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At the beginning Hitler didn't planned to conquenquer Norway as they had products exported from Norway's mines, but after some time he couldn't stand more it's Neutrality and ordered plans to invade it. On April 1 it was ordered to be done in April 9. That day, the major Norwaygian ports were occupied by the advance of the greman troops, and at the same time one parachute battalion took Oslo and Stavager airfields, and 800 aircrafts were threating the population.

At the same time, Denmark was occupied, by troopships covered by aircrafts to Cpenhague. They marked the frontier in Jutland. This communications were essential for their communications.

Allied troops (French and British) began to arrive at April fourteen, and after more than one month fighting, they retired again as it wasn't suitable, and it was finally invaded.

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The previous event wasn't that significant when on May 10the western powers were surprised by Hitler's stroke against Low countries Called Fall Gelb.

They sent General Wilhelm von Leeb’s Army Group C to stay in the Maginot line to divert French forces. Bock’s Army Group B were sent to the baasin of Maas River, and the group A went to the Ardennes. Army group B comprised Küchler’s 18th Army, with one armoured division and airborne support, to attack the Netherlands, and Reichenau’s 6th, with two armoured divisions, to advance over the Belgian plain.

Even that forces had to deal too with allies, they conquered very fast France and their neighbouring countries:

Netherlands sourrenders on May 15 (their goverment exilled to London)

Belgium: Lropoldo III surrendered 28 May (he wasn't supported by the goverment, that did the same and went to London)

After getting Belgium, German forces directed their attcks towards France. Taking advantage of the weak situation of the defenses in the Ardennes Forest, a region considered difficult for armored vehicles, the Germans managed to penetrate deep into French territory.

On June 14, 1940, Paris was occupied by Germany. A couple of weeks after that, on June 22, the French government that couldn't resist more signed an armistice with Germany at Compiègne. This agreement stablished France into a German-occupied zone in the northwest, but an unoccupied zone in the south, administered by the Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis.

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The second world war started on September the first, when Germany invaded Poland, it started by a nazi surprise attack by the german battleship Schleswig-Holstein. Many divissions and aereal forces commenced a coordinated attack across the German-Polish border.

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Germany was advanciong too much in just a few days, so Great Britain and France, supporting Poland, declared to Nazi Germany the war. In fact, this this did't helped poland.

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The Soviet union took advantage on their meeting with Germans on October 10. They tighted some of the northern countries: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, to admit Soviet garrisons onto their territories. That countries accepted that, but then Finland refused it, even though territorial compensation and the cessions offered by the Soviet union that it wanted the territories for its own strategic reasons. Finland’s armed forces amounted to about 200.000 troops in 10 divisions. The Soviets eventually brought aproximately 70 divisions to bear in their attack on Finland, with 1.000 tanks. Soviet troops attacked Finland on November 30, 1939.

The attacks continued, and on February the first, the Red army sent 14 divisions, and Finland saw itself pounded by a huge artillery and Bombardment, their counterattacks wre attempted by Soviet airforce... Finally, the Soviets managed fo pass the Karelian Isthmus, the poit in which Finland collpsed so in March 6 Finland surrended asking for peace, the terms were accepted about a week later: Finns gave the entire Karelian Isthmus, Viipuri, and their part of the Rybachy Peninsula to the Soviets.

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The Germans at this moment weren't only tightening around the Polish forces at southwest Vistula, but deeply penetrating through the east too.

As a result, the Polish forces were reduced to random efforts by individual troops when another blow fell: on September 17, 1939, Soviet forces attacked entering Poland from the east. The next day, their government and the high command went to the Romanian frontier on their way into exile.

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Warsaw Army, defense and armaments could hardly resist out against the Germans until September 28, passing through terror-bombings and artillery barrages that impacted and damaged impotant parts of the city and their people, without any regard for the civilian population. The last moment cosiderated from the Polish forces take place on October the 5, the date in which we consider this invasion ends.

The final figures were devastating for Poland: 700.000 prisoners taken by Germany, 70.000 soldier deaths and 130.000 wounded soldiers.

It was conquered by both Germany and Soviet Union, that met in Polish territories and greeted each others.

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Italy was't prepared for war when the firs attack took place, but their leader Benito Mussolini was ready to take any positive advantages from their paternship with Hitler.

The conquest of France finally conviced Mussolini, and they signed their pact of Steel with Hitler.

Once Italy had the alliance, they declared war to France and Great Britain.

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The Battle of Britain was the first military campaign that was fully in the air. After France defeat in June , Hitler planned Operation Sea Lion: a full-scale invasion of Britain. But, before this could happen, Germany needed to gain air strength. At the beginning , the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) launched a massive aerial assault on the Royal Air Force (RAF). Their objective was to destroy British air defenses, bomb key industrial and military targets, and afraiding population. At first, the Luftwaffe was focused on attacking coastal defenses and airfields. In September, the campaign shifted into the Blitz, a period of heavy bombing on cities like London. The courage and skill of RAF pilots, many of them came from other nations, played an essential role. By late October, Hitler called off the invasion plan: Germany had failed to achieve air superiority. The battle marked Nazi Germany’s first major defeat, showing that GB won't surrender easily.

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The german attack on Greece programmed for April 1 was moved because of the Belgrade Coup d' état, ha dicided that Yugoslavia was to be attacked and destroyed at the same time. Italy agreed to colaborate and Hungary and Bulgaria agreed to sent troops. On April 6 both Yugoslavia and Greece were invaded with 24 divisions and 1200 tanks.

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Operation Barbarossa, launched on June 22, Germany’s massive invasion of the Soviet Union, the largest military operation, with about three million German soldiers alongside forces from Finland, Romania, and other Axis allies, with the purpose of crushing Soviet resistance in a campaign that Hitler believed would be completed in some weeks. The German strategy was divided into three major army groups: Group North advancing towards Leningrad, Group Centre toward Moscow, and Group South aiming to seize Ukraine and the oil-rich Caucasus. At the beginning the Germans achieved enormous territorial gains and provoked losses on Soviet forces through surprise attacks,but as the campaign dragged into the Russian winter, logistical failures, and the brutal climate halted the German advance just outside Moscow, where a powerful Soviet counteroffensive in December 1941 marked the beginning of Germany’s failure on the Eastern Front and a crucialpoint in the war.

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On December 11,four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States, officially expanding WW2 into a global conflict.Even ifGermany was not obligated to enter the war under the terms of the Tripartite Pact unless Japan had been attacked first, Adolf Hitler chose to make the declaration, believing that the U.S. would become involved and hoping that Japan would reciprocate by attacking British positions in Asia and distracting American forces from Europe, the decision backfired, as the United States now mobilized its enormous industrial and military capacity against both Axis powers, uniting its population under a common cause and beginning a coordinated Allied war effort that would ultimately lead to Germany’s defeat, the declaration of war by Germany gave Roosevelt the justification to entervfully with American troops and resources in Europe.

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On July 2, the imperial conference decided to press Japan, even if there was a risk of war with UK and USA. On July 26, by a new agreement withVichy France, Japanese forces started occupying some bases in south Indochina. In this moment United states reacted vigorously by imposing an embargo on supplies of oil to Japan.

The negotiations with the Dutch of Indonesia decided that war must been undertaken.

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US continue pressing Japan and asking things that couldn't concede: retiring the pact of the Tripartite (which would had let them isolated ) and withdrawal of Japanese troops from hina and southeast Asia (a humiliating retreat from an overt commitment of four years’ standing) and an open- door regime for trade in china.

The secretary of the state Cordell Hull sent a note requiring to evacuate China and Indochina and to recognize no Chinese regime other than that of Chiang Kai-shek, Japan could see no point in continuing. As peace with US seemed impossible japan started to prepare their plans of war.

Japan programmed for December 7 a surprise attack to the Mmain US pacific Fleet in its base in Hawaiian Islands, that consisted in several light crusiers, battleships, combat plains, destroyers, submarines, etc.

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Learn about Japan's pre-World War II invasions, joining of the Axis powers, and attack on Pearl Harbor

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article

When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, the Japanese, despite a series of victorious battles, had still not brought their war in China to an end: on the one hand, the Japanese strategists had made no plans to cope with the guerrilla warfare pursued by the Chinese; on the other, the Japanese commanders in the field often disregarded the orders of the supreme command at the Imperial headquarters and occupied more Chinese territory than they had been ordered to take. Half of the Japanese Army was thus still tied down in China when the commitment of Great Britain and France to war against Germany opened up the prospect of wider conquests for Japan in Southeast Asia and in the Pacific. Japan's military ventures in China proper were consequently restricted rather more severely henceforth.

The German victories over the Netherlands and France in the summer of 1940 further encouraged the Japanese premier, Prince Konoe, to look southward at those defeated powers' colonies and also, of course, at the British and U.S. positions in the Far East. The island archipelago of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) along with French Indochina and British-held Malaya contained raw materials ( tin, rubber, petroleum) that were essential to Japan's industrial economy, and if Japan could seize these regions and incorporate them into the empire, it could make itself virtually self-sufficient economically and thus become the dominant power in the Pacific Ocean. Since Great Britain, single-handedly, was confronting the might of the Axis in Europe, the Japanese strategists had to reckon, primarily, with the opposition of the United States to their plans for territorial aggrandizement. When Japanese troops entered northern Indochina in September 1940 (in pursuance of an agreement extorted in August from the Vichy government of France), the United States uttered a protest. Germany and Italy, by contrast, recognized Japan as the leading power in the Far East by concluding with it the Tripartite, or Axis, Pact of September 27, 1940: negotiated by Japanese foreign minister Matsuoka Yosuke, the pact pledged its signatories to come to one another's help in the event of an attack "by a power not already engaged in war." Japan also concluded a neutrality pact with the U.S.S.R. on April 13, 1941.

On July 2, 1941, the Imperial Conference decided to press the Japanese advance southward even at the risk of war with Great Britain and the United States; and this policy was pursued even when Matsuoka was relieved of office a fortnight later. On July 26, in pursuance of a new agreement with Vichy France, Japanese forces began to occupy bases in southern Indochina.

