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World War II[b] or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis. Nearly all of the world’s countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

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Home World History Wars, Battles & Armed Conflicts
Table of Contents

Also called:

Second World War

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Date:

September 3, 1939 - September 2, 1945

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What was the cause of World War II?

What countries fought in World War II?

Who were the leaders during World War II?

What were the turning points of World War II?

How did World War II end?

How many people died during World War II?

World War II, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000-50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union's power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Read Sir John Keegan's Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Axis initiative and Allied reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23-24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II

Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 pm on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 am and at 5:00 pm, respectively. World War II had begun.

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World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes

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World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. The main combatants were the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China). It was the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in human history.

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World War II: Causes and Timeline | HISTORY

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World War II was fought from 1939 to 1945. Learn more about World War II combatants, battles and generals, and what caused World War II.

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During the Battle of Westerplatte, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein attacks Westerplatte at the start of the war, September 1, 1939

The destroyer USS Shaw explodes during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

The causes of World War II have been given considerable attention by historians. The immediate precipitating event was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, and the subsequent declarations of war on Germany made by Britain and France, but many other prior events have been suggested as ultimate causes. Primary themes in historical analysis of the war's origins include the political takeover of Germany in 1933 by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party; Japanese militarism against China, which led to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and the Second Sino-Japanese War; Italian aggression against Ethiopia, which led to the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the consent of Western countries to Germany's actions on the annexation of Austria and the partition of Czechoslovakia and Germany's initial success in negotiating the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union to divide the territorial control of Eastern Europe between them.

During the interwar period, deep anger arose in the Weimar Republic on the conditions of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which punished Germany for its role in World War I with heavy financial reparations and severe limitations on its military that were intended to prevent it from becoming a military power again. The demilitarisation of the Rhineland, the prohibition of German unification with Austria, the loss of its overseas colonies and of some 12% of its pre-war land area and population provoked strong currents of revanchism in German politics.

During the worldwide economic crisis of the Great Depression in the 1930s, many people lost faith in liberal democracy and countries across the world turned to authoritarian regimes. In Germany, resentment over the terms of the Treaty of Versailles was intensified by the instability of the German political system, as many on both the Right and the Left rejected the Weimar Republic liberalism. The most extreme political aspirant to emerge from that situation was Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party. The Nazis took totalitarian power in Germany from 1933 and demanded the undoing of the Versailles provisions. Their ambitious and aggressive domestic and foreign policies reflected their ideologies of Antisemitism, unification of all Germans, the acquisition of "living space" (Lebensraum) for agrarian settlers, the elimination of Bolshevism and the hegemony of an " Aryan"/" Nordic" master race over "subhumans" (Untermenschen) such as Jews and Slavs. Other factors leading to the war included the aggression by Fascist Italy against Ethiopia and by Imperial Japan against China.

At first, the aggressive moves met with only feeble and ineffectual policies of appeasement from the other major world powers. The League of Nations proved helpless, especially regarding China and Ethiopia. A decisive proximate event was the 1938 Munich Conference, which formally approved Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler promised it was his last territorial claim, nevertheless in early 1939, he became even more aggressive, and European governments finally realised that appeasement would not guarantee peace but by then it was too late.

Britain and France rejected diplomatic efforts to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union, and Hitler instead offered Stalin a better deal in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939. An alliance formed by Germany, Italy, and Japan led to the establishment of the Axis powers.

"The Big Four" made all the major decisions at the Paris Peace Conference (from left to right, David Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, Woodrow Wilson of the U.S.)

By the end of World War I in late 1918, the world's social and geopolitical circumstances had fundamentally and irrevocably changed. The Allies had been victorious, but many of Europe's economies and infrastructures had been devastated, including those of the victors. France, along with the other victors, was in a desperate situation regarding its economy, security and morale and understood that its position in 1918 was "artificial and transitory". Thus, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau worked to gain French security via the Treaty of Versailles, and French security demands, such as reparations, coal payments, and a demilitarised Rhineland, took precedence at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-1920, which designed the treaty. The war "must be someone's fault - and that's a very natural human reaction", analysed the historian Margaret MacMillan. Germany was charged with the sole responsibility of starting World War I, and the War Guilt Clause was the first step to satisfying revenge for the victor countries, especially France, against Germany. Roy H. Ginsberg argued, "France was greatly weakened and, in its weakness and fear of a resurgent Germany, sought to isolate and punish Germany... French revenge would come back to haunt France during the Nazi invasion and occupation twenty years later".

Germany after Versailles

Annexed or transferred to neighbouring countries by the treaty or later by plebiscites and League of Nation actions

The two main provisions of the French security agenda were war reparations from Germany in the form of money and coal and a detached German Rhineland. The French government printed excess currency, which created inflation, to compensate for the lack of funds, and it borrowed money from the United States. Reparations from Germany were needed to stabilise the French economy. France also demanded for Germany to give France its coal supply from the Ruhr to compensate for the destruction of French coal mines during the war. The French demanded an amount of coal that was a "technical impossibility" for the Germans to pay. France also insisted on the demilitarisation of the German Rhineland in the hope of hindering any possibility of a future German attack and giving France a physical security barrier between itself and Germany. The inordinate amount of reparations, coal payments and the principle of a demilitarised Rhineland were largely viewed by the Germans as insulting and unreasonable.

The resulting Treaty of Versailles brought a formal end to the war but was judged by governments on all sides of the conflict. It was neither lenient enough to appease Germany nor harsh enough to prevent it from becoming a dominant continental power again. The German people largely viewed the treaty as placing the blame, or "war guilt", on Germany and Austria-Hungary and as punishing them for their "responsibility", rather than working out an agreement that would assure long-term peace. The treaty imposed harsh monetary reparations and requirements for demilitarisation and territorial dismemberment, caused mass ethnic resettlement and separated millions of ethnic Germans into neighbouring countries.

In the effort to pay war reparations to Britain and France, the Weimar Republic printed trillions of marks, which caused hyperinflation. Robert O. Paxton stated, "No postwar German government believed it could accept such a burden on future generations and survive...". Paying reparations to the victorious side had been a traditional punishment with a long history of use, but it was the "extreme immoderation" that caused German resentment. Germany did not make its last World War I reparation payment until 3 October 2010, 92 years after the end of the war. Germany also fell behind its coal payments because of a passive resistance movement against France. In response, the French invaded the Ruhr and occupied it. By then, most Germans had become enraged with the French and placed the blame for their humiliation on the Weimar Republic. Adolf Hitler, a leader of the Nazi Party, attempted a coup d'état in 1923 in what became known as the Beer Hall Putsch, and he intended to establish a Greater Germanic Reich. Although he failed, Hitler gained recognition as a national hero by the German population.

During the war, German colonies outside Europe had been annexed by the Allies, and Italy took the southern half of Tyrol after the armistice. The war in the east had ended with the defeat and the collapse of the Russian Empire, and German troops had occupied large parts of Eastern and Central Europe with varying degrees of control and established various client states such as a kingdom of Poland and the United Baltic Duchy. The German Navy spent most of the war in port, only to be turned over to the Allies. It was scuttled by its own officers to avoid it from being surrendered. The lack of an obvious military defeat would become one of the pillars holding together the Dolchstosslegende ("stab-in-the-back myth"), which gave the Nazis another propaganda tool.

Map of territorial changes in Europe after World WarI (as of 1922)

The demilitarised Rhineland and the additional cutbacks on military also infuriated the Germans. Although France logically wanted the Rhineland to be a neutral zone, France had the power to make their desire happen, which merely exacerbated German resentment of the French. In addition, the Treaty of Versailles dissolved the German general staff, and possession of navy ships, aircraft, poison gas, tanks and heavy artillery was also made illegal. The humiliation of being bossed around by the victor countries, especially France, and being stripped of their prized military made the Germans resent the Weimar Republic and idolise anyone who stood up to it. Austria also found the treaty unjust, which encouraged Hitler's popularity.

The conditions generated bitter resentment towards the war's victors, who had promised the Germans that US President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points would be a guideline for peace; but the Americans had played only a minor role in the war, and Wilson could not convince the Allies to agree to adopt his Fourteen Points. Many Germans felt that the German government had agreed to an armistice based on that understanding, and others felt that the German Revolution of 1918-1919 had been orchestrated by the " November criminals", who later assumed office in the new Weimar Republic. The Japanese also started to express resentment against Western Europe for how they were treated during the negotiations of the Treaty of Versailles. The Japanese proposition to discuss the issue of racial equality was not put in the final draft because of many other Allies, and the Japanese participation in the war caused little reward for the country. The war's economic and psychological legacies persisted well into the Interwar period.

The League of Nations was an international peacekeeping organization founded in 1919 with the explicit goal of preventing future wars. The League's methods included disarmament, collective security, the settlement of disputes between countries by negotiations and diplomacy and the improvement of global welfare. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a fundamental shift in thought from the preceding century. The old philosophy of "concert of nations", which grew out of the Congress of Vienna (1815), saw Europe as a shifting map of alliances among nation-states, which created a balance of power that was maintained by strong armies and secret agreements. Under the new philosophy, the League would act as a government of governments, with the role of settling disputes between individual nations in an open and legalist forum. Despite Wilson's advocacy, the United States never joined the League of Nations.

The League lacked an armed force of its own and so depended on member nations to enforce its resolutions, uphold economic sanctions that the League ordered or provide an army when needed for the League to use. However, individual governments were often very reluctant to do so. After numerous notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis Powers in the 1930s. The reliance upon unanimous decisions, the lack of an independent body of armed forces and the continued self-interest of its leading members meant that the failure was arguably inevitable.

Expansionism is the doctrine of expanding the territorial base or economic influence of a country, usually by means of military aggression. Militarism is the principle or policy of maintaining a strong military capability to use aggressively to expand national interests and/or values, with the view that military efficiency is the supreme ideal of a state.

The Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations had sought to stifle expansionist and militarist policies by all actors, but the conditions imposed by their creators imposed on the world's new geopolitical situation and the technological circumstances of the era only emboldened the re-emergence of those ideologies during the Interwar Period. By the early 1930s, militaristic and aggressive national ideologies prevailed in Germany, Japan and Italy. The attitude fuelled advancements in military technology, subversive propaganda and ultimately territorial expansion. It has been observed that the leaders of countries that have been suddenly militarised often feel a need to prove that their armies are formidable, which was often a contributing factor in the start of conflicts such as the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Italy and its colonial possessions in 1940

In Italy, Benito Mussolini sought to create a New Roman Empire, based around the Mediterranean. Italy invaded Ethiopia as early as 1935, Albania in early 1938, and later Greece. The invasion of Ethiopia provoked angry words and a failed oil embargo from the League of Nations. Spazio vitale ("living space") was the territorial expansionist concept of Italian Fascism. It was analogous to Nazi Germany's concept of Lebensraum and the United States' concept of " Manifest Destiny". Fascist ideologist Giuseppe Bottai likened this historic mission to the deeds of the ancient Romans.

Under the Nazi regime, Germany began its own program of expansion that sought to restore its "rightful" boundaries. As a prelude toward its goals, the Rhineland was remilitarised in March 1936. Also of importance was the idea of a Greater Germany, supporters of which hoped to unite the German people under one nation-state to include all territories inhabited by Germans, even if they happened to be a minority in a particular territory. After the Treaty of Versailles, a unification between Germany and the newly formed German-Austria, a rump state of Austria-Hungary, was blocked by the Allies, despite the large majority of Austrians supporting the idea.

During the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), the Kapp Putsch, an attempted coup d'état against the republican government, was launched by disaffected members of the armed forces. Later, some of the more radical militarists and nationalists were submerged in grief and despair into the Nazi Party, and more moderate elements of militarism declined. The result was an influx of militarily-inclined men into the Nazi Party. Combined with its racial theories, that fuelled irredentist sentiments and put Germany on a collision course for war with its immediate neighbours.

The Japanese march into Zhengyangmen, Beijing, after they captured the city in July 1937

In Asia, the Empire of Japan harboured expansionist desires towards Manchuria and the Republic of China. Two contemporaneous factors in Japan contributed both to the growing power of its military and the chaos in its ranks before World War I. One was the Cabinet Law, which required the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) to nominate cabinet members before changes could be formed. That essentially gave the military a veto power over the formation of any Cabinet in the ostensibly-parliamentary country. The other factor was , the institutionalized disobedience by junior officers. It was common for radical junior officers to press their goals to the extent of assassinating their seniors. In 1936, the phenomenon resulted in the February 26 Incident in which junior officers attempted a coup d'état and killed leading members of the Japanese government. In the 1930s, the Great Depression wrecked Japan's economy and gave radical elements within the Japanese military the chance to force the entire military into working towards the conquest of all of Asia.

For example, in 1931, the Kwantung Army, a Japanese military force stationed in Manchuria, staged the Mukden Incident, which sparked the invasion of Manchuria and its transformation into the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo.

Twentieth-century events marked the culmination of a millennium-long process of intermingling between Germans and Slavic people. The rise of nationalism in the 19th century made race a centerpiece of political loyalty. The rise of the nation-state had given way to the politics of identity, including pan-Germanism and pan-Slavism. Furthermore, Social Darwinist theories framed the coexistence as a "Teuton vs. Slav" struggle for domination, land, and limited resources. Integrating these ideas into their own worldview, the Nazis believed that the Germans, the " Aryan race", were the master race and that the Slavs were inferior.

Japanese occupation of China in 1937

Other than a few coal and iron deposits and a small oil field on Sakhalin Island, Japan lacked strategic mineral resources. In the early 20th century, in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan had succeeded in pushing back the East Asian expansion of the Russian Empire in competition for Korea and Manchuria.

Japan's goal after 1931 was economic dominance of most of East Asia, often expressed in the Pan-Asian terms of "Asia for the Asians". Japan was determined to dominate the China market, which the US and other European powers had been dominating. On October 19, 1939, US Ambassador to Japan Joseph C. Grew, in a formal address to the America-Japan Society, stated that

the new order in East Asia has appeared to include, among other things, depriving Americans of their long established rights in China, and to this the American people are opposed.... American rights and interests in China are being impaired or destroyed by the policies and actions of the Japanese authorities in China.

In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria and China proper. Under the guise of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, with slogans such as "Asia for the Asians!", Japan sought to remove the Western powers' influence in China and replace it with Japanese domination.

The ongoing conflict in China led to a deepening conflict with the US in which public opinion was alarmed by events such as the Nanking Massacre and growing Japanese power. Lengthy talks were held between the US and Japan. The Japanese invasion of the south of French Indochina made President Franklin Roosevelt freeze all Japanese assets in the US. The intended consequence was to halt oil shipments from the US to Japan, which supplied 80 percent of Japanese oil imports. The Netherlands and Britain followed suit.

With oil reserves that would last only a year and a half during peacetime and much less during wartime, the ABCD line left Japan two choices: comply with the US-led demand to pull out of China or seize the oilfields in the East Indies from the Netherlands. The Japanese government deemed it unacceptable to retreat from China.

In the late 1980s, the British historian Richard Overy was involved in a historical dispute with Timothy Mason that played out mostly over the pages of the Past and Present journal over the reasons for the outbreak of the war in 1939. Mason had contended that a "flight into war" had been imposed on Hitler by a structural economic crisis, which confronted Hitler with the choice of making difficult economic decisions or aggression. Overy argued against Mason's thesis by maintaining that Germany was faced with economic problems in 1939, but the extent of those problems could not explain aggression against Poland and the reasons for the outbreak of war were the choices made by the Nazi leadership.

Mason had argued that the German working-class was always against the Nazi dictatorship; that in the overheated German economy of the late 1930s, German workers could force employers to grant higher wages by leaving for another firm and so grant the desired wage increases and that such a form of political resistance forced Hitler to go to war in 1939. Thus, the outbreak of the war was caused by structural economic problems, a "flight into war" imposed by a domestic crisis. The key aspects of the crisis were, according to Mason, a shaky economic recovery that was threatened by a rearmament program that overwhelmed the economy and in which the regime's nationalist bluster limited its options. In that way, Mason articulated a Primat der Innenpolitik ("primacy of domestic politics") view of the war's origins by the concept of social imperialism. Mason's Primat der Innenpolitik thesis was in marked contrast to the Primat der Außenpolitik ("primacy of foreign politics"), which is usually used to explain the war. Mason thought German foreign policy was driven by domestic political considerations, and the launch the war in 1939 was best understood as a "barbaric variant of social imperialism".

Mason argued, "Nazi Germany was always bent at some time upon a major war of expansion". However, Mason argued that the timing of such a war was determined by domestic political pressures, especially as relating to a failing economy, and had nothing to do with what Hitler wanted. Mason believed that from 1936 to 1941, the state of the German economy, not Hitler's "will" or "intentions", was the most important determinate on German foreign policy decisions.

Mason argued that the Nazi leaders were so deeply haunted by the November 1918 German Revolution that they were most unwilling to see any fall in working-class living standards for fear of provoking a repetition of the revolution. Mason stated that by 1939, the "overheating" of the German economy caused by rearmament, the failure of various rearmament plans produced by the shortages of skilled workers, industrial unrest caused by the breakdown of German social policies and the sharp drop in living standards for the German working class forced Hitler into going to war at a time and a place that were not of his choosing.

Mason contended that when faced with the deep socio-economic crisis, the Nazi leadership had decided to embark upon a ruthless foreign policy of "smash and grab" to seize territory in Eastern Europe that could be pitilessly plundered to support the living standards in Germany. Mason described German foreign policy as driven by an opportunistic "next victim" syndrome after the in which the "promiscuity of aggressive intentions" was nurtured by every successful foreign policy move. Mason's considered the decision to sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and to attack Poland despite the risk of a war against Britain and France to be the abandonment by Hitler of his foreign policy program outlined in and to have been forced on him by his need to stop a collapsing German economy by seizing territory abroad to be plundered.

For Overy, the problem with Mason's thesis was that it rested on the assumption that in a way that was not shown by the records, information was passed on to Hitler about Germany's economic problems. Overy argued for a difference between economic pressures induced by the problems of the Four Year Plan and economic motives to seize raw materials, industry and foreign reserves of neighbouring states as a way of accelerating the plan. Overy asserted that Mason downplayed the repressive German state's capacity to deal with domestic unhappiness. Finally, Overy argued that there is considerable evidence that Germany felt that it could master the economic problems of rearmament. As one civil servant put it in January 1940, "we have already mastered so many difficulties in the past, that here too, if one or other raw material became extremely scarce, ways and means will always yet be found to get out of a fix".

Hitler and his Nazis took full control of Germany in 1933-34 ( Machtergreifung), turning it into a dictatorship with a highly hostile outlook toward the Treaty of Versailles and Jews. It solved its unemployment crisis by heavy military spending.

Hitler's diplomatic tactics were to make seemingly-reasonable demands and to threaten war if they were not met. After concessions were made, he accepted them and moved onto a new demand. When opponents tried to appease him, he accepted the gains that were offered and went to the next target. That aggressive strategy worked as Germany pulled out of the League of Nations (1933), rejected the Versailles Treaty, began to rearm with the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (1935), won back the Saar (1935), re-militarized the Rhineland (1936), formed an alliance ("axis") with Mussolini's Italy (1936), sent massive military aid to Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), seized Austria (1938), took over Czechoslovakia after the British and French appeasement of the Munich Agreement of 1938, formed a peace pact with Stalin's Russia in August 1939 and finally invaded Poland in September 1939.

In violation of the Treaty of Versailles and the spirit of the Locarno Pact and the Stresa Front, Germany remilitarized the Rhineland on March 7, 1936, by moving German troops into the part of western Germany in which according to the Versailles Treaty, they were not allowed. Neither France nor Britain was prepared fight a preventive war to stop the violation and so there were no consequences.

Following the Stresa Conference and even as a reaction to the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini attempted to expand the Italian Empire in Africa by invading the Ethiopian Empire, also known as the Abyssinian Empire. The League of Nations declared Italy to be the aggressor and imposed sanctions on oil sales, which proved ineffective. Italy annexed Ethiopia in May 1936 and merged Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somaliland into a single colony, known as Italian East Africa. On June 30, 1936, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie gave a stirring speech before the League of Nations denouncing Italy's actions and criticizing the world community for standing by. He warned, "It is us today. It will be you tomorrow". As a result of the League's condemnation of Italy, Mussolini declared the country's withdrawal from the organization.

Francisco Franco and Heinrich Himmler in Madrid, Spain, 1940

Between 1936 and 1939, Germany and Italy lent support to the Nationalists led by general Francisco Franco in Spain, and the Soviet Union supported the existing democratically elected government, the Spanish Republic, led by Manuel Azaña. Both sides experimented with new weapons and tactics. The League of Nations was never involved, and its major powers remained neutral and tried with little success to stop arms shipments into Spain. The Nationalists eventually defeated the Republicans in 1939.

Spain negotiated with joining the Axis but remained neutral during World War II and did business with both sides. It also sent a volunteer unit to help the Germans against the Soviets. The Spanish Civil War was considered in the 1940s and 1950s to be a prelude to World War II, which was the case to some extent by changing it into an antifascist contest after 1941, but bore no resemblance to the war that started in 1939 and had no major role in causing it.

In 1931, Japan took advantage of China's weakness in the Warlord Era and fabricated the Mukden Incident in 1931 to set up the puppet state of Manchukuo in Manchuria, with Emperor Puyi, who had been the last emperor of China. In 1937 the Marco Polo Bridge Incident triggered the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The invasion was launched by the bombing of many cities such as Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou. The latest, which began on 22 and 23 September 1937, called forth widespread protests culminating in a resolution by the Far Eastern Advisory Committee of the League of Nations. The Imperial Japanese Army captured the Chinese capital city of Nanjing and committed war crimes in the Nanjing Massacre. The war tied down large numbers of Chinese soldiers and so Japan set up three different Chinese puppet states to enlist some Chinese support.

The was the 1938 annexation by threat of force of Austria into Germany. Historically, Pan-Germanism was the idea of creating a Greater Germany to include all ethnic Germans into one nation-state and was popular in both Austria and Germany.

The National Socialist Program included the idea in one of its points: "We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the people's right to self-determination."

The Stresa Front of 1935 between Britain, France and Italy had guaranteed the independence of Austria, but after the creation of the Rome-Berlin Axis, Mussolini was much less interested in upholding its independence.

The Austrian government resisted as long as possible but had no outside support and finally gave in to Hitler's fiery demands. No fighting occurred, most Austrians supported the annexation and Austria was fully absorbed as part of Germany. Outside powers did nothing, and Italy had little reason for continued opposition to Germany and, if anything, was drawn in closer to the Nazis.

The Sudetenland was a predominantly-German region in Czechoslovakia along the border with Germany. It had more than three million ethnic Germans, who comprised almost a quarter of the country's population. In the Treaty of Versailles, the region was given to the Czechoslovakia against the wishes of most of the local population. The decision to disregard its right to self-determination was based on France's intent to weaken Germany. Much of Sudetenland was industrialised.

