World War II
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| World War II | |||||||
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| Combatants | |||||||
Major Allied powers: United Kingdom France Soviet Union United States  Republic of Chinaand others | Major Axis powers: Nazi Germany Italy Japanand others | ||||||
| Commanders | |||||||
| Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Harry Truman Chiang Kai-Shek | Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tojo | ||||||
| Casualties | |||||||
| Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000,000 Total dead: 50,000,000 | Military dead: 8,000,000 Civilian dead: 4,000,000 Total dead: 12,000,000 | ||||||
| Theatres of World War II |
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| Europe – Eastern Europe – Africa – Middle East – Mediterranean – Asia & Pacific – Atlantic |
World War II, or the Second World War, was a worldwide conflict fought between the Allied Powers and the Axis Powers, from 1939 until 1945. Armed forces from over seventy nations engaged in aerial, naval, and ground-based combat. Spanning much of the globe, World War II resulted in the deaths of over sixty million people, making it the deadliest conflict in human history. The war ended in 1945 with an Allied victory.
Overview
Europe
On September 1, 1939, Germany, led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, invaded Poland according to an agreement with the Soviet Union, which joined the invasion on September 17. The United Kingdom and France responded by declaring war on Germany on September 3, initiating a widespread naval war. Germany rapidly overwhelmed Poland, then Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France in 1940, and Yugoslavia and Greece in 1941. Italian, and later German, troops attacked British forces in North Africa. By summer 1941, Germany had conquered France and most of Western Europe, but it failed to subdue the United Kingdom due to the resistance of the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy.
Hitler then turned on the Soviet Union, launching a surprise attack (codenamed Operation Barbarossa) on June 22, 1941. Despite enormous gains, the invasion bogged down outside of Moscow in late 1941. The Soviets later encircled and captured the German Sixth Army at the Battle of Stalingrad (1942-43), decisively defeated the Axis during the Battle of Kursk, and broke the Siege of Leningrad. The Red Army then pursued the retreating Wehrmacht all the way to Berlin, and won the street-by-street Battle of Berlin, as Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker on April 30, 1945.
Meanwhile, the Western Allies invaded Italy in 1943 and then liberated France in 1944, following amphibious landings in the Battle of Normandy. Repulsing a German counterattack at the Battle of the Bulge in December, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine River and linked up with their Soviet counterparts at the Elbe River in central Germany.
During the war, six million Jews, as well as Roma and other groups, were murdered by Germany in a state-sponsored genocide known as The Holocaust.
Asia and the Pacific
Japan invaded China on July 7, 1937 (see Second Sino-Japanese war) with plans to expand to most of East and South-East Asia. On December 7, 1941 Japan launched surprise attacks against several countries, including the major United States Navy base at Pearl Harbor, thereby drawing the United States into the war.
After six months of sweeping successes, the Japanese were checked at the Battle of the Coral Sea and decisively defeated in the Battle of Midway, in which they lost four aircraft carriers. Japanese expansion was finally stopped and the Allies went on the offensive at the Battle of Milne Bay and the Battle of Guadalcanal, both in the Southwest Pacific. The Allies then conducted a drive across the Central Pacific, and were victorious in a series of great naval battles such as the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944, and invasions of key islands such as Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. In the meantime, American submarines gradually cut off the supply of oil and other raw materials to Japan.
In the last year of the war Allied air forces conducted a strategic firebombing campaign against the Japanese homeland. On August 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, and on August 9 another was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.
Aftermath
About 62 million people, or 2.5% of the world population, died in the war, though estimates vary greatly (refer to the Casualties section). Large swaths of Europe and Asia were devastated and took years to recover. The war had political and technological consequences that last to this day.
Causes
The immediate Causes of World War II are generally held to be the German invasion of Poland, and the Japanese attacks on China, the United States, and the British and Dutch colonies. In each of these cases, the attacks were the result of a decision made by authoritarian ruling elites in Germany and Japan. World War II started after these aggressive actions were met with an official declaration of war, armed resistance or both.
The Nazi Party came to power in Germany by democratic means, although after acquiring power they eliminated most vestiges of Germany's democratic system. The reasons for their popularity included their renouncement of the Treaty of Versailles (particularly Article 231, known as the "Guilt Clause"), which had placed many restrictions on Germany since the end of the World War I, staunch anti-communism, the Dolchstosslegende and promises of stability and economic reconstruction. They also appealed to a sense of Germanic identity, superiority and entitlement, which would play an important role in starting the war, as they demanded the integration of lands they considered to be rightfully belonging to Germany. Hitler was also portrayed by himself, his party, and his book Mein Kampf as an almost otherworldly savior for the German people.
Imperial Japan in the 1930s was largely ruled by a militarist clique of Army and Navy leaders, devoted to Japan becoming a world colonial power. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937 to bolster its meager stock of natural resources and extend its colonial control over a wider area. The United States and the United Kingdom reacted by making loans to China, providing covert military assistance, pilots and fighter aircraft to Kuomintang China and instituting increasingly broad embargoes of raw materials and oil against Japan. These embargoes would potentially have eventually forced Japan to give up its newly conquered possessions in China or find new sources of oil and other materials to run their economy. Japan was faced with the choice of withdrawing from China, negotiating some compromise, developing new sources of supply, buying what they needed some where else, or going to war to conquer the territories that contained oil, bauxite and other resources in the Dutch East Indies, Malay and the Philippines. Believing the French, Dutch and British governments more than occupied with the war in Europe, the Soviets reeling from German attacks and that the United States could not be organized for war for years and would seek a compromise before waging full scale war, they chose the latter, and went ahead with plans for the Greater East Asia War in the Pacific.[1]
The direct cause of the United States' entry into the war with Japan was the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Germany declared war on the United States on December 12, 1941.
