Section 16.4

• American General who led the Allied forces in Western Europe

• Commanded Operation Torch• Finally crushed Rommel’s Afrika Korps in North Africa

• Commanded the D-Day Invasion• Drove the Nazis from Europe

• Later becomes an American President

• Battle between Germans and Soviets from 1942-1943

• By November 1942, Germans held 90% of the city• When the Russian winter set in, the Soviets

launch a counterattack• February 1943: 90,000 frostbitten and starving

Germans (out of an original 330,000) surrendered to the Soviets

• Soviets lost over 1 million soldiers in this battle but forced the Germans to take the defensive in USSR

• July 10, 1943: Allied forces attacked Sicily and captured German and Italian forces

• July 25, 1943: Mussolini toppled from power and arrested

• September, 3 1943: Italy surrendered, but Germans take control and put Mussolini back in charge.

• June 4, 1944: Allies enter Rome• Mussolini tried to escape disguised

as a German but was ambushed by Italian resistance fighters who shot him

• Internment: the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial

• At home, many Americans feared that Japanese and Japanese-Americans might aid the enemy

• They had been heavily influenced by Anti-Japanese government propaganda• Roosevelt authorized the imprisonment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans• Many Japanese-American born citizens fought for their countries while their

families at home were kept prisoners in camps

• June 6th 1944: The day on which the Allies began their invasion of the European mainland beginning at Normandy, France.

• Referred to as Operation Overlord• Eisenhower commanded British, American, French and

Canadian troops using planes, tanks, ships and landing craft

• Germans fought back with machine guns, rocket launchers and cannons

• Of the American forces alone, 2,700 men died on the beaches that day

• By September, the Allies had successfully liberated Paris

• 1944-1945 battle in which Allied forces turned back the last major German offensive of WWII

• Facing the Soviets to their east and the Americans and British to the West, Hitler decided to attack on the Allied forces to the west

• Taking the Allies off guard, the Germans created a “bulge” in the Allied lines before the Allies were able to push them back

• The Germans had no reinforcements and no choice but to retreat

• March 1945-Allies rolled through Europe and took Berlin

• Hitler married his long-time girlfriend and then they both committed suicide by ingesting poison in a bunker

• The Third Reich (Germany’s regime or empire) surrendered on March 7th, 1945

• This is celebrated today as V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day)

• By the fall of 1944, Japan was also in retreat as the Allies closed in

• October 23, 1944: The Battle at Leyte Gulf, a disastrous loss for the Japanese eliminated the entire Japanese Navy

• Japanese were forced to rely on their Army and kamikaze pilots: Japanese suicide pilots who would sink Allied ships by crash-diving bomb filled planes into them

• March 1945: Allies take island of Iwo Jima• June 21, 1945: Allies capture Okinawa• Only Japan remained

• Developed by the Top-Secret Manhattan Project• Led by Robert J. Oppenheimer• Had the force of 20,000 tons of T.N.T.

Invasion of JapanContinue firebombingBlockadeDemonstration of bomb

Why did we not chose any of these?

Manhattan Project – The building of the atomic bomb. Divided into several smaller projects.

Enola Gay – Bomber plane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Paul Tibbets – PilotFat Man – Name given

to the type of bomb that was dropped.

•

• “Moreover, the enemy now possesses a new and terrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do incalculable damage. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.”

-Emperor Hirohito

• Japanese surrendered on September 2nd, 1945 to Douglas MacArthur on the American battleship, USS Missouri

• This day is celebrated in the U.S. as V-J Day and it effectively ended World War II