Main Idea Questions:
1. How was the war fought differently in Europe than in the Pacific?
2. What role do you believe Russia played in achieving victory, and how did you come to that conclusion?
3. Why did the U.S. agree to land or begin fighting in North Africa?
4. What was the relationship like between Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin?
2. What role do you believe Russia played in achieving victory, and how did you come to that conclusion?
3. Why did the U.S. agree to land or begin fighting in North Africa?
4. What was the relationship like between Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin?
Terms
1. facism
2. Axis Alliance
3. Blitzkrieg
4. Battle of Britain
5. Operation Barbarossa
6. Pearl Harbor
7. Women's Army Corps
8. Tuskegee Airmen
9. Japanese Internment Camps
10. North African campaign
11. U-Boats
12. Operation Overlord
13. D-Day
14. Capture of Rome
15. The Holocaust
16. Race to Berlin
17. Franklin D. Roosevelt
18. Douglas MacArthur
19. Battle of Midway
20. Kamikaze
21. Battle of Iwo Jima
22. Battle of Okinawa
23. Atomic Bomb
24. Harry S. Truman
2. Axis Alliance
3. Blitzkrieg
4. Battle of Britain
5. Operation Barbarossa
6. Pearl Harbor
7. Women's Army Corps
8. Tuskegee Airmen
9. Japanese Internment Camps
10. North African campaign
11. U-Boats
12. Operation Overlord
13. D-Day
14. Capture of Rome
15. The Holocaust
16. Race to Berlin
17. Franklin D. Roosevelt
18. Douglas MacArthur
19. Battle of Midway
20. Kamikaze
21. Battle of Iwo Jima
22. Battle of Okinawa
23. Atomic Bomb
24. Harry S. Truman
|
Fascism - authoritarian, far-right, dictatorial power. Extreme nationalism - puts nation/race above all others. Is different from communism. Apply it to Germany.
Axis Alliance - Benito Mussolini (Italy), Adolf Hitler (Germany), and Emperor Hirohito (Japan). Nationalism....expansion... Blitzkrieg - Lightning war - Germany Battle of Britain - July 10 - October 31, 1940. France invaded June 1940. Hitler hoped after that to invade Britain. British Air Force fought off German Air Force (Luftwaffe). Hitler believed after he had successfully invaded and controlled France that he would attack the British using the might of the German Air Force to soften the defenses and weaken the British Air Force before he would actually invade Great Britain in September 1940. Fortunately for GB, Germany was unable to defeat the British and thus never attempted a landing there. For now, the Germans were stuck in France.
Germany invaded western Poland on September 1, 1939. The Soviets occupied eastern Poland.
|
Germany invaded France in 1940.
Battle of Britain Map
|
Germany invaded Russia "Operation Barbarossa" in June 1941.
|
Axis forces (blue area).
|
|
Benito Mussolini - Italian fascist dictator of Italy. In June 1940, Mussolini declared war on Britain and France and began the invasion of Libya and Egypt in North Africa. By February 1941, the Italians were halted and nearly defeated in North Africa by the British. Adolf Hitler realized that an Italian defeat in North Africa would be very bad for him so in February 1941, he sent General Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps to help the Italians beat the British in North Africa.
By the fall of 1941, the Germans had now captured most of the countries to the west of them (with the exception of Switzerland and Spain, both of which were neutral). They helped occupy North Africa, and had invaded in Russia (that meant they were going to be fighting on three fronts, the Western Front, the Mediterranean Front, and the Eastern Front). |
|
The last German front to be opened was the Eastern Front which began with Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, this was the invasion of the Soviet Union (Russia). The Eastern Front would be where the bloodiest fighting of the war took place. Hitler's idea of invading France was mostly based on revenge of WWI and the natural resources found in France, his reason for fighting in North Africa was to help bail out Mussolini, his main purpose of invading Russia and Poland was to have an area to resettle ethnic Germans in and to get natural resources. In the meantime, he planned to relocate any people he declared "undesirable" such as Jews from those regions.
In six months, half of the Soviet Army was captured by Germany (3 million men). Germans surrounded Leningrad and cut it off from supplies, 800,000 Russians starved to death. By winter time, 1941, the Germans were on the outskirts of Moscow, 1,000 miles east of Berlin. America sent tons of weapons and supplies to keep the Russians in the fight, without them, the Germans would be able to concentrate all of their forces on Great Britain.
In six months, half of the Soviet Army was captured by Germany (3 million men). Germans surrounded Leningrad and cut it off from supplies, 800,000 Russians starved to death. By winter time, 1941, the Germans were on the outskirts of Moscow, 1,000 miles east of Berlin. America sent tons of weapons and supplies to keep the Russians in the fight, without them, the Germans would be able to concentrate all of their forces on Great Britain.
Joseph Stalin threw all of his resources at the Germans. Stalin declared Russian prisoners as traitors, many were ordered to be executed if they were returned. During the battle of Moscow alone, Stalin had 8,000 civilians executed for cowardice.
North Africa (Operation Torch)
|
Soviet dictator and ally to the U.S. and Britain, Joseph Stalin, pressured FDR to open a new front with American soldiers to relieve Russians fighting on the Eastern Front. By opening up another front against the Germans, German leaders would have to pull forces out of Russia and send them to fight the Americans. FDR and British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill understand that it would take a while for US forces to be trained and equipped for a large invasion in strongly defended France, but North Africa also had German troops in it and it would not take as many troops to invade there. Allied planners decided to have the Americans invade North Africa in November 1942.
