At first, the Allies, Britain and France, had regarded Fascism as the best defense against encroachments into Western Europe by Soviet Communism, under the iron rule of Stalin.To appease Hitler, the Allies agreed to sacrifice Czechoslovakia to German expansionism by the terms of the 1938 Munich Pact. But on September 1, 1939, Hitler's tanks rolled into Poland, which was an ally of Britain and France, and the Allies were forced to declare war on Germany.
The Germans were prepared for war and the allies were not. In the Spring of 1940, in blitzkrieg (lightning war), Hitler rapidly conquered Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, leaving Britain to fight alone. In 1941, Hitler tore up a mutual nonaggression pact he had signed with Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union, which immediatly joined Britain as an ally.
As the European colonial powers were weakened by the war in Europe, the Japanese militarists saw their opportunity to step up their plan to drive all colonial powers, including the United States, from east Asia, and to establish their own "New Order" there. President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull resisted these efforts. When the Japanese occupied French Indochina (Vietnam and Cambodia) in July of 1941, the president froze Japanese assets in the United States and embargoed shipments of the oil and scrap iron desperately needed in Japan. Britain followed suit. In November,1941, negotiations over trade, the status of China, and territorial expansion in Asia. While the talks were going on, a Japanese fleet set out across the Pacific towared Hawaii.
On the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japanese fighters, bombers, and submarines attacked the American Naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Nineteen U.S. ships were sunk or badly damaged; more than 2300 Americans were killed. The following day, President Roosevelt spoke to Congress, referring to the "day which will live in infamy" and asking for a declaration of war against Japan. A few hours later,the other Axis powers, Germany and Italy, also declared war on the United States.
Industry and agriculture mobilized to create a giant wartime production apparatus, shifting as quickly as possible from consumer goods to military supllies and equipment. The wartime economy provided millions of new jobs for women, and proftable war contracts for manufacturers.Many government agencies were up to regulate prices, wages, and rents; allocate materials; and coordinate production. Rationing systems were set up for scarce goods such as gasoline, sugar, coffee, and rubber. Fearful of further Japanese attacks and of enemy spies and sabotage, many Americans, particulary on the West Coast, became suspicious of all people of Japanese ancestry, even those born in the United states, the Nisei.President Roosevelt authorized inland "relocation camps" and the forced removal of 100,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and property. As early as September, 1940, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, the first U.S. peacetime draft. Im December, 1941, the age limits were broadened to include men 20 to 44 years of age. In May, 1942, Congress authorized the formation of women's noncombat branches on the Navy(WAVES), Army(WACS), Air Force(WAFS), Coast Gard(SPARS), and Marines. In all, about 16 million Americans served in military units during the war.
Despite the slightly improved position in the Pacific, the late summer of 1942 was perhaps the darkest period of the war for the Allies. In North Africa, the Axis forces under Field Marshal Rommel were sweeping into Egypt; in Russia, they had penetrated the Caucasus and launched a gigantic offensive against Stalingrad (see Volgograd ). In the Atlantic, even to the shores of the United States and in the Gulf of Mexico, German submarines were sinking Allied shipping at an unprecedented rate.
Yet the Axis war machine showed signs of wear, while the United States was merely beginning to realize its potential, and Russia had huge reserves and was receiving U.S. lend-lease aid through Iran and the port of Murmansk. The major blow, however, was leveled at the Axis by Britain, when General Montgomery routed Rommel at Alamein in North Africa (Oct., 1942). This was followed by the American invasion of Algeria (Nov. 8, 1942); the Americans and British were joined by Free French forces of General de Gaulle and by regular French forces that had passed to the Allies after the surrender of Admiral Darlan . After heavy fighting in Tunisia, North Africa was cleared of Axis forces by May 12, 1943.
Meantime, in the Soviet stand at Stalingrad and counteroffensive resulted in the surrender (Feb. 2, 1943) of the German 6th Army, followed by nearly uninterrupted Russian advances. In the Mediterranean, the Allies followed up their African victory by the conquest of Sicily (July-Aug., 1943) and the invasion of Italy, which surrendered on Sept. 8. However, the German army in Italy fought bloody rearguard actions, and Rome fell (June 4, 1944) only after the battles of Monte Cassino and Anzio . In the Atlantic, the submarine threat was virtually ended by the summer of 1944. Throughout German-occupied Europe, underground forces, largely supplied by the Allies, began to wage war against their oppressors.