This time the United States reacted vigorously, not only freezing Japanese assets under U.S. control but also imposing an embargo on supplies of oil to Japan. Dismay at the embargo drove the Japanese naval command, which had hitherto been more moderate than the army, into collusion with the army's extremism. When negotiations with the Dutch of Indonesia for an alternative supply of oil produced no satisfaction, the Imperial Conference on September 6, at the high command's insistence, decided that war must be undertaken against the United States and Great Britain unless an understanding with the United States could be reached in a few weeks' time.

General Tōjō Hideki, who succeeded Konoe as premier in mid-October 1941, continued the already desperate talks. The United States, however, persisted in making demands that Japan could not concede: renunciation of the Tripartite Pact (which would have left Japan diplomatically isolated); the withdrawal of Japanese troops from China and from Southeast Asia (a humiliating retreat from an overt commitment of four years' standing); and an open-door regime for trade in China. When Cordell Hull, the U.S. secretary of state, on November 26, 1941, sent an abrupt note to the Japanese bluntly requiring them to evacuate China and Indochina and to recognize no Chinese regime other than that of Chiang Kai-shek, the Japanese could see no point in continuing the talks. ( See Sidebar: Pearl Harbor and the "Back Door to War" Theory.)

Since peace with the United States seemed impossible, Japan set in motion its plans for war, which would now necessarily be waged not only against the United States but also against Great Britain (the existing war effort of which depended on U.S. support and the Far Eastern colonies of which lay within the orbit of the projected Japanese expansion) and against the Dutch East Indies (the oil of which was essential to Japanese enterprises, even apart from geopolitical considerations).

The evolving Japanese military strategy was based on the peculiar geography of the Pacific Ocean and on the relative weakness and unpreparedness of the Allied military presence in that ocean. The western half of the Pacific is dotted with many islands, large and small, while the eastern half of the ocean is, with the exception of the Hawaiian Islands, almost devoid of landmasses (and hence of usable bases). The British, French, American, and Dutch military forces in the entire Pacific region west of Hawaii amounted to only about 350,000 troops, most of them lacking combat experience and being of disparate nationalities. Allied air power in the Pacific was weak and consisted mostly of obsolete planes. If the Japanese, with their large, well-equipped armies that had been battle-hardened in China, could quickly launch coordinated attacks from their existing bases on certain Japanese-mandated Pacific islands, on Formosa ( Taiwan), and from Japan itself, they could overwhelm the Allied forces, overrun the entire western Pacific Ocean as well as Southeast Asia, and then develop those areas' resources to their own military-industrial advantage. If successful in their campaigns, the Japanese planned to establish a strongly fortified defensive perimeter extending from Burma in the west to the southern rim of the Dutch East Indies and northern New Guinea in the south and sweeping around to the Gilbert and Marshall islands in the southeast and east. The Japanese believed that any American and British counteroffensives against this perimeter could be repelled, after which those nations would eventually seek a negotiated peace that would allow Japan to keep her newly won empire.

Until the end of 1940 the Japanese strategists had assumed that any new war to be waged would be against a single enemy. When it became clear, in 1941, that the British and the Dutch as well as the Americans must be attacked, a new and daring war plan was successfully sponsored by the commander in chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku.

Yamamoto's plan prescribed two operations, together involving the whole strength of his navy, which was composed of the following ships: 10 battleships, six regular aircraft carriers, four auxiliary carriers, 18 heavy cruisers, 20 light cruisers, 112 destroyers, 65 submarines, and 2,274 combat planes. The first operation, to which all six regular aircraft carriers, two battleships, three cruisers, and 11 destroyers were allocated, was to be a surprise attack, scheduled for December 7 (December 8 by Japanese time), on the main U.S. Pacific Fleet in its base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. The rest of the Japanese Navy was to support the army in the " Southern Operation": 11 infantry divisions and seven tank regiments, assisted by 795 combat planes, were to undertake two drives, one from Formosa through the Philippines, the other from French Indochina and Hainan Island through Malaya, so as to converge on the Dutch East Indies, with a view to the capture of Java as the culmination of a campaign of 150 days-during which, moreover, Wake Island, Guam, the Gilbert Islands, and Burma should also have been secured as outer bastions, besides Hong Kong.

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World War II - World War II - Japanese policy, 1939-41: When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, the Japanese, despite a series of victorious battles, had still not brought their war in China to an end: on the one hand, the Japanese strategists had made no plans to cope with the guerrilla warfare pursued by the Chinese; on the other, the Japanese commanders in the field often disregarded the orders of the supreme command at the Imperial headquarters and occupied more Chinese territory than they had been ordered to take.

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The Battle of Midway, June 4-7, was a strategic naval battle in the Pacific between the Japanese Navy and the United States Navy. Continuing their victory at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese wanted to eliminate the U.S. as a Pacific power by atracting its aircraft carriers into a trap near the island of Midway, however, American cryptographers had broken Japanese codes and knew in advance both the date and location of the attack. In the battle that followed, U.S. bombers could sink four Japanese aircraft carriers shifting the balance of power in the Pacific. The victory wasgoing to be decissive later in the war, halting Japanese expansion and beginning a series of offensives that would lead lastly to Japan’s defeat.

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On August 23 the German Army launched a full-scale attack tothe Soviet city of Stalingrad, beginning one of the worst battles of WW2. Hitler was determined to get the city not only because of its value and position, but also hoping to humiliate Stalin by taking his namecity. Germany started progressing quickly, subjected the city to intense bombing, however, Soviet forces defended every street and building. By November, Soviet forcesbegan surrounding the German army in a massive counteroffensive called Operation Uranus. The battle turned into a brutal war with freezing temperatures, and constant fighting inside the city, finally leading to the surrender of the German Army in early 1943.

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Battle of Stalingrad, (July 17, 1942-February 2, 1943), successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Russia, U.S.S.R., during World War II. Russians consider it to be one of the greatest battles of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict. It stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union and marked the turning of the tide of war in favour of the Allies.

Stretching about 30 miles (50 km) along the banks of the Volga River, Stalingrad was a large industrial city producing armaments and tractors and was an important prize in itself for the invading German army. Capturing the city would cut Soviet transport links with southern Russia, and Stalingrad would then serve to anchor the northern flank of the larger German drive into the oil fields of the Caucasus. In addition, seizing the city that bore the name of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin would serve as a great personal and propaganda victory for Adolf Hitler. German war planners hoped to achieve that end with Fall Blau ("Operation Blue"), a proposal that Hitler assessed and summarized in Führer Directive No. 41 on April 5, 1942. Hitler's goal was to eliminate Soviet forces in the south, secure the region's economic resources, and then wheel his armies either north to Moscow or south to conquer the remainder of the Caucasus. The offensive would be undertaken by Army Group South under Field Marshal Fedor von Bock. On June 28, 1942, operations began with significant German victories.

On July 9 Hitler altered his original plan and ordered the simultaneous capture of both Stalingrad and the Caucasus. Army Group South was split into Army Group A (under Field Marshal Wilhelm List) and Army Group B (under Bock). Within days, Bock was replaced at the head of Army Group B by Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs. The division of forces placed tremendous pressure on an already-strained logistical support system. It also caused a gap between the two forces, allowing Soviet forces to escape encirclement and retreat to the east. As Army Group A captured Rostov-na-Donu, it penetrated deeply into the Caucasus (Operation Edelweiss). Army Group B made slow progress toward Stalingrad (Operation Fischreiher). Hitler intervened in the operation again and reassigned Gen. Hermann Hoth 's Fourth Panzer Army from Army Group B to Army Group A to help in the Caucasus.

Stalin and the Soviet high command responded to the summer offensive by forming the Stalingrad Front with the Sixty-second, Sixty-third, and Sixty-fourth Armies, under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko. The Eighth Air Army and Twenty-first Army were also placed under his command. While the initial Soviet response to Fall Blau was to maintain an orderly withdrawal and thus avoid the massive encirclements and troop losses that had characterized the early months of Operation Barbarossa, on July 28 Stalin issued Order No. 227, decreeing that the defenders at Stalingrad would take "Not One Step Back." He also refused the evacuation of any civilians, stating that the army would fight harder knowing that they were defending residents of the city.

For his part, Hitler continued to directly intervene at the operational level, and in August he ordered Hoth to turn around and head toward Stalingrad from the south. By the end of August, the Fourth Army's northeastward advance against the city was converging with the eastward advance of the Sixth Army, under Gen. Friedrich Paulus, with 330,000 of the German army's finest troops. The Red Army, however, put up a determined resistance, yielding ground only very slowly and at a high cost to the Sixth Army as it approached Stalingrad.

On August 23 a German spearhead penetrated the city's northern suburbs, and the Luftwaffe rained incendiary bombs that destroyed most of the city's wooden housing. The Soviet Sixty-second Army was pushed back into Stalingrad proper, where, under the command of Gen. Vasily I. Chuikov, it made a determined stand. Meanwhile, the Germans' concentration on Stalingrad was steadily draining reserves from their flank cover, which was already strained by having to stretch so far-400 miles (650 km) on the left (north), as far as Voronezh, and 400 miles again on the right (south), as far as the Terek River. By mid-September the Germans had pushed the Soviet forces in Stalingrad back until the latter occupied only a 9-mile- (15-km-) long strip of the city along the Volga, and that strip was only 2 or 3 miles (3 to 5 km) wide. The Soviets had to supply their troops by barge and boat across the Volga from the other bank. At that point Stalingrad became the scene of some of the fiercest and most-concentrated fighting of the war; streets, blocks, and individual buildings were fought over by many small units of troops and often changed hands again and again. The city's remaining buildings were pounded into rubble by the unrelenting close combat. The most-critical moment came when on October 14 the Soviet defenders had their backs so close to the Volga that the few remaining supply crossings of the river came under German machine-gun fire. The Germans, however, were growing dispirited by heavy losses, fatigue, and the approach of winter.