Czechoslovakia had a modern army of 38 divisions, backed by a well-noted armament industry ( Škoda) and military alliances with France and the Soviet Union. However, its defensive strategy against Germany was based on the mountains of the Sudetenland.

Hitler pressed for the Sudetenland's incorporation into Germany and supported German separatist groups within the region. Alleged Czechoslovak brutality and persecution under Prague helped to stir up nationalist tendencies, as did the Nazi press. After the Anschluss, all German parties except for the German Social-Democratic Party merged with the Sudeten German Party (SdP). Paramilitary activity and extremist violence peaked during the period, and the Czechoslovak government declared martial law in parts of the Sudetenland to maintain order. That only complicated the situation, especially since Slovak nationalism was rising from suspicion towards Prague and encouragement by Germany. Citing the need to protect the Germans in Czechoslovakia, Germany requested the immediate annexation of the Sudetenland.

In the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938, the British, French, and Italian prime ministers appeased Hitler by giving him what he wanted in the hope that it would be his last demand. The powers allowed Germany to move troops into the region and incorporate it into the Reich "for the sake of peace". In exchange, Hitler gave his word that Germany would make no further territorial claims in Europe. Czechoslovakia was not allowed to participate in the conference. When the French and British negotiators informed the Czechoslovak representatives about the agreement and that if Czechoslovakia would not accept it, France and Britain would consider Czechoslovakia to be responsible for war and stay neutral, Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš capitulated and Germany took the Sudetenland unopposed.

Chamberlain's policies have been the subject of intense debate for more than 70 years by academics, politicians and diplomats. The historians' assessments have ranged from condemnation for allowing Hitler's Germany to grow too strong to the judgment that Germany was so strong that it might well win a war and so the postponement of a showdown was in the country's best interests.

German occupation and Slovak independence

In March 1939, breaking the Munich Agreement, German troops invaded Prague, and with the Slovaks declaring independence, Czechoslovakia disappeared as a country. The entire ordeal ended the French and British policy of appeasement.

After the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Mussolini feared for Italy becoming a second-rate member of the Axis. Rome delivered Tirana an ultimatum on March 25, 1939, by demanding the accession to Italy's occupation of Albania. King Zog refused to accept money in exchange for allowing a full Italian takeover and colonization of Albania.

On April 7, 1939, Italian troops invaded Albania, which was occupied after a three-day campaign with minimal resistance offered by Albanian forces.

In 1939, the Japanese attacked west from Manchuria into the Mongolian People's Republic after the 1938 Battle of Lake Khasan. They were decisively beaten by Soviet units, under General Georgy Zhukov. After the battle, the Soviet Union and Japan were at peace until 1945. Japan looked south to expand its empire, which led to conflict with the United States over the Philippines and the control of shipping lanes to the Dutch East Indies. The Soviet Union focused on its western border but left 1 million to 1.5 million troops to guard its border with Japan.

The Polish Corridor and the Free City of Danzig

After the end of Czechoslovakia proved that Germany could not be trusted, Britain and France decided on a change of strategy. They decided any further unilateral German expansion would be met by force. The natural next target for German expansion was Poland, whose access to the Baltic sea had been carved out of West Prussia by the Versailles Treaty, which made East Prussia an exclave. The main port of the area, Danzig, had been made into a free city-state under Polish influence guaranteed by the League of Nations, a stark reminder to German nationalists of the Napoleonic free city that had been established after French Emperor Napoleon I's crushing victory over Prussia in 1807.

After taking power, the Nazi government made efforts to establish friendly relations with Poland, which resulted in the signing of the ten-year German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact with the Piłsudski regime in 1934. In 1938, Poland participated in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by annexing Trans-Olza. In 1939, Hitler claimed extraterritoriality for the Reichsautobahn Berlin-Königsberg and a change in Danzig's status in exchange for promises of territory in Poland's neighbours and a 25-year extension of the non-aggression pact. Poland refused for fear of losing its de facto access to the sea, subjugation as a German satellite state or client state and future further German demands. In August 1939, Hitler delivered an ultimatum to Poland on Danzig's status.

Polish alliance with Entente

The Franco-Polish Alliance was the military alliance between Poland and France that was active between the early 1920s and the outbreak of the Second World War. The initial agreements were signed in February 1921 and formally took effect in 1923. During the interwar period the alliance with Poland was one of the cornerstones of French foreign policy.

See also: Franco-Polish alliance (1524)

During the France-Habsburg rivalry, which began in the 16th century, France tried to find allies to the east of Austria, hoping to ally with Poland. Polish King Jan III Sobieski also had the intention to ally with France against the threat of Austria, but the greater threat posed by the Muslim-led Ottoman Empire made him fight for the Christian cause in the Battle of Vienna. In the 18th century, Poland was partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria, but Napoleon recreated the Polish state in the Duchy of Warsaw. With the rise of a united German Empire in the 19th century, France and Poland found a new common enemy.

During the Polish-Soviet War of 1920, France, one of the most active supporters of Poland, sent the French Military Mission to Poland to aid the Polish army. In early February in Paris, three pacts were discussed by Polish Chief of State Józef Piłsudski and French President Alexandre Millerand: political, military and economic.

The political alliance was signed there on February 19, 1921 by Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Count Eustachy Sapieha and French Minister of Foreign Affairs Aristide Briand, in the background of the negotiations that ended the Polish-Soviet War by the Treaty of Riga. The agreement assumed a common foreign policy, the promotion of bilateral economical contacts, the consultation of new pacts concerning Central and Eastern Europe and assistance in case one of the signatories became a victim of an "unprovoked" attack. As such, it was a defensive alliance. The secret military pact was signed two days later, on February 21, 1921, and clarified that the agreement was aimed at possible threats from both Germany and the Soviet Union. An attack on Poland would make France keep lines of communication free and Germany in check but not require it to send troops or to declare war. Both political and military pacts were legally not in force until the economic pact was ratified, which occurred on August 2, 1923.

The alliance was further extended by the Franco-Polish Warrant Agreement, signed on October 16, 1925 in Locarno, as part of the Locarno Treaties. The new treaty subscribed all previously-signed Polish-French agreements to the system of mutual pacts of the League of Nations.

The alliance was closely tied with the Franco-Czechoslovakian Alliance. France's alliances with Poland and Czechoslovakia were aimed at deterring Germany from the use of force to achieve a revision of the postwar settlement and ensuring that German forces would be confronted with significant combined strength of its neighbours. Although Czechoslovakia had a significant economy and industry and Poland had a strong army, the French-Polish-Czechoslovakian triangle never reached its full potential. Czechoslovakian foreign policy, under Edvard Beneš, avoided signing a formal alliance with Poland, which would force Czechoslovakia to take sides in Polish-German territorial disputes. Czechoslovakia's influence was weakened by the doubts of its allies as to the trustworthiness of its army, and Poland's influence was undermined by fighting between supporters and opponents of Józef Piłsudski. France's reluctance to invest in its allies' industry (especially Poland's), improve trade relations by buying their agricultural products and share military expertise further weakened the alliance.

In the 1930s, the alliance remained mostly inactive and its only effect was to keep the French Military Mission to Poland, which had worked with the Polish General Staff ever since the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920. However, with the German threat becoming increasingly visible in the latter part of the decade, both countries started to seek a new pact to guarantee the independence of all contracting parties and military co-operation in case of a war with Germany.

Finally, a new alliance started to be formed in 1939. The Kasprzycki-Gamelin Convention was signed May 19, 1939 in Paris. It was named after Polish Minister of War Affairs General Tadeusz Kasprzycki and Commander of the French Army Maurice Gamelin. The military convention was army-to-army, not state-to-state, and was not in force legally, as it was dependent on signing and ratification of the political convention. It obliged both armies to provide help to each other in case of a war with Germany. In May, Gamelin promised a "bold relief offensive" within three weeks of a German attack.

The treaty was ratified by France on September 4, 1939, on the fourth day of German offensive on Poland.

However, France provided only token help to Poland during the war in the form of the Saar Offensive, which has often been considered an example of Western betrayal. However, the political convention was the basis of the recreation of the Polish Army in France.

Piotr Zychowicz quoted the memoirs of the French ambassador to Poland, Léon Noël, who wrote as early as October 1938, "It is of utmost importance that we remove from our obligations everything that would deprive French government the freedom of decision on the day when Poland finds itself in war with Germany". Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet reassured Noel by writing that "our agreement with Poland is full of gaps, needed to keep our country away from war".

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In March 1939, Britain and France guaranteed the independence of Poland. Hitler's claims in the summer of 1939 on Danzig and the Polish Corridor provoked yet another international crisis. On August 25, Britain signed the Polish-British Common Defence Pact.

Nominally, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a non-aggression treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union and was signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939, by Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.

In 1939, neither Germany nor the Soviet Union was ready to go to war with each other. The Soviet Union had lost territory to Poland in 1920. Although officially called a "non-aggression treaty," the pact included a secret protocol in which the independent countries of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania were divided into spheres of interest between both the parties. The secret protocol explicitly assumed "territorial and political rearrangements" in those areas.

All of the mentioned countries were invaded, occupied, or forced to cede part of their territory by the Soviet Union, Germany or both. Finland and Romania maintained their independence, however being forced to cede parts of their territory.

The conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland had a great impact of assessing the former's military capabilities by Nazi Germany.

Grave of German soldiers fallen during invasion of Poland in Końskie. Visible inscription "For Fuhrer und Vaterland"

Between 1919 and 1939, Poland had pursued a policy of balancing between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and agreed to non-aggression pacts with both. In early 1939, Germany demanded for Poland to join the Anti-Comintern Pact as a satellite state of Germany. Poland, fearing a loss of independence, refused. Hitler admitted to his generals on 23 May 1939 that his reason for invading Poland was not Danzig: "Danzig is not the issue at stake. It is a matter of extending our living space in the East...". To deter Hitler, Britain and France announced that an invasion would mean war and tried to convince the Soviet Union to join in this deterrence. The Soviets, however, gained control of the Baltic states and part of Poland by allying with Germany by the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939. London's attempt at deterrence failed, but Hitler did not expect a wider war. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and rejected the British and French demands for it to withdraw, which resulted in both to declare war on September 3, 1939, in accordance with the defence treaties with Poland that they had signed and publicly announced. However neither France nor Britain provided significant military aid to Poland except small operation known as Saar offensive. As of 1 September 1939 Poland was only partially mobilized, which was largely the result of pressure from the British and French ambassadors on the Polish government, fearing a repeat of the mobilization scenario of war from 1914. The Wehrmacht also had advantage in terms of the number of tanks and planes and the technical advancement of its equipment.

On September 17, 1939, the Red Army entered Poland from the east, and the Polish Command decided to abandon the defense of the so-called Romanian Bridgehead and evacuate of all its forces to neighboring countries. The last larger unit of Polish troops capitulated on October 6, 1939, near Kock, but some units went straight to partisan combat. Until the spring of 1940, the resistance of irregular units in the region of the Świętokrzyskie Mountains in central Poland lasted, but the struggle of these units resulted in enormous repressions against the civilian population of the region in which they operated.

Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. Hitler believed that the Soviet Union could be defeated in a fast and relentless assault that capitalised on the Soviets' ill-prepared state and hoped that success there would bring Britain to the negotiation table, which would end the war altogether.

The US government and general public in general had been supportive of China, condemned European colonialist policies and Japan and promoted the so-called Open Door Policy. Many Americans viewed the Japanese as an aggressive and/or inferior race. The Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek held friendly relations with the US, which opposed Japan's invasion of China in 1937 and considered it a violation of international law and of the sovereignty of the Republic of China. The US offered the Nationalist government diplomatic, economic and military assistance during its war against Japan. Diplomatic friction between the United States and Japan manifested itself in events like the Panay incident in 1937 and the Allison incident in 1938.

Reacting to Japanese pressure on French authorities of French Indochina to stop trade with China, the US began restricting trade with Japan in July 1940. The end of all oil shipments in 1941 was decisive since the Americans, British and Dutch provided almost all of Japan's oil. In September 1940, the Japanese invaded Vichy French Indochina and occupied Tonkin to prevent China from importing arms and fuel through French Indochina along the Sino-Vietnamese Railway from the port of Haiphong through Hanoi to Kunming, in Yunnan. The US decided that the Japanese had now gone too far and decided to force a rollback of its gains. In 1940 and 1941, the Americans and the Chinese decided to organise a volunteer squadron of American planes and pilots to attack the Japanese from Chinese bases. Known as the Flying Tigers, the unit was commanded by Claire Lee Chennault. Its first combat came two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Taking advantage of the situation, Thailand launched the Franco-Thai War in October 1940. Japan stepped in as a mediator in the war in May 1941 and allowed its ally to occupy the bordering provinces in Cambodia and Laos. In July 1941, as Operation Barbarossa had effectively neutralised the Soviet threat, the faction of the Japanese military junta supporting the "Southern Strategy" pushed through the occupation of the rest of French Indochina.

The US reacted by seeking to bring the Japanese war effort to a complete halt by imposing a full embargo on all trade between the United States to Japan on August 18, 1941, and demanding a Japanese withdrawal of all troops from China and Indochina. Japan was dependent on the United States for 80% of its oil, which resulted in an economic and military crisis for Japan since it could not continue the war effort against China without access to petroleum and oil products.

On 7 December 1941, without a declaration of war, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor with the aim of destroying the main American battle fleet at anchor. Meanwhile, other Japanese forces attacked the American-held Philippines and the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The following day, an official Japanese declaration of war on the United States and the British Empire was printed on the front page of all Japanese newspapers' evening editions. International time differences caused the announcement to take place between midnight and 3 a.m. on 8 December in North America and at about 8 a.m. on 8 December in the United Kingdom.

Canada declared war on Japan on the evening of 7 December, and a royal proclamation affirmed the declaration the next day. The British declared war on Japan on the morning of 8 December and specifically identified the attacks on Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong as the cause but omitted any mention of Pearl Harbor. The United States declared war upon Japan on the afternoon of 8 December, nine hours after the United Kingdom, and identified only "unprovoked acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America" as the cause.

Four days later, the US was brought into the European war when on December 11, 1941, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States. Hitler chose to declare that the Tripartite Pact required Germany to follow Japan's declaration of war although American destroyers escorting convoys and German U-boats had been de facto at war in the Battle of the Atlantic. The declaration of war effectively ended US isolationist sentiment, and the country immediately reciprocated and so formally entered the war in Europe.

1. ^ Keynes, John Maynard (1920). "History of World War I". THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE.

2. ^ Axelrod, Josh (11 August 2019). "A Century Later: The Treaty of Versailles and Its Rejection of Racial Equality". NPR.

3. ^ Clark, Joseph (1944). Ten Years in Japan: a Contemporary Record Drawn from the Diaries and Private and Official Papers of Joseph G. Grew, United States Ambassador to Japan, 1932-1942. pp. 251-255. ASIN B0006ER51M.

4. ^ Sugihara, Kaoru (1997). "The Economic Motivations behind Japanese Aggression in the Late 1930s: Perspectives of Freda Utley and Nawa Toichi". Journal of Contemporary History. 32 (2): 259-280. doi:10.1177/002200949703200208. JSTOR 261244. S2CID 152462148.

5. ^ Perry, Matt (1999). "Mason, Timothy". In Kelly Boyd (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing. Vol. 2. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishing. pp. 780-781. doi:10.4324/9780203825556. ISBN 9780203825556. S2CID 221608764.

6. Kershaw, Ian (2000) The Nazi Dictatorship. London: Arnold, p. 88. ISBN 0340760281

7. Weinberg, Gerhard. ^ The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933-36 (vol. 1) (1971); The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Starting World War II, 1937-1939 (vol. 2) (University of Chicago Press, 1980) ISBN 0-226-88511-9.

8. ^ Ripsman, Norrin M.; Levy, Jack S. (2007). "The Preventive War that Never Happened: Britain, France, and the Rise of Germany in the 1930s" (PDF). Security Studies. Informa UK Limited. 16 (1): 32-67. doi:10.1080/09636410701304549. S2CID 145796434.

9. Faber, David (2010) Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II. pp. 139-68. ISBN 1439132348

10. ^ Chamberlain's radio broadcast Archived 2007-06-07 at the Wayback Machine, 27 September 1938

11. ^ Cole, Robert A. (2010). "Appeasing Hitler: The Munich Crisis of 1938: A Teaching and Learning Resource". New England Journal of History. 66 (2): 1-30.

12. Lukacs, John (2001) ^ The Last European War: September 1939 - December 1941. Yale University Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0300089158

13. ^ "Bericht über eine Besprechung (Schmundt-Mitschrift)". "Danzig ist nicht das Objekt, um das es geht. Es handelt sich für uns um die Erweiterung des Lebensraumes im Osten und Sicherstellung der Ernährung, sowie der Lösung des Baltikum-Problems."

14. Kochanski, Halik (2012) ^ The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War. Harvard University Press. pp. 34-93. ISBN 0674284003

15. Steiner, Zara (2011) ^ The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933-1939. Oxford University Press. pp. 690-92, 738-41. ISBN 9780199676095 doi:10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199676095.001.0001

16. ^ Smith, Ralph B. (1978). "The Japanese Period in Indochina and the Coup of 9 March 1945". Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. Cambridge University Press (CUP). 9 (2): 268-301. doi:10.1017/s0022463400009784. JSTOR 20062728. S2CID 162631136.

17. Graham, Euan (2006). ^ Japan's sea lane security, 1940-2004: a matter of life and death? Routledge. p. 77. ISBN 9780415356404

18. ^ French, Howard W. (December 9, 1999). "Pearl Harbor Truly a Sneak Attack, Papers Show". The New York Times.

19. See also ^ United States declaration of war upon Italy and United States declaration of war upon Germany (1941).

Kaillis, Aristotle (2000). Fascist Ideology. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415216128.

Paxton, Robert O. (2011). Europe in the Twentieth Century. United States: Wadsworth. ISBN 9781133171126.

Bell, P. M. H. The Origins of the Second World War in Europe (Routledge, 2014).

Dowswell, Paul. The Causes of World War II (Heinemann, 2002).

Kagan Robert. The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941 (Knopf, 2023); excerpt

Morewood, Steve. "The origins of World War Two in Europe." in Themes in Modern European History, 1890-1945 (Routledge, 2008) pp. 291-330.

Overy, Richard J. The Origins of the Second World War (Routledge, 2014) . a major scholarly study

Tarling, Nicholas, and Margaret Lamb. From Versailles to Pearl Harbor: The Origins of the Second World War in Europe and Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001) online.

Watt, Donald Cameron. How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938-1939 (1989). online a major scholarly study; online review

Weinberg, Gerhard L. A world at arms: A global history of World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

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The causes of World War II have been given considerable attention by historians. The immediate precipitating event was the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, and the subsequent declarations of war on Germany made by Britain and France, but many other prior events have been suggested as ultimate causes.

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Operation Centerboard

Part of the Pacific War of World War II

Type
Nuclear bombing

Location

Date

6 and 9 August 1945

Executed by

Casualties

Hiroshima:

70,000-126,000 civilians killed

7,000-20,000 soldiers killed

12 Allied prisoners of war

Nagasaki:

60,000-80,000 killed (within 4 months)

150+ soldiers killed

8-13 Allied prisoners of war

On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war against Japan and invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria. The Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender on 2 September, effectively ending the war.

In the final year of World War II, the Allies prepared for a costly invasion of the Japanese mainland. This undertaking was preceded by a conventional bombing and firebombing campaign that devastated 64 Japanese cities. The war in the European theatre concluded when Germany surrendered on 8 May 1945, and the Allies turned their full attention to the Pacific War. By July 1945, the Allies' Manhattan Project had produced two types of atomic bombs: " Little Boy", an enriched uranium gun-type fission weapon, and " Fat Man", a plutonium implosion-type nuclear weapon. The 509th Composite Group of the United States Army Air Forces was trained and equipped with the specialized Silverplate version of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress, and deployed to Tinian in the Mariana Islands. The Allies called for the unconditional surrender of the Imperial Japanese armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on 26 July 1945, the alternative being "prompt and utter destruction". The Japanese government ignored the ultimatum.

The consent of the United Kingdom was obtained for the bombing, as was required by the Quebec Agreement, and orders were issued on 25 July by General Thomas Handy, the acting chief of staff of the United States Army, for atomic bombs to be used against Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki. These targets were chosen because they were large urban areas that also held militarily significant facilities. On 6 August, a Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later, a Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. Over the next two to four months, the effects of the atomic bombings killed between 90,000 and 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 and 80,000 people in Nagasaki; roughly half occurred on the first day. For months afterward, many people continued to die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition. Though Hiroshima had a sizable military garrison, most of the dead were civilians.

Scholars have extensively studied the effects of the bombings on the social and political character of subsequent world history and popular culture, and there is still much debate concerning the ethical and legal justification for the bombings. Supporters claim that the atomic bombings were necessary to bring an end to the war with minimal casualties; critics believe that the bombings were unnecessary for the war's end and a war crime, and highlight the moral and ethical implications of the intentional nuclear attack on civilians.

Background

Pacific War

Situation of the Pacific War on 1 August 1945.
White and green: Areas still controlled by Japan included Korea, Taiwan, Indochina, and much of China, including most of the main cities, and the Dutch East Indies
Red: Allied-held areas
Grey: Neutral Soviet Union

In 1945, the Pacific War between the Empire of Japan and the Allies entered its fourth year. Most Japanese military units fought fiercely, ensuring that the Allied victory would come at an enormous cost. The 1.25 million battle casualties incurred in total by the United States in World War II included both military personnel killed in action and wounded in action. Nearly one million of the casualties occurred during the last year of the war, from June 1944 to June 1945. In December 1944, American battle casualties hit an all-time monthly high of 88,000 as a result of the German Ardennes Offensive. Worried by the losses sustained, President Roosevelt suggested the use of atomic bombs on Germany as soon as possible, but was informed the first usable atomic weapons were still months away. America's reserves of manpower were running out. Deferments for groups such as agricultural workers were tightened, and there was consideration of drafting women. At the same time, the public was becoming war-weary, and demanding that long-serving servicemen be sent home.

In the Pacific, the Allies returned to the Philippines, recaptured Burma, and invaded Borneo. Offensives were undertaken to reduce the Japanese forces remaining in Bougainville, New Guinea and the Philippines. In April 1945, American forces landed on Okinawa, where heavy fighting continued until June. Along the way, the ratio of Japanese to American casualties dropped from five to one in the Philippines to two to one on Okinawa. Although some Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner, most fought until they were killed or committed suicide. Nearly 99 percent of the 21,000 defenders of Iwo Jima were killed. Of the 117,000 Okinawan and Japanese troops defending Okinawa in April to June 1945, 94 percent were killed; 7,401 Japanese soldiers surrendered, an unprecedentedly large number.

