Splash Screen

• Adolf Hitler believed that Germany could build a great civilization.

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• To do this, Germany needed more land to support more German people.

• He wanted lands in the east in the Soviet Union and prepared for war.

• His plan was to use the land for German settlements.

• The Slavic people would become slaves.

The German Path to War

(pages 809–812)


• Hitler proposed that Germany be able to revise the unfair provisions of the Treaty of Versailles that had ended World War I.

• At first he said he would use peaceful means.

• However, in March of 1935, he created a new air force and began a military draft.

The German Path to War (cont.)

(pages 809–812)


• France, Great Britain, and Italy condemned Hitler’s moves.

• Due to problems at home caused by the Great Depression, however, they were not prepared to take action.

• Hitler became convinced that the Western states would not stop him from breaking the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

(pages 809–812)



• In March of 1936, Hitler sent German troops into the Rhineland, which was supposed to be a demilitarized area.

• France would not oppose Germany for this treaty violation without British support.

• Great Britain saw Hitler’s actions as reasonable and therefore did not call for a military response.

(pages 809–812)


• This was the beginning of the policy of appeasement, one based on the belief that if European states satisfied the reasonable demands of dissatisfied states, the dissatisfied states would be content, and peace would be preserved.

(pages 809–812)



• Hitler gained new allies. • Benito Mussolini was the Fascist leader

of Italy. • He invaded Ethiopia in 1935 with the

support of German troops. • In 1936, both Italy and Germany sent

troops to Spain to support General Francisco Franco.

(pages 809–812)



• Later in the year, Hitler and Mussolini became allies and formed the Rome-Berlin Axis.

• Germany also signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan forming an alliance against communism.

(pages 809–812)



• By 1937, Germany had become a very powerful nation.

• In 1938, Hitler pursued a long-held goal, union with Austria, or Anschluss.

• By threatening to invade Austria, Hitler forced the Austrians to put Austrian Nazis in charge of the government.

• The new government then invited German troops into Austria to “help” maintain order.

• Hitler then annexed Austria to Germany.

(pages 809–812)



• In 1938, Hitler demanded that the Sudetenland in northwestern Czechoslovakia be given to Germany.

• The British, French, Italian, and German representatives then met in Munich.

• Britain, France, and Italy gave in to all of Hitler’s demands.

• German troops were allowed into Czechoslovakia.

(pages 809–812)



• After the Munich Conference, the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced that the settlement meant “peace for our time.”

• He believed Hitler’s promises that Germany would make no more demands.

• After Munich, Hitler was even more convinced that France and Great Britain would not fight.

• In March of 1939, Hitler invaded western Czechoslovakia, and made a Nazi puppet state out of Slovakia in eastern Czechoslovakia.

(pages 809–812)



• France and Great Britain began to react. Great Britain said it would protect Poland if Hitler invaded.

• France and Britain began negotiations with Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator.

• They knew that they would need the Soviet Union to help contain the Nazis.

(pages 809–812)



• Hitler was afraid of an alliance between the West and the Soviet Union.

• In August of 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact.

• They promised not to attack each other. • Hitler offered Stalin eastern Poland and

the Baltic states. • Hitler knew that eventually he would

break the pact. • However, it enabled him to invade Poland

without fear.(pages 809–812)



• On September 1, Germany invaded Poland.

• Two days later, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany.

(pages 809–812)



• In September 1931, Japanese soldiers seized Manchuria.

• The Japanese claimed that the Chinese had attacked them.

• In fact, the Japanese had staged the attack themselves disguised as Chinese soldiers.

• When the League of Nations investigated and condemned the attack, Japan withdrew from the league.

• For several years, Japan strengthened its hold on Manchuria, which it renamed Manchukuo.

The Japanese Path to War

(pages 812–813)


• By the mid-1930s, militants had gained control of Japanese politics.

• The United States opposed the Japanese takeover of Manchuria but did nothing to stop it.

