Transcript WWII - Dr. Charles Best Secondary School

WWII
History 12
Ms Leslie
Who’s to blame?
1.Allied powers for being spineless and
allowing appeasement
2.Hitler being overly aggressive
3.WWI and WWII are just the same war.
Europe just took a break.
German Quick facts
1.After WWI, still far more powerful then
neighbours
2.Has a growing population
3.Not prepared for a long drawn out war.
4.Hitler was aware of the effects of WWI on
Germany – Social cohesion.
5.Hitler has many enemies – social
democrats, Jews and Roman Catholics
Blitzkrieg
 Short, intense attacks. Usually with
aircraft
 Short wars = less drain on economy
 Allows German civilian lift remain
normal until 1942 when the USSR fights
back
The Polish Campaign
 German commander = Gudenrian
 Deploy 40 infantry divisions 14
mechanized divisions
 Attack starts Sept 1, 1939.
 With in 1 week, the Nazi army is
outside Warsaw.
 Sept 17 USSR invades from the East
 Sept 18, Polish gov’t flees into exile.
 Polish troops in Warsaw continue
fighting bitterly until Sept 28, some
units outside the city last until Oct 5.
 But it was futile
Baltic States and the Russo-Finnish
War
 Part of the Nazi-Soviet (MolotovRibbentrop) pact
 Oct 1939 Soviet troops enter Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania. Finland refuses
 Nov 30, USSR starts the Winter War
with Finland.
Winter War
Soviets only successful in far north
USSR inadequate and inferior troops
Difficult terrain
Bad communications
Invasion declared illegal by League of
Nations
 Feb 1, 1940 Red Army attacks again
and Finland falls in March and signs the
Moscow Peace treaty with USSR.
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The Phony War
 Sept 1939 - April 1940
 German and French troops hunkered
down in the Siegfried like or Maginot
Line.
 Both waiting for a major push
 War is at sea
 U-boats sank 110 vessels in first 4
months
 Both sides laying mines
 Soon the German surface fleet is sunk
or in retreat - never a significant force
 A British destroyer chases the German
vessel ‘Altmark’ in to a Norwegian fjord and
rescued 300 British prisoners on board.
 This violation of Norwegian neutrality
convinced Hitler that the Allies could not be
trusted to stay out of Scandinavia.
Scandinavia
1940
 March - French and
British navies mine
the waters and land
in Norweigen Ports.
 April 9 Germans
land in Oslo,
Kristiansand,
stavanger, Bergen
and Trondhelm
 Norwegian resistance was quickly over
come since Norwegian forces were not even
mobilized and local Nazis led by Vidkun
Quisling helped the invaders.
 Quisling is despised by Norwegians and his
name becomes a term to describe ‘traitors’
 Allies landed on the coast but it was too
little, too late.
 Allies continue to fight until May but it’s
futile
 Demark in attacked at the same time,
complete German success came with in
hours.
Holland, Belgium and France
 May 10, 1940 the assault in the west
begins
 Germany decides to avoid the Maginot
Line by going through Belgium.
 They must go through Holland first
 The Dutch have a small, ill trained
army, an air force of only 130 ish and
they loose 50% of it
 Luftwaffe bombs airfields
 Parachute troops into key locations to
secure bridges
 The main transportation in Holland is
the rivers, take those and the Dutch
navy is stuck.
 May 14, German tanks outside of
Rotterdam.
 Decide to use the destruction of the city
to shock politicians in to surrendering
 City is flattened, 30,000 die
 Same day, gov’t flees to UK and orders
troops to lay down arms
 Skirmishes end on the 16
 Blitzkrieg takes the country in 4 days
Belgium and France
 Again paratroopers near bridges in
Belgium
 British and French armies slow the
advance in the North, but German
advancement in the South make that
position difficult to maintain
 Von Runstedt takes German army
through the supposedly impassable
Ardennes.
 May 12 - over the Meuse River
 Rapid German advance = confusion
behind French lines.
