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August 23-24 1939

Hitler had been wanting to invade Poland since early 1939, but Poland was protected by France and Great Britain, and possibly the Soviet Union. There were secret negotiations with the Soviet Union to make the nonagression pact and insure the division of Poland after the invasion.

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German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact | History, Facts, & Significance

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German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, pact signed on August 23, 1939, between Germany and the Soviet Union that was concluded a few days before the beginning of World War II and which divided eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. The pact was voided when Germany launched Operation Barbarossa in 1941.

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From 1st of Semptember to 5th of october, the German Nazi army invaded poland by using Blitzkrieg tactics to invade it quickly.

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Invasion of Poland, attack on Poland by Nazi Germany that marked the start of World War II. The invasion lasted from September 1 to October 5, 1939.

As dawn broke on September 1, 1939, German forces launched a surprise attack on Poland. Army Group North attacked from Pomerania and East Prussia, while Army Group South drove deep into southern Poland from Silesia and Slovakia. Strategically outflanked and materially outnumbered, Polish forces stood little chance, especially because they were deployed too close to the German frontier, unintentionally facilitating Germany's strategy of envelopment.

The powerful Luftwaffe destroyed the Polish air force in days, leaving the Polish army at the mercy of the German panzer divisions. The speed with which the German tank units cut through the Polish lines was to give a new name to the lexicon of warfare: blitzkrieg ("lightning war"). The declaration of war on Nazi Germany by Britain and France on September 3 did nothing to help Poland.

The Poles enjoyed a limited tactical success from September 9 to 15 at the Bzura River, yet it came to nothing as the German armies closed in on Warsaw. Poland's fate had already been sealed, when-in accordance with the secret terms of the Nazi-Soviet pact-the Red Army crossed the Polish border from the east on September 17. While Warsaw and a few garrisons continued to hold out, the remnants of the Polish armed forces retreated to neighboring countries, with at least 90,000 men escaping to fight another day. Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. In the end, German losses totaled 14,000 dead or missing and 30,000 wounded out of a total of 1,250,000 troops involved in the invasion; Polish casualties numbered 66,000 dead, 130,000 wounded, and 400,000 captured out of 800,000 troops.

Adrian Gilbert

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Invasion of Poland | Description & Facts

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The Invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany occurred from September 1 to October 5, 1939, and marked the start of World War II.

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Demographic: 100 Million deaths, half being civilians. Many cities were destroyed and it had an important economic impact.

Human rights: Genocides and human rights violations being seen as major crimes, leading to more efforts being put into them.

Peace Establishment: Germany was denazified and United Nations was created.

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September 3rd 1939

Due to the invasion of Poland, Great Britain and France declared the war on Germany. Phony war starts, a period of time in which GB and France declared the war to Germany but no war happened untill April, 1940.

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The campaign in Poland, 1939

The German conquest of Poland in September 1939 was the first demonstration in war of the new theory of high-speed armoured warfare that had been adopted by the Germans when their rearmament began. Poland was a country all too well suited for such a demonstration. Its frontiers were immensely long-about 3,500 miles in all; and the stretch of 1,250 miles adjoining German territory had recently been extended to 1,750 miles in all by the German occupation of Bohemia-Moravia and of Slovakia, so that Poland's southern flank became exposed to invasion-as the northern flank, facing East Prussia, already was. Western Poland had become a huge salient that lay between Germany's jaws.

It would have been wiser for the Polish Army to assemble farther back, behind the natural defense line formed by the Vistula and San rivers, but that would have entailed the abandonment of some of the most valuable western parts of the country, including the Silesian coalfields and most of the main industrial zone, which lay west of the river barrier. The economic argument for delaying the German approach to the main industrial zone was heavily reinforced by Polish national pride and military overconfidence.

When war broke out the Polish Army was able to mobilize about 1,000,000 men, a fairly large number. The Polish Army was woefully outmoded, however, and was almost completely lacking in tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and antitank and antiaircraft guns. Yet many of the Polish military leaders clung to the double belief that their preponderance of horsed cavalry was an important asset and that they could take the offensive against the German mechanized forces. They also tended to discount the effect of Germany's vastly superior air force, which was nearly 10 times as powerful as their own.

The unrealism of such an attitude was repeated in the Polish Army's dispositions. Approximately one-third of Poland's forces were concentrated in or near the Polish Corridor (in northeastern Poland), where they were perilously exposed to a double envelopment-from East Prussia and the west combined. In the south, facing the main avenues of a German advance, the Polish forces were thinly spread. At the same time, nearly another one-third of Poland's forces were massed in reserve in the north-central part of the country, between Łódź and Warsaw, under the commander in chief, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły. The Poles' forward concentration in general forfeited their chance of fighting a series of delaying actions, since their foot-marching army was unable to retreat to their defensive positions in the rear or to man them before being overrun by the invader's mechanized columns.

The 40-odd infantry divisions employed by the Germans in the invasion counted for much less than their 14 mechanized or partially mechanized divisions: these consisted of six armoured divisions; four light divisions, consisting of motorized infantry (infantry wholly transported by trucks and personnel carriers) with two armoured units; and four motorized divisions. The Germans attacked with about 1,500,000 troops in all. It was the deep and rapid thrusts of these mechanized forces that decided the issue, in conjunction with the overhead pressure of the Luftwaffe, which wrecked the Polish railway system and destroyed most of the Polish Air Force before it could come into action. The Luftwaffe's terror-bombing of Polish cities, bridges, roads, rail lines, and power stations completed the disorganization of the Polish defenses.

On September 1, 1939, the German attack began. Against northern Poland, General Fedor von Bock commanded an army group comprising General Georg von Küchler's 3rd Army, which struck southward from East Prussia, and General Günther von Kluge's 4th Army, which struck eastward across the base of the Corridor. Much stronger in troops and in tanks, however, was the army group in the south under General Gerd von Rundstedt, attacking from Silesia and from the Moravian and Slovakian border: General Johannes Blaskowitz's 8th Army, on the left, was to drive eastward against Łódź; General Wilhelm List's 14th Army, on the right, was to push on toward Kraków and to turn the Poles' Carpathian flank; and General Walther von Reichenau's 10th Army, in the centre, with the bulk of the group's armour, was to deliver the decisive blow with a northwestward thrust into the heart of Poland. By September 3, when Kluge in the north had reached the Vistula and Küchler was approaching the Narew River, Reichenau's armour was already beyond the Warta; two days later his left wing was well to the rear of Łódź and his right wing at Kielce; and by September 8 one of his armoured corps was in the outskirts of Warsaw, having advanced 140 miles in the first week of war. Light divisions on Reichenau's right were on the Vistula between Warsaw and Sandomierz by September 9, while List, in the south, was on the San above and below Przemyśl. At the same time, the 3rd Army tanks, led by Guderian, were across the Narew attacking the line of the Bug River, behind Warsaw. All the German armies had made progress in fulfilling their parts in the great enveloping maneuver planned by General Franz Halder, chief of the general staff, and directed by General Walther von Brauchitsch, the commander in chief. The Polish armies were splitting up into uncoordinated fragments, some of which were retreating while others were delivering disjointed attacks on the nearest German columns.

On September 10 the Polish commander in chief, Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły, ordered a general retreat to the southeast. The Germans, however, were by that time not only tightening their net around the Polish forces west of the Vistula (in the Łódź area and, still farther west, around Poznań) but also penetrating deeply into eastern Poland. The Polish defense was already reduced to random efforts by isolated bodies of troops when another blow fell: on September 17, 1939, Soviet forces entered Poland from the east. The next day, the Polish government and high command crossed the Romanian frontier on their way into exile. The Warsaw garrison held out against the Germans until September 28, undergoing terror-bombings and artillery barrages that reduced parts of the city to rubble, with no regard for the civilian population. The last considerable fragment of the Polish Army resisted until October 5; and some guerrilla fighting went on into the winter. The Germans took a total of 700,000 prisoners, and about 80,000 Polish soldiers escaped over neutral frontiers. Approximately 70,000 Polish soldiers were killed and more than 130,000 wounded during the battle, whereas the Germans sustained about 45,000 total casualties. Poland was conquered for partition between Germany and the U.S.S.R., the forces of which met and greeted each other on Polish soil. On September 28 another secret German-Soviet protocol modified the arrangements of August: all Lithuania was to be a Soviet sphere of influence, not a German one; but the dividing line in Poland was changed in Germany's favour, being moved eastward to the Bug River.

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World War II - The war in Europe, 1939-41

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World War II - World War II - The war in Europe, 1939-41: The German conquest of Poland in September 1939 was the first demonstration in war of the new theory of high-speed armoured warfare that had been adopted by the Germans when their rearmament began.

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September 17, 1939

The Red Army invaded Poland from the East.

Hitler and Joseph Stalin agreed on the final division of poland.

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Poland - History, Culture, Politics | Britannica

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Poland - History, Culture, Politics: With an area of about 150,000 square miles (389,000 square km) and more than 27 million inhabitants (more than 35 million by 1939), interwar Poland was the sixth largest country in Europe. Devastated by the years of hostilities, the state had to be reconstructed of three parts with different political, economic, and judicial systems and traditions. More than three-fifths of the population was dependent on agriculture that was badly in need of structural change: agrarian reform and redistribution of land that would relieve the demographic pressure (e.g., hidden unemployment) and modernization of production that could alleviate the disparity between agrarian

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November 30, 1939 - March 12, 1940

With the Poland invasion and division, the Soviet Union wanted to push its border with Finland on the Karelian Isthmus to protect Leningrad from possible German attacks.

The Soviets wanted several Finnish islands along with a naval base at Hanko. In exchange, they would give them Soviet land. Finland refused, so the Soviet Union decided to start an attack, starting the Russo-Finnish War (winter war).

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Russo-Finnish War, (November 30, 1939-March 12, 1940), war waged by the Soviet Union against Finland at the beginning of World War II, following the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (August 23, 1939).

During the 1920s the Finnish government, wary of the threat posed by the Soviet Union, pursued a defense alliance with Estonia, Latvia, and Poland. However, that effort was squelched when the Finnish parliament chose not to ratify the agreement. The Finnish-Soviet nonaggression pact of 1932 was directed at the same concern but failed to quell Finnish fears of Soviet expansionism. Following the invasion, defeat, and partitioning of Poland by Germany and the Soviets in 1939, the Soviet Union sought to push its border with Finland on the Karelian Isthmus westward in an attempt to buttress the security of Leningrad ( St. Petersburg) from potential German attack. To that end, the Soviets also endeavoured to gain possession of several Finnish islands in the Gulf of Finland and to secure a 30-year lease for a naval base at Hanko (Hangö). The Soviet proposals for those acquisitions included an offer to exchange Soviet land. When Finland refused, the Soviet Union launched an attack on November 30, 1939, beginning the Russo-Finnish War.

Soviet troops totaling about one million men attacked Finland on several fronts. The heavily outnumbered Finns put up a skillful and effective defense that winter, and the Red Army made little progress. In February 1940, however, the Soviets used massive artillery bombardments to breach the Mannerheim Line (the Finns' southern defensive barrier stretching across the Karelian Isthmus), after which they streamed northward across the isthmus to the Finnish city of Viipuri ( Vyborg). Unable to secure help from Britain and France, the exhausted Finns made peace (the Treaty of Moscow) on Soviet terms on March 12, 1940, agreeing to the cession of western Karelia and to the construction of a Soviet naval base on the Hanko Peninsula.

Having approached Germany without reaching a formal alliance, Finland allowed German troops transit through the country after the outbreak of war between Germany and the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Finns then joined the fight against the Soviets, undertaking the "War of Continuation." An armistice signed on September 19, 1944, effectively concluded that conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland, contingent on Finnish recognition of the Treaty of Moscow and the evacuation of German troops (who refused to leave). The formal end of the Soviet-Finnish conflict came with the signing of a peace treaty in Paris on February 10, 1947.

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Russo-Finnish War | Summary, Combatants, & Facts

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Russo-Finnish War (November 30, 1939-March 12, 1940), also called the Winter War, war waged by the Soviet Union against Finland at the beginning of World War II, following the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact (August 23, 1939). Learn more about the Russo-Finnish War in this article.

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April 9, 1940

Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to secure the transport of Swedish iron. Denmark surrendered quickly. In Norway, British forces helped to resist the attack, but Germany used elite troops and defeated them. Germany took full control of Norway, gaining key resources and a strategic position in the North Sea.

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British plans for landings on the Norwegian coast in the third week of March 1940 were temporarily postponed. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, however, was by that time convinced that some aggressive action ought to be taken; and Paul Reynaud, who succeeded Édouard Daladier as France's premier on March 21, was of the same opinion. (Reynaud had come into office on the surge of the French public's demand for a more aggressive military policy and quicker offensive action against Germany.) It was agreed that mines should be laid in Norwegian waters and that the mining should be followed by the landing of troops at four Norwegian ports, Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, and Stavanger.

Because of Anglo-French arguments, the date of the mining was postponed from April 5 to April 8. The postponement was catastrophic. Hitler had on April 1 ordered the German invasion of Norway to begin on April 9; so, when on April 8 the Norwegian government was preoccupied with earnest protest about the British mine laying, the German expeditions were well on their way.

On April 9, 1940, the major Norwegian ports from Oslo northward to Narvik (1,200 miles away from Germany's naval bases) were occupied by advance detachments of German troops. At the same time, a single parachute battalion (the first ever employed in warfare) took the Oslo and Stavanger airfields, and 800 operational aircraft overawed the Norwegian population. Norwegian resistance at Narvik, at Trondheim (the strategic key to Norway), at Bergen, at Stavanger, and at Kristiansand had been overcome very quickly; and Oslo's effective resistance to the seaborne forces was nullified when German troops from the airfield entered the city.

Simultaneously, along with their Norwegian enterprise, the Germans on April 9 occupied Denmark, sending troopships, covered by aircraft, into Copenhagen harbour and marching over the land frontier into Jutland. This occupation was obviously necessary for the safety of their communications with Norway.

Allied troops began to land at Narvik on April 14. Shortly afterward, British troops were landed also at Namsos and at Åndalsnes, to attack Trondheim from the north and from the south, respectively. The Germans, however, landed fresh troops in the rear of the British at Namsos and advanced up the Gudbrandsdal from Oslo against the force at Åndalsnes. By this time the Germans had about 25,000 troops in Norway. By May 2, both Namsos and Åndalsnes were evacuated by the British. The Germans at Narvik held out against five times as many British and French troops until May 27. By that time the German offensive in France had progressed to such an extent that the British could no longer afford any commitment in Norway, and the 25,000 Allied troops were evacuated from Narvik 10 days after their victory. The Norwegian king Haakon VII and his government left Norway for Britain at the same time. Hitler garrisoned Norway with about 300,000 troops for the rest of the war. By occupying Norway, Hitler had ensured the protection of Germany's supply of iron ore from Sweden and had obtained naval and air bases with which to strike at Britain if necessary.

What was to happen in Norway became a less important question for the western powers when, on May 10, 1940, they were surprised by Hitler's long-debated stroke against them through the Low Countries.

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World War II - World War II - The invasion of Norway: British plans for landings on the Norwegian coast in the third week of March 1940 were temporarily postponed. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, however, was by that time convinced that some aggressive action ought to be taken; and Paul Reynaud, who succeeded Édouard Daladier as France's premier on March 21, was of the same opinion.

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Germany invades France, Belgium, and the Netherlands

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Germany invades France, Belgium, and the Netherlands

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May 10, 1940

Germany invaded France, Belgium and netherlands in May 1940 using fast attacks called Blitzkrieg. German tanks went through the Ardennes Forest, surprising the Allies. France and Britain were not able to stop the German advance. France surrendered in June 1940, and Germany occupied most of the country.

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The "phony war" and the invasion of Denmark and Norway

After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, six months of relative calm descended on Europe. During a period dubbed the "phony war" by the press, the conflict between France and Germany was confined to a 100-mile (160-km) stretch of common frontier between the Rhine River and the Luxembourg border, and any pressure was limited to narrow sectors of this area. Gen. Maurice Gamelin, the French commander in chief, had argued that France's only path to success would lie in "extending our front of attack" from the Moselle River to Maastricht, Netherlands, for an advance through Belgium and part of the Netherlands to the lower Rhine. He emphasized that, if Belgium and the Netherlands would not agree to this and if the French government was unwilling to override their neutrality, the prospect was dim. As this wider alternative was ruled out, Gamelin saw no point in courting heavy losses and wearing down the French army's morale by pressing the attack on the Rhine-Moselle sector. The French had hardly dented the foremost layers of the German defense on the Franco-German frontier before the Germans had overrun Poland and returned to the West in force. The French command decided to withdraw its divisions to the shelter of its own Maginot Line.

German U-boats spent the "phony war" period sinking scores of Allied merchant ships, and the Germans sent out diplomatic feelers in the hopes that a negotiated peace would allow them to consolidate their already significant gains. By early 1940, however, both German leader Adolf Hitler and the Allies were contemplating the expansion of the war into Scandinavia. British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had formulated a plan to mine the Norwegian port of Narvik in an effort to disrupt the flow of coal from neutral Norway to Germany, while Norwegian fascist Vidkun Quisling had personally urged Hitler to occupy his country. As rumours of a planned Allied violation of Norway's neutrality swirled, the Germans initiated preparations for an offensive in Scandinavia. On April 7-8, 1940, the British began laying mines in Norwegian territorial waters; by that point, however, German plans were well advanced and the invasion was all but underway.

In the early dawn hours of April 9, German troops crossed the Danish border, and German warships sailed into Copenhagen's harbour. There was little organized resistance, and by noon the whole of Denmark was occupied. Simultaneously, German warships appeared in the fjord leading to Oslo, and German aircraft swarmed in the skies above the Norwegian capital. Norwegian shore batteries offered a spirited defense of Oslo, sinking the German heavy cruiser Blücher and checking the approach of German seaborne forces. This effort came to naught, however, when German parachute infantry landed at the Oslo airfield and captured the city later in the day. Elsewhere in Norway, German forces seized Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, and Narvik. Within two days, the Germans had taken most of the strategic centres of Norway, and the Norwegian army never had a real chance to mobilize.

Beginning on April 14, the Anglo-French Allies landed expeditionary forces on the Norwegian coast, at Åndalsnes and Namsos near Trondheim in central Norway and at Narvik in the far north. These groups were unable to get any heavy artillery or mechanized equipment ashore, and their antiaircraft defenses were largely nonexistent. British sea power could not disrupt the movement of men and supplies from Germany, whereas German air power proved more than capable of interfering with the landing of Allied reinforcements near Trondheim. After several failed attempts to penetrate Norway and link up with the Norwegian resistance, the Allied effort had to be abandoned and the troops withdrawn, except from Narvik. Following this operation, which was carried out in the first week of May, the Germans were uncontested masters of southern and central Norway. The Allied force at Narvik succeeded in taking that city in early June, only to be withdrawn days later. The Allied victory at Narvik was undone by the desperate need for troops in France, where the German blitzkrieg was making short work of the French defenses.

