Unit 7.7 - Conducting World War II

THEMATIC FOCUS

Governance

A variety of internal and external factors contribute to state formation, expansion, and decline. Governments maintain order through a variety of administrative institutions, policies, and procedures, and governments obtain, retain, and exercise power in different ways and for different purposes.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain similarities and differences in how governments used a variety of methods to conduct war.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

KC-6.2.IV.A.ii World War II was a total war. Governments used a variety of strategies, including political propaganda, art, media, and intensified forms of nationalism, to mobilize populations (both in the home countries and the colonies or former colonies) for the purpose of waging war. Governments used ideologies, including fascism and communism to mobilize all of their state’s resources for war and, in the case of totalitarian states, to repress basic freedoms and dominate many aspects of daily life during the course of the conflicts and beyond.

KC-6.1.III.C.ii New military technology and new tactics, including the atomic bomb, fire-bombing, and the waging of “total war” led to increased levels of wartime casualties.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

Western democracies mobilizing for war:

§ Great Britain under Winston Churchill

§ United States under Franklin Roosevelt

Totalitarian states mobilizing for war:

§ Germany under Adolf Hitler

§ USSR under Joseph Stalin

New military technology and new tactics:

§ waging of “total war”

§ fire-bombing

§ atomic bomb

Western democracies mobilizing for war

§ Great Britain under Winston Churchill

'bracing defeat' of Dunkirk and the fall of France in June 1940
- - Dunkirk -- Britain was able to evacuate 85% of their stranded troops between May 25-June 4, 1940
  - 338,226 men escaped, including 139,997 French, Polish, and Belgian troops
  - 30,000-40,000 more were left behind and captured by the Germans. Around 16,000 French soldiers and 1,000 British soldiers died during the evacuation
Technology
- - radar
    - - during the Battle of Britain (Blitz), this technology enabled the Royal Air Force (RAF) Fighter Command adequate notice of where and when to direct their fighter forces to repel German bombing raids.
  - Spitfire
    - - in short supply, was unsurpassed as an interceptor by any fighter in any other air force
      - British fighters were simply shooting down German bombers faster than German industry could produce them

§ United States under Franklin Roosevelt

1939 -- cash-and-carry policy of supplying the British, in which the British paid cash and carried the materials on their ships.
1941 -- lend-lease program
- - the United States “lent” destroyers and other war goods to the British in return for the lease of naval bases.
  - The program later extended such aid to the Soviets, the Chinese, and many others.

Totalitarian states mobilizing for war

§ Germany under Adolf Hitler

Operation Barbarossa

22 June 1941 -- Adolf Hitler ordered his armed forces to invade the Soviet Union
the German military assembled the largest and most powerful invasion force in history
- - 3.6 million soldiers
  - thirty-seven hundred tanks
  - twenty-five hundred planes
  - The governments of Hungary, Finland, and Romania augmented the German invasion force with their own military contingents totaling about thirty divisions.

§ USSR under Joseph Stalin

by 1941, Stalin had amassed a defense force including:
- - 360 divisions of the Red Army
  - the capacity of Soviet industry outstripped that of German industry
  - Soviets also received crucial equipment from their allies, notably trucks from the United States
  - United States manufactured thirteen million pairs of felt-lined winter boots for the Red Army
Stalin ordered Soviet industry to relocate to areas away from the front.
- - About 80 percent of firms manufacturing war matériel moved to the Ural Mountains between August and October 1941

New military technology and new tactics

§ Total War

President Franklin Roosevelt (USA) delivered one of his famous radio broadcasts, known as fireside chats. In it he explained the nature of the war: “This war is a new kind of war,” he said. “It is warfare in terms of every continent, every island, every sea, every air lane.”
almost every nation had participated in it
Battles raged across the vast Pacific and Atlantic oceans, across Europe and northern Africa, and throughout much of Asia
Virtually every weapon known to humanity was thrown into the war
entire societies engaged in warfare and mobilized every available material and human resource
heavily populated metropolitan areas became targets in unprecedented ways

§ fire-bombing

The Battle of Britain

the German Luftwaffe hoped to defeat Britain almost solely through air attacks
- - “The Blitz,” as the British called this air war

the Luftwaffe rained bombs on heavily populated metropolitan areas, especially London
- - killed more than forty thousand British civilians

firebombing of German cities

early 1943 Britain’s Royal Air Force had committed itself to area bombing in which centers of cities became the targets of nighttime raids.
U.S. planes attacked industrial targets in daytime
Dresden in February 1945
- - literally cooked German men, women, and children in their bomb shelters
  - 135,000 people died in the firestorm

firebombing of Tokyo

The release of napalm firebombs during low-altitude sorties at night met with devastating success
destroyed 25 percent of the city’s buildings
killed approximately one hundred thousand people, and made more than a million homeless