The Japanese Path to War (cont.)

(pages 812–813)


• Chiang Kai-shek tried to avoid a war with Japan.

• He was more concerned with the threat from the Chinese Communists.

• He tried to appease Japan by allowing the Japanese to occupy parts of northern China.

• Japan moved steadily southward. • In December 1936, Chiang formed a

united front against the Japanese.

(pages 812–813)



• In July 1937, the Chinese and Japanese clashed south of Beijing.

• The Japanese seized the capital of Nanjing.

• Chiang Kai-shek refused to surrender and moved the capital.

(pages 812–813)



• Japanese military leaders wanted to establish a New Order in East Asia.

• The order would include Japan, Manchuria, and China.

• The Japanese thought that, as the only modernized country, they could guide the other East Asian nations to prosperity.

(pages 812–813)



• The Japanese planned to seize Soviet Siberia.

• During the 1930s, Japan began to cooperate with Nazi Germany.

• The Japanese thought that they and Germany could defeat the Soviet Union and divide its resources.

(pages 812–813)



• The Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact forced the Japanese to rethink their goals.

• The Japanese needed natural resources. • They looked to expand into Southeast Asia

for sources. • At the same time they knew that they

risked strong response from European colonial powers and the United States.

• They decided to take the risk.

(pages 812–813)



• In 1940, the Japanese demanded the right to exploit economic resources in French Indochina.

• The United States responded by imposing economic sanctions, or restrictions on trade that are intended to enforce international law, unless Japan withdrew to its borders of 1931.

(pages 812–813)



• The Japanese badly needed oil and scrap iron from the United States.

• The economic sanctions were a very real threat. In the end, after long debate, Japan decided to launch a surprise attack on U.S. and European colonies in Southeast Asia.

(pages 812–813)



Europe at War

(pages 814–817)

• The 1939 invasion of Poland by Germany took just four weeks.

• The speed and efficiency of the German army stunned the world.

• Called blitzkrieg (“lightning war”), the Germans used panzer divisions (strike forces of about 300 tanks and soldiers) that were supported by airplanes.

• On September 28, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland.


• In the spring of 1940, Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway.

• In May, Germany attacked the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.

• The German armies broke through French lines and moved across northern France.

• The French had fortified their border with Germany along the Maginot Line, but the Germans surprised them by going around it.

Europe at War (cont.)

(pages 814–817)


• The Germans trapped the entire British army and French forces on the beaches of Dunkirk.

• The British navy and private boats were able to evacuate 338,000 Allied troops, barely averting a complete disaster.

(pages 814–817)



• On June 22, the French signed an armistice with the Germans, who occupied three-fifths of France.

• An authoritarian French regime under German control was set up to govern the rest of the country.

• Led by Marshal Henri Pétain, it was named Vichy France.

• Germany now controlled western and central Europe.

• Only Britain remained undefeated.

(pages 814–817)



• The British asked the United States for help.

• The United States had a strict policy of isolationism.

• A series of neutrality acts passed in the 1930s prevented the United States from involvement in European conflicts.

• Though President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced the Germans, the United States did nothing at first.

(pages 814–817)



• Roosevelt wanted to repeal the neutrality acts and help Great Britain.

• Over time, the laws were slowly relaxed, and the United States sent food, ships, planes, and weapons to Britain.

(pages 814–817)



• Hitler understood that he could not attack Britain by sea unless he first controlled the air.

• In August 1940, the Luftwaffe–German air force–began a major bombing offensive against military targets in Britain.

• Aided by a good radar system, the British fought back but suffered critical losses.

(pages 814–817)



• In September, Hitler retaliated to a British attack on Berlin by shifting attacks from military targets to British cities.

• He hoped to break British morale. However, the shift in strategy allowed the British to rebuild their air power and inflict crippling losses on the Germans.

• Having lost the Battle of Britain, Hitler postponed the invasion of Britain indefinitely at the end of September.