The military costs of the battle for Norway were relatively light, in accordance with the size of the forces engaged. The British lost several destroyers during the campaign, and the aircraft carrier Glorious was sunk while covering the evacuation convoys from Narvik. The political effects of the loss of Norway were immediate and far-reaching, however. The government of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whose war efforts were characterized by former prime minister David Lloyd George as "always too late or too little," was subjected to a vote of confidence on May 8. Although Chamberlain survived that motion, dozens of members of his own party voted against him, and his Conservative government was on the verge of toppling. Hitler was emboldened by the lackluster Allied performance in Norway, and, while Chamberlain was making a last desperate attempt to save his administration, Germany was preparing for another offensive. On the morning of May 10, German troops, tanks, and aircraft poured into the Low Countries. Within hours Chamberlain announced his resignation, and by that evening Churchill had been confirmed as prime minister at the head of a unity government.

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Battle of France | History, Summary, Maps, & Combatants

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Battle of France (May 10-June 25, 1940), during World War II, the German invasion of the Low Countries and France. In just over six weeks, German armed forces overran Belgium and the Netherlands, drove the British Expeditionary Force from the Continent, captured Paris, and forced the surrender of the French government.

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May 26 – June 4, 1940

The evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk to England due to the invasions. Vessels and many boats were used to evacuate. It ended up saving 198 thousand British and 140 thousand French and Belgian troops.

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Why was the Dunkirk evacuation necessary?

How was the Dunkirk evacuation executed?

What was the significance of the Dunkirk evacuation?

Dunkirk evacuation, (1940) in World War II, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and other Allied troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk (Dunkerque) to England. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian boats were used in the evacuation, which began on May 26. When it ended on June 4, about 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops had been saved.

Blitzkrieg and the Allied collapse

The immediate context of the Dunkirk evacuation was Germany's invasion of the Low Countries and northern France in May 1940. On May 10 the German blitzkrieg attack on the Netherlands began with the capture by parachutists of key bridges deep within the country, with the aim of opening the way for mobile ground forces. The Dutch defenders fell back westward, and by noon on May 12 German tanks were on the outskirts of Rotterdam. Queen Wilhelmina and her government left the country for England on May 13, and the next day the Dutch army surrendered to the Germans.

Learn about the German invasion of France and the neutral nations of Belgium and Holland and the Dunkirk evacuation

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The invasion of Belgium also began on May 10, when German airborne troops landed on the fortress of Eben Emael, immediately opposite Maastricht, and on bridges over the Albert Canal. On May 11 the Belgian front was broken, and German tanks ran on westward while Belgian, French, and British divisions fell back to a line between Antwerp and Namur.

The German invasion of France hinged on Gen. Paul Ludwig von Kleist's surprise advance through the hilly and dense Ardennes Forest. On May 10 German tanks crossed Luxembourg to the southeastern border of Belgium, and by the evening of May 12 the Germans were across the Franco-Belgian frontier and overlooking the Meuse River. The next day they crossed the Meuse, and on May 15 they broke through the French defenses into open country, turning westward in the direction of the English Channel. That same day, Gen. Henri Giraud assumed command of the French Ninth Army and drew up a plan for a counteroffensive on a line 25 miles (40 km) west of the Meuse. On May 16 Giraud found that the forces for such an undertaking were not available, while the Germans had advanced in strength far beyond that line. He now decided to withdraw to the line of the Oise, 30 miles (48 km) farther back, and to block the Germans there. Once again he was too late, for the German panzer divisions outran his retreating troops and were across that barrier on May 17.

Even if the French had been able to mount a counteroffensive, they would not have found it easy to crush the invader. Kleist's southern flank was progressively lined by his motorized divisions, which in turn were relieved by the infantry corps that were marching on as fast as possible. This lining of the Aisne had an important indirect effect of playing on the most instinctive fear of the French. When, on May 15, French commander-in-chief Maurice Gamelin received an alarming report that the Germans were crossing the Aisne between Rethel and Laon, he told the government that he had no reserves between that sector and Paris and could not guarantee the security of the capital for more than a day. After Gamelin's startling message, French Premier Paul Reynaud hastily decided to move the seat of government from Paris to Tours. By evening more reassuring reports had come from the Aisne, and Reynaud broadcast a denial of "the most absurd rumours that the government is preparing to leave Paris." At the same time, he seized the opportunity to replace Gamelin and for that purpose summoned Gen. Maxime Weygand from Syria. Weygand did not arrive until May 19, and thus for three critical days the Supreme Command was without direction.

While Allied leaders were still hoping for an attack that would cut off the expanding "bulge," German armoured forces raced to the Channel and cut off the Allied forces in Belgium. The remaining obstacles that could have blocked the advance were not manned in time. After crossing the Oise on May 17, German Gen. Heinz Guderian's advance troops reached Amiens two days later. On May 20 they swept on and reached Abbeville, thus blocking all communications between north and south. By the next day motorized divisions had taken over the line of the Somme from Péronne to Abbeville, forming a strong defensive flank. Guderian's corps then turned north up the coast in a drive for Calais and Dunkirk on May 22. Gen. Georg-Hans Reinhardt swung south of the British rear position at Arras, headed for the same objective-the last escape port that remained open for the British.

Allied planners had hoped to check the Germans at the Dyle Line-a defensive line that ran from Antwerp south to the French frontier, north of Sedan-but by May 16 Gamelin had determined that such a stand was impracticable. The Allied armies in Belgium wheeled back to the line of the Scheldt. By the time they arrived there, the position had been undermined by the cutting of their communications. On May 19 Gen. John Gort, commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), began to consider the necessity of evacuating his forces by sea and the preparatory steps that such an endeavour would require. The next day, however, orders came from the British Cabinet that the BEF was to march south on Amiens. Gort argued that such a long-range drive in reverse was not practicable, either tactically or administratively. All he could manage was an attack by two divisions, which had just been rushed south to Arras, led by a brigade of infantry tanks, the only armoured troops he had. When this riposte was launched on May 21, it comprised no more than two tank battalions backed by two infantry battalions, while elements of one French light mechanized division covered its flanks. The British light tanks proved to be surprisingly effective against German antitank weapons, and this small drive into the corridor momentarily shook the nerve of the German High Command. German planners realized that if two or three armoured divisions had been available for a concentrated counterstroke, the German advance might have been dislocated.

After this flash in the pan the Allied armies in the north made no further effort to break out of the trap, while the belated relieving push from the south was so feeble as to be almost farcical. The prevailing confusion was increased by Weygand's arrival to take over supreme command. The 73-year-old veteran of World War I was better at expounding outdated theory than grasping the realities of a rapidly changing, increasingly motorized battlefield. His grandiloquent orders had no more chance of being translated into practical terms than those of Reynaud or new British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. While the governments and commanders got into a tangle of divergent views and orders, the cut-off armies in the north fell back on a slant closer to the coast under increasing pressure from Gen. Walther von Reichenau's advance through Belgium. More dangerous still was the backdoor approach of Guderian, whose armoured forces were sweeping north past Boulogne and Calais.

Consequently, three of Gort's divisions were withdrawn from the front and sent south to strengthen the line of canals that covered Dunkirk and the Allies' rear. Two more divisions were allotted for Weygand's renewed project of a Franco-British drive down into the German corridor. When the Belgians' extended right flank, adjoining the British, gave way under pressure from Reichenau, these two divisions were rushed north again. By the time they arrived on May 27, the Belgian centre had cracked, and there were no reserves to fill this fresh gap. With their country overrun and their backs to the sea, in a small strip crowded with refugees, the Belgians were driven to sue for an armistice that evening. The cease-fire was sounded early the next morning.

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Dunkirk evacuation | Facts, Map, Photos, Numbers, Timeline, & Summary

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Dunkirk evacuation (May 26-June 4, 1940), in World War II, the evacuation of about 198,000 soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and 140,000 French and Belgian troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk to England. Naval vessels and hundreds of civilian boats were used in the operation.

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June 10, 1940

When France was about to fall, Italy joined the war on Germany’s side, hoping to get territories.

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Military disaster

Only in June 1940, when France was about to fall and World War II seemed virtually over, did Italy join the war on Germany's side, still hoping for territorial spoils. Mussolini announced his decision-one bitterly opposed by his foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano-to huge crowds across Italy on June 10. Italy's initial attack on the French Alps in June 1940 was quickly cut short by the Franco-German armistice. The real war for Italy began only in October, when Mussolini attacked Greece from Albania in a disastrous campaign that obliged the Germans, in 1941, to rescue the Italian forces and take over Greece themselves. The Germans also had to lend support in the hard-fought campaigns of North Africa, where eventually the decisive second battle of El-Alamein (October 1942) destroyed the Italian position and led to the surrender of all of Italy's North African forces in May 1943. Meanwhile, the Italians had lost their extensive empire in eastern Africa, including Ethiopia, early in 1941; and 250,000 Italian troops in Russia, sent to help the German invaders, suffered untold hardships. The epic winter retreat of the Alpine division left thousands dead. In all, nearly 85,000 Italian troops failed to make it home from Russia.

In short, the war was an almost unrelieved succession of military disasters. Poor generals and low morale contributed much to this outcome-the Italian conscripts were fighting far from home for causes in which few of them believed. In addition, Italy had few tanks or antitank guns; clothing, food, vehicles, and fuel were all scarce; and supplies could not safely be transported to North Africa or Russia. Italian factories could not produce weapons without steel, coal, or oil, and, even when raw materials were available, production was limited because the northern Italian factories were subject to heavy Allied bombing, especially in 1942-43. Heavy attacks destroyed the iron ore production capacities on Elba, off the Tuscan coast, and damaged several industrial zones, particularly in northern Italian cities such as Genoa, La Spezia, Turin, and Milan. Naples and other southern cities also were bombed, as was the San Lorenzo district of Rome. (The San Lorenzo air raid, carried out by U.S. forces in July 1943, killed more than 3,000 people.)

Bombing indeed was one of the causes of the first major strikes since 1925. In March 1943 the leading factories in Milan and Turin stopped work in order to secure evacuation allowances for workers' families. By this time civilian morale was clearly very low, food shortages were endemic, and hundreds of thousands of people had fled to the countryside. Government propaganda was ineffective, and Italians could easily hear more-accurate news on Radio Vatican or even Radio London. In Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as in Italian-occupied Slovenia and Croatia, the local Slavic population supported armed Resistance movements, and anti-Italian terrorism was widespread. In Sicily landowners formed armed bands for possible use against mainland interference. On the mainland itself the anti-Fascist movements cautiously revived in 1942 and 1943. The Communists helped to organize strikes, the leading Roman Catholics formed the Christian Democratic Party (now the Italian Popular Party) in 1943, and the new Party of Action was founded in January 1943, mainly by republicans and Radicals. Leading Communists began to reenter Italy, and their party began to put down deep roots across the country. By this time most of the leading clandestine parties were more willing to work together to overthrow fascism. In March 1943 they signed an agreement to do so.

A further consequence of the war was the internment of hundreds of thousands of Italian emigrants across the world, especially in Britain and the United States. Italians, even with strong anti-Fascist credentials, were rounded up and sometimes stripped of their citizenship. This draconian policy left a legacy of bitterness and recrimination which lasted for years on both sides.

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Italy - WWII, Axis, Allies: Only in June 1940, when France was about to fall and World War II seemed virtually over, did Italy join the war on Germany's side, still hoping for territorial spoils. Mussolini announced his decision-one bitterly opposed by his foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano-to huge crowds across Italy on June 10.

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June 22, 1940

The Tripartite Pact was an agreement made by Italy, Japan and Germany. It consisted of a defense alliance between the countries involved, and avoided making the United States enter the war.

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Tripartite Pact, agreement concluded by Germany, Italy, and Japan on September 27, 1940, one year after the start of World War II. It created a defense alliance between the countries and was largely intended to deter the United States from entering the conflict. Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Croatia were later signatories to the pact.

The Tripartite Pact was the culmination of a series of agreements between Germany, Japan, and Italy. On October 25, 1936, Germany and Italy completed the Rome-Berlin Axis, a cooperation deal. A month later Japan joined the so-called Axis powers by signing (with Germany) the Anti-Comintern Pact, an anti- communist agreement that was primarily directed against the Soviet Union; Italy signed in 1937. However, that compact was broken with the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 23, 1939, which paved the way for Germany to invade Poland the following week, thus starting World War II.

Against this backdrop, officials from Germany, Italy, and Japan met in Berlin in September 1940 to devise the Tripartite Pact. It notably called on signees "to assist one another with all political, economic and military means" when any one of them was attacked by "a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Sino-Japanese Conflict." Such wording notably excluded the Soviet Union, which was already involved in both wars, and was thus seen as a warning to the United States against entering World War II. The pact was signed by Joachim von Ribbentrop (Germany), Galeazzo Ciano (Italy), and Kurusu Saburo (Japan). Several other European countries-some of which had been coerced-were later signatories.

The Tripartite Pact was notably invoked in 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. On December 8 the United States declared war on Japan, and four days later Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. Thereafter, however, the pact was largely seen as ineffective, Germany and Japan having divergent interests and largely pursuing their own agendas. For example, in April 1941 Japan signed a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union, but two months later Germany invaded the communist country. The Japanese subsequently refused German calls to intervene.

Amy Tikkanen.

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Tripartite Pact | Definition, History, Significance, & Facts

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Tripartite Pact, agreement concluded by Germany, Italy, and Japan on September 27, 1940, one year after the start of World War II. It created a defense alliance between the countries and was largely intended to deter the United States from entering the conflict. Learn more about the pact's background and significance.

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June 22, 1941

Called Operation Barbarossa, the Soviet Union invasion was a complete failure. The German troops were not able to defeat the Soviet forces. The cold was very significant in this conflict, because it hardened the advance of the German troops.

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Operation Barbarossa, original name Operation Fritz, during World War II, code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which was launched on June 22, 1941. The failure of German troops to defeat Soviet forces in the campaign signaled a crucial turning point in the war.

Background

Although Adolf Hitler had congratulated himself on the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939 as a matter of expediency, anti-bolshevism had remained his most profound emotional conviction as World War II entered its second year. Following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states and of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in June 1940, which put Soviet forces in proximity to the Romanian oil fields on which Germany depended, Hitler's long-standing interest in overthrowing the Soviet regime was heightened. He became acutely suspicious of the intentions of the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, and he began to feel that he could not afford to wait to complete the subjugation of western Europe, as he had originally planned, before dealing with the Soviet Union.

Hitler and his generals had originally scheduled the invasion of the U.S.S.R. for mid-May 1941, but the unforeseen necessity of invading Yugoslavia and Greece in April of that year forced them to postpone the Soviet campaign to late June. The swiftness of Hitler's Balkan victories enabled him to keep to this revised timetable, but the five weeks' delay shortened the time for carrying out the invasion of the U.S.S.R. and was to prove the more serious because in 1941 the Russian winter would arrive earlier than usual. Nevertheless, Hitler and the heads of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH, or German Army High Command)-namely, the army commander in chief, Walther von Brauchitsch, and the army general staff chief, Franz Halder-were convinced that the Red Army could be defeated in two or three months and that by the end of October the Germans would have conquered the whole European part of Russia and Ukraine west of a line stretching from Arkhangelsk (Archangel) to Astrakhan. The invasion of the Soviet Union was originally given the code name Operation Fritz, but, as preparations began, Hitler renamed it Operation Barbarossa, after the Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa (reigned 1152-90), who sought to establish German predominance in Europe.

For the campaign against the Soviet Union, the Germans allotted almost 150 divisions containing a total of about three million men. Among those units were 19 panzer divisions, and in total the Barbarossa force had about 3,000 tanks, 7,000 artillery pieces, and 2,500 aircraft. It was in effect the largest and most powerful invasion force in human history. The Germans' strength was further increased by more than 30 divisions of Finnish and Romanian troops.

The Soviet Union had twice or perhaps three times the number of both tanks and aircraft as the Germans had, but their aircraft were mostly obsolete. The Soviet tanks were about equal to those of the Germans, however. A greater hindrance to Hitler's chances of victory was that the German intelligence service underestimated the troop reserves that Stalin could bring up from the depths of the U.S.S.R. The Germans correctly estimated that there were about 150 divisions in the western parts of the U.S.S.R. and reckoned that 50 more might be produced. But the Soviets actually brought up more than 200 fresh divisions by the middle of August, making a total of 360. The consequence was that, though the Germans succeeded in shattering the original Soviet armies by superior technique, they then found their path blocked by fresh ones. The effects of the miscalculations were increased because much of August was wasted while Hitler and his advisers were having long arguments as to what course they should follow after their initial victories. Another factor in the Germans' calculations was purely political, though no less mistaken; they believed that within three to six months of their invasion, the Soviet regime would collapse from lack of domestic support.

Initial offensive

On June 22, 1941, the German offensive was launched by three army groups under the same commanders as in the invasion of France in 1940. On the left (north), an army group under Gen. Wilhelm von Leeb struck from East Prussia into the Baltic states toward Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). On the right (south), another army group, under Gen. Gerd von Rundstedt, with an armoured group under Gen. Paul Ludwig von Kleist, advanced from southern Poland into Ukraine against Kiev, whence it was to wheel southeastward to the coasts of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Last, in the centre, north of the Pripet Marshes, the main blow was delivered by Gen. Fedor von Bock's army group, with one armoured group under Gen. Heinz Guderian and another under Gen. Hermann Hoth, thrusting northeastward at Smolensk and Moscow.

The invasion along a 1,800-mile (2,900-km) front took the Soviet leadership completely by surprise and caught the Red Army in an unprepared and partially demobilized state. As part of the southern flank of Bock's group, Guderian's tanks raced 50 miles (80 km) beyond the frontier on the first day of the invasion and were at Minsk, 200 miles (320 km) beyond it, on June 27. At Minsk they converged with Hoth's tanks, which had attacked from the northern flank, but Bock's infantry could not follow up quickly enough to complete the encirclement of the Soviet troops in the area; though 300,000 prisoners were taken in the salient, a large part of the Soviet forces was able to escape to the east. The Soviet armies were clumsily handled and frittered their tank strength away in piecemeal action like that of the French in 1940. But the isolated Soviet troops fought with a stubbornness that the French had not shown, and their resistance imposed a brake by continuing to block road centres long after the German tide had swept past them. The result was similar when Guderian's tanks, having crossed the Dnieper River on July 10, entered Smolensk six days later and converged with Hoth's thrust through Vitebsk; 200,000 Soviet prisoners were taken, but some Soviet forces were withdrawn from the trap to the line of the Desna, and a large pocket of resistance lay behind the German armour. By mid-July, moreover, a series of rainstorms were turning the sandy Russian roads into clogging mud, over which the wheeled vehicles of the German transport behind the tanks could make only very slow progress. The Germans also began to be hampered by the scorched-earth policy adopted by the retreating Soviets. The Soviet troops burned crops, destroyed bridges, and evacuated factories in the face of the German advance. Entire steel and munitions plants in the westernmost portions of the U.S.S.R. were dismantled and shipped by rail to the east, where they were put back into production. The Soviets also destroyed or evacuated most of their rolling stock (railroad cars), thus depriving the Germans of the use of the Soviet rail system, since Soviet railroad track was of a gauge different from that of German track and German rolling stock was consequently useless on it.