Chronology
War breaks out: 1939
European Theatre
German policy aims and ideologies
The chief stated aim of the German policy at the time was the reacquisition of German territories taken by the Treaty of Versailles, and the addition of ethnic German regions of former Austria-Hungary to form a Greater Germany.
German foreign policy professed concern for the rights of ethnic Germans living in portions of Poland and Czechoslovakia which had been taken from Germany and Austria respectively. During his negotiations with Chamberlain, Hitler mentioned their plight as one of his key reasons for asserting claims to portions of these countries.
During one session with UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Hitler's aides brought him multiple reports alleging atrocities against ethnic Germans in nearby countries, which Hitler invoked in support of Germany's claims to its former territory.
When Hitler annexed parts of Czechoslovakia and Poland, he was welcomed enthusiastically by these ethnic Germans. When the war ended, many of these communities were forcibly expelled.[1]
Another of the main reasons that German society moved towards war was due to the perceived inequities of the Versailles Treaty. (More than anything else, this treaty, coupled with the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s, enabled the Nazis to originally ride a wave of mass public discontent to power, and to set in place their fascist forms of dictatorship and re-militarization.) The Nazis claimed that only they could free Germany from international subjugation. Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland and the Ruhr, and overturned several territorial dispositions which were enacted by the treaty.
In the hands of the Nazis, this issue was used to rationalize brutal persecution of entire ethnic minorities and political groups. This effort against previous international settlements enabled a convergence of their political programs, war aims, and racist ideologies.
Appeasement and pre-war alliances
The British and French governments followed a policy of appeasement in order to avoid a new European war. This was partially due to doubts about the willingness of their populations to fight another war so soon after the huge death tolls of the first World War. This policy culminated in the Munich Agreement in 1938, in which the seemingly inevitable outbreak of the war was averted when the United Kingdom and France agreed to Germany's annexation and immediate occupation of the German-speaking regions of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain declared that the agreement represented "peace in our time". In March 1939, Germany invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia, effectively killing appeasement. Less than a year after the Munich agreement, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany.
The failure of the Munich Agreement showed that deals made with Hitler at the negotiating table could not be trusted and that his aspirations for power and dominance in Europe went beyond anything that England and France would tolerate. Poland and France pledged on May 19, 1939, to provide each other with military assistance in the event either was attacked. The British had already offered support to Poland in March. On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Pact included a secret protocol that would divide Central Europe into German and Soviet areas of interest, including a provision to partition Poland. Each country agreed to allow the other a free hand in its area of influence, including military occupation. The deal provided for sales of oil and food from the Soviets to Germany, thus reducing the danger of a UK blockade such as the one that had nearly starved Germany in World War I. Hitler was then ready to go to war with Poland and, if necessary, with the United Kingdom and France. He claimed there were German grievances relating to the issues of the Free City of Danzig and the Polish Corridor, but he planned to conquer all Polish territory and incorporate it into the German Reich. The signing of a new alliance between the United Kingdom and Poland on August 25 did not significantly alter his plans.
German and Soviet invasion of Poland
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, using the false pretext of a faked "Polish attack" on a German border post.
On September 3, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany, followed quickly by Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The French mobilized slowly and then mounted only a token offensive in the Saar, which they soon abandoned, while the British could not take any direct action in support of the Poles in the time available (see Western betrayal). Meanwhile, on September 8, the Germans reached Warsaw, having slashed through the Polish defenses.
On September 17, the Soviet Union, pursuant to its secret agreement with Germany, invaded Poland from the east, throwing Polish defences into chaos by opening the second front. A day later, both the Polish president and commander-in-chief fled to Romania. On October 1, hostile forces, after a one-month siege of Warsaw, entered the city. The last Polish units surrendered on October 6. Poland, however, never officially surrendered to the Germans. Some Polish troops evacuated to neighboring countries. In the aftermath of the September Campaign, occupied Poland managed to create a powerful resistance movement and contributed significant military forces to the Allies for the duration of World War II.
Phony War
After Poland fell, Germany paused to regroup during the winter of 1939-1940 until April 1940, while the British and French stayed on the defensive. The period was referred to by journalists as “the Phony War” or the “Sitzkrieg” because so little ground combat took place.
Battle of the Atlantic
Meanwhile in the North Atlantic, German U-boats operated against Allied shipping. The submarines made up in skill, luck, and courage what they lacked in numbers. One U-boat sank the British carrier HMS Courageous, while another U-boat managed to sink the battleship HMS Royal Oak in its home anchorage of Scapa Flow. Altogether, the U-boats sank more than 110 vessels in the first four months of the war. The most damaging effect of the U-boats was in sinking transatlantic merchant shipping.
After 1943, Germany had no serious chance of victory at sea. The Allies produced ships faster than they were sunk, and lost fewer ships by adopting the convoy system. Improved anti-submarine warfare meant that the life expectancy of a typical U-boat crew would be measured in months. The vastly improved Type 21 U-boat appeared as the war was ending, but too late.
In the South Atlantic, the Admiral Graf Spee sank nine UK Merchant Navy vessels. She was then engaged by British cruisers HMS Ajax, HMS Exeter, and HMNZS Achilles in the Battle of the River Plate, and forced into Montevideo Harbor. Rather than face battle again, Captain Langsdorff made for sea and scuttled his battleship just outside the harbor.
