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Western Civilizations, 3rd Brief Edition: A W. W. Norton StudySpace
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In This Chapter
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Chapter 26
The Second World War
Chapter Study Outline
Introduction
Threats to the balance of power
A conflict among nations, peoples, and ideals
The new methods of warfare
The Holocaust and the atomic bomb
The war of absolutes and the values of Western civilization
The Causes of the War: Unsettled Quarrels, Economic Fallout, and Nationalism
The peace settlement
Created more problems than it solved
Eastern European satellite states
Allied naval blockade of Germany
German "war guilt"
League of Nations as an alliance of victors against the vanquished
Peace and security
No binding standards created for peace and security
How to guarantee peace?
Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928)outlawing war as an international crime
The League of Nations
Never a league of all nations
Germany and the Soviet Union were excluded
The United States never joined
Economic conditions
German reparations and slow recovery
The Great Depression intensified economic nationalism
Governments imposed high tariffs to preserve home markets
Depression as last blow to Weimar Germany
Power passed to the Nazis (1933)
Germany ignored provisions of Versailles
Decline of Japanese exports played into the hand of Japan's military
Invasion of Manchuria (1931)
Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935
Ideologies
Violent nationalism
Glorifying the nation and national destiny
Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany formed the "Axis" (later joined by Japan)
Fascist regimes in eastern Europe
Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Romania
The special case of Czechoslovakia
The 1930s: Challenges to the Peace, Appeasement, and the "Dishonest Decade"
An atmosphere of fear and apprehension
Aggression as a challenge to civilization
Avoiding another war
The 1930s as "a low, dishonest decade" (W. H. Auden, 1939)
Appeasement
Assumptions
The outbreak of another world war was unthinkable
British and American arguments that Germany had been mistreated at Versailles
Fascist states were a bulwark against Soviet communism
Endshow to maintain Europe's balance of power?
Soviets the greater threat, so accommodate Hitler
The League of Nations
Japanese invasion of China turned into an invasion of the whole country
The Rape of Nanjing (1937) "kill all, burn all, destroy all"
The League expressed shock but did nothing
Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935
Avenging the defeat of 1896
League imposed sanctions on Italy but without enforcement
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
A weak republican government could not overcome opposition
Extreme right-wing military officers rebelled
Francisco Franco (r. 1936-1975)
Hitler and Mussolini sent in troops and tested new weapons; war was a dress rehearsal
The Soviets sided with the communist troops fighting for the Spanish Republic
Britain and France failed to act decisively
Volunteers from England, France, and the United States
Saw the war as a test of the West's determination to resist fascism
Blum and the Popular Frontlimited support
Feared intervention would polarize France
April 1937: The destruction of Guernica
Hitler's lessons
Britain, France, and the Soviet Union would have a hard time containing fascism
Britain and France would do anything to avoid another war
German rearmament and the politics of appeasement
Hitler played on Germans' sense of shame and betrayal
Removed Germany from the League of Nations in 1933
Tore up disarmament provisions of Versailles in 1935
The unification of all ethnic Germans
Reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936
France and Britain did nothing
The annexation of Austria (1938)
No response from the West
Hitler declared his intention to occupy the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia)
Neville Chamberlain
With the Sudetenland, Germany's ambitions would be satisfied
Believed Germany could not commit to a sustained war
Eastern Europe ranked low in British priorities
Munich: September 29, 1938
Daladier (France), Chamberlain, Mussolini, and Hitler met
The capitulation of France and Britain
Chamberlain proclaimed "peace in our time"
March 1939: Germany invaded Czechoslovakia
Convinced public of the futility of appeasement
Stalin's response
Feared the West might strike a deal with Hitler
August 1939: the Nazi-Soviet pact of nonaggression
Stalin promised a share of Poland, Finland, and the Baltic States
The Outbreak of Hostilities and the Fall of France
Poland
Hitler demanded the abolition of the Polish Corridor
Poland stood firm, but Hitler attacked on September 1, 1939
Britain and France sent a warning to Germany
Germany ignored the demand
Britain and France declared war on September 3, 1939
The Blitzkrieg (lightning war)
Soviet troops invaded from the East
Poland fell in four weeks
The phony war
ScandinaviaGermans took Denmark in one day (spring 1940)