Nevertheless, by mid-July the Germans had advanced more than 400 miles (640 km) and were only 200 miles (320 km) from Moscow. They still had ample time to make decisive gains before the onset of winter, but they lost the opportunity, primarily because of arguments throughout August between Hitler and the OKH about the destination of the next thrusts thence. Whereas the OKH proposed Moscow as the main objective, Hitler wanted the major effort to be directed southeastward, through Ukraine and the Donets Basin into the Caucasus, with a minor swing northwestward against Leningrad (to converge with Leeb's army group).

In Ukraine, meanwhile, Rundstedt and Kleist had made short work of the foremost Soviet defenses, stronger though the latter had been. A new Soviet front south of Kiev was broken by the end of July, and in the next fortnight the Germans swept down to the Black Sea mouths of the Bug and Dnieper rivers to converge with Romania's simultaneous offensive. Kleist was then ordered to wheel northward from central Ukraine and Guderian southward from Smolensk for a pincer movement around the Soviet forces behind Kiev; by the end of September the claws of the encircling movement had caught 520,000 men. These gigantic encirclements were partly the fault of inept Soviet high commanders and partly the fault of Stalin, who as commander in chief stubbornly overrode the advice of his generals and ordered his armies to stand and fight instead of allowing them to retreat eastward and regroup in preparation for a counteroffensive.

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Operation Barbarossa | History, Summary, Combatants, Casualties, & Facts

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Operation Barbarossa, original name Operation Fritz, during World War II, code name for the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which was launched on June 22, 1941. The failure of German troops to defeat Soviet forces in the campaign signaled a crucial turning point in the war.

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September 8, 1941

Germany and its allies surrounded Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The city was cut off from supplies, causing extreme hunger and suffering. Over a million civilians died during the siege. Despite this, the city never surrendered.

900 days later, the soviets won and the Operation Barbarossa ended.

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Siege of Leningrad, also called 900-day siege, prolonged siege (September 8, 1941-January 27, 1944) of the city of Leningrad ( St. Petersburg) in the Soviet Union by German and Finnish armed forces during World War II. The siege actually lasted 872 days.

After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German armies had by early September approached Leningrad from the west and south while their Finnish allies approached to the north down the Karelian Isthmus. Leningrad's entire able-bodied population was mobilized to build antitank fortifications along the city's perimeter in support of the city's 200,000 Red Army defenders. Leningrad's defenses soon stabilized, but by early November it had been almost completely encircled, with all its vital rail and other supply lines to the Soviet interior cut off.

The ensuing German blockade and siege claimed 650,000 Leningrader lives in 1942 alone, mostly from starvation, exposure, disease, and shelling from distant German artillery. Sparse food and fuel supplies reached the city by barge in the summer and by truck and ice-borne sled in winter across Lake Ladoga. These supplies kept the city's arms factories operating and its two million inhabitants barely alive in 1942, while one million more of its children, sick, and elderly were being evacuated. Starvation-level food rationing was eased by new vegetable gardens that covered most open ground in the city by 1943.

Soviet offensives in early 1943 ruptured the German encirclement and allowed more copious supplies to reach Leningrad along the shores of Lake Ladoga. In January 1944 a successful Soviet offensive drove the Germans westward from the city's outskirts, ending the siege. The Soviet government awarded the Order of Lenin to Leningrad in 1945 and bestowed the title Hero City of the Soviet Union on it in 1965, thus paying tribute to the city's successful endurance of one of the most grueling and memorable sieges in history. A monument commemorating the victims and heroism of the siege was unveiled in 1975.

Michael Levy.

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Siege of Leningrad, also called 900-day siege, prolonged siege (September 8, 1941-January 27, 1944) of the city of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in the Soviet Union by German and Finnish armed forces during World War II. The siege actually lasted 872 days.

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October 2, 1941

German forces reached the city's outskirts, threatening the Soviet capital. At first, they advanced quickly and seemed close to victory. But bad weather, Soviet defense, and logistics problems slowed them down. In December, the Soviets pushed them back, saving Moscow.

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Battle of Moscow, battle fought between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union from September 30, 1941 to January 7, 1942, during World War II. It was the climax of Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa, and it ended the Germans' intention to capture Moscow, which ultimately doomed the Third Reich.

The German advance on Moscow in September 1941 was soon in trouble because of atrocious weather conditions. The Germans were also shocked by the Soviet Union's ability to keep bringing forward more reserves. Although some Nazi officers thought Moscow was unattainable, they had no choice but to press forward, because they had to end the war before the fierce winter set in.

German troops managed to encircle large Soviet forces at Viazma in October, but the Soviets still fought on, delaying the Nazi advance. German soldiers pierced the improvised defense lines on the approaches to Moscow and reached within 15 miles (24 km) of the city-they could see the cupolas of St. Basil's Cathedral in Red Square in the distance. However, resistance kept stiffening. Joseph Stalin chose to stay in Moscow and appeared at the annual celebrations in Red Square, offering a morale boost to his people.

By early November, the German army suffered its first cases of frostbite, and soon Nazi soldiers had difficulty firing frozen guns. Then, on December 5, Siberian troops-transferred from the Chinese frontier-attacked, many wearing the snow camouflage that the Germans would learn to fear. The Red Army had high hopes of this offensive, intending to encircle and destroy their attackers. They did not manage this, but they did drive back the Germans up to 155 miles (250 km) at some points. Nazi Germany had lost its chance for a quick victory. German losses during the Battle of Moscow totaled 250,000-400,000 dead or wounded, and the Red Army suffered 600,000-1,300,000 dead, wounded, or captured.

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Battle of Moscow, battle fought between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union from September 30, 1941 to January 7, 1942, during World War II. It was the climax of Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa, and it ended the Germans' intention to capture Moscow, which ultimately doomed the Third Reich.

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December 7, 1941

Japan attacked a naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The attack damaged many ships and airplanes and killed many people. They intended to avoid US interfering Japan's conquests in West Asia, but it led to them entering the war.

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Pearl Harbor attack, (December 7, 1941), surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese that precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. The strike climaxed a decade of worsening relations between the United States and Japan.

Prelude to war

In the late 1930s, American foreign policy in the Pacific hinged on support for China, and aggression against China by Japan therefore necessarily would bring Japan into conflict with the United States. As early as 1931 the Tokyo government had extended its control over the Chinese province of Manchuria, and the following year the Japanese cemented their hold on the region with the creation of the puppet state of Manchukuo. A clash at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing on July 7, 1937, signaled the beginning of open warfare between Japan and the United Front of Chinese Nationalists and the Chinese Communist Party. In response, the United States government extended its first loan to China in 1938.

In July 1939 the U.S. announced the termination of the 1911 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with Japan. Beginning in the summer of 1940, the U.S. began to restrict the export to Japan of materials useful in war. Between June 1940 and the fateful crisis of December 1941, the tension constantly mounted. In July 1941, by which time the Japanese had occupied all of Indochina and had entered into an alliance with the Axis powers ( Germany and Italy), the U.S. government severed all commercial and financial relations with Japan. Japanese assets were frozen, and an embargo was declared on shipments to Japan of petroleum and other vital war materials. Militarists were steadily gaining in influence in the Tokyo government; they bitterly resented U.S. aid to China, which by this time had been stepped up. They saw in the German invasion of the Soviet Union an unrivaled opportunity to pursue a policy of aggression in the Far East without danger of an attack upon their rear by the forces of the Red Army. Nonetheless, negotiations looking to find some kind of understanding between the United States and Japan took place through the autumn of 1941, and not until near the end of November did it become clear that no agreement was possible.

Although Japan continued to negotiate with the United States up to the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, the government of Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki decided on war. Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku, the commander in chief of Japan's Combined Fleet, had planned the attack against the U.S. Pacific Fleet with great care. Once the U.S. fleet was out of action, the way for the unhindered Japanese conquest of all of Southeast Asia and the Indonesian archipelago would be open. The order for the assault was issued on November 5, 1941, and on November 16 the task force began its rendezvous in the Kuril Islands. Commanders were instructed that the fleet might be recalled, however, in case of a favourable outcome of the negotiations in Washington, D.C. On November 26, Vice Adm. Nagumo Chuichi led a fleet including 6 aircraft carriers, 2 battleships, 3 cruisers, and 11 destroyers to a point some 275 miles (440 km) north of Hawaii. From there about 360 planes in total were launched.

Warnings and responses

The U.S. Pacific Fleet had been stationed at Pearl Harbor since April 1940. In addition to nearly 100 naval vessels, including 8 battleships, there were substantial military and air forces. As the tension mounted, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel and Lieut. Gen. Walter C. Short, who shared command at Pearl Harbor, were warned of the possibility of war, specifically on October 16 and again on November 24 and 27. The notice of November 27, to Kimmel, began, "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning," went on to say that "negotiations have ceased," and directed the admiral to "execute an appropriate defensive deployment." Kimmel also was ordered to "undertake such reconnaissance and other measures as you deem necessary." The communication of the same day to Short declared that "hostile action is possible at any moment" and, like its naval counterpart, urged "measures of reconnaissance."

In response to these warnings, the measures taken by the army and navy commanders were, as the event proved, far from adequate. Short ordered an alert against sabotage and concentrated most of his fighter planes at the base on Wheeler Field in an effort to prevent damage to them. He also gave orders to operate five of the mobile radar sets that had been set up in the island from 4:00 am to 7:00 am, considered to be the most dangerous period. (Radar training, however, was in a far-from-advanced stage.)

Kimmel, despite the fact that his intelligence had not been able to locate substantial elements in the Japanese fleet-especially the first-line ships in carrier divisions 1 and 2-did not expand his reconnaissance activities to the northwest, the logical point for an attack. He moored the entire fleet (save that part which was at sea) in the harbour and permitted a part of his personnel to go on shore leave. Neither of these officers suspected that the base at Pearl Harbor would itself be subjected to attack. Nor, for that matter, is there any indication that their superiors in Washington were in any way conscious of the approaching danger. In the 10 days between the war warning of November 27 and the Japanese attack itself, no additional action was taken by Washington.

Early on Sunday morning, December 7, Washington learned that the Japanese ambassadors had been instructed to ask for an interview with the secretary of state at 1:00 pm (7:30 am Pearl Harbor time). This was a clear indication that war was at hand. The message took some time to decode, and it was not in the hands of the chief of naval operations until about 10:30. It was delivered to the War Department between 9:00 and 10:00 am. Gen. George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army chief of staff, was out horseback riding and did not see the dispatch until he arrived at his office about 11:15 am. The chief of naval operations, Adm. Harold Stark, even then did not think that the communication called for any additional instructions to Kimmel. However, Marshall did decide to send a new warning and gave orders to the military command to communicate with the navy. He did not telephone, fearing that his words might be intercepted, and instead sent his dispatch by telegram. There was a mix-up in communication, however, and the warning did not reach Hawaii until after the attack had begun. It is important to note that it had not been filed until noon, only an hour before the Japanese planes moved in on the base.

At Pearl Harbor itself, there were incidents that, properly interpreted, might have given a brief warning. Four hours before the decisive moment, a Japanese submarine was sighted by the minesweeper USS Condor. About two and a half hours later, the commander of the destroyer USS Ward sent a message saying that he "had attacked, fired upon, and dropped depth charges upon submarine operating in defensive sea area" near Pearl Harbor. While Kimmel waited for confirmation of this report, the Japanese opened hostilities. In these same morning hours, U.S. Army Pvt. George Elliott, practicing on the radar set after its normal closing time, noticed a large flight of planes on the screen. When he telephoned his lieutenant, he was told to disregard the observation, as a flight of B-17 bombers from the United States was expected at that time. Once again an opportunity was missed.

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Pearl Harbor attack | Date, History, Map, Casualties, Timeline, & Facts

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Pearl Harbor attack, surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu Island, Hawaii, by the Japanese on December 7, 1941, which precipitated the entry of the United States into World War II. Learn more about the details and significance of the attack in this article.

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December 8, 1941

Due to the Pearl Harbour Attack, USA seems forced to enter the war and make a response to Japan's attacks.

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The road to war

After World War I most Americans concluded that participating in international affairs had been a mistake. They sought peace through isolation and throughout the 1920s advocated a policy of disarmament and nonintervention. As a result, relations with Latin-American nations improved substantially under Hoover, an anti-imperialist. This enabled Roosevelt to establish what became known as the Good Neighbor Policy, which repudiated altogether the right of intervention in Latin America. By exercising restraint in the region as a whole and by withdrawing American occupation forces from the Caribbean, Roosevelt increased the prestige of the United States in Latin America to its highest level in memory.

As the European situation became more tense, the United States continued to hold to its isolationist policy. Congress, with the approval of Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull, enacted a series of neutrality laws that legislated against the factors that supposedly had taken the United States into World War I. As Italy prepared to invade Ethiopia, Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1935, embargoing shipment of arms to either aggressor or victim. Stronger legislation followed the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, in effect penalizing the Spanish government, whose fascist enemies were receiving strong support from Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

National Archives, Washington, D.C.

In the Pacific Roosevelt continued Hoover's policy of nonrecognition of Japan's conquests in Asia. When Japan invaded China in 1937, however, he seemed to begin moving away from isolationism. He did not invoke the Neutrality Act, which had just been revised, and in October he warned that war was like a disease and suggested that it might be desirable for peace-loving nations to " quarantine" aggressor nations. He then quickly denied that his statement had any policy implications, and by December, when Japanese aircraft sank a U.S. gunboat in the Yangtze River, thoughts of reprisal were stifled by public apathy and by Japan's offer of apologies and indemnities. With strong public opposition to foreign intervention, Roosevelt concentrated on regional defense, continuing to build up the navy and signing mutual security agreements with other governments in North and South America.

When Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939 touched off World War II, Roosevelt called Congress into special session to revise the Neutrality Act to allow belligerents (in reality only Great Britain and France, both on the Allied side) to purchase munitions on a cash-and-carry basis. With the fall of France to Germany in June 1940, Roosevelt, with heavy public support, threw the resources of the United States behind the British. He ordered the War and Navy departments to resupply British divisions that had been rescued at Dunkirk minus their weaponry, and in September he agreed to exchange 50 obsolescent destroyers for 99-year leases on eight British naval and air bases in the Western Hemisphere.

The question of how much and what type of additional aid should be given to the Allies became a major issue of the election of 1940, in which Roosevelt ran for an unprecedented third term. Public opinion polls, a new influence upon decision makers, showed that most Americans favoured Britain but still wished to stay out of war. Roosevelt's opponent, Wendell Willkie, capitalized on this and rose steadily in the polls by attacking the president as a warmonger. An alarmed Roosevelt fought back, going so far as to make what he knew was an empty promise. "Your boys," he said just before the election, "are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." In truth, both candidates realized that U.S. intervention in the war might become essential, contrary to their public statements. Roosevelt won a decisive victory.

Upon being returned to office, Roosevelt moved quickly to aid the Allies. His Lend-Lease Act, passed in March 1941 after vehement debate, committed the United States to supply the Allies on credit. When Germany, on March 25, extended its war zone to include Iceland and the Denmark Strait, Roosevelt retaliated in April by extending the American Neutrality Patrol to Iceland. In July the United States occupied Iceland, and U.S. naval vessels began escorting convoys of American and Icelandic ships. That summer Lend-Lease was extended to the Soviet Union after it was invaded by Germany. In August Roosevelt met with the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, off the coast of Newfoundland to issue a set of war aims known as the Atlantic Charter. It called for national self-determination, larger economic opportunities, freedom from fear and want, freedom of the seas, and disarmament.

Although in retrospect U.S. entry into World War II seems inevitable, in 1941 it was still the subject of great debate. Isolationism was a great political force, and many influential individuals were determined that U.S. aid policy stop short of war. In fact, as late as August 12, 1941, the House of Representatives extended the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 by a vote of only 203 to 202. Despite isolationist resistance, Roosevelt pushed cautiously forward. In late August the navy added British and Allied ships to its Icelandic convoys. Its orders were to shoot German and Italian warships on sight, thus making the United States an undeclared participant in the Battle of the Atlantic. During October one U.S. destroyer was damaged by a German U-boat and another was sunk. The United States now embarked on an undeclared naval war against Germany, but Roosevelt refrained from asking for a formal declaration of war. According to public opinion polls, a majority of Americans still hoped to remain neutral.

The war question was soon resolved by events in the Pacific. As much as a distant neutral could, the United States had been supporting China in its war against Japan, yet it continued to sell Japan products and commodities essential to the Japanese war effort. Then, in July 1940, the United States applied an embargo on the sale of aviation gas, lubricants, and prime scrap metal to Japan. When Japanese armies invaded French Indochina in September with the apparent purpose of establishing bases for an attack on the East Indies, the United States struck back by embargoing all types of scrap iron and steel and by extending a loan to China. Japan promptly retaliated by signing a limited treaty of alliance, the Tripartite Pact, with Germany and Italy. Roosevelt extended a much larger loan to China and in December embargoed iron ore, pig iron, and a variety of other products.

Japan and the United States then entered into complex negotiations in the spring of 1941. Neither country would compromise on the China question, however, Japan refusing to withdraw and the United States insisting upon it. Believing that Japan intended to attack the East Indies, the United States stopped exporting oil to Japan at the end of the summer. In effect an ultimatum, since Japan had limited oil stocks and no alternative source of supply, the oil embargo confirmed Japan's decision to eliminate the U.S. Pacific Fleet and to conquer Southeast Asia, thereby becoming self-sufficient in crude oil and other vital resources. By the end of November Roosevelt and his military advisers knew (through intercepted Japanese messages) that a military attack was likely; they expected it to be against the East Indies or the Philippines. To their astonishment, on December 7 Japan directed its first blow against naval and air installations in Hawaii. In a bold surprise attack, Japanese aircraft destroyed or damaged 18 ships of war at Pearl Harbor, including the entire battleship force, and 347 planes. Total U.S. casualties amounted to 2,403 dead and 1,178 wounded.

On December 8, 1941, Congress with only one dissenting vote declared war against Japan. Three days later Germany and Italy declared war against the United States; and Congress, voting unanimously, reciprocated. As a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the previously divided nation entered into the global struggle with virtual unanimity.

The United States at war

Although isolationism died at Pearl Harbor, its legacy of unpreparedness lived on. Anticipating war, Roosevelt and his advisers had been able to develop and execute some plans for military expansion, but public opinion prohibited large-scale appropriations for armament and defense. Thus, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the United States had some 2,200,000 men under arms, but most were ill-trained and poorly equipped. Barely a handful of army divisions even approached a state of readiness. The Army Air Corps possessed only 1,100 combat planes, many of which were outdated. The navy was better prepared, but it was too small to fight a two-ocean war and had barely been able to provide enough ships for convoy duty in the North Atlantic. Eventually more than 15,000,000 men and women would serve in the armed forces, but not until 1943 would the United States be strong enough to undertake large-scale offensive operations. (For U.S. military involvement in World War II, see the article World War II.)

War production

Roosevelt had begun establishing mobilization agencies in 1939, but none had sufficient power or authority to bring order out of the chaos generated as industry converted to war production. He therefore created the War Production Board in January 1942 to coordinate mobilization, and in 1943 an Office of War Mobilization was established to supervise the host of defense agencies that had sprung up in Washington, D.C. Gradually, a priorities system was devised to supply defense plants with raw materials; a synthetic rubber industry was developed from scratch; rationing conserved scarce resources; and the Office of Price Administration kept inflation under control.