Pacific Theatre
Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War began in 1937, when Japan attacked deep into China from its foothold in Manchuria. On July 7, 1937, Japan, after occupying Manchuria since 1931, launched another attack against China near Beiping (now Beijing). The Japanese made initial advances but were stalled in the Battle of Shanghai. The city eventually fell to the Japanese in December 1937, and the capital city Nanjing (Nanking) also fell. As a result, the Chinese government moved its seat to Chongqing for the remainder of the war. The Japanese forces committed brutal atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war in the Rape of Nanking, slaughtering as many as 300,000 civilians within a month.
Second Russo-Japanese War
On May 8, 1939, 700 Mongol horsemen crossed the Khalka river, which the Japanese considered to be the Manchurian border. The Soviet and Mongolian governments believed the border was twenty miles to the east. Mongol and Manchu forces began to shoot at each other, and within days their Soviet and Japanese patrons had sent large military contingents, which almost immediately joined in the clash, which led to a full-scale war which lasted well into September, and Soviet fear of having to fight a two front war was a primary reason for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Nazis. The Japanese would suffer approximately 18,000 casualties, the Soviet-Mongolian forces 9,000.
War spreads: 1940
European Theatre
Soviet-Finnish War and occupation of Baltic Republics
In a secret Soviet-German agreement, Finland was designated a Soviet buffer zone, and the Soviets attacked on November 30, 1939, which started the Winter War. Despite outnumbering Finnish troops by 4 to 1, the Red Army found the attack embarrassingly difficult, and the Finnish defence prevented an all-out invasion. Finally, however, the Soviets prevailed and the peace treaty saw Finland cede strategically important border areas near Leningrad. The war triggered an international outcry, and, on December 14, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations. In June 1940, the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, sending the local leadership to the Gulag; in addition, it annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania.
German invasion of Denmark and Norway
Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940, in Operation Weserübung, in part to counter the threat of an impending Allied invasion of Norway. Denmark did not resist, but Norway fought back. The United Kingdom, whose own invasion was ready to launch, landed in the north. By late June, the Allies were defeated and withdrew, Germany controlled most of Norway, and the Norwegian Army had surrendered, while the royal family escaped to London. Germany used Norway as a base for air and naval attacks on Arctic convoys headed to the Soviet Union.
German invasion of France and the Low Countries
On May 10, 1940, the Germans invaded Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, ending the Phony War. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and the French Army advanced into northern Belgium and planned to fight a mobile war in the north, while maintaining a static continuous front along the Maginot Line further south. The Allied plans were immediately smashed by the most classic example in history of Blitzkrieg. The Dutch city of Rotterdam was destroyed in a bombing raid.
In the first phase of the invasion, Fall Gelb (CACA), the Wehrmacht's Panzergruppe von Kleist, raced through the Ardennes, a heavily forested region which the Allies had thought impenetrable for a modern, mechanized army. The Germans broke the French line at Sedan, held by reservists rather than first-line troops, then drove west across northern France to the English Channel, splitting the Allies in two. Meanwhile, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fell quickly following the attack of German Army Group B.
The BEF and French forces, encircled in the north, were evacuated from Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. The operation was one of the biggest military evacuations in history, as 338,000 British and French troops were transported across the English Channel on warships and civilian boats.
On June 10, Italy joined the war, attacking France in the south. German forces then continued the conquest of France with Fall Rot (Case Red). France signed an armistice with Germany on June 22 1940, leading to the direct German occupation of Paris and two-thirds of France, and the establishment of a neutral (but pro-German) state headquartered in southeastern France known as Vichy France.
Battle of Britain
Germany had begun preparations in summer of 1940 to invade the United Kingdom in Operation Sea Lion. Most of the UK Army's heavy weapons and supplies had been lost at Dunkirk. The Germans had no hope of overpowering the Royal Navy, but they did think they had a chance of success, if they could gain air superiority. To do that, they first had to deal with the Royal Air Force. The ensuing contest in the late Summer of 1940 between the two air forces became known as the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe initially targeted RAF Fighter Command aerodromes and radar stations. Hitler, angered by retaliatory UK bombing raids on Berlin, switched his attentions towards the bombing of London, in an operation known as The Blitz. The Luftwaffe was eventually beaten back by Hurricanes and Spitfires, while the Royal Navy remained in control of the English Channel. Thus, the invasion plans were cancelled indefinitely, as Hitler turned to the East.
Italian invasion of Greece
Italy invaded Greece on October 28, 1940, from Italian occupied Albania. The Greek army forced the Italians to retreat back to Albania. By mid-December, the Greeks occupied one-quarter of Albania, tying down 530,000 Italians. Meanwhile, in fulfillment of Britain's guarantee to Greece the Royal Navy struck at the Italian fleet. Torpedo bombers from British Aircraft Carriers attacked the Italian fleet in the southern port of Taranto. One battleship was sunk and several other ships were put temporarily out of action. The success of aerial torpedoes at Taranto was noted with interest by Japan's naval chief, Yamoto, who was considering ways of "taking out" the U.S. Pacific fleet.
North Africa
With the French fleet neutralized, the UK Royal Navy battled the Italian fleet for supremacy in the Mediterranean. The British had strong bases at Gibraltar, Malta, and Alexandria, Egypt. In Africa, Italian troops invaded and captured British Somaliland in August. In September, the North African Campaign began when Italian forces in Libya attacked British forces in Egypt. The aim was to capture the Suez Canal, a vital link between the United Kingdom and India. UK, Indian, and Australian forces counter-attacked in Operation Compass, but this offensive stopped in 1941 when much of the Australian and New Zealand forces were transferred to Greece to defend it from German attack. German forces (known later as the Afrika Korps) under General Erwin Rommel, however, landed in Libya and renewed the assault on Egypt.
