-
Benito Mussolini's fascist government in Italy
Benito Mussolini was establishing a totalitarian regime in
Italy, where unemployment and inflation produced bitter strikes, some communist-led. Alarmed by these threats, the middle and upper classes demanded stronger leadership.By 1921, Mussolini had established the Fascist Party. Fascism stressed nationalism and placed the interests of the state above those of individuals. In October 1922, he marched on Rome with thousands of his followers.The ''Black shirts" -
Third Reich
By mid 1932, the Nazis had become the strongest political party in Germany. In January 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor (prime minister). Once in power, Hitler quickly dismantled Germany’s democratic Weimar Republic. In its place he established the Third Reich, or Third German Empire. According to Hitler, the Third
Reich would be a “Thousand-Year Reich”—it would last for a thousand years. -
Hitler invades the Rhineland
In 1935, he began a military buildup in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. A year later, he sent troops into the Rhineland, a German region bordering France and Belgium that was demilitarized as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. The League did nothing to stop Hitler. -
Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia
Meanwhile, Mussolini began building his new Roman Empire. His first target was Ethiopia, one of Africa’s few remaining independent countries. By the fall of 1935, tens of thousands of Italian soldiers stood ready to advance on Ethiopia. The League of Nations reacted with brave talk of “collective resistance to all acts of unprovoked aggression.” -
Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia(2)
When the invasion began, however, the League’s response was an ineffective economic boycott—little more than a slap on Italy’s wrist. By May 1936, Ethiopia had fallen. In desperation, Haile Selassie, the ousted Ethiopian emperor, appealed to the League for assistance. Nothing was done. “It is us today,” he told them. “It will be you tomorrow.” -
Francisco Franco
In 1936, a group of Spanish army officers led by General Francisco Franco, rebelled against the Spanish republic. Revolts broke out all
over Spain, and the Spanish Civil War began. The war aroused passions not only in Spain but throughout the world. About 3,000 Americans formed the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and traveled to Spain to fight against Franco. “We knew, we just knew,” recalled Martha Gellhorn, “that Spain was the place to stop fascism.”Among the African American still bitter about Mus -
Rome-Berlin Axis
Such limited aid was not sufficient to stop the spread of fascism, however. The Western democracies remained neutral. Although the Soviet Union sent equipment and advisers, Hitler and Mussolini backed Franco’s forces with troops, weapons, tanks, and fighter planes. The war forged a close relationship between the German and Italian dictators, who signed a formal alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.almost 500,000 lives, Franco’s victory in 1939 established him as Spain’s fascist dictator. -
Nonaggression pact
As tensions rose over Poland, Stalin surprised everyone by signing a nonaggression pact with Hitler. Once bitter enemies, on August 23, 1939 fascist Germany and communist Russia now committed never to attack each other. Germany and the Soviet Union also signed a second, secret pact, agreeing to divide Poland between them. With the danger of a two-front war eliminated, the fate of Poland was sealed. -
Blitzkrieg
At the same time, German tanks raced across the Polish countryside, spreading terror and confusion.This invasion was the first test of Germany’s newest military strategy, the blitzkrieg, or lightning war. Blitzkrieg made use of advances in military technology—such as fast tanks and more powerful aircraft—to take the enemy by surprise and then quickly crush all opposition with overwhelming force. On September 3, two days following the terror Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany -
Britain and France declare war on Germany
Major fighting was over in three weeks, long before France, Britain, and their allies could mount a defense. In the last week of fighting, the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east, grabbing
some of its territory. The portion Germany annexed in western Poland contained almost two-thirds of Poland’s population. By the end of the month, Poland had ceased to exist—and World War II had begun. -
The Battle of Britain
In the summer of 1940, the Germans began to assemble an invasion fleet along the French coast. Because its naval power could not compete with that of Britain, Germany also launched an air war at the same time. The Luftwaffe began making bombing runs over Britain. Its goal was to gain total control of the
skies by destroying Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF). Hitler
had 2,600 planes at his disposal. On a single day—August
15— 2,000 German planes ranged over
Britain.Fight fall and spring -
Pearl Harbor attack
Early the next morning, a Japanese dive-bomber swooped low over Pearl Harbor— the largest U.S. naval base in the Pacific. The bomber was followed by more than 180 Japanese warplanes
launched from six aircraft carriers. As the first Japanese bombs found their targets, a radio operator flashed this message: “Air raid on Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill.” -
US convoy system
The Allies responded by organizing their cargo ships into convoys. Convoys were groups of ships traveling together for mutual protection, as they had done in the First World War. The convoys were escorted across the Atlantic by destroyers equipped with sonar for detecting submarines underwater. They were also accompanied by airplanes that used radar to spot U-boats on the ocean’s surface. -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Germans had been fighting in the Soviet Union since June 1941. In November 1941, the bitter cold had stopped them in their tracks outside the Soviet cities of Moscow and Leningrad. When spring came, the German tanks were ready to roll. In the summer of 1942, the Germans took the offensive in the southern Soviet Union. Hitler hoped to capture Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains. He also wanted to wipe out Stalingrad, a major industrial center on the Volga River. -
