effort
- By
1945, Germany
could no longer defend itself in the air
- Defeat
of Japan
- With
war won in Europe, the Allies poured their resources
into defeating Japan
- By
mid-1945, most of the Japanese navy and air forces had been destroyed.
- When
the U.S.
issued a warning to Japan
to surrender or face “utter and complete destruction”, the Japanese
ignored the deadline and the United States
dropped the bomb of Hiroshima
on August 6, 1945
- Looking
Ahead
- After
the surrender of Japan,
American forces occupied the smoldering ruins of Japan
- The
Allies divided Hitler’s fallen empire into four zones of
occupation-French, British, American, and Russian
- Countries
faced difficult decisions about the future and how to built the
foundations for a stable world peace
- Aftermath
of War
- WWII
killed as many as 75 million people in total
- The Soviet
Union lost the most deaths-22 million people from Russia
alone died
- The
horrors of the Holocaust came into existence after the war came to an end
as “walking skeletons” emerged out of the concentration camps
- The
United Nations
- In
April 1945, delegates from 50 nations met in San
Francisco to draft a charter for the United Nations
- Its
five permanent members were the United
States, the Soviet Union,
Britain, France,
and China
- The
UN organization takes on many more problems than keeping peace-they help
prevent diseases from spreading in third world countries, improving
education, and aiding nations to develop economically
- The
Crumbling Alliance
- Conflicting
ideologies and mutual distrust divided the former Allies and soon led to
the conflict known as the Cold War
- The
Cold War was a state of tension and hostility among nations without armed
conflict between the major rivals
- At
first, the focus of the Cold War was Eastern Europe,
where Stalin and the western power had very different goals
- Containing
Communism
- Like
Churchill, President Truman saw communism as an evil force creeping across
Europe and threatening countries around the world,
including China
- The United
States took a leading role on the
world stage after WWII
- The
Truman Doctrine was released on March
12th, 1947 which would guild the United
States for decades; it made it clear
for the United States
to resist Soviet expansion in Europe or in the
rest of the world