As the Allies advanced towards Japan, conditions became steadily worse for the Japanese people. Japan's merchant fleet declined from 5,250,000 gross tons in 1941 to 1,560,000 tons in March 1945, and 557,000 tons in August 1945. Lack of raw materials forced the Japanese war economy into a steep decline after the middle of 1944. The civilian economy, which had slowly deteriorated throughout the war, reached disastrous levels by the middle of 1945. The loss of shipping also affected the fishing fleet, and the 1945 catch was only 22 percent of that in 1941. The 1945 rice harvest was the worst since 1909, and hunger and malnutrition became widespread. U.S. industrial production was overwhelmingly superior to Japan's. By 1943, the U.S. produced almost 100,000 aircraft a year, compared to Japan's production of 70,000 for the entire war. In February 1945, Prince Fumimaro Konoe advised Emperor Hirohito that defeat was inevitable, and urged him to abdicate.

Preparations to invade Japan

Following Germany's defeat Japan remained the sole power against the Allies in World War II.

Even before the surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May 1945, plans were underway for the largest operation of the Pacific War, Operation Downfall, the Allied invasion of Japan. The operation had two parts: set to begin in October 1945, Operation Olympic involved a series of landings by the U.S. Sixth Army intended to capture the southern third of the southernmost main Japanese island, Kyūshū. This was to be followed in March 1946 by Operation Coronet, the capture of the Kantō Plain, near Tokyo on the main Japanese island of Honshū by the U.S. First, Eighth and Tenth Armies, as well as a Commonwealth Corps made up of Australian, British and Canadian divisions. The target date was chosen to allow for Olympic to complete its objectives, for troops to be redeployed from Europe, and the Japanese winter to pass.

Japan's geography made this invasion plan obvious to the Japanese; they were able to predict the Allied invasion plans accurately and thus adjust their defensive plan, Operation Ketsugō, accordingly. The Japanese planned an all-out defense of Kyūshū, with little left in reserve. In all, there were 2.3 million Japanese Army troops prepared to defend the home islands, backed by a civilian militia of 28 million. Casualty predictions varied widely, but were extremely high. The Vice Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, Vice Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi, predicted up to 20 million Japanese deaths.

The Americans were alarmed by the Japanese buildup, which was accurately tracked through Ultra intelligence. On 15 June 1945, a study by the Joint War Plans Committee, who provided planning information to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, estimated that Olympic would result in 130,000 to 220,000 U.S. casualties, with U.S. dead in the range from 25,000 to 46,000. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson commissioned his own study by Quincy Wright and William Shockley, who estimated the invading Allies would suffer between 1.7 and 4 million casualties, of whom between 400,000 and 800,000 would be dead, while Japanese fatalities would have been around 5 to 10 million.

Marshall began contemplating the use of a weapon that was "readily available and which assuredly can decrease the cost in American lives": poison gas. Quantities of phosgene, mustard gas, tear gas and cyanogen chloride were moved to Luzon from stockpiles in Australia and New Guinea in preparation for Operation Olympic, and MacArthur ensured that Chemical Warfare Service units were trained in their use. Consideration was also given to using biological weapons.

Air raids on Japan

A B-29 over Osaka on 1 June 1945

While the United States had developed plans for an air campaign against Japan prior to the Pacific War, the capture of Allied bases in the western Pacific in the first weeks of the conflict meant that this offensive did not begin until mid-1944 when the long-ranged Boeing B-29 Superfortress became ready for use in combat. Operation Matterhorn involved India-based B-29s staging through bases around Chengdu in China to make a series of raids on strategic targets in Japan. This effort failed to achieve the strategic objectives that its planners had intended, largely because of logistical problems, the bomber's mechanical difficulties, the vulnerability of Chinese staging bases, and the extreme range required to reach key Japanese cities.

Brigadier General Haywood S. Hansell determined that Guam, Tinian, and Saipan in the Mariana Islands would better serve as B-29 bases, but they were in Japanese hands. Strategies were shifted to accommodate the air war, and the islands were captured between June and August 1944. Air bases were developed, and B-29 operations commenced from the Marianas in October 1944. The XXI Bomber Command began missions against Japan on 18 November 1944. The early attempts to bomb Japan from the Marianas proved just as ineffective as the China-based B-29s had been. Hansell continued the practice of conducting so-called high-altitude precision bombing, aimed at key industries and transportation networks, even after these tactics had not produced acceptable results. These efforts proved unsuccessful due to logistical difficulties with the remote location, technical problems with the new and advanced aircraft, unfavorable weather conditions, and enemy action.

The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9-10 March 1945, was the single deadliest air raid in history,[33] with a greater area of fire damage and loss of life than either of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.[34][35]

Hansell's successor, Major General Curtis LeMay, assumed command in January 1945 and initially continued to use the same precision bombing tactics, with equally unsatisfactory results. The attacks initially targeted key industrial facilities but much of the Japanese manufacturing process was carried out in small workshops and private homes. Under pressure from United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) headquarters in Washington, LeMay changed tactics and decided that low-level incendiary raids against Japanese cities were the only way to destroy their production capabilities, shifting from precision bombing to area bombardment with incendiaries. Like most strategic bombing during World War II, the aim of the air offensive against Japan was to destroy the enemy's war industries, kill or disable civilian employees of these industries, and undermine civilian morale.

Over the next six months, the XXI Bomber Command under LeMay firebombed 64 Japanese cities. The firebombing of Tokyo, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, on 9-10 March killed an estimated 100,000 people and destroyed 41 km ² (16 sq mi) of the city and 267,000 buildings in a single night. It was the deadliest bombing raid of the war, at a cost of 20 B-29s shot down by flak and fighters. By May, 75 percent of bombs dropped were incendiaries designed to burn down Japan's "paper cities". By mid-June, Japan's six largest cities had been devastated. The end of the fighting on Okinawa that month provided airfields even closer to the Japanese mainland, allowing the bombing campaign to be further escalated. Aircraft flying from Allied aircraft carriers and the Ryukyu Islands also regularly struck targets in Japan during 1945 in preparation for Operation Downfall. Firebombing switched to smaller cities, with populations ranging from 60,000 to 350,000. According to Yuki Tanaka, the U.S. fire-bombed over a hundred Japanese towns and cities.

The Japanese military was unable to stop the Allied attacks and the country's civil defense preparations proved inadequate. Japanese fighters and anti-aircraft guns had difficulty engaging bombers flying at high altitude. From April 1945, the Japanese interceptors also had to face American fighter escorts based on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. That month, the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service stopped attempting to intercept the air raids to preserve fighter aircraft to counter the expected invasion. By mid-1945 the Japanese only occasionally scrambled aircraft to intercept individual B-29s conducting reconnaissance sorties over the country, to conserve supplies of fuel. In July 1945, the Japanese had 137,800,000 litres (1,156,000 US bbl) of avgas stockpiled for the invasion of Japan. About 72,000,000 litres (604,000 US bbl) had been consumed in the home islands area in April, May and June 1945. While the Japanese military decided to resume attacks on Allied bombers from late June, by this time there were too few operational fighters available for this change of tactics to hinder the Allied air raids.

Atomic bomb development

The discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 made the development of an atomic bomb a theoretical possibility. Fears that a German atomic bomb project would develop atomic weapons first, especially among scientists who were refugees from Nazi Germany and other fascist countries, were expressed in the Einstein-Szilard letter to Roosevelt in 1939. This prompted preliminary research in the United States in late 1939. Progress was slow until the arrival of the British MAUD Committee report in late 1941, which indicated that only 5 to 10 kilograms of isotopically-pure uranium-235 were needed for a bomb instead of tons of natural uranium and a neutron moderator like heavy water. Consequently, the work was accelerated, first as a pilot program, and finally in the agreement by Roosevelt to turn the work over the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to construct the production facilities necessary to produce uranium-235 and plutonium-239. This work was consolidated within the newly created Manhattan Engineer District, which became better known as the Manhattan Project, eventually under the direction of Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr..

The work of the Manhattan Project took place at dozens of sites across the United States, and even some outside of its borders. It would ultimately cost over US$2 billion (equivalent to about $24 billion in 2021) and employ over 125,000 people simultaneously at its peak. Groves appointed J. Robert Oppenheimer to organize and head the project's Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where bomb design work was carried out. Two different types of bombs were eventually developed: a gun-type fission weapon that used uranium-235, called Little Boy, and a more complex implosion-type nuclear weapon that used plutonium-239, called Fat Man.

There was a Japanese nuclear weapon program, but it lacked the human, mineral, and financial resources of the Manhattan Project, and never made much progress towards developing an atomic bomb.

Preparations

Organization and training

The "Tinian Joint Chiefs": Captain William S. Parsons (left), Rear Admiral William R. Purnell (center), and Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell (right)

The 509th Composite Group was constituted on 9 December 1944, and activated on 17 December 1944, at Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbets. Tibbets was assigned to organize and command a combat group to develop the means of delivering an atomic weapon against targets in Germany and Japan. Because the flying squadrons of the group consisted of both bomber and transport aircraft, the group was designated as a "composite" rather than a "bombardment" unit. Due to its remoteness, Tibbets selected Wendover for his training base over Great Bend, Kansas and Mountain Home, Idaho. Each bombardier completed at least 50 practice drops of inert or conventional explosive pumpkin bombs, targeting islands around Tinian and later the Japanese home islands, until as late as August 14, 1945. Some of the missions over Japan were flown by single unescorted bombers with a single payload in order to accustom the Japanese to this pattern. They also simulated actual atomic bombing runs, including the directions of ingress and egress with respect to the wind. Tibbets himself was barred from flying most missions over Japan for fear that he might be captured and forced to reveal what he knew. On 5 April 1945, the code name Operation Centerboard was assigned. The officer responsible for its allocation in the War Department's Operations Division was not cleared to know any details of it. The first bombing was later codenamed Operation Centerboard I, and the second, Operation Centerboard II.

The 509th Composite Group had an authorized strength of 225 officers and 1,542 enlisted men, almost all of whom eventually deployed to Tinian. In addition to its authorized strength, the 509th had attached to it on Tinian 51 civilian and military personnel from Project Alberta, known as the 1st Technical Detachment. The 509th Composite Group's 393d Bombardment Squadron was equipped with 15 Silverplate B-29s. These aircraft were specially adapted to carry nuclear weapons, and were equipped with fuel-injected engines, Curtiss Electric reversible-pitch propellers, pneumatic actuators for rapid opening and closing of bomb bay doors and other improvements.

The ground support echelon of the 509th Composite Group moved by rail on 26 April 1945, to its port of embarkation at Seattle, Washington. On 6 May the support elements sailed on the SS Cape Victory for the Marianas, while group materiel was shipped on the SS Emile Berliner. The Cape Victory made brief port calls at Honolulu and Eniwetok but the passengers were not permitted to leave the dock area. An advance party of the air echelon, consisting of 29 officers and 61 enlisted men, flew by C-54 to North Field on Tinian, between 15 and 22 May. There were also two representatives from Washington, D.C., Brigadier General Thomas Farrell, the deputy commander of the Manhattan Project, and Rear Admiral William R. Purnell of the Military Policy Committee, who were on hand to decide higher policy matters on the spot. Along with Captain William S. Parsons, the commander of Project Alberta, they became known as the "Tinian Joint Chiefs".

Choice of targets

The mission runs of 6 and 9 August, with Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Kokura (the original target for 9 August) displayed

In April 1945, Marshall asked Groves to nominate specific targets for bombing for final approval by himself and Stimson. Groves formed a Target Committee, chaired by himself, that included Farrell, Major John A. Derry, Colonel William P. Fisher, Joyce C. Stearns and David M. Dennison from the USAAF; and scientists John von Neumann, Robert R. Wilson and William Penney from the Manhattan Project. The Target Committee met in Washington on 27 April; at Los Alamos on 10 May, where it was able to talk to the scientists and technicians there; and finally in Washington on 28 May, where it was briefed by Tibbets and Commander Frederick Ashworth from Project Alberta, and the Manhattan Project's scientific advisor, Richard C. Tolman.

The Target Committee nominated five targets: Kokura (now Kitakyushu), the site of one of Japan's largest munitions plants; Hiroshima, an embarkation port and industrial center that was the site of a major military headquarters; Yokohama, an urban center for aircraft manufacture, machine tools, docks, electrical equipment and oil refineries; Niigata, a port with industrial facilities including steel and aluminum plants and an oil refinery; and Kyoto, a major industrial center. The target selection was subject to the following criteria:

The target was larger than 4.8 km (3 mi) in diameter and was an important target in a large city.

The blast wave would create effective damage.

The target was unlikely to be attacked by August 1945.

These cities were largely untouched during the nightly bombing raids, and the Army Air Forces agreed to leave them off the target list so accurate assessment of the damage caused by the atomic bombs could be made. Hiroshima was described as "an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to rivers it is not a good incendiary target."

The Target Committee stated that "It was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released.... Kyoto has the advantage of the people being more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon. Hiroshima has the advantage of being such a size and with possible focussing from nearby mountains that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed. The Emperor's palace in Tokyo has a greater fame than any other target but is of least strategic value."

Edwin O. Reischauer, a Japan expert for the U.S. Army Intelligence Service, was incorrectly said to have prevented the bombing of Kyoto. In his autobiography, Reischauer specifically refuted this claim:

... the only person deserving credit for saving Kyoto from destruction is Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War at the time, who had known and admired Kyoto ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier.

Extant sources show that while Stimson was personally familiar with Kyoto, this was the result of a visit decades after his marriage, not because he honeymooned there. On 30 May, Stimson asked Groves to remove Kyoto from the target list due to its historical, religious and cultural significance, but Groves pointed to its military and industrial significance. Stimson then approached President Harry S. Truman about the matter. Truman agreed with Stimson, and Kyoto was temporarily removed from the target list. Groves attempted to restore Kyoto to the target list in July, but Stimson remained adamant. On 25 July, Nagasaki was put on the target list in place of Kyoto. It was a major military port, one of Japan's largest shipbuilding and repair centers, and an important producer of naval ordnance.

Proposed demonstration

In early May 1945, the Interim Committee was created by Stimson at the urging of leaders of the Manhattan Project and with the approval of Truman to advise on matters pertaining to nuclear technology. They agreed that the atomic bomb was to be used (1) against Japan at the earliest opportunity, (2) without special warning, and (3) on a "dual target" of military installation surrounded by other buildings susceptible to damage.

During the meetings on 31 May and 1 June, scientist Ernest Lawrence had suggested giving the Japanese a non-combat demonstration. Arthur Compton later recalled that:

It was evident that everyone would suspect trickery. If a bomb were exploded in Japan with previous notice, the Japanese air power was still adequate to give serious interference. An atomic bomb was an intricate device, still in the developmental stage. Its operation would be far from routine. If during the final adjustments of the bomb the Japanese defenders should attack, a faulty move might easily result in some kind of failure. Such an end to an advertised demonstration of power would be much worse than if the attempt had not been made. It was now evident that when the time came for the bombs to be used we should have only one of them available, followed afterwards by others at all-too-long intervals. We could not afford the chance that one of them might be a dud. If the test were made on some neutral territory, it was hard to believe that Japan's determined and fanatical military men would be impressed. If such an open test were made first and failed to bring surrender, the chance would be gone to give the shock of surprise that proved so effective. On the contrary, it would make the Japanese ready to interfere with an atomic attack if they could. Though the possibility of a demonstration that would not destroy human lives was attractive, no one could suggest a way in which it could be made so convincing that it would be likely to stop the war.

The possibility of a demonstration was raised again in the Franck Report issued by physicist James Franck on 11 June and the Scientific Advisory Panel rejected his report on 16 June, saying that "we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use." Franck then took the report to Washington, D.C., where the Interim Committee met on 21 June to re-examine its earlier conclusions; but it reaffirmed that there was no alternative to the use of the bomb on a military target.

Like Compton, many U.S. officials and scientists argued that a demonstration would sacrifice the shock value of the atomic attack, and the Japanese could deny the atomic bomb was lethal, making the mission less likely to produce surrender. Allied prisoners of war might be moved to the demonstration site and be killed by the bomb. They also worried that the bomb might be a failure, as the Trinity test was that of a stationary device, not an air-dropped bomb. In addition, although more bombs were in production, only two would be available at the start of August, and they cost billions of dollars, so using one for a demonstration would be expensive.

Various leaflets were dropped on Japan listing cities targeted for destruction by firebombing. The other side stated that other cities may be attacked[87]

For several months, the U.S. had warned civilians of potential air raids by dropping more than 63 million leaflets across Japan. Many Japanese cities suffered terrible damage from aerial bombings; some were as much as 97 percent destroyed. LeMay thought that leaflets would increase the psychological impact of bombing, and reduce the international stigma of area-bombing cities. Even with the warnings, Japanese opposition to the war remained ineffective. In general, the Japanese regarded the leaflet messages as truthful, with many Japanese choosing to leave major cities. The leaflets caused such concern that the government ordered the arrest of anyone caught in possession of a leaflet. Leaflet texts were prepared by recent Japanese prisoners of war because they were thought to be the best choice "to appeal to their compatriots".

In preparation for dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the Oppenheimer-led Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee decided against a demonstration bomb and against a special leaflet warning. Those decisions were implemented because of the uncertainty of a successful detonation and also because of the wish to maximize shock in the leadership. No warning was given to Hiroshima that a new and much more destructive bomb was going to be dropped. Various sources gave conflicting information about when the last leaflets were dropped on Hiroshima prior to the atomic bomb. Robert Jay Lifton wrote that it was 27 July, and Theodore H. McNelly wrote that it was 30 July. The USAAF history noted that eleven cities were targeted with leaflets on 27 July, but Hiroshima was not one of them, and there were no leaflet sorties on 30 July. Leaflet sorties were undertaken on 1 and 4 August. Hiroshima may have been leafleted in late July or early August, as survivor accounts talk about a delivery of leaflets a few days before the atomic bomb was dropped. Three versions were printed of a leaflet listing 11 or 12 cities targeted for firebombing; a total of 33 cities listed. With the text of this leaflet reading in Japanese "...we cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked..." Hiroshima was not listed.

Consultation with Britain and Canada

In 1943, the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Quebec Agreement, which stipulated that nuclear weapons would not be used against another country without mutual consent. Stimson therefore had to obtain British permission. A meeting of the Combined Policy Committee, which included one Canadian representative, was held at the Pentagon on 4 July 1945. Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson announced that the British government concurred with the use of nuclear weapons against Japan, which would be officially recorded as a decision of the Combined Policy Committee. As the release of information to third parties was also controlled by the Quebec Agreement, discussion then turned to what scientific details would be revealed in the press announcement of the bombing. The meeting also considered what Truman could reveal to Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, at the upcoming Potsdam Conference, as this also required British concurrence.

Orders for the attack were issued to General Carl Spaatz on 25 July under the signature of General Thomas T. Handy, the acting chief of staff, since Marshall was at the Potsdam Conference with Truman. It read:

1. The 509th Composite Group, 20th Air Force will deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki. To carry military and civilian scientific personnel from the War Department to observe and record the effects of the explosion of the bomb, additional aircraft will accompany the airplane carrying the bomb. The observing planes will stay several miles distant from the point of impact of the bomb.

2. Additional bombs will be delivered on the above targets as soon as made ready by the project staff. Further instructions will be issued concerning targets other than those listed above.

That day, Truman noted in his diary that:

This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo]. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one.

Potsdam Declaration

The 16 July success of the Trinity Test in the New Mexico desert exceeded expectations. On 26 July, Allied leaders issued the Potsdam Declaration, which outlined the terms of surrender for Japan. The declaration was presented as an ultimatum and stated that without a surrender, the Allies would attack Japan, resulting in "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland". The atomic bomb was not mentioned in the communiqué.

On 28 July, Japanese papers reported that the declaration had been rejected by the Japanese government. That afternoon, Prime Minister Kantarō Suzuki declared at a press conference that the Potsdam Declaration was no more than a rehash ( yakinaoshi) of the Cairo Declaration, that the government intended to ignore it (, "kill by silence"), and that Japan would fight to the end. The statement was taken by both Japanese and foreign papers as a clear rejection of the declaration. Emperor Hirohito, who was waiting for a Soviet reply to non-committal Japanese peace feelers, made no move to change the government position. Japan's willingness to surrender remained conditional on the preservation of the (Imperial institution and national polity), assumption by the Imperial Headquarters of responsibility for disarmament and demobilization, no occupation of the Japanese Home Islands, Korea or Formosa, and delegation of the punishment of war criminals to the Japanese government.

At Potsdam, Truman agreed to a request from Winston Churchill that Britain be represented when the atomic bomb was dropped. William Penney and Group Captain Leonard Cheshire were sent to Tinian, but found that LeMay would not let them accompany the mission. All they could do was send a strongly worded signal to Wilson.

The Little Boy bomb, except for the uranium payload, was ready at the beginning of May 1945. There were two uranium-235 components, a hollow cylindrical projectile and a cylindrical target insert. The projectile was completed on 15 June, and the target insert on 24 July. The projectile and eight bomb pre-assemblies (partly assembled bombs without the powder charge and fissile components) left Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, California, on 16 July aboard the cruiser USS Indianapolis, and arrived on Tinian on 26 July. The target insert followed by air on 30 July, accompanied by Commander Francis Birch from Project Alberta. Responding to concerns expressed by the 509th Composite Group about the possibility of a B-29 crashing on takeoff, Birch had modified the Little Boy design to incorporate a removable breech plug that would permit the bomb to be armed in flight.

The first plutonium core, along with its polonium- beryllium urchin initiator, was transported in the custody of Project Alberta courier Raemer Schreiber in a magnesium field carrying case designed for the purpose by Philip Morrison. Magnesium was chosen because it does not act as a neutron reflector. The core departed from Kirtland Army Air Field on a C-54 transport aircraft of the 509th Composite Group's 320th Troop Carrier Squadron on 26 July, and arrived at North Field 28 July. Three Fat Man high-explosive pre-assemblies, designated F31, F32, and F33, were picked up at Kirtland on 28 July by three B-29s, two from the 393d Bombardment Squadron plus one from the 216th Army Air Force Base Unit, and transported to North Field, arriving on 2 August.

Hiroshima during World War II

The Enola Gay dropped the "Little Boy" atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Paul Tibbets (center in photograph) can be seen with six members of the ground crew.

At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of industrial and military significance. A number of military units were located nearby, the most important of which was the headquarters of Field Marshal Shunroku Hata's Second General Army, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan, and was located in Hiroshima Castle. Hata's command consisted of some 400,000 men, most of whom were on Kyushu where an Allied invasion was correctly anticipated. Also present in Hiroshima were the headquarters of the 59th Army, the 5th Division and the 224th Division, a recently formed mobile unit. The city was defended by five batteries of 70 mm and 80 mm (2.8 and 3.1 inch) anti-aircraft guns of the 3rd Anti-Aircraft Division, including units from the 121st and 122nd Anti-Aircraft Regiments and the 22nd and 45th Separate Anti-Aircraft Battalions. In total, an estimated 40,000 Japanese military personnel were stationed in the city.