The turning point of the battle came with a huge Soviet counteroffensive, code-named Operation Uranus (November 19-23), which had been planned by Generals Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, Aleksandr Mikhailovich Vasilevsky, and Nikolay Nikolayevich Voronov. It was launched in two spearheads, some 50 miles (80 km) north and south of the German salient whose tip was at Stalingrad. The counteroffensive utterly surprised the Germans, who thought the Soviets incapable of mounting such an attack. The operation was a "deep penetration" maneuver, attacking not the main German force at the forefront of the battle for Stalingrad-the 250,000 remaining men of the Sixth Army and Fourth Panzer Army, both formidable foes-but instead hitting the weaker flanks. Those flanks were vulnerably exposed on the open steppes surrounding the city and were weakly defended by undermanned, undersupplied, overstretched, and undermotivated Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian troops. The attacks quickly penetrated deep into the flanks, and by November 23 the two prongs of the attack had linked up at Kalach, about 60 miles (100 km) west of Stalingrad; the encirclement of the two German armies in Stalingrad was complete. The German high command urged Hitler to allow Paulus and his forces to break out of the encirclement and rejoin the main German forces west of the city, but Hitler would not contemplate a retreat from the Volga River and ordered Paulus to "stand and fight." With winter setting in and food and medical supplies dwindling, Paulus's forces grew weaker. Hitler declared that the Sixth Army would be supplied by the Luftwaffe, but the air convoys could deliver only a fraction of the necessary supplies.

In mid-December Hitler ordered one of the most-talented German commanders, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, to form a special army corps to rescue Paulus's forces by fighting its way eastward (Operation Winter Tempest), but Hitler refused to let Paulus fight his way westward at the same time in order to link up with Manstein. That fatal decision doomed Paulus's forces, since Manstein's forces then simply lacked the reserves needed to break through the Soviet encirclement single-handedly. The Soviets then resumed the offensive (Operation Saturn, begun on December 16) to shrink the pocket of encircled Germans, to head off any further relief efforts, and to set the stage for the final capitulation of the Germans in Stalingrad. The Volga River was now frozen over solid, and Soviet forces and equipment were sent over the ice at various points within the city. Hitler exhorted the trapped German forces to fight to the death, going so far as to promote Paulus to field marshal (and reminding Paulus that no German officer of that rank had ever surrendered). With Soviet armies closing in as part of Operation Ring (begun January 10, 1943), the situation was hopeless. The Sixth Army was surrounded by seven Soviet armies. On January 31 Paulus disobeyed Hitler and agreed to give himself up. Twenty-two generals surrendered with him, and on February 2 the last of 91,000 frozen starving men (all that was left of the Sixth and Fourth armies) surrendered to the Soviets.

The Soviets recovered 250,000 German and Romanian corpses in and around Stalingrad, and total Axis casualties (Germans, Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians) are believed to have been more than 800,000 dead, wounded, missing, or captured. Of the 91,000 men who surrendered, only some 5,000-6,000 ever returned to their homelands (the last of them a full decade after the end of the war in 1945); the rest died in Soviet prison and labour camps. On the Soviet side, official Russian military historians estimate that there were 1,100,000 Red Army dead, wounded, missing, or captured in the campaign to defend the city. An estimated 40,000 civilians died as well.

In 1945 Stalingrad was officially proclaimed a Hero City of the Soviet Union for its defense of the motherland. In 1959 construction began of an enormous memorial complex, dedicated to "the Heroes of the Stalingrad Battle," on Mamayev Hill, a key high ground in the battle that dominates the city's landscape today. The memorial was finished in 1967; its focal point is The Motherland Calls, a great 52-metre- (172-foot-) high statue of a winged female figure holding a sword aloft. The tip of the sword reaches 85 metres (280 feet) into the air. In the Mamayev complex is the tomb of Chuikov, who went on to lead the Soviet drive to Berlin and who died a marshal of the Soviet Union almost 40 years after the Battle of Stalingrad.

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Battle of Stalingrad | History, Summary, Location, Deaths, & Facts | Britannica

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Battle of Stalingrad, successful Soviet defense of the city of Stalingrad that was a turning point in favor of the Allies in World War II. Russians consider it to be one of the greatest battles of their Great Patriotic War, and most historians consider it to be the greatest battle of the entire conflict.

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British forces launched a huge offensive against the German and Italian troops in North Africa, near the Egyptian town of El Alamein. The Allies were trying to stop and reverse Axis expansion towards the Suez Canal and the Middle East. Montgomery had carefully prepared his army.

The 23 of October at the morning, the assault began with a heavy artillery barrage and continued by ground attacks, the battle w lasted arround two weeks, but finally the Axis forces were pushed back, forcing Rommel to retreat westward across Libya. This victory gave the Allies an advantage in North Africa and was the beginning of the ending for Axis control in the zone.

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Battles of El-Alamein | Significance, Map, Casualties, Montgomery, & Rommel | Britannica

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The Battles of El-Alamein were a pair of battles in World War II, fought from July 1–27 and October 23—November 11, 1942, pitting German and Italian against British, Australian, New Zealander, South African, and Indian forces in coastal central Egypt and resulting in a pivotal Allied victory.

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Mussolini and Hitler were already allied, and in September 27 they formed the Tripartite joint to Japan. Hitler had planned to conquest the Soviet union in 1943, but he decided to advance it to 1941, While preparing, he decided to extend his influence through countries as Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia.

While Hitler was focused on this, Mussolini decided to sent 7 divissions from Albania into a war from its own against Greece.

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United States and GB started Operation Torch on November 8. They aimed the territories controlled by France in noth Africa, Morocco and Algeria. The prupose was to protect them and prepare them for an advance that could push Axis forces out from Tunisia.
The Operation Torch included landings at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers, and mixed resistance from Vichy French forces, (who were quickly overwhelmed or switched sides). This was the first time US troops faced Axis powers in battle, and helped to pressure on Soviet forces fighting on the Eastern Front. The operation was successfull, as it showed the Allied cooperation and allowed for the buildup of forces that would later invade Italy and southern Europe.

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The fifth if July Nazi Germany launched Operation Citadel, trying to eliminate the Soviet salient around the city of Kursk (Russia). This was the beginning of the Battle of Kursk, the largest tank battle, in which approximately 6,000 tanks went (of course 2 million troops, and 4,000 aircraft, nearly 50 divisions with 900,000 troops and 2,700 tanks...) They wanted to sourround and destroy Soviet. However, the Soviets anticipated the attack and had constructed deep defensive lines, including extensive minefields and anti-tank fortifications,. The German advance met with all that resistance, and their progress was limited to some miles in the north and south. On July 12, the Soviets launched an enormus counteroffensive, that lead into an intense fighting. The Soviet forces could stop the German advance, and in August 23, they had recaptured importantcities like Orel and Kharkov.

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The operation Husky was the large-scale invasion of Sicily in July. In this event, American and British forces leaded on the southearn and southestern costs. Fighting the low resistence of the beginning, they could quickly start advancing inland. That invasion was finnally successful, wich meant the downfall of Mussolini, that was arrested in July 25, after a vote no confidence by the Fascist Grand Council. This also made Germany strenghthen its forces in Italy. Challenching battles would continue on Italian mainland.

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World War II - Allied Landings, Defeat of Axis | Britannica

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World War II - Allied Landings, Defeat of Axis: The success of the Sicilian operation and the fall of Mussolini led to a new turn of strategical thought that necessitated a new Anglo-U.S. conference, which took place in Quebec in mid-August 1943 and was code-named “Quadrant.”

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The prisoners of Treblinka (a Poland extermination camp) had an uprising against Germans. This camp was one of the camps whith the most exterminations as part of the "Final Solution."

The revolt was secretly planned by a group of prisioners that could steal weapons, rifles and grenades, from the camp armament. On August 2 at a signal given, the prisoners set parts of the camp launched their attack, with the prupose of destroying the facility and escapeing. In the chaos, about 300 prisoners managed to cross the perimeter of the camp; however, many were catched again or killed later. Even if it wasn't successful this meant a powerful act of resistance, highlighting the prisoners' resistence in the face of systematic extermination.

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United States launched its first major offensive in the Pacific Theater of World War II in August 7. The campaign began with amphibious landings by U.S. Marines on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida in the southern Solomon Islands, trying to prevent Japan threatening the rest if routes between the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. The primary objective was to achieve a nearly completed airfield on Guadalcanal, that would provide the Allies with a strategic base for further operations. The initial landings didn't had much resistance,so Marines could ensure the airfield fastly. However, the Japanese counterattacks by land, sea, and air in an attempt to retake the island, lead to a protracted and brutal campaign that lasted until February 1943.

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Battle of Guadalcanal, (August 1942-February 1943), series of World War II land and sea clashes between Allied and Japanese forces on and around Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. Along with the naval Battle of Midway (June 3-6, 1942), the fighting on Guadalcanal marked a turning point in favour of the Allies in the Pacific War.

The naval campaign at Guadalcanal

Landings in the southern Solomons and the Battle of Savo Island

On July 6, 1942, the Japanese moved a force consisting of troops and labourers to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and began constructing an airfield. The Allies recognized that land-based planes operating from this field would seriously menace bases in the New Hebrides and New Caledonia as well as Port Moresby in New Guinea. Immediate steps were taken to eject the Japanese, utilizing forces that were available in the South Pacific.

On August 7, 1942, some 6,000 men of the U.S. 1st Marine Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift, launched an amphibious assault on Guadalcanal and Florida Island, surprising Guadalcanal's 2,000 Japanese defenders. The landings were made with strong naval and air support and met with little initial resistance, and the airfield on Guadalcanal and the harbour on Florida Island were seized in the first 36 hours. The Marines named the airstrip Henderson Field, after Maj. Lofton Henderson, a Marine aviator who had perished while leading a bombing run at the Battle of Midway the previous month. Henderson Field would quickly become the centre of gravity for the conflict on Guadalcanal.

