World War II: Resistance Movements & Major Battles

1. NEW ORDER • Exploited industrial and agricultural potential of non-German land to aid German economy • Requisitioned food from conquered regions • Made forced laborers of conquered people • Ruled by force and terror • Symbolized by prison cell, firing squad, torture chamber, and concentration camp

2. RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS • Resistance movements became stronger in conquered countries as Nazi barbarism intensified • Rescued downed airmen, radioed intelligence, and sabotaged German installations

3. RESISTANCE ACTIVITIES • Norwegians blew up the German stock of “heavy water” • Needed for atomic weapons research • Danish sabotaged railways and smuggled almost entire Jewish population into Sweden • Greeks blew up crucial viaduct for sending military supplies to North Africa • After D-Day, French delayed movement of German reinforcements and liberated sections of the country • Belgians captured vital port of Antwerp

4. POLISH RESISTANCE • Numbered 300,000 at is height • Reported on German troop movements and interfered with supplies destined for Eastern Front • Staged full-scale revolt in August 1944 against Germans in Warsaw • Appealed to Soviet troops for help but the Red Army did nothing • Polish underground surrendered after 63 days of fighting and the Nazis destroyed Warsaw

5. YUGOSLAVIAN RESISTANCE • Headed by Josef Broz • Better known as “Tito” • Moscow-trained, intelligent, and courageous • Disciplined fighting force that tied down a huge German army and ultimately liberated country from Nazi rule

6. JEWISH RESISTANCE • Emerged in Eastern Europe but suffered from handicaps • Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and others would not support them and sometimes even denounced them to Nazis • Warsaw Ghetto Uprising • Spring 1943 • Armed with only a few guns and homemade bombs • Fought Germans for several weeks

7. RESISTANCE IN ITALY AND GERMANY • Italian partisans helped liberate Italy after Allied landing in 1943 • Army officers plotted to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944 • Headed by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg • Hitler escaped serious injury • In retaliation, 5000 suspected anti-Nazis were tortured and executed

8. JAPAN • Had begun full-scale war against China in 1937 • War initially went well • Japan captured most important cities and seaports • Inflicted heavy casualties on Chinese forces • Engaged in atrocities • “Rape of Nanking” • Forced government of Chaing Kai’shek to withdraw to Chungking

9. PEARL HARBOR • Japan planned to take over French Indochina, British Burma and Malaya, and Dutch Indonesia • In order to obtain oil, rubber, tin, and rice • Knowing that the U.S would resist this plan, Japanese leaders decided on a quick strike against the American Pacific Fleet • Struck on December 7, 1941 at naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii • US lost 17 ships (7 battleships), 188 planes, and 2403 men • U.S. declared war against Japan the next day • Germany declared war on the U.S. several days later

10. JAPANESE EMPIRE

11. NAZI EMPIRE IN EUROPE MIDWAY STALINGRAD EL ALAMEIN

12. BATTLE OF MIDWAY • June 4, 1942 • Japan sought to destroy what remained of U.S. Pacific Fleet • Battle waged entirely by aircraft carrier-based planes • U.S. won • Destroyed 4 Japanese aircraft carriers • Downed 322 Japanese planes • Japan loses initiative

13. BATTLE OF STALINGRAD • Germans renew offensive in Russia in Spring of 1942 • Goal was to capture Stalingrad • Epic battle • Commander of German 6th army, General Friedreich Paulus, asks permission to withdraw in November 1943 • Hitler refuses permission • Remnants of 6th army surrender on February 2, 1943 • Germans lost 260,000 men and had another 110,000 taken prisoner • Momentum of German invasion is lost

14. BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN • General Erwin Rommel drives British out of Lybia and tries to capture Egypt and Suez Canal • Although short of supplies, Rommel moves on Egypt in early 1942 • Stopped at Battle of El Alamein by British 8th army commanded by General Bernard Montgomery • October 1942 • Victory followed by joint Anglo-American invasion of North Africa in November 1942 • Germans and Italians defeated by May 1943

15. INVASION OF ITALY • Allies invade Sicily in July 1943 • Italians force Mussolini to resign and new government surrenders in September 1943 • Germany sends troops to Italy to halt Allied advance • Intense fighting that would last for the rest of the war • Mussolini captured and executed by Italian partisans in April 1945

16. D-DAY (JUNE 6, 1944) • Allies land on beaches of Normandy • 2 million men and 5000 ships • Germans caught by surprise • Despite stubborn German resistance on some beaches, all beaches were secured • Men and equipment then flooded through these gateways • By the end of July 1944, 1,500,000 men had entered France and began to move east towards Germany

17. WINTER, 1944 • Paris rises up and is liberated • Brussels and Antwerp are liberated • Allied bombers hitting German factories and civilian centers • Battle of the Bulge • December 1944 • Germans launch counter-offensive designed to split Allied forces and regain Antwerp • Heroic defense by Americans at Bastogne stops German offensive • Allied drive towards Germany resumes • Red Army liberates Baltic states, Poland, Hungary and penetrates Germany itself by February 1945

18. THE END OF THE THIRD REICH • US troops enter Germany in March 1945 • Red army approaches Berlin in April 1945 • Hitler commits suicide in bunker • Blames entire war on Jews in “Last Testament” • Germany unconditionally surrenders on May 7, 1945

19. ISLAND-HOPPING IN THE PACIFIC • US forces attack strategic islands held by Japan beginning in 1942 • Japan defends islands tenaciously and contest every inch of land • 21,000 Japanese soldiers die on Iwo Jima (March 1945) • 100,000 die on Okinawa (April 1945)

20. DAWN OF THE ATOMIC AGE • US drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 • 78,000 people killed/60% of city demolished • Reason? • Truman said he ordered the attack to avoid US invasion of Japan and high casualties • Others argue that dropping the bomb was unnecessary because Japan was on verge of surrender • Some argue bomb was dropped because the Soviet Union was about to declare war on Japan • US drops second bomb on Nagasaki on August 9 • One day after USSR declared war on Japan • Japan surrenders two days later

21. LEGACY I • 50 million dead • Including 20 million Russians • Soviet Union annexed Baltic states, Poland took over East Prussia • Germans who had lived in these territories forced to leave • Material losses were enormous • Homeless and hungry people flooded roads everywhere

22. LEGACY II • US and USSR emerge as two most powerful states in the world • Dwarfing Great Britain, France, and Germany • Break-up of European colonial empires • GB gives up India in 1947 • France gives up Lebanon and Syria • Dutch abandon Indonesia • By the 1960s, virtually every former European colony had gained independence

23. LEGACY III • Nazi racial theories showed that the mind remained attracted to irrational beliefs • Nazi atrocities demonstrated that people could torture and kill with zeal and machine-like indifference • Nazi assault on reason and freedom demonstrated the precariousness of Western Civilization • Some intellectuals drifted into despair • Life was absurd, without meaning and out of control • Only a fool would still believe in progress or human goodness