Called Operation Torch, it was launched on November 8, 1942 and was led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower (65,000 U.S. troops, including the first airborne operation in U.S. history). U.S. forces would land in Morocco and drive east to link up with British troops landing in Algeria. From there they would drive the Germans east and try to capture them before they could escape to Sicily.
|
By May of 1943 German troops under Erwin Rommel were driven to Tunisia where they were able to slip away to Sicily. On July 9, 1943, U.S. and British forces under Eisenhower and British General Bernard Montgomery landed on the Island of Sicily and began going after the German Army in an attempt to capture it before it could retreat to the Italian mainland.
|
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
|
British General Bernard Montgomery
|
U.S. General George S. Patton, Eisenhower's most trusted general in North Africa, Italy, and eventually France.
|
Invasions of Sicily & Italy
The invasion of Sicily was known as Operation Husky, it was a two pronged attack by British General Bernard Montgomery and George S. Patton. The idea was to capture the German army between U.S. and British forces. While both Allied armies advanced through Sicily successfully, the German army was able to escape to the Italian mainland.
American soldier WWII
|
German soldier WWII
|
German uniform WWII
American soldiers WWII (North Africa)
|
|
On September 3, 1943, U.S. forces under General Mark Clark invaded the Italian mainland at Salerno. By September 17, 1943, Salerno was secured in Allied hands with over 13,000 Allied soldiers killed or wounded. Same time the landing was taking place, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was overthrown and imprisoned and the Italians switched sides to the allies.
Throughout the fall and spring of 1943, Allied forces advanced slowly up the Italian peninsula driving the Germans north. German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring set up a strong defensive line in central Italy that took the allies six months to breakthrough. In May, they continued their drive north to capture Rome. On June 4, 1944, General Mark Clark's 5th Army entered Rome and allowed the Germans to escape further north.....two days later, the allies began the invasion of France at Normandy.
|
|
The End of the Italian Theater - 1945
A line of 3,000 feet high mountains (Apennine Mountains) filled with elite German mountain troops stalled the Allied advance in Northern Italy in the winter of 1944/1945. The U.S. needed specially trained mountain troops to scale the rocky sides of the snow capped mountains. Luckily, beginning in 1943, just such a unit was formed for the purpose of mountain climbing and skiing in combat, called the 10th Mountain Division. For two years they trained until January 1945 when they were sent to Italy to break the German Gothic line in Northern Italy.
Map of Northern Italy showing the German Gothic Line.
|
Once they broke through the Gothic Line, the 10th Mountain Division drove through the Po River Valley and to Lake Garda.
|
|
The 10th Mountain attacked the Gothic Line and took the mountain tops from the Germans. The Germans counterattacked six times but were unable to push the 10th Mountain from their newly gained prize. Once they entered the Po Valley, many of the Germans began to surrender to the mountain troops. Once the 10th reached Lake Garda in extreme northern Italy, the Germans began shelling the Americans as they traveled down the only road that followed around the lake. Finally, on May 2, all of the Germans in Italy surrendered, four days later, the war was over. Of the 20,000 men that entered Italy with the 10th Mountain, after six months of fighting, more than a thousand were dead, and over 3000 wounded...one in four soldiers in the division were either killed or wounded.
Lake Garda is more than 143 square miles, has an average temp of 50 degrees, and is over 1100 feet deep. On April 30, 1945, a DUKW amphibious boat carrying 25 members of the 605th Field Artillery, Battery B, 10th Mountain Division, capsized (sank) in Lake Garda, 24 of the 25 soldiers on board drowned. 65 years later, the DUKW was found.
|
Road and tunnel along Lake Garda.
|
|
DUKW from the 10th Mountain Division that sank on April 30, 1945.
|
The Invasion of France
|
|
|
The invasion and liberation of France was always a priority with Allied forces. With the Soviets pushing the Germans west back out of Russia, if the US and British could successfully land in France, they could drive east toward Germany, meaning the Soviets, US, and British forces could squeeze Germany. The place chosen for the Allied invasion was an area of Northern France known as Normandy. The British faked like the invasion would happen further northeast at Calais, while preparing to hit the peninsula further south.
On June 5, 1944, US Airborne troops were dropped behind enemy lines. Their job was to secure strategic crossroads and bridges and then walk toward the Normandy beaches where the infantry would land the next day and link up with them. The 101st Airborne and the 82nd Airborne would make the jump. Meanwhile, U.S. forces planned to attack on the morning of June 6, 1944 at two beaches: Omaha and Utah. The British would hit beaches Juno, Gold, and Sword. |
|
|
|
The U.S. 29th Infantry Division and 1st Infantry Division hit Omaha Beach, while the 4th Infantry Division hit Utah Beach. The 2nd Rangers would hit Omaha and scale the cliffs at Point de Hoc on the flank. The Germans had concrete bunkers with machine guns trained on the beaches and beach obstacles.
|
|
Along most of the beaches, casualties were actually fewer than expected. Omaha Beach was the worst, 2,000 men were killed or wounded from the time they hit the beach until noon when about 600 men captured the German positions overlooking the beach. Three days later Normandy was considered secured. With a solid beach head secured, US and British forces began their drive east through France and toward Germany.
|
Company A, 116th Regiment had 35 men from Bedford, Virginia in it, by the end of the Normandy campaign, 23 would be dead. The small town of Bedford suffered more than any other unit during WWII.
|
Shoulder patch of the 29th Infantry Division.
|