The Japanese reacted quickly, and just before 2:00 am on August 9 they struck hard at the Allied naval force supporting the operation. A force of Japanese cruisers and destroyers engaged the Allied fleet in a furious night battle that came to be called the Battle of Savo Island. The result was a disaster for the Allies. Over the course of roughly a half hour, the Japanese sank the U.S. cruisers Astoria, Quincy, and Vincennes and crippled the Australian cruiser Canberra while suffering negligible losses. Over the following months, some two dozen Japanese and Allied ships would be sunk in the waters to the north of Guadalcanal; the sea lane between Guadalcanal and Florida Island would subsequently be known to Allied sailors as Ironbottom Sound.

The Battles of the Eastern Solomons, Cape Esperance, and Santa Cruz

Japanese forces began gathering at Rabaul, New Britain, some 650 miles (roughly 1,050 km) northwest of Guadalcanal, and Vice Adm. Robert Ghormley responded by concentrating Task Force 61, under Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher, southeast of Guadalcanal. The carriers USS Enterprise and USS Saratoga and the battleship USS North Carolina were supported by numerous cruisers and destroyers, as well as land-based aircraft from Henderson Field. On August 24 contact was made with the powerful 1st Carrier Division under Nagumo Chūichi, and the Battle of the Eastern Solomons ensued. Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers from the Saratoga sank the Japanese light carrier Ryujo, and Saratoga dive-bombers seriously damaged the seaplane carrier Chitose. The Enterprise was struck by dive-bombers from the Japanese carrier Shokaku, and a fire deep in the ship caused its rudder to jam. It spent nearly an hour steaming in a circle before control was restored; if a second wave of Japanese planes had not followed an erroneous position report on the American carriers, the Enterprise almost certainly would not have survived the day.

Both sides withdrew their ships from the area by midnight, and a Japanese resupply convoy under the command of Rear Adm. Tanaka Raizō attempted to force its way through to Guadalcanal without the benefit of air cover on the morning of August 25. Dive-bombers from Guadalcanal struck Tanaka's flagship, the cruiser Jintsū, and inflicted heavy damage on a Japanese troop ship. U.S. Army Air Forces B-17s scored a direct hit on the destroyer Mutsuki, sinking it. Tanaka was forced to retire, but he quickly revised his tactics, and his destroyer squadron-the so-called "Toyko Express"-would ferry tens of thousands of Japanese troops and tons of vital supplies to Guadalcanal over the following months.

During the next six weeks, no major action took place in the Solomons, although Japanese planes and submarines continued to harass the U.S. resupply effort, and Japanese surface ships shelled Henderson Field. The most notable loss during this time was the carrier USS Wasp, which was torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-19 on September 15. That single torpedo attack also fatally struck the destroyer USS O'Brien and damaged the USS North Carolina. The Japanese resupplied and reinforced their positions at Guadalcanal with nightly runs of the "Tokyo Express," and Tanaka would earn a reputation as arguably the most gifted destroyer captain in the Pacific War. Just before midnight on the night of October 11, five U.S. cruisers and four destroyers under the command of Rear Adm. Norman Scott intercepted a strong Japanese surface force that was en route to Henderson Field. In the ensuing Battle of Cape Esperance, the Japanese lost the heavy cruiser Furutaka and the destroyer Fubuki, while the Americans lost the destroyer USS Duncan.

Two weeks later the much larger Battle of Santa Cruz occurred against the backdrop of a major Japanese ground offensive on Guadalcanal. U.S. commanders were anticipating a Japanese attack, and Vice Adm. William ("Bull") Halsey, who had succeeded Ghormley as commander of U.S. naval forces in the South Pacific on October 18, concentrated his available assets into two carrier battle groups. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, which had spent nearly a month at Pearl Harbor undergoing repairs, sailed with the battleship USS South Dakota, the heavy cruiser USS Portland, and a screen of light cruisers and destroyers. The carrier USS Hornet was supported by the heavy cruisers USS Northampton and USS Pensacola and a light cruiser and destroyer escort. Against this force was arrayed Vice Adm. Nagumo Chūichi's fleet carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku-both of which had participated in the Pearl Harbor attack-the light carrier Zuiho, the escort carrier Junyo, four battleships, and an assortment of destroyers and other support craft. The two forces met north of Guadalcanal on October 26, and the result was a tactical victory for Japan. The Hornet was sunk, as was the destroyer USS Porter, and the Enterprise was seriously damaged. Nagumo was forced to retire, however, as the Zuiho and the Shokaku had suffered numerous bomb hits and the loss of nearly 100 aircraft had left him without a significant portion of his naval air complement. The Japanese retreat bought the Americans a much needed breathing spell.

The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal

The climax of sea fighting in the Solomons came in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal (November 12-15, 1942). On November 11-12, the U.S. landed a sizable contingent of reinforcements and supplies on the island. At roughly the same time, a fleet of Japanese transports, carrying some 7,000 men, steamed southward from Rabaul behind an escort of several battleships and a large screen of cruisers and destroyers. When the Americans detected this force descending on their vulnerable transports and cargo vessels, they dispatched a force of cruisers and destroyers to fight a delaying action. The result was a series of violent confrontations that inflicted heavy losses on both sides, but left the United States in a position of strength in the southern Solomons.

Just after midnight on November 13, the U.S. task force, under the command of Rear Adm. Daniel Callaghan, engaged Japanese ships commanded by Vice Adm. Abe Hiroaki. The battle that followed was a brutal 24-minute melee that saw capital ships on both sides blasting away at extremely close range. The Japanese lost the battleship Hiei while the U.S. lost the cruisers USS Atlanta and USS Juneau as well as several destroyers. Callaghan and Rear Adm. Norman Scott were killed in the engagement; they were the only two flag officers of the U.S. Navy to be killed in a surface engagement in World War II.

On November 14 Japanese cruisers and destroyers shelled Henderson Field, and another invasion force was discovered north of Guadalcanal. The Japanese ships were subjected to air attacks throughout the day, and that night they were engaged by the battleships USS Washington and USS South Dakota. About midnight, contact was made north of Savo Island, and another fierce night action ensued. The Japanese lost the battleship Kirishima and the heavy cruiser Kinugasa, and the U.S. lost three more destroyers.

The land campaign on Guadalcanal

The initial amphibious assault on the southern Solomons represented a superb coordination of Allied naval, air, and ground forces. Warships laid down heavy barrages to screen the approach of troop transports and carrier-based planes, and U.S. Army Air Forces bombers softened Japanese defenses. Landing craft took the Marines ashore at key points throughout the islands. The Marines rapidly secured a beachhead on Guadalcanal and captured the almost-complete airstrip that would become Henderson Field. They also seized the smaller islands of Tulagi, Gavutu, and Tanombogo. While the Japanese construction units on Guadalcanal were overcome with comparative ease-or simply melted away into the jungle-the defenders of Tulagi and Gavatu included elements of the elite Special Naval Landing Force (SNLF), and they fought desperately. The battle for Tulagi saw the Japanese garrison destroyed virtually to the last man; this would serve as a grim preview of later engagements in the U.S. campaign in the Pacific.

Almost as soon as the U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal, Japanese commanders began making preparations for the retaking of the island. Vandegrift had concentrated some 11,000 Marines into a tight defensive perimeter centred on Henderson Field. He had been warned of an imminent attack, thanks to the efforts of U.S. cryptanalysts, who had penetrated the Japanese naval code. The Japanese, believing that the Americans had withdrawn many of their troops after the stinging defeat at Savo Island, vastly underestimated the strength of the U.S. presence on Guadalcanal. In the predawn hours of August 21, the Japanese launched their first ground offensive on Guadalcanal. At the Battle of the Tenaru (also called the Battle of Alligator Creek), U.S. Marine defenders annihilated a force of some 900 veteran Japanese army troops east of Henderson Field.

Shelling by Japanese ships and aerial bombardment from Japanese planes became routine, but the U.S. defenders were able to cling to their narrow toehold on Guadalcanal, thanks in part to the efforts of the so-called " Cactus Air Force," a motley collection of Marine, U.S. Army Air Forces, and U.S. Navy aviators operating out of Henderson Field. Cactus Air Force pilots shot down more than 150 Japanese planes in the first five weeks of the battle, and Henderson's bomber contingent pounded Japanese warships and transports. On September 13-14, U.S. Marine Corps Col. Merritt ("Red Mike") Edson, the 800 Marines of the 1st Raider Battalion, and a handful of Marine parachute troops were subjected to one of the most intense assaults on Henderson Field thus far, when they were attacked by a Japanese force more than three times their size. Their tenacious defense in what came to be called the Battle of Edson's Ridge helped to cement the reputation of the Raiders in Marine lore and earned Edson the Medal of Honor.

The Japanese forces on the island reached a peak strength of 36,000 troops by October, but they were unable to overwhelm the Americans' defensive perimeter and retake the airfield. The hardest fighting occurred on October 24-25, when a single Marine battalion was all that stood between Henderson Field and two Japanese regiments. The 1st Battalion of the 7th Marine Division, commanded by Lieut. Col. Chesty Puller, repelled the Japanese assault and inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers. Reinforced by soldiers of the 164th Infantry Regiment, the first U.S. Army unit to land on Guadalcanal, Puller's Marines weathered repeated Japanese charges and held their positions. Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone was awarded the Medal of Honor for "conspicuous gallantry" during the engagement, and Puller received his third Navy Cross (of an eventual five). By November the U.S. Navy was able to land reinforcements on Guadalcanal faster than the Japanese, and Allied counterattacks had steadily pushed the Japanese toward the northwest part of the island.

In December the 1st Marine Division was withdrawn after four months of intense combat, and the U.S. 25th Infantry Division began arriving on Guadalcanal. At the start of 1943, Allied combat strength on Guadalcanal stood at two U.S. Army divisions and a Marine regiment, totaling some 44,000 troops. Offensive operations continued through January 1943, narrowing and compressing the Japanese position. During the first week of February, light surface craft began evacuating the 12,000 remaining Japanese troops from Guadalcanal. On February 8, 1943, almost exactly six months after the initial landings, the last remaining Japanese pocket of resistance was eliminated, and Guadalcanal was at last firmly in Allied hands.

