Chapter 26: THE DEFEAT OF THE...

Chapter 26: THE DEFEAT OF THE AXIS:

CHAPTER 26: Objectives

o We will examine the key battles that

led to the defeat of the Axis powers

in Europe.

o We will examine the key battles of

the Pacific front.

o We will examine the development of

the Atomic bomb and the reasoning

of why the weapon was used.

Psa_68:30 Rebuke the company

of spearmen, the multitude of the

bulls, with the calves of the

people, till every one submit

himself with pieces of silver:

scatter thou the people that

delight in war.

Introduction:

o By the middle of the 1943, America

and its allies had succeeded in

stopping the Axis advanced both in

Europe and in the Pacific.

o Now they were in the offensive.

The Liberation of France:

o By early 1944, American and British bombers were attacking German industrial installations around the clock.

o In one incident in Dresden, bombing resulted in a firestorm that destroyed three-fourths of the previously undamaged city.

o Approximately 135,000 civilians were killed.


o Military leaders claimed that the

bombing destroyed industrial

facilities, demoralized the population

and cleared the way for the great

Allied invasion of France planned for

the late spring.


o An enormous invasion force had been

gathering for almost two years almost 3

million troops, and perhaps the greatest

array of naval vessels and armaments

ever assembled in one place.

o On the morning of June 6, 1944, D-Day,

General Dwight D. Eisenhower the

Supreme Commander of Allied forces

sent this vast armada into action.


o The landing came not at the

narrowest part of the English

Channel, where the Germans had

expected and prepared for it but

along sixty miles of the Cotentin

Peninsula on the coast of Normandy.


o While airplanes and battleships off-shore bombarded the Nazi defenses.

o 4,000 vessels landed troops and supplies on the beach of American, British and Canadian troops

o (Three divisions of paratroopers had been dropped behind the German lines the night before, the scene of great confusion, to seize critical roads and bridges for the push inland).


o Fighting was intense along the coast but because but the superior manpower and equipment of the allied forces gradually prevailed.

o Within a week the German forces had been dislodged from virtually the entire Normandy Coast.

o American, British, and Canadian troops gained a foothold in France.


o With the efforts of General Omar Bradley and George S. Patton, the allies after a slow month of progress began their thrust to the heart of France.

o By August 25, 1944, Free French forces liberated the city of Paris from German occupation.

o Germans were almost entirely driven out of France and Belgium.


o The great Allied Drive came to a halt however, at the Rhine River in the face of a firm line of German Defenses, and a period of cold weather, rain and floods.

o In mid-December, German forces did a desperate counterattack but were finally stopped at a town called Bastogne.

o The battle ended serious German resistant in the West.


o In early Spring of 1945, British field

Marshall Bernard Montgomery,

commander of Allied ground operations

on D-Day and after, pushed into

northern Germany with a million troops,

while Bradley’s army sweeping towards

central Germany.


o The German resistance was now

broken on both fronts.

o American forces were moving

eastward faster than they had

anticipated and could have

beaten the Russian to Berlin and

Prague.


o Instead, the American and British

high commands decided to halt the

advance along the Elbe River in

central Germany to await the

Russians.

o That decision enabled the Soviets to

occupy eastern Germany and

Czechoslovakia.


o On April 30, with Soviet forces on the

outskirts of Berlin, Adolf Hitler killed

himself in his bunker.

o May 8, 1945, the remaining German

forces surrendered unconditionally which

was called V-E (Victory in Europe) Day

prompted great celebrations in Western

Europe and in the United States but

Japan still remained.

The Pacific Offensive:

o In February 1944, American naval forces

under Admiral Chester Nimitz won a

series of victories in the Marshall

Islands and cracked the outer perimeter

of the Japanese Empire.

o Within a mouth, the navy had destroyed

other vital Japanese bastions.


o Japanese shipping was crippled by American submarines and the Japanese domestic economy led to food rationing and a gasoline shortage.

o America hoped that China would aid in fighting the Chinese but Chiang Kai-Shek the Chinese premier was more concerned with fighting the Communists rather than focus on the Japanese, much to American frustration.


o In Mid-June 1944 an enormous American armada stuck the heavily fortified Mariana Islands and, after some of the bloodiest operations of war captured Tinian, Guam, and Saipan, 1,350 miles from Tokyo.

o On October 20, General MacArthur’s troops landed on Leyte Island in the Philippines.