Pacific Theatre
Sino-Japanese War
By 1940, the war had reached a stalemate with both sides making minimal gains. The United States provided heavy financial support for China and set up the Flying Tigers air unit to bolster Chinese air forces.
Southeast Asia
Japanese forces invaded northern parts of French Indo-China on September 22. The move was not unexpected, and followed a demand for bases in the region made two months earlier. Japanese relations with the west had deteriorated steadily in recent years and United States, having renounced the U.S.-Japanese trade treaty of 1911, placed embargoes on exports to Japan of war and other materials.
War becomes global: 1941
European Theatre
Lend-Lease
After France had fallen in 1940, the United Kingdom was out of money. Franklin Roosevelt persuaded the U.S. Congress to pass the Lend-Lease act on March 11 1941, which provided the United Kingdom and 37 other countries with US$5 billion dollars in military equipment and other supplies, US$3.4 billion of it going to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
Canada operated a similar program that sent $4.7 billion in supplies to the United Kingdom.
German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece
On April 6, 1941, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces invaded Yugoslavia, ending with the surrender of the Yugoslavian army on April 17, and the creation of a puppet state in Croatia. Two rival resistance movements endured in Yugoslavia for the remainder of the war. The Communist group, AVNOJ, led by Tito finally prevailed over the Chetniks led by Draža Mihailović. Also on April 6, Germany invaded Greece from Bulgaria. The Greek army was outnumbered and collapsed. Athens fell on April 27, yet the United Kingdom managed to evacuate over 50,000 troops. The stubborn Greek resistance and the attack on Yugoslavia, however, delayed the German invasion of the Soviet Union by a critical six weeks.
German airborne invasion of Crete
Nazi Germany invaded the island with soldiers from the elite divisions of the 7th Flieger Division and 5 Mountain Division. Crete was defended by about 11,000 Greek and 28,000 ANZAC troops (see Creforce), who had just escaped Greece without their artillery or vehicles. The Germans attacked the three main airfields of the island of Maleme, Rethimnon, and Heraklion. After one day of fighting, none of the objectives were reached and the Germans had suffered appalling casualties. German plans were in disarray and Commanding General Kurt Student was contemplating suicide. During the next day, through miscommunication and failure of Allied commanders to grasp the situation, Maleme airfield in western Crete fell to the Germans. The loss of Maleme enabled the Germans to fly in heavy reinforcements and overwhelm the Allied forces on the island. In light of the heavy casualties suffered by the parachutists, however, Adolf Hitler forbade further airborne operations.
German invasion of the Soviet Union
From the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August, 1939, through half of 1941, Stalin and the Soviet Union fed and equipped Hitler and Germany as Germany invaded Western Europe and attacked the United Kingdom by air. Germany then betrayed its Soviet partner.
On June 22, 1941, Operation Barbarossa began, the largest military invasion in history. Three German Army Groups, an Axis force of over four million men, advanced rapidly deep into the Soviet Union, destroying almost the entire western Red Army in huge battles of encirclement. Nevertheless, the Soviets dismantled as much industry as possible ahead of the advancing Axis forces, moving it to areas east of the Ural Mountains for reassembly, and ultimately resupplying the Soviet armies and contributing mightily to the destruction of Germany. By late November, the Axis had reached a line at the gates of Leningrad, Moscow, and Rostov, at the cost of about 23 percent casualties. Their advance then ground to a halt as the harsh Russian winter set in. The German General Staff had underestimated the size of the Soviet army and its ability to draft new troops. German soldiers were ill-equipped for harsh weather, and logistics were poor because of the distances, the rudimentary rail and road system, and the breakdown of men, animals and machinery in extreme cold.
German forward units had advanced within sight of Moscow's Saint Basil's Cathedral, but on December 5, the Soviets counterattacked and pushed the Axis back some 150-250 kilometers (100-150 mi), the first major German defeat of World War II.
Meanwhile, on June 25, the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union began with Soviet air attacks shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa.
Allied conferences
The Atlantic Charter was issued as a joint declaration by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, at Argentia, Newfoundland, on August 14, 1941.
In December 1941, after the United States entered the war, Churchill and Roosevelt met Stalin at the Arcadia Conference. They agreed that defeating Germany had priority over defeating Japan. To relieve German pressure on Russia, the US proposed a 1942 cross-channel invasion of France, which the British strongly opposed, suggesting instead a small invasion of Norway or landings in French North Africa. The Declaration by the United Nations was issued.
North Africa and the Middle East
In North Africa, Rommel's forces advanced rapidly eastward, laying siege to the vital seaport of Tobruk. Two Allied attempts to relieve Tobruk were defeated, but a larger offensive at the end of the year (Operation Crusader) drove Rommel back after heavy fighting.
In April-May 1941, there a was short war in Iraq that resulted in a renewal of UK occupation. In June, Allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon and captured Damascus on June 17. Later, in August, UK and Red Army troops occupied neutral Iran, securing its oil and a southern supply line to the Soviet Union.
Mediterranean
Good Intelligence accounted for a British victory on March 28 in the largest naval battle of the war so far, when Admiral Cunningham's ships encountered the main Italian fleet south of Cape Matapan, at the southern extremity of the Greek mainland. At the cost of a couple of aircraft shot down, the British sank five Italian cruisers and three destroyers. The Italian navy was emasculated as a fighting force, and the British task of moving troops across the Mediterranean to Greece was eased.
