The Third Reich experienced its first military defeat in the Battle of Britain, in which the Royal Air Force, during the summer and fall of , prevented the German air force from gaining the air superiority necessary for an invasion of Britain. Consequently, Hitler postponed the invasion.
On June 22, , negating their non-aggression pact, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Eagerness to realize his long-held dream caused Hitler to gamble everything on a quick military campaign. He had anticipated victory within three months, but effective Soviet resistance and the early onset of winter stopped German advances.
Shops had limited supplies of food and what was available was often rationed. People built air raid shelters in their gardens and windows and doors had to be blacked out, while gas masks were carried for protection in case of a possible gas attack.
A definitive account of the build up and first few months of the Second World War is captured in the book, Outbreak While at sea, the Battle of the Atlantic 3 September to 8 May was arguably the pivotal campaign of the war, and the longest.
The early battles in the Atlantic heavily favoured the Germans, as they used their submarines U-boats to sneak up on British ships and sink them with torpedoes. The book also covers the intelligence of the Bletchley Park intercepts and how breaking German secret codes played an important part in the battle and the rest of the war.
In July the Royal Air Force fought back in the Battle of Britain, in which they lost planes and more than pilots. By early September , the German air force changed its strategy, concentrating now on bombing British towns and cities. This was the Blitz — night after night, until May , German bombers attacked British cities, ports and industrial areas, leaving utter devastation and many civilians killed.
In mid, Allied naval forces began an aggressive counterattack against Japan, involving a series of amphibious assaults on key Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. The approach of winter, along with dwindling food and medical supplies, spelled the end for German troops there, and the last of them surrendered on January 31, Soviet troops soon advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, while Hitler gathered his forces to drive the Americans and British back from Germany in the Battle of the Bulge December January , the last major German offensive of the war.
An intensive aerial bombardment in February preceded the Allied land invasion of Germany, and by the time Germany formally surrendered on May 8, Soviet forces had occupied much of the country.
Hitler was already dead, having died by suicide on April 30 in his Berlin bunker. President Harry S. Post-war Germany would be divided into four occupation zones, to be controlled by the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and France. Heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima February and Okinawa April-June , and fears of the even costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize the use of a new and devastating weapon.
Developed during a top secret operation code-named The Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb was unleashed on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. On August 15, the Japanese government issued a statement declaring they would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and on September 2, U.
Although more than 1 million African Americans served in the war to defeat Nazism and fascism, they did so in segregated units. The same discriminatory Jim Crow policies that were rampant in American society were reinforced by the U. Black servicemen rarely saw combat and were largely relegated to labor and supply units that were commanded by white officers. There were several African American units that proved essential in helping to win World War II, with the Tuskegee Airmen being among the most celebrated.
But the Red Ball Express, the truck convoy of mostly Black drivers were responsible for delivering essential goods to General George S. Yet, despite their role in defeating fascism, the fight for equality continued for African American soldiers after the World War II ended.
They remained in segregated units and lower-ranking positions, well into the Korean War , a few years after President Truman signed an executive order to desegregate the U.
World War II proved to be the deadliest international conflict in history, taking the lives of 60 to 80 million people, including 6 million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Rearmament and militarization provided appealing avenues for Germans seeking some means to reassert their national pride. Only later would the world learn that those intentions revolved around the methodical military conquest of Europe from the center outward, a process one historian of the Second World War has likened to eating an artichoke leaf by leaf from the inside out.
That conquest began with the German invasion of Poland in and the attack on France and the Low Countries six months later. Politicians in Britain, France, and the United States For more information Weinberg, Gerhard.
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