I. Aggression, Appeasement, and War
A. Early Challenges to World Peace
1. One of the earliest tests was posed by Japan. Japan sized Manchuria in 1931 in pursuit of the goal to have an empire equal to those of the western powers.
2. In the 1930s the United States Congress passes a series of neutrality acts. Including one that prohibited the US to sell arms to other nations in war.
3. In 1936 Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland � another treaty invasion. The area belonged to Germany but it lay on the frontier with France.
B. The Spanish Civil War
1. In 1936 Spain plunged into a civil war. Although the Spanish Civil War was a local struggle it soon drew other European powers into the fighting.
2. One April morning in 1937, German bombers streaked over the market square. An estimated 1,600 people were killed.
3. The republican government passed a series of controversial reforms. It took over some Church lands and ended Church control of education.
C. German Aggression Continues
1. Hitler pursued his goal of bringing all German-speaking people into the Third Reich. He also took steps to gain �living space� for Germans in Eastern Europe.
2. Early in 1938 Hitler forced the Austrian chancellor to appoint Nazis to key cabinet posts.
3. At the Munich Conference in September 1938, British and French leaders again chose to surrender to Hitler.
D. The Plunge Towards War
1. In August 1939, Hitler stunned the world by announcing a nonaggression pact with his great enemy � Joseph Stalin, head of the Soviet Union.
2. The pact was not based on friendship or respect but on mutual need. The Nazis feared communism as Stalin feared fascism.
3. On September 1, 1939, a week after the Nazi-Soviet pact, German forces stormed into Poland.
E. Why War Came
1. Germany, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union all felt betrayed or excluded by the settlement and wanted to change it.
2. Many historians believe that Hitler may have been stopped in 1936, before Germany was fully rearmed.
3. The experience of WWI and awareness of the destructive power of modern technology made the idea of renewed fighting unbearable.
II. The Global Conflict: Axis Advances
A. The First Onslaught
1. In September 1939, Nazi forces stormed into Poland, revealing the enormous power of Hitler�s blitzkrieg, or �lighting war.�
2. On June 22, 1940 in a forest clearing in northeastern France, Hitler avenged the German defeat and forced France to surrender.
3. Technology created a war machine with even greater destructive power.
B. The Battle of Britain
1. On August 12, 1940 the first wave of German bombers appeared over England�s southern coast. The Battle of Britain had begun.
2. Late afternoon on September 7th German bombers appeared over London. For the next 57 nights the bombing went on. Some 15,000 people lost their lives.
3. By June 1941, Hitler had abandoned Operation Sea Lion in favor of a new campaign. This time, he targeted the Soviet Union.
C. Charging Ahead
1. In 1940 Italian forces invaded Greece. When they met stiff resistance, German troops once again came to the rescue, and both Greece and Yugoslavia were added to the Axis Empire.
2. While the Luftwaffe was blasting Britain, Axis armies were pushing into North Africa and the Balkans.
3. Both Bulgaria and Hungary has joined the Axis alliance. By 1941, the Axis powers or their allies controlled most of Western Europe.
D. Operation Barbarossa
1. In 1941, Hitler embarked on Operation Barbarossa � the conquest of the Soviet Union. Hitler�s motives were clear.
2. More than a million Leningraders died during the German siege. The survivors, meanwhile, struggled to defend their city.
3. Hitler�s forces were not prepared for Russia�s �General Winter� and by early December the temp dropped to -20 degrees. Thousands of German soldiers froze to death.
E. Growing American Involvement
1. When the war began in 1939 the United States declared its neutrality. Although isolationists feeling remained strong, many American sympathized with those who battled the Axis powers.
2. President Roosevelt found ways around the Neutrality Acts to provide aid, including warships, to Britain as it stood alone against Germany.
3. In August 1941 Roosevelt met Churchill secretly on a warship and discussed goals for the war, and for the post war.
F. Japan Attacks
1. In December 1941, the Allies gained a vital boost when a surprise action by Japan suddenly pitched the United States into the war.
2. To stop Japanese aggression the United States banned the sale to Japan of war materials, such as iron, steel, and oil for airplanes.
3. Early on December 7, 1941, Japanese airplanes struck. They damaged 19 ships, smashed American planes on the ground, and killed more than 2,400 people.
III. The Global Conflict: Allied Successes
A. Occupied Lands
1. While the Germans rampaged across Europe, the Japanese conquered and empire in Asia and the Pacific.
2. To accomplish his goal of killing Jews he had �death camps� built in Poland, Germany, at places like Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.
3. By 1945, the Nazis had massacred more than six million Jews in what became known as the Holocaust.
B. The Allied War Effort
1. Like the Axis powers, the Allies were committed to total war. Democratic governments in the United States and Britain increased their political power.