Hiroshima was a supply and logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a communications center, a key port for shipping, and an assembly area for troops. It supported a large war industry, manufacturing parts for planes and boats, for bombs, rifles, and handguns. The center of the city contained several reinforced concrete buildings. Outside the center, the area was congested by a dense collection of small timber workshops set among Japanese houses. A few larger industrial plants lay near the outskirts of the city. The houses were constructed of timber with tile roofs, and many of the industrial buildings were also built around timber frames. The city as a whole was highly susceptible to fire damage. It was the second largest city in Japan after Kyoto that was still undamaged by air raids, primarily because it lacked the aircraft manufacturing industry that was the XXI Bomber Command's priority target. On 3 July, the Joint Chiefs of Staff placed it off limits to bombers, along with Kokura, Niigata and Kyoto.

The population of Hiroshima had reached a peak of over 381,000 earlier in the war but prior to the atomic bombing, the population had steadily decreased because of a systematic evacuation ordered by the Japanese government. At the time of the attack, the population was approximately 340,000-350,000. Residents wondered why Hiroshima had been spared destruction by firebombing. Some speculated that the city was to be saved for U.S. occupation headquarters, others thought perhaps their relatives in Hawaii and California had petitioned the U.S. government to avoid bombing Hiroshima. More realistic city officials had ordered buildings torn down to create long, straight firebreaks. These continued to be expanded and extended up to the morning of 6 August 1945.

Bombing of Hiroshima

Strike order for the Hiroshima bombing as posted on 5 August 1945

Hiroshima was the primary target of the first atomic bombing mission on 6 August, with Kokura and Nagasaki as alternative targets. The 393d Bombardment Squadron B-29 , named after Tibbets's mother and piloted by Tibbets, took off from North Field, Tinian, about six hours' flight time from Japan. Enola Gay was accompanied by two other B-29s: The Great Artiste, commanded by Major Charles Sweeney, which carried instrumentation, and a then-nameless aircraft later called Necessary Evil, commanded by Captain George Marquardt. Necessary Evil was the photography aircraft.

After leaving Tinian, the aircraft made their way separately to Iwo Jima to rendezvous with Sweeney and Marquardt at 05:55 at 2,800 meters (9,200 ft), and set course for Japan. The aircraft arrived over the target in clear visibility at 9,470 meters (31,060 ft). Parsons, who was in command of the mission, armed the bomb in flight to minimize the risks during takeoff. He had witnessed four B-29s crash and burn at takeoff, and feared that a nuclear explosion would occur if a B-29 crashed with an armed Little Boy on board. His assistant, Second Lieutenant Morris R. Jeppson, removed the safety devices 30 minutes before reaching the target area.

The Hiroshima atom bomb cloud 2-5 minutes after detonation[132]

During the night of 5-6 August, Japanese early warning radar detected the approach of numerous American aircraft headed for the southern part of Japan. Radar detected 65 bombers headed for Saga, 102 bound for Maebashi, 261 en route to Nishinomiya, 111 headed for Ube and 66 bound for Imabari. An alert was given and radio broadcasting stopped in many cities, among them Hiroshima. The all-clear was sounded in Hiroshima at 00:05. About an hour before the bombing, the air raid alert was sounded again, as Straight Flush flew over the city. It broadcast a short message which was picked up by Enola Gay. It read: "Cloud cover less than 3/10th at all altitudes. Advice: bomb primary." The all-clear was sounded over Hiroshima again at 07:09.

At 08:09, Tibbets started his bomb run and handed control over to his bombardier, Major Thomas Ferebee. The release at 08:15 (Hiroshima time) went as planned, and the Little Boy containing about 64 kg (141 lb) of uranium-235 took 44.4 seconds to fall from the aircraft flying at about 9,400 meters (31,000 ft) to a detonation height of about 580 meters (1,900 ft) above the city. Enola Gay was 18.5 km (11.5 mi) away before it felt the shock waves from the blast.

Due to crosswind, the bomb missed the aiming point, the Aioi Bridge, by approximately 240 m (800 ft) and detonated directly over Shima Surgical Clinic. It released the equivalent energy of 16 ± 2 kilotons of TNT (66.9 ± 8.4 TJ). The weapon was considered very inefficient, with only 1.7 percent of its material fissioning. The radius of total destruction was about 1.6 kilometers (1 mi), with resulting fires across 11 km ² (4.4 sq mi).

Enola Gay stayed over the target area for two minutes and was 16 kilometers (10 mi) away when the bomb detonated. Only Tibbets, Parsons, and Ferebee knew of the nature of the weapon; the others on the bomber were only told to expect a blinding flash and given black goggles. "It was hard to believe what we saw", Tibbets told reporters, while Parsons said "the whole thing was tremendous and awe-inspiring... the men aboard with me gasped 'My God'." He and Tibbets compared the shockwave to "a close burst of ack-ack fire".

Events on the ground

People on the ground reported a pika-a brilliant flash of light-followed by a don-a loud booming sound. The experiences of survivors in the city varied depending on their location and circumstances, but a common factor in survivor accounts was a sense that a conventional weapon (sometimes cited as a magnesium bomb, which have a distinctively bright white flash) had happened to go off immediately in their vicinity, causing tremendous damage (throwing people across rooms, breaking glass, crushing buildings). Only after emerging from these ruins did the survivors tend to gradually understand that the entire city had in fact been attacked at the same instant. Survivor accounts frequently feature walking through the ruins of the city without a clear sense of where to go, and encountering the cries of people trapped within crushed structures, or people with horrific burns. As the numerous small fires created by the blast began to grow, they merged into a firestorm that moved quickly throughout the ruins, killing many who had been trapped, and causing people to jump into Hiroshima's rivers in search of sanctuary (many of whom drowned). The photographer Yoshito Matsushige took the only photographs of Hiroshima immediately after the bombing. He described in a later interview that, immediately after the bombing, "everywhere there was dust; it made a grayish darkness over everything." He took five photographs in total before he could not continue: "It was really a terrible scene. It was just like something out of hell." Survivor accounts also prominently feature cases of survivors who appeared uninjured, but who would succumb within hours or days to what would later be identified as radiation sickness.

The exact number of people killed by the blast, firestorm, and radiation effects of the bombing are unknown. Estimates have ranged from 66,000 people killed and 69,000 injured, upwards to 140,000 dead (by December 1945) in later estimations. Difficulty in coming up with a correct figure is due to the imprecise record-keeping during the war, the chaos caused by the attack, lack of agreement on how many people were in the city on the morning of the attack, and uncertainty in methodology. Estimates also vary on the number of Japanese military personnel killed. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded in 1946 that there were 24,158 soldiers present in Hiroshima at the time of the attack, and that 6,789 were killed or missing as a result. Later re-calculations suggest that there were personnel in the city that were uncounted in this estimate, and suggest that as many as 20,000 Japanese military personnel were killed. U.S. surveys estimated that 12 km ² (4.7 sq mi) of the city were destroyed. Japanese officials determined that 69 percent of Hiroshima's buildings were destroyed and another 6 to 7 percent damaged.

Some of the reinforced concrete buildings in Hiroshima had been very strongly constructed because of the earthquake danger in Japan, and their framework did not collapse even though they were fairly close to the blast center. Since the bomb detonated in the air, the blast was directed more downward than sideways, which was largely responsible for the survival of the Prefectural Industrial Promotional Hall, now commonly known as the Genbaku (A-bomb) dome, which was only 150 m (490 ft) from ground zero (the hypocenter). The ruin was named Hiroshima Peace Memorial and was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996 over the objections of the United States and China, which expressed reservations on the grounds that other Asian nations were the ones who suffered the greatest loss of life and property, and a focus on Japan lacked historical perspective.

For decades this photo was misidentified as the mushroom cloud of the bomb that formed at c. 08:16.[151][152] However, due to its much greater height, the scene was identified in March 2016 as the firestorm-cloud that engulfed the city,[152] some three hours after the bombing.

The air raid warning had been cleared at 07:31, and many people were outside, going about their activities. Eizō Nomura was the closest known survivor, being in the basement of a reinforced concrete building (it remained as the after the war) only 170 meters (560 ft) from ground zero at the time of the attack. He died in 1982, aged 84. Akiko Takakura was among the closest survivors to the hypocenter of the blast. She was in the solidly-built Bank of Hiroshima only 300 meters (980 ft) from ground-zero at the time of the attack.

Over 90 percent of the doctors and 93 percent of the nurses in Hiroshima were killed or injured-most had been in the downtown area which received the greatest damage. The hospitals were destroyed or heavily damaged. Only one doctor, Terufumi Sasaki, remained on duty at the Red Cross Hospital. Nonetheless, by early afternoon the police and volunteers had established evacuation centres at hospitals, schools and tram stations, and a morgue was established in the Asano library. Survivors of the blast gathered for medical treatment, but many would die before receiving any help, leaving behind rings of corpses around hospitals.

Most elements of the Japanese Second General Army headquarters were undergoing physical training on the grounds of Hiroshima Castle, barely 820 meters (900 yd) from the hypocenter. The attack killed 3,243 troops on the parade ground. The communications room of Chugoku Military District Headquarters that was responsible for issuing and lifting air raid warnings was located in a semi-basement in the castle. Yoshie Oka, a Hijiyama Girls High School student who had been mobilized to serve as a communications officer, had just sent a message that the alarm had been issued for Hiroshima and neighboring Yamaguchi, when the bomb exploded. She used a special phone to inform Fukuyama Headquarters (some 100 kilometers (62 mi) away) that "Hiroshima has been attacked by a new type of bomb. The city is in a state of near-total destruction."

Since Mayor Senkichi Awaya had been killed while eating breakfast with his son and granddaughter at the mayoral residence, Field Marshal Shunroku Hata, who was only slightly wounded, took over the administration of the city, and coordinated relief efforts. Many of his staff had been killed or fatally wounded, including Lieutenant Colonel Yi U, a prince of the Korean imperial family who was serving as a General Staff Officer. Hata's senior surviving staff officer was the wounded Colonel Kumao Imoto, who acted as his chief of staff. Soldiers from the undamaged Hiroshima Ujina Harbor used Shin'yō-class suicide motorboats, intended to repel the American invasion, to collect the wounded and take them down the rivers to the military hospital at Ujina. Trucks and trains brought in relief supplies and evacuated survivors from the city.

Twelve American airmen were imprisoned at the Chugoku Military Police Headquarters, about 400 meters (1,300 ft) from the hypocenter of the blast. Most died instantly, although two were reported to have been executed by their captors, and two prisoners badly injured by the bombing were left next to the Aioi Bridge by the , where they were stoned to death. Eight U.S. prisoners of war killed as part of the medical experiments program at Kyushu University were falsely reported by Japanese authorities as having been killed in the atomic blast as part of an attempted cover up.

Japanese realization of the bombing

The Tokyo control operator of the Japan Broadcasting Corporation noticed that the Hiroshima station had gone off the air. He tried to re-establish his program by using another telephone line, but it too had failed. About 20 minutes later the Tokyo railroad telegraph center realized that the main line telegraph had stopped working just north of Hiroshima. From some small railway stops within 16 km (10 mi) of the city came unofficial and confused reports of a terrible explosion in Hiroshima. All these reports were transmitted to the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff.

Military bases repeatedly tried to call the Army Control Station in Hiroshima. The complete silence from that city puzzled the General Staff; they knew that no large enemy raid had occurred and that no sizable store of explosives was in Hiroshima at that time. A young officer was instructed to fly immediately to Hiroshima, to land, survey the damage, and return to Tokyo with reliable information for the staff. It was felt that nothing serious had taken place and that the explosion was just a rumor.

The staff officer went to the airport and took off for the southwest. After flying for about three hours, while still nearly 160 km (100 mi) from Hiroshima, he and his pilot saw a great cloud of smoke from the firestorm created by the bomb. After circling the city to survey the damage they landed south of the city, where the staff officer, after reporting to Tokyo, began to organize relief measures. Tokyo's first indication that the city had been destroyed by a new type of bomb came from President Truman's announcement of the strike, sixteen hours later.

Events of 7-9 August

After the Hiroshima bombing, Truman issued a statement announcing the use of the new weapon. He stated, "We may be grateful to Providence" that the German atomic bomb project had failed, and that the United States and its allies had "spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history-and won". Truman then warned Japan: "If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware." This was a widely broadcast speech picked up by Japanese news agencies.

The 50,000-watt standard wave station on Saipan, the OWI radio station, broadcast a similar message to Japan every 15 minutes about Hiroshima, stating that more Japanese cities would face a similar fate in the absence of immediate acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and emphatically urged civilians to evacuate major cities. Radio Japan, which continued to extoll victory for Japan by never surrendering had informed the Japanese of the destruction of Hiroshima by a single bomb.

Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov had informed Tokyo of the Soviet Union's unilateral abrogation of the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact on 5 April. At two minutes past midnight on 9 August, Tokyo time, Soviet infantry, armor, and air forces had launched the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation. Four hours later, word reached Tokyo of the Soviet Union's official declaration of war. The senior leadership of the Japanese Army began preparations to impose martial law on the nation, with the support of Minister of War Korechika Anami, to stop anyone attempting to make peace.

On 7 August, a day after Hiroshima was destroyed, Dr. Yoshio Nishina and other atomic physicists arrived at the city, and carefully examined the damage. They then went back to Tokyo and told the cabinet that Hiroshima was indeed destroyed by a nuclear weapon. Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, estimated that no more than one or two additional bombs could be readied, so they decided to endure the remaining attacks, acknowledging "there would be more destruction but the war would go on". American Magic codebreakers intercepted the cabinet's messages.

Purnell, Parsons, Tibbets, Spaatz, and LeMay met on Guam that same day to discuss what should be done next. Since there was no indication of Japan surrendering, they decided to proceed with dropping another bomb. Parsons said that Project Alberta would have it ready by 11 August, but Tibbets pointed to weather reports indicating poor flying conditions on that day due to a storm, and asked if the bomb could be readied by 9 August. Parsons agreed to try to do so.

Nagasaki during World War II

The Bockscar and its crew, who dropped a Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki

The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest seaports in southern Japan, and was of great wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The four largest companies in the city were Mitsubishi Shipyards, Electrical Shipyards, Arms Plant, and Steel and Arms Works, which employed about 90 percent of the city's labor force, and accounted for 90 percent of the city's industry. Although an important industrial city, Nagasaki had been spared from firebombing because its geography made it difficult to locate at night with AN/APQ-13 radar.

Unlike the other target cities, Nagasaki had not been placed off limits to bombers by the Joint Chiefs of Staff's 3 July directive, and was bombed on a small scale five times. During one of these raids on 1 August, a number of conventional high-explosive bombs were dropped on the city. A few hit the shipyards and dock areas in the southwest portion of the city, and several hit the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works. By early August, the city was defended by the 134th Anti-Aircraft Regiment of the 4th Anti-Aircraft Division with four batteries of 7 cm (2.8 in) anti-aircraft guns and two searchlight batteries.

The harbor at Nagasaki in August 1945 before the city was hit with the atomic bomb

In contrast to Hiroshima, almost all of the buildings were of old-fashioned Japanese construction, consisting of timber or timber-framed buildings with timber walls (with or without plaster) and tile roofs. Many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also situated in buildings of timber or other materials not designed to withstand explosions. Nagasaki had been permitted to grow for many years without conforming to any definite city zoning plan; residences were erected adjacent to factory buildings and to each other almost as closely as possible throughout the entire industrial valley. On the day of the bombing, an estimated 263,000 people were in Nagasaki, including 240,000 Japanese residents, 10,000 Korean residents, 2,500 conscripted Korean workers, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, 600 conscripted Chinese workers, and 400 Allied prisoners of war in a camp to the north of Nagasaki.

Bombing of Nagasaki

The Bockscar B-29 and a post war Mk III nuclear weapon painted to resemble the Fat Man bomb, at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio

Responsibility for the timing of the second bombing was delegated to Tibbets. Scheduled for 11 August against Kokura, the raid was moved earlier by two days to avoid a five-day period of bad weather forecast to begin on 10 August. Three bomb pre-assemblies had been transported to Tinian, labeled F-31, F-32, and F-33 on their exteriors. On 8 August, a dress rehearsal was conducted off Tinian by Sweeney using Bockscar as the drop airplane. Assembly F-33 was expended testing the components and F-31 was designated for the 9 August mission.

At 03:47 Tinian time (GMT+10), 02:47 Japanese time, on the morning of 9 August 1945, Bockscar, flown by Sweeney's crew, lifted off from Tinian island with the Fat Man, with Kokura as the primary target and Nagasaki the secondary target. The mission plan for the second attack was nearly identical to that of the Hiroshima mission, with two B-29s flying an hour ahead as weather scouts and two additional B-29s in Sweeney's flight for instrumentation and photographic support of the mission. Sweeney took off with his weapon already armed but with the electrical safety plugs still engaged.

During pre-flight inspection of Bockscar, the flight engineer notified Sweeney that an inoperative fuel transfer pump made it impossible to use 2,400 liters (640 U.S. gal) of fuel carried in a reserve tank. This fuel would still have to be carried all the way to Japan and back, consuming still more fuel. Replacing the pump would take hours; moving the Fat Man to another aircraft might take just as long and was dangerous as well, as the bomb was live. Tibbets and Sweeney therefore elected to have Bockscar continue the mission.

Nagasaki before and after the bombing, after the fires had burned out

This time Penney and Cheshire were allowed to accompany the mission, flying as observers on the third plane, , flown by the group's operations officer, Major James I. Hopkins, Jr. Observers aboard the weather planes reported both targets clear. When Sweeney's aircraft arrived at the assembly point for his flight off the coast of Japan, Big Stink failed to make the rendezvous. According to Cheshire, Hopkins was at varying heights including 2,700 meters (9,000 ft) higher than he should have been, and was not flying tight circles over Yakushima as previously agreed with Sweeney and Captain Frederick C. Bock, who was piloting the support B-29 The Great Artiste. Instead, Hopkins was flying 64-kilometer (40 mi) dogleg patterns. Though ordered not to circle longer than fifteen minutes, Sweeney continued to wait for Big Stink for forty minutes. Before leaving the rendezvous point, Sweeney consulted Ashworth, who was in charge of the bomb. As commander of the aircraft, Sweeney made the decision to proceed to the primary, the city of Kokura.

After exceeding the original departure time limit by nearly a half-hour, Bockscar, accompanied by The Great Artiste, proceeded to Kokura, thirty minutes away. The delay at the rendezvous had resulted in clouds and drifting smoke over Kokura from fires started by a major firebombing raid by 224 B-29s on nearby Yahata the previous day. Additionally, the Yahata Steel Works intentionally burned coal tar, to produce black smoke. The clouds and smoke resulted in 70 percent of the area over Kokura being covered, obscuring the aiming point. Three bomb runs were made over the next 50 minutes, burning fuel and exposing the aircraft repeatedly to the heavy defenses around Kokura, but the bombardier was unable to drop visually. By the time of the third bomb run, Japanese anti-aircraft fire was getting close, and Second Lieutenant Jacob Beser, who was monitoring Japanese communications, reported activity on the Japanese fighter direction radio bands.

With fuel running low because of the failed fuel pump, Bockscar and The Great Artiste headed for their secondary target, Nagasaki. Fuel consumption calculations made en route indicated that Bockscar had insufficient fuel to reach Iwo Jima and would be forced to divert to Okinawa, which had become entirely Allied-occupied territory only six weeks earlier. After initially deciding that if Nagasaki were obscured on their arrival the crew would carry the bomb to Okinawa and dispose of it in the ocean if necessary, Ashworth agreed with Sweeney's suggestion that a radar approach would be used if the target was obscured. At about 07:50 Japanese time, an air raid alert was sounded in Nagasaki, but the "all clear" signal was given at 08:30. When only two B-29 Superfortresses were sighted at 10:53 Japanese Time (GMT+9), the Japanese apparently assumed that the planes were only on reconnaissance and no further alarm was given.

A few minutes later at 11:00 Japanese Time, The Great Artiste dropped instruments attached to three parachutes. These instruments also contained an unsigned letter to Professor Ryokichi Sagane, a physicist at the University of Tokyo who studied with three of the scientists responsible for the atomic bomb at the University of California, Berkeley, urging him to tell the public about the danger involved with these weapons of mass destruction. The messages were found by military authorities but not turned over to Sagane until a month later. In 1949, one of the authors of the letter, Luis Alvarez, met with Sagane and signed the letter.

At 11:01 Japanese Time, a last-minute break in the clouds over Nagasaki allowed Bockscar's bombardier, Captain Kermit Beahan, to visually sight the target as ordered. The Fat Man weapon, containing a core of about 5 kg (11 lb) of plutonium, was dropped over the city's industrial valley. It exploded 47 seconds later at 11:02 Japanese Time at 503 ± 10 m (1,650 ± 33 ft), above a tennis court, halfway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south and the Nagasaki Arsenal in the north. This was nearly 3 km (1.9 mi) northwest of the planned hypocenter; the blast was confined to the Urakami Valley and a major portion of the city was protected by the intervening hills. The resulting explosion released the equivalent energy of 21 ± 2 kt (87.9 ± 8.4 TJ). Big Stink spotted the explosion from 160 kilometers (100 mi) away, and flew over to observe.

The bomb destroyed the Roman Catholic Urakami Tenshudo Church

Bockscar flew on to Okinawa, arriving with only sufficient fuel for a single approach. Sweeney tried repeatedly to contact the control tower for landing clearance, but received no answer. He could see heavy air traffic landing and taking off from Yontan Airfield. Firing off every flare on board to alert the field to his emergency landing, the Bockscar came in fast, landing at 230 km/h (140 mph) instead of the normal 190 kilometers per hour (120 mph). The number two engine died from fuel starvation as he began the final approach. Touching down on only three engines midway down the landing strip, Bockscar bounced up into the air again for about 7.6 meters (25 ft) before slamming back down hard. The heavy B-29 slewed left and towards a row of parked B-24 bombers before the pilots managed to regain control. Its reversible propellers were insufficient to slow the aircraft adequately, and with both pilots standing on the brakes, Bockscar made a swerving 90-degree turn at the end of the runway to avoid running off it. A second engine died from fuel exhaustion before the plane came to a stop.