Battle of the Atlantic
On May 9, the UK destroyer HMS Bulldog captured a German U-Boat and recovered a complete, intact Enigma Machine. This was a vital for the Allies in the Battle of the Atlantic (1939-1945), and in their code-breaking efforts. The machine was taken to Bletchley Park, where it was used to help decipher and understand German encryption techniques.
On May 24, the German battleship Bismarck left port, threatening British shipping in the Atlantic. After UK battlecruiser HMS Hood was sunk in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the Royal Navy engaged in a massive hunt across the North Atlantic for Bismarck. The German battleship was sunk after a 1,700-mile (2,700 kilometers) chase in which the British employed eight battleships and battle cruisers, two aircraft carriers, 11 cruisers, 21 destroyers, and six submarines.After an extensive chase, Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers from aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal struck the Bismarck, resulting in only minor damage to the ship, but causing her rudder to jam and allowing the pursuing Royal Navy squadrons to catch and sink her.
Pacific Theatre
Japan and United States enter the War
In the summer of 1941, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands began an oil embargo against Japan, threatening its ability to fight a major war at sea or in the air. However, Japanese forces continued to advance into China. Japan planned an attack on Pearl Harbor to cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet, then seize oil fields in the Dutch East Indies. On December 7, a Japanese carrier fleet launched an unexpected air attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The raid destroyed most of the American aircraft on the island and knocked the main American battle fleet out of action (six battleships sank, but four of them along with two other badly damaged battleships eventually returned to service). However, the four American aircraft carriers that had been the intended main target of the Japanese attack were off at sea. At Pearl Harbor, the main dock, supply, and repair facilities were quickly repaired. Furthermore, the base's fuel storage facilities, whose destruction could have crippled the Pacific fleet, were untouched.
The attack united American public opinion to demand vengeance against Japan. The following day, December 8, the United States declared war on Japan. On the same day, Japan invaded Malaya, and China officially declared war against Japan. Disaster struck the British on the 10th, as they lost two major battleships, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse. Both ships had been attacked by 85 Japanese bombers and torpedo planes based in Saigon, and 840 UK sailors perished. Churchill was to say of the event, "In all of the war I have never received a more direct shock."
Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, even though it was not obliged to do so under the Tripartite Pact. Hitler hoped that Japan would support Germany by attacking the Soviet Union. Japan did not oblige because it had signed a non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union. Instead, Germany's declaration largely removed any significant opposition to the United States' joining the fight in the Europe Theater with full commitment.
Japanese offensive
Less than 24 hours after the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan invaded Hong Kong. The Philippines and the British colonies of Malaya, Borneo, and Burma soon followed, with Japan's intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. Despite fierce resistance by Philippine, Australian, New Zealand, British, Canadian, Indian, and American forces, all these territories capitulated to the Japanese in a matter of months. The British island fortress of Singapore was captured in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats of all time.
Deadlock: 1942
European Theatre
- Western and Central Europe
In May, the architect of the Final Solution, Reinhard Heydrich, was assassinated by Czech resistance agents in Operation Anthropoid. Hitler ordered severe reprisals against the occupants of the nearby Czechoslovakian village of Lidice.
On August 19, Allied forces, mainly Canadian, launched the Dieppe Raid (codenamed Operation Jubilee) on the German-occupied port of Dieppe, France. The attack was an Allied disaster, but provided critical information utilized later in Operation Torch and Operation Overlord.
- Soviet winter and early spring offensives
In the north, the Red Army launched the Toropets-Kholm Operation January 9 to February 6 1942, trapping a German force near Andreapol. The Soviets also surrounded a German garrison in the Demyansk Pocket, which held out with air supply for four months (February 8 until April 21), and established themselves in front of Kholm, Velizh, and Velikie Luki.
In the south, Soviet forces launched an offensive in May against the German Sixth Army, initiating a bloody 17-day battle around Kharkov which resulted in the loss of over 200,000 Red Army personnel.
- Axis summer offensive
On June 28, the Axis began their summer offensive, Operation Blue, a planned drive southeast from the Don river to the Volga river toward the Caucasus mountains. German Army Group B planned to capture the city of Stalingrad, which would secure the German left flank, while Army Group A planned to capture the southern oil fields. In the Battle of the Caucasus, fought in the late summer and fall of 1942, the Axis forces captured the oil fields.
- Stalingrad
On August 23, the Germans reached the Volga north of Stalingrad. German bombing virtually destroyed the wooden buildings of the city which flanked the central strip, containing large modern factories. By September 23 the main factory complex was surrounded and the German artillery was within range of the quays on the river, across which the Soviets evacuated wounded and brought in reinforcements. Ferocious street fighting, hand-to-hand conflict of the most savage kind, now ensued at Stalingrad. Exhaustion and deprivation gradually sapped men's strength. Hitler, who had become obsessed with the battle of Stalingrad, refused to countenance a withdrawal. Von Paulus, in desperation, launched yet another attack early in November by which time the Germans had managed to capture 90% of the city. The Soviets, however, had been building up massive forces on the flanks of Stalingrad which were by this time severely undermanned as the bulk of the German forces had been concentrated in capturing the city. They launched Operation Uranus on November 19, with twin attacks that met at the city of Kalach four days later and trapped the Sixth Army in Stalingrad.
The Germans requested permission to attempt a break-out, which was refused by Hitler, who ordered Sixth Army to remain in Stalingrad where he promised they would be supplied by air until rescued. About the same time, the Soviets launched Operation Mars in a salient near the vicinity of Moscow. Its objective was to tie down Army Group Center and to prevent it from reinforcing Army Group South at Stalingrad.
