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WORLD WAR IINotes

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Versailles treaty created resentment

War Guilt Clause. Reparations. Lost territory. Army reduced Navy reduced Not allowed have airplanes Demilitarised Rhineland Danzig corridor. Danzig given to Poland

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Hitler comes to power

Use SA to attack political opponents. Night of long knives Rohm killed SA not

needed anymore. Uses the political system to win votes. Rich industrialists give money. 1929 wall street crash Germany broke

print money. Nazi look like they are organised.

Fear of communism Hitler against these. Hitler vows to dismantle Versailles treaty

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Road to war

Starts to build up army in 1933 1934 Saar Plebiscite. 1936March into demilitarised Rhineland

unopposed. 1938 Union With Austria Anschluss.

September 1938 Munich conference Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia handed to Germany. (Peace in out Time).

Appeasement. March 1939 Takes over the rest of

Czechoslovakia. Britain & France guarantee Poland.

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Nazi Soviet Non aggression pact, secretly divide up Poland.

September 1, 1939 Invade Poland Britain & France declare war on Germany.

6 Months of inaction called phoney war. Denmark & Norway conquered April

1940. May 1940 Invasion of France through

Ardennes by passing Maginot line.

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British and French forces defeated and are evacuated at Dunkirk.#

Lend and lease USA loans weapons to GB across north Atlantic in convoys. Had to get by German U Boats called Battle of the Atlantic.

Enigma code broken British could read German messages to their submarines.

Operation ‘Sea lion’ Germany prepares to invade Britain.

Battle of Britain Germans try to wipe out RAF but fail. Blitz Germans start to bomb British Cities London,

Coventry, Liverpool. Ends when they start to invade Russia

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Turning point.

December 1941, USA enters the war following Japanese surprise attack on Pearl harbour

Late 1942 Germans defeated in North Africa at the battle of El Alamein.

Germany invades Russia Operation Barbarossa. Russians fight back. At Stalingrad Nazi defeated. Also defeated at Battle of Kursk greatest tank battle in history.

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Anzio Bridgehead 1944 Allies invade Italy rout Germans.

Normandy and D day June 1944 allies land in France and start to drive the Germans back to their own borders.

Russians invade at the same time from the east. Germans loose ground.

Hitler commits suicide April 1945.

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May 1945 Germans surrender under Admiral Donitz.

Japan was defeated by USA at the battle of midway wiped out the Japanese fleet and in August 1945 they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrender war is over