World War 2
Nancy Reagan
March 5, 2023
World War 1
March 5, 2023The World War 2
Hitler, who was obsessed with the superiority of the “pure” German race, which he referred to as “Aryan,” believed that war was the only way to achieve the necessary Lebensraum (living space) for the expansion of the German race.
In the mid-1930s, Hitler secretly launched the rearmament of Germany, a violation of the Versailles Treaty.
After forming coalitions with Italy and Japan against the Soviet Union, Hitler occupied Austria in 1938 and Czechoslovakia the following year.
The United States and Soviet Union were focused on internal politics at the time, and neither France nor Britain (the two nations most ravaged by World War I) were eager for confrontation
The beginning of World War Two (1939)
In late August 1939, Hitler and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin signed the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, which incited a flurry of fear in London and Paris.
Hitler had long planned an invasion of Poland, a nation to which Great Britain and France had committed military help if it were attacked by Germany.
The agreement with Stalin ensured that Hitler would not confront a war on two fronts once he invaded Poland, and that he would get Soviet assistance in splitting the nation.
Hitler invaded Poland from the west on September 1, 1939; two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, initiating World War II.
Late in May, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated from Dunkirk by water, while French forces in the south launched a futile resistance.
France being on the edge of collapse, Italy’s fascist ruler Benito Mussolini established an alliance with Hitler, the Pact of Steel, and on June 10 Italy declared war on France and Britain.
German soldiers reached Paris on June 14, 1914, and Marshal Philippe Petain, France’s World War I hero, proposed an armistice two nights later
Afterwards, France was divided into two zones, one under German military control and the other under Petain’s Vichy France-based government.
Hitler shifted his focus to the United Kingdom, which had the defensive advantage of being separated from Europe by the English Channel.
To clear the way for an amphibious invasion (codenamed Operation Sea Lion), beginning in September 1940 and lasting until May 1941, German planes known as the Blitz heavily bombarded Britain, including night raids on London and other industrial cities that caused enormous civilian casualties and damage.
Hitler postponed his invasion preparations when the Royal Air Force (RAF) eventually beat the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) in the Battle of Britain.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill began receiving vital supplies from the U.S. under the Lend-Lease Act, which was passed by Congress in early 1941. This was in response to the depletion of Britain’s defensive resources
Pacific Theater World War II (1941-43)
The United States was the only nation capable of opposing Japanese aggression, which, by late 1941, included an expansion of Japan’s continuing conflict with China and the capture of European colonial possessions in the Far East, with Britain engaged in combat with Germany in Europe.
On December 7, 1941, 360 Japanese aircraft attacked the important U.S. naval facility at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, completely catching the Americans off guard and killing almost 2,300 soldiers.
The attack on Pearl Harbor united American public opinion in support of entering World War Two, and on December 8, with only one opposing vote, Congress declared war on Japan.
Germany and the other Axis powers declared war on the United States without delay. In June 1942, following a run of Japanese wins, the U.S. Pacific Fleet won the decisive Battle of Midway, which proved to be a turning point in the war.
On Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, the Allies were victorious in a series of battles against Japanese forces from August 1942 to February 1943, which helped reverse the tide in the Pacific.
Midway through 1943, Allied naval forces launched an ambitious counterattack against Japan consisting of a series of amphibious assaults on major Japanese-held Pacific islands.
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Second World War Ends (1945)
At the July-August 1945 Potsdam Conference, U.S. President Harry S. Truman (who had assumed office following Roosevelt’s death in April), Churchill, and Stalin reviewed the ongoing conflict with Japan and the peace deal with Germany.
After the war, Germany would be divided into four occupation zones governed by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and France.
Churchill and Truman conceded to Stalin on the controversial issue of the future of Eastern Europe because they required Soviet support in the battle against Japan.
Iwo Jima (February 1945) and Okinawa (April-June 1945) operations resulted in heavy deaths, and Truman authorised the use of a new, lethal weapon out of fear of an even more costly invasion of Japan by land.
The atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. It was created during a top-secret operation code-named The Manhattan Project.
The Japanese government announced on August 15 that it would accept the provisions of the Potsdam Declaration, and on September 2, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur formally accepted Japan’s surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
Despite their involvement in defeating fascism, African-American soldiers continued to strive for equality after World War II concluded.
A few years after President Truman signed an executive order to desegregate the U.S. military in 1948, they remained in segregated units and lower-ranking positions well into the Korean War.
World War II Losses and Consequences
Six million Jews perished at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust, making World War II the worst international battle in human history, with 60 to 80 million people killed.
Civilians accounted for an estimated 50-55 million war deaths, while military personnel accounted for 21-25 million battle deaths.
Millions of people were hurt, and countless others lost their homes and belongings.
The legacy of the war would include the expansion of communism from the Soviet Union into eastern Europe and its final triumph in China, as well as the shift of global power from Europe to two opposing superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, who would shortly engage in the Cold War.
G.I.T.C
Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 prompted the United Kingdom and France to declare war on Germany, initiating World War II. In the following six years, the struggle would claim more people and damage more land and property than any previous war.