After initial snarls and never-ending disputes, by the beginning of 1944 production was reaching astronomical totals-double those of all the enemy countries combined. Hailed at the time as a production miracle, this increase was about equal to what the country would have produced in peacetime, assuming full employment. War production might have risen even higher if regulation of civilian consumption and industry had been stricter.

Scientists, under the direction of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, played a more important role in production than in any previous war, making gains in rocketry, radar and sonar, and other areas. Among the new inventions was the proximity fuze, which contained a tiny radio that detonated an artillery shell in the vicinity of its target, making a direct hit unnecessary. Of greatest importance was the atomic bomb, developed by scientists in secrecy and first tested on July 6, 1945.

Financing the war

The total cost of the war to the federal government between 1941 and 1945 was about $321,000,000,000 (10 times as much as World War I). Taxes paid 41 percent of the cost, less than Roosevelt requested but more than the World War I figure of 33 percent. The remainder was financed by borrowing from financial institutions, an expensive method but one that Congress preferred over the alternatives of raising taxes even higher or making war bond purchases compulsory. In consequence the national debt increased fivefold, amounting to $259,000,000,000 in 1945. The Revenue Act of 1942 revolutionized the tax structure by increasing the number who paid income taxes from 13,000,000 to 50,000,000. At the same time, through taxes on excess profits and other sources of income, the rich were made to bear a larger part of the burden, making this the only period in modern history when wealth was significantly redistributed.

Social consequences of the war

Despite the vast number of men and women in uniform, civilian employment rose from 46,000,000 in 1940 to more than 53,000,000 in 1945. The pool of unemployed men dried up in 1943, and further employment increases consisted of women, minorities, and over- or underage males. These were not enough to meet all needs, and by the end of the year a manpower shortage had developed.

One result of this shortage was that blacks made significant social and economic progress. Although the armed forces continued to practice segregation, as did Red Cross blood banks, Roosevelt, under pressure from blacks, who were outraged by the refusal of defense industries to integrate their labour forces, signed Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. It prohibited racial discrimination in job training programs and by defense contractors and established a Fair Employment Practices Committee to insure compliance. By the end of 1944 nearly 2,000,000 blacks were at work in defense industries. As black contributions to the military and industry increased, so did their demands for equality. This sometimes led to racial hostilities, as on June 20, 1943, when mobs of whites invaded the black section of Detroit. Nevertheless, the gains offset the losses. Lynching virtually died out, several states outlawed discriminatory voting practices, and others adopted fair employment laws.

Full employment also resulted in raised income levels, which, through a mixture of price and wage controls, were kept ahead of inflation. Despite both this increase in income and a no-strike pledge given by trade union leaders after Pearl Harbor, there were numerous labour actions. Workers resented wage ceilings because much of their increased income went to pay taxes and was earned by working overtime rather than through higher hourly rates. In consequence, there were almost 15,000 labour stoppages during the war at a cost of some 36,000,000 man-days. Strikes were greatly resented, particularly by the armed forces, but their effects were more symbolic than harmful. The time lost amounted to only one-ninth of 1 percent of all hours worked.

Because Pearl Harbor had united the nation, few people were prosecuted for disloyalty or sedition, unlike during World War I. The one glaring exception to this policy was the scandalous treatment of Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent. In 1942, on the basis of groundless racial fears and suspicions, virtually the entire Japanese-American population of the West Coast, amounting to 110,000 persons, was rounded up and imprisoned in "relocation" centres, which the inmates regarded as concentration camps. The Japanese-Americans lost their liberty, and in most cases their property as well, despite the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which had already arrested those individuals it considered security risks, had verified their loyalty.

Records of the War Relocation Authority, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

The 1944 election

Roosevelt soundly defeated Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York in the 1944 election, but his margin of victory was smaller than it had been previously. His running mate, chosen by leaders who disliked former vice president Henry A. Wallace for his extreme liberalism, was Sen. Harry S. Truman of Missouri, a party Democrat who had distinguished himself by investigating fraud and waste among war contractors.

UPI/Bettmann Archive

The new U.S. role in world affairs

The U.S. entry into World War II had brought an end to isolation, and President Roosevelt was determined to prevent a retreat into isolationism once the war was over. After a series of conferences in December 1941, Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill announced the formation of the United Nations, a wartime alliance of 26 nations. In 1943 Roosevelt began planning the organization of a postwar United Nations, meeting with congressional leaders to assure bipartisan support. The public supported Roosevelt's efforts, and that fall Congress passed resolutions committing the United States to membership in an international body "with power adequate to establish and to maintain a just and lasting peace." Finally, in the spring of 1945, delegates from 50 nations signed the charter for a permanent United Nations. In addition to political harmony, Roosevelt promoted economic cooperation, and, with his full support, in 1944 the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were created to bar a return of the cutthroat economic nationalism that had prevailed before the war.

Throughout the war Roosevelt met with Churchill and Stalin to plan military strategy and postwar policy. His last great conference with them took place at Yalta in Crimea in February 1945. There policies were agreed upon to enforce the unconditional surrender of Germany, to divide it into zones for occupation and policing by the respective Allied forces, and to provide democratic regimes in eastern European nations. A series of secret agreements were also made at Yalta; chief among these was the Soviet pledge to enter the war against Japan after the German surrender, in return for concessions in East Asia.

Roosevelt died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12 and was succeeded by Truman. In the following months the German armed forces collapsed, and on May 7 all German forces surrendered. In the Pacific the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in early 1945 brought Japan under a state of siege. In the summer, before an invasion could take place, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On September 2 the surrender of Japan was signed in Tokyo harbour on the battleship Missouri.
Frank Freidel William L. O'Neill

The United States since 1945

The peak Cold War years, 1945-60

The Truman Doctrine and containment

Truman, who had been chosen as vice president for domestic political reasons, was poorly prepared to assume the presidency. He had no experience of foreign affairs, knew little about Roosevelt's intentions, and was intimidated by the giant shoes he now had to fill. His first decisions were dictated by events or plans already laid. In July, two months after the German forces surrendered, he met at Potsdam, Germany, with Stalin and Churchill (who was succeeded at the conference by Clement Attlee) to discuss future operations against Japan and a peace settlement for Europe. Little was accomplished, and there would not be another meeting between Soviet and American heads of state for 10 years.

Hopes that good relations between the superpowers would ensure world peace soon faded as a result of the Stalinization of eastern Europe and Soviet support of communist insurgencies in various parts of the globe. Events came to a head in 1947 when Britain, weakened by a failing economy, decided to pull out of the eastern Mediterranean. This would leave both Greece, where a communist-inspired civil war was raging, and Turkey to the mercies of the Soviet Union. Truman now came into his own as a national leader, asking Congress to appropriate aid to Greece and Turkey and asserting, in effect, that henceforth the United States must help free peoples in general to resist communist aggression. This policy, known as the Truman Doctrine, has been criticized for committing the United States to the support of unworthy regimes and for taking on greater burdens than it was safe to assume. At first, however, the Truman Doctrine was narrowly applied. Congress appropriated $400 million for Greece and Turkey, saving both from falling into unfriendly hands, and thereafter the United States relied mainly on economic assistance to support its foreign policy.

The keystone of this policy, and its greatest success, was the European Recovery Program, usually called the Marshall Plan. Europe's economy had failed to recover after the war, its paralysis being worsened by the exceptionally severe winter of 1946-47. Thus, in June 1947 Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed the greatest foreign-aid program in world history in order to bring Europe back to economic health. In 1948 Congress created the Economic Cooperation Administration and over the next five years poured some $13 billion worth of aid into western Europe. (Assistance was offered to Eastern-bloc countries also, but they were forced by Stalin to decline.) The plan restored economic vitality and confidence to the region, while undermining the local communist parties. In 1949 Truman proposed extending similar aid to underdeveloped nations throughout the world, but the resulting Point Four Program was less successful than the Marshall Plan. Experience showed that it was easier to rebuild a modern industrial economy than to develop one from scratch.

U.S. policy for limiting Soviet expansion had developed with remarkable speed. Soon after the collapse of hopes for world peace in 1945 and 1946, the Truman administration had accepted the danger posed by Soviet aggression and resolved to shore up noncommunist defenses at their most critical points. This policy, known as containment, a term suggested by its principal framer, George Kennan, resulted in the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, as well as in the decision to make the western zones of Germany (later West Germany) a pillar of strength. When the Soviet Union countered this development in June 1948 by blocking all surface routes into the western-occupied zones of Berlin, Britain and the United States supplied the sectors by air for almost a year until the Soviet Union called off the blockade. A logical culmination of U.S. policy was the creation in 1949 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance among 12 (later 16) nations to resist Soviet aggression.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Containment worked less well in Asia. In December 1945 Truman sent General Marshall to China with instructions to work out an agreement between the communist rebels and the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. This was an impossible task, and in the subsequent fighting Mao Zedong's communist forces prevailed. The Nationalist government fled to Taiwan in 1949, and the United States then decided to concentrate its East Asian policy upon strengthening occupied Japan, with much better results.

Postwar domestic reorganization

After the end of World War II the vast U.S. military establishment was dismantled, its strength falling from 12 million men and women to about 1.5 million in 1947. The navy and army air forces remained the world's strongest, however, and the U.S. monopoly of atomic weapons seemed to ensure security. In 1946 the United States formed an Atomic Energy Commission for purposes of research and development. The armed forces were reorganized under a secretary of defense by the National Security Act of 1947, which also created the U.S. Air Force as an independent service. In 1949 the services were brought together in a single Department of Defense, though each retained considerable autonomy. In that same year the Soviet Union exploded its own atomic device, opening an era of intense nuclear, and soon thermonuclear, competition.

Peace brought with it new fears. Demobilizing the armed forces might result in massive unemployment and another depression. Or, conversely, the huge savings accumulated during the war could promote runaway inflation. The first anxiety proved groundless, even though government did little to ease the transition to a peacetime economy. War contracts were canceled, war agencies diminished or dissolved, and government-owned war plants sold to private parties. But, after laying off defense workers, manufacturers rapidly tooled up and began producing consumer goods in volume. The housing industry grew too, despite shortages of every kind, thanks to mass construction techniques pioneered by the firm of Levitt and Sons, Inc., and other developers. All this activity created millions of new jobs. The Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, also helped ease military personnel back into civilian life. It provided veterans with loans, educational subsidies, and other benefits.

Inflation was more troublesome. Congress lacked enthusiasm for wartime price controls and in June 1946 passed a bill preserving only limited controls. Truman vetoed the bill as inadequate, controls expired, and prices immediately soared. Congress then passed an even weaker price-control bill, which Truman signed. Nevertheless, by the end of the year, most price and wage controls had been lifted. In December the Office of Price Administration began to close down. As a result, the consumer price index did not stabilize until 1948, when prices were more than a third above the 1945 level, while wage and salary income had risen by only about 15 percent.

Truman's difficulties with Congress had begun in September 1945 when he submitted a 21-point domestic program, including proposals for an expansion of social security and public housing and for the establishment of a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act banning discrimination. These and subsequent liberal initiatives, later known as the Fair Deal, were rejected by Congress, which passed only the Employment Act of 1946. This clearly stated the government's responsibility for maintaining full employment and established a Council of Economic Advisers to advise the president.

Truman's relations with Congress worsened after the 1946 elections. Voters, who were angered by the price-control debacle, a wave of strikes, and Truman's seeming inability to lead or govern, gave control of both houses of Congress to Republicans for the first time since 1928. The president and the extremely conservative 80th Congress battled from beginning to end, not over foreign policy, where bipartisanship prevailed, but over domestic matters. Congress passed two tax reductions over Truman's vetoes and in 1947, again over Truman's veto, passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which restricted unions while extending the rights of management. Congress also rejected various liberal measures submitted by Truman, who did not expect the proposals to pass but wanted Congress on record as having opposed important social legislation.

By 1948, Truman had won support for his foreign policy, but he was expected to lose the presidential election that year because of his poor domestic record. Polls showed him lagging behind Dewey, again the Republican nominee, and to make matters worse the Democratic Party splintered. Former vice president Henry A. Wallace headed the Progressive Party ticket, which pledged to improve Soviet-American relations whatever the cost. Southerners, known as Dixiecrats, who were alienated by the Democratic Party's strong civil rights plank, formed the States' Rights Democratic Party and nominated Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president. These defections appeared to ensure Truman's defeat. Instead Truman won handily, receiving almost as many votes as his opponents combined. His support came largely from labour, which was upset by the Republican passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, from blacks, who strongly supported the Democrats' civil rights provisions, and from farmers, who preferred the higher agricultural subsidies promised by the Democrats, especially at a time when commodity prices were falling.

The Democrats regained control of Congress in 1948, but Truman's relations with that body continued to be troubled. In January 1949 he asked for a broad range of Fair Deal measures, with uneven results. Congress did approve a higher minimum wage, the extension of social security to 10 million additional persons, more public works, larger sums for the TVA and for rural electrification, and the Housing Act of 1949, which authorized construction of 810,000 units for low-income families. Truman failed, however, to persuade Congress to repeal Taft-Hartley, to reform the agricultural subsidy system, to secure federal aid to education, to adopt his civil rights program, or, most importantly, to accept his proposal for national health insurance. He succeeded nevertheless in protecting the New Deal principle of federal responsibility for social welfare, and he helped form the Democratic agenda for the 1960s.

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United States - World War II: After World War I most Americans concluded that participating in international affairs had been a mistake. They sought peace through isolation and throughout the 1920s advocated a policy of disarmament and nonintervention. As a result, relations with Latin-American nations improved substantially under Hoover, an anti-imperialist.

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February 15, 1942

Singapore was the primary British base in the pacific and was considered very strong, but Japan forced them to surrender easily using a strong strategy.

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Meanwhile, on February 8 and 9, three Japanese divisions had landed on Singapore Island; and on February 15 they forced the 90,000-strong British, Australian, and Indian garrison there, under Lieutenant General A.E. Percival, to surrender. Singapore was the major British base in the Pacific and had been regarded as unassailable due to its strong seaward defenses. The Japanese took it with comparative ease by advancing down the Malay Peninsula and then assaulting the base's landward side, which the British had left inadequately defended. On February 13, moreover, Japanese paratroopers had landed at Palembang in Sumatra, which fell to an amphibious assault three days later.

When ABDACOM was dissolved on February 25, 1942, only Java remained to complete the Japanese program of conquest. The Allies' desperate attempt to intercept the Japanese invasion fleet was defeated in the seven-hour Battle of the Java Sea on February 27, in which five Allied warships were lost and only one Japanese destroyer damaged. The Japanese landed at three points on Java on February 28 and rapidly expanded their beachheads. On March 9 the 20,000 Allied troops in Java surrendered. In the Indian Ocean, the Japanese captured the Andaman Islands on March 23, and began a series of attacks on British shipping. After the failure of ABDACOM, the U.S.-British Combined Chiefs of Staff placed the Pacific under the U.S. Joint Chiefs' strategic direction. MacArthur became supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific Area, which comprised the Dutch East Indies (less Sumatra), the Philippines, Australia, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomons; and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz became commander in chief of the Pacific Ocean Areas, which comprised virtually every area not under MacArthur. Their missions were to hold the U.S.-Australia line of communications, to contain the Japanese within the Pacific, to support the defense of North America, and to prepare for major amphibious counteroffensives.

Japan's initial war plans were realized with the capture of Java. But despite their military triumphs, the Japanese saw no indication that the Allies were ready for a negotiated peace. On the contrary, it seemed evident that an Allied counterstroke was in the making. The U.S. Pacific Fleet bombed the Marshall Islands on February 1, 1942, Wake Island on February 23, and Marcus Island (between Wake and Japan) on March 1. These moves, together with the bombing of Rabaul on February 23 and the establishment of bases in Australia and a line of communications across the South Pacific, made the Japanese decide to expand so as to cut the Allied line of communications to Australia. They planned to occupy New Caledonia, the Fiji Islands, and Samoa and also to seize eastern New Guinea, whence they would threaten Australia from an air base to be established at Port Moresby. They planned also to capture Midway Island in the North Pacific and to establish air bases in the Aleutians. In pursuance of this new program, Japanese troops occupied Lae and Salamaua in New Guinea and Buka in the Solomon Islands in March 1942 and Bougainville in the Solomons and the Admiralty Islands (north of New Guinea) early in April.

Something to raise the Allies' morale was achieved on April 18, 1942, when 16 U.S. bombers raided Tokyo-though they did little real damage except to the Japanese government's prestige. Far more important were the consequences of the U.S. intelligence services' detection of Japanese plans to seize Port Moresby and Tulagi (in the southern Solomons). Had these two places fallen, Japanese aircraft could have dominated the Coral Sea. In the event, after U.S. aircraft on May 3, 1942, had interfered with the Japanese landing on Tulagi, U.S. naval units, with aircraft, challenged the Japanese ships on their circuitous detour from Rabaul to Port Moresby. On May 5 and 6 the opposing carrier groups sought each other out, and the four-day Battle of the Coral Sea ensued. On May 7 planes from the Japanese carriers sank a U.S. destroyer and an oil tanker, but U.S. planes sank the Japanese light carrier Shoho and a cruiser; and the next day, though Japanese aircraft sank the U.S. carrier Lexington and damaged the carrier Yorktown, the large Japanese carrier Shokaku had to retire crippled. Finally, the Japanese lost so many planes in the battle that their enterprise against Port Moresby had to be abandoned.

Despite the mixed results of the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Japanese continued with their plan to seize Midway Island. Seeking a naval showdown with the remaining ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and counting on their own numerical superiority to secure a victory, the Japanese mustered four heavy and three light aircraft carriers, two seaplane carriers, 11 battleships, 15 cruisers, 44 destroyers, 15 submarines, and miscellaneous small vessels. The U.S. Pacific Fleet had only three heavy carriers, eight cruisers, 18 destroyers, and 19 submarines, though there were some 115 aircraft in support of it. The Americans, however, had the incomparable advantage of knowing the intentions of the Japanese in advance, thanks to the U.S. intelligence services' having broken the Japanese Navy's code and deciphered key radio transmissions. In the ensuing Battle of Midway, the Japanese ships destined to take Midway Island were attacked while still 500 miles from their target by U.S. bombers on June 3. The Japanese carriers were still able to launch their aircraft against Midway early on June 4, but in the ensuing battle, waves of carrier- and Midway-based U.S. bombers sank all four of the Japanese heavy carriers and one heavy cruiser. Appalled by this disaster, the Japanese began to retreat in the night of June 4-5. Though the U.S. carrier Yorktown was sunk by torpedo on June 6, Midway was saved from invasion. In the Aleutians, the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor effectively and on June 7 occupied Attu and Kiska.

The Battle of Midway was probably the turning point of the war in the Pacific, for Japan lost its first-line carrier strength and most of its navy's best trained pilots. Henceforth, the naval strengths of the Japanese and of the Allies were virtually equal. Having lost the strategic initiative, Japan canceled its plans to invade New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa.

The Chinese front and Burma, 1941-42

Japan's entry into war against the western Allies had its repercussions in China. Chiang Kai-shek's government on December 9, 1941, formally declared war not only against Japan (a formality long overdue) but also, with political rather than military intent, against Germany and Italy. Three Chinese armies were rushed to the Burmese frontier, since the Burma Road was the only land route whereby the western Allies could send supplies to the Nationalist Chinese government. On January 3, 1942, Chiang was recognized as supreme Allied commander for the China theatre of war; and a U.S. general, Joseph W. Stilwell, was sent to him to be his chief of staff. In the first eight weeks after Pearl Harbor, however, the major achievement of the Chinese was the definitive repulse, on January 15, 1942, of a long-sustained Japanese drive against Ch'ang-sha, on the Canton-Han-k'ou railway.