In December, Von Manstein hastily put together a German relief force of units composed from Army Group South to relieve the trapped Sixth Army. Unable to get reinforcements from Army Group Center, the relief force only managed to get within 50 kilometers (30 mi) before they were turned back by the Soviets. By the end of the year, Sixth Army was in desperate condition, as the Luftwaffe was able to supply only about a sixth of the supplies needed.
Shortly before surrendering to the Red Army on February 2 1943, Friedrich von Paulus was promoted to Fieldmarshall. This was a message from Hitler, because no German Fieldmarshall had ever surrendered his troops or been taken alive. Only 91,000 German prisoners were taken, including 22 generals of which only 5,000 men ever returned to Germany after the war. This was to be the greatest, and most costly battle in terms of human life, in world history. Around 2 million men were killed or wounded on both sides, including civilians, with Axis casualties estimated to be approximately 850,000.
- Eastern North Africa
At the beginning of 1942, the Allied forces in North Africa were weakened by detachments to the Far East. Rommel once again attacked and recaptured Benghazi. Then, he defeated the Allies at the Battle of Gazala, and captured Tobruk along with several thousand prisoners and large quantities of supplies. Following up, he drove deep into Egypt.
The First Battle of El Alamein took place in July 1942. Allied forces had retreated to the last defensible point before Alexandria and the Suez Canal. The Afrika Korps, however, had outrun its supplies, and the defenders stopped its thrusts. The Second Battle of El Alamein occurred between October 23 and November 3. Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery was in command of Allied forces known as the British Eighth Army. The Eighth Army took the offensive and was ultimately triumphant. After the German defeat at El Alamein, the Axis forces made a successful strategic withdrawal to Tunisia.
Western North Africa
Operation Torch was launched by the U.S., British and Free French forces on November 8, 1942. It aimed to gain control of North Africa through simultaneous landings at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers, followed a few days later with a landing at Bône, the gateway to Tunisia. The local forces of Vichy France put up minimal resistance before submitting to the authority of Free French General Henri Giraud. In retaliation, Hitler invaded and occupied Vichy France. The German and Italian forces in Tunisia were caught in the pincers of Allied advances from Algeria in the west and Libya in the east. Rommel's tactical victory against inexperienced American forces at the Battle of the Kasserine Pass only postponed the eventual surrender of the Axis forces in North Africa.
Pacific Theatre
Central and Southwest Pacific
On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed United States Executive Order 9066, leading to the internment of thousands of Japanese, Italians, German Americans, and some emigrants from Hawaii who fled after the bombing of Pearl Harbor for the duration of the war.
In April, the Doolittle Raid, the first U.S. air raid on Tokyo, boosted morale in the United States and caused Japan to shift resources to homeland defense, but did little physical damage.
In early May, a Japanese naval invasion of Port Moresby, New Guinea, was thwarted by Allied navies in the Battle of the Coral Sea. This was both the first successful opposition to a Japanese attack and the first battle fought between aircraft carriers. The U.S. did however lose the major aircraft carrier USS Lexington, giving Japan a tactical victory.
A month later, on June 5, U.S. carrier-based dive-bombers sank four of Japan's best aircraft carriers in the Battle of Midway, a major victory for the United States. Historians mark this battle as a turning point and the end of Japanese expansion in the Pacific. Cryptography played an important part in the battle, as the United States had broken the Japanese naval codes and knew the Japanese plan of attack.
In July, a Japanese overland attack on Port Moresby was led along the rugged Kokoda Track. An outnumbered, untrained and ill equipped Australian battalion defeated the 5,000-strong Japanese force, the first land defeat of Japan in the war and one of the most significant victories in Australian military history.
Between late July and mid September, Australian forces, hampered by the terrain and the inefficiencies of High command, fought back two concerted Japanese thrusts towards Port Moresby, the Battle of Milne Bay and the Kokoda Track.
The battle for Kokoda was a costly and desperate battle. The Australian forces, under the command of AIF officers, held back the Japanese forces long enough for the 21st Brigade to reinforce the ravaged militia.
On August 7, U.S. Marines began the Battle of Guadalcanal. For the next six months, U.S. forces fought Japanese forces for control of the island. Meanwhile, several naval encounters raged in the nearby waters, including the Battle of Savo Island, Battle of Cape Esperance, Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, and Battle of Tassafaronga.
In late August and early September, while battle raged on Guadalcanal, an amphibious Japanese attack on the eastern tip of New Guinea was met by Australian forces in the Battle of Milne Bay.
Sino-Japanese War
Japan launched a major offensive in China following the attack on Pearl Harbor. The aim of the offensive was to take the strategically important city of Changsha, which the Japanese had failed to capture on two previous occasions. For the attack, the Japanese massed 120,000 soldiers under four divisions. The Chinese responded with 300,000 men, and soon the Japanese army was encircled and had to retreat.
War turns: 1943
European Theatre
Soviet and German spring offensives
After the surrender of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, the Red Army launched eight offensives during the winter. Many were concentrated along the Don basin near Stalingrad. These attacks resulted in initial gains until German forces were able to take advantage of the over extended and weakened condition of the Red Army and launch a counter attack to re-capture the city of Kharkov and surrounding areas. This was to be the last major strategic German victory of World War II.