6 million Jews were slaughtered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler’s heinous “Final Solution”; this genocide is now known as the Holocaust.
Resulting in World War II
The devastation of the Great War (as World War I was known at the time) had significantly destabilised Europe, and in many senses World War II arose out of concerns left unsolved by that earlier battle.
Specifically, political and economic instability in Germany, as well as persistent bitterness over the severe terms set by the Treaty of Versailles, spurred the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, also known as the Nazi Party.
After becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Hitler aggressively consolidated power, declaring himself Führer (supreme leader) in 1934.
On September 17, Soviet troops invaded Poland from the east.
In early 1940, according to a secret document appended to the Nonaggression Pact, Germany and the Soviet Union had shared sovereignty over Poland, which had fallen fast under attack from both sides.
Stalin’s armies next advanced to conquer the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and destroyed a reluctant Finland in the Russo-Finnish War.
During the six months following the invasion of Poland, the lack of action on the part of Germany and its western allies prompted the media to refer to a “fake war.”
At sea, however, the British and German navies faced off in intense warfare, and devastating German U-boat submarines struck at merchant shipping heading for Britain, sinking more than 100 vessels in the first four months of World War Two.
World War II in the West (1940-41) (1940-41)
The war began in earnest on April 9, 1940, when Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and conquered Denmark.
The German invasion of Belgium and the Netherlands on May 10 came to be known as “blitzkrieg,” or lightning war.
Three days later, Hitler’s forces crossed the Meuse River and attacked French forces at Sedan, positioned at the northern end of the Maginot Line, a complex chain of fortifications created after World War I and regarded as an impregnable defensive barrier.
In reality, German tanks and aircraft burst through the line and continued to the rear, rendering it ineffective.
Hitler vs. Stalin: Operation Barbarossa (1941-42)
Early in 1941, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria joined the Axis, and in April of that year, German soldiers overran Yugoslavia and Greece.
Hitler’s conquest of the Balkans was merely a prelude to his true objective: an invasion of the Soviet Union, whose vast territory would provide Lebensraum for the German master race.
The other half of Hitler’s scheme consisted of the genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe.
During the time of the Soviet onslaught, plans for the “Final Solution” were implemented, and over the next three years, more than 4 million Jews perished in the death camps established in occupied Poland.
Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, on June 22, 1941.
Despite the fact that Soviet tanks and aircraft much outnumbered those of the Germans, Russian aviation equipment was largely antiquated, and the impact of the surprise invasion allowed the Germans to come within 200 miles of Moscow by the middle of July.
Hitler and his commanders’ disagreements delayed the next German advance until October, when it was halted by a Soviet counteroffensive and terrible winter weather.
This “island-hopping” plan was successful, bringing the Allies closer to their eventual objective of conquering the Japanese mainland.
Toward Victory for the Allies in World War Two (1943-45)
In 1943, British and American forces had defeated Italian and Nazi forces in North Africa.
Mussolini’s administration fell in July 1943 as a result of an Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy, but Allied fighting against the Germans in Italy would continue until 1945.
On the Eastern Front, a Soviet counteroffensive launched in November 1942 brought an end to the deadly Battle of Stalingrad, which witnessed some of the worst action of World War Two.
The arrival of winter, along with depleting food and medical supplies, spelt the end for German troops there, and on January 31, 1943, the last of them surrendered.
On June 6, 1944, known as “D-Day,” the Allies launched a huge invasion of Europe by landing 156,000 British, Canadian, and American soldiers on the Normandy, France, beaches.
Hitler responded by committing his entire surviving army to Western Europe, ensuring Germany’s collapse in the east.
Soon thereafter, Soviet forces marched into Poland,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, while Hitler assembled his forces for the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944-January 1945), the final major German offensive of the war.
In February of 1945, heavy aerial bombardment preceded the Allied invasion of Germany by land, and by the time Germany formally surrendered on May 8, Soviet forces had controlled a large portion of the country.
Hitler was already deceased, having committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30.
African American Troops Participate in Two Wars
In the United States Military Forces, World War II showed a striking contradiction.
Despite the fact that over one million African Americans served in the war to oppose Nazism and fascism, they did so in segregated formations.
The U.S. military perpetuated the discriminatory Jim Crow rules that were prevalent in American society.
The majority of black soldiers were confined to work and supply battalions commanded by white leaders and rarely experienced combat.
The Tuskegee Airmen were the most recognised of the African-American forces that contributed significantly to the victory in World War II.
The Red Ball Express, a truck convoy comprised primarily of African-American drivers, was tasked with bringing crucial supplies to General George S. Patton’s troops on the front lines in France.
The all-Black 761st Tank Battalion participated in the Battle of the Bulge, as did the 92nd Infantry Division in Italy.
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Was born on the Bajora planet is the ninth planet after the sun it will take 8 light years to reach my planet which means you never going to make it with today's technology. I moved to earth due to ecological problems on my planet. Thought earth will be a better place but to my surprise, it is not. The stupidity those people have is unbelievable and that inspire me to write a couple of books on humanity and their stupidity. After years of travelling around the planet, I decided to live in this town which is across the sea from the mainland. Here the level of stupidity is higher and that is good because I sell more books