(pages 814–817)



• Hitler was convinced that the way to defeat Britain was to first smash the Soviet Union.

• He thought that the British were resisting only because they were expecting Soviet support.

• He also thought that the Soviets could be easily defeated.

• He planned to invade in the spring of 1941 but was delayed by problems in the Balkans.

(pages 814–817)



• After the Italians had failed to capture Greece in 1940, the British still held air bases there.

• Hitler seized Greece and Yugoslavia in April 1941.

(pages 814–817)



• Then Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.

• The attack on the Soviet Union stretched out for 1,800 miles.

• German troops moved quickly and captured two million Russian soldiers by November.

• The Germans were within 25 miles of Moscow.

(pages 814–817)



• However, winter came early in 1941 and, combined with fierce Russian resistance, forced the Germans to halt.

• This marked the first time in the war that the Germans had been stopped.

• The Germans were not equipped for the bitter Russian winter.

• In December, the Soviet army counterattacked.

(pages 814–817)


Japan at War

(pages 817–818)

• On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

• They also attacked the Philippines and the British colony of Malaya.

• Soon after, they invaded the Dutch East Indies and other islands in the Pacific Ocean.

• In spite of some fierce resistance in places such as the Philippines, by the spring of 1942, the Japanese controlled almost all of Southeast Asia and much of the western Pacific.



• The Japanese created the Greater East-Asia Coprosperity Sphere, which included the entire region under Japanese control.

• Japan announced its intention to liberate colonial nations in Southeast Asia, but it first needed their natural resources.

• The Japanese treated the occupied countries as conquered lands.

Japan at War (cont.)

(pages 817–818)


• The Japanese thought that their attacks on the U.S. fleet would destroy the U.S. Navy and lead the Americans to accept Japanese domination in the Pacific.

• However, the attack on Pearl Harbor had the opposite effect.

• It united the American people and convinced the nation that it should enter the war against Japan.

(pages 817–818)



• Hitler thought that the Americans would be too involved in the Pacific to fight in Europe.

• Four days after Pearl Harbor, he declared war on the United States.

• World War II had become a global war.

(pages 817–818)



The Allies Advance

(pages 818–821)

• A new coalition was formed called the Grand Alliance.

• It included Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

• The three nations agreed to focus on military operations and ignore political differences.

• They agreed in 1943 to fight until the Axis Powers–Germany, Italy, and Japan–surrendered unconditionally.


• At the beginning of 1942, the Germans continued to fight the war against Britain and the Soviet Union.

• The Germans were also fighting in North Africa.

• The Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel broke through British lines in Egypt and advanced on Alexandria.

• During the spring, the Germans captured the entire Crimea in the Soviet Union.

The Allies Advance (cont.)

(pages 818–821)


• By the fall of 1942, the war had turned against the Germans.

• In the summer of 1942, the British in North Africa had stopped the Germans at El Alamein.

• The Germans retreated. • In November, British and American forces

invaded French North Africa and forced the German and Italian troops to surrender by May.

(pages 818–821)



• On the Eastern Front, Hitler decided to attack Stalingrad, a major Soviet industrial center.

• Between November 1942 and February 1943 the Soviets counterattacked.

• They surrounded the Germans and cut off their supply lines.

• In May, the Germans were forced to surrender.

• They lost some of their best troops. • Hitler then realized that he would not

defeat the Soviet Union.

(pages 818–821)



• In 1942, the Allies had their first successes in the Pacific.

• In the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, American naval forces stopped the Japanese and saved Australia from invasion.

• In June, the Battle of Midway Island was the turning point in the Pacific war.

• U.S. planes destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers and established naval superiority.

(pages 818–821)



• By the fall of 1942, Allied forces were about to begin two major operation plans against Japan.

• One, led by General Douglas MacArthur, would move into the Philippines through New Guinea and the South Pacific Islands.

• The other would move across the Pacific, capturing some of the Japanese-held islands and ending up in Japan.