Thereafter, Chiang and Stilwell were largely preoccupied by efforts to check the Japanese advance into Burma. By mid-March 1942 two Chinese armies, under Stilwell's command, had crossed the Burmese frontier; but before the end of the month the Chinese force defending Toungoo, in central Burma between Rangoon and Mandalay, was nearly annihilated by the more soldierly Japanese. British and Indian units in Burma fared scarcely better, being driven into retreat by the enemy's numerical superiority both in the air and on the ground. On April 29 the Japanese took Lashio, the Burma Road's southern terminus, thus cutting the supply line to China and turning the Allies' northern flank. Under continued pressure, the British and Indian forces in the following month fell back through Kalewa to Imphāl (across the Indian border), while most of the Chinese retreated across the Salween River into China. By the end of 1942 all of Burma was in Japanese hands, China was effectively isolated (except by air), and India was exposed to the danger of a Japanese invasion through Burma.

Since the U.S. bombers that raided Tokyo on April 18 flew on to Chinese airfields, particularly to those in Chekiang (the coastal province south of Shanghai), the Japanese reacted by launching a powerful offensive to seize those airfields. By the end of July they had generally achieved their objectives.

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World War II - Fall of Singapore and Battle of Midway

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Singapore was the major British base in the Pacific and had been regarded as unassailable due to its strong seaward defenses. The Japanese took it with comparative ease by advancing down the Malay Peninsula and then assaulting the base's landward side, which the British had left inadequately defended.

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May 4–8, 1942

Air-sea battle fought between Japan and the Allies. Japan wanted to get Port Moresby in New Guinea, a key strategic point, but the Allies stopped and weakened them.

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Battle of the Coral Sea | Japanese-United States history

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Battle of the Coral Sea: Battle of the Coral Sea, (May 4-8, 1942) World War II naval and air engagement in which a U.S. fleet turned back a Japanese invasion force that had been heading for strategic Port Moresby in New Guinea.

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June 3–6, 1942

An important battle between the US and Japan in the Pacific. The US had broken Japan codes and prepared an ambush near Midway Island. They sank four Japanese aircraft carriers. After this, Japan was more vulnerable.

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Examine how the U.S. Navy defeated Japan's fleet to check Japanese expansion in the Battle of Midway Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article

Battle of Midway, (June 3-6, 1942), World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan's first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. Together with the Battle of Guadalcanal, the Battle of Midway ended the threat of further Japanese invasion in the Pacific.

Context

The Midway Islands were claimed for the United States on July 5, 1859, by Capt. N.C. Brooks. The coral atoll-consisting of Eastern Island and the larger Sand Island to the west-has a total land area of just 2.4 square miles (6.2 square km). Midway was formally annexed by the U.S. in 1867, and the same year a coal depot was established for transpacific steamers, but it was never used. For many years thereafter only slight attention was paid to Midway. In 1903 Pres. Theodore Roosevelt placed Midway under the administration of the U.S. Navy Department, and the atoll became a connecting point for the submarine cable being laid between Hawaii and the Philippines. It was not until the advent of air transportation that the real significance of Midway was appreciated. By 1935 the islands had become a regular stopover point for transpacific flights.

It was World War II which conclusively demonstrated the strategic importance of Midway. In 1940 the U.S. Navy began work on a major air and submarine base there. By the following year Eastern Island would boast three runways, while on Sand Island a seaplane hangar was built for a squadron of PBY Catalina flying boats. Sand Island was also home to Midway's defensive garrison as well as its power plant and radio facilities. Japan recognized that control of the atoll would be critical for its plans in the central Pacific. If the islands could be seized by Japan, then the American military presence in Hawaii, just 1,100 miles (1,770 km) to the southeast, could be seriously threatened. Furthermore, the supply lines between the United States and Australia could be severed, thereby crippling the Allied war effort and opening the southwest Pacific to conquest.

So prominent was Midway in Japanese war planning that it was included in the opening offensive of the Pacific War on December 7-8, 1941. Roughly 12 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese destroyers Sazanami and Ushio bombarded the power plant and seaplane hangar on Sand Island. Lieut. George Cannon, despite being seriously wounded by a Japanese shell, remained at his post to direct one of the island's defensive batteries. The Japanese ships were forced to retire, and Cannon, who died of his wounds, would be the first U.S. Marine to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II.

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Clash of carriers

Disposition of forces

Despite a strategic setback at the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 4-8, 1942), the Japanese had continued with plans to seize the Midway Islands and bases in the Aleutians. Seeking a naval showdown with the numerically inferior U.S. Pacific Fleet, Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku sent out the bulk of the Kidō Butai ("Mobile Force"), a massive carrier battle group under the command of Vice Adm. Nagumo Chuichi. The 4 heavy aircraft carriers Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga, and Soryu were supplemented by 2 light aircraft carriers, 2 seaplane carriers, 7 battleships, 15 cruisers, 42 destroyers, 10 submarines, and various support and escort vessels. Their orders were to engage and destroy the American fleet and invade Midway.

U.S. intelligence had divined Japanese intentions after breaking the Japanese JN25 naval code, and the Americans had time to prepare their defense. Adm. Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, could not muster a single battleship, however, and just two of his heavy carriers-the Hornet and the Enterprise-were combat ready. To further complicate matters, his most senior carrier commander, Vice Adm. William "Bull" Halsey, had been incapacitated by a serious bout of neurodermatitis and would miss the battle entirely. A third carrier, the Yorktown, had been so seriously damaged at the Battle of the Coral Sea that the Japanese believed it sunk, and it spent nearly two weeks limping back to Pearl Harbor. An initial damage assessment estimated that it would take three months to return the ship to service. Nimitz told repair crews that they had three days. Miraculously, after less than 72 hours in dry dock, the Yorktown steamed out of Pearl Harbor on the morning of May 30. It would join the rest of Nimitz's fleet, which included the Hornet, the Enterprise, 8 cruisers, and 18 destroyers at a rendezvous point optimistically code-named "Point Luck," 350 miles (560 km) northeast of Midway. There they awaited the advance of Yamamoto's armada. Whereas the Japanese had no land-based air support, the Americans could commit about 115 land-based Navy, Marine Corps, and Army Air Forces planes from Midway and Hawaii. The American fleet also included some 19 submarines.

June 3

The battle began at 9:04 am on June 3, 1942, when an American reconnaissance plane sighted lead elements of the invasion fleet some 500 miles (800 km) west of Midway and was fired upon by Japanese deck gunners. A second surface contact was made at 9:25 am, approximately 700 miles (1,100 km) west of Midway, with an American pilot reporting that he had located the "main body" of the Japanese fleet. In reality, these vessels represented only a small portion of the landing and occupation force.

Discover the significant events of June 4, 1942, during the Battle of Midway Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc/Kenny Chmielewski

At 12:30 pm a flight of U.S. Army Air Forces Boeing B-17 bombers was dispatched from Midway. In the late afternoon they struck ineffectually at part of the Japanese invasion force, which was by now about 220 miles (350 km) southwest of the U.S. fleet. American strategic bombers would demonstrate limited usefulness against moving naval targets at Midway and elsewhere in the Pacific, but they proved to be excellent reconnaissance platforms. Their high operational ceiling and long range meant that they could loiter for extended periods at altitudes unreachable by Japanese antiaircraft fire, while their onboard armament presented a formidable defense against carrier-based fighters.

About 9:15 pm, before the B-17s had returned, a quartet of Consolidated PBY Catalina seaplanes was launched from Midway. This group intercepted a Japanese surface force about 1:15 am in the early hours of June 4 and carried out a torpedo attack and strafing run. One of the Catalinas scored a hit on the Japanese tanker Akebono Maru; this would prove to be the only successful torpedo attack launched by an American aircraft during the entire battle. As the Catalinas made their way back to Midway, they were notified by radio that the islands were under attack by Japanese aircraft.

June 4

The attack on Midway

About 5:45 am on June 4, a Catalina pilot excitedly radioed the uncoded message, "Many planes heading Midway, bearing 320, distance 150." Within minutes, two of the Japanese carriers were sighted, and by 6:00 am virtually all of Midway's planes were airborne and on combat patrol. Just after 6:15 am more than two dozen Marine fighters-a mixture of Brewster F2A Buffaloes and Grumman F4F Wildcats-sighted and engaged the first wave of Japanese planes about 30 miles (48 km) from Midway. Formations of Japanese Aichi D3A "Val" dive-bombers and Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bombers were escorted by squadrons of Mitsubishi A6M " Zero " fighters. The American pilots were outnumbered roughly 4-to-1. Moreover, the Zero was demonstrably superior to both the Buffalo and the Wildcat. Despite the mismatch, the Marines lightly bloodied the attackers but paid an enormous cost, losing more than half their number in the process.

About 6:30 am, with the island's fighter screen largely neutralized, the aerial bombardment of Midway began. The Japanese attack lasted about half an hour and caused extensive damage to structures on both Eastern and Sand islands. Midway's runways were largely unharmed, however, possibly because the Japanese were planning to use them themselves once the invasion had been completed. Between the aerial engagement and Midway's antiaircraft defenses, the Japanese lost fewer than 10 planes in their attack on the island.

Midway attacks and Nagumo's decision

While Midway was absorbing the full force of the Japanese assault, land-based planes from Midway were converging on the Japanese fleet. Just after 7:00 am a quartet of U.S. Army Air Forces Martin B-26 Marauders began a torpedo attack run on the Akagi, Nagumo's flagship. They were closely followed by six U.S. Navy Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers. Most of the American planes were shot down in the attempt, and none scored hits, a fact that owed much to the dismal performance of U.S. Mark 13 torpedoes. The Imperial Japanese Navy, conversely, fielded aerial and surface torpedoes of outstanding quality, and the Japanese would retain the technological advantage in this area until the end of the war.

About this time Nagumo made a fateful decision. Midway's aircraft were obviously still active, and an after-action report from the Hiryu's air commander, Lieut. Joichi Tomonaga, indicated that a second attack on Midway would be necessary to suitably pacify the island ahead of the planned amphibious assault. In addition, Nagumo's scout planes had detected no trace of an American naval presence nearby. This was hardly the fault of the pilots, as the search area was an expanse of ocean larger than the entire United Kingdom and visibility was sharply reduced by cloud cover in some areas. At 7:15 am, believing that he retained the element of surprise and that the American fleet was no closer than Hawaii, Nagumo ordered that the fueled and ready planes on the Kaga and the Akagi were to have their torpedoes replaced with bombs. The situation changed abruptly at 7:28 am, when one of Nagumo's scouts reported sighting "10 enemy surface ships" but gave no indication of the makeup of this force. Now, faced with the possibility of American carriers in the area, Nagumo brought the rearming effort to halt. At 7:45 am he ordered those planes which had not yet had their torpedoes replaced to prepare for an attack on American naval units. The flight and hangar decks of the Japanese carriers were now covered with fueled and armed aircraft as well as unsecured ordnance.

Nearly an hour after the initial American strike at the Japanese carrier force, a second wave of Midway-based planes launched their attack. At 7:55 am a squadron of 16 U.S. Marine Corps Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers targeted the Soryu, scoring no hits and losing half their number to antiaircraft fire and Japanese fighters. Roughly 15 minutes later U.S. Army Air Forces B-17s carried out a high-level bombing of the carrier force to little effect but suffered no losses themselves. At approximately 8:20 am the last of Midway's planes, a squadron of 11 U.S. Marine Corps Vought SB2U Vindicator dive-bombers, targeted the Japanese battleship Haruna. Most of these planes were intercepted by the Japanese fighter screen, however, and the bombing runs that they did manage to carry out were not on target. Until this moment, the Battle of Midway was an unqualified Japanese victory.

Battle of Midway: Japanese aircraft carrier U.S. Air Force

As the Vindicators were being chased away, Nagumo finally received confirmation that the American naval force did, indeed, include a carrier. This news could not have come at a worse time. The planes from the attack on Midway were returning and low on fuel, and the fighters of Nagumo's combat air patrol were also in need of refueling and rearmament. If he chose to launch his ready aircraft for an attack on the imminent threat, he risked losing scores of skilled aviators as their planes splashed into the Pacific. Nagumo had also spent the previous 90 minutes demonstrating the futility of attempting uncoordinated attacks on a well-defended carrier battle group without fighter escort. Rather than risk the same outcome, Nagumo made a decision that would determine the course of the Pacific War. He would clear his flight decks and recover his planes before launching a concerted attack on the American fleet.

Attack by the American carriers

The American carriers were divided into two groups: Task Force 16, which included the Enterprise and the Hornet, under Halsey's replacement, Rear Adm. Raymond Spruance, and Task Force 17, which included the Yorktown, under Rear Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher. Due to his seniority in rank, Fletcher would have overall tactical command, but he granted Spruance significant operational latitude. This was fortunate, as Spruance was arguably the finest American naval commander of the war.

The flight of the Devastators

As the attack on Midway was unfolding, Fletcher and Spruance were monitoring signals traffic in an effort to determine the strength and position of the Japanese fleet. Just after 6:00 am, Midway radioed that two carriers had been sighted, and the American admirals acted immediately. Spruance's Task Force 16 was about 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Fletcher and Task Force 17, placing it closer to the Japanese fleet. Fletcher ordered Spruance to sail southwest and engage the enemy. Fletcher, who had scouts in the air, would recover his planes and hold the Yorktown in reserve against the threat of additional Japanese carriers. Hoping to catch the Japanese carriers before they could prepare a second attack on Midway, Spruance gambled by launching his planes at 7:00 am from a distance that all but guaranteed that many of his aircraft would not have enough fuel to return.

While the American carrier planes were attempting to close on the Japanese fleet, they were given no additional guidance on its whereabouts. The lack of communication between Midway and the carriers and between the carriers and their own planes would mean that the American strike force would arrive piecemeal if it arrived at all. Dozens of planes were forced to return to the Hornet, land at Midway, or ditch at sea without ever having located the Japanese. At 8:38 am, having recovered his scouts and believing that his fleet had been discovered by the Japanese, Fletcher began launching planes from the Yorktown.

About 9:20 am, 15 Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bombers from the Hornet became the first American carrier planes to strike at the Japanese. The attack of Torpedo Squadron 8 on the Soryu was an unmitigated disaster. Every one of the Devastators was shot down, and the squadron's sole survivor, pilot Ensign George Gay, would spend the next 30 hours floating in the Pacific as the battle raged around him. At 10:20 am torpedo squadrons from the Enterprise and Yorktown struck with similar results. Of the 41 Devastators launched at Midway, only six made it back to their carriers, and not a single one carried out a successful torpedo attack.

The Dauntlesses turn the tide

The Yorktown's Devastators were unique in that they were the only torpedo squadron to enter the battle with a fighter escort. A half-dozen Grumman F4F Wildcats from the Yorktown accompanied the slow-moving Devastators, and the Japanese combat air patrol responded immediately. They dropped down to near sea level to intercept the American fighters, unwittingly clearing the way for a new threat.

Battle of Midway U.S. Navy/National Archives/Naval Historical Center(Digital Photo Number: 80-G-17054)

Low on fuel and lacking any additional information about the whereabouts of the Japanese fleet, Lieut. Comdr. Wade McClusky was scanning the Pacific for any trace of the enemy. The Enterprise's air group commander had arrived at the estimated point of interception at 9:20 am, but Nagumo had changed course while they were en route. McClusky then made what Nimitz would later characterize as "one of the most important decisions of the battle." Rather than returning to the Enterprise with his squadron of Douglas SBD Dauntless dive-bombers, McClusky continued his search to the northwest, eventually spotting the Japanese destroyer Arashi as it hastened to catch up with the rest of the fleet. The Dauntlesses spotted the Kaga and the Akagi about 10:00 am and moved into attack position.

Diving out of the sun, the Enterprise's Dauntlesses struck at 10:22 am just as the torpedo attack was concluding, and quickly scored multiple devastating bomb hits on both the Kaga and the Akagi. Almost simultaneously, 17 Dauntlesses that had accompanied the Yorktown torpedo attack group dove on the Soryu. Within minutes the three Japanese carriers were in flames, and the momentum in the Pacific had shifted. Although the dive-bombers did not emerge unscathed-the Enterprise lost more than a dozen Dauntlesses-they had inflicted enormous damage on the Kidō Butai. As fires raged out of control, Nagumo was forced to abandon the Akagi, and he transferred his flag to the light cruiser Nagara.

The Hiryu strikes back

About 10:50 am, as the other three Japanese carriers burned, Rear Adm. Tamon Yamaguchi, commander of the battle group which included the Soryu and the Hiryu, ordered a hastily assembled attack force into the air. For the next half hour, until Nagumo had reestablished his flagship, Yamaguchi would serve as the effective commander of what remained of the Japanese fleet. The Hiryu's planes followed the American strike force back to the Yorktown, and, just after noon, they carried out a dive-bombing attack that left the American carrier dead in the water. Although the American fighter screen and antiaircraft defenses had exacted a punishing toll on the Japanese, three bomb hits had seriously-but not fatally-damaged the Yorktown. While repair teams worked to patch the flight deck and restore operation to the ship's boilers, Fletcher transferred his flag to the cruiser Astoria.

Battle of Midway 2rd Class William G. Roy-U.S. Navy/NARA

An hour of frenzied work brought most of the Yorktown's boilers back online, and by 2:30 pm the ship was underway. Within minutes, however, a second wave of planes from the Hiryu pounced on the carrier. A pair of torpedo hits brought the Yorktown to a stop for a second time, and the ship began to list dangerously. At 2:55 pm the Yorktown 's captain, Capt. Elliott Buckmaster, gave the order to abandon ship.

Spruance in command

By this time, however, American scouts had located the Hiryu, and a mixed force of Dauntlesses from the Enterprise and the Yorktown took to the skies at 3:30 pm. They were soon joined by additional dive-bombers from the Hornet. The American bombers would travel without escort, as all available fighters were tasked with maintaining a combat air patrol over the fleet. Just before 4:00 pm Fletcher, recognizing that Task Force 17 had ceased to be a functional carrier battle group and not wishing to waste precious time by transferring his flag to the Enterprise, turned over operational control of the fleet to Spruance.

The first wave of American bombers descended on the Hiryu about 5:00 pm and quickly reduced the Japanese carrier to a flaming wreck. At least four American bombs struck the Hiryu, and the Hornet's Dauntlesses, arriving a half hour later, turned their attention to other ships in the Hiryu 's battle group. This attack caused no significant damage to the remaining Japanese ships nor did a subsequent high-altitude strike by B-17s from Midway and Hawaii.

After recovering his planes, Spruance opted to sail Task Force 16 east, away from the day's action, rather than west in pursuit of the remnants of the Kidō Butai. History would prove this to be an exceptionally prudent course, as the Japanese navy excelled at night engagements, and their surface fleet, even accounting for the loss of four carriers, remained a significant threat. Retiring to the east also kept the American ships within range of Midway's land-based aircraft. The destroyer Hughes from Task Force 17 was tasked with guarding the crippled Yorktown overnight. That evening the Kaga and the Soryu both sank.