 Nazi armies able to surround British
expeditionary Force (BEF)
 Allies cut in half, Germans take Ports
 May 21, Britain strikes back at Dunkirk Successful and shakes up the German
high command
 British tanks match Nazi tanks
 Attempt at Dunkirk fails because Nazis use
anti-aircraft guns
 May 23rd, Evacuations at Bollogne start,
4,000 troops at first, another 1,000 later by
fishermen
 Britain has suffered worst defeat ever
 Winston Churchill become Prime Minister
 May 23 - BEF and French forces are
split
 BEF near Lille, 40 miles from Dunkirk
 French are further south
 German Panzers are 10 miles from
Dunkirk
 "Nothing but a miracle can save the BEF
now," wrote General Brooke in his diary.
 On 23 May, he put the army on half-rations.
In Britain, 26 May was designated a "Day
of National Prayer" for the Army
 WWII is about to end in German victory
But…..
 May 24 - Hitler inexplicably halts the
attack against the BEF
 Might want to be saving his troops to
attack France
 This event leads to the escape of
hundreds of thousands of troops
Evacuation of Dunkirk
 May 25 it starts
 While being pounded from the Luftwaffe,
120,000 BEF pulled out by May 30th
 Luftwaffe is also dropping leaflets reading
“British soldiers! Look at the map: it gives
your true situation! Your troops are entirely
surrounded — stop fighting! Put down your
arms!”
 The Allied soldiers mostly used these as
toilet paper.
 June 2nd - 224,000 more BEF
evacuated and 94,000 French
 By June 4 it was over - 338,000 troops
in Britain while their equipment is on
the beach
Reasons for success
 RAF and Royal Navy
 900+ fishing vessels and private yachts
men
 Waters at Dunkirk are shallow, so battle
ships can’t get close
 Soldiers would wade out into the ocean
and wait for fishing boats to pick them
up and take them to the navy ships
 Showed the solidarity of the British
 Some came as far at the Isle of Man
and Glasgow
 ‘Dunkirk spirit’
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwar
s/wwtwo/launch_ani_fall_france_campa
ign.shtml
Invasion of France
 June 7 - Rommel heads south
 June 9 - Cross the Seine
 June 10 - French Gov’t moved to Tours,
Italy declares war on France
 June 12 - French commander tells
Reynaud France is beaten
 June 14 - Paris falls, Gov’t flees to Vichy
 June 16 - Reynaud resigns and his successor
Petain asks the Germans for armistice
 June 22 - French surrender happened in the
same railway coach, at Compiegne, that the
1918 armistice had been signed in.
 Germany occupied the Northern and Western
coasts, gaining fine submarine bases, and the
French army was demobilized.
 Britain is now alone in the fight against
Germany.
Why were the German’s
successful?
 German Panzers and Luftwaffe superior.
 Awesome leadership
 But actually had a smaller army
 Allies had out of date ideas - fighting in
an old-fashioned way.
French failures
 French high command obsessed with defense
 Ignored experts like Charles de Gaulle that
tanks should be massed together for rapid
movement
 Airpower ignored
 France not ready for was economically and
psychologically
 France already had a rising fascist movement
Battle of Britain
 Nazis called it Operation Sea lion
 Luftwaffe = 2,800 planes RAF 700 and
counting
 August 12 - aerial attacks on harbours,
radar stations, aerodromes and
munitions factories
 Again Hitler inexplicable switches tactics
 Instead of wiping out the RAF when he
had the chance, he attacks Civilians
 This allows the RAF to recoup
The Blitz
 Refers to the aerial bombardment of London
 Sept 7 Luftwaffe bombards London in
retaliation for an RAF bombing of Berlin
 London bombed for 57 nights in a row
 Blitz lasts from Sept 1940-May 1941
 127 large night attacks, 71 of which are in
London
 2 million houses destroyed, 60% are in
London
 60,000 civilians die, 87,000 wounded
 The Queen, a teenager at the time,
lives through it all
RAF advantages
 Parachuted pilots land on home soil
 Luftwaffe can only be in the air 60-90
mins
 Britain had superior radar
 1,389 Luftwaffe lost - 792 RAF lost
 Operation Sea lion called off as with out
air superiority any invasion force would
be cut to pieces by the Royal Navy
North Africa and Greece
 June 10, 1940 Italy declares war and invades
North Africa and Greece
 In Africa, Mussolini has no success, Britain
pushed Italian troops into Libya, Capturing
130,000 prisoners and 400 tanks
 Rommel and the German Afrika Korps had to
bail out the Italians
 Royal Navy sinks
half the Italian fleet
in harbour at
Taranto
 In Greece the
Italians are pushed
back to Albania.
