Chapter 28: Global Configuration: World War II, 1939-1945

• Hitler wished to united Germans under one singular nation
  • Annexed Austria which violated Treaty of Versailles
• German troops occupied all of Czechoslovakia by 1939
• The Pact of Steel
  • May 1939: Hitler formed a military alliance with Mussolini
• Axis Powers of World War II were established by Tripartite Pact (1940)
  • Signed by Italy, Japan, and Germany
• Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939
  • Started World War II
  • British and France declared war against Germany on September 3, 1939
• Hitler postponed invasion of Europe due to bad weather
  • War started again in spring of 1940
• German forces attacked france on June 5, 1940
  • Paris fell 9 days later
  • France surrendered June 22, 1940
  • France was under Nazi occupation
• Hitler had no interests in going to war with Britain and offered the deal that Britain would keep its empire if it allowed him to conquer the continent
  • Britain refused to compromise causing Germany to prepare for an invasion of Britain
  • Germans bombed Britain until May 1941
  • 60,000 British civilians were killed with many buildings being demolished or severely damaged
• Hitler invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941 and attacked Greece
• Hungary, Romania, & Bulgaria joined the Axis Powers
• Hitler wanted to “purify” Europe of Jews
  • Did this through extermination labelled as the “Final Solution”
  • Extermination by gas was introduced after death by firing squads for the Jews was deemed too inefficient
  • First extermination camp was built in Chelmno, Poland in 1941
  • Jews, Gypsies, criminals, Communists, homosexuals, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political prisoners were sent to concentration camps
  • An average of 12,000 people were killed daily at Auschwitz (concentration camp)
  • About 75% of the European Jew population was killed
• Hitler saw the Soviet Union as Germany’s primary enemy
  • Invaded Soviet Union on June 22, 1941
• The United States, despite being neutral, helped the Allies after the fall of France in 1940
  • Provided Britain and the Soviet Union with weapons under the Lend-Lease Act in 1941
• Every new act of aggression by Japan to increase their empire caused tensions between Japan and the U.S. to increase
• In the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise air attack on the American naval base, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
  • Killed 2,400 people
  • Destroyed 150 planes and 19 ships
• U.S. declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941
• Germany and Italy declared war on U.S. on December 11, 1941
• Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, ending the war in Europe
• Japan continued to expand after Pearl Harbor
  • Air raids by America destroyed Japan’s navy, industrial plants, and parts of its cities
  • Japan wouldn’t surrender despite 200,000 people being killed in Tokyo in one week
  • U.S. President Harry Truman authorized the use of atomic bombs on Japan on August 6, 1945
  • Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) were bombed
  • Bombs killed over 100,000 people with radiation from bombs continuing to kill people long after they were dropped
  • Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945
• The Big Three
  • Leaders of the three major allies of World War II who coordinated defeat of Germany and Japan and negotiated post-war settlements
  • Churchill (Britain)
  • Stalin (Soviet Union)
  • Roosevelt, later Truman (U.S.)
• Around 50 million people were killed, 35 million injured, and 3 million missing after World War II
  • 50% of deaths were those of civilians
• The total cost of war was over $1 Trillion

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