• By November 1942, after fierce battles in the Solomon Islands, the Japanese power was diminishing.

(pages 818–821)



Last Years of the War

(pages 821–822)

• By early 1943, the tide had turned against the Axis forces.

• In May, the Axis forces surrendered in Tunisia.

• The Allies then moved north and invaded Italy in September.

• Winston Churchill called Italy the “soft underbelly” of Europe.


• After the Allies captured Sicily, Mussolini was removed from office.

• The king arrested him. • A new Italian government offered to

surrender to the Allies. • However, the Germans rescued Mussolini

and set him up as dictator of a puppet German state in northern Italy.

Last Years of the War (cont.)

(pages 821–822)


• The Germans established a strong defense south of Rome.

• The Allies had very heavy casualties as they slowly advanced north.

• They did not take Rome until June 4, 1944.

• The Allies had long been planning a “second front” in western Europe.

• They planned to invade France from Great Britain across the English Channel.

• On June 6, 1944 (D-Day), the Allies under U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower landed on the beaches in Normandy.

(pages 821–822)



• Though the Germans were expecting the invasion to take place in another location, there was still heavy resistance.

• However, because the Germans thought the invasion was a diversion, they were slow to respond.

• This gave the Allies the chance to set up a beachhead.

• By landing two million men and a half-million vehicles, the Allies eventually broke through the German lines.

(pages 821–822)



• After the breakout, the Allies moved south and east.

• French resistance fighters rose up in German-occupied Paris.

• Paris was liberated by the end of August. In March of 1945, the Allies crossed the Rhine River.

• In the north they linked up with the Soviet army that was moving from the east.

(pages 821–822)



• The Soviets had turned the tables on the Germans in 1943.

• They soundly defeated German troops in July at the Battle of Kursk in a huge tank battle.

• Then they moved steadily westward. • By the end of 1943, they had reoccupied

Ukraine. • By early 1944, they had moved into the

Baltic states.

(pages 821–822)



• In the north, Soviet troops occupied Warsaw in January 1945 and entered Berlin in April.

• Along a southern front, the Soviets swept through Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria.

(pages 821–822)



• By January 1945, Hitler had moved into an underground bunker in Berlin.

• In the end he blamed the Jews for the war.

• On April 30, he committed suicide. • Two days before, Italian partisans–

resistance fighters–had shot Mussolini. • On May 7, 1945, German commanders

surrendered, and the war in Europe was over.

(pages 821–822)



• The war in Asia continued. Beginning in 1943, the Allied forces had gone on the offensive and moved across the Pacific.

• As the Allies came closer to the Japanese home islands in 1945, U.S. president Harry S Truman decided to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities.

• He hoped that this would avoid an invasion of Japan.

• The first bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6.

(pages 821–822)



• Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

• Both cities were completely destroyed. • Thousands died immediately, and

thousands more died later of radiation sickness.

• The Japanese surrendered on August 14.

(pages 821–822)



• World War II was over. • Seventeen million people had died in

battle in World War II. • Some estimate that, including civilian

losses, as many as fifty million people died in the war.

(pages 821–822)


• In 1942, the Nazis controlled Europe from the English Channel in the west to near Moscow in the east.


The New Order in Europe

(pages 824–825)

• While Germany annexed some areas, most were run by military or civilian officials with help from local citizens who supported them.


The New Order in Europe (cont.) • The Nazis were especially ruthless in

eastern Europe. • The Nazis saw the Slavic peoples as

racially inferior. • The Nazis wanted the lands for German

settlers. • Soon after they conquered Poland, they

began to put their plans for an Aryan racial empire into action.

(pages 824–825)


• Heinrich Himmler, the SS leader, was put in charge of German resettlement plans in the east.

• This meant to move Slavic people out and replace them with Germans.

• Beginning in western Poland, the Germans moved one million Poles to southern Poland.

• By 1942, two million ethnic Germans had been moved in to colonize the new German provinces in Poland.