The Allies, who had signed (Jan. 1, 1942) the United Nations declaration, were drawn closer together militarily by the Casablanca Conference , at which they pledged to continue the war until the unconditional surrender of the Axis, and by the Moscow Conferences , the Quebec Conference , the Cairo Conference , and the Tehran Conference . The invasion of German-held France was decided upon, and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was put in charge of the operation.
By the beginning of 1944 air warfare had turned overwhelmingly in favor of the Allies, who wrought unprecedented destruction on many German cities and on transport and industries throughout German-held Europe. This air offensive prepared the way for the landing (June 6, 1944) of the Allies in N France (see Normandy campaign ) and a secondary landing (Aug. 15) in S France. After heavy fighting in Normandy, Allied armored divisions raced to the Rhine, clearing most of France and Belgium of German forces by Oct., 1944. The use of V-1 and V-2 rockets by the Germans proved as futile an effort as their counteroffensive in Belgium under General von Rundstedt (see Battle of the Bulge ).
On the Eastern Front Soviet armies swept (1944) through the Baltic States, E Poland, Belorussia, and Ukraine and forced the capitulation of Romania (Aug. 23), Finland (Sept. 4), and Bulgaria (Sept. 10). Having evacuated the Balkan Peninsula, the Germans resisted in Hungary until Feb., 1945, but Germany itself was pressed. The Russians entered East Prussia and Czechoslovakia (Jan., 1945) and took E Germany to the Oder.
On Mar. 7 the Western Allies�whose chief commanders in the field were Omar N. Bradley and Montgomery�crossed the Rhine after having smashed through the strongly fortified Siegfried Line and overran W Germany. German collapse came after the meeting (Apr. 25) of the Western and Russian armies at Torgau in Saxony, and after Hitler's death amid the ruins of Berlin, which was falling to the Russians under marshals Zhukov and Konev . The unconditional surrender of Germany was signed at Reims on May 7 and ratified at Berlin on May 8.
After the completion of the campaigns in the Solomon Islands (late 1943) and New Guinea (1944), the Allied advance moved inexorably, in two lines that converged on Japan, through scattered island groups�the Philippines, the Mariana Islands, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. Japan, with most of its navy sunk, staggered beneath these blows. At the Yalta Conference , the USSR secretly promised its aid against Japan, which still refused to surrender even after the Allied appeal made at the Potsdam Conference . On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States first used the atomic bomb and devastated Hiroshima ; on Aug. 9, the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki . The USSR had already invaded Manchuria. On Aug. 14, Japan announced its surrender, formally signed aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2.
Although hostilities came to an end in Sept., 1945, a new world crisis caused by the postwar conflict between the USSR and the United States�the two chief powers to emerge from the war�made settlement difficult. By Mar., 1950, peace treaties had been signed with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland; in 1951, the Allies (except the USSR) signed a treaty with Japan, and, in 1955, Austria was restored to sovereignty. Germany, however, remained divided�first between the Western powers and the USSR, then (until 1990) into two German nations (see Germany ).
Despite the birth of the United Nations , the world remained politically unstable and only slowly recovered from the incalculable physical and moral devastation wrought by the largest and most costly war in history. Soldiers and civilians both had suffered in bombings that had wiped out entire cities. Modern methods of warfare�together with the attempt of Germany to exterminate entire religious and ethnic groups (particularly the Jews )�famines, and epidemics, had brought death to tens of millions and made as many more homeless. The suffering and degradation of the war's victims were of proportions that passed the understanding of those who had been spared. The conventions of warfare had been violated on a large scale (see war crimes ), and warfare itself was revolutionized by the development and use of nuclear weapons.
Political consequences included the reduction of Britain and France to powers of lesser rank, the emergence of the Common Market (see European Economic Community ; European Union ), the independence of many former colonies in Asia and Africa, and, perhaps most important, the beginning of the cold war between the Western powers and the Communist-bloc nations.
Spencer