German summer offensive
The rains of spring inhibited campaigning in the Soviet Union, but both sides used the interval to build up for the inevitable battle that would come in the summer. The start date for the offensive had been moved repeatedly as delays in preparation had forced the Germans to postpone the attack. By July 4, the Wehrmacht after assembling their greatest concentration of firepower during the whole of World War II, launched their offensive against the Soviet Union at the Kursk salient. Their intentions were known by the Soviets, who hastened to defend the salient with an enormous system of earthwork defenses. The Germans attacked from both the north and south of the salient and hoped to meet in the middle, cutting off the salient and trapping 60 Soviet divisions. The German offensive in the Northern sector was ground down as little progress was made through the Soviet defenses but in the Southern Sector there was a danger of a German breakthrough. The Soviets then brought up their reserves, and the ensuing Battle of Kursk became the largest tank battle of the war, near the city of Prokhorovka. The Germans lacking any sizable reserves had exhausted their armored forces and could not stop the Soviet counteroffensive that threw them back across their starting positions.
Soviet fall and winter offensives
The Soviets captured Kharkov following their victory at Kursk and with the Autumn rains threatening, Hitler agreed to a general withdrawal to the Dnieper line in August. As September proceeded into October, the Germans found the Dnieper line impossible to hold as the Soviet bridgeheads grew. Important Dnieper towns started to fall, with Zaporozhye the first to go, followed by Dnepropetrovsk. Early in November the Soviets broke out of their bridgeheads on either side of Kiev and recaptured the Ukrainian capital. The 1st Ukrainian Front attacked at Korosten on Christmas Eve, and the Soviet advance continued along the railway line until the 1939 Soviet-Polish border was reached.
Allied invasion of Italy
The surrender of Axis forces in Tunisia on May 13, 1943, yielded some 250,000 prisoners. The North African war proved to be a disaster for Italy, and when the Allies invaded Sicily on July 10 in Operation Husky, capturing the island in a little over a month, the regime of Benito Mussolini collapsed. On July 25, he was removed from office by Victor Emmanuel III, the King of Italy, and arrested with the positive consent of the Great Fascist Council. A new government, led by Pietro Badoglio, took power and declared ostensibly that Italy would stay in the war. Badoglio had already begun secret peace negotiations with the Allies.
The Allies invaded mainland Italy on September 3, 1943. Italy surrendered to the Allies on September 8, as had been agreed in negotiations. The royal family and Badoglio government escaped to the south, leaving the Italian army without orders, while the Germans took over the fight, forcing the Allies to a complete halt in the winter of 1943-44 at the Gustav Line south of Rome.
In the north, Mussolini, with Nazi support, created what was effectively a puppet state, the Italian Social Republic or Republic of Salò, named after the new capital of Salò on Lake Garda.
Mid-1943 brought the fifth and final German Sutjeska offensive against the Yugoslav partisans.
Battle of the Atlantic
The turning point of the Battle of the Atlantic took place in early 1943 as the Allies refined their naval tactics, effectively making use of new technology to counter the U-Boats. Although two convoys suffered heavy losses, the U-Boats were also taking increasingly heavy casualties, and were forced to abandon their main offensive in the mid-Atlantic.
The Allies had also resumed running the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. In December, the last major sea battle between the Royal Navy and the German Navy took place. At the Battle of North Cape, Germany's last battlecruiser, the Scharnhorst, was sunk by HMS Duke of York, HMS Belfast, and several destroyers.
Pacific Theatre
Central and Southwest Pacific
On January 2, Buna, New Guinea, was captured by the Allies. This event ended the threat to Port Moresby. By January 22, 1943, the Allied forces had achieved their objective of isolating Japanese forces in eastern New Guinea and cutting off their main line of supply.
American authorities declared Guadalcanal secure on February 9. Australian and U.S. forces undertook the prolonged campaign to retake the occupied parts of the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and the Dutch East Indies, experiencing some of the toughest resistance of the war. The rest of the Solomon Islands were retaken in 1943.
In November, U.S. Marines won the Battle of Tarawa. This was the first heavily opposed amphibious assault in the Pacific theater. The high casualties taken by the Marines sparked off a storm of protest in the United States, where the large losses could not be understood for such a tiny and seemingly unimportant island. This led to the adoption of the "Island hopping" strategy, where the Allies bypassed some Japanese island strongholds and let them "wither on the vine", cut off from supplies and troop reinforcements.
Sino-Japanese War
A vigorous, fluctuating battle for Changde in China's Hunan province began on November 2, 1943. The Japanese threw over 100,000 men into the attack on the city, which changed hands several times in a few days but ended up still held by the Chinese. Overall, the Chinese ground forces were compelled to fight a war of defense and attrition while they built up their armies and awaited an Allied counteroffensive.
Southeast Asia
The Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang Army, under Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist Chinese Army, under Mao Zedong, both opposed the Japanese occupation of China, but never truly allied against the Japanese. Conflict between Nationalist and Communist forces emerged long before the war; it continued after and, to an extent, even during the war, though less openly.
The Japanese had captured most of Burma, severing the Burma Road by which the Western Allies had been supplying the Chinese Nationalists. This loss forced the Allies to create a large sustained airlift from India, known as "flying the Hump". Under the American General Joseph Stilwell, Chinese forces in India were retrained and re-equipped, while preparations were made to drive the Ledo Road from India to replace the Burma Road. This effort was to prove an enormous engineering task.
Beginning of the end: 1944
European Theatre
Soviet winter and spring offensives
In the northwest, a Soviet offensive in January 1944 had relieved the siege of Leningrad. The Germans conducted an orderly retreat from the Leningrad area to a shorter line based on the lakes to the south.
In the south, in March, two Soviet formations encircled Generaloberst Hans-Valentin Hube's First Panzer Army north of the Dniestr river. The Germans escaped the pocket in April, saving most of their men but losing their heavy equipment.