Outcome and casualties

Although U.S. losses were heavy in both the naval and ground campaigns, the Battle of Guadalcanal was decisive in that U.S. positions in the southern Solomons were never again seriously threatened. The Japanese lost a total of 24,000 men killed in the Battle of Guadalcanal, while the Americans sustained 1,600 killed, 4,200 wounded, and several thousand dead from malaria and other tropical diseases. The various naval battles cost each side 24 warships: the Japanese lost 2 battleships, 4 cruisers, 1 light carrier, 11 destroyers, and 6 submarines, while the Americans lost 8 cruisers, 2 heavy carriers, and 14 destroyers.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Michael Ray.

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Battle of Guadalcanal | Facts, Map, & Significance

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Battle of Guadalcanal, (August 1942-February 1943), series of World War II land and sea clashes between Allied and Japanese forces on and around Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific. Along with the naval Battle of Midway (June 3-6, 1942), the fighting on Guadalcanal marked a turning point in favour of the Allies in the Pacific War.

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The Allies commenced their invasion of mainland Italy by landing British forces in the region of Calabria on September 3,their first step to liberate the country from Axis control. This event after the conquest of Sicily, and was facilitated by Italy's secret negotiations with the Allies. It leaded into an armistice announced on September 8. Even by Italy's surrender, German forces quickly moved to occupy strategic positions on the country, resulting in fierce resistance against the advancing troops. The invasion of Italy opened a new front in Europe.

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From November 28 to December 1,in the Tehran Conference the leaders of the Allied powers (U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin) met, it was first meeting during World War II. Held in Tehran (Iran), the conference focused on coordinating military strategy against Germany and discussing plans what would they do after the war. some of the most important decisions were the agreement to launch Operation Overlord (cross-channel invasion of France) and the Soviet commitment to launch an offensive on the Eastern Front. About the post-war, they also talked, including the division of Germany and the establishment of the United Nations.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Tehrān Conference, (November 28-December 1, 1943), meeting between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Tehrān during World War II. The chief discussion centred on the opening of a "second front" in western Europe. Stalin agreed to an eastern offensive to coincide with the forthcoming Western Front, and he pressed the western leaders to proceed with formal preparations for their long-promised invasion of German-occupied France.

Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Though military questions were dominant, the Tehrān Conference saw more discussion of political issues than had occurred in any previous meeting between Allied governmental heads. Not only did Stalin reiterate that the Soviet Union should retain the frontiers provided by the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939 and by the Russo-Finnish Treaty of 1940, but he also stated that it would want the Baltic coast of East Prussia. Though the settlement for Germany was discussed at length, all three Allied leaders appeared uncertain; their views were imprecise on the topic of a postwar international organization; and, on the Polish question, the western Allies and the Soviet Union found themselves in sharp dissension, Stalin expressing his continued distaste for the Polish government-in-exile in London. On Iran, which Allied forces were partly occupying, they were able to agree on a declaration (published on December 1, 1943) guaranteeing the postwar independence and territorial integrity of that state and promising postwar economic assistance.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Michael Ray, Editor.

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World War II: The western Allies and Stalin: Cairo and Tehrān, 1943

...Roosevelt and Churchill went to Tehrān, to meet Stalin at the Eureka conference of November 28-December 1. Stalin renewed the Soviet promise of military intervention against Japan, but he primarily wanted an assurance that "Overlord" (the invasion of France) would indeed take place in 1944. Reassured about this by Roosevelt,...

At the Tehrān Conference late in 1943, Churchill's proposal that the Soviet-Polish border coincide with the Curzon Line (roughly similar to the Ribbentrop-Molotov line) and that Poland be compensated at Germany's cost was accepted by Roosevelt and Stalin. The Mikołajczyk government, which was opposed to such a...

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November 28, 1943 - December 1, 1943

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Tehran Conference | Facts History, & Significance

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Tehran Conference (November 28-December 1, 1943), meeting of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin in Iran during World War II. The chief discussion concerned the opening of a second front in Europe with the invasion of German-occupied France.

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On August 25, the French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division liberated Paris from fascism after four years. After that a whole week of fighting between France and Germany took place. The German military governor of Paris defied Adolf Hitler's orders to destroy the city's monuments and instead surrendered to the Allies. The nextday, General Charles organised a triumphant parade symbolizing the restoration of France and its people.

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After more than four years of Nazi occupation, Paris is liberated by the French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. German resistance was light, and General Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of the German garrison, defied an order by Adolf Hitler to blow up Paris' landmarks and burn the city to the ground before its liberation. Choltitz signed a formal surrender that afternoon, and on August 26, Free French General Charles de Gaulle led a joyous liberation march down the Champs d'Elysees.

Paris fell to Nazi Germany on June 14, 1940, one month after the German Wehrmacht stormed into France. Eight days later, France signed an armistice with the Germans, and a puppet French state was set up with its capital at Vichy. Elsewhere, however, General Charles de Gaulle and the Free French kept fighting, and the Resistance sprang up in occupied France to resist Nazi and Vichy rule.

The French 2nd Armored Division was formed in London in late 1943 with the express purpose of leading the liberation of Paris during the Allied invasion of France. In August 1944, the division arrived at Normandy under the command of General Jacques-Philippe Leclerc and was attached to General George S. Patton's 3rd U.S. Army. By August 18, Allied forces were near Paris, and workers in the city went on strike as Resistance fighters emerged from hiding and began attacking German forces and fortifications.

At his headquarters two miles inland from the Normandy coast, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower had a dilemma. Allied planners had concluded that the liberation of Paris should be delayed so as to not divert valuable resources away from important operations elsewhere. The city could be encircled and then liberated at a later date.

On August 21, Eisenhower met with de Gaulle and told him of his plans to bypass Paris. De Gaulle urged him to reconsider, assuring him that Paris could be reclaimed without difficulty. The French general also warned that the powerful communist faction of the Resistance might succeed in liberating Paris, thereby threatening the re-establishment of a democratic government. De Gaulle politely told Eisenhower that if his advance against Paris was not ordered, he would send Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division into the city himself.

On August 22, Eisenhower agreed to proceed with the liberation of Paris. The next day, the 2nd Armored Division advanced on the city from the north and the 4th Infantry Division from the south. Meanwhile, in Paris, the forces of German General Dietrich von Choltitz were fighting the Resistance and completing their defenses around the city. Hitler had ordered Paris defended to the last man, and demanded that the city not fall into Allied hands except as "a field of ruins." Choltitz dutifully began laying explosives under Paris' bridges and many of its landmarks, but disobeyed an order to commence the destruction. He did not want to go down in history as the man who had destroyed the "City of Light"-Europe's most celebrated city.

The 2nd Armored Division ran into heavy German artillery, taking heavy casualties, but on August 24 managed to cross the Seine and reach the Paris suburbs. There, they were greeted by enthusiastic civilians who besieged them with flowers, kisses, and wine. Later that day, Leclerc learned that the 4th Infantry Division was poised to beat him into Paris proper, and he ordered his exhausted men forward in a final burst of energy. Just before midnight on August 24, the 2nd Armored Division reached the Hótel de Ville in the heart of Paris.

German resistance melted away during the night. Most of the 20,000 troops surrendered or fled, and those that fought were quickly overcome. On the morning of August 25, the 2nd Armored Division swept clear the western half of Paris while the 4th Infantry Division cleared the eastern part. Paris was liberated.

In the early afternoon, Choltitz was arrested in his headquarters by French troops. Shortly after, he signed a document formally surrendering Paris to de Gaulle's provisional government. De Gaulle himself arrived in the city later that afternoon. On August 26, de Gaulle and Leclerc led a triumphant liberation march down the Champs d'Elysees. Scattered gunfire from a rooftop disrupted the parade, but the identity of the snipers was not determined.

De Gaulle headed two successive French provisional governments until 1946, when he resigned over constitutional disagreements. From 1958 to 1969, he served as French president under the Fifth Republic.

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Paris is liberated after four years of Nazi occupation | August 25, 1944 | HISTORY

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After more than four years of Nazi occupation, Paris is liberated by the French 2nd Armored Division and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. German resistance was light, and General Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of the German garrison, defied an order by Adolf Hitler to blow up Paris' landmarks and burn the city to the ground [...]

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All the Allied forces went to take back France on June 6 at Operation Overlord, also called D-Day. Leadedred by General Dwight, about 160,000 troops from US, UK, Canada, and other Allied nations landed on five beaches along the coast of France (Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword). The operation had a huge planning and coordination, with airborne assaults and naval and aerial bombardments to weak German defenses. They had to face difficle obstacles, for example at Omaha Beach where American forces encountered intense resistance,but after everything they were successful, contributing toFrench liberation and Germany defeat.

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The decision to go

Learn about the Normandy Invasion planned by Dwight Eisenhower to give Allied powers a foothold in France Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article

May 1944 had been chosen at the conference in Washington in May 1943 as the time for the invasion. Difficulties in assembling landing craft forced a postponement until June, but June 5 was fixed as the unalterable date by Eisenhower on May 17. As the day approached and troops began to embark for the crossing, bad weather set in, threatening dangerous landing conditions. After tense debate, Eisenhower and his subordinates decided on a 24-hour delay, requiring the recall of some ships already at sea. Eventually, on the morning of June 5, Eisenhower, assured by chief meteorologist James Martin Stagg of a break in the weather, announced, "O.K. We'll go." Within hours an armada of 3,000 landing craft, 2,500 other ships, and 500 naval vessels-escorts and bombardment ships-began to leave English ports. That night 822 aircraft, carrying parachutists or towing gliders, roared overhead to the Normandy landing zones. They were a fraction of the air armada of 13,000 aircraft that would support D-Day.