May 10, 1939: Germans moved through Belgium toward France
The fall of France
French army overwhelmed by the German advance
French army poorly organized
French refugees fled south
Dunkirkthree hundred thousand British and French troops evacuated to England
June 18, 1939: the Germans reached Paris
June 18, 1939: French surrendered
Germans occupied northern France
Southern France fell under the Vichy regime, headed by Marshall Pétain
The Free French movement
Not Alone: The Battle of Britain and the Beginnings of a Global War
The Battle of Britain (July 1940-June 1941)
Forty thousand civilians dead
Stalemate in the air
British resistance
Winston Churchill (1940-1945, 1951-1955)
Talented but arrogant
Language and personal diplomacy
Convinced FDR to break with American neutrality
Lend-Lease
A global war
The battle of the Atlantic
German submarines ("wolf packs") sank millions of tons of merchant shipping
British development of sonar and aerial reconnaissance
Breaking the German codes
North Africa
British needed to protect the Suez
British humiliation of Italian invasion force in Libya
Forced Germany to intervene
Afrika Korps and Erwin Rommel
British defeated Italian navy in the Mediterranean
Rommel's invasion of Egypt defeated at El Alamein (1942)
United States landed in French territories of Algeria and Morocco
Conference at Casablanca
Allies discussed the course of the war
Fate of French territories in North Africa
Japan
December 7, 1941: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
Set out to destroy U.S. fleet
Most American ships were out to sea
Japanese swept through British protectorate of Malaya
Singapore fell in December 1941
The invasion of the Philippines
Corregidor and the "Death March"
Japanese pressed on to Burma
William Slim reorganized imperial defenses
British and Indian troops defeated the Japanese invasion of India
The American navy
Rapid production of planes and ships
Chester Nimitz and William Halsey
Coral Sea, Midway, and Guadalcanal
"Island hopping"
The Rise and Ruin of Nations: Germany's War in the East and the Occupation of Europe
German victories
1940: Germany took Yugoslavia
Established a Croatian puppet state
Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria sided with Germany
Greece ultimately fell to the Germans
By the summer of 1941, Germany dominated the continent
Hitler's ultimate goal
Russia and the Ukraine
Ethnically inferior Slavs and Jews, governed by communists
Nazi-Soviet Pact as a matter of convenience for Hitler
June 22, 1941: Hitler authorized Operation Barbarossathe invasion of the Soviet Union
Stalin's purges had gotten rid of Russia's most capable commanders
Germans took thousands of prisoners
War against the Soviets characterized by ideology and racial hatred
Racial hatred
Cleansing occupied territories of "undesirable elements"
Hitler diverted his attack from Moscow to the industrial south
The Nazi New Order
A patchwork affair
Military governments (Poland and Ukraine)
Collaborators (France)
Allied fascists (Hungary)
The empire was meant to feed Germany and maintain morale and support
Occupied countries paid "occupation costs" in taxes, food, industrial production, and manpower
Puppet regimes
Norway and the Netherlands
Dedicated party of Nazis governed
At the same time, well-organized resistance movement
France
Collaboration ranged from simple survival tactics to active Nazi support
The isolation or deportation of French Jews
Communist activists
Had a long tradition of smuggling and resisting government
Became active guerrillas and saboteurs
The Free French and Charles de Gaulle
Yugoslavia
Fascist Croats against most Serbs
The Ustasha
Josip Broz (Tito) emerged as the leader of the Yugoslav resistance
Communist guerrilla army
Gained support of the Allies
Moral issues facing the occupied countries
The enemies of the Nazisthe "undesirables"
Racial War, Ethnic Cleansing, and the Holocaust
World War II as a racial war
Hitler had already outlined his war against the Untermensch (subhuman)
Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs
The purification of the German people
Fall 1939: Himmler directed massive population transfers
Ethnic Germans moved into the Reich
Poles and Jews were deported
A campaign of terror
Poles deported to forced-labor camps
Special death squads shot Jews in the streets
Rassenkampf (racial struggle)
Radicalized by the war itself
1938-1941: Nazis had no concerted plan to deal with undesirables
Forced emigration
Deportation to Madagascar
June 1941: The turning point Barbarossa
Nazis directed hatred against Slavs, Jews, and Marxists
A "war of extermination"
From systematic brutality to atrocities to murder
More than 5 million military prisoners marched to camps to work as slave labor
The Einsatzgruppen (death squads)
1941: "Pacification" had killed eighty-five thousand
April 1942: five hundred thousand killed
1943: 2.2 million Jews killed
The Warsaw and Lodz ghettodeath and terror
The Holocaust
Nazis discussed plans for mass killings in death camps
The ghettos were sealed
Poison gas vans
Auschwitz-Birkenau
Systematic annihilation of Jews and Gypsies
1942-1944: one million killed
Anonymous slaughter?