In early May, the Red Army's 3rd Ukrainian Front engaged German Seventeenth Army of Army Group South which had been left behind after the German retreat from the Ukraine. The battle was a complete victory for the Red Army, and a botched evacuation effort across the Black Sea led to over 250,000 German and Romanian casualties.
During April 1944, a series of attacks by the Red Army near the city of Iaşi, Romania, aimed at capturing the strategically important sector. The German-Romanian forces successfully defended the sector throughout the month of April. The attack at Târgul Frumos was the final attempt by the Red Army to achieve its goal of having a springboard into Romania for a summer offensive.
With Soviet forces approaching, German troops occupied Hungary on March 20. Hitler thought that Hungarian leader Admiral Miklós Horthy might no longer be a reliable ally.
Finland sought a separate peace with Stalin in February 1944, but would not accept the initial terms offered. On June 9, the Soviet Union began the Fourth strategic offensive on the Karelian Isthmus that, after three months, forced Finland to accept an armistice.
Italy and the Balkans
Following Italy's surrender, German troops took over the defense of the Italian peninsula and established the Gustav line in the southern Apennine Mountains south of Rome. The Allies were unable to break this line, and so attempted to bypass it with an amphibious landing at Anzio on January 22, 1944. The landing, named Operation Shingle, quickly became encircled by the Germans and bogged down, leading Churchill to comment, "Instead of hurling a wildcat onto the shore all we got was a stranded whale."
Unable to circumvent the Gustav line, the Allies again attempted to break through with frontal assaults. On February 15, the monastery of Monte Cassino, founded in 524 by St. Benedict was destroyed by American B-17 and B-26 bombers, upon the erroneous belief that the Germans made use of it for artillery spotting. Two days after the bombing, crack German paratroopers poured into the ruins to defend it. From January 12 to May 18, it was assaulted four times by Allied troops, for a loss of over 54,000 Allied and 20,000 German soldiers.
After months, the Gustav line was broken and the Allies marched north. On June 4, Rome was liberated, and the Allied army reached Florence in August. It then was held at the Gothic Line on the Tuscan Apennines during the winter.
Germany withdrew from the Balkans and held Hungary until February 1945.
Romania turned against Germany in August 1944, threatening German lines of retreat from the Ukraine. Bulgaria surrendered in September.
V Weapons
In June 1944, the Germans used the world's first cruise missile, the V-1 flying bomb, to attack UK targets. Later, they would employ the V-2 rocket, a liquid-fuelled guided ballistic missile.
Area bombing raids
The U.S., UK, and Canadian air forces counterattacked the Luftwaffe and began large-scale strategic bombing, eventually targeting major cities inside Germany. This effort was orchestrated by Air Chief Marshall Harris, who became known as 'Bomber Harris'. Additionally, Winston Churchill ordered "terror raids" intended to wipe out whole cities in one go, by incendiary devices causing firestorms, thus depriving German workers of their homes. Mass raids involving upwards of 500 to 1000 heavy bombers at a time were undertaken against airfields, industrial centers, submarine bases, rail-marshalling yards, oil depots and, in the later stages of the war, launching sites for weapons such as the V-1 missile (nicknamed 'doodlebug'), the V-2 rocket and a jet-engined plane, the Messerschmitt Me 262. The Luftwaffe was overwhelmed and had only a few operational planes left by late 1944 on the Western Front. By 1945, all major German cities were burnt-out ruins.
Soviet summer offensive
Operation Bagration, a Soviet offensive involving 2.5 million men and 6,000 tanks, was launched on June 22, 1944. Its objective was to clear German troops from Belarus. The subsequent battle resulted in the destruction of German Army Group Centre and over 800,000 German casualties, the greatest defeat for the Wehrmacht during the war. The Soviets swept forward, reaching the outskirts of Warsaw on July 31.
Warsaw Uprising
The proximity of the Red Army led the Poles in Warsaw to believe they would soon be liberated. On August 1, they revolted as part of the wider Operation Tempest. Nearly 40,000 Polish resistance fighters seized control of the city. The Soviets, however, did not advance any further. [2] The only assistance given to the Poles was artillery fire, as German army units moved into the city to put down the revolt. The resistance ended on October 2. German units then destroyed most of what was left of the city.
Soviet autumn and winter offensives
After the destruction of Army Group Center, the Soviets attacked German forces in the south in mid-July 1944, and in a month's time they cleared Ukraine of German presence.
The Red Army's 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts engaged German Heeresgruppe Südukraine, which consisted of German and Romanian formations, in an operation to occupy Romania and destroy the German formations in the sector. The result of the battle was complete victory for the Red Army, and a switch of Romania from the Axis to the Allied camp.
In October 1944, General der Artillerie Maximilian Fretter-Pico's Sixth Army encircled and destroyed three corps of Marshal Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky's Group Pliyev near Debrecen, Hungary. This was to be the last German victory in the Eastern front.
The Red Army's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Baltic Fronts engaged German Army Group Center and Army Group North to capture the Baltic region from the Germans. The result of the series of battles was a permanent loss of contact between Army Groups North and Centre, and the creation of the Courland Pocket in Latvia. From December 29, 1944, to February 13, 1945, Soviet forces laid siege to Budapest, which was defended by German Waffen-SS and Hungarian forces. It was one of the bloodiest sieges of the war.
Allied invasion of Western Europe
On "D-Day" (June 6, 1944), the western Allies of mainly the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada invaded German-held Normandy.[2] German resistance was stubborn, especially on Omaha Beach and in the city of Caen. During the first month, the Allies measured progress in hundreds of yards and bloody rifle fights in the Bocage. An Allied breakout (Operation Cobra) was effected at St.-Lô.