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CHAPTER 26: Objectives
o We will examine the key battles that
led to the defeat of the Axis powers
in Europe.
o We will examine the key battles of
the Pacific front.
o We will examine the development of
the Atomic bomb and the reasoning
of why the weapon was used.
Psa_68:30 Rebuke the company
of spearmen, the multitude of the
bulls, with the calves of the
people, till every one submit
himself with pieces of silver:
scatter thou the people that
delight in war.
Introduction:
o By the middle of the 1943, America
and its allies had succeeded in
stopping the Axis advanced both in
Europe and in the Pacific.
o Now they were in the offensive.
The Liberation of France:
o By early 1944, American and British bombers were attacking German industrial installations around the clock.
o In one incident in Dresden, bombing resulted in a firestorm that destroyed three-fourths of the previously undamaged city.
o Approximately 135,000 civilians were killed.
The Liberation of France:
o Military leaders claimed that the
bombing destroyed industrial
facilities, demoralized the population
and cleared the way for the great
Allied invasion of France planned for
the late spring.
The Liberation of France:
o An enormous invasion force had been
gathering for almost two years almost 3
million troops, and perhaps the greatest
array of naval vessels and armaments
ever assembled in one place.
o On the morning of June 6, 1944, D-Day,
General Dwight D. Eisenhower the
Supreme Commander of Allied forces
sent this vast armada into action.
The Liberation of France:
o The landing came not at the
narrowest part of the English
Channel, where the Germans had
expected and prepared for it but
along sixty miles of the Cotentin
Peninsula on the coast of Normandy.
The Liberation of France:
o While airplanes and battleships off-shore bombarded the Nazi defenses.
o 4,000 vessels landed troops and supplies on the beach of American, British and Canadian troops
o (Three divisions of paratroopers had been dropped behind the German lines the night before, the scene of great confusion, to seize critical roads and bridges for the push inland).
The Liberation of France:
o Fighting was intense along the coast but because but the superior manpower and equipment of the allied forces gradually prevailed.
o Within a week the German forces had been dislodged from virtually the entire Normandy Coast.
o American, British, and Canadian troops gained a foothold in France.
The Liberation of France:
o With the efforts of General Omar Bradley and George S. Patton, the allies after a slow month of progress began their thrust to the heart of France.
o By August 25, 1944, Free French forces liberated the city of Paris from German occupation.
o Germans were almost entirely driven out of France and Belgium.
The Liberation of France:
o The great Allied Drive came to a halt however, at the Rhine River in the face of a firm line of German Defenses, and a period of cold weather, rain and floods.
o In mid-December, German forces did a desperate counterattack but were finally stopped at a town called Bastogne.
o The battle ended serious German resistant in the West.
The Liberation of France:
o In early Spring of 1945, British field
Marshall Bernard Montgomery,
commander of Allied ground operations
on D-Day and after, pushed into
northern Germany with a million troops,
while Bradley’s army sweeping towards
central Germany.
The Liberation of France:
o The German resistance was now
broken on both fronts.
o American forces were moving
eastward faster than they had
anticipated and could have
beaten the Russian to Berlin and
Prague.
The Liberation of France:
o Instead, the American and British
high commands decided to halt the
advance along the Elbe River in
central Germany to await the
Russians.
o That decision enabled the Soviets to
occupy eastern Germany and
Czechoslovakia.
The Liberation of France:
o On April 30, with Soviet forces on the
outskirts of Berlin, Adolf Hitler killed
himself in his bunker.
o May 8, 1945, the remaining German
forces surrendered unconditionally which
was called V-E (Victory in Europe) Day
prompted great celebrations in Western
Europe and in the United States but
Japan still remained.
The Pacific Offensive:
o In February 1944, American naval forces
under Admiral Chester Nimitz won a
series of victories in the Marshall
Islands and cracked the outer perimeter
of the Japanese Empire.
o Within a mouth, the navy had destroyed
other vital Japanese bastions.
The Pacific Offensive:
o Japanese shipping was crippled by American submarines and the Japanese domestic economy led to food rationing and a gasoline shortage.
o America hoped that China would aid in fighting the Chinese but Chiang Kai-Shek the Chinese premier was more concerned with fighting the Communists rather than focus on the Japanese, much to American frustration.
The Pacific Offensive:
o In Mid-June 1944 an enormous American armada stuck the heavily fortified Mariana Islands and, after some of the bloodiest operations of war captured Tinian, Guam, and Saipan, 1,350 miles from Tokyo.
o On October 20, General MacArthur’s troops landed on Leyte Island in the Philippines.