Following the mission, there was confusion over the identification of the plane. The first eyewitness account by war correspondent William L. Laurence of The New York Times, who accompanied the mission aboard the aircraft piloted by Bock, reported that Sweeney was leading the mission in The Great Artiste. He also noted its "Victor" number as 77, which was that of Bockscar. Laurence had interviewed Sweeney and his crew, and was aware that they referred to their airplane as The Great Artiste. Except for Enola Gay, none of the 393d's B-29s had yet had names painted on the noses, a fact which Laurence himself noted in his account. Unaware of the switch in aircraft, Laurence assumed Victor 77 was The Great Artiste, which was in fact, Victor 89.

Events on the ground

Although the bomb was more powerful than the one used on Hiroshima, its effects were confined by hillsides to the narrow Urakami Valley. Of 7,500 Japanese employees who worked inside the Mitsubishi Munitions plant, including "mobilized" students and regular workers, 6,200 were killed. Some 17,000-22,000 others who worked in other war plants and factories in the city died as well. Casualty estimates for immediate deaths vary widely, ranging from 22,000 to 75,000. At least 35,000-40,000 people were killed and 60,000 others injured. In the days and months following the explosion, more people died from their injuries. Because of the presence of undocumented foreign workers, and a number of military personnel in transit, there are great discrepancies in the estimates of total deaths by the end of 1945; a range of 60,000 to 80,000 can be found in various studies.

Yōsuke Yamahata photographed this child incinerated in Nagasaki. American forces censored such images in Japan until 1952.[215][216]

Unlike Hiroshima's military death toll, only 150 Japanese soldiers were killed instantly, including 36 from the 134th AAA Regiment of the 4th AAA Division. At least eight Allied prisoners of war (POWs) died from the bombing, and as many as thirteen may have died. The eight confirmed deaths included a British POW, Royal Air Force Corporal Ronald Shaw, and seven Dutch POWs. One American POW, Joe Kieyoomia, was in Nagasaki at the time of the bombing but survived, reportedly having been shielded from the effects of the bomb by the concrete walls of his cell. There were 24 Australian POWs in Nagasaki, all of whom survived.

The radius of total destruction was about 1.6 km (1 mi), followed by fires across the northern portion of the city to 3.2 km (2 mi) south of the bomb. About 58 percent of the Mitsubishi Arms Plant was damaged, and about 78 percent of the Mitsubishi Steel Works. The Mitsubishi Electric Works suffered only 10 percent structural damage as it was on the border of the main destruction zone. The Nagasaki Arsenal was destroyed in the blast. Although many fires likewise burnt following the bombing, in contrast to Hiroshima where sufficient fuel density was available, no firestorm developed in Nagasaki as the damaged areas did not furnish enough fuel to generate the phenomenon. Instead, ambient wind pushed the fire spread along the valley. Had the bomb been dropped more precisely at the intended aiming point, which was downtown Nagasaki at the heart of the historic district, the destruction to medical and administrative infrastructure would have been even greater.

As in Hiroshima, the bombing badly dislocated the city's medical facilities. A makeshift hospital was established at the Shinkozen Primary School, which served as the main medical center. The trains were still running, and evacuated many victims to hospitals in nearby towns. A medical team from a naval hospital reached the city in the evening, and fire-fighting brigades from the neighboring towns assisted in fighting the fires. Takashi Nagai was a doctor working in the radiology department of Nagasaki Medical College Hospital. He received a serious injury that severed his right temporal artery, but joined the rest of the surviving medical staff in treating bombing victims.

Plans for more atomic attacks on Japan

Memorandum from Groves to Marshall regarding the third bomb, with Marshall's hand-written caveat that the third bomb not be used without express presidential instruction

Groves expected to have another "Fat Man" atomic bomb ready for use on 19 August, with three more in September and a further three in October; a second Little Boy bomb (using U-235) would not be available until December 1945. On 10 August, he sent a memorandum to Marshall in which he wrote that "the next bomb ... should be ready for delivery on the first suitable weather after 17 or 18 August." The memo today contains hand-written comment written by Marshall: "It is not to be released over Japan without express authority from the President." At the cabinet meeting that morning, Truman discussed these actions. James Forrestal paraphrased Truman as saying "there will be further dropping of the atomic bomb," while Henry A. Wallace recorded in his diary that: "Truman said he had given orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrific. He didn't like the idea of killing, as he said, 'all those kids.'" The previous order that the target cities were to be attacked with atomic bombs "as made ready" was thus modified. There was already discussion in the War Department about conserving the bombs then in production for Operation Downfall, and Marshall suggested to Stimson that the remaining cities on the target list be spared attack with atomic bombs.

Two more Fat Man assemblies were readied, and scheduled to leave Kirtland Field for Tinian on 11 and 14 August, and Tibbets was ordered by LeMay to return to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to collect them. At Los Alamos, technicians worked 24 hours straight to cast another plutonium core. Although cast, it still needed to be pressed and coated, which would take until 16 August. Therefore, it could have been ready for use on 19 August. Unable to reach Marshall, Groves ordered on his own authority on 13 August that the core should not be shipped.

Surrender of Japan and subsequent occupation

Until 9 August, Japan's war council still insisted on its four conditions for surrender. The full cabinet met at 14:30 on 9 August, and spent most of the day debating surrender. Anami conceded that victory was unlikely, but argued in favor of continuing the war. The meeting ended at 17:30, with no decision having been reached. Suzuki went to the palace to report on the outcome of the meeting, where he met with Kōichi Kido, the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal of Japan. Kido informed him that the emperor had agreed to hold an imperial conference, and gave a strong indication that the emperor would consent to surrender on condition that be preserved. A second cabinet meeting was held at 18:00. Only four ministers supported Anami's position of adhering to the four conditions, but since cabinet decisions had to be unanimous, no decision was reached before it ended at 22:00.

Calling an imperial conference required the signatures of the prime minister and the two service chiefs, but the Chief Cabinet Secretary Hisatsune Sakomizu had already obtained signatures from Toyoda and General Yoshijirō Umezu in advance, and he reneged on his promise to inform them if a meeting was to be held. The meeting commenced at 23:50. No consensus had emerged by 02:00 on 10 August, but the emperor gave his "sacred decision", authorizing the Foreign Minister, Shigenori Tōgō, to notify the Allies that Japan would accept their terms on one condition, that the declaration "does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign ruler."

On 12 August, the Emperor informed the imperial family of his decision to surrender. One of his uncles, Prince Asaka, asked whether the war would be continued if the kokutai could not be preserved. Hirohito simply replied, "Of course." As the Allied terms seemed to leave intact the principle of the preservation of the Throne, Hirohito recorded on 14 August his capitulation announcement which was broadcast to the Japanese nation the next day despite an attempted military coup d'état by militarists opposed to the surrender.

In his declaration's fifth paragraph, Hirohito solely mentions the duration of the conflict; and did not explicitly mention the Soviets as a factor for surrender:

But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by every one-the gallant fighting of military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of Our servants of the State and the devoted service of Our one hundred million people, the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest.

The sixth paragraph by Hirohito specifically mentions the use of nuclear ordnance devices, from the aspect of the unprecedented damage they caused:

Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.

The seventh paragraph gives the reason for the ending of hostilities against the Allies:

Such being the case, how are we to save the millions of our subjects, or to atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of our imperial ancestors? This is the reason why we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.

In his "Rescript to the Soldiers and Sailors" delivered on 17 August, Hirohito did not refer to the atomic bombs or possible human extinction, and instead described the Soviet declaration of war as "endangering the very foundation of the Empire's existence."

The Hiroshima ruins in March and April 1946, by Daniel A. McGovern and Harry Mimura

On 10 August 1945, the day after the Nagasaki bombing, military photographer Yōsuke Yamahata, correspondent Higashi, and artist Yamada arrived in the city with instructions to record the destruction for propaganda purposes. Yamahata took scores of photographs, and on 21 August, they appeared in Mainichi Shimbun, a popular Japanese newspaper. After Japan's surrender and the arrival of American forces, copies of his photographs were seized amid the ensuing censorship, but some records have survived.

Leslie Nakashima, a former United Press (UP) journalist, filed the first personal account of the scene to appear in American newspapers. He observed that large numbers of survivors continued to die from what later became recognized as radiation poisoning. On 31 August, The New York Times published an abbreviated version of his 27 August UP article. Nearly all references to uranium poisoning were omitted. An editor's note was added to say that, according to American scientists, "the atomic bomb will not have any lingering after-effects."

Wilfred Burchett was also one of the first Western journalists to visit Hiroshima after the bombing. He arrived alone by train from Tokyo on 2 September, defying the traveling ban put in place on Western correspondents. Burchett's dispatch, "The Atomic Plague", was printed by the Daily Express newspaper in London on 5 September 1945. The reports from Nakashima and Burchett informed the public for the first time of the gruesome effects of radiation and nuclear fallout- radiation burns and radiation poisoning, sometimes lasting more than thirty days after the blast. Burchett especially noted that people were dying "horribly" after bleeding from orifices, and their flesh would rot away from the injection holes where vitamin A was administered, to no avail.

The New York Times then apparently reversed course and ran a front-page story by Bill Lawrence confirming the existence of a terrifying affliction in Hiroshima, where many had symptoms such as hair loss and vomiting blood before dying. Lawrence had gained access to the city as part of a press junket promoting the U.S. Army Air Force. Some reporters were horrified by the scene, however, referring to what they saw as a "death laboratory" littered with "human guinea pigs". General MacArthur found the reporting to have turned from good PR into bad PR and threatened to court martial the entire group. He withdrew Burchett's press accreditation and expelled the journalist from the occupation zones. The authorities also accused him of being under the sway of Japanese propaganda and later suppressed another story, on the Nagasaki bombing, by George Weller of the Chicago Daily News. Less than a week after his New York Times story was published, Lawrence also backtracked and dismissed the reports on radiation sickness as Japanese efforts to undermine American morale.

A member of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Lieutenant Daniel McGovern, used a film crew to document the effects of the bombings in early 1946. The film crew shot 27,000 m (90,000 ft) of film, resulting in a three-hour documentary titled The Effects of the Atomic Bombs Against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The documentary included images from hospitals, burned-out buildings and cars, and rows of skulls and bones on the ground. It was classified "secret" for the next 22 years. Motion picture company Nippon Eigasha started sending cameramen to Nagasaki and Hiroshima in September 1945. On 24 October 1945, a U.S. military policeman stopped a Nippon Eigasha cameraman from continuing to film in Nagasaki. All Nippon Eigasha's reels were confiscated by the American authorities, but they were requested by the Japanese government, and declassified. The public release of film footage of the city post-attack, and some research about the effects of the attack, was restricted during the occupation of Japan, but the Hiroshima-based magazine, Chugoku Bunka, in its first issue published on 10 March 1946, devoted itself to detailing the damage from the bombing.

The book , written by Pulitzer Prize winner John Hersey and originally published in article form in The New Yorker, is reported to have reached Tokyo in English by January 1947, and the translated version was released in Japan in 1949. It narrated the stories of the lives of six bomb survivors from immediately prior to, and months after, the dropping of the Little Boy bomb. Beginning in 1974, a compilation of drawings and artwork made by the survivors of the bombings began to be compiled, with completion in 1977, and under both book and exhibition format, it was titled The Unforgettable Fire.

Life among the rubble in Hiroshima in March and April 1946. Film footage taken by Lieutenant Daniel A. McGovern (director) and Harry Mimura (cameraman) for a United States Strategic Bombing Survey project.

The bombing amazed Otto Hahn and other German atomic scientists, whom the British held at Farm Hall in Operation Epsilon. Hahn stated that he had not believed an atomic weapon "would be possible for another twenty years"; Werner Heisenberg did not believe the news at first. Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker said "I think it's dreadful of the Americans to have done it. I think it is madness on their part", but Heisenberg replied, "One could equally well say 'That's the quickest way of ending the war'". Hahn was grateful that the German project had not succeeded in developing "such an inhumane weapon"; Karl Wirtz observed that even if it had, "we would have obliterated London but would still not have conquered the world, and then they would have dropped them on us".

Hahn told the others, "Once I wanted to suggest that all uranium should be sunk to the bottom of the ocean". The Vatican agreed; L'Osservatore Romano expressed regret that the bomb's inventors did not destroy the weapon for the benefit of humanity. Rev. Cuthbert Thicknesse, the dean of St Albans, prohibited using St Albans Abbey for a thanksgiving service for the war's end, calling the use of atomic weapons "an act of wholesale, indiscriminate massacre". Nonetheless, news of the atomic bombing was greeted enthusiastically in the U.S.; a poll in Fortune magazine in late 1945 showed a significant minority of Americans (23 percent) wishing that more atomic bombs could have been dropped on Japan. The initial positive response was supported by the imagery presented to the public (mainly the powerful images of the mushroom cloud). During this time in America, it was a common practice for editors to keep graphic images of death out of films, magazines, and newspapers.

Post-attack casualties

Silent film footage taken in Hiroshima in March 1946 showing survivors with severe burns and keloid scars. Survivors were asked to stand in the orientation they were in at the time of the flash, to document and convey the line-of-sight nature of flash burns, and to show that, much like a sunburn, thick clothing and fabric offered protection in many cases. The sometimes extensive burn scar contracture is not unusual, being common to all second- and third-degree burns when they cover a large area of skin.

An estimated 90,000 to 140,000 people in Hiroshima (up to 39 percent of the population) and 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki (up to 32 percent of the population) died in 1945, though the number which died immediately as a result of exposure to the blast, heat, or due to radiation, is unknown. One Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission report discusses 6,882 people examined in Hiroshima and 6,621 people examined in Nagasaki, who were largely within 2,000 meters (6,600 ft) of the hypocenter, who suffered injuries from the blast and heat but died from complications frequently compounded by acute radiation syndrome (ARS), all within about 20 to 30 days. Many people not injured by the blast eventually died within that timeframe as well after suffering from ARS. At the time, the doctors had no idea what the cause was and were unable to effectively treat the condition. Midori Naka was the first death officially certified to be the result of radiation poisoning or, as it was referred to by many, the "atomic bomb disease". She was some 650 meters (2,130 ft) from the hypocenter at Hiroshima and would die on 24 August 1945 after traveling to Tokyo. It was unappreciated at the time but the average radiation dose that would kill approximately 50 percent of adults (the LD50) was approximately halved; that is, smaller doses were made more lethal when the individual experienced concurrent blast or burn polytraumatic injuries. Conventional skin injuries that cover a large area frequently result in bacterial infection; the risk of sepsis and death is increased when a usually non-lethal radiation dose moderately suppresses the white blood cell count.

In the spring of 1948, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) was established in accordance with a presidential directive from Truman to the National Academy of Sciences- National Research Council to conduct investigations of the late effects of radiation among the survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1956, the ABCC published The Effect of Exposure to the Atomic Bombs on Pregnancy Termination in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ABCC became the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) on 1 April 1975. A binational organization run by both the United States and Japan, the RERF is still in operation today.

Cancer increases

Cancers do not immediately emerge after exposure to radiation; instead, radiation-induced cancer has a minimum latency period of some five years and above, and leukemia some two years and above, peaking around six to eight years later. Jarrett Foley published the first major reports on the significant increased incidence of the latter among survivors. Almost all cases of leukemia over the following 50 years were in people exposed to more than 1 Gy. In a strictly dependent manner dependent on their distance from the hypocenter, in the 1987 Life Span Study, conducted by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, a statistical excess of 507 cancers, of undefined lethality, were observed in 79,972 hibakusha who had still been living between 1958 and 1987 and who took part in the study. As the epidemiology study continues with time, the RERF estimates that, from 1950 to 2000, 46 percent of leukemia deaths which may include Sadako Sasaki and 11 percent of solid cancers of unspecified lethality were likely due to radiation from the bombs or some other post-attack city effects, with the statistical excess being 200 leukemia deaths and 1,700 solid cancers of undeclared lethality. Both of these statistics being derived from the observation of approximately half of the total survivors, strictly those who took part in the study. A meta-analysis from 2016 found that radiation exposure increases cancer risk, but also that the average lifespan of survivors was reduced by only a few months compared to those not exposed to radiation.

Birth defect investigations

While during the preimplantation period, that is one to ten days following conception, intrauterine radiation exposure of "at least 0.2 Gy" can cause complications of implantation and death of the human embryo. The number of miscarriages caused by the radiation from the bombings, during this radiosensitive period, is not known.

One of the early studies conducted by the ABCC was on the outcome of pregnancies occurring in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in a control city, Kure, located 29 km (18 mi) south of Hiroshima, to discern the conditions and outcomes related to radiation exposure. James V. Neel led the study which found that the overall number of birth defects was not significantly higher among the children of survivors who were pregnant at the time of the bombings. He also studied the longevity of the children who survived the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reporting that between 90 and 95 percent were still living 50 years later.

While the National Academy of Sciences raised the possibility that Neel's procedure did not filter the Kure population for possible radiation exposure which could bias the results, overall, a statistically insignificant increase in birth defects occurred directly after the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima when the cities were taken as wholes, in terms of distance from the hypocenters. However, Neel and others noted that in approximately 50 humans who were of an early gestational age at the time of the bombing and who were all within about 1 kilometer (0.62 mi) of the hypocenter, an increase in microencephaly and anencephaly was observed upon birth, with the incidence of these two particular malformations being nearly 3 times what was to be expected when compared to the control group in Kure.

In 1985, Johns Hopkins University geneticist James F. Crow examined Neel's research and confirmed that the number of birth defects was not significantly higher in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many members of the ABCC and its successor Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) were still looking for possible birth defects among the survivors decades later, but found no evidence that they were significantly common among the survivors or inherited in the children of survivors.

Investigations into brain development

Despite the small sample size of 1,600 to 1,800 persons who came forth as prenatally exposed at the time of the bombings, that were both within a close proximity to the two hypocenters, to survive the absorption of a substantial dose of radiation and then the malnourished post-attack environment, data from this cohort does support the increased risk of severe mental retardation (SMR), that was observed in some 30 individuals, with SMR being a common outcome of the aforementioned microencephaly. While a lack of statistical data, with just 30 individuals out of 1,800, prevents a definitive determination of a threshold point, the data collected suggests a threshold intrauterine or fetal dose for SMR, at the most radiosensitive period of cognitive development, when there is the largest number of undifferentiated neural cells (8 to 15 weeks post-conception) to begin at a threshold dose of approximately "0.09" to "0.15" Gy, with the risk then linearly increasing to a 43-percent rate of SMR when exposed to a fetal dose of 1 Gy at any point during these weeks of rapid neurogenesis.

However either side of this radiosensitive age, none of the prenatally exposed to the bombings at an age less than 8 weeks, that is prior to synaptogenesis or at a gestational age more than 26 weeks "were observed to be mentally retarded", with the condition therefore being isolated to those solely of 8-26 weeks of age and who absorbed more than approximately "0.09" to "0.15" Gy of prompt radiation energy.

Examination of the prenatally exposed in terms of IQ performance and school records, determined the beginning of a statistically significant reduction in both, when exposed to greater than 0.1 to 0.5 gray, during the same gestational period of 8-25 weeks. However outside this period, at less than 8 weeks and greater than 26 after conception, "there is no evidence of a radiation-related effect on scholastic performance."

The reporting of doses in terms of absorbed energy in units of grays and rads - rather than the biologically significant, biologically weighted sievert in both the SMR and cognitive performance data - is typical. The reported threshold dose variance between the two cities is suggested to be a manifestation of the difference between X-ray and neutron absorption, with Little Boy emitting substantially more neutron flux, whereas the Baratol that surrounded the core of Fat Man filtered or shifted the absorbed neutron-radiation profile, so that the dose of radiation energy received in Nagasaki was mostly that from exposure to X-rays/gamma rays. Contrast this to the environment within 1500 meters of the hypocenter at Hiroshima, where the in-utero dose depended more on the absorption of neutrons which have a higher biological effect per unit of energy absorbed. From the radiation dose reconstruction work, the estimated dosimetry at Hiroshima still has the largest uncertainty as the Little Boy bomb design was never tested before deployment or afterward, therefore the estimated radiation profile absorbed by individuals at Hiroshima had required greater reliance on calculations than the Japanese soil, concrete and roof-tile measurements which began to reach accurate levels and thereby inform researchers, in the 1990s.

Many other investigations into cognitive outcomes, such as schizophrenia as a result of prenatal exposure, have been conducted with "no statistically significant linear relationship seen". There is a suggestion that in the most extremely exposed, those who survived within a kilometer or so of the hypocenters, a trend emerges akin to that seen in SMR, though the sample size is too small to determine with any significance.

Torii, Nagasaki, Japan. One-legged torii in the background

The survivors of the bombings are called , a Japanese word that literally translates to "explosion-affected people". The Japanese government has recognized about 650,000 people as hibakusha. As of March 31, 2023, 113,649 were still alive, mostly in Japan. The government of Japan recognizes about one percent of these as having illnesses caused by radiation.[better source needed ] The memorials in Hiroshima and Nagasaki contain lists of the names of the hibakusha who are known to have died since the bombings. Updated annually on the anniversaries of the bombings, as of August 2023, the memorials record the names of 535,000 hibakusha; 339,227 in Hiroshima and 195,607 in Nagasaki.

If they discuss their background, hibakusha and their children were (and still are) victims of fear-based discrimination and exclusion for marriage or work due to public ignorance; much of the public persist with the belief that the hibakusha carry some hereditary or even contagious disease. This is despite the fact that no statistically demonstrable increase of birth defects/congenital malformations was found among the later conceived children born to survivors of the nuclear weapons used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or indeed has been found in the later conceived children of cancer survivors who had previously received radiotherapy. The surviving women of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that could conceive, who were exposed to substantial amounts of radiation, went on and had children with no higher incidence of abnormalities/birth defects than the rate which is observed in the Japanese average. A study of the long-term psychological effects of the bombings on the survivors found that even 17-20 years after the bombings had occurred survivors showed a higher prevalence of anxiety and somatization symptoms.

Double survivors

Perhaps as many as 200 people from Hiroshima sought refuge in Nagasaki. The 2006 documentary Twice Survived: The Doubly Atomic Bombed of Hiroshima and Nagasaki documented 165 nijū hibakusha (lit. double explosion-affected people), nine of whom claimed to be in the blast zone in both cities. On 24 March 2009, the Japanese government officially recognized Tsutomu Yamaguchi as a double hibakusha. He was confirmed to be 3 km (1.9 mi) from ground zero in Hiroshima on a business trip when the bomb was detonated. He was seriously burnt on his left side and spent the night in Hiroshima. He arrived at his home city of Nagasaki on 8 August, the day before the bombing, and he was exposed to residual radiation while searching for his relatives. He was the first officially recognized survivor of both bombings. He died in 2010 of stomach cancer.

Korean survivors

During the war, Japan brought as many as 670,000 Korean conscripts to Japan to work as forced labor. About 5,000-8,000 Koreans were killed in Hiroshima and another 1,500-2,000 died in Nagasaki. For many years, Korean survivors had a difficult time fighting for the same recognition as Hibakusha as afforded to all Japanese survivors, a situation which resulted in the denial of the free health benefits to them in Japan. Most issues were eventually addressed in 2008 through lawsuits.