Unconditional surrender
Like African Americans, most Mexican Americans served in segregated units. Seventeen MexicanAmerican soldiers were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. An all-Chicano unit—Company E of the 141st Regiment, 36th Division became one of the most decorated of the war -
Bloody Anzio
Japanese Americans also served in Italy and North Africa. At the urging of General Delos Emmons, the army created the 100th Battalion, which consisted of 1,300 Hawaiian Nisei. (The word Nisei refers to American citizens whose parents had emigrated from Japan.) The 100th saw brutal combat and became known as the Purple Heart Battalion. Later the 100th was merged into the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team. It became the most decorated unit in U.S. history. -
D-Day
Under Eisenhower’s direction in England, the Allies gathered a force of nearly 3 million British, American, and Canadian troops, together with mountains of military equipment and supplies. Eisenhower planned to attack Normandy in northern France. To keep their plans secret, the Allies set up a huge phantom army with its own headquarters and equipment. In radio messages they knew the Germans could read, Allied commanders sent orders to this makebelieve army to attack the French port of Calais 150 -
The Battle of the Bulge
On December 16, under cover of dense fog, eight German tank divisions broke through weak American defenses along an 80-mile front. Hitler hoped that a victory would split American and British forces and break up Allied supply lines. Tanks drove 60 miles into Allied territory, creating a bulge in the lines that gave this desperate last ditch offensive its name, the Battle of the Bulge. As the Germans swept westward, they captured 120 American GIs near Malmédy. -
Death of Hirtler
Hitler prepared for the end. On April 29, he married Eva Braun, his
longtime companion. The same day, he wrote out his last address to the German people. In it he blamed the Jews for starting the war and his generals for losing it. “I die with a happy heart aware of the
immeasurable deeds of our soldiers at the front. I myself and my wife choose to die in order to escape the disgrace of . .capitulation,” he said. The next day Hitler shot himself while his new wife swallowed poison. -
Harry S. Truman
President Roosevelt did not live to see V-E Day. On April 12, 1945, while posing for a portrait in Warm Springs, Georgia, the president had a stroke and died. That night, Vice President Harry S. Truman became the nation’s 33rd president. -
War Productions Board
The War Production Board (WPB) assumed that responsibility. The WPB decided which companies would convert from peacetime to wartime production and allocated raw materials to key industries. The WPB also organized drives to collect scrap iron, tin cans, paper, rags, and cooking fat for recycling into war goods. Across America, children scoured attics, cellars, garages, vacant lots, and back alleys, looking for useful junk. -
Adolf Hitler's rose to power in Germany
In Germany, Adolf Hitler had followed a path to power similar to Mussolini’s. At the end of World War I, Hitler had been a jobless soldier drifting around Germany. In 1919, he joined a struggling group called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as the Nazi Party. Despite its name, this party had no ties to socialism.Hitler also wanted to enforce racial “purification” at home. Nazism is the brand of the German. -
Mein Kampf
A third element of Nazism was national expansion. Hitler believed that for Germany to thrive, it needed more lebensraum, or living space. One of the Nazis’ aims, as Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, was “to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth,” even if this could be accomplished only by “the might of a victorious sword. -
Storm troopers
The Great Depression helped the Nazis come to power. Because of war debts and dependence on American loans and investments, Germany’s economy was hit hard. By 1932, some 6 million Germans were unemployed. Many men who were out of work joined Hitler’s private army, the storm troopers (or Brown Shirts). The German people were desperate and turned to Hitler as their last hope. -
Japanese invasion of Manchuria
The watchful League of Nations had been established after World War I to prevent just such aggressive acts. In this greatest test of the League’s power, representatives were sent to Manchuria to investigate the situation. Their report condemned Japan, who in turn simply quit the League. Meanwhile, the success of the Manchurian invasion put the militarists firmly in control of Japan’s government. -
Hitler's military build-up in Germany
The failure of the League of Nations
to take action against Japan did not escape the notice of Europe’s dictators. In 1933, Hitler pulled Germany out of the League. In 1935, he began a military buildup in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. -
Hitler's Anschluss
Austria was Hitler’s first target. The Paris Peace Conference following World War I had created the relatively small nation of Austria out of what was left of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The majority of Austria’s 6 million people were Germans who favored unification with Germany. On March 12, 1938, German troops marched into Austria unopposed. A day later, Germany announced that its Anschluss, or “union,” with Austria was complete. The United
States and the rest of the world did nothing. -
Munich Agreement
Hitler invited French premier Édouard Daladier and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain to meet with him in Munich. When they arrived, the führer declared that the annexation of the Sudetenland would be his “last territorial demand.” In their eagerness to avoid war, Daladier and Chamberlain chose to believe him. On
September 30, 1938, they signed the Munich Agreement, which turned the Sudetenland over to Germany without a single shot being fired. -
