6-7: Ending theSecond World War

Overview

• War aims• Preserve freedom and democracy

• Fight fascism and militarism

• Reinforced by discovery of atrocities and Holocaust

• Reasons for Victory• Allied cooperation

• Technological and scientific advances

• Military strategy

• U.S. emerges as global leader

The Battlefronts

• Fighting Germany• Defeat Hitler First

• Defense at Sea, Attacks by Air

• From North Africa to Italy

• From D-Day to Victory in Europe

• German surrender

• Discovery of the Holocaust

The Battlefronts

• Fighting Japan• Early Japanese victories in the

Pacific

• Turning Point, 1942

• Island-Hopping

• Atomic Bombs

• Manhattan Project

• Decision to Use Bomb

• Saving American lives

• Force an end to the war

• Forestall Soviet intervention

• Bombing of Japan

• Japan Surrenders

Wartime Conferences

• Big Three

• Casablanca (Jan. ‘43)• Call for “unconditional surrender”

• Moscow (Oct. ‘43)• USSR to enter war against Japan

after fall of Germany

• Yalta (Feb. ’45)• Partition of Germany

• Soviet satellite states

• Potsdam (Jul. ‘45)• Atomic bomb decision

• Call for Nuremberg Trials

The War’s Legacy

• Costs• 50 million deaths—military and

civilian

• Asia and Europe ravaged by war

• U.S.: 15 million soldiers; 300,000 KIA and 800,000 WIA

• U.S. emerges as leading world power

• United Nations• Pledged principles of Atlantic Charter

• Peace-keeping organization