Learn about the invasion routes of the Allies and the German defenses in northern France during the Normandy Invasion Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The landings

Britannica World War II Infographic Explainer: Obstacles at Omaha Beach during the Normandy Invasion Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article

Britannica World War II Infographic Explainer: Landings on Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches during the Normandy Invasion Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc./Kenny Chmielewski See all videos for this article

The airborne troops were the vanguard, and their landings were a heartening success. The American 82nd and 101st airborne divisions, dropping into a deliberately inundated zone at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, suffered many casualties by drowning but nevertheless secured their objective. The British 6th Airborne Division seized its unflooded objectives at the eastern end more easily, and its special task force also captured key bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River. When the seaborne units began to land about 6:30 am on June 6, the British and Canadians on Gold, Juno, and Sword beaches overcame light opposition. So did the Americans at Utah. The U.S. 1st Division at Omaha Beach, however, confronted the best of the German coast divisions, the 352nd, and was roughly handled by machine gunners as the troops waded ashore. During the morning, the landing at Omaha threatened to fail. Only dedicated local leadership eventually got the troops inland-though at a cost of more than 2,000 casualties.

The German response

Meanwhile, the German high command-in the absence of Rommel, who was home on leave-began to respond. Hitler was initially unwilling to release the armoured divisions for a counterattack. When he relented after midday, elements of the 21st Panzer Division drove into the gap between the British 3rd and Canadian 3rd divisions at Sword Beach and Juno Beach and almost reached the sea. Had they done so, the landings might have failed. Fierce resistance by British antitank gunners at Périers-sur-le-Dan turned the tide in late evening.

The lodgment area established

On June 7 the beachhead consisted of three separate sectors: that of the British and Canadians, between Caen (not taken) and Bayeux; that of the U.S. V Corps, between Port-en-Bessin and Saint-Pierre-du-Mont; and that of the U.S. VII Corps, west of the Vire River behind Utah Beach. The narrow gap between Gold and Omaha at Port-en-Bessin was quickly closed, but it was not until June 12 that the American corps were able to join hands after a bitter battle to capture Carentan. The beachhead then formed a continuous zone, its deepest point being southwest of Bayeux, where the V Corps had driven nearly 15 miles (25 km) inland.

Carentan; World War II U.S. Army Photograph

Meanwhile, work had been proceeding pell-mell to complete two artificial harbours, known by their code name, Mulberry, that were intended to off-load vehicles and supplies until the port of Cherbourg was secured. An outer breakwater of sunken ships for each harbour was in place by June 11. Floating piers, designed to rise and fall with the tides, were half-finished by June 19, when a heavy storm destroyed much of the material. The Americans then decided to abandon their Mulberry, while the British harbour was not in use until July. Most supplies meanwhile had to be beach-landed by assorted landing craft, landing ships, and amphibious trucks ( DUKW s).

Mulberry artificial harbour during the Normandy Invasion Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Stalemate, June-July 1944

Fighting in the bocage

Fighting inshore, the Allies also encountered difficulty in the dense hedgerow country known to the French as the bocage. Thanks to the success of the airborne landings, the flanks of the beachhead were firmly held, but efforts to break out of the centre were frustrated by fierce German resistance and counterattacks, particularly around Caen in the British-Canadian sector. A British armoured thrust at Villers-Bocage was defeated on June 13. A large-scale infantry offensive west of Caen, called Operation Epsom, was also defeated on June 25-29. There was gloom at SHAEF; it seemed that stalemate was descending. The gloom was deepened by Montgomery's strategy. His plan was to draw German armour toward the British front and win a battle of attrition between tank forces. The successful German defense, however, led the Americans to doubt the plan's viability.

In fact, the Germans were also depressed, for their bitter defense was using up men and equipment that could not be replaced. Moreover, the Americans were now able to profit from the deployment of most of the enemy's armour against the British and break into the base of the Cotentin Peninsula and advance on Cherbourg. The last bastion in the heavily fortified city fell on June 28, and clearance of the port began at once.

Crisis in the German command

The setbacks brought about a crisis in the German high command, which in any case now suffered unforeseeable casualties. Dollmann, commander of the Seventh Army, died suddenly on June 28, just after the surrender of the main garrison in Cherbourg; his death was blamed on a heart attack, though it is quite likely he committed suicide. Rommel was severely injured when his car was strafed by a British fighter on July 17. Worst of all, Rundstedt confessed defeatism to Hitler, urged him to make peace, and was dismissed on July 2 along with Geyr, the commander of Panzer Group West. Geyr was replaced by the capable veteran Heinrich Eberbach. Rundstedt himself was replaced by Günther von Kluge, who soon came round to sharing Rundstedt's doubts. On July 20 a conspiracy of officers (including former army chief of staff Ludwig Beck and reserve army chief of staff Claus, Count Schenk von Stauffenberg) who believed the only hope of securing a peace lay in Hitler's removal made an attempt on his life at his East Prussian headquarters, Rastenburg. The failure of the July Plot led to Hitler's taking draconian powers over the army and exacting terrible revenge on those suspected of complicity. Rommel was forced to commit suicide in October, and Kluge did so on August 18.

The German defense of Normandy had by then taken a turn for the worse. Though a large British armoured offensive west of Caen, Operation Goodwood, failed on July 18-19, the U.S. First Army conducted a bitter battle of attrition around Saint-Lô in the second and third weeks of July. Its success was to lay the basis for the long-awaited breakout.

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Normandy Invasion - Normandy Invasion - D-Day, June 6, 1944: May 1944 had been chosen at the conference in Washington in May 1943 as the time for the invasion. Difficulties in assembling landing craft forced a postponement until June, but June 5 was fixed as the unalterable date by Eisenhower on May 17.

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On August 1, the Polish underground resistance, initiated the Warsaw Uprising against German occupation forces. Their objective was to liberate Warsaw before the advancing Soviet Army could stablish control over them. Approximately 50,000 Polish fighters fought in intense urban combat, starting to gain control over significant parts of Warsaw at the beginning. The uprising didn't get enough external support; the Soviet forces stopped their advance on the outskirts,

and Western Allies had dificulties in providing aid. German forces responded with brutal suppression, that lead around 200,000 civilians deaths and almost total destruction of the city, it was a failure.

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Warsaw Uprising, (August-October 1944), insurrection in Warsaw during World War II by which Poles unsuccessfully tried to oust the German army and seize control of the city before it was occupied by the advancing Soviet army. The uprising's failure allowed the pro-Soviet Polish administration, rather than the Polish government-in-exile in London, to gain control of Poland.

As the Red Army approached Warsaw (July 29-30, 1944), Soviet authorities, promising aid, encouraged the Polish underground there to stage an uprising against the Germans. However, the Polish underground, known as the Home Army, was anxious because the Soviet Union had already assumed direct control of eastern Poland and had sponsored the formation of the Polish Committee of National Liberation to administer the remainder of Soviet-occupied Polish territory. Hoping to gain control of Warsaw before the Red Army could "liberate" it, the Home Army followed the Soviet suggestion to revolt.

Commanded by General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, the Warsaw corps of 50,000 troops attacked the relatively weak German force on August 1 and within three days gained control of most of the city. The Germans sent in reinforcements, however, and forced the Poles into a defensive position, bombarding them with air and artillery attacks for the next 63 days.

Meanwhile, the Red Army, which had been detained during the first days of the insurrection by a German assault, occupied a position at Praga, a suburb across the Vistula River from Warsaw, and remained idle. In addition, the Soviet government refused to allow the western Allies to use Soviet air bases to airlift supplies to the beleaguered Poles.

Without Allied support, the Home Army split into small, disconnected units and was forced to surrender when its supplies gave out (October 2). Bór-Komorowski and his forces were taken prisoner, and the Germans then systematically deported the remainder of the city's population and destroyed the city itself.

By allowing the Germans to suppress the Warsaw Uprising, the Soviet authorities also allowed them to eliminate the main body of the military organization that supported the Polish government-in-exile in London. Consequently, when the Soviet army occupied all of Poland, there was little effective organized resistance to its establishing Soviet political domination over the country and imposing the communist-led Provisional Government of Poland (Jan. 1, 1945).

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Warsaw Uprising, (August-October 1944), insurrection in Warsaw during World War II by which Poles unsuccessfully tried to oust the German army and seize control of the city before it was occupied by the advancing Soviet army. The uprising's failure allowed the pro-Soviet Polish administration,

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The Operation Market Garden was a plan to accelerate the end of the was by the Allies. It started in September 17 consisted into capturing key bridges in Netherlands, and from that point advanciong to Germany, including airborne assaults (by U.S., G.B. and Poland) and a British ground offensive. The first objectives were achieved, but the final bridge, over the Rhine, couldn't be secured, so the resut consisted in several casualities and the advance towards Germany was delayed.

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The battle of the Bulge started on December 16, with a German surprise counterattack through the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxemburg. Their aim was to divide the Allied forces and to capture the port of Antwerp.
German troops took advance of the bad weather conditions that conditioned Allied air support, they "created a bulge" in the Allied front lines leading to battles such as siege of Bastogne. Once the weather improved, the Allied air forces changed the situation, and by January the German advance was repelled.

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Battle of the Bulge, also called Battle of the Ardennes, (December 16, 1944-January 16, 1945), the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II-an unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back from German home territory. The name Battle of the Bulge was appropriated from Winston Churchill 's optimistic description in May 1940 of the resistance that he mistakenly supposed was being offered to the Germans' breakthrough in that area just before the Anglo-French collapse; the Germans were in fact overwhelmingly successful. The "bulge" refers to the wedge that the Germans drove into the Allied lines.

After their invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Allies moved across northern France into Belgium during the summer but lost momentum in the autumn. Apart from an abortive thrust to Arnhem, Netherlands, the efforts of the Allied armies in western Europe during September and October 1944 amounted to little more than a process of nibbling. Meanwhile, the German defense was being continuously strengthened with such reserves as could be relocated from elsewhere and with the freshly raised forces of the Volkssturm ("home guard"). German numbers were also bolstered by those troops who had managed to withdraw from France. A general offensive launched in mid-November by all six Allied armies on the Western Front brought disappointingly small results at heavy cost; continued efforts merely exhausted the attacking troops.