Hiroshima was subsequently struck by Typhoon Ida on 17 September 1945. More than half the bridges were destroyed, and the roads and railroads were damaged, further devastating the city. The population increased from 83,000 soon after the bombing to 146,000 in February 1946. The city was rebuilt after the war, with help from the national government through the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law passed in 1949. It provided financial assistance for reconstruction, along with land donated that was previously owned by the national government and used for military purposes. In 1949, a design was selected for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, the closest surviving building to the location of the bomb's detonation, was designated the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was opened in 1955 in the Peace Park. Hiroshima also contains a Peace Pagoda, built in 1966 by Nipponzan-Myōhōji.

On January 27, 1981, the Atomic Bombing Relic Selecting Committee of Hiroshima announced to build commemorative plaques at nine historical sites related to the bombing in the year. Genbaku Dome, Shima Hospital (hypocenter), Motoyasu Bridge all unveiled plaques with historical photographs and descriptions. The rest sites planned including Hondō Shopping Street, Motomachi No.2 Army Hospital site, Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital, Fukuromachi Elementary School, Hiroshima City Hall and Hiroshima Station. The committee also planned to establish 30 commemorative plaques in three years.

Nagasaki was also rebuilt after the war, but was dramatically changed in the process. The pace of reconstruction was initially slow, and the first simple emergency dwellings were not provided until 1946. The focus on redevelopment was the replacement of war industries with foreign trade, shipbuilding and fishing. This was formally declared when the Nagasaki International Culture City Reconstruction Law was passed in May 1949. New temples were built, as well as new churches owing to an increase in the presence of Christianity. Some of the rubble was left as a memorial, such as a at Sannō Shrine, and an arch near ground zero. New structures were also raised as memorials, such as the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, which was opened in the mid-1990s.

Debate over bombings

The role of the bombings in Japan's surrender, and the ethical, legal, and military controversies surrounding the United States' justification for them have been the subject of scholarly and popular debate. On one hand, it has been argued that the bombings caused the Japanese surrender, thereby preventing casualties that an invasion of Japan would have involved. Stimson talked of saving one million casualties. The naval blockade might have starved the Japanese into submission without an invasion, but this would also have resulted in many more Japanese deaths.

However, critics of the bombings have cited a belief that atomic weapons are fundamentally immoral, that the bombings were war crimes, and that they constituted state terrorism. The Japanese may have surrendered without the bombings, but only an unconditional surrender would satisfy the Allies. Others, such as historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, argued that the entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan "played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrender because it dashed any hope that Japan could terminate the war through Moscow's mediation". A view among critics of the bombings, popularized by American historian Gar Alperovitz in 1965, is the idea of atomic diplomacy: that the United States used nuclear weapons to intimidate the Soviet Union in the early stages of the Cold War. James Orr wrote that this idea became the accepted position in Japan and that it may have played some part in the decision making of the US government.

Legal considerations

The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which address the codes of wartime conduct on land and at sea, were adopted before the rise of air power. Despite repeated diplomatic attempts to update international humanitarian law to include aerial warfare, it was not updated before the outbreak of World War II. The absence of specific international humanitarian law did not mean aerial warfare was not covered under the laws of war, but rather that there was no general agreement of how to interpret those laws. This means that aerial bombardment of civilian areas in enemy territory by all major belligerents during World War II was not prohibited by positive or specific customary international humanitarian law.

In 1963 the bombings were subjected to judicial review in Ryuichi Shimoda v. The State. The District Court of Tokyo ruled the use of nuclear weapons in warfare wasn't illegal, but held in its obiter dictum that the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illegal under international law as it existed at that time, as an indiscriminate bombardment of undefended cities. The court denied the appellants compensation on the grounds that the Japanese government had waived the right for reparations from the U.S. government under the Treaty of San Francisco.

By 30 June 1946, there were components for nine atomic bombs in the US arsenal, all Fat Man devices identical to the one used in the bombing of Nagasaki. The nuclear weapons were handmade devices, and a great deal of work remained to improve their ease of assembly, safety, reliability and storage before they were ready for production. There were also many improvements to their performance that had been suggested or recommended, but that had not been possible under the pressure of wartime development. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, decried the use of the atomic bombs as adopting "an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages", but in October 1947 he reported a military requirement for 400 bombs.

The American monopoly on nuclear weapons lasted four years before the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb in September 1949. The United States responded with the development of the hydrogen bomb, a nuclear weapon a thousand times as powerful as the bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Such ordinary fission bombs would henceforth be regarded as small tactical nuclear weapons. By 1986, the United States had 23,317 nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union had 40,159. In early 2019, more than 90% of the world's 13,865 nuclear weapons were owned by the United States and Russia.

By 2020, nine nations had nuclear weapons, but Japan was not one of them. Japan reluctantly signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in February 1970, but is still sheltered under the American nuclear umbrella. American nuclear weapons were stored on Okinawa, and sometimes in Japan itself, albeit in contravention of agreements between the two nations. Lacking the resources to fight the Soviet Union using conventional forces, NATO came to depend on the use of nuclear weapons to defend itself during the Cold War, a policy that became known in the 1950s as the New Look. In the decades after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States would threaten to use its nuclear weapons many times.

On 7 July 2017, more than 120 countries voted to adopt the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Elayne Whyte Gómez, President of the UN negotiations on the nuclear ban treaty, said, "the world has been waiting for this legal norm for 70 years," since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. As of 2023, Japan has not signed the treaty.

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Further reading

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Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Wikipedia

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Operation Centerboard Part of the Pacific War of World War II Type Nuclear bombing Location Date 6 and 9 August 1945 Executed by Casualties Hiroshima: 70,000-126,000 civilians killed 7,000-20,000 soldiers killed 12 Allied prisoners of war Nagasaki: 60,000-80,000 killed (within 4 months) 150+ soldiers killed 8-13 Allied prisoners of war On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.

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(20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. During his dictatorship, he initiated the European theatre of World War II by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.

Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and was raised near Linz. He lived in Vienna later in the first decade of the 1900s before moving to Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I. In 1919, he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), the precursor of the Nazi Party, and in 1921 was appointed leader of the Nazi Party. In 1923, he attempted to seize governmental power in a failed coup in Munich and was sentenced to five years in prison, serving just over a year of his sentence. While there, he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"). After his early release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting pan-Germanism, antisemitism and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. He frequently denounced communism as being part of an international Jewish conspiracy.

By November 1932, the Nazi Party held the most seats in the but did not have a majority. No political parties were able to form a majority coalition in support of a candidate for chancellor. Former chancellor Franz von Papen and other conservative leaders convinced President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933. Shortly thereafter, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933 which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. Upon Hindenburg's death on 2 August 1934, Hitler succeeded him, becoming simultaneously the head of state and government with absolute power. Domestically, Hitler implemented numerous racist policies and sought to deport or kill German Jews. His first six years in power resulted in rapid economic recovery from the Great Depression, the abrogation of restrictions imposed on Germany after World War I, and the annexation of territories inhabited by millions of ethnic Germans, which initially gave him significant popular support.

One of Hitler's key goals was Lebensraum ( lit.  ' living space ') for the German people in Eastern Europe, and his aggressive, expansionist foreign policy is considered the primary cause of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and, on 1 September 1939, invaded Poland, resulting in Britain and France declaring war on Germany. In June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. In December 1941, he declared war on the United States. By the end of 1941, German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe and North Africa. These gains were gradually reversed after 1941, and in 1945 the Allied armies defeated the German army. On 29 April 1945, he married his long-term partner, Eva Braun, in the Red Army. In accordance with Hitler's wishes, their corpses were burned.Führerbunker in Berlin. On the following day, the couple committed suicide to avoid capture by the Soviet

The historian and biographer Ian Kershaw describes Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil". Under Hitler's leadership and racist ideology, the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of an estimated six million Jews and millions of other victims, whom he and his followers deemed Untermenschen (subhumans) or socially undesirable. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the deliberate killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 28.7 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre. The number of civilians killed during World War II was unprecedented in warfare, and the casualties constitute the deadliest conflict in history.

Hitler's father, Alois Hitler (1837-1903), was the illegitimate child of Maria Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, and Alois initially bore his mother's surname, "Schicklgruber". In 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Alois's mother. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedler's brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. In 1876, Alois was made legitimate and his baptismal record annotated by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Alois's father (recorded as "Georg Hitler"). Alois then assumed the surname "Hitler", also spelled "Hiedler", "Hüttler" , or . The name is probably based on the German word Hütte ( lit.   ' hut '), and probably has the meaning "one who lives in a hut".

Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Alois's mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the family's 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenberger's existence, and Jewish residency in Styria had been illegal for nearly 400 years and would not become legal again until decades after Alois's birth, so historians dismiss the claim that Alois's father was Jewish.

Early years

Childhood and education

Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (present-day Austria), close to the border with the German Empire. He was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Pölzl. Three of Hitler's siblings-Gustav, Ida, and Otto-died in infancy. Also living in the household were Alois's children from his second marriage: Alois Jr. (born 1882) and Angela (born 1883). When Hitler was three, the family moved to Passau, Germany. There he acquired the distinctive lower Bavarian dialect, rather than Austrian German, which marked his speech throughout his life. The family returned to Austria and settled in Leonding in 1894, and in June 1895 Alois retired to Hafeld, near Lambach, where he farmed and kept bees. Hitler attended Volksschule (a state-funded primary school) in nearby Fischlham.

Hitler as an infant (c. 1889-90)

The move to Hafeld coincided with the onset of intense father-son conflicts caused by Hitler's refusal to conform to the strict discipline of his school. His father beat him, although his mother tried to protect him.

Alois Hitler's farming efforts at Hafeld ended in failure, and in 1897 the family moved to Lambach. The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even considered becoming a priest. In 1898, the family returned permanently to Leonding. Hitler was deeply affected by the death of his younger brother Edmund in 1900 from measles. Hitler changed from a confident, outgoing, conscientious student to a morose, detached boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers. Paula Hitler recalled how Adolf was a teenage bully who would often slap her.

Alois had made a successful career in the customs bureau and wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. Hitler later dramatised an episode from this period when his father took him to visit a customs office, depicting it as an event that gave rise to an unforgiving antagonism between father and son, who were both strong-willed. Ignoring his son's desire to attend a classical high school and become an artist, Alois sent Hitler to the Realschule in Linz in September 1900. Hitler rebelled against this decision, and in Mein Kampf states that he intentionally performed poorly in school, hoping that once his father saw "what little progress I was making at the technical school he would let me devote myself to my dream".

Like many Austrian Germans, Hitler began to develop German nationalist ideas from a young age. He expressed loyalty only to Germany, despising the declining Habsburg monarchy and its rule over an ethnically diverse empire. Hitler and his friends used the greeting "Heil", and sang the " Deutschlandlied" instead of the Austrian Imperial anthem. After Alois's sudden death on 3 January 1903, Hitler's performance at school deteriorated and his mother allowed him to leave. He enrolled at the Realschule in Steyr in September 1904, where his behaviour and performance improved. In 1905, after passing a repeat of the final exam, Hitler left the school without any ambitions for further education or clear plans for a career.

Early adulthood in Vienna and Munich

The Alter Hof in Munich, a watercolour painting by Hitler in 1914

In 1907, Hitler left Linz to live and study fine art in Vienna, financed by orphan's benefits and support from his mother. He applied for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna but was rejected twice. The director suggested Hitler should apply to the School of Architecture, but he lacked the necessary academic credentials because he had not finished secondary school.

On 21 December 1907, his mother died of breast cancer at the age of 47; Hitler was 18 at the time. In 1909, Hitler ran out of money and was forced to live a bohemian life in homeless shelters and a men's dormitory. He earned money as a casual labourer and by painting and selling watercolours of Vienna's sights. During his time in Vienna, he pursued a growing passion for architecture and music, attending ten performances of Lohengrin, his favourite Wagner opera.

In Vienna, Hitler was first exposed to racist rhetoric. Populists such as mayor Karl Lueger exploited the city's prevalent anti-Semitic sentiment, occasionally also espousing German nationalist notions for political benefit. German nationalism was even more widespread in the Mariahilf district, where Hitler then lived. Georg Ritter von Schönerer became a major influence on Hitler, and he developed an admiration for Martin Luther. Hitler read local newspapers that promoted prejudice and utilised Christian fears of being swamped by an influx of Eastern European Jews as well as pamphlets that published the thoughts of philosophers and theoreticians such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustave Le Bon, and Arthur Schopenhauer. During his life in Vienna, Hitler also developed fervent anti-Slavic sentiments.

The origin and development of Hitler's anti-Semitism remains a matter of debate. His friend August Kubizek claimed that Hitler was a "confirmed anti-Semite" before he left Linz. However, historian Brigitte Hamann describes Kubizek's claim as "problematical". While Hitler states in Mein Kampf that he first became an anti-Semite in Vienna, Reinhold Hanisch, who helped him sell his paintings, disagrees. Hitler had dealings with Jews while living in Vienna. Historian Richard J. Evans states that "historians now generally agree that his notorious, murderous anti-Semitism emerged well after Germany's defeat [in World War I], as a product of the paranoid "stab-in-the-back" explanation for the catastrophe".

Hitler received the final part of his father's estate in May 1913 and moved to Munich, Germany. When he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army, he journeyed to Salzburg on 5 February 1914 for medical assessment. After he was deemed unfit for service, he returned to Munich. Hitler later claimed that he did not wish to serve the Habsburg Empire because of the mixture of races in its army and his belief that the collapse of Austria-Hungary was imminent.

Hitler (far right, seated) with Bavarian Army comrades from the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (c. 1914-18)

In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Hitler was living in Munich and voluntarily enlisted in the Bavarian Army. According to a 1924 report by the Bavarian authorities, allowing Hitler to serve was most likely an administrative error, because as an Austrian citizen, he should have been returned to Austria. Posted to the Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (1st Company of the List Regiment), he served as a dispatch runner on the Western Front in France and Belgium, spending nearly half his time at the regimental headquarters in Fournes-en-Weppes, well behind the front lines. In 1914, he was present at the First Battle of Ypres and in that year was decorated for bravery, receiving the Iron Cross, Second Class.

During his service at headquarters, Hitler pursued his artwork, drawing cartoons and instructions for an army newspaper. During the Battle of the Somme in October 1916, he was wounded in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout. Hitler spent almost two months recovering in hospital at Beelitz, returning to his regiment on 5 March 1917. He was present at the Battle of Arras of 1917 and the Battle of Passchendaele. He received the Black Wound Badge on 18 May 1918. Three months later, in August 1918, on a recommendation by Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, his Jewish superior, Hitler received the Iron Cross, First Class, a decoration rarely awarded at Hitler's Gefreiter rank. On 15 October 1918, he was temporarily blinded in a mustard gas attack and was hospitalised in Pasewalk. While there, Hitler learned of Germany's defeat, and, by his own account, suffered a second bout of blindness after receiving this news.

Hitler described his role in World War I as "the greatest of all experiences", and was praised by his commanding officers for his bravery. His wartime experience reinforced his German patriotism, and he was shocked by Germany's capitulation in November 1918. His displeasure with the collapse of the war effort began to shape his ideology. Like other German nationalists, he believed the Dolchstoßlegende ( stab-in-the-back myth), which claimed that the German army, "undefeated in the field", had been "stabbed in the back" on the home front by civilian leaders, Jews, Marxists, and those who signed the armistice that ended the fighting-later dubbed the "November criminals".

The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that Germany had to relinquish several of its territories and demilitarise the Rhineland. The treaty imposed economic sanctions and levied heavy reparations on the country. Many Germans saw the treaty as an unjust humiliation. They especially objected to Article 231, which they interpreted as declaring Germany responsible for the war. The Versailles Treaty and the economic, social, and political conditions in Germany after the war were later exploited by Hitler for political gain.

Entry into politics

After World War I, Hitler returned to Munich. Without formal education or career prospects, he remained in the Army. In July 1919, he was appointed Verbindungsmann (intelligence agent) of an Aufklärungskommando (reconnaissance unit) of the Reichswehr, assigned to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers' Party (DAP). At a DAP meeting on 12 September 1919, Party Chairman Anton Drexler was impressed by Hitler's oratorical skills. He gave him a copy of his pamphlet My Political Awakening, which contained anti-Semitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas. On the orders of his army superiors, Hitler applied to join the party, and within a week was accepted as party member 555 (the party began counting membership at 500 to give the impression they were a much larger party).

Hitler made his earliest known written statement about the Jewish question in a 16 September 1919 letter to Adolf Gemlich (now known as the Gemlich letter). In the letter, Hitler argues that the aim of the government "must unshakably be the removal of the Jews altogether". At the DAP, Hitler met Dietrich Eckart, one of the party's founders and a member of the occult Thule Society. Eckart became Hitler's mentor, exchanging ideas with him and introducing him to a wide range of Munich society. To increase its appeal, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ( National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), now known as the "Nazi Party"). Hitler designed the party's banner of a swastika in a white circle on a red background.

Hitler was discharged from the Army on 31 March 1920 and began working full-time for the party. The party headquarters was in Munich, a centre for anti-government German nationalists determined to eliminate Marxism and undermine the Weimar Republic. In February 1921-already highly effective at crowd manipulation-he spoke to a crowd of over 6,000. To publicise the meeting, two truckloads of party supporters drove around Munich waving swastika flags and distributing leaflets. Hitler soon gained notoriety for his rowdy polemic speeches against the Treaty of Versailles, rival politicians, and especially against Marxists and Jews.

Hitler poses for the camera in September 1930

In June 1921, while Hitler and Eckart were on a fundraising trip to Berlin, a mutiny broke out within the Nazi Party in Munich. Members of its executive committee wanted to merge with the Nuremberg-based German Socialist Party (DSP). Hitler returned to Munich on 11 July and angrily tendered his resignation. The committee members realised that the resignation of their leading public figure and speaker would mean the end of the party. Hitler announced he would rejoin on the condition that he would replace Drexler as party chairman, and that the party headquarters would remain in Munich. The committee agreed, and he rejoined the party on 26 July as member 3,680. Hitler continued to face some opposition within the Nazi Party. Opponents of Hitler in the leadership had Hermann Esser expelled from the party, and they printed 3,000 copies of a pamphlet attacking Hitler as a traitor to the party. In the following days, Hitler spoke to several large audiences and defended himself and Esser, to thunderous applause. His strategy proved successful, and at a special party congress on 29 July, he was granted absolute power as party chairman, succeeding Drexler, by a vote of 533 to 1.

Hitler's vitriolic beer hall speeches began attracting regular audiences. A demagogue, he became adept at using populist themes, including the use of scapegoats, who were blamed for his listeners' economic hardships. Hitler used personal magnetism and an understanding of crowd psychology to his advantage while engaged in public speaking. Historians have noted the hypnotic effect of his rhetoric on large audiences, and of his eyes in small groups. Alfons Heck, a former member of the Hitler Youth, recalled:

We erupted into a frenzy of nationalistic pride that bordered on hysteria. For minutes on end, we shouted at the top of our lungs, with tears streaming down our faces: Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil! From that moment on, I belonged to Adolf Hitler body and soul.

Early followers included Rudolf Hess, former air force ace Hermann Göring, and army captain Ernst Röhm. Röhm became head of the Nazis' paramilitary organisation, the Sturmabteilung (SA, "Stormtroopers"), which protected meetings and attacked political opponents. A critical influence on Hitler's thinking during this period was the Aufbau Vereinigung, a conspiratorial group of White Russian exiles and early Nazis. The group, financed with funds channelled from wealthy industrialists, introduced Hitler to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy, linking international finance with Bolshevism.

The programme of the Nazi Party was laid out in their 25-point programme on 24 February 1920. This did not represent a coherent ideology, but was a conglomeration of received ideas which had currency in the völkisch Pan-Germanic movement, such as ultranationalism, opposition to the Treaty of Versailles, distrust of capitalism, as well as some socialist ideas. For Hitler, the most important aspect of it was its strong anti-Semitic stance. He also perceived the programme as primarily a basis for propaganda and for attracting people to the party.

Beer Hall Putsch and Landsberg Prison

Defendants in the Beer Hall Putsch trial, 1 April 1924. From left to right: Heinz Pernet, Friedrich Weber, Wilhelm Frick, Hermann Kriebel, Erich Ludendorff, Hitler, Wilhelm Brückner, Ernst Röhm, and Robert Wagner.

The dust jacket of Mein Kampf's 1926-28 edition, which Hitler authored in 1925

In 1923, Hitler enlisted the help of World War I General Erich Ludendorff for an attempted coup known as the " Beer Hall Putsch". The Nazi Party used Italian Fascism as a model for their appearance and policies. Hitler wanted to emulate Benito Mussolini's " March on Rome" of 1922 by staging his own coup in Bavaria, to be followed by a challenge to the government in Berlin. Hitler and Ludendorff sought the support of Staatskommissar (State Commissioner) Gustav Ritter von Kahr, Bavaria's de facto ruler. However, Kahr, along with Police Chief Hans Ritter von Seisser and Reichswehr General Otto von Lossow, wanted to install a nationalist dictatorship without Hitler.

On 8 November 1923, Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people organised by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich. Interrupting Kahr's speech, he announced that the national revolution had begun and declared the formation of a new government with Ludendorff. Retiring to a back room, Hitler, with his pistol drawn, demanded and subsequently received the support of Kahr, Seisser, and Lossow. Hitler's forces initially succeeded in occupying the local Reichswehr and police headquarters, but Kahr and his cohorts quickly withdrew their support. Neither the Army nor the state police joined forces with Hitler. The next day, Hitler and his followers marched from the beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry to overthrow the Bavarian government, but police dispersed them. Sixteen Nazi Party members and four police officers were killed in the failed coup.

Hitler fled to the home of Ernst Hanfstaengl and by some accounts contemplated suicide. He was depressed but calm when arrested on 11 November 1923 for high treason. His trial before the special People's Court in Munich began in February 1924, and Alfred Rosenberg became temporary leader of the Nazi Party. On 1 April, Hitler was sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg Prison. There, he received friendly treatment from the guards, and was allowed mail from supporters and regular visits by party comrades. Pardoned by the Bavarian Supreme Court, he was released from jail on 20 December 1924, against the state prosecutor's objections. Including time on remand, Hitler served just over one year in prison.

While at Landsberg, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of ( lit.  ' My Struggle '); originally titled Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice) at first to his chauffeur, Emil Maurice, and then to his deputy, Rudolf Hess. The book, dedicated to Thule Society member Dietrich Eckart, was an autobiography and exposition of his ideology. The book laid out Hitler's plans for transforming German society into one based on race. Throughout the book, Jews are equated with "germs" and presented as the "international poisoners" of society. According to Hitler's ideology, the only solution was their extermination. While Hitler did not describe exactly how this was to be accomplished, his "inherent genocidal thrust is undeniable", according to Ian Kershaw.