June 5-6

On June 5 the Yorktown was taken under tow and a salvage operation was begun. The Akagi and the Hiryu, both of which had managed to remain afloat through the night, were scuttled. Yamaguchi opted to go down with his flagship, and he was accompanied by the Hiryu's captain, Rear Adm. Tomeo Kaku. While such a decision was entirely in keeping with the Japanese honour code ( Bushidō) it deprived the Japanese navy of a highly esteemed flag officer as well as one of its most senior naval aviators.

Battle of Midway National Archives, Washington, D.C.

On the afternoon of June 5 Spruance dispatched nearly 60 bombers in an attempt to catch the retiring Japanese surface force, but the Americans succeeded in locating just one ship, the destroyer Tanikaze. The Tanikaze had been tasked with ensuring that the Hiryu actually sunk, and despite being the target of multiple attacks, it managed to escape largely unscathed and rejoin the Japanese fleet. Spruance renewed the pursuit the following day, and Dauntlesses from the Hornet and the Enterprise found a group of stragglers from the main Japanese fleet. With no fighter escort to protect them, the Japanese ships were easy prey for the dive-bombers. The cruiser Mikuma was sunk, and the cruiser Mogami as well as the destroyers Asashio and Arashio were seriously damaged.

Meanwhile, repair crews were working feverishly to save the Yorktown. The destroyer Hammann had tied up to the carrier early on the morning of June 6, and other ships joined a growing protective ring. Scores of men worked throughout the day to fight fires and bring flooding under control, and good progress was being made when, at 1:35 pm, lookouts spotted the wakes of incoming torpedoes. The Japanese submarine I-168 had approached the salvage operation undetected, and explosions soon rocked both the Hammann and the Yorktown. Almost immediately the order was given to abandon the Hammann, which sank within minutes. Some of the remaining destroyers launched a depth charges attack against the I-168, but the submarine escaped. The Yorktown, for all the damage it had sustained, somehow remained afloat but listing, and the salvage crew had hoped to resume work the following day. However, in the early morning hours of June 7, the Yorktown 's list increased, and about 5:00 am the carrier slipped beneath the waves "with all her battle flags flying."

Casualties and significance

The material losses suffered by Japan at Midway were catastrophic. Four carriers, a heavy cruiser, and more than 320 planes were sent to the bottom of the Pacific. Approximately 3,000 Japanese sailors and airmen were killed, and, because the Japanese fleet left the action area in relative haste, there was little opportunity to recover survivors who might have gone into the water. The victory cost the United States one carrier and a destroyer, as well as nearly 150 aircraft-more than two-thirds of which were carrier-based. American personnel losses were relatively light; 317 sailors, airmen, and Marines from the Midway garrison were killed.

In the days following the engagement, U.S. Navy patrols in the area around Midway recovered several survivors, including nearly three dozen crewmen from the engineering department of the Hiryu. Interrogation of these prisoners of war would provide the Americans with vital intelligence about Japanese naval capabilities. On June 21, more than two weeks after the battle, an American Catalina flying boat spotted the two-man crew of one of the Enterprise 's Devastators some 360 miles (roughly 580 km) north of Midway. They would be the last survivors of Midway to be recovered from the Pacific.

The official U.S. Navy combat narrative of the battle characterized Midway as "a victory of intelligence," and this was certainly the case. From the breaking of the Japanese JN25 naval code to the execution of a clever scheme to confirm that Midway was to be the target of the Japanese attack, American cryptanalysts played an outsize role at Midway. Intelligence alone did not win the battle, however. Both Fletcher and Spruance employed sound carrier tactics, and Fletcher's decision to cede operational control to Spruance late on June 4 ensured that the American command structure would not be disrupted at a key point of the battle.

The Battle of Midway brought the Pacific naval forces of Japan and the United States to approximate parity and marked a turning point of the military struggle between the two countries. It was also the most decisive naval defeat suffered by Japan since 1592, when Korean admiral Yi Sun-shin destroyed Toyotomi Hideyoshi's invasion fleet. For the Allies it was a great strategic victory: the Japanese were prompted to cancel their plans to invade New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa and lost all but the last vestiges of their earlier strategic initiative.
Michael Ray

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June 3, 1942 - June 6, 1942

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Battle of Midway | Significance & Outcome

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Battle of Midway (June 3-6, 1942), World War II naval battle, fought almost entirely with aircraft, in which the United States destroyed Japan's first-line carrier strength and most of its best trained naval pilots. The American victory effectively ended Japan's ability to prosecute an offensive war in the Pacific.

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World War I: The humilliation imposed to Germany created a desire for revenge and reconquer imposed by nationalism.

Escalating Agression: Multiple conflicts started to appear

Democracy weakness: Democracy was seen as a weak policy and dictatorships started to be more hostile.

Alliances: As a major conflict was being predicted, the countries started arranging themselves into groups in case of War.

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July 1–27 and October 23-November 11, 1942

German and Italian against British, Australian, New Zealander, South African and Indian Forces in Egypt. It was an important battle won by the Allies. The first battle ended in a stalemate, but the second one was decisive.

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Battles of El-Alamein, (1-27 July 1942, 23 October-11 November 1942), World War II events. After the First Battle of El-Alamein, Egypt (150 miles west of Cairo), ended in a stalemate, the second one was decisive. It marked the beginning of the end for the Axis in North Africa. The charismatic Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was comprehensively defeated by the British Eighth Army, and Allied material superiority meant that he had little chance of rallying his broken forces.

After the British had inflicted severe defeats on the Italian forces in North Africa, the German general Erwin Rommel was chosen commander of Axis forces in Libya (February 1941). In January 1942 his forces started a new drive eastward along the North African coast to seize the Suez Canal. After losing Benghazi in January, the British held the Germans in check until May. Then the German and Italian forces were able to destroy most of the British tank force, take Tobruk, and move eastward into Egypt, reaching the British defenses at El-Alamein on June 30, 1942. Rommel attacked this line on July 1, but the next day the British commander, Gen. Claude Auchinleck, counterattacked, and a battle of attrition developed. By mid-July Rommel was still at El-Alamein, blocked, and had even been thrown on the defensive, thus ending the first battle. The British had stopped his drive to overrun Egypt and seize the canal. Allied losses for this first battle amounted to some 13,250 killed or wounded of 150,000 troops; for the Axis, some 10,000 killed or wounded of 96,000 troops.

In the wake of this defensive success, Auchinleck was sacked, but his replacement was killed, paving the way for Bernard Montgomery to take command of Britain's Eight Army in North Africa. With Rommel on the defensive, Montgomery took this time to build up a sizeable army in preparation for a new offensive, the Second Battle of El-Alamein.

The British had built a defensive line at El-Alamein because the Qattara Depression to the south was impassable to mechanized forces. A narrow choke point prevented the German panzers from operating on their preferred southern flank with open terrain. Now that the British had moved over to the offensive, the proposed battlefield also suited the British Eighth Army, whose main strength lay in its artillery and infantry formations.

By mid-October 1942, Montgomery could deploy approximately double the number of men and tanks available to Rommel's German-Italian army. The British also enjoyed the invaluable advantage of air superiority over the battlefield. Aware that an attack was imminent, Rommel had prepared his defenses as best he could, sowing hundreds of thousands of antitank and antipersonnel mines along his front to slow any British advance. Rommel returned to Germany to recuperate from illness shortly before the British offensive was launched, command passing to a subordinate.

Montgomery's plan comprised a diversionary attack to the south, spearheaded by Free French troops, while the main attack would come in the northern sector, close to the coast. The British would break into the Axis line and force them to counterattack. In the process, the British would wear down the enemy's offensive capability.

On the night of 23-24 October a barrage from more than 800 guns heralded the offensive; British sappers, followed by infantry and tanks, advanced to clear paths through the minefields. Although the Axis commanders were taken aback at the violence of the assault, the Eighth Army's progress was painfully slow, the British armor failing to get to grips with the enemy. Rommel, meanwhile, mounted spirited counterattacks.

For a while it seemed that the Axis might bring the British offensive to a halt. The German minefields and accurate antitank fire produced a mounting toll of knocked-out British tanks. But progress by the infantry, especially the Australian and New Zealand Divisions, opened up corridors through the Axis defenses that the British could exploit. On 2 November Rommel signaled to Hitler that the battle was lost. Although initially refused permission to retreat, Rommel began the withdrawal of his German units, leaving his Italian allies-who lacked motor transport-to be mopped up by the British. By 4 November the motorized elements of the Axis were in full retreat, and because of the sluggish British follow-up they were allowed to escape virtually unscathed. But this was of limited strategic importance because the British victory at El-Alamein was confirmed by Operation Torch, the Anglo-American landings in North Africa on 8 November. The Axis forces were now being squeezed in the Allied vice, and their expulsion from North Africa was only a question of time.

Losses in second battle: Axis, 9,000 dead, 15,000 wounded, and 30,000 captured of 110,000 troops; Allied, 4,800 dead, 9,000 wounded of 195,000 troops.

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Battles of El-Alamein | WWII Turning Point, British Victory

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Battles of El-Alamein, (1-27 July 1942, 23 October-11 November 1942), World War II events. After the First Battle of El-Alamein, Egypt (150 miles west of Cairo), ended in a stalemate, the second one was decisive. It marked the beginning of the end for the Axis in North Africa.

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August 17, 1942

The conflict began when Germany launched an attack on Stalingrad. The objective was to seize it because of its industrial power and location near oil fields. The Soviets refused to surrender, turning the ruins into strong defensive positions. The battle quickly became one of the bloodiest in history.

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

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

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February 2, 1943

The Soviets managed to defend Stalingrad from the Germans. The Soviets stopped the German advance into the Soviet Union, worsening the situation for them.

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

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

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Battle of the Atlantic Turns in Allied Favor

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Battle of the Atlantic Turns in Allied Favor

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May 1943

The Allies needed to transport troops and supplies from North America to Europe. Germany tried to stop this using submarines to sink Allied ships.

The Allies used convoys to defend against German attacks. Over time, they developed better weapons, sonar, and radar technology. They also decoded German codes, which helped them to avoid the submarines. In 1943, the Allies started to win, this was a very important event that contributed to the Allies victory.

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Battle of the Atlantic, in World War II, a contest between the Western Allies and the Axis powers (particularly Germany) for the control of Atlantic sea routes. For the Allied powers, the battle had three objectives: blockade of the Axis powers in Europe, security of Allied sea movements, and freedom to project military power across the seas. The Axis, in turn, hoped to frustrate Allied use of the Atlantic to wage war. For British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the Battle of the Atlantic represented Germany's best chance to defeat the Western powers.

The first phase of the battle for the Atlantic lasted from the autumn of 1939 until the fall of France in June 1940. During that period the Anglo-French coalition drove German merchant shipping from the sea and established a fairly effective long-range blockade, while the German navy attempted to inflict some measure of damage on Allied forces at sea. The battle took a radically different turn in May-June 1940, following the Axis conquest of the Low Countries, the fall of France, and Italy's entry into the war on the Axis side. Britain lost French naval support just when its own sea power had been hurt by losses incurred in the retreat from Norway and the evacuation from Dunkirk and stretched by Italian belligerency. Axis air power imperiled and eventually barred the direct route through the Mediterranean Sea to the Suez Canal, forcing British shipping to use the long alternative route around the Cape of Good Hope. That cut the total cargo-carrying capacity of the British merchant marine almost in half at the very moment when German acquisition of naval and air bases on the Atlantic coast foreshadowed more destructive attacks on shipping in northern waters.

From the German perspective, with the conquest of western Europe complete, knocking Britain out of the war by attacking its trade seemed a manageable objective. Beginning in the autumn of 1940, German U-boat ( submarine) attacks were dramatically successful, and over the winter Germany also sent out its major surface warships and air power. However, the combined assault by air, surface, and submarine forces failed to force Britain to surrender. With help from burgeoning Canadian naval and air forces, a fully escorted transatlantic convoy system was in place by May 1941, the same month that the German surface attacks on Allied trade routes collapsed with the loss of the battleship .

At that critical juncture, the United States, though still technically a nonbelligerent, assumed a more active role in the Atlantic war. In 1940, through the Destroyers for Bases deal, the United States turned over 50 World War I destroyers to Great Britain, which helped to make good previous naval losses. In return, the United States received 99-year leases for bases in Newfoundland, in Bermuda, and at numerous points in the Caribbean. American units were also deployed in Iceland and Greenland. In addition, Canada built naval and air bases in Newfoundland. By the fall of 1941, the Americans were fully engaged in escorting shipping in the northwest Atlantic alongside the Canadians and British, and the U.S. Navy fought several battles with U-boats west of Iceland, where it had established advanced bases. The U-boats, meanwhile, were drawn off to the Mediterranean and the Arctic in support of Germany's new war with Russia while those attacking convoys on the Sierra Leone route suffered a tactical defeat by increasingly better-equipped British escort forces. By late 1941 the North Atlantic was comparatively quiet.

The United States' formal entry into the war in December 1941 opened a vast new area for U-boat operations in American waters just as U.S. forces were drawn off for the new war in the Pacific theatre. The German offensive off the U.S. East Coast in early 1942 found shipping entirely unguarded, and American efforts to protect it-anything short of adopting convoys-were utterly unsuccessful. As a result, Allied merchant shipping losses spiked between January and June 1942, when more tonnage was lost off the U.S. coast than the Allies had lost during the previous two and a half years. German U-boats also operated in considerable force along the South Atlantic ship lanes to Asia and the Middle East. The Allied campaign (1942-43) in the Mediterranean depended almost entirely upon seaborne supply shipped through submarine-infested waters. In addition, Allied convoys bound for the Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangelsk had to battle their way through savage air and undersea attacks.

As in 1941, help from Canada's expanding military came in a timely fashion in 1942 as Canadian naval and air forces filled the void left in the North Atlantic by the departure of U.S. forces to the Caribbean and Pacific. Canadians established the first convoys in the American zone, and American convoys soon followed. When transatlantic convoys shifted their western terminus from Halifax to New York City in September 1942, they were escorted by the Royal Canadian Navy. With more and better equipment, the convoy system was strengthened and extended throughout 1942. Meanwhile, unprecedented merchant shipbuilding, especially in the United States, had caught up and begun to forge ahead of losses by autumn of that year.

But the battle was not yet over. The progressive expansion of the convoy system in the Western Hemisphere had forced the U-boats back into the mid-Atlantic by late 1942, where the battle climaxed over the next six months. The crisis peaked in March, when the Allies' top-secret Ultra program suffered a lapse in intercepting and decrypting German communications for mid-ocean U-boats. During that gap the Germans enjoyed their final major successes of the war: every Allied convoy was sighted, and over half were attacked. By then decisions reached by Allied leaders at the Casablanca Conference of January 1943 had begun to push major naval and air reinforcements into the North Atlantic. Improving spring weather by April, modern radar equipment, repenetration of the U-boat codes, new escort aircraft carriers, very-long-range patrol aircraft, and aggressive tactics had resulted in a major defeat of Germany's submarine fleet by May.

Attempts by the Germans to renew the assault on Allied shipping by using acoustic homing torpedoes failed in the autumn of 1943, and so the U-boats retreated inshore, where they waged a guerrilla campaign against shipping. Allied victory in the Atlantic in 1943, coupled with the opening of the Mediterranean to through traffic later that year, translated into significant reductions in shipping losses. For the balance of the war, the Allies exercised unchallenged control of Atlantic sea-lanes.

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Battle of the Atlantic | Combatants, Significance, & Facts

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Battle of the Atlantic, in World War II, a contest between the Western Allies and the Axis powers (particularly Germany) for the control of Atlantic sea routes. The Allied objectives were to blockade the Axis powers in Europe, secure Allied sea movements, and project military power across the seas.

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September 3, 1943

After Mussolini was removed from power in July, Italy surrendered and signed an armistice.

This shocked Germany, who occupied Italy to try to stop Allied advances.

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By the summer of 1943 the Italian position was hopeless. Northern and eastern Africa had been lost, the northern Italian cities were being regularly bombed, war production was minimal, and morale had collapsed. So too had the Fascist regime, which could no longer command any obedience. Court circles began sounding out Allied terms, which of course included the removal of Mussolini. In July 1943 the Allies invaded Sicily, and within a few weeks they controlled the island. On July 24-25 the Fascist Grand Council met in Rome for the first time since the beginning of the war and passed a motion asking the king to resume his full constitutional powers-that is, to dismiss Mussolini. In a dramatic decision, a substantial majority of the members voted against the duce. The king dismissed Mussolini the same day and installed Marshal Pietro Badoglio, an elderly World War I veteran who had fought in Ethiopia, as prime minister. Spontaneous demonstrations followed throughout the country, in which statues of Mussolini were torn down, Fascist symbols removed, and political prisoners released. At first the authorities did not react, but, in the five days after July 25, troops shot dead 83 demonstrators. The army took over the key positions in Rome, the duce was arrested, and the main Fascist institutions, including the Fascist Party, were dissolved. On July 27 Badoglio formed an interim government that consisted mostly of ex-Fascists.

Badoglio assured Germany and the Italian people that the war would continue, but he also attempted, rather feebly, to reach armistice terms with the Allies. German troops began pouring into Italy. Heavy Allied bombing continued over most Italian cities. Strikes broke out throughout the country. Allied troops arrived on the Italian mainland in early September but met heavy resistance from the Germans at Salerno. The Badoglio government agreed to an armistice with the Allies, and U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander in chief in the Mediterranean, announced it on September 8, 1943. Under this agreement (the so-called Short Armistice), the Italian government promised to cease hostilities against the Allies and end its alliance with Germany.

The Germans immediately took over Rome. In the previous few weeks, they had already taken over most of central and northern Italy. The Italian army, left without orders even to defend Rome, was disintegrating despite some brave spontaneous fighting (the official beginning of the Resistance) at Porta San Paolo. The king and his government fled south to Brindisi, leaving Rome to the Germans. Chaos reigned among Italian troops, and thousands deserted, while others joined the Resistance forces. At Cephallenia, a Greek island, Italian troops refused to obey German orders to give up their arms, and thousands of them were shot or deported. In late September the Badoglio government signed a "Long Armistice," which virtually gave up military and political control over Italy, as well as control of the mass media and financial institutions, to the Allies. This agreement was not made public during the conflict.

Badoglio officially declared war on Germany on October 13. Italy became a war zone. For 18 months the Allies fought the Germans up the peninsula, wreaking untold devastation throughout the land. The Allies took Naples in October 1943 but reached Rome only in June 1944, Florence in August, and the northern cities in April 1945.

The Allies ruled the south after September 1943, and Badoglio's government had very little influence on events. The anti-Fascist parties, which detested Badoglio and wanted the king to abdicate, refused to join the government until April 1944, when the Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti agreed to do so. Scholars disagree on whether this decision was autonomous or came in response to orders from Moscow. When Rome was liberated, Victor Emmanuel was replaced by his son, Umberto, as "lieutenant general of the realm," and the leading anti-Fascist parties formed a nominal government led by the reformist Socialist Ivanoe Bonomi, who had been prime minister from 1921 to 1922.