In mid-December Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, had at his disposal 48 divisions distributed along a 600-mile (nearly 1,000-km) front between the North Sea and Switzerland. For the site of their counteroffensive, the Germans chose the hilly and wooded country of the Ardennes. Because it was generally regarded as difficult country, a large-scale offensive there was likely to be unexpected. At the same time, the thick woods provided concealment for the massing of forces, whereas the high ground offered a drier surface for the maneuvers of tanks. An awkward feature from an offensive point of view, however, was the fact that the high ground was intersected with deep valleys where the through roads became bottlenecks where a tank advance was liable to be blocked. The aims of the German counteroffensive were far-reaching: to break through to Antwerp, Belgium, by an indirect move, to cut off the British army group from American forces as well as from its supplies, and then to crush the isolated British. Overall command of the offensive was given to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.

The Fifth Panzer Army, led by Hasso, Freiherr (baron) von Manteuffel, was to break through the U.S. front in the Ardennes, swerve westward, and then wheel northward across the Meuse, past Namur to Antwerp. As it advanced, it was to build up a defensive flank barricade to shut off interference from the U.S. armies farther south. The Sixth Panzer Army, under SS commander Sepp Dietrich, was to thrust northwestward on an oblique line past Liège to Antwerp, creating a strategic barrier astride the rear of the British and of the more northerly American armies. To those two panzer armies the Germans gave the bulk of the tanks that they could scrape together. To minimize the danger from a speedy intervention of Anglo-American air power, which was vastly greater than their own, the Germans launched their stroke when the meteorological forecast promised them a natural cloak; indeed, for the first three days, mist and rain kept the Allied air forces on the ground.

Aided by its surprise, the German counteroffensive, which started before dawn on December 16, 1944, made menacing progress in the opening days, creating alarm and confusion on the Allied side. The Fifth Panzer Army bypassed Bastogne (which was held throughout the offensive by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division under the tenacious leadership of Gen. Anthony McAuliffe) and by December 24 had advanced to within 4 miles (6 km) of the Meuse River. Time and opportunities were lost, however, through gasoline shortages resulting from wintry weather and from growing Allied air attacks, and the German drive faltered. This frustration of the German advance was largely due to the way in which outflanked U.S. detachments held Bastogne and several other important bottlenecks in the Ardennes as well as to the speed with which British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who had taken charge of the situation on the northern flank, swung his reserves southward to forestall the Germans at the crossings of the Meuse.

Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army relieved Bastogne on the 26th, and on January 3, 1945, the U.S. First Army began a counteroffensive. Between January 8 and January 16 the Allied armies concentrated their strength and were attempting to pinch off the great German wedge driven into their front, but the Germans carried out a skillful withdrawal that took them out of the potential trap. Judged on its own account, the Battle of the Bulge had been a profitable operation for Germany, for, even though it fell short of its objectives, it upset the Allies' preparations and inflicted much damage at a cost that was not excessive for the effect. Viewed in relation to the whole situation, however, the counteroffensive had been a fatal operation. While the Allies suffered some 75,000 casualties, Germany lost 120,000 men and stores of matériel that it could ill afford to replace. Germany had thus forfeited the chance of maintaining any prolonged resistance to a resumed Allied offensive. It brought home to the German troops their incapacity to turn the scales and thereby undermined such hopes as they had retained.

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Battle of the Bulge | Summary, Commanders, & Significance

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Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944-January 16, 1945), the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War II. The 'bulge' refers to the wedge that the Germans drove into the Allied lines during their ultimately unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back from German home territory.

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The Yalta Conference was a Conference of February in which the leaders of the allied powers met (Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin). They wanted to make the final plan to destroy Nazi Germany and discuss the organization of Europe after war. They agreed on division of Germany, the persecution of war criminals, the Poland's borders and governance, and made a controversial decision to allow Soviet influence over Europe. stalin also agreed to declare war to Japan after Germany surrendered (that would influence in the pacific war).

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Yalta Conference, (February 4-11, 1945), major World War II conference of the three chief Allied leaders-Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union-which met at Yalta in Crimea to plan the final defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany.

It had already been decided that Germany would be divided into occupied zones administered by U.S., British, French, and Soviet forces. The conferees accepted the principle that the Allies had no duty toward the Germans except to provide minimum subsistence, declared that the German military industry would be abolished or confiscated, and agreed that major war criminals would be tried before an international court, which subsequently presided at Nürnberg. The determination of reparations was assigned to a commission.

How to deal with the defeated or liberated countries of eastern Europe was the main problem discussed at the conference. The agreements reached, which were accepted by Stalin, called for "interim governmental authorities broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population...and the earliest possible establishment through free elections of governments responsive to the will of the people." Britain and the United States supported a Polish government-in-exile in London, while the Soviets supported a communist-dominated Polish committee of national liberation in Lublin. Neither the Western Allies nor the Soviet Union would change its allegiance, so they could only agree that the Lublin committee would be broadened to include representatives of other Polish political groups, upon which the Allies would recognize it as a provisional government of national unity that would hold free elections to choose a successor government. Poland 's future frontiers were also discussed but not decided.

Regarding the Pacific Theatre, a secret protocol stipulated that, in return for the Soviet Union's entering the war against Japan within "two or three months" after Germany's surrender, the U.S.S.R. would obtain from Japan the Kuril Islands and regain the territory lost in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 (including the southern part of Sakhalin Island), and the status quo in pro-Soviet Outer Mongolia would be maintained. Stalin agreed to sign a pact of alliance and friendship with China.

The United Nations organization charter had already been drafted, and the conferees worked out a compromise formula for voting in the Security Council. The Soviets withdrew their claim that all 16 Soviet republics should have membership in the General Assembly.

After the agreements reached at Yalta were made public in 1946, they were harshly criticized in the United States. This was because, as events turned out, Stalin failed to keep his promise that free elections would be held in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Instead, communist governments were established in all those countries, noncommunist political parties were suppressed, and genuinely democratic elections were never held. At the time of the Yalta Conference, both Roosevelt and Churchill had trusted Stalin and believed that he would keep his word. Neither leader had suspected that Stalin intended that all the popular front governments in Europe would be taken over by communists. Roosevelt and Churchill were further inclined to assent to the Yalta agreements because they assumed, mistakenly as it turned out, that Soviet assistance would be sorely needed to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific and Manchuria. In any case, the Soviet Union was the military occupier of eastern Europe at the war's end, and so there was little the Western democracies could do to enforce the promises made by Stalin at Yalta. The formulation by American delegation member James F. Byrnes, soon to be secretary of state (1945-47), was apt: "It was not a question of what we would let the Russians do, but what we could get the Russians to do."

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Yalta Conference | Summary, Dates, Consequences, & Facts

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Yalta Conference, (February 4-11, 1945), major World War II conference of the three chief Allied leaders-Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom, and Premier Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union-which met at Yalta in Crimea to plan the final defeat and occupation of Nazi Germany.

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The battle of Iwo Jima started when the U.S. Marines arrived to the island of Iwo Jima , with the objective of take it away from japanese forces. Due to the island's network of underground defenses the battle was exhausting. Depsite the bombardments before the invasion, Japan had a strong defense that could resist. A month of fighting later, the island was declared ensured on March 26. Allies victory gave them a base for their air operations and was as prove of determination of the United States forces.

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Battle of Iwo Jima, (February 19-March 16, 1945), World War II conflict between the United States and the Empire of Japan. The United States mounted an amphibious invasion of the island of Iwo Jima as part of its Pacific campaign against Japan. A costly victory for the United States, the battle was one of the bloodiest in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps and was cited as proof of the Japanese military's willingness to fight to the last man.

Context

Shortly after its attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japan gained control over much of Southeast Asia and the central Pacific. The Japanese sphere of control extended west to Burma ( Myanmar), south to the Dutch East Indies (now Malaysia) and New Guinea, and east to Wake Island. However, the United States assumed command of Allied forces in the Pacific theatre and mounted a counteroffensive that incorporated a strategic combination of land, air, and naval assaults.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCOS)-Adm. Ernest King, Adm. William Leahy, Gen. George Marshall, and Gen. Henry ("Hap") Arnold-was created in 1942 to provide a body of high command to direct U.S. operations during the war. Each member was a four-star officer from the U.S. Army, Navy, and Army Air Forces (AAF). The Marine Corps was not represented in this body during World War II. Convention dictated that a single officer should command all armed forces in the Pacific, but the JCOS could not agree on any one person to do so. At King's urging, the body chose to bifurcate the theatre and gave Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Adm. Chester Nimitz command over one half each. Even then, however, there was contention over how to make progress toward the Japanese homeland. MacArthur wanted to retake the Philippines en route to Tokyo, while Nimitz wanted an "island-hopping" approach that focused on small strategic gains throughout the Central Pacific. In 1944 the JCOS agreed on a two-pronged plan that combined both strategies. By October of that year, MacArthur had landed on Filipino soil, and Nimitz had seized the Mariana Islands, severely crippling Japanese naval and air power along the way.

Arnold was of the opinion that the Bonin Islands could be useful for conducting B-29 Superfortress air raids on Tokyo. He was convinced that Iwo Jima (now Iō-tō) in particular, being halfway between the Mariana Islands and the Japanese capital, would place his fighters in range of the city so that they could support bombing operations in the region. Arnold had to rely on the Navy to take these islands for him, however. At the JCOS's direction, Nimitz initially intended to take Formosa ( Taiwan) rather than Iwo Jima, but recommendations from his subordinate admirals prompted him to propose that he seize Iwo Jima and Okinawa instead. The JCOS approved the plan, and in October 1944 Nimitz began preparations for an Iwo Jima invasion, later known as Operation Detachment.