Hitler's invasion of the Netherlands
France’s Maginot Line proved to be ineffective; the German army threatened to bypass the line during its invasion of Belgium. Hitler’s generals sent their tanks through the Ardennes, a region of wooded ravines in northeast France, thereby avoiding British and French troops who thought the Ardennes were impassable. The Germans continued to march toward Paris. -
Germany and Italy's invasion of France
The German offensive trapped almost 400,000 British
and French soldiers as they fled to the beaches of Dunkirk on the French side of the English Channel. In less than a week, a makeshift fleet of fishing trawlers, tugboats, river barges, pleasure craft—more than 800 vessels in all—ferried about 330,000 British, French, and Belgian troops to safety across the Channel. -
Marshal Philippe Petain
After France fell, a French general named Charles de Gaulle fled to England, where he set up a government-in-exile. De Gaulle proclaimed defiantly, “France has lost a battle, but France has not lost the war.” -
Internment
To remove them would have destroyed the islands’ economy
and hindered U.S. military operations there. However, he was eventually forced to order the internment, or confinement, of 1,444 Japanese Americans, 1 percent of Hawaii’s Japanese-American population. -
Korematsu v. United States
Japanese Americans fought for justice, both in the courts and in Congress.The initial results were discouraging. In 1944, the Supreme Court decided, in Korematsu v. United States, that the government’s policy of evacuating Japanese Americans to camps was justified on the basis of “military necessity.” (See pages
596–597.) After the war, however, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) pushe -
Battle of the Atlantic
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler ordered submarine raids against ships along America’s east coast. The German aim in the Battle of the Atlantic was to prevent food and war materials from
reaching Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Britain depended on supplies from the sea. The 3,000-milelong shipping lanes from
North America were her lifeline. Hitler knew that if he cut that lifeline, Britain would be starved into submission. -
Operation Torch
The Italian campaign got off to a good start with the capture of Sicily in the summer of 1943. Stunned by their army’s collapse in Sicily, the Italian government forced dictator Benito Mussolini to resign. On July 25, 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III summoned Il Duce (Italian for “the leader”) to his palace, stripped him of power,
and had him arrested. “At this moment,” the king told Mussolini, “you are the most hated man in Italy.” Italians began celebrating the end of the war -
V-E Day
A week later, General Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich. On May 8, 1945, the Allies celebrated V-E Day—Victory in Europe Day. The war in Europe was finally over -
Lend-Lease Act
Roosevelt compared his plan to lending a garden hose to a neighbor whose house was on fire. He asserted that this was the only sensible thing to do to prevent the fire from spreading to your own property. Isolationists argued bitterly against the plan, but most Americans favored it, and Congress passed the LendLease Act in March 1941. -
Women's Auxiliary Army Corps
The military’s work force needs were so great that Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall pushed for the formation of a Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC). “There are innumerable duties now being performed by soldiers that can be done better by women,” Marshall said in support of a bill to establish the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps. Under this bill, women volunteers would serve in noncombat positions. -
Manhattan Project
Roosevelt responded by creating an Advisory Committee on Uranium to study the new discovery. In 1941, the committee reported that it would take from three to five years to build an atomic bomb. Hoping to shorten that time, the OSRD set
up an intensive program in 1942 to develop a bomb as quickly as possible. Because much of the early research was performed at Columbia University in Manhattan, the Manhattan Project became the code name for research work that extended across the country. -
Office of Price Administration
Roosevelt responded to this threat by creating the Office of Price Administration (OPA). The OPA fought inflation by freezing prices on most goods. Congress also raised income tax rates and extended the tax to millions of people who had never paid it before. The higher taxes reduced consumer demand on scarce goods by leaving workers with less to spend. -
Joseph Stalin's totalitarian government in the Soviet Union
Stalin moved to transform the Soviet Union from a backward rural nation into a great industrial power. In 1928, the Soviet dictator outlined the first of several “five-year plans,” to direct the industrialization. All economic activity was placed under state management. By 1937, the Soviet Union had become the world’s second-largest industrial power, surpassed in overall production only by the United States. The human costs of this transformation, however, were enormous. -
Phony war
For the next several months after the fall of Poland,
French and British troops on the Maginot Line, a system of fortifications built along France’s eastern border (see map on p. 538), sat staring into Germany, waiting for something to happen. On the Siegfried Line a few miles away German troops stared back. The blitzkrieg had given way to what the Germans called the sitzkrieg (“sitting war”), and what some newspapers referred to as the phony war. -
Hitler's invasion of Denmark and Norway
Suddenly, on April 9, 1940, Hitler launched a surprise invasion
of Denmark and Norway in order “to protect [those countries’] freedom and independence.” But in truth, Hitler planned to build bases along the coasts to strike at Great Britain. Next, Hitler turned against the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, which were overrun by the end of May. The phony war had ended