(pages 824–825)

The New Order in Europe (cont.)


The New Order in Europe (cont.) • When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union,

Hitler anticipated turning all the people into slaves and inhabiting the conquered lands with German peasants.

• Himmler stated that German plans could involve killing 30 million Slavs.

(pages 824–825)


The New Order in Europe (cont.) • Due to labor shortages in Germany, the

Nazis starting rounding up foreign workers as slave labor.

• By the summer of 1944, seven million Europeans were laboring in Germany.

• Another seven million were forced to work in their own countries.

(pages 824–825)


The New Order in Europe (cont.) • Forced labor caused problems for the

Germans. • Bringing workers to Germany reduced the

number of workers left in occupied countries.

• The Germans’ brutal tactics led more and more people to resist Nazi occupation forces.

(pages 824–825)


The Holocaust • Hitler’s vision divided the world into the

Aryan race and those who would destroy it.

• He was convinced that the Jewish people were the greatest threat to his Aryan Empire.

• He directed that Jews in Europe be exterminated completely.

• His plan was called the Final Solution.

(pages 825–828)


The Holocaust (cont.) • The SS under Himmler was responsible

for carrying out the Final Solution. • The Final Solution was genocide, or the

physical extermination, of the Jewish people.

(pages 825–828)


The Holocaust (cont.) • Reinhard Heydrich was the head of the

SS’s Security Service. • He was in charge of the Final Solution. • He created special forces, called Einsatzgruppen, to carry out Nazi plans.

• When Poland fell, he ordered all Jews rounded up and put in terribly crowded ghettos in a number of cities.

• The Nazis tried to starve the Jews. • Some of the ghettos organized resistance

against the Nazis.(pages 825–828)


• In June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen began acting as mobile killing units.

• They followed the army, rounded up all Jews, and executed them.

• They buried the victims in mass graves. Perhaps one million Jews were killed in this way.

• However, the Nazis found that this process was too slow.

(pages 825–828)

The Holocaust (cont.)


• The next step was to build death camps. • Beginning in 1942, Jews from countries

occupied by or sympathetic to Germany were transported to Poland in freight trains like cattle.

• Six death camps were built in Poland. • The largest was Auschwitz. • About 30 percent of the arrivals were sent

to work in a labor camps. • Many of those were starved or worked to

death. • The rest were exterminated in mass gas

chambers.(pages 825–828)



• By the spring of 1942, the death camps were fully operating.

• Throughout the war, the Final Solution continued to have top priority.

• Even as the Nazis were losing the war in 1944, Jews were being shipped from Greece and Hungary to the death camps.

• The Final Solution had priority over the military for trains.

(pages 825–828)



• The Nazis were also responsible for the deaths of at least nine to ten million non-Jewish people.

• About 40 percent of Europe’s Gypsies were killed, as were Poles, Ukrainians, and Belorussians who lost their lives as slave laborers.

• The Nazis also probably killed at least three to four million Soviet prisoners of war.

(pages 825–828)



• This mass slaughter of European civilians, particularly European Jews, is called the Holocaust.

• In a few places, Jews resisted. • In some countries, people tried to help

Jews to escape from the Nazis. • The Danish people were able to protect

most of their Jewish citizens. • In many places, collaborators (people

who assisted the enemy) helped the Nazis find Jews.

(pages 825–828)



• Though the Allies knew about the death camps, they chose to concentrate on ending the war.

• They did not learn the full truth until the war was over.

(pages 825–828)



• Young people of all ages were victims of World War II.

• Jewish children were the first to be put to death in the gas chambers because they could not work.

• 1.2 million Jewish children died in the Holocaust.

• In Germany, Britain, and Japan, many children were moved from cities that were being bombed.

• Some who were evacuated never saw their parents again.

(pages 825–828)



• By 1945 there were 13 million orphaned children in Europe.

• In Eastern Europe, children suffered terribly.