o As the American forces pushed

closer to Japan itself, the Japanese

used their entire fleet against the

Allied invaders in three major

encounters which together

constituted the decisive Battle of

Leyte Gulf, the largest naval

engagement in history.


o American forces held off the Japanese onslaught and sank four Japanese carriers, all but destroying Japan’s capacity to continue a serious naval war.

o But Japanese resistance remained fierce.

o In the Battle of Iwo Jima, the United States Marine Corps suffered the costliest battle in its history with over 25,000 casualties.


o The Battle of Okinawa, an island only 370 miles South of Japan was further evidence of the strength of the Japanese resistance in those last desperate months.

o Week after week, the Japanese sent kamikaze suicide planes against American and British ships sacrificing 3,500 of them while inflicting greater damage.


o Japanese troops on shore launched desperate nighttime attacks on the American lines.

o The United States and its allies suffered nearly 50,000 casualties before finally capturing Okinawa in late June 1945.

o More than 100,000 Japanese died in the siege.


o An expectation that the invasion of Japan itself would be bitter.

o But such an invasion might not be necessary.

o The Japanese had almost no ships or planes left with which to fight.

o Japanese industrial bases were destroyed by constant bombardments and civilians were being killed in great number because of the bombardment.


o Moderates including Emperor Hirohito

sought to find a way for peace but could

not persuade military leaders to give up

the fight.

The Manhattan Project:

o Reports had reached the United

States in 1939 that Nazi scientists

had taken the first step toward the

creation of an atomic bomb.

o The United States and Britain

immediately began a race to develop

the weapon before the Germans did.


o Albert Einstein warned FDR that the

Germans were developing atomic

weapons and that the United States

must begin trying to do the same.

o The effort to build atomic weapons

centered on the use of uranium.


o Ultimately, the United States began

research and development for an

atom bomb, with a code name

known as the Manhattan Project.

o (Because it was devised in the

Manhattan Engineer District Office of

the Army Corps of Engineers).


o Over the next three years, the U.S. government secretly poured nearly $2 billion into the Manhattan Project.

o A massive scientific and technological effort conducted at hidden laboratories in Oak Ride, Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico; Hanford Washington and other sites.


o In the process of research and

development, plutonium proved capable

of providing a practical fuel for the

weapon.

o Scientists in Los Alamos, under the

direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer

were charged with the construction of

the actual bomb.


o Despite unforeseen problems, the scientists pushed ahead much faster than anyone had predicted.

o Even so, the war in Europe ended before they were ready to test the first weapon.

o Just before the dawn of July 16, 1945, in the desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico, the first atomic explosion in history happened.


o News of the explosion reached President Harry S. Truman (who had taken office in April on the death of Roosevelt) in Postsdam, Germany, where he was attending a conference of Allied leaders.

o He issued an ultimatum to the Japanese (signed jointly by the British) demanding that they surrender by August 3 or face complete devastation.


o The Japanese premier wanted to accept the Allied demand, but he still could not persuade the military leaders to agree.

o But the United States was committed to unconditional surrender.

o On August 6, 1945, a B-29, the Enola Gay dropped an atomic weapon on the Japanese industrial center at Hiroshima.

o 80,000 Civilians died and survivors faced the fall out of radiation effects.


o The Japanese Government stunned by the attack was at first unable to agree on a response.

o Two days later, on August 8, the Soviet Union declared War on Japan.

o And the following day, the United States sent another American plane to drop another atomic weapon this time on the city of Nagasaki causing more than 100,000 deaths.


o Finally the emperor intervened to break the stalemate in the cabinet and on August 14 the government announced that it was ready to give up.

o On September 2, 1945, on board the American battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay, the Japanese officials signed the articles of surrender.


o The most catastrophic war in the

history of mankind had come to an end.

o The United States had emerged not

only victorious but in a position of

unprecedented power, influence, and

prestige.

o Fourteen million combatants had died

in the struggle.


o As many as 40 million civilians may have died mostly from bombings, from disease and starvation, from genocidal campaigns of extermination.

o The U.S. had suffered only light casualties in light comparison with many other nations but the cost had still been high.

o 322,000 dead another 800,000 injured.


o But despite the sacrifices, the threat

of nuclear warfare between the

United States and the Soviet Union

would loom for many decades.

Chapter 26: THE DEFEAT OF THE...

Documents

Transcript of Chapter 26: THE DEFEAT OF THE...