Tide turns in Africa
 Rommel able to push British out of
Lybia
 June 1942 German forces 70 miles from
Alexandria, Egypt
 April 1941, Germany invades Yugoslavia
and Greece
 Push through to Athens and push out
the British and the Anzac troops
 May 1941, Crete falls to Germany
 36,000 allied troops die
Operation Barbarossa
 Hitler does not count on the USSR
staying out of the war.
 He invades on the premise it’s always
been part of the plan for the 1,000 year
Reich
 Attack a tactical mistake
 3 pronged toward Leningrad in the
North, Moscow in the center and
Ukraine in the South
 3.5 million troops are committed with
3,500 tanks and 5,000 aircraft
 USSR caught off guard, major cities fall
quickly
 Leningrad and Moscow remain out of
reach as Panzers become bogged down
in the rain and mud of October and the
-40 C weather in the winter
War in the Far East
 Hitler had hoped Japan would enter the
war against Japan
 They attack the USA instead
 On July 26, 1941 Japan made an
agreement with Vichy France to occupy
bases in French Indo-China
 USA responds with an oil embargo on
Japan
 USA also demands Japan pull out of
China
 Tojo has become Prime Minister
 He plans to launch an attack on
American, the Dutch and Britain
Pearl Harbour
 Dec 7 , 1941
 353 Japanese planes wreck havoc for 2
hours
 Destroy 350 aircraft, 5 battle ships and
kill 3,700 people
 On the same day Japan attacked the
Philippines and Hong Kong
 Japan sank British Naval ships ‘Prince of
Wales’ and ‘Repulse’ as they came to help
intervene
 By May 1942, the Japanese Hand captured
Malaya, Singapore, Burma, Hong Kong, the
Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Guam and
Wake Island
 Dec 8 , 1941 USA joins the fight
Things looking up for the Allies
 With the USA in the war, any war of
attrition would eventually go in favour
of the allies
 The peak of the Axis power is between
the summers of 1943 and 42, it’s all
down hill from there
Battle of Midway
 June 1942, Americans counter attack
Japanese forces
 5 aircraft carriers and 5,000 soldiers
 They sink 4
 Japanese carriers, mostly because
Americans had broken the code and
knew when Japanese attacks would
happen
 In the battle of the Pacific, air power is
crucial. Japanese losses at Midway
were huge
 Japanese looses 2 more carriers in the
Battle of the Coral Sea
 General Macarthur starts ‘Island
Hopping’ in the Solomon Island,
heading towards Japan
El Alamein, Egypt Oct 1942
 Rommel’s Afrika Korps driven back by
Montgomery’s 8th army
 Allied army uses a lot of deception to
win
 Radioed wrong locations of attacks
 Built a dummy pipeline
 Made dummy tanks of plywood
attached to jeeps in the South
 In the North tanks were disguised to
look like lorries
 Axis powers laid a half million
landmines
 German forces - 80,000 soldiers and
540 tanks
 Allied forced 230,000 and 1,440 tanks
 RAF superior
 Allies had broken the code to they knew
in advance German plans
 Axis powers pushed back to Tunisia
 Allies landed in Morocco and Algeria,
opening up a front in the west as well
 Rommel had received a "Victory or Death"
message from Adolph Hitler, halting any
withdrawal.
 German forces had to withdraw on the night
of November 3-4.
 By November 6 the Axis forces were in full
retreat and over 30,000 soldiers had
surrendered.
 In May 1943, 275,000 German and Italian
troops surrendered and an invasion of Italy
was made possible.
 Winston Churchill said of this victory: "This is
not the end, this is not the beginning, nor is it
even the beginning of the end, but it is,
perhaps, the end of the beginning."