• All secondary schools were closed because the Germans did not think Slavic people needed more than a very basic education.

• Children on both sides, particularly at the end of the war, joined the fighting.

• Sometimes 14- or 15-year-old children were at the front lines or worked as spies.

(pages 825–828)



The New Order in Asia

(pages 828–829)

• Japan hoped to use its newly conquered countries as sources of raw materials, such as tin, oil, and rubber.

• The possessions would also provide a market for Japanese goods.


The New Order in Asia (cont.) • The Japanese used the slogan “Asia for

the Asiatics.” • They contacted anticolonialist forces and

promised them that local governments would be set up under Japanese control.

• This happened in Burma, the Dutch East Indies, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

• However, each territory was actually run by the Japanese military.

• Local people were forced to serve in the military or work on public works projects.

(pages 828–829)


• In Vietnam, the Japanese took rice from the people.

• A million people starved to death in 1944 and 1945.

• At first, many Southeast Asian nationalists cooperated with the Japanese.

• Their attitudes changed as the Japanese provoked local people through their arrogance and contempt for local customs.

• For example, Buddhist pagodas in Burma were used as military latrines.

The New Order in Asia (cont.)

(pages 828–829)


• Like the Germans, the Japanese had little respect for the lives of people in occupied countries.

• In Nanjing, China, the Japanese soldiers looted the city and killed and raped its people.

• The Japanese used labor forces composed of prisoners of war and local peoples.

• In one case, 12,000 Allied prisoners of war died while constructing the Burma-Thailand railway in 1943.


(pages 828–829)


• Nationalists in occupied countries were conflicted.

• They did not want the former colonial powers to return, but they did not like the Japanese either.

• Some, like Ho Chi Minh in French Indochina, turned against the Japanese and worked with the Allies.

• Others simply did nothing. • By the end of the war, few people in

occupied Asian countries supported the Japanese.


(pages 828–829)


The Mobilization of Peoples: Four Examples

(pages 830–832)

• Even more than World War I, World War II was a total war.

• Economic mobilization was more extensive.

• The war had an enormous impact on civilian life in many parts of the world.


• In the Soviet Union initial defeats led to drastic emergency measures.

• For example, Leningrad was under siege for nine hundred days.

• Over a million people died there due to food shortages.

• People had to eat dogs, cats, and mice.

The Mobilization of Peoples: Four Examples (cont.)

(pages 830–832)


• Soviet workers dismantled factories in the west and shipped them to the east, out of the way of the attacking German army.

• At times workers ran machines as new factory buildings were built up around them.


(pages 830–832)


• The military and industrial mobilization of the Soviet Union produced 78,000 tanks and 98,000 artillery pieces.

• In 1943, 55 percent of the national income went to war materials.

• As a result there were severe shortages of food and housing.


(pages 830–832)


• Soviet women were an important part of the war effort. Women working in industry increased 60 percent.

• They worked in industries, mines, and railroads.

• They dug antitank ditches and worked as air raid wardens.

• Some fought in battles and flew in bombers.


(pages 830–832)


• The war did not come to the home territory of the United States.

• The country became an arsenal for the Allies.

• The United States produced much of the military equipment needed to fight the Axis.

• In 1943, the United States was building six ships a day and ninety-six thousand planes per year.


(pages 830–832)


• The American mobilization created some social turmoil.

• There were widespread movements of people.

• For example, many women and men enrolled in the military moved frequently.

• Also, as millions of servicemen and workers looking for jobs moved around, their wives and children or girlfriends often moved with them.


(pages 830–832)


• African Americans were profoundly impacted by the war.

• Over a million African Americans moved from the South to cities in the North and West to work in war industries.

• At times the influx of African Americans led to social tensions and even violence.

• A million African Americans joined the military.

• They served in segregated units. Angered by their treatment, many returned from the war ready to fight for their civil rights.


(pages 830–832)


• Japanese Americans on the West Coast were moved to internment camps away from the ocean.