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Italy - Unification, Fascism, Republic | Britannica

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Italy - Unification, Fascism, Republic: By the summer of 1943 the Italian position was hopeless. Northern and eastern Africa had been lost, the northern Italian cities were being regularly bombed, war production was minimal, and morale had collapsed. So too had the Fascist regime, which could no longer command any obedience.

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September 8, 1943

On September 8, 1943, Italy signed an armistice. In response, Germany quickly occupied northern and central Italy to stop the Allies from advancing. They rescued Mussolini and made him lead a puppet state in the north. The Allies then had to fight German forces in Italy until 1945.

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By the summer of 1943 the Italian position was hopeless. Northern and eastern Africa had been lost, the northern Italian cities were being regularly bombed, war production was minimal, and morale had collapsed. So too had the Fascist regime, which could no longer command any obedience. Court circles began sounding out Allied terms, which of course included the removal of Mussolini. In July 1943 the Allies invaded Sicily, and within a few weeks they controlled the island. On July 24-25 the Fascist Grand Council met in Rome for the first time since the beginning of the war and passed a motion asking the king to resume his full constitutional powers-that is, to dismiss Mussolini. In a dramatic decision, a substantial majority of the members voted against the duce. The king dismissed Mussolini the same day and installed Marshal Pietro Badoglio, an elderly World War I veteran who had fought in Ethiopia, as prime minister. Spontaneous demonstrations followed throughout the country, in which statues of Mussolini were torn down, Fascist symbols removed, and political prisoners released. At first the authorities did not react, but, in the five days after July 25, troops shot dead 83 demonstrators. The army took over the key positions in Rome, the duce was arrested, and the main Fascist institutions, including the Fascist Party, were dissolved. On July 27 Badoglio formed an interim government that consisted mostly of ex-Fascists.

Badoglio assured Germany and the Italian people that the war would continue, but he also attempted, rather feebly, to reach armistice terms with the Allies. German troops began pouring into Italy. Heavy Allied bombing continued over most Italian cities. Strikes broke out throughout the country. Allied troops arrived on the Italian mainland in early September but met heavy resistance from the Germans at Salerno. The Badoglio government agreed to an armistice with the Allies, and U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander in chief in the Mediterranean, announced it on September 8, 1943. Under this agreement (the so-called Short Armistice), the Italian government promised to cease hostilities against the Allies and end its alliance with Germany.

The Germans immediately took over Rome. In the previous few weeks, they had already taken over most of central and northern Italy. The Italian army, left without orders even to defend Rome, was disintegrating despite some brave spontaneous fighting (the official beginning of the Resistance) at Porta San Paolo. The king and his government fled south to Brindisi, leaving Rome to the Germans. Chaos reigned among Italian troops, and thousands deserted, while others joined the Resistance forces. At Cephallenia, a Greek island, Italian troops refused to obey German orders to give up their arms, and thousands of them were shot or deported. In late September the Badoglio government signed a "Long Armistice," which virtually gave up military and political control over Italy, as well as control of the mass media and financial institutions, to the Allies. This agreement was not made public during the conflict.

Badoglio officially declared war on Germany on October 13. Italy became a war zone. For 18 months the Allies fought the Germans up the peninsula, wreaking untold devastation throughout the land. The Allies took Naples in October 1943 but reached Rome only in June 1944, Florence in August, and the northern cities in April 1945.

The Allies ruled the south after September 1943, and Badoglio's government had very little influence on events. The anti-Fascist parties, which detested Badoglio and wanted the king to abdicate, refused to join the government until April 1944, when the Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliatti agreed to do so. Scholars disagree on whether this decision was autonomous or came in response to orders from Moscow. When Rome was liberated, Victor Emmanuel was replaced by his son, Umberto, as "lieutenant general of the realm," and the leading anti-Fascist parties formed a nominal government led by the reformist Socialist Ivanoe Bonomi, who had been prime minister from 1921 to 1922.

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Italy - Unification, Fascism, Republic | Britannica

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Italy - Unification, Fascism, Republic: By the summer of 1943 the Italian position was hopeless. Northern and eastern Africa had been lost, the northern Italian cities were being regularly bombed, war production was minimal, and morale had collapsed. So too had the Fascist regime, which could no longer command any obedience.

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November 28 – December 1, 1943

A conference between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, to discuss the opening of a second front in Western Europe.

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

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

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

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

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Michael Ray, Editor.

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

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

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

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November 28, 1943 - December 1, 1943

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Tehran Conference | Facts History, & Significance

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

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January 22, 1944

The Allies landed near Rome, to break through the German defenses, the Gustav Line. They wanted to surprise the Germans and gain territory quickly, but the Germans surrounded them and a fight occurred. The Allies won and liberated Rome in June.

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World War II - Italian Front, 1944: The Allies’ northward advance up the Italian peninsula to Rome was still blocked by Kesselring’s Gustav Line, which was hinged on Monte Cassino.

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June 6, 1944

Landing of US, British and Canadian forces in Normandy. The operation faced strong German defenses but succeeded in securing the beachheads. This made possible the liberation of France.

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also called:

Operation Overlord or D-Day

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date:

June 6, 1944 - July 9, 1944

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Hitler's Reich, east and west

In midsummer 1943, a year before the Anglo-American invasion of Normandy that would lead to the liberation of western Europe, Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht ("Armed Forces") still occupied all the territory it had gained in the blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939-41 and most of its Russian conquests of 1941-42. It also retained its foothold on the coast of North Africa, acquired when it had gone to the aid of its Italian ally in 1941. The Russian counteroffensives at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk had pushed back the perimeter of Hitler's Europe in the east. Yet he or his allies still controlled the whole of mainland Europe, except for neutral Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and Sweden. The Nazi war economy, though overshadowed by the growing power of America's, outmatched both that of Britain and that of the Soviet Union except in the key areas of tank and aircraft production. Without direct intervention by the western Allies on the Continent-an intervention that would centre on the commitment of a large American army-Hitler could count on prolonging his military dominance for years to come.

The second front

Since 1942 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had been pressing his allies, U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to mount a second front in the west. It was impossible in the circumstances. America's army was still forming, while the landing craft necessary to bring such an army across the English Channel had not yet been built. Nevertheless, Britain had begun to prepare theoretical plans for a return to the continental mainland soon after the retreat from Dunkirk, France, in 1940, and the Americans, immediately after Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, had started to frame their own timetable. Less inhibited than the British by perceived technical difficulties, the Americans pressed from the start for an early invasion-desirably in 1943, perhaps even in 1942. To that end George C. Marshall, Roosevelt's chief of staff, appointed a protégé, Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the U.S. Army's war plans division in December 1941 and commissioned him to design an operational scheme for Allied victory.

Swiftly convincing himself that the priority of "Germany first" agreed to by Roosevelt and Churchill in the Atlantic Charter was correct, Eisenhower framed proposals for a 1943 invasion (Operation Roundup) and another for 1942 (Operation Sledgehammer) in the event of a Russian collapse or a sudden weakening of Germany's position. Both plans were presented to the British in London in April 1942, and Roundup was adopted. The British, nevertheless, reserved objective doubts, and at subsequent Anglo-American conferences-in Washington in June, in London in July-they first quashed all thought of Sledgehammer and then succeeded in persuading the Americans to agree to a North African landing as the principal operation of 1942. Operation Torch, as the landing in North Africa was to be code-named, effectively postponed Roundup again, while subsequent operations in Sicily and the Italian mainland delayed preparations for the cross-Channel invasion through 1943 as well. The postponements were a principal cause of concern at inter-Allied conferences at Washington (code-named Trident, May 1943), Quebec (Quadrant, August 1943), Cairo (Sextant, November 1943), and Tehrān (Eureka, November-December 1943). At the last gathering, Roosevelt and Stalin combined against Churchill to insist on the adoption of May 1944 as an unalterable date for the invasion. In return, Stalin agreed to mount a simultaneous offensive in eastern Europe and to join in the war against Japan once Germany had been defeated.

Operation Overlord

The decision taken at Tehrān was a final indication of American determination to stage the cross-Channel invasion; it was also a defeat for Alan Brooke, Churchill's chief of staff and the principal opponent of premature action. Yet despite Brooke's procrastination, the British had in fact been proceeding with structural plans, coordinated by Lieut. Gen. Frederick Morgan, who had been appointed COSSAC (chief of staff to the supreme Allied commander [designate]) at the Anglo-American Casablanca Conference in January 1943. His staff's first plan for Operation Overlord (as the invasion was henceforth to be known) was for a landing in Normandy between Caen and the Cotentin Peninsula in a strength of three divisions, with two brigades to be air-dropped. Another 11 divisions were to be landed within the first two weeks through two artificial harbours that would be towed across the Channel. Once a foothold had been established, a force of a hundred divisions, the majority shipped directly from the United States, were to be assembled in France for a final assault on Germany. In January 1944 Eisenhower became supreme Allied commander, and the COSSAC staff was redesignated SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force).

Fortress Europe

Hitler had long been aware that the Anglo-American allies would eventually mount a cross-Channel invasion, but, as long as they dissipated their forces in the Mediterranean and as long as the campaign in the east demanded the commitment of all available German forces, he downplayed the threat. By November 1943, however, he accepted that it could be ignored no longer, and in his Directive Number 51 he announced that France would be reinforced. To oversee defensive preparations, Hitler appointed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, former commander of the Afrika Korps, as inspector of coastal defenses and then as commander of Army Group B, occupying the threatened Channel coast. As army group commander, Rommel officially reported to the longer-serving Commander in Chief West Gerd von Rundstedt, though the entire structure was locked into a rigid chain of command that deferred many operational decisions to the Führer himself.

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Normandy Invasion | Definition, Map, Photos, Casualties, & Facts

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The Normandy Invasion was the Allied invasion of western Europe during World War II. It was launched on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), with the simultaneous landing of U.S., British, and Canadian forces on five separate beachheads in Normandy, France. The success of the landings would play a key role in the defeat of the Nazi's Third Reich.

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August 25, 1944

Thanks to the Normandy Invasion, northern France was liberated. Then, the troops advanced to Germany liberating eventually all of France.

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Vichy's decline was paralleled by the rise of the anti-German underground. Within weeks of the 1940 collapse, tiny groups of men and women had begun to resist. Some collected military intelligence for transmission to London; some organized escape routes for British airmen who had been shot down; some circulated anti-German leaflets; some engaged in sabotage of railways and German installations. The Resistance movement received an important infusion of strength in June 1941, when Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union brought the French Communist Party into active participation in the anti-German struggle. It was further reinforced by the German decision to conscript French workers; many draftees took to the hills and joined guerrilla bands that took the name Maquis (meaning "underbrush"). A kind of national unity was finally achieved in May 1943, when de Gaulle's personal representative, Jean Moulin, succeeded in establishing a National Resistance Council (Conseil National de la Résistance) that joined all the major movements into one federation.

De Gaulle's original call for resistance had attracted only a handful of French citizens who happened to be in Britain at the time. But, as the British continued to fight, a trickle of volunteers from France began to find its way to his headquarters in London. De Gaulle promptly established an organization called Free France and in 1941 capped it with a body called the French National Committee (Comité National Français), for which he boldly claimed the status of a legal government-in-exile. During the next three years, first in London and then (after 1943) in Algiers, he insisted on his right to speak for France and on France's right to be heard as a Great Power in the councils of the Allies. His demands and his manner irked Churchill and Roosevelt and caused persistent tension. The U.S. government unsuccessfully attempted in 1942 to sidetrack him in favour of General Henri Giraud, who immediately after the Allied landings in North Africa was brought out of France to command the French armies in liberated North Africa and to assume a political role as well. De Gaulle arrived in Algiers in May 1943 and joined Giraud as copresident of a new French Committee of National Liberation. By the end of the year he had outmaneuvered Giraud and emerged as the unchallenged spokesman for French resisters everywhere. Even the Communists in 1943 grudgingly accepted his leadership.

Liberation

When the Allied forces landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the armed underground units had grown large enough to play a prominent role in the battles that followed-harassing the German forces and sabotaging railways and bridges. As the Germans gradually fell back, local Resistance organizations took over town halls and prefectures from Vichy incumbents. De Gaulle's provisional government immediately sent its own delegates into the liberated areas to ensure an orderly transfer of power. On August 19 Resistance forces in Paris launched an insurrection against the German occupiers, and on August 25 Free French units under General Jacques Leclerc entered the city. De Gaulle himself arrived later that day, and on the next he headed a triumphal parade down the Champs-Élysées. Most high-ranking Vichy officials (including Pétain and Laval) had moved eastward with the Germans; at the castle of Sigmaringen in Germany they adopted the posture of a government-in-exile.

De Gaulle's provisional government, formally recognized in October 1944 by the U.S., British, and Soviet governments, enjoyed unchallenged authority in liberated France. But the country had been stripped of raw materials and food by the Germans; the transportation system was severely disrupted by air bombardment and sabotage; 2.5 million French prisoners of war, conscripted workers, and deportees were still in German camps; and the task of liquidating the Vichy heritage threatened to cause grave domestic stress. An informal and spontaneous purge of Vichy officials or supporters had already begun in the summer of 1944; summary executions by Resistance bands appear to have exceeded 10,000.

A more systematic retribution followed. Special courts set up to try citizens accused of collaboration heard 125,000 cases during the next two years. Some 50,000 offenders were punished by "national degradation" (loss of civic rights for a period of years), almost 40,000 received prison terms, and between 700 and 800 were executed.

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France - Resistance, WWII, Liberation: Vichy's decline was paralleled by the rise of the anti-German underground. Within weeks of the 1940 collapse, tiny groups of men and women had begun to resist. Some collected military intelligence for transmission to London; some organized escape routes for British airmen who had been shot down; some circulated anti-German leaflets; some engaged in sabotage of railways and German installations.

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September 17–25, 1944

The operation consisted of a Nazi pursuit in France, a failed attempt to get into Germany.

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Operation Market Garden | Description & Facts

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As their armies pursued the retreating Germans across France during World War II, from September 17 to 27, 1944, in what became known as Operation Market Garden, Allied commanders debated alternative strategies on how to advance into Germany.

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December 16, 1944

Germany tried a counterattack to split Allied forces. Even though Germany had an initial advantage, the Allies were capable of containing it and finally won, weakening Germany.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Battle of the Bulge | Summary, Commanders, & Significance

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

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February 4–11, 1945

It was a major World War II conference of the Allied leaders Franklin D.Roosvelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, who gathered to organize how to defeat Germany.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Yalta Conference | Summary, Dates, Consequences, & Facts

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

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April 30, 1945

When Soviet soldiers entered Berlin, Hitler killed himself on April 30, 1945, in his underground bunker. People still argue about how he died, but most believe he shot himself. His wife, Eva Braun, also ended her life. As Hitler wanted, their bodies were burned and buried

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As Soviet troops entered the heart of Berlin, Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, in his underground bunker. Although there is some speculation about the manner of his death, it is widely believed that he shot himself. Eva Braun, whom he had recently married, also took her own life. According to his wishes, both bodies were burned and buried. Almost immediately, however, conspiracy theories began. The Soviets initially claimed that they were unable to confirm Hitler's death and later spread rumors that he was alive. According to subsequent reports, however, the Soviets recovered his burnt remains, which were identified through dental records. Hitler's body was secretly buried before being exhumed and cremated, with the ashes scattered in 1970.

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As Soviet troops entered the heart of Berlin, Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, in his underground bunker. Although there is some speculation about the manner of his death, it is widely believed that he shot himself. Eva Braun, whom he had recently married, also took her own life.

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May 7, 1945

After Hitler’s death, the Allies insisted in an unconditional surrender, which was signed at Reims on May 7, 1945, ending German participation in WW2.

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Germany’s surrender | World War II [1945] | Britannica

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Other articles where Germany’s surrender is discussed: Third Reich: The end of the Third Reich: …the Allies insisted upon an unconditional surrender, and this was signed at Reims on May 7, 1945, to take effect at midnight May 8–9. With the unconditional surrender, Hitler’s “Thousand-Year Reich” ceased to exist, and the responsibility for the government of the German people was assumed by the four occupying…

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August 6 and 9, 1945

American bombing raids on these Japanese cities that marked the first use of atomic weapons in war. Many people died due to the explosion and many more due to the radiation later.

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What were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

When were the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Who was involved in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Why did the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki happen?

What were the results of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during World War II, American bombing raids on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) that marked the first use of atomic weapons in war. Tens of thousands were killed in the initial explosions and many more would later succumb to radiation poisoning. On August 10, one day after the bombing of Nagasaki, the Japanese government issued a statement agreeing to accept the Allied surrender terms that had been dictated in the Potsdam Declaration.

Early atomic research

The turning point in the quest for atomic energy came in January 1939, eight months before the start of World War II. German scientists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, following a clue provided by Irène Joliot-Curie and Pavle Savić in France (1938), proved definitely that the bombardment of uranium with neutrons produced radioisotopes of barium, lanthanum, and other elements from the middle of the periodic table.

The significance of this discovery was communicated by Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch, two Jewish scientists who had fled Germany, to Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. Bohr had been preparing to journey to the United States, and he arrived in New York on January 16, 1939. He discussed the matter with Albert Einstein, John Archibald Wheeler, and others before announcing to the world on January 26 the discovery of a process that Meitner and Frisch had termed fission. Enrico Fermi proposed to Bohr that neutrons might be released during the fission process, thus raising the possibility of a sustained nuclear chain reaction. These revolutionary suggestions triggered a flurry of activity in the world of physics. Subsequent studies by Bohr and Wheeler indicated that fission did not occur in uranium-238, the isotope of uranium most commonly found in nature, but that fission could take place in uranium-235. Gradually many of the riddles surrounding fission were resolved, and by June 1940 the basic facts concerning the release of atomic energy were known throughout the scientific world.

The Manhattan Project

The American atomic program takes shape

While engaged in one war in Europe and another in the Pacific, the United States would launch the largest scientific effort undertaken to that time. It would involve 37 installations throughout the country, more than a dozen university laboratories, and 100,000 people, including the Nobel Prize-winning physicists Arthur Holly Compton, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Ernest Lawrence, and Harold Urey.

The first contact between the scientific community and the U.S. government regarding atomic research was made by George B. Pegram of Columbia University. Pegram arranged a conference between Fermi and officers of the U.S. Navy in March 1939. In July Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner conferred with Einstein, and the three later went to New York to meet with National Recovery Administration economist Alexander Sachs. Supported by a letter from Einstein, Sachs approached Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt and explained the significance of nuclear fission to him. Roosevelt formed the Advisory Committee on Uranium, appointing Lyman Briggs, director of the National Bureau of Standards, to serve as its chair. In February 1940 a fund of $6,000 was made available to begin research; by the time of its completion, the project's budget would exceed $2 billion.

U.S. officials were now well aware of Adolf Hitler's atomic ambitions. In his letter to Roosevelt, Einstein explicitly called attention to uranium reserves in Czechoslovakia that had fallen under the control of the Third Reich in March 1939. The British had also begun studying fission, and Urey and Pegram visited the United Kingdom to see what was being done there. By August 1943 a combined policy committee had been established with the United Kingdom and Canada. Later that year a number of scientists of those countries moved to the United States to join the project that by then was well underway.