 He also wrote "Before Alamein, we had no
victory and after it we had no defeats".
Battle of Stalingrad
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1.
2.
3.
4.
July 17, 1942 - Feb 2 - 1943
Why Stalingrad?
It’s called Stalingrad
Huge Industrial City
Give Germany a base in USSR
Huge oil fields in the Caucasus
 German 6th Army led by General von
Paulus with 330,000 troops
 City destroyed by the end of August
 Luftwaffe dropped incendiary bombs
onto wooden houses
 But the Russians refused to surrender
 Red army pushed back to a 3-4 km
stretch along the Volga River
 Able to supply their troops by barges
 Germans never try to cross the Volga
 The Germans, however, were growing
dispirited by heavy losses, by fatigue,
and by the approach of winter
Operation Uranus
 Red army encircles the remaining
250,000 member 6th army
 Hitler refuses to allowed Paulus to
retreat and orders him to ‘stand and
fight’
 6th army grows weaker as they start to
run out of food and are not prepared
for winter
 A German division was sent eastward to rescue the
6th army, but Paulus was not allowed to fight
Westward to meet up with them.
 Hitler told them to fight to the death
 promotes Paulus to field marshal (and reminds
Paulus that no German officer of that rank had
ever surrendered indicating Hitler expected him to
commit suicide).
 Jan 31, 1943 Paulus surrenders, defying Hitler
 Twenty-four generals surrendered with him,
and on February 2 the last of 91,000 frozen,
starving men (all that was left of the 6th and
4th armies) turned themselves over to the
Soviets.
 they no longer respected Hitler.
 Paulus was catholic and therefore would not
commit suicide
 Soviets recovered 250,000 German corpses
around Stalingrad another 550,000 Germans
were wounded or missing.
 Of the 91,000 Germans captured half would die
in a march to Siberian prisoner camps only 56,000 made it home. The last of them returned
in 1955.
 Paulus was captured, tried and released in 1953.
He became an outspoken opponent of Hitler and
served as a witness against the Nazis during the
War crime tribunals.
 There were probably 1.1 million Red Army
soldiers that died and 40,000 civilians
Reasons the 6th Army lost
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Blitzkrieg only good for long distance
Civilians fought back
Luftwaffe outnumbered
Stalin would not allow retreat
Germans never attempted to cross the
Volga
6. Hitler did not expect a long fight
The importance of the Battle
 Shattered the myth of German
invincibility
 In the summer was the Battle of Kursk largest tank battle in History
 Soviet forces were now superior to
Germany
What was the Battle of
Stalingrad like?
 Bitter fighting raged for every ruin, street,
factory, house, basement, and staircase. Even
the sewers were battle grounds
 Some of the taller buildings, saw floor-byfloor, close-quarters combat, with the
Germans on one level, Soviets on the next,
Germans on the next, etc., firing at each
other through holes in the floors.
 A lot of Snipers
 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic
-video/562720/18896/In-the-Battle-ofStalingrad-the-advancing-Germans-arefinally
The War in the Atlantic
 1940 Italian fleet cripples
 May 1941 - Bismark sunk - last German
surface raider
 German transports to Crete lost that
same month
U-boats
 Advancements in U-boats gave
Germans the edge at sea
 Able to dive deeper
 Have a sound-absorbing rubber coating
 Have a chemical bubble making decoy
Allied advantage over U-boats
 Sonar can find them underwater really
well - forces U-boats to stay on the
surface
 Broke the Enigma code
 USA send more destroyers to Britain
The U-boat threat
 Start of 1942 only 90 U-boats with
another 250 under construction
 Able to sink 4 million tonnes of slippage
while only loosing 21 U-boats
 A U-boat was sunk in the St. Laurence
 Spotted off the coast of Vancouver
Island - Rader Hill
 By July 1943, the Allies could produce ships at a
faster rate then the U-boast could sink them.
 This was due to improved allied equipment (the
addition of long range patrol aircraft and detection
equipment)
 and the additional warships following American’s
entry into the war.