Published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926, Mein Kampf sold 228,000 copies between 1925 and 1932. One million copies were sold in 1933, Hitler's first year in office. Shortly before Hitler was eligible for parole, the Bavarian government attempted to have him deported to Austria. The Austrian federal chancellor rejected the request on the specious grounds that his service in the German Army made his Austrian citizenship void. In response, Hitler formally renounced his Austrian citizenship on 7 April 1925.

Rebuilding the Nazi Party

At the time of Hitler's release from prison, politics in Germany had become less combative and the economy had improved, limiting Hitler's opportunities for political agitation. As a result of the failed Beer Hall Putsch, the Nazi Party and its affiliated organisations were banned in Bavaria. In a meeting with the Prime Minister of Bavaria, Heinrich Held, on 4 January 1925, Hitler agreed to respect the state's authority and promised that he would seek political power only through the democratic process. The meeting paved the way for the ban on the Nazi Party to be lifted on 16 February.

However, after an inflammatory speech he gave on 27 February, Hitler was barred from public speaking by the Bavarian authorities, a ban that remained in place until 1927. To advance his political ambitions in spite of the ban, Hitler appointed Gregor Strasser, Otto Strasser, and Joseph Goebbels to organise and enlarge the Nazi Party in northern Germany. Gregor Strasser steered a more independent political course, emphasising the socialist elements of the party's programme.

The stock market in the United States crashed on 24 October 1929. The impact in Germany was dire: millions became unemployed and several major banks collapsed. Hitler and the Nazi Party prepared to take advantage of the emergency to gain support for their party. They promised to repudiate the Versailles Treaty, strengthen the economy, and provide jobs.

Rise to power

Brüning administration

The Great Depression provided a political opportunity for Hitler. Germans were ambivalent about the parliamentary republic, which faced challenges from right- and left-wing extremists. The moderate political parties were increasingly unable to stem the tide of extremism, and the German referendum of 1929 helped to elevate Nazi ideology. The elections of September 1930 resulted in the break-up of a grand coalition and its replacement with a minority cabinet. Its leader, chancellor Heinrich Brüning of the Centre Party, governed through emergency decrees from President Paul von Hindenburg. Governance by decree became the new norm and paved the way for authoritarian forms of government. The Nazi Party rose from obscurity to win 18.3 per cent of the vote and 107 parliamentary seats in the 1930 election, becoming the second-largest party in parliament.

Hitler and Nazi Party treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz at the dedication of the renovation of the Palais Barlow on Brienner Straße in Munich into the Brown House headquarters, December 1930

Hitler made a prominent appearance at the trial of two Reichswehr officers, Lieutenants Richard Scheringer and Hanns Ludin, in late 1930. Both were charged with membership in the Nazi Party, at that time illegal for Reichswehr personnel. The prosecution argued that the Nazi Party was an extremist party, prompting defence lawyer Hans Frank to call on Hitler to testify. On 25 September 1930, Hitler testified that his party would pursue political power solely through democratic elections, which won him many supporters in the officer corps.

Brüning's austerity measures brought little economic improvement and were extremely unpopular. Hitler exploited this by targeting his political messages specifically at people who had been affected by the inflation of the 1920s and the Depression, such as farmers, war veterans, and the middle class.

Although Hitler had terminated his Austrian citizenship in 1925, he did not acquire German citizenship for almost seven years. This meant that he was stateless, legally unable to run for public office, and still faced the risk of deportation. On 25 February 1932, the interior minister of Brunswick, Dietrich Klagges, who was a member of the Nazi Party, appointed Hitler as administrator for the state's delegation to the Reichsrat in Berlin, making Hitler a citizen of Brunswick, and thus of Germany.

Hitler ran against Hindenburg in the 1932 presidential elections. A speech to the Industry Club in Düsseldorf on 27 January 1932 won him support from many of Germany's most powerful industrialists. Hindenburg had support from various nationalist, monarchist, Catholic, and republican parties, and some Social Democrats. Hitler used the campaign slogan " Hitler über Deutschland" ("Hitler over Germany"), a reference to his political ambitions and his campaigning by aircraft. He was one of the first politicians to use aircraft travel for campaigning and used it effectively. Hitler came in second in both rounds of the election, garnering more than 35 per cent of the vote in the final election. Although he lost to Hindenburg, this election established Hitler as a strong force in German politics.

Appointment as chancellor

Hitler, at a window of the Reich Chancellery, receives an ovation on the evening of his inauguration as chancellor, 30 January 1933

The absence of an effective government prompted two influential politicians, Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, along with several other industrialists and businessmen, to write a letter to Hindenburg. The signers urged Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties", which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people".

Hindenburg reluctantly agreed to appoint Hitler as chancellor after two further parliamentary elections-in July and November 1932-had not resulted in the formation of a majority government. Hitler headed a short-lived coalition government formed by the Nazi Party (which had the most seats in the Reichstag) and Hugenberg's party, the German National People's Party (DNVP). On 30 January 1933, the new cabinet was sworn in during a brief ceremony in Hindenburg's office. The Nazi Party gained three posts: Hitler was named chancellor, Wilhelm Frick Minister of the Interior, and Hermann Göring Minister of the Interior for Prussia. Hitler had insisted on the ministerial positions as a way to gain control over the police in much of Germany.

Reichstag fire and March elections

As chancellor, Hitler worked against attempts by the Nazi Party's opponents to build a majority government. Because of the political stalemate, he asked Hindenburg to again dissolve the Reichstag, and elections were scheduled for early March. On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Göring blamed a communist plot, as Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found in incriminating circumstances inside the burning building. Until the 1960s, some historians, including William L. Shirer and Alan Bullock, thought the Nazi Party itself was responsible; the current consensus of nearly all historians is that van der Lubbe set the fire alone.

At Hitler's urging, Hindenburg responded by signing the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February, drafted by the Nazis, which suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. The decree was permitted under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which gave the president the power to take emergency measures to protect public safety and order. Activities of the German Communist Party (KPD) were suppressed, and some 4,000 KPD members were arrested.

In addition to political campaigning, the Nazi Party engaged in paramilitary violence and the spread of anti-communist propaganda in the days preceding the election. On election day, 6 March 1933, the Nazi Party's share of the vote increased to 43.9 per cent, and the party acquired the largest number of seats in parliament. Hitler's party failed to secure an absolute majority, necessitating another coalition with the DNVP.

Day of Potsdam and the Enabling Act

On 21 March 1933, the new Reichstag was constituted with an opening ceremony at the Garrison Church in Potsdam. This "Day of Potsdam" was held to demonstrate unity between the Nazi movement and the old Prussian elite and military. Hitler appeared in a morning coat and humbly greeted Hindenburg.

To achieve full political control despite not having an absolute majority in parliament, Hitler's government brought the Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act) to a vote in the newly elected Reichstag. The Act-officially titled the Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich ("Law to Remedy the Distress of People and Reich")-gave Hitler's cabinet the power to enact laws without the consent of the Reichstag for four years. These laws could (with certain exceptions) deviate from the constitution.

Since it would affect the constitution, the Enabling Act required a two-thirds majority to pass. Leaving nothing to chance, the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to arrest all 81 Communist deputies (in spite of their virulent campaign against the party, the Nazis had allowed the KPD to contest the election) and prevent several Social Democrats from attending.

On 23 March 1933, the Reichstag assembled at the Kroll Opera House under turbulent circumstances. Ranks of SA men served as guards inside the building, while large groups outside opposing the proposed legislation shouted slogans and threats towards the arriving members of parliament. After Hitler verbally promised Centre party leader Ludwig Kaas that Hindenburg would retain his power of veto, Kaas announced the Centre Party would support the Enabling Act. The Act passed by a vote of 444-94, with all parties except the Social Democrats voting in favour. The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship.

Dictatorship

At the risk of appearing to talk nonsense I tell you that the National Socialist movement will go on for 1,000 years! ... Don't forget how people laughed at me 15 years ago when I declared that one day I would govern Germany. They laugh now, just as foolishly, when I declare that I shall remain in power!

-  Adolf Hitler to a British correspondent in Berlin, June 1934

Having achieved full control over the legislative and executive branches of government, Hitler and his allies began to suppress the remaining opposition. The Social Democratic Party was made illegal, and its assets were seized. While many trade union delegates were in Berlin for May Day activities, SA stormtroopers occupied union offices around the country. On 2 May 1933, all trade unions were forced to dissolve, and their leaders were arrested. Some were sent to concentration camps. The German Labour Front was formed as an umbrella organisation to represent all workers, administrators, and company owners, thus reflecting the concept of Nazism in the spirit of Hitler's Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community").

In 1934, Hitler became Germany's head of state with the title of Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor of the Reich)

By the end of June, the other parties had been intimidated into disbanding. This included the Nazis' nominal coalition partner, the DNVP; with the SA's help, Hitler forced its leader, Hugenberg, to resign on 29 June. On 14 July 1933, the Nazi Party was declared the only legal political party in Germany. The demands of the SA for more political and military power caused anxiety among military, industrial, and political leaders. In response, Hitler purged the entire SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives, which took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934. Hitler targeted Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders who, along with a number of Hitler's political adversaries (such as Gregor Strasser and former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher), were rounded up, arrested, and shot. While the international community and some Germans were shocked by the killings, many in Germany believed Hitler was restoring order.

Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934. On the previous day, the cabinet had enacted the Law Concerning the Head of State of the German Reich. This law stated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of president would be abolished, and its powers merged with those of the chancellor. Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government and was formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Chancellor of the Reich), although Reichskanzler was eventually dropped. With this action, Hitler eliminated the last legal remedy by which he could be removed from office.

As head of state, Hitler became commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Immediately after Hindenburg's death, at the instigation of the leadership of the Reichswehr, the traditional loyalty oath of soldiers was altered to affirm loyalty to Hitler personally, by name, rather than to the office of commander-in-chief (which was later renamed to supreme commander) or the state. On 19 August, the merger of the presidency with the chancellorship was approved by 88 per cent of the electorate voting in a plebiscite.

Hitler's personal standard

In early 1938, Hitler used blackmail to consolidate his hold over the military by instigating the Blomberg-Fritsch affair. Hitler forced his War Minister, Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, to resign by using a police dossier that showed that Blomberg's new wife had a record for prostitution. Army commander Colonel-General Werner von Fritsch was removed after the Schutzstaffel (SS) produced allegations that he had engaged in a homosexual relationship. Both men had fallen into disfavour because they objected to Hitler's demand to make the Wehrmacht ready for war as early as 1938. Hitler assumed Blomberg's title of Commander-in-Chief, thus taking personal command of the armed forces. He replaced the Ministry of War with the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), headed by General Wilhelm Keitel. On the same day, sixteen generals were stripped of their commands and 44 more were transferred; all were suspected of not being sufficiently pro-Nazi. By early February 1938, twelve more generals had been removed.

Hitler took care to give his dictatorship the appearance of legality. Many of his decrees were explicitly based on the Reichstag Fire Decree and hence on Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. The Reichstag renewed the Enabling Act twice, each time for a four-year period. While elections to the Reichstag were still held (in 1933, 1936, and 1938), voters were presented with a single list of Nazis and pro-Nazi "guests" which received well over 90 per cent of the vote. These sham elections were held in far-from-secret conditions; the Nazis threatened severe reprisals against anyone who did not vote or who voted against.

Nazi Germany

Ceremony honouring the dead (Totenehrung) on the terrace in front of the Hall of Honour (Ehrenhalle) at the Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg in September 1934

Economy and culture

In August 1934, Hitler appointed Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht as Minister of Economics, and in the following year, as Plenipotentiary for War Economy in charge of preparing the economy for war. Reconstruction and rearmament were financed through Mefo bills, printing money, and seizing the assets of people arrested as enemies of the State, including Jews. The number of unemployed fell from sixmillion in 1932 to fewer than one million in 1936. Hitler oversaw one of the largest infrastructure improvement campaigns in German history, leading to the construction of dams, autobahns, railroads, and other civil works. Wages were slightly lower in the mid to late 1930s compared with wages during the Weimar Republic, while the cost of living increased by 25 per cent. The average work week increased during the shift to a war economy; by 1939, the average German was working between 47 and 50 hours a week.

Hitler's government sponsored architecture on an immense scale. Albert Speer, instrumental in implementing Hitler's classicist reinterpretation of German culture, was placed in charge of the proposed architectural renovations of Berlin. Despite a threatened multi-nation boycott, Germany hosted the 1936 Olympic Games. Hitler officiated at the opening ceremonies and attended events at both the Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the Summer Games in Berlin.

Rearmament and new alliances

In a meeting with German military leaders on 3 February 1933, Hitler spoke of "conquest for Lebensraum in the East and its ruthless Germanisation" as his ultimate foreign policy objectives. In March, Prince Bernhard Wilhelm von Bülow, secretary at the Foreign Office ( Auswärtiges Amt), issued a statement of major foreign policy aims: Anschluss with Austria, the restoration of Germany's national borders of 1914, rejection of military restrictions under the Treaty of Versailles, the return of the former German colonies in Africa, and a German zone of influence in Eastern Europe. Hitler found Bülow's goals to be too modest. In speeches during this period, he stressed the peaceful goals of his policies and a willingness to work within international agreements. At the first meeting of his cabinet in 1933, Hitler prioritised military spending over unemployment relief.

Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference in October 1933. In January 1935, over 90 per cent of the people of the Saarland, then under League of Nations administration, voted to unite with Germany. That March, Hitler announced an expansion of the Wehrmacht to 600,000 members-six times the number permitted by the Versailles Treaty - including development of an air force (Luftwaffe) and an increase in the size of the navy (Kriegsmarine). Britain, France, Italy, and the League of Nations condemned these violations of the Treaty but did nothing to stop it. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement (AGNA) of 18 June allowed German tonnage to increase to 35 per cent of that of the British navy. Hitler called the signing of the AGNA "the happiest day of his life", believing that the agreement marked the beginning of the Anglo-German alliance he had predicted in Mein Kampf. France and Italy were not consulted before the signing, directly undermining the League of Nations and setting the Treaty of Versailles on the path towards irrelevance.

Germany reoccupied the demilitarised zone in the Rhineland in March 1936, in violation of the Versailles Treaty. Hitler also sent troops to Spain to support Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War after receiving an appeal for help in July 1936. At the same time, Hitler continued his efforts to create an Anglo-German alliance. In August 1936, in response to a growing economic crisis caused by his rearmament efforts, Hitler ordered Göring to implement a Four Year Plan to prepare Germany for war within the next four years. The plan envisaged an all-out struggle between " Judeo-Bolshevism" and German Nazism, which in Hitler's view required a committed effort of rearmament regardless of the economic costs.

In October 1936, Count Galeazzo Ciano, foreign minister of Mussolini's government, visited Germany, where he signed a Nine-Point Protocol as an expression of rapprochement and had a personal meeting with Hitler. On 1 November, Mussolini declared an "axis" between Germany and Italy. On 25 November, Germany signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan. Britain, China, Italy, and Poland were also invited to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, but only Italy signed in 1937. Hitler abandoned his plan of an Anglo-German alliance, blaming "inadequate" British leadership. At a meeting in the Reich Chancellery with his foreign ministers and military chiefs that November, Hitler restated his intention of acquiring Lebensraum for the German people. He ordered preparations for war in the East, to begin as early as 1938 and no later than 1943. In the event of his death, the conference minutes, recorded as the Hossbach Memorandum, were to be regarded as his "political testament". He felt that a severe decline in living standards in Germany as a result of the economic crisis could only be stopped by military aggression aimed at seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia. Hitler urged quick action before Britain and France gained a permanent lead in the arms race. In early 1938, in the wake of the Blomberg-Fritsch affair, Hitler asserted control of the military-foreign policy apparatus, dismissing Neurath as foreign minister and appointing himself as War Minister. From early 1938 onwards, Hitler was carrying out a foreign policy ultimately aimed at war.

World War II

Hitler and the Japanese foreign minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka , at a meeting in Berlin in March 1941. In the background is Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Early diplomatic successes

Alliance with Japan

In February 1938, on the advice of his newly appointed foreign minister, the strongly pro-Japanese Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler ended the Sino-German alliance with the Republic of China to instead enter into an alliance with the more modern and powerful Empire of Japan. Hitler announced German recognition of Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, and renounced German claims to their former colonies in the Pacific held by Japan. Hitler ordered an end to arms shipments to China and recalled all German officers working with the Chinese Army. In retaliation, Chinese General cancelled all Sino-German economic agreements, depriving the Germans of many Chinese raw materials.

Austria and Czechoslovakia

October 1938: Hitler is driven through the crowd in Cheb (German: Eger), in the Sudetenland.

On 12 March 1938, Hitler announced the unification of Austria with Nazi Germany in the . Hitler then turned his attention to the ethnic German population of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. On 28-29 March 1938, Hitler held a series of secret meetings in Berlin with Konrad Henlein of the Sudeten German Party, the largest of the ethnic German parties of the Sudetenland. The men agreed that Henlein would demand increased autonomy for Sudeten Germans from the Czechoslovakian government, thus providing a pretext for German military action against Czechoslovakia. In April 1938 Henlein told the foreign minister of Hungary that "whatever the Czech government might offer, he would always raise still higher demands ... he wanted to sabotage an understanding by any means because this was the only method to blow up Czechoslovakia quickly". In private, Hitler considered the Sudeten issue unimportant; his real intention was a war of conquest against Czechoslovakia.

In April, Hitler ordered the OKW to prepare for Fall Grün (Case Green), the code name for an invasion of Czechoslovakia. As a result of intense French and British diplomatic pressure, on 5 September Czechoslovakian President Edvard Beneš unveiled the "Fourth Plan" for constitutional reorganisation of his country, which agreed to most of Henlein's demands for Sudeten autonomy. Henlein's party responded to Beneš' offer by instigating a series of violent clashes with the Czechoslovakian police that led to the declaration of martial law in certain Sudeten districts.

Germany was dependent on imported oil; a confrontation with Britain over the Czechoslovakian dispute could curtail Germany's oil supplies. This forced Hitler to call off Fall Grün, originally planned for 1 October 1938. On 29 September, Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier, and Mussolini attended a one-day conference in Munich that led to the Munich Agreement, which handed over the Sudetenland districts to Germany.

Chamberlain was satisfied with the Munich conference, calling the outcome " peace for our time", while Hitler was angered about the missed opportunity for war in 1938; he expressed his disappointment in a speech on 9 October in Saarbrücken. In Hitler's view, the British-brokered peace, although favourable to the ostensible German demands, was a diplomatic defeat which spurred his intent of limiting British power to pave the way for the eastern expansion of Germany. As a result of the summit, Hitler was selected magazine's Man of the Year for 1938. In late 1938 and early 1939, the continuing economic crisis caused by rearmament forced Hitler to make major defence cuts. In his "Export or die" speech of 30 January 1939, he called for an economic offensive to increase German foreign exchange holdings to pay for raw materials such as high-grade iron needed for military weapons.

On 14 March 1939, under threat from Hungary, Slovakia declared independence and received protection from Germany. The next day, in violation of the Munich Agreement and possibly as a result of the deepening economic crisis requiring additional assets, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to invade the Czech rump state, and from Prague Castle he proclaimed the territory a German protectorate.

Start of World War II

In private discussions in 1939, Hitler declared Britain the main enemy to be defeated and that Poland's obliteration was a necessary prelude for that goal. The eastern flank would be secured and land would be added to Germany's Lebensraum. Offended by the British "guarantee" on 31 March 1939 of Polish independence, he said, "I shall brew them a devil's drink". In a speech in Wilhelmshaven for the launch of the battleship Tirpitz on 1 April, he threatened to denounce the Anglo-German Naval Agreement if the British continued to guarantee Polish independence, which he perceived as an "encirclement" policy. Poland was to either become a German satellite state or it would be neutralised in order to secure the Reich's eastern flank and prevent a possible British blockade.

Hitler initially favoured the idea of a satellite state, but upon its rejection by the Polish government, he decided to invade and made this the main foreign policy goal of 1939. On 3 April, Hitler ordered the military to prepare for Fall Weiss ("Case White"), the plan for invading Poland on 25 August. In a Reichstag speech on 28 April, he renounced both the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German-Polish Non-Aggression Pact. Historians such as William Carr, Gerhard Weinberg, and Ian Kershaw have argued that one reason for Hitler's rush to war was his fear of an early death. He had repeatedly claimed that he must lead Germany into war before he got too old, as his successors might lack his strength of will. Hitler was concerned that a military attack against Poland could result in a premature war with Britain. Hitler's foreign minister and former Ambassador to London, Joachim von Ribbentrop, assured him that neither Britain nor France would honour their commitments to Poland. Accordingly, on 22 August 1939 Hitler ordered a military mobilisation against Poland.

This plan required tacit Soviet support, and the non-aggression pact (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) between Germany and the Soviet Union, led by Joseph Stalin, included a secret agreement to partition Poland between the two countries. Contrary to Ribbentrop's prediction that Britain would sever Anglo-Polish ties, Britain and Poland signed the Anglo-Polish alliance on 25 August 1939. This, along with news from Italy that Mussolini would not honour the Pact of Steel, prompted Hitler to postpone the attack on Poland from 25 August to 1 September. Hitler unsuccessfully tried to manoeuvre the British into neutrality by offering them a non-aggression guarantee on 25 August; he then instructed Ribbentrop to present a last-minute peace plan with an impossibly short time limit in an effort to blame the imminent war on British and Polish inaction.

On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded western Poland under the pretext of having been denied claims to the Free City of Danzig and the right to extraterritorial roads across the Polish Corridor, which Germany had ceded under the Versailles Treaty. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September, surprising Hitler and prompting him to angrily ask Ribbentrop, "Now what?" France and Britain did not act on their declarations immediately, and on 17 September, Soviet forces invaded eastern Poland.

The fall of Poland was followed by what contemporary journalists dubbed the " Phoney War" or Sitzkrieg ("sitting war"). Hitler instructed the two newly appointed Gauleiters of north-western Poland, Albert Forster of Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Arthur Greiser of Reichsgau Wartheland, to Germanise their areas, with "no questions asked" about how this was accomplished. In Forster's area, ethnic Poles merely had to sign forms stating that they had German blood. In contrast, Greiser agreed with Himmler and carried out an ethnic cleansing campaign towards Poles. Greiser soon complained that Forster was allowing thousands of Poles to be accepted as "racial" Germans and thus endangered German "racial purity". Hitler refrained from getting involved. This inaction has been advanced as an example of the theory of "working towards the Führer", in which Hitler issued vague instructions and expected his subordinates to work out policies on their own.