On December 6, 1941, one day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the project was placed under the direction of Vannevar Bush and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Bush's staff included Harvard University Pres. James B. Conant, Pegram, Urey, and Lawrence, among others. Alongside this scientific body was created the "Top Policy Group," consisting of Bush, Conant, Roosevelt, U.S. Vice Pres. Henry Wallace, U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall.

Because there was no way of knowing in advance what technique would succeed in creating a functional bomb, it was decided to work simultaneously on several methods of isolating uranium-235 while also researching reactor development. The goal was twofold: to learn more about the chain reaction for bomb design and to develop a method of producing a new element, plutonium, which was expected to be fissile and could be isolated from uranium chemically. Lawrence and his team developed an electromagnetic separation process at the University of California, Berkeley, while Urey's group at Columbia University experimented with the conversion of uranium into a gaseous compound that was then permitted to diffuse through porous barriers. Both of these processes, particularly the diffusion method, required large complex facilities and huge amounts of electric power to produce even small amounts of separated uranium-235. It soon became clear that an enormous physical infrastructure would have to be built to support the project.

From Stagg Field to Los Alamos

On June 18, 1942, the War Department assigned management of construction work related to the project to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Manhattan District (much early atomic research-most notably Urey's group-was based at Manhattan's Columbia University). On September 17, 1942, Brig. Gen. Leslie R. Groves was placed in charge of all Army activities relating to the project. "Manhattan Project" became the code name applied to this body of atomic research that would extend across the country.

The first experimental reactor-a graphite cube about 8 feet (2.4 metres) on edge and containing about seven tons of uranium oxide-had been set up at Columbia University in July 1941. By the end of that year, reactor work had been transferred to the University of Chicago, where Arthur Holly Compton and his cryptically named "Metallurgical Laboratory" were considering related problems. On December 2, 1942, the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was carried out under Fermi's supervision in Chicago Pile No. 1, a reactor that Fermi had constructed in a squash court under the bleachers of Stagg Field, the university's football stadium. It had now been proven that the controlled release of atomic energy was feasible for the production of power and the manufacture of plutonium.

In February 1943 construction began on a pilot uranium enrichment plant located on the Clinch River in the Tennessee Valley, about 15 miles (about 24 km) west of Knoxville, Tennessee. The Clinton Engineer Works (later known as Oak Ridge) occupied a 70-square-mile (180-square-km) tract of land and came to employ roughly 5,000 technicians and maintenance personnel. For the project's full-sized reactors, however, a more isolated site would be necessary. Groves had expressed concern about the pilot reactor's proximity to Knoxville, and the larger reactors would have significantly greater power needs than could be accommodated in the Tennessee Valley.

In January 1943 Groves had selected a 580-square-mile (1,500-square-km) tract in south-central Washington for the project's plutonium production facilities. The location was desirable for its relative isolation and for the availability, in large quantities, of cooling water from the Columbia River and electric power from the Grand Coulee Dam and Bonneville Dam hydroelectric installations. The creation of what came to be known as the Hanford Engineer Works required a significant displacement of the local population. Residents of the towns of Hanford, Richland, and White Bluffs were given just 90 days to vacate their homes, and the Wanapum Native American people were forced to relocate to Priest Rapids, losing access to their traditional fishing grounds on the Columbia. At its peak in the summer of 1944, the huge complex at Hanford employed more than 50,000 people.

For the final stages of the project, it was necessary to find a location that was even more remote than Hanford for the purposes of both security and safety. A site was chosen by the Manhattan Project's scientific director, J. Robert Oppenheimer, on an isolated mesa at Los Alamos, New Mexico, 34 miles (55 km) north of Santa Fe. Beginning in April 1943, scientists and engineers began arriving at the Los Alamos Laboratory, as it was then called. Under Oppenheimer's direction, this team was tasked with developing methods of reducing the fissionable products of the Clinton and Hanford production plants to pure metal and fabricating that metal into the components of a deliverable weapon. The weapon had to be small enough that it could be dropped from a plane and simple enough that it could be fused to detonate at the proper moment in the air above the target. Most of these issues had to be addressed before any significant stores of fissionable material had been produced, so that the first adequate amounts could be used in a functional bomb. At its peak in 1945 more than 5,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, and their families lived at the Los Alamos site.

The Trinity test

Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, and within 24 hours Pres. Harry S. Truman had been briefed about the atomic bomb program by Stimson. Germany surrendered in May 1945, thus ending the war in Europe, but combat raged on in the Pacific. Sanguinary battles at Iwo Jima (February-March 1945) and Okinawa (April-June 1945) offered a preview of what an invasion of the Japanese home islands might look like, and there remained a strong impetus to see the Manhattan Project through to its conclusion. By the summer of 1945, the production plants had delivered a sufficient amount of fissionable material to produce a nuclear explosion, and bomb development had advanced to a point that an actual field test of a nuclear weapon could be conducted. Such a test would obviously be no simple affair. A vast array of complex equipment had to be assembled so that the success or failure of the test could be analyzed.

The bomb development teams at Los Alamos had settled on two possible designs. One, fueled by uranium-235, would utilize a "gun assembly" that used high explosives to shoot two subcritical slugs of fissionable material together in a hollow tube. The violent collision of the two slugs would cause the uranium-235 to reach critical mass, thus triggering a chain reaction and explosion. Engineers were confident that this comparatively simple design would work, but a sufficient quantity of uranium-235 would not be available until about August 1, 1945. The Hanford site would be able to deliver enough plutonium-239 for testing by early July, but Los Alamos scientists had determined that the gun assembly model would not be compatible with plutonium as a fuel source. An alternative design had been proposed, one that would use concentric layers of high explosives to implode the fissionable material under enormous pressures into a denser mass that would immediately achieve criticality. It was believed that this "implosion" design would be the most efficient way to weaponize the meagre amount of plutonium that had been produced thus far.

For the test, Oppenheimer selected a location on the Alamogordo Bombing Range (now White Sands Missile Range), 120 miles (193 km) south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He called the site "Trinity" in reference to one of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. The first atomic bomb-a plutonium implosion device called "Gadget"-was raised to the top of a 100-foot (30-metre) steel tower that was designated "Zero." The area at the base of the tower was marked as "Ground Zero," a term that would pass into common parlance to describe the centre of an (often catastrophic) event. Military officials and scientists occupied observation posts at distances ranging from 10,000 to 17,000 yards (9 to 15.5 km). They had been instructed to lie down with their feet toward the tower and to protect their eyes from the blinding flash of the explosion.

On the morning of the test, the skies were dark and it was raining, with occasional lightning. "Gadget" was detonated at 5:29:45 am on July 16, 1945. The explosion caused a flash that illuminated the mountain peaks 10 miles (16 km) away. Soon there followed a tremendous sustained roar accompanied by a tornado-like burst of wind. Where the tower had stood, there was a great surging ball of fire, followed by a mushroom cloud that rose some 40,000 feet (12,200 metres) into the sky. The heat of the explosion had completely vaporized the tower; in its place was a saucer-shaped crater about a half mile (800 metres) in diameter and 25 feet (almost 8 metres) deep. The floor of the crater was fused into a glassy jade-coloured mineral subsequently dubbed trinitite. The bomb had generated an explosive power equivalent to approximately 21,000 tons of trinitrotoluene (TNT). The blast was visible from a distance of 50 miles (80 km), and it shattered windows 125 miles (200 km) away. Residents of Gallup, New Mexico, more than 180 miles (290 km) from Ground Zero, reported feeling the ground shake. In an attempt to head off questions about the world-changing event that had occurred at Trinity, the army issued a brief statement to the press: "A remotely located ammunition magazine containing a considerable amount of high explosives and pyrotechnics exploded, but there was no loss of life or limb to anyone."

News of the successful test reached Truman, who was attending the final meeting of the "Big Three" Allied powers at Potsdam, Germany. Truman informed Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that the United States possessed "a new weapon of unusual destructive force." On July 26 the Big Three issued an ultimatum, calling on Japan to surrender unconditionally or face "prompt and utter destruction." When it became clear that no surrender was imminent, plans to use the bomb went into effect. Some within the Manhattan Project had argued for a demonstration explosion on an uninhabited site in the Pacific. This was considered but soon discarded, largely because of concerns that the demonstration bomb might not prompt sufficient reaction from the Japanese government. By this time, several dozen B-29 bombers had been modified to carry the weapons, and a staging base at Tinian, in the Mariana Islands, 1,500 miles (2,400 km) south of Japan, had been expanded into the largest airfield in the world.

The bombing of Hiroshima

On July 16, just hours after the successful completion of the Trinity test, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis left port at San Francisco with the gun assembly mechanism, roughly half of the U.S. supply of uranium-235, and several Los Alamos technicians. The remainder of the U.S. uranium-235 stockpile was flown to Tinian on transport planes. Upon the arrival of the Indianapolis at Tinian on July 26, assembly began on the bomb, dubbed Little Boy. The Indianapolis departed Tinian after the delivery, but it was sunk en route to the Philippines by the Japanese submarine I-58 on July 30. Hundreds of crew members who survived the torpedo attack died in the water while awaiting a rescue. The components of a second bomb, a plutonium device nicknamed Fat Man, were transported to Tinian by air. By August 2, 1945, both bombs had arrived at Tinian, and U.S. commanders were waiting only for a break in the weather to order the execution of Special Bombing Mission 13-an atomic attack on the Japanese home islands.

Groves had chaired the committee responsible for target selection, and by the end of May 1945 the list had been narrowed to Kokura, Hiroshima, Niigata, and Kyōto, all cities that had not yet been subjected to Gen. Curtis LeMay's strategic bombing campaign. Kyōto, Japan's ancient capital, was consistently placed at the top of the list, but Stimson appealed directly to Truman to remove it from consideration because of its cultural importance. Nagasaki was added in its place. Hiroshima became the primary target because of its military value-the city served as the headquarters of the Japanese Second Army-and because planners believed that the compactness of the urban centre would most vividly demonstrate the destructive power of the bomb.

The pilots, mechanics, and crews of the 509th Composite Group of the Twentieth Air Force had all trained with the specially modified B-29s that would serve as delivery vehicles for the bombs. Col. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., the commander of the 509th, would pilot the B-29 that would drop the first bomb. His 11-man crew included Maj. Thomas Ferebee as bombardier and Manhattan Project ordnance expert Capt. William ("Deak") Parsons as weaponeer. Tibbets personally selected plane number 82 for the mission, and, shortly before taking off at approximately 2:45 am on August 6, 1945, Tibbets asked a maintenance worker to paint his mother's name-Enola Gay-on the nose of the aircraft. Two other B-29s accompanied the Enola Gay to serve as observation and camera planes. Once the Enola Gay was airborne, Parsons added the final components to Little Boy. This was done because a number of the modified B-29s had crashed on takeoff, and there was some concern that a crash would cause a fully assembled bomb to detonate, wiping out the installation at Tinian.

The skies were clear, and the Enola Gay encountered no opposition while approaching the target. At 7:15 am (Tinian time) Parsons armed the weapon, and the Enola Gay ascended to an attack altitude of 31,000 feet (9,450 metres). A trio of B-29s had flown ahead of the strike force to perform weather reconnaissance over the primary (Hiroshima) and secondary (Kokura and Nagasaki) targets. The pilot of the Hiroshima mission radioed Tibbets that there was little cloud cover and that he should proceed to the primary target. Just after 8:00 am local time (9:00 am Tinian time), the crew of the Enola Gay sighted Hiroshima. At around 8:12 am Tibbets relinquished control of the aircraft to Ferebee, who began his bombing run. Ferebee's aim point was the Aioi Bridge, a distinctive T-shaped span over the Ōta River. Tibbets ordered his crew to don their protective goggles, and at 8:15 am the bomb was released. Tibbets immediately put the Enola Gay into a sharp turn that, he hoped, would carry it beyond the bomb's blast radius.

It took roughly 45 seconds for Little Boy to descend to an altitude of 1,900 feet (580 metres), at which point it exploded in the sky directly above Shima Hospital. Within a fraction of a second of the detonation, the temperature at ground level exceeded 7,000 °C (12,600 °F) and a powerful blast wave scoured the landscape. Out of a population of 343,000 inhabitants, some 70,000 people were killed instantly, and by the end of the year the death toll had surpassed 100,000. Two-thirds of the city area was destroyed. "Nuclear shadows" were all that remained of people who had been subjected to the intense thermal radiation. A massive mushroom cloud rose to a height of more than 40,000 feet (more than 12 km). Although less than 2 percent of the uranium-235 contained in Little Boy had achieved fission, the bomb was horrifying in its destructive power. The explosive yield was the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. Sgt. Bob Caron, the Enola Gay's tail gunner and the only member of the crew to directly observe the blast, described the scene as a "peep into hell." A series of shockwaves rocked the Enola Gay as it departed the area, and at a distance of nearly 400 miles (640 km) the mushroom cloud was still visible. Upon returning to Tinian, after a flight of just over 12 hours, Tibbets was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

Later that day, Truman addressed the people of the United States:

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It had more than 2,000 times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam," which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.

The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in development.

It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

Truman further noted, "We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history-and won." Poet and author James Agee, writing in Time, offered something of a counterpoint to Truman's speech:

The race had been won, the weapon had been used by those on whom civilization could best hope to depend; but the demonstration of power against living creatures instead of dead matter created a bottomless wound in the living conscience of the race. The rational mind had won the most Promethean of its conquests over nature, and had put into the hands of common man the fire and force of the sun itself.

News of Hiroshima's destruction was only slowly understood, and some Japanese officials argued that their own stalled atomic program had demonstrated how difficult it would be to create such a weapon. It was possible, they argued, that the bomb dropped on Hiroshima was the only one in the American arsenal. Other members of the Japanese government had been arguing for months in favour of a negotiated settlement, perhaps mediated by the Soviets. That window was abruptly closed on August 8, 1945, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, when the Soviet Union declared war against Japan.

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atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki

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Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki | Date, Significance, Timeline, Deaths, & Aftermath

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Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, during World War II, American bombing raids on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) that marked the first use of atomic weapons in war. Tens of thousands were killed in the blasts and thousands more would die of radiation poisoning.

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August 15, 1945

Due to the bombing raids, Japan had no other option than surrendering, ending WW2.

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The Allies' reply to the Japanese offer of August 10, 1945, agreed to respect the sovereign status of the Japanese emperor on condition that he should be subject to the directives of the supreme commander of the Allied Powers. On August 14 the Japanese in their turn agreed to this proviso. President Truman then announced Japan's readiness to surrender, and elaborate plans were made to bring the war to an end.

Missouri: Japanese surrender Army Signal Corps. Collection/U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (Image ID: USA C-2719)

Emperor Hirohito issued a proclamation to the Japanese people that they should accept the decision to surrender, and every effort was made to persuade them to accept the defeat that they had come to regard as unthinkable. Princes of the Imperial house were dispatched to distant Japanese Army forces in China and Korea to carry the emperor's message. A small group of diehard opponents of surrender attempted to assassinate Premier Danshaku Suzuki Kantarō, and other government leaders. It was feared for a time that some fanatical Japanese airmen might launch suicide attacks on the Allied occupation forces, but no such incidents occurred. In retrospect, it appears that the interval between August 14 and September 2, when the formal surrender ceremonies took place, was essential to enable the Japanese government to prepare the way for a peaceful surrender.

Truman designated MacArthur as supreme commander of the Allied Powers to accept the Japanese surrender and to command the troops who were to occupy Japan. Japanese emissaries flew to Manila to confer with U.S. authorities about the procedures to be followed. The formal surrender took place on the deck of the U.S. battleship , flagship of the Pacific Fleet, anchored in Tokyo Bay. During the last days of August, Allied troops had landed at the forts guarding the bay and at Yokosuka naval base. The Missouri flew from its foremast the flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. The Royal Navy was represented by HMS Duke of York, flying the flag of Adm. Sir Bruce Fraser. More than 250 ships representing all the Allied powers were anchored in the bay.

The ceremonies began at about 9:00 am on September 2, 1945. The nine members of the Japanese delegation, led by the foreign minister, Shigemitsu Mamoru, were brought to the Missouri from Yokohama in a U.S. destroyer. They stood facing the Allied commanders with two copies of the surrender document on a small table before them. As he opened the ceremony, MacArthur was accompanied by Nimitz and Halsey, and at his side were Lieut. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright and Lieut. Gen. Sir Arthur E. Percival, both of whom had recently been rescued from Japanese prison camps. After a few preliminary remarks, MacArthur invited the Japanese representatives to sign the instrument of surrender, which included the clear statement: "We hereby proclaim the unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters and of all Japanese armed forces and all armed forces under Japanese control wherever situated." Shigemitsu signed first, on behalf of the emperor and the Japanese government, followed by Gen. Umezu Yoshijiro, on behalf of the Imperial General Headquarters. The document was then also signed by MacArthur, Nimitz, and representatives of Great Britain, the U.S.S.R., China, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. After a 30-minute ceremony, hundreds of Allied warplanes from nearby carriers and land bases flew over Tokyo and additional ground troops were landed from the ships in Tokyo Bay.

Douglas MacArthur signing the Japanese surrender agreement Lt. C. F. Wheeler-Navy/U.S. Department of Defense

For purposes of carrying out the surrender of Japanese troops in Korea, the United States and the U.S.S.R. agreed to a demarcation line along the 38th parallel. It was a fateful decision that led to the division of the country into a communist North Korea and a democratic South Korea.

Casualties and the material cost of the Pacific War

The human cost of the Pacific War was enormous. Some 2,000,000 Japanese-including nearly 700,000 civilians-were killed as a result of military action, and hundreds of thousands more succumbed to disease or starvation. Of the Allied forces, the U.S. suffered the greatest losses, with more than 100,000 killed in action. Nearly 6,000 American civilians were killed in action, the overwhelming majority of whom were members of the merchant marine. Some 27,000 Filipino troops were killed in combat against the Japanese, while more than three times that many civilians were lost. Total Australian casualties topped 45,000, with some 17,500 of those killed. New Zealand suffered nearly 12,000 fatalities; as a ratio of total population, this was the highest casualty rate among Commonwealth nations. Some 2,600 Dutch soldiers and sailors were killed in combat, while more than three times that many died in Japanese captivity; nearly 17,000 Dutch civilians died while prisoners of war.

The Philippines suffered from three years of Japanese occupation and exploitation, and from the destruction wrought in the reconquest of the islands by the Americans in 1944-45. The harbour at Manila was wrecked by the retreating Japanese, and many portions of the city were demolished by bombardment.

In Japan, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey found the damage to urban centres comparable to that in Germany. In total, some 40 percent of the built-up areas of 66 Japanese cities was destroyed, and approximately 30 percent of the entire urban population of Japan lost their homes and many of their possessions. Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered the peculiar and lasting damage done by atomic explosion and radiation. Japan also lost about 80 percent of its merchant marine in the war in the Pacific.

The military relief effort in the Far East did not assume the proportions it did in Europe, since no western Allied armies entered China. Small quantities of relief supplies were shipped to the Philippines and the Dutch Indies under military auspices, but these programs were soon transferred to civilian control. There was no Asian equivalent of the Marshall Plan.

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Pacific War - Pacific War - The Japanese surrender: The Allies' reply to the Japanese offer of August 10, 1945, agreed to respect the sovereign status of the Japanese emperor on condition that he should be subject to the directives of the supreme commander of the Allied Powers.