§ atomic bomb

Watch WW2 from Space -- (Atomic Bomb--1:20-end)

Hiroshima

August 6, 1945
- - blast destroyed everything within a radius of 1-mile from the center of the explosion, except for certain reinforced concrete frames
    - - heavy damage up to 3-miles from the blast
      - glass broken up to 12 miles from blast
  - over 1/4th of the population killed instantly (60,000 killed)
  - an additional 1/4th seriously injured

Nagasaki

August 9, 1945
- - total destruction over an area of 3 square miles
    - - over 1/3rd of the 50,000 buildings in the target area were destroyed or seriously damaged
  - 80,000 killed

The Soviet Union

The Soviet Union declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945
- - this new threat, combined with the devastation caused by the bombs, persuaded Emperor Hirohito (1901–1989) to surrender unconditionally

The Japanese surrendered on 15 August, and the war was officially over on 2 September 1945

Class Activity -- Watch The Fallen of World War II

The Fallen of World War II-Interactive

Re-watch the video and/or use the interactive version of it to dig deeper to answer the following questions in brief but sufficient

detail and by citing specific evidence

1. What does each person icon represent?

2. What two types of deaths are counted in this video?

3. How many American soldiers died in WWII?

4. How many soldiers died on “D-Day” in European Theatre?

5. How many American soldiers died at the “Battle of Okinawa” in the Pacific Theater?

6. How many German Deaths on the “Western Front” fighting Britain and the U.S.?

7. What happened at Stalingrad and how many Germans died there?

8. How many Germans died overall on the Eastern Front?

9. How many Soviets/Russians died on the Eastern Front?

10. How many Jewish people were killed during the “Holocaust”?

11. How many Jews were killed in the Death Camps vs. how many were killed by shooting?

12. What other groups, including totals, were killed as part of the Holocaust? Include totals.

13. Poland lost the highest percentage of its citizenry during WWII. What percentage died? How are they also part of the “Holocaust”? Elaborate/explain.

14. Which country, including totals, lost the most people (citizens/non-combatants and soldiers) overall during WWII?

15. How was Stalin’s cruelty towards his own people part of the figure above?

16. Which countries were guilty of targeting civilians, including totals? Who targeted cities (urban centers) most?

17. Overall, how many soldiers and civilians died in the European Theater during WWII?

18. From which two nations did the majority of deaths come from in the Pacific Theater? Include totals.

19. How many civilian deaths in the Pacific Theater can be attributed to Japanese War Crimes?

20. What country had the 2nd largest casualty total in the war (second only to Soviet Union)? Include totals.

21. How did the country above show a willingness to sacrifice it own people to the war effort as is evidenced by the “Yellow River Flood”? Include totals and elaborate and explain (consider comparing to 2004 Tsunami totals).

22. How many Japanese soldiers died fighting Chinese vs. fighting Americans in the Pacific Theatre? Include totals.

23. How many Japanese citizens died during American firebombing and/or nuclear bombing? Include totals.

24. How many people (soldiers & citizens) were killed in the Pacific Theatre? Include totals. (Caution: you may have to do math here).

25. How many total deaths (soldiers and civilians) were killed during WWII?

26. How does the death toll in WWII compared to previous wars in history? Compare WWII to 2+ previous wars in history using both raw statistics and statistics adjusted for population growth (proportional statistics).

27. The period after WWII has been coined “The Long Peace”. The authors of this film state that “saying anything” about post-WWII conflicts can be “controversial”. Explain this. Has it been a “Long Peace” or is this “too strong of a word” or is it a bit of both? Cite specific statistics and examples of the conflicts since WWII and how they compare.

DEBRIEF AND SUMMARY

Key Takeaways

A) Who won WWII?

If you want to answer that question by focusing on what nation sacrificed the most in order to defeat the Axis Powers, than the answer is the Soviet Union with its estimated over 20-millions civilian and soldiers killed
If you want to answer that question by focusing on who came out of the war in the strongest position then the answer is the United States.
- - US GDP -- doubles and becomes the worlds largest creditor
    - - 1/2 manufacturing production
      - controls 2/3 of the worlds gold stocks
  - US international military bases go from 14 to more than 30,000
  - US military goes from the 17 most powerful military in the world to number one.

B.) The Global Order had been restructured

1941 Atlantic Charter
- - F.D. Roosevelt's opposition to European colonialism was well known
  - Roosevelt insisted that the 1941 Atlantic Charter contain the following provision: “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.”
  - FDR wanted the USA on the side of anti-colonialism, but Truman in the Oval Office when WWII ended
A shift from a “world order” ruled by colonial powers to a world of nations
- - number of sovereign [independent] countries mushroomed from 50 to 192 from 1945 to the end of the twentieth century.
  - European powers like Great Britain will attempt to maintain a “Commonwealth” to maintain parity with the new geopolitical “Super Powers”