World War IIin Images

WWII in Europe and Asia: 1939-1945

U.S. in WWII: 1941-1945

What was the cause of World War II?

a. Germany, Japan, and Italy trying to take over land.b. people trying to save the Jews from Hitler’s gas chambers.c. an assassination that was blamed on the wrong group.d. Hitler attempting to turn Europe communist.

Hitler’s “Lebensraum” – living space

Japan’s growing empire

Fascist dictatorships

• Adolf Hitler in Germany• Benito Mussolini in Italy

• FASCISM: form of government marked by the state’s assumed “right” to control individuals, usually through a dictatorship; usually highly nationalistic.

Who were the belligerents?

• ALLIES:• Great Britain aka United

Kingdom• France (taken out early in the war)

• China• USSR aka Soviet Union

(joined in 1941)

• USA (joined in 1941)

• More than a dozen other countries

• AXIS• Germany• Italy• Japan

What was the U.S.’ role at the beginning?A. neutralityB. declaration of war against GermanyC. declaration of war against JapanD. helping the Allies with weapons and equipment

What brought us into the war?

• Our stand against Japan’s aggression in China etc. included cutting off oil supplies, freezing Japanese assets in U.S. banks, etc.

• We set up negotiations with Japan, but as these were going on, they attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. FDR called this “a day that will live in infamy.”

• We then declared war.

War on Two Fronts

• North Africa/Europe• Asia

The Home Front – Total War

• Women working in industrial jobs

• Rationing

Japanese internment• Shortly after the attack on Pearl

Harbor, FDR issued Executive Order 9066, mandating that Japanese-American citizens on the West Coast were to be moved out of “military zones” which included the states along the Pacific Coast. More than 120,000 people were held in internment camps until 1945.

• Congress has since declared this a violation of those people’s rights, and two presidents have formally apologized for the internment.

The Big Three – Churchill, FDR, Stalin

Preparing for Peace – the Big Three at Yalta, on the Crimea (Ukraine)

What’s up with the USSR?• Before the war started, Hitler and Stalin signed a

NON-AGGRESSION PACT, agreeing not to attack each other.

• Possibly because he’d failed at taking over Britain, Hitler decided he DID want to invade the USSR after all in 1941.

• This brought the U.S.S.R. into the war on the side of the ALLIES. This was an awkward partnership because we had STRONG disagreements over communism and the way the Russian people were treated.

During the Allies’ liberation of Europe, we discovered the death camps. Twenty-three Nazis who had played key roles in the

holocaust and the war were tried for war crimes in Nuremburg, Germany. Twelve were sentenced to death.

Sympathy for the plight of the Jews (and guilt over our unwillingness to take in Jews who were fleeing during the early

stages of German aggression) led to the support of a Jewish homeland, Israel, established in 1948.

Ending the War with Japan

• Island-hopping• Attack the mainland?• Harry S Truman and the

Manhattan Project• Dropping the atom

bomb: Hiroshima August 6, 1945; Nagasaki August 9, 1945

• Japan surrendered August 15, 1945.

Allied occupations bring on the Cold War

• http://warchronicle.com/numbers/WWII/deaths.htm