Notes

This new style of warfare became known as blitzkrieg (lightning war—the Germans actually used the term blitzkrieg to refer to a war of short duration, but it came to refer to combined-arms tactics of rapid maneuver). Germany quickly drove deep into Poland. Two weeks after the war began, the USSR invaded from the east; Joseph Stalin, leader of the USSR, had earlier signed a mutual non-aggression pact with Hitler, and secretly they had agreed to divide Poland between them. Before the end of the month, Poland had capitulated. In the coming months, Denmark, Norway, and the Baltic States also fell under Nazi control.

Utilizing Italy’s mountainous terrain, cut by only a few, narrow roads, the Germans and those Italians who continued to fight alongside them established a series of defensive positions such as the Gustav Line to slow the Allied advance and inflict heavy casualties. The German command in Italy did not surrender until May 2, 1945, just days before Allied victory in Europe.

Britain went through a series of commanders in North Africa before placing Lt. Gen. Bernard Montgomery in charge of Eighth Army there. After halting Rommel’s attacks near El Alamein in September 1942, Montgomery launched a counterattack with a 3:1 advantage in October. When the Afrika Korps ran short on fuel and ammunition, it retired to Tunisia.

The onslaught forced a bulge 50 miles wide and 70 miles deep into the American lines, giving it the name Battle of the Bulge. Staunch defenses at St. Vith and Bastogne caused the attack to grind to a halt, and by late January counterattacks had pushed the Germans back to their start line, minus 100,000 men and 700 fighting vehicles. Allied losses, primarily American, were 90,000 men and 300 fighting vehicles, but those losses could be replaced much more easily than the Germans could replace theirs.

On May 2, the German capital of Berlin surrendered to Soviet forces. On April 30, Hitler had committed suicide, along with his mistress Eva Braun, whom he had married just hours before, and other members of his inner circle. On May 8, an unconditional surrender was officially ratified. The war in Europe was over, but the war in the Pacific was still unfinished. Many soldiers, airmen and sailors who had survived war in Europe and the Atlantic began preparing to fight again, on the other side of the world.

In addition to bombing Pearl Harbor, Japan swept through British Malaya in a "bicycle blitzkrieg" and captured "impregnable Singapore," seizing more territory in a shorter amount of time than any nation since Napoleon’s France. It was now at war with China, the United States, the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations (notably Australia, New Zealand, India and Burma), and the Netherlands. (In 1938, Japanese forces had been decisively beaten by those of the Soviet Union in the Battle of Khalkin Gol, and those two nations signed a non-aggression pact that would last until the final weeks of World War II.)

Fighting was always brutal between the two sides, wherever they faced each other. Surrender was so shameful in Japan’s Bushido culture that, as one American officer expressed it after the war, "Every nation said its soldiers would fight to the last man. Only the Japanese did it." The names of islands like New Guinea, Tarawa, Peleliu, the Marianas, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and others would be written in the blood of Japanese, American, Australian and New Zealand servicemen.

March–June 1945 saw the last major battle for a Pacific island. Okinawa is just 60 miles long and just 18 miles across at its widest point. An assault force of 180,000 was sent to wrest it from 130,000 defenders. Over 107,000 Japanese military and civilian personnel died, including women who threw their babies into the sea from cliffs, then jumped themselves because Japanese propaganda had convinced them the Americans would torture them. The Americans lost some 13,000 dead and 49,000 wounded among their land forces. Additionally, kamikaze attacks sunk 36 American and British ships and damaged 368 more. One of the damaged, the USS Indianapolis, would be sent to California for repairs; it returned from there carrying the atom bomb to Tinian Island but was sunk shortly after delivering its lethal package.

On the American homefront, African Americans who had served in the war returned to find the old discrimination against them still in place. A civil rights movement developed, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as its best-known leader, that ended officially sanctioned segregation, discrimination in employment and other social ills. Mahatma Ghandi in India paved the way for civil rights movements in the U.S. and other countries through nonviolent means. In South Africa in 1948, however, conservatives narrowly defeated the moderate coalition that had guided the nation through World War II, and the new government instituted even stricter racial policies than had existed before, under the name apartheid (seperateness); apartheid continued until 1994.

The most destructive war in all of history, its exact cost in human lives is unknown, but casualties in World War II may have totaled 50 million service personnel and civilians killed. Nations suffering the highest losses, military and civilian, in descending order, are:
USSR: 42,000,000
Germany: 9,000,000
China: 4,000,000
Japan: 3,000,00

No one historic event can be said to have been the origin of World War II. Japan’s unexpected victory over czarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) left open the door for Japanese expansion in Asia and the Pacific. The United States U.S. Navy first developed plans in preparation for a naval war with Japan in 1890. War Plan Orange, as it was called, would be updated continually as technology advanced and greatly aided the U.S. during World War II.

The years between the first and second world wars were a time of instability during the worldwide Great Depression that began around 1930. It was also a time when some nations, including Germany, Italy and Japan developed intense nationalist feelings that led to a desire to expand: Germany in Northern and Eastern Europe, Italy in Africa and Greece, and Japan in Asia and the South Pacific. Germany had the added motivation of overturning (and ultimately avenging) the harsh terms forced on it at the conclusion of the First World War.

This new style of warfare became known as blitzkrieg (lightning war—the Germans actually used the term blitzkrieg to refer to a war of short duration, but it came to refer to combined-arms tactics of rapid maneuver). Germany quickly drove deep into Poland. Two weeks after the war began, the USSR invaded from the east; Joseph Stalin, leader of the USSR, had earlier signed a mutual non-aggression pact with Hitler, and secretly they had agreed to divide Poland between them. Before the end of the month, Poland had capitulated. In the coming months, Denmark, Norway, and the Baltic States also fell under Nazi control.

In May 1940, Germany shocked the world by rapidly invading and defeating the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and a British Expeditionary Force that was aiding the French. Operations began May 10 with attacks on Holland and ended June 25, when France signed an armistice that divided the country into occupied and unoccupied zones. The Germans controlled the occupied zones, in the north and northwest, which comprised three-fifths of the country; a new French government established at Vichy administered the southern two-fifths. Italy’s leader, Benito Mussolini, hoped to get in on the spoils and declared war on France June 10; Italian forces attacked southern France on June 21.

On July 10, an air war over England began, which British prime minister Winston Churchill termed the Battle of Britain. The German Luftwaffe was to knock out the Royal Air Force (RAF) in preparation for Operation Sealion, the proposed naval invasion of Britain, or force Churchill to seek a negotiated peace. Though it was a near-run thing, the defense mounted by the badly outmanned RAF led Hitler to abandon plans for the invasion; the Battle of Britain ended September 30.
The fighting in Europe began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Previously, Germany, led by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, had annexed Czechoslovakia and Austria without provoking a military response from France or Great Britain. Poland was a step too far; both of those nations declared war on Germany in support of Poland, but they were slow to take effective actions. The French military and government expected Poland would hold out till spring, allowing France time to mobilize. But Germany demonstrated the effectiveness of combined arms warfare, in which infantry, armor, artillery and aircraft work in coordination. This type of war required rapid communication; in preparation, the Germans had developed radios small enough that every vehicle could be equipped with one.
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