People were tortured, beaten, and executed publicly
Death marches
Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Hamburg
Ordinary Germans obeying orders
Who knew?
Extermination involved the knowledge and cooperation of many not directly involved in killing
Most who suspected the worst were terrified and powerless
The Jewish Problem
Many Europeans believed there was a problem to be solved
Nazis tried to conceal the death camps
What of other governments?
Vichy France required Jews to wear special identification
Italians participated less actively
Hungarian government dragged its feet when it came to deportation
Little resistance seemed to be possible
Rebellions at Auschwitz and Treblinka
Warsaw ghetto uprising (1943)
Eighty percent of the residents had been deported
Small Jewish underground movement
Fifty-six thousand Jews were killed
Human costs
4.1-5.7 million Jews killed
Some long-standing Jewish communities were annihilated
A new Europe?
Total War: Home Fronts, the War of Production, Bombing and "the Bomb"
War demanded massive resources and a national commitment
Wartime profits and the "dance of the millions"
Germany and Japan robbed local areas of resources
United States, Britain, and Soviet Union
Long work shifts
Effects on women and the family
Rationing
Production
Propaganda campaigns encouraged the production of war equipment
Patriotism, communal interests, and a common stake in winning the war
Allies built tanks, ships, and airplanes by the tens of thousands
Germany was less efficient in the use of workers and resources
Pet projects of the Nazis expended time and money
New targets
Centers of industry as military targets
American and British strategic bombing
For the British, a war of retribution
For the Americans, grinding down Germany without sacrificing too many Allied lives
The Dresden firebombing
The race to build the bomb
Nuclear fission and the chain reaction
British passed technical information on to American scientists
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954)
Built the first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago in December 1942
German experiments
Best specialists were Jews or anti- Nazis now working for the Allies
Lacked crucial bits of technical information
The Manhattan Project
Managing the effort to build an American atomic bomb
Los Alamos, New Mexico (1943)
Laboratory that brought together most capable nuclear physicists
Robert Oppenheimer (1904- 1967) placed in charge of the project
First atomic test on July 16, 1945, near Los Alamos
Great Crusades: The Allied Counterattack and the Dropping of the Atomic Bomb
The Nazi penetration of the Soviet Union
The siege of Leningrad
The Eastern Front
Changes in the character of war
War to save the Russian motherland (rodina)the Russian will to survive
Victory during the "General Winter"took its toll on Nazi supplies
Astonishing recovery of Soviet army
Whole industries were rebuilt
Whole populations moved to work in new factories
Soviets found the Blitzkrieg predictable
The turning point1943
Germans aimed an all-out assault on Stalingrad
Drawn into bitter house-to-house fighting with Soviet snipers
Stalingrad destroyed
With supplies low, the Russian armies surrounded the Germans in the city
January 1943: German surrender
Six thousand of two hundred and fifty thousand Germans survived
One million Soviet deaths
Soviet offensives
Kursk (1943)
Six thousand tanks and 2 million men in battle lasting six weeks
German army was crushed
The leadership of Grigori Zhukov
Ukraine back in Soviet hands, Romania knocked out of the war
Soviet victories in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
The Western Front
Stalin pressured the Allies to open a second front in the West
The Allied invasion of Sicily
Mussolini surrendered in summer 1943
The Normandy invasion (June 6, 1944)
The liberation of Paris (August 14, 1944)
The battle of the Bulge (December 1944)
Allies crossed the Rhine in April 1945
Germans preferred to surrender to the Americans or British rather than face the Russians
Soviets entered Berlin on April 21, 1945
Hitler committed suicide in his bunker beneath the Chancellery on April 30, 1945
Germany surrendered unconditionally on May 7
The war in the Pacific
British, Indian, and Nepalese troops liberated Rangoon (Burma)
Australians recaptured Dutch East Indies
Okinawa fell to the Americans (June 1945)
Chinese communists and nationalists pushed the Japanese back on Hong Kong
Soviet forces marched through Manchuria to Korea
United States, Britain, and China called on Japan to surrender or be destroyed on July 26
B-29s began systematic bombing of Japanese cities
Japan refused to surrender
The decision to drop the bomb
Was it necessary? Japan had already been beaten
Harry Truman
August 6, 1945: Hiroshima, August 9: Nagasaki
Japan surrendered unconditionally on August 14, 1945
Conclusion
A new world ravaged by war
Western imperialism
Mass killing
Technology, genocide, and global war