• Sixty-five percent of them had been born in the United States.

• In spite of that, they were required to take loyalty oaths and were forced to live in camps surrounded by barbed wire.


(pages 830–832)


• The government claimed to do this for national security.

• Of American descendants of the Axis Power countries, Japanese Americans were the only group to be put into camps.


(pages 830–832)


• In 1939 in Germany, many civilians feared that the war would bring disaster.

• Hitler understood the importance of the home front.

• He believed that lack of civilian support had led to the German defeat in World War I.

• To keep up public morale, Hitler refused to cut consumer-goods production for the first two years of the war.


(pages 830–832)


• This decision may have cost Germany the war.

• After defeats on the Russian front, the policy changed.


(pages 830–832)


• Early in 1942, Hitler increased arms production and the size of the army.

• Albert Speer became minister for armaments and munitions.

• He tripled armament production between 1942 and 1943.

• In July 1944, the German economy was totally mobilized.

• Schools, theaters, and cafes were closed. • However, this came too late to avoid

defeat.


(pages 830–832)


• Before the war, the Nazis tried to keep women out of the job market. As the war progressed, more and more men had to serve in the military.

• The Nazis changed their policies and encouraged women to work.

• However, the number of working women increased very little between 1939 and 1944.


(pages 830–832)


• Wartime Japan was a highly mobilized society.

• The government controlled prices, wages, labor, and resources.

• Citizens were encouraged to sacrifice for the national cause.

• In the final years of the war, young Japanese volunteered to serve as suicide pilots against U.S. ships.

• They were called kamikaze (“divine wind”) pilots.


(pages 830–832)


• The Japanese government opposed employing women.

• General Hideki Tojo, the Japanese prime minister from 1941 to 1944, argued that employing women would weaken the family system and the nation.

• Female employment increased only in areas in which women had traditionally worked, such as textiles and farming.

• The Japanese met labor shortages by using Korean and Chinese laborers.


(pages 830–832)


Frontline Civilians: The Bombing of Cities

(pages 833–834)

• Bombing was used against military targets, enemy troops, and civilian populations.

• World War II was the first war in which large masses of civilians were bombed.


Frontline Civilians: The Bombing of Cities (cont.)

(pages 833–834)

• Toward the end of World War I, there had been a few bombing raids against civilian targets.

• The raids had caused great public outcry. • After the war, European nations began

to think that bombing civilian targets could be used to force governments to make peace.

• During the 1930s, European nations developed long-range bombers.


(pages 833–834)

• The first sustained civilian bombing was done by the Germans against London.

• For months, the Germans bombed the city nightly.

• There were heavy casualties and tremendous damage.

• In time, the blitz, as the bombing was called, was carried to other British cities.

• In spite of the heavy bombing, British morale remained high.



(pages 833–834)

• The idea that bombing civilians would force peace was proved wrong.

• In 1942, the British began major bombing campaigns against German cities.

• Ignoring their own experience, the British hoped that the bombing would break the morale of the German people.

• Thousands of bombers were used to attack major German cities.



(pages 833–834)

• The bombing of Germany added to civilian terror.

• The Germans particularly feared incendiary bombs, which spread fire when they exploded.

• In some cities, such as Dresden, enormous firestorms resulted from the bombing, killing hundreds of thousands of people and burning everything that could burn.



(pages 833–834)

• The bombing of Germany by the Allies may have killed a half-million civilians.

• Millions of buildings were destroyed. • In spite of the terrible destruction, the

bombing did not seem to sap the morale of the German people or destroy the German industrial capacity.

• However, the destruction of transportation systems and fuel supplies strongly impacted the ability of the Germans to supply their military forces.



(pages 833–834)

• In November 1944, the Allies began attacks on Japanese cities.

• By that time, the Japanese air force could no longer defend Japan.

• The crowded Japanese cities, filled with highly combustible structures, were especially vulnerable.