The Pacific Offensive:
o As the American forces pushed
closer to Japan itself, the Japanese
used their entire fleet against the
Allied invaders in three major
encounters which together
constituted the decisive Battle of
Leyte Gulf, the largest naval
engagement in history.
The Pacific Offensive:
o American forces held off the Japanese onslaught and sank four Japanese carriers, all but destroying Japan’s capacity to continue a serious naval war.
o But Japanese resistance remained fierce.
o In the Battle of Iwo Jima, the United States Marine Corps suffered the costliest battle in its history with over 25,000 casualties.
The Pacific Offensive:
o The Battle of Okinawa, an island only 370 miles South of Japan was further evidence of the strength of the Japanese resistance in those last desperate months.
o Week after week, the Japanese sent kamikaze suicide planes against American and British ships sacrificing 3,500 of them while inflicting greater damage.
The Pacific Offensive:
o Japanese troops on shore launched desperate nighttime attacks on the American lines.
o The United States and its allies suffered nearly 50,000 casualties before finally capturing Okinawa in late June 1945.
o More than 100,000 Japanese died in the siege.
The Pacific Offensive:
o An expectation that the invasion of Japan itself would be bitter.
o But such an invasion might not be necessary.
o The Japanese had almost no ships or planes left with which to fight.
o Japanese industrial bases were destroyed by constant bombardments and civilians were being killed in great number because of the bombardment.
The Pacific Offensive:
o Moderates including Emperor Hirohito
sought to find a way for peace but could
not persuade military leaders to give up
the fight.
The Manhattan Project:
o Reports had reached the United
States in 1939 that Nazi scientists
had taken the first step toward the
creation of an atomic bomb.
o The United States and Britain
immediately began a race to develop
the weapon before the Germans did.
The Manhattan Project:
o Albert Einstein warned FDR that the
Germans were developing atomic
weapons and that the United States
must begin trying to do the same.
o The effort to build atomic weapons
centered on the use of uranium.
The Manhattan Project:
o Ultimately, the United States began
research and development for an
atom bomb, with a code name
known as the Manhattan Project.
o (Because it was devised in the
Manhattan Engineer District Office of
the Army Corps of Engineers).
The Manhattan Project:
o Over the next three years, the U.S. government secretly poured nearly $2 billion into the Manhattan Project.
o A massive scientific and technological effort conducted at hidden laboratories in Oak Ride, Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico; Hanford Washington and other sites.
The Manhattan Project:
o In the process of research and
development, plutonium proved capable
of providing a practical fuel for the
weapon.
o Scientists in Los Alamos, under the
direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer
were charged with the construction of
the actual bomb.
The Manhattan Project:
o Despite unforeseen problems, the scientists pushed ahead much faster than anyone had predicted.
o Even so, the war in Europe ended before they were ready to test the first weapon.
o Just before the dawn of July 16, 1945, in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first atomic explosion in history happened.
The Manhattan Project:
o News of the explosion reached President Harry S. Truman (who had taken office in April on the death of Roosevelt) in Postsdam, Germany, where he was attending a conference of Allied leaders.
o He issued an ultimatum to the Japanese (signed jointly by the British) demanding that they surrender by August 3 or face complete devastation.
The Manhattan Project:
o The Japanese premier wanted to accept the Allied demand, but he still could not persuade the military leaders to agree.
o But the United States was committed to unconditional surrender.
o On August 6, 1945, a B-29, the Enola Gay dropped an atomic weapon on the Japanese industrial center at Hiroshima.
o 80,000 Civilians died and survivors faced the fall out of radiation effects.
The Manhattan Project:
o The Japanese Government stunned by the attack was at first unable to agree on a response.
o Two days later, on August 8, the Soviet Union declared War on Japan.
o And the following day, the United States sent another American plane to drop another atomic weapon this time on the city of Nagasaki causing more than 100,000 deaths.
The Manhattan Project:
o Finally the emperor intervened to break the stalemate in the cabinet and on August 14 the government announced that it was ready to give up.
o On September 2, 1945, on board the American battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay, the Japanese officials signed the articles of surrender.
The Manhattan Project:
o The most catastrophic war in the
history of mankind had come to an end.
o The United States had emerged not
only victorious but in a position of
unprecedented power, influence, and
prestige.
o Fourteen million combatants had died
in the struggle.
The Manhattan Project:
o As many as 40 million civilians may have died mostly from bombings, from disease and starvation, from genocidal campaigns of extermination.
o The U.S. had suffered only light casualties in light comparison with many other nations but the cost had still been high.
o 322,000 dead another 800,000 injured.