Another dispute pitched one side represented by Heinrich Himmler and Greiser, who championed ethnic cleansing in Poland, against another represented by Göring and Hans Frank ( governor-general of occupied Poland), who called for turning Poland into the "granary" of the Reich. On 12 February 1940, the dispute was initially settled in favour of the Göring-Frank view, which ended the economically disruptive mass expulsions. On 15 May 1940, Himmler issued a memo entitled "Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Population in the East", calling for the expulsion of the entire Jewish population of Europe into Africa and the reduction of the Polish population to a "leaderless class of labourers". Hitler called Himmler's memo "good and correct", and, ignoring Göring and Frank, implemented the Himmler-Greiser policy in Poland.

Hitler visits Paris with architect Albert Speer (left) and sculptor Arno Breker (right), 23 June 1940.

On 9 April, German forces invaded Denmark and Norway. On the same day Hitler proclaimed the birth of the Greater Germanic Reich, his vision of a united empire of Germanic nations of Europe in which the Dutch, Flemish, and Scandinavians were joined into a "racially pure" polity under German leadership. In May 1940, Germany attacked France, and conquered Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium. These victories prompted Mussolini to have Italy join forces with Hitler on 10 June. France and Germany signed an armistice on 22 June. Kershaw notes that Hitler's popularity within Germany-and German support for the war-reached its peak when he returned to Berlin on 6 July from his tour of Paris. Following the unexpected swift victory, Hitler promoted twelve generals to the rank of field marshal during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony.

Britain, whose troops were forced to evacuate France by sea from Dunkirk, continued to fight alongside other British dominions in the Battle of the Atlantic. Hitler made peace overtures to the new British leader, Winston Churchill, and upon their rejection he ordered a series of aerial attacks on Royal Air Force airbases and radar stations in southeast England. On 7 September the systematic nightly bombing of London began. The German Luftwaffe failed to defeat the Royal Air Force in what became known as the Battle of Britain. By the end of September, Hitler realised that air superiority for the invasion of Britain (in Operation Sea Lion) could not be achieved, and ordered the operation postponed. The nightly air raids on British cities intensified and continued for months, including London, Plymouth, and Coventry.

On 27 September 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed in Berlin by Saburō Kurusu of Imperial Japan, Hitler, and Italian foreign minister Ciano, and later expanded to include Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, thus yielding the Axis powers. Hitler's attempt to integrate the Soviet Union into the anti-British bloc failed after inconclusive talks between Hitler and Molotov in Berlin in November, and he ordered preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union.

In early 1941, German forces were deployed to North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East. In February, German forces arrived in Libya to bolster the Italian presence. In April, Hitler launched the invasion of Yugoslavia, quickly followed by the invasion of Greece. In May, German forces were sent to support Iraqi forces fighting against the British and to invade Crete.

Path to defeat

On 22 June 1941, contravening the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, over three million Axis troops attacked the Soviet Union. This offensive (codenamed Operation Barbarossa) was intended to destroy the Soviet Union and seize its natural resources for subsequent aggression against the Western powers. The action was also part of the overall plan to obtain more living space for German people; and Hitler thought a successful invasion would force Britain to negotiate a surrender. The invasion conquered a huge area, including the Baltic republics, Belarus, and West Ukraine. By early August, Axis troops had advanced 500 km (310 mi) and won the Battle of Smolensk. Hitler ordered Army Group Centre to temporarily halt its advance to Moscow and divert its Panzer groups to aid in the encirclement of Leningrad and Kiev. His generals disagreed with this change, having advanced within 400 km (250 mi) of Moscow, and his decision caused a crisis among the military leadership. The pause provided the Red Army with an opportunity to mobilise fresh reserves; historian Russel Stolfi considers it to be one of the major factors that caused the failure of the Moscow offensive, which was resumed in October 1941 and ended disastrously in December. During this crisis, Hitler appointed himself as head of the Oberkommando des Heeres.

Hitler announcing the declaration of war against the United States to the Reichstag on 11 December 1941

On 7 December 1941, Japan attacked the American fleet based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Four days later, Hitler declared war against the United States. On 18 December 1941, Himmler asked Hitler, "What to do with the Jews of Russia?", to which Hitler replied, "als Partisanen auszurotten" ("exterminate them as partisans"). Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer has commented that the remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust.

In late 1942, German forces were defeated in the second battle of El Alamein, thwarting Hitler's plans to seize the Suez Canal and the Middle East. Overconfident in his own military expertise following the earlier victories in 1940, Hitler became distrustful of his Army High Command and began to interfere in military and tactical planning, with damaging consequences. In December 1942 and January 1943, Hitler's repeated refusal to allow their withdrawal at the Battle of Stalingrad led to the almost total destruction of the 6th Army. Over 200,000 Axis soldiers were killed and 235,000 were taken prisoner. Thereafter came a decisive strategic defeat at the Battle of Kursk. Hitler's military judgement became increasingly erratic, and Germany's military and economic position deteriorated, as did Hitler's health.

The destroyed map room at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's eastern command post, after the 20 July plot

Following the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Mussolini was removed from power by King Victor Emmanuel III after a vote of no confidence of the Grand Council of Fascism. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, placed in charge of the government, soon surrendered to the Allies. Throughout 1943 and 1944, the Soviet Union steadily forced Hitler's armies into retreat along the Eastern Front. On 6 June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed in northern France in one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Overlord. Many German officers concluded that defeat was inevitable and that continuing under Hitler's leadership would result in the complete destruction of the country.

Between 1939 and 1945, there were numerous plans to assassinate Hitler, some of which proceeded to significant degrees. The most well-known and significant, the 20 July plot of 1944, came from within Germany and was at least partly driven by the increasing prospect of a German defeat in the war. Part of Operation Valkyrie, the plot involved Claus von Stauffenberg planting a bomb in one of Hitler's headquarters, the Wolf's Lair at Rastenburg. Hitler narrowly survived because staff officer Heinz Brandt moved the briefcase containing the bomb behind a leg of the heavy conference table, which deflected much of the blast. Later, Hitler ordered savage reprisals resulting in the execution of more than 4,900 people. According to British academic Dan Plesch, Hitler was put on the United Nations War Crimes Commission's first list of war criminals in December 1944, after determining that Hitler could be held criminally responsible for the acts of the Nazis in occupied countries. By March 1945, at least seven indictments had been filed against him.

Defeat and death

Front page of the US Armed Forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes, 2 May 1945, announcing Hitler's death. It erroneously states that Hitler died on 1 May; he died on 30 April.

By late 1944, both the Red Army and the Western Allies were advancing into Germany. Recognising the strength and determination of the Red Army, Hitler decided to use his remaining mobile reserves against the American and British armies, which he perceived as far weaker. On 16 December, he launched the Ardennes Offensive to incite disunity among the Western Allies and perhaps convince them to join his fight against the Soviets. After some temporary successes, the offensive failed. With much of Germany in ruins in January 1945, Hitler spoke on the radio: "However grave as the crisis may be at this moment, it will, despite everything, be mastered by our unalterable will." Acting on his view that Germany's military failures meant it had forfeited its right to survive as a nation, Hitler ordered the destruction of all German industrial infrastructure before it could fall into Allied hands. Minister for Armaments Albert Speer was entrusted with executing this scorched earth policy, but he secretly disobeyed the order. Hitler's hope to negotiate peace with the United States and Britain was encouraged by the death of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 12 April 1945, but contrary to his expectations, this caused no rift among the Allies.

On 20 April, his 56th and final birthday, Hitler made his last trip from the Führerbunker to the surface. In the ruined garden of the Reich Chancellery, he awarded Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth, who were now fighting the Red Army at the front near Berlin. By 21 April, Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front had broken through the defences of General Gotthard Heinrici's Army Group Vistula during the Battle of the Seelow Heights and advanced to the outskirts of Berlin. In denial about the dire situation, Hitler placed his hopes on the undermanned and under-equipped Armeeabteilung Steiner ( Army Detachment Steiner), commanded by Felix Steiner. Hitler ordered Steiner to attack the northern flank of the salient, while the German Ninth Army was ordered to attack northward in a pincer attack.

During a military conference on 22 April, Hitler inquired about Steiner's offensive. He was informed that the attack had not been launched and that the Soviets had entered Berlin. Hitler ordered everyone but Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Hans Krebs, and Wilhelm Burgdorf to leave the room, then launched into a tirade against the perceived treachery and incompetence of his generals, culminating in his declaration-for the first time-that "everything is lost". He announced that he would stay in Berlin until the end and then shoot himself.

By 23 April, the Red Army had surrounded Berlin, and Goebbels made a proclamation urging its citizens to defend the city. That same day, Göring sent a telegram from Berchtesgaden, arguing that as Hitler was isolated in Berlin, Göring should assume leadership of Germany. Göring set a deadline, after which he would consider Hitler incapacitated. Hitler responded by having Göring arrested, and in his last will and testament of 29 April, he removed Göring from all government positions. On 28 April, Hitler discovered that Himmler, who had left Berlin on 20 April, was attempting to negotiate a surrender to the Western Allies. He considered this treason and ordered Himmler's arrest. He also ordered the execution of Hermann Fegelein, Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's headquarters in Berlin, for desertion.

After midnight on the night of 28-29 April, Hitler married Eva Braun in a small civil ceremony in the Führerbunker. Later that afternoon, Hitler was informed that Mussolini had been executed by the Italian resistance movement on the previous day; this is believed to have increased his determination to avoid capture. On 30 April, Soviet troops were within five hundred metres of the Reich Chancellery when Hitler shot himself in the head and Braun bit into a cyanide capsule. In accordance with Hitler's wishes, their corpses were carried outside to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were placed in a bomb crater, doused with petrol, and set on fire as the Red Army shelling continued. Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and Goebbels assumed Hitler's roles as head of state and chancellor respectively. On the evening of 1 May, Goebbels and his wife, Magda, committed suicide in the Reich Chancellery garden, after having poisoned their six children with cyanide.

Berlin surrendered on 2 May. The remains of the Goebbels family, General Hans Krebs (who had committed suicide that day), and Hitler's dog Blondi were repeatedly buried and exhumed by the Soviets. Hitler's and Braun's remains were alleged to have been moved as well, but this is most likely Soviet disinformation. There is no evidence that any identifiable remains of Hitler or Braun-with the exception of dental bridges-were ever found by them. While news of Hitler's death spread quickly, a death certificate was not issued until 1956, after a lengthy investigation to collect testimony from 42 witnesses. Hitler's death was entered as an assumption of death based on this testimony.

The Holocaust

If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!

The Holocaust and Germany's war in the East were based on Hitler's long-standing view that the Jews were the enemy of the German people, and that Lebensraum was needed for Germany's expansion. He focused on Eastern Europe for this expansion, aiming to defeat Poland and the Soviet Union and then removing or killing the Jews and Slavs. The Generalplan Ost (General Plan East) called for deporting the population of occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to West Siberia, for use as slave labour or to be murdered; the conquered territories were to be colonised by German or "Germanised" settlers. The goal was to implement this plan after the conquest of the Soviet Union, but when this failed, Hitler moved the plans forward. By January 1942, he had decided that the Jews, Slavs, and other deportees considered undesirable should be killed.

Hitler's order for Aktion T4, dated 1 September 1939

The genocide was organised and executed by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. The records of the Wannsee Conference, held on 20 January 1942 and led by Heydrich, with fifteen senior Nazi officials participating, provide the clearest evidence of systematic planning for the Holocaust. On 22 February, Hitler was recorded saying, "we shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jews". Similarly, at a meeting in July 1941 with leading functionaries of the Eastern territories, Hitler said that the easiest way to quickly pacify the areas would be best achieved by "shooting everyone who even looks odd". Although no direct order from Hitler authorising the mass killings has surfaced, his public speeches, orders to his generals, and the diaries of Nazi officials demonstrate that he conceived and authorised the extermination of European Jewry. During the war, Hitler repeatedly stated his prophecy of 1939 was being fulfilled, namely, that a world war would bring about the annihilation of the Jewish race. Hitler approved the Einsatzgruppen-killing squads that followed the German army through Poland, the Baltic, and the Soviet Union-and was well informed about their activities. By summer 1942, Auschwitz concentration camp was expanded to accommodate large numbers of deportees for murder or enslavement. Scores of other concentration camps and satellite camps were set up throughout Europe, with several camps devoted exclusively to extermination.

Between 1939 and 1945, the Schutzstaffel (SS), assisted by collaborationist governments and recruits from occupied countries, were responsible for the deaths of at least eleven million non-combatants, including the murders of about 6 million Jews (representing two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe), and between 200,000 and 1,500,000 Romani people. The victims were killed in concentration and extermination camps and in ghettos, and through mass shootings. Many victims of the Holocaust were murdered in gas chambers or shot, while others died of starvation or disease or while working as slave labourers. In addition to eliminating Jews, the Nazis planned to reduce the population of the conquered territories by 30 million people through starvation in an action called the Hunger Plan. Food supplies would be diverted to the German army and German civilians. Cities would be razed, and the land allowed to return to forest or resettled by German colonists. Together, the Hunger Plan and Generalplan Ost would have led to the starvation of 80 million people in the Soviet Union. These partially fulfilled plans resulted in additional deaths, bringing the total number of civilians and prisoners of war who died in the democide to an estimated 19.3 million people.

Hitler's policies resulted in the killing of nearly two million non-Jewish Polish civilians, over three million Soviet prisoners of war, communists and other political opponents, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, and trade unionists. Hitler never spoke publicly about the killings and seems to have never visited the concentration camps. The Nazis embraced the concept of racial hygiene. On 15 September 1935, Hitler presented two laws-known as the Nuremberg Laws-to the Reichstag. The laws banned sexual relations and marriages between Aryans and Jews and were later extended to include "Gypsies, Negroes or their bastard offspring". The laws stripped all non-Aryans of their German citizenship and forbade the employment of non-Jewish women under the age of 45 in Jewish households. Hitler's early eugenic policies targeted children with physical and developmental disabilities in a programme dubbed Action Brandt, and he later authorised a euthanasia programme for adults with serious mental and physical disabilities, now referred to as Aktion T4.

Leadership style

Hitler ruled the Nazi Party autocratically by asserting the Führerprinzip (leader principle). The principle relied on absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors; thus, he viewed the government structure as a pyramid, with himself-the infallible leader-at the apex. Rank in the party was not determined by elections-positions were filled through appointment by those of higher rank, who demanded unquestioning obedience to the will of the leader. Hitler's leadership style was to give contradictory orders to his subordinates and to place them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped with those of others, to have "the stronger one [do] the job". In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power. His cabinet never met after 1938, and he discouraged his ministers from meeting independently. Hitler typically did not give written orders; instead, he communicated verbally, or had them conveyed through his close associate Martin Bormann. He entrusted Bormann with his paperwork, appointments, and personal finances; Bormann used his position to control the flow of information and access to Hitler.

Hitler dominated his country's war effort during World War II to a greater extent than any other national leader. He strengthened his control of the armed forces in 1938, and subsequently made all major decisions regarding Germany's military strategy. His decision to mount a risky series of offensives against Norway, France, and the Low Countries in 1940 against the advice of the military proved successful, though the diplomatic and military strategies he employed in attempts to force the United Kingdom out of the war ended in failure. Hitler deepened his involvement in the war effort by appointing himself commander-in-chief of the Army in December 1941; from this point forward, he personally directed the war against the Soviet Union, while his military commanders facing the Western Allies retained a degree of autonomy. Hitler's leadership became increasingly disconnected from reality as the war turned against Germany, with the military's defensive strategies often hindered by his slow decision-making and frequent directives to hold untenable positions. Nevertheless, he continued to believe that only his leadership could deliver victory. In the final months of the war, Hitler refused to consider peace negotiations, regarding the destruction of Germany as preferable to surrender. The military did not challenge Hitler's dominance of the war effort, and senior officers generally supported and enacted his decisions.

Personal life

Hitler and Braun in 1942

Hitler created a public image as a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission and the nation. He met his lover, Eva Braun, in 1929, and married her on 29 April 1945, one day before they both committed suicide.

In September 1931, his half-niece, Geli Raubal, took her own life with Hitler's gun in his Munich apartment. It was rumoured among contemporaries that Geli was in a romantic relationship with him, and her death was a source of deep, lasting pain. Paula Hitler, the younger sister of Hitler and the last living member of his immediate family, died in June 1960.

Views on religion

Hitler was born to a practising Catholic mother and an anti-clerical father; after leaving home, Hitler never again attended Mass or received the sacraments. Albert Speer states that Hitler railed against the church to his political associates, and though he never officially left the church, he had no attachment to it. He adds that Hitler felt that in the absence of organised religion, people would turn to mysticism, which he considered regressive. According to Speer, Hitler believed that Japanese religious beliefs or Islam would have been a more suitable religion for Germans than Christianity, with its "meekness and flabbiness". Historian John S. Conway states that Hitler was fundamentally opposed to the Christian churches. According to Bullock, Hitler did not believe in God, was anticlerical, and held Christian ethics in contempt because they contravened his preferred view of " survival of the fittest". He favoured aspects of Protestantism that suited his own views, and adopted some elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchical organisation, liturgy, and phraseology. In a 1932 speech, Hitler stated that he was not a Catholic, and declared himself a German Christian. In a conversation with Albert Speer, Hitler said, "Through me the Evangelical Church could become the established church, as in England."

Hitler viewed the church as an important politically conservative influence on society, and he adopted a strategic relationship with it that "suited his immediate political purposes". In public, Hitler often praised Christian heritage and German Christian culture, though professing a belief in an "Aryan Jesus" who fought against the Jews. Any pro-Christian public rhetoric contradicted his private statements, which described Christianity as "absurdity" and nonsense founded on lies.

According to a US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) report, "The Nazi Master Plan", Hitler planned to destroy the influence of Christian churches within the Reich. His eventual goal was the total elimination of Christianity. This goal informed Hitler's movement early on, but he saw it as inexpedient to publicly express this extreme position. According to Bullock, Hitler wanted to wait until after the war before executing this plan. Speer wrote that Hitler had a negative view of Himmler's and Alfred Rosenberg's mystical notions and Himmler's attempt to mythologise the SS. Hitler was more pragmatic, and his ambitions centred on more practical concerns.

Researchers have variously suggested that Hitler suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, irregular heartbeat, coronary sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, syphilis, giant-cell arteritis, tinnitus, and monorchism. In a report prepared for the OSS in 1943, Walter Charles Langer of Harvard University described Hitler as a "neurotic psychopath". In his 1977 book The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler, historian Robert G. L. Waite proposes that Hitler suffered from borderline personality disorder. Historians Henrik Eberle and Hans-Joachim Neumann consider that while he suffered from a number of illnesses including Parkinson's disease, Hitler did not experience pathological delusions and was always fully aware of, and therefore responsible for, his decisions.

Sometime in the 1930s, Hitler adopted a mainly vegetarian diet, avoiding all meat and fish from 1942 onwards. At social events, he sometimes gave graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make his guests shun meat. Bormann had a greenhouse constructed near the Berghof (near Berchtesgaden) to ensure a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables for Hitler. Hitler stopped drinking alcohol around the time he became vegetarian and thereafter only very occasionally drank beer or wine on social occasions. He was a non-smoker for most of his adult life, but smoked heavily in his youth (25 to 40 cigarettes a day); he eventually quit, calling the habit "a waste of money". He encouraged his close associates to quit by offering a gold watch to anyone able to break the habit. Hitler began using amphetamine occasionally after 1937 and became addicted to it in late 1942. Speer linked this use of amphetamine to Hitler's increasingly erratic behaviour and inflexible decision-making (for example, rarely allowing military retreats).

Prescribed 90 medications during the war years by his personal physician, Theodor Morell, Hitler took many pills each day for chronic stomach problems and other ailments. He regularly consumed amphetamine, barbiturates, opiates, and cocaine, as well as potassium bromide and atropa belladonna (the latter in the form of Doktor Koster's Antigaspills). He suffered ruptured eardrums as a result of the 20 July plot bomb blast in 1944, and 200 wood splinters had to be removed from his legs. Newsreel footage of Hitler shows tremors in his left hand and a shuffling walk, which began before the war and worsened towards the end of his life. Ernst-Günther Schenck and several other doctors who met Hitler in the last weeks of his life also formed a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.

Outside of a building in Braunau am Inn, Austria, where Hitler was born, is a memorial stone placed as a reminder of World War II. The inscription translates as:

For peace, freedom
and democracy
never again fascism
millions of dead warn [us]

Hitler's suicide was likened by contemporaries to a "spell" being broken. Public support for Hitler had collapsed by the time of his death, which few Germans mourned; Kershaw argues that most civilians and military personnel were too busy adjusting to the collapse of the country or fleeing from the fighting to take any interest. According to historian John Toland, Nazism "burst like a bubble" without its leader.

Kershaw describes Hitler as "the embodiment of modern political evil". "Never in history has such ruination-physical and moral-been associated with the name of one man", he adds. Hitler's political programme brought about a world war, leaving behind a devastated and impoverished Eastern and Central Europe. Germany suffered wholesale destruction, characterised as Stunde Null (Zero Hour). Hitler's policies inflicted human suffering on an unprecedented scale; according to R. J. Rummel, the Nazi regime was responsible for the democidal killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians and prisoners of war. In addition, 28.7 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European theatre of World War II. The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in the history of warfare. Historians, philosophers, and politicians often use the word "evil" to describe the Nazi regime. Many European countries have criminalised both the promotion of Nazism and Holocaust denial.

Historian Friedrich Meinecke described Hitler as "one of the great examples of the singular and incalculable power of personality in historical life". English historian Hugh Trevor-Roper saw him as "among the 'terrible simplifiers' of history, the most systematic, the most historical, the most philosophical, and yet the coarsest, cruelest, least magnanimous conqueror the world has ever known". For the historian John M. Roberts, Hitler's defeat marked the end of a phase of European history dominated by Germany. In its place emerged the Cold War, a global confrontation between the Western Bloc, dominated by the United States and other NATO nations, and the Eastern Bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union. Historian Sebastian Haffner asserted that without Hitler and the displacement of the Jews, the modern nation state of Israel would not exist. He contends that without Hitler, the de-colonisation of former European spheres of influence would have been postponed. Further, Haffner claimed that other than Alexander the Great, Hitler had a more significant impact than any other comparable historical figure, in that he too caused a wide range of worldwide changes in a relatively short time span.

In propaganda

Hitler exploited documentary films and newsreels to inspire a cult of personality. He was involved and appeared in a series of propaganda films throughout his political career, many made by Leni Riefenstahl, regarded as a pioneer of modern filmmaking. Hitler's propaganda film appearances include:

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External links

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(20 April 1889 - 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934.

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This article is about the wall that surrounded West Berlin during the Cold War. For the border that divided most of East and West Germany, see German wall. For the video game, see The Berlin Wall (video game). For the ring wall around the historic city of Berlin, see Berlin Customs Wall.