War in the Air
 In the Pacific bombers paved the way
for Marines in the ‘island hopping’
campaign
 American Planes kept the transport of
goods to Allied troops
 Paratroopers essential in getting behind
enemy lines
Fire Storms
 After Defeat in Russia, Germany could
no longer bomb European cities.
 The allies continued to bomb cities.
 The Ruhr, Cologne, Hamberg and Berlin
What is a Firestorm?
 It is achieved by dropping incendiary bombs,
filled with highly combustible chemicals such
as magnesium, phosphorus or petroleum jelly
(napalm), in clusters over a specific target.
 After the area caught fire, the air above the
bombed area, becomes extremely hot and
rose rapidly.
 Cold air then rushed in at ground level from
the outside and people were sucked into the
fire.
Dresden
 Feb 13, 1945
 40,000 people killed in 1
nights bombing
 Had not been attacked
yet
 Has no anti-aircraft guns
 650,000 people in the
city, mostly refugees
from advancing Red
Army
 Another fire storm in Tokyo in March
1945 killed 80,000 and destroyed 1/4 of
the city
 Despite massive destruction to German
cities, Production did not falter until
October 1944.
 Krupp Munitions factories permanently
out of action
 June 1945, Japanese production
destroyed
Axis collapse - Italy
 Allies recognize to attack the weakest first
 Invade Sicily in July 1943 successfully
 Mussolini is dismissed by the King and flees
North
 Replaced by Badoglio who dissolved the
Fascist party in 2 days and declares war on
Nazi Germany
 October 1943, Allies capture Naples and
Badoglio signs an armistice
 Germany sends troops into Northern Italy
 Allied victory in April 1945
 Mussolini tried to escape to Spain by
dressing in a German uniform and traveling
with the retreating German army
 He and his mistress are captured by
Italian Communists and executed
 After being shot, kicked, and spat upon,
the bodies were hung upside down on
meat hooks from the roof of a gas
station.
 The bodies were then stoned by
civilians from below
France
 Allies were reluctant to open up an Western
front after Dieppe
 an Allied attack on the German-occupied port
of Dieppe on the northern coast of France on
19 August 1942.
 The assault began at 5:00 AM in the morning
and by 9:00 AM the Allied commanders had
been forced to call a retreat.
 3,623 of the 6,086 men who made it ashore
were either killed, wounded, or captured.
June 6 - 1945 D-DAY
 the Normandy landings began along a 60
mile stretch of the Normandy coast between
Charbourg and Le Havre.
 New engineering marvels like the ‘mulberry
harbor's (artificial harbours) and PLUTO
(pipeline under the ocean) helped the
326,000 men land and remain well supplied.
 Eventually 3 million men were landed in
France.
 Paris is Liberated Aug 25
 Brussels and Antwerp liberated in Sept
 Battle of the Bulge - Hitler risks
everything in Dec. Nazis loose 600
tanks and 100,000 soldiers (out of
500,000)
 Hitler knows if he doesn’t win here the
war is lost
Fighting over the Ardennes
American, UK and Canadian troops involved
600,000 Allies all together
Germans had some success at beginning
But American and UK troops came and
pushed them back
 By Jan 16 Nazi army in retreat
 Last large scale attack by Hitler
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 Through Feb Allies continue to advance
 Patton leads his army to Colbenz by March
 Montgomery crosses the Rhine on March 2324 after an attack from Germany
 Germans preferred to allow Western allies to
advance rather then wait for the Soviets to
occupy them
The Eastern Front
 Has the most battles, the most losses
 After Loosing Kursk ad D-day German
forces could not hold back the Red
Army
 Aug 1944, Romania changes sides and
joins the allies
 This opens up an attack route through
the south
 Oct 20, Belgrade, Serbia, Falls to Tito’s
Partisans. Tito was the leader of the
Yugoslavia resistance. He’s a commie,
becomes prime minister for 35 years
 Nov 4 Red army in Budapest, Hungary
 Finland Surrenders in Sept
 Jan 17 - USSR takes Poland
 April 25 - Berlin
encircled
 Soviet and American
troops shake hands
at Elbe River
Death of Hitler
 Hiding in his Führerbunker. (now a parking
lot)
 By Mid-April 1945, Goring and Himmler have
deserted
 Midnight April 28 Hitler married his Ling time
girlfriend Ava Braun
 April 29 Red Army 1 mile from Führerbunker.