• By the following summer, a fourth of Japanese dwellings and many of its industries had been destroyed .


(pages 833–834)

• The bombing of civilians then reached an unprecedented level when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.



Peace and a New War

(pages 834–836)

• After the end of World War II, a new international conflict emerged, the Cold War.

• The Cold War was primarily an ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. It dominated world politics until the end of the 1980s.


Peace and a New War (cont.) • In November 1943, Stalin, Churchill, and

Roosevelt met in Tehran to decide the future course of the war.

• Their countries were known as the Big Three of the Grand Alliance.

• The Big Three decided that the Americans and British would attack Germany through France in 1944.

• They would then meet the Soviet forces somewhere in a defeated Germany.

(pages 834–836)


Peace and a New War (cont.) • This meant the Soviet troops would

probably liberate most of Eastern Europe. • They also agreed to partition postwar

Germany.

(pages 834–836)


• In February of 1945, the Big Three powers met at Yalta in southern Russia.

• By that time, they knew that the Germans were beaten.

• Roosevelt and Churchill realized that eleven million Soviet troops were taking possession of much of Eastern and Central Europe.

• Roosevelt favored the idea of self-determination for postwar Europe.

(pages 834–836)

Peace and a New War (cont.)


• This meant that each country would choose its own form of government.

• Stalin was suspicious of the Western powers and wanted a Communist buffer between the West and the Soviet Union.

• Roosevelt also sought Soviet military help against Japan.

• In return for military aid, Roosevelt agreed that the Soviets could take Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, two warm-water ports, and railroad rights in Manchuria.

(pages 834–836)



• Roosevelt wanted to create the United Nations organization to help resolve difficult international disagreements.

• The Big Three powers at Yalta accepted his plans and set the founding meeting of the United Nations for April 1945, in San Francisco.

(pages 834–836)



• The Big Three also confirmed at the Yalta Conference that Germany would have to surrender unconditionally.

• They agreed to divide Germany into four zones.

• The zones would be occupied and governed by France, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union.

• Stalin agreed to hold free elections in Poland at some future date.

(pages 834–836)



• The Soviets and the Americans were deeply split about free elections in Eastern Europe.

• The Soviets wanted these nations to be pro-Soviet.

• The Americans wanted free elections. • These conflicting goals were never

reconciled.

(pages 834–836)



• The Potsdam Conference was held in July 1945.

• Roosevelt had died in April and was replaced by Harry Truman.

• Truman demanded that free elections be held throughout Eastern Europe.

• Stalin refused to concede. Stalin wanted absolute military security for his country.

• He thought this could only happen if all the Eastern European states had Communist governments.

(pages 834–836)



• He saw free elections as a direct threat. • The only way to force free elections in

Eastern Europe would have been to invade the Soviet-held territory.

• As World War II had just ended, very few people favored that course.

• The Allies agreed that leaders who had committed crimes against humanity during the war should be tried for their crimes.

• In 1945 and 1946, Nazi leaders were tried and condemned at trials in Nuremberg, Germany. Trials were also held in Japan and Italy. (pages 834–836)



• In 1945 and 1946, Nazi leaders were tried and condemned at trials in Nuremberg, Germany. Trials were also held in Japan and Italy.

(pages 834–836)


• Many Western leaders thought that the Soviets intended to spread communism throughout the world.

• The Soviets saw Western policy, particularly that of the United States, as global capitalist expansionism.


• In March 1946, Winston Churchill declared that an “iron curtain” had “descended across the continent.”

• This iron curtain divided Europe into two hostile sides.

• Stalin responded by calling Churchill’s speech a “call to war with the Soviet Union.”

• The world seemed to be bitterly divided again.

(pages 834–836)



• The Allies agreed that leaders who committed crimes against humanity during the war should be tried for their crimes. In 1945 and 1946, Nazi leaders were tried and condemned at trials in Nuremberg, Germany. Trials were also held in Japan and Italy.

(pages 834–836)


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