Battle

Iwo Jima is located about 760 miles (1,220 km) from Tokyo. It is a small island covering an area of about 8 square miles (20 square km) and spanning about 5 miles (8 km) in length. A volcanic island, Iwo Jima is dotted with hundreds of caves and is covered with volcanic sand and ash. At the southwest tip of the island is Mount Suribachi, a largely dormant volcano that provides a sweeping view of most of the island. Two beaches flank the northwest and southeast parts of the western sector. At the time of the U.S. invasion, there were two airfields in the middle of the island, Motoyama 1 and 2. A third airfield to the north was unfinished.

In May 1944 Japanese Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki had sent seasoned Lieut. Gen. Kuribayashi Tadamichi to organize the defense of Iwo Jima. Despite the apparent futility of resistance, Kuribayashi resolved to make the United States bleed for its victory. He began by ordering the construction of a tunnel network beneath the island to provide both protection and a means to circumvent enemy lines. He then had his troops erect hundreds of pillboxes, blockhouses, and gun sites for aboveground coverage, many of which were so well constructed that only a direct hit from a battleship could cause serious damage. However, rather than heavily defending the coastline, he planned to keep his soldiers in caves and tunnels until the Americans advanced far enough inland to be decimated by coordinated infantry and artillery fire. Finally, in a break from traditional Japanese defensive strategy, Kuribayashi gave his men strict orders to abandon the often-suicidal banzai charges and instead kill 10 Americans each from their hideouts. By the time U.S. forces initiated their assault, Kuribayashi's Iwo Jima garrison had grown to an estimated 21,000 soldiers.

Nimitz created a U.S. Joint Expeditionary Force of Navy and Marines to carry out Operation Detachment. At its disposal was an armada of 11 warships that were intended to soften up Japanese defenses with sustained bombardment. Maj. Gen. Harry Schmidt took charge of Marine operations. He fielded the largely veteran 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine divisions, totaling some 70,000 troops. U.S. intelligence had reported only 13,000 Japanese defenders and excellent beach terrain for landing, so planners chose to have the Marines land on the southeastern beach in seven sections (listed southwest to northeast): Green, Red 1, Red 2, Yellow 1, Yellow 2, Blue 1, and Blue 2. The 28th Regiment at Green would plow across the 0.5-mile (0.8-km) stretch to the other side of the island to cut off and eventually take Mount Suribachi. The 27th Regiment at Red 1 and 2 would head northward past Motoyama 1, which would be taken by the 23rd Regiment at Yellow 1 and 2. The 25th Regiment at Blue 1 and 2 would head east to secure the right flank. Schmidt was prepared for Japanese banzai attacks and expected the swarm of bodies to expedite the invasion process, anticipating total control of the island in no more than four days.

Before landing his Marines on the beaches, Schmidt had requested that the Navy bombard the island for 10 consecutive days. His request was denied, however, and he was granted a mere three days on account of Nimitz's tight schedule ahead of the Okinawa invasion. The brief period of shelling was blighted by poor weather, and, when compounded with the island's well-protected defenses, the bombardment did little to soften up the Japanese. About 9:00 am on February 19, 1945, Marines began to land on the beach in intervals. They were surprised to encounter embankments of volcanic ash towering some 15 feet (4.6 meters) high. What was supposed to be an easy and methodical landing process quickly became congested, and Kuribayashi maximized the confusion by directing his troops and artillery to fire on the U.S. soldiers.

Schmidt sent in U.S. Naval Construction Battalion units (Seabees) with bulldozers to clear some of the ash, and by the end of that day the 28th Regiment had successfully isolated Suribachi from the rest of the island. On February 21 Kuribayashi executed a kamikaze attack on U.S. Navy vessels, badly damaging several ships. U.S. Marines continued to press forward on land, though, and on February 23 they secured Suribachi. Marines twice raised the American flag on Suribachi's summit. The second flag raising was photographed by Pulitzer Prize-winner Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press, and his photograph became one of the most famous combat images of World War II.

The 23rd, 25th, and 27th regiments began to measure their advances in yards. The 23rd Regiment managed to take Motoyama 1 by February 24 and Motoyama 2 by February 27, but progressing past that point proved exceedingly difficult. The first main Japanese line of defense lay beyond a sulfur field filled with man-made and natural defenses. Japanese soldiers battered the Marines with artillery by day, and at night they would slip behind the U.S. rear and plant mines along roads to disrupt enemy movements. On February 27 the central regiments, reinforced by the 21st Regiment from the 3rd Marine Division, mounted a massive coordinated assault that broke through the centre of the Japanese line and overran the heights adjacent to the unfinished Motoyama 3 airfield the following day. However, intense fighting continued on the right flank at the Amphitheater, Turkey Knob, and Hill 382, a rise that would be dubbed "the Meat Grinder." From their defensive positions, the Japanese fired on the Marines relentlessly, and U.S. soldiers resorted to using flamethrowers to snuff out every possible defender, but the area remained at a stalemate even after Marines took the Meat Grinder on March 2.

On the northern end of the island, the 28th Regiment fought alongside troops from the 5th Division for control of Hills 362A and 362B, seizing them both with considerable difficulty by March 3. Similarly, the 21st Regiment managed to take Hill 362C near the island's northeast shore, leaving only a small but resilient group of Japanese soldiers in that sector holding out at a site known as Cushman's Pocket. On March 8 Japanese Navy Capt. Samaji Inouye led a nighttime banzai attack against Kuribayashi's orders in hopes of driving the Americans off of their hill. His attack proved futile, however, and the casualties inflicted provided an opening for the Marines. By March 10 U.S. troops had finally cleared the Amphitheater and Turkey Knob of its defenders.

Despite areas of intense resistance at Cushman's Pocket, the northwest coast, and a small area on the east coast, the U.S. declared Iwo Jima secure on March 16. In actuality the island would not be secure until March 26, when a few hundred Japanese troops moved behind enemy lines toward Motoyama 1 and killed about 100 Americans in their sleep before being gunned down themselves. With the other pockets of defenders killed or captured, that night attack marked the last major engagement at Iwo Jima.

Aftermath and criticism

Operation Detachment was one of the deadliest conflicts in U.S. Marine Corps history. The Japanese death toll approached 18,500 soldiers, and some 6,800 U.S. Marines were killed and 19,200 were wounded. Twenty-seven Medals of Honor were awarded at the conclusion of the battle. The fact that Marines were forced to kill the Japanese virtually to the last man is a testament to the iron grip that Japan's military indoctrination had on its servicemen. Even Kuribayashi refused to surrender in the end, by some accounts preferring to commit seppuku rather than fall into American hands alive. Those few Japanese soldiers who survived were often ostracized at home because of their failure to defend the homeland with their lives.

For the United States, the Pyrrhic victory at Iwo Jima provided the AAF with important airfields that would be used throughout the rest of the Pacific War, but the impetus for the battle has drawn criticism from both high-ranking generals and prominent historians. Military historian and Marine Capt. Robert Burrell found that the provision of fighter escorts on bombing raids-the principal reason for Operation Detachment-was minimal overall, as only 10 escort missions ever occurred. B-29 bomber raids did originate from the island and were especially impactful, but these raids were not cited as a justification for the assault prior to the conclusion of the war. The primary postwar justification was Iwo Jima's capacity to provide emergency landings, but, while 2,251 B-29s landed on the island throughout the rest of the war, the majority of them were not strictly emergencies. Most concerning, though, was the fact that the JCOS did not consider either the opinion of the Marines or the doubts of their planners ahead of ordering the invasion. Had they done so, thousands of lives might have been saved.
Myles Hudson

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Battle of Iwo Jima | Facts, Significance, Photos, & Map

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Battle of Iwo Jima (February 19-March 16, 1945), World War II battle fought between the United States and Japan over a strategically important island some 760 miles (1,220 km) south of Tokyo. A photo of Marines raising the American flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi became one of the Pacific War's iconic images.

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In April, the Red Army launched its attacked Nazi Germany, and launched an offensive starting the Battle of Berlin. Soviet army sourrounded Berlin, which leaded into intense fights. On April 30, Hitler committed suicide. The city surrendered on May 2, marking finally the end of Nazi Germany.

On May 8 the Victory in Europe Day ( or V-E Day) marked the formal acceptance by the Allies of Nazi Germany's surrender, effectively ending World War II in Europe.

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The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, and launched a massive invasion of Manchuria (that were occupied by them). This attack is also known as Operation August Storm, it overwhelmed Japan and made them think significantly about their a decision on surrendering and the powers in east Asia were alterated.

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Japan surrendered formally on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, September 2, marking the most important point of the war: its end. Leaders and representatives from Japan and Allied power signed the Instrument of surrender, which officially was the final of that conflicts that had lasted years.

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The treaty of Versailles, made after WW1 blamed Germany and imposed terms over them that caused them a feeling of humiliation: they were taken territories, forced to pay huge amounts of money, restricted militarly...

All this caused a desire of revenge.

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The League of Nations was created after the WW1 to mantain peace among countries, but without the support and participation of United States, they couldn't prevent the attacks by Axis powers.

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The global economic depression of the 1930s "cultivated" lots of extremist ideologies in a way of thinking solutions to unemployment and poverty, so extremist leaders support increased significantly.

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The dictatorship of some authoritarian leaders like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini or Stanin imposed extreme policies. They all had the desire of expanding, conquistating and recreating empires that destabilized the international peace.

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The invasions of Austria and Czechoslovalia by Germany were followed by the one to poland, that caused the outbreak of the war.

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The WW2 caused a demographic disaster, it is estimated from 35 to 60 millions of deaths (more than 6 million Jews assesinated) , 25 million wounded people, 60 million people had to left their homes and 27 million their countries... Including militars and civilians.

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The war caused a massive destruction of cities , infrastructure and economies, specially in Europe and in Asia, needing a massive reconstruction.

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Those people that had to run away from their countries as refugees, there were millions and altered demographic patterns and continents.

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United States and Soviet Union emerged as the global dominating powers, this will create later a lot of tension and the onset of the Cold War era.

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The United Nations were stablished in 1945, its aim was to prevent future global conflicts and promotion of national cooperation and keeping peace.

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