2. As men joined the military and war industries expanded, millions of women replaced them in essential jobs.
3. British and American women served in the armed forces in auxiliary roles, driving trucks and ambulances, delivering airplanes, decoding messages, assisting at anti-aircraft sites.
C. Turning Points
1. During 1942 and 943, the Allies won several that would turn the tide of the battle. The first turning points in North Africa and Italy.
2. In July 1943, a combined British and American army landed first in Sicily and then in southern Italy. They defeated the Italian forces there in about a month.
3. In 1942, American general Dwight Eisenhower took command of a joint Anglo-American force in Morocco and Algeria.
D. The Red Army Resists
1. After the Soviet Union advance in 1941, the Germans were stalled outside Moscow and Leningrad. In 1942, Hitler launched a new offensive.
2. After the battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army took the offensive. They lifted the siege of Leningrad and drove the invaders out of the Soviet Union.
3. At Stalingrad, German forces were trapped without food or ammunition and with no hope of rescue, the German commander finally surrendered in early 1943. the battle cost the Germans approximately 300,000 killed, wounded, or captured soldiers.
E. Invasion of France
1. By 1944, the Allies were at last ready to open the long-awaited second front in Europe � the invasion of France.
2. The Allies chose June 6, 1944 � D-Day they called it � for the invasion of France.
3. In Paris, French resistance forces rose up against he occupying Germans. Under pressure from all sides, the Germans retreated.
IV. Toward Victory
A. War in the Pacific
1. In May and June 1942, American warships and airplanes severely damaged two Japanese fleets during the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway Island.
2. In October 1944, MacArthur began to retake the Philippines. The British meanwhile were pushing the Japanese back in the jungles of Burma and Malaya.
3. By 1944, American ships were blockading Japan, while American bombers pounded Japanese cities and industries.
B. The Nazis Defeated
1. As the Allies advanced into Belgium in December 1944, Germany launched a massive counterattack. Hitler was throwing everything into his final effort.
2. By 1945, Germany could no longer defend itself in the air. Allied raids on Dresdon in February 1945 killed as many as 135,000 people.
3. The Germans drove the Allies back in several places but were unable to break through. The Battle of the Bulge slowed the Allied advance, but it was Hitler�s last success.
C. Defeat of Japan
1. By mid � 1945, most of the Japanese navy and air force had been destroyed. Yet the Japanese still had an army of two million men.
2. On August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped and atomic bomb on the midsized city of Hiroshima. The bomb flattened 4 square miles and instantly killed more than 70,000 people.
3. On August 8, 1945 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. The next day the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing more than 40,000 people.
D. Looking Ahead
1. After Japan surrendered the United States occupied the smoldering ruins of Japan.
2. In Germany, the Allies had divided Hitler�s fallen empire into four zones of occupation, French, British, American, and Russian.
3. In both countries the Allied forces faced difficult decisions about their future.
V. From World War to Cold War
A. Aftermath of War
1. The aftermath of the war was that as many as 75 million people worldwide had died. In Europe 38 million, and in the Soviet Union more than 22 million dead.
2. At wartime meetings, the Allies had agreed that the Axis leaders should be charged for �crimes against humanity.�
3. Only at the end of the war did the Allies learn the full extent of the Holocaust and the tortures and misery inflicted on Jews and others in the Nazi camps.
B. The United Nations
1. The World War II Allies set up and international organization to secure peace. In 1945, delegates from 50 nations met in San Francisco to draft a charter for the United Nations.
2. The UN�s work would go beyond peace keeping; they would also take on problems from preventing disease and improving education to protecting refugees and aiding nations to develop economically.
3. Its five permanent members, the United States, the Soviet Union (today Russia), Britain, France, and China � all have the right to veto any council decisions.
C. The Crumbling Alliances
1. The Soviet dictator pointed out that the United States was not consulting the Soviet Union about peace terms for Italy or Japan, defeated and occupied by American and British troops.
2. Roosevelt and Churchill rejected Stalin�s view, making him promise �free elections� in Eastern Europe. Stalin ignored that pledge.
3. In the East were the Soviet-dominated, communist countries of Eastern Europe. In the West were the western democracies, led by the United States.
D. Containing Communism
1. Like Churchill, President Truman saw communism as an evil force creeping across Europe and threatening countries around the world, including China.
2. In 1949 as tensions grew, the United States, Canada, and nine Western European countries formed a military alliance called NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
3. The Cold War would last for more than 40 years. Rivalry between the hostile camps would not only divide Europe but would also fuel crises around the world.