Hitler hears about Mussolini’s fate
 Tests a cyanide capsule on his favorite
dog, Blondi.
 April 30 - noon- Red Army 1 block away,
Has his last meal
 Around 2 pm he and his wife say their
good byes and retreat to their room.
They both take cyanide pills and Hitler
shoots himself in the head
 After his death everyone in the bunker started
smoking, a practice Hitler for forbade.
 Goebbels has the bodies moved outside and
doused with gasoline and set on fire
 The bodies are burned for 3 hours and hastily
buried in a shell crater
 May 1 - Goebbels and His wife poison
their 6 young children
 They then go up to the garden and
have an SS officer shoot them in the
back of the head.
 Their bodies were only partially burned.
 May 2 - Soviets find Hitler and Ava and
his 2 dogs.
 Since the bodies were in the soviets
possession they have since been ‘lost’
and no one knows what happened to
Hitler’s body for sure
 Hitler is succeeded by Admiral Doenitz
who does not care to fight on
 Before he surrenders he’s able to save
55% of Berlin’s troops and civilians by
moving them to Western ally occupied
areas instead of towards the soviets
 Midnight May 8, 1945 the European
War ends
The Pacific
 The allies has 2 choices, north through
the Aleutians or south through
Micronesia.
 First allies take the Solomon Islands
and the Bismark Archipelago
 Continue through the Philippines.
 Japanese resistance is futile as the allies
fire power is superior.
 Kamikaze attacks cause a great deal of
damage.
 Cause allied high command to worry
about the kind of resistance they would
meet in a land invasion of Japan
 The Fight for Iwa Jima showed the
Japanese fighting spirit. Of the 18,000
Japanese soldiers only 216 survive
 In the assault in Okinawa, 355 kamikaze
raids.
 Worlds largest Battleship the ‘Yamato’ is
sent on a suicide mission… it only had
enough fuel for a 1 way trip… it is sunk
on April 7
 Rangoon (Burma) is Liberated on May 1,
1945
 Throughout July 1945, Japanese
mainland is heavily bombed
 67 cities fire-bombed
 Hirohito is given an ultimatum to
surrender at the Potsdam conference
but he refuses
The Manhattan Project
 1942-45 the Americans are working on
an atomic bomb with American, British,
Canadian and Danish scientists
 Fear Germany is also working on an
atomic bomb
 Employs 130,000 people and costs $2
billion
Bombing of Hiroshima
 August 6, 1945.
 A modern city with
concrete structures
 The bomb was called
‘little boy’
 Killed 140,000 –
80,000 of which died
immediately
 Missed it’s target of a
bridge and hit a
medical clinic
 Detonated 600 m in the air = more
damage
 Total destruction for 1.6 km square with
fires for 11 km square
 Americans had warned other civilians in
the past of bombings with leaflets, but
Hiroshima was not warned.
Nagasaki
 Large sea-port, mostly wooden structures
 The bomb was called ‘fat man’
 Killed 80,000 – many were refugees from
Hiroshima
 Detonated 450 m in the air, heat blast of over 3,900
degrees C and winds of more than 1,000 km/hour
 15–20% died from injuries or the combined
effects of flash burns, trauma, and radiation
burns, compounded by illness, malnutrition
and radiation sickness.
 August 10 Japan surrenders.
 Sept 2 war officially comes to an end
Was it necessary?
 Truman says he was trying to save
allied lives by preventing a land invasion
 In July Japan as already talking peace
with Russia
 A lot of destruction with the firestorms
Why did the axis powers lose?
 Shortage of key materials
 Allies built more planes and Aircraft
carriers
 Axis powers took on too much
 There are soooooo many Russians
 Axis powers did not learn from mistakes
Effects of the war
 30 million killed - half from Russia
 21 million displaced
 No peace treaties like after WWI occupied instead
 Welfare systems set up
 Nuclear weapons
 New world powers - USA and USSR
 Cold War starts almost right away
 United Nations replaces the League.
 End :)