Notebook Page 47

World War II in Asia and Europe

Period 4: 1900 CE – Present
 The Asian Theatre
By the early 1930s, tensions between the Chinese and the Japanese
had grown in the areas won during earlier conflicts with China and Russia

By the late 1930s, Japan’s economy was failing, as was the West’s; as
such, the Japanese sought imperial conquest as a means of income

In 1937, Japan staged a Chinese nationalist attack on Japanese

railroads in Manchuria, and used it as an excuse to declare war

The Japanese quickly overwhelmed the un-modernized army of the Republic of China, and took the main cities

Western powers and the League of Nations opposed Japanese imperial aggression, especially when reports of
the inhumane acts, such as the rape, torture, and mass murder of thousands of Chinese occurred in Nanking

In lieu of direct conflict, the US and UK decided to engage in an oil embargo against Japan in 1941

With only six months worth of oil reserves, the Japanese decided the only course of action was to obtain access to oil
in the South Pacific by force, and with European forces engaged with or occupied by Nazi Germany after 1939, their
primary objective was to disable their only threat in the Pacific: the U.S. Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Japanese Invasion of China
Nanking Massacre
 Fascism in Spain
In the mid 1930s, a pivotal civil war broke out in Spain between
the elected communist government (known as the Republicans)
and a rebel fascist and royalist force (known as the Nationalists)

The war itself was funded and partially fought by the USSR and Nazi
Germany, aiding the Republican and Nationalist forces respectively

Siding with the Nationalists, Nazi Germany sent money, weapons,

and soldiers to aid their fellow fascist leader, Francisco Franco

The Nazis in particular used these conflicts to test their new military equipment and strategies

As practice, they firebombed entire cities, such as the city of Guernica, and utilized their new highly-mobile army to
practice military maneuvers known as the blitzkrieg: an aerial assault followed by the dividing of enemy forces with
densely packed groups of panzers (tanks) that were followed by infantry and automobiles to overwhelm enemies

With Nazi support, the Nationalists were successful, and the fascist dictator Francisco Franco ruled Spain until 1971
Guernica, Pablo Picasso, 1937
 Pan-German Expansionism
Following up on his promise to restore German glory, Hitler began remilitarizing in 1936 and
positioned troops near France—both of which were forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles

Violating the Treaty of Versailles further, Germany annexed the German-speaking

country of Austria in 1938, while the UK and France remained neutral, hoping to
avoid another costly war

Next, Hitler, looking to further his Pan-Germanic goal of uniting all German
speakers, sought to add the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia

Rather than start another war, the UK and France decided to appease Hitler,
and let him take the Sudetenland; this was known as the Munich Agreement

Hitler agreed to take the Sudetenland without force, and finish his goal of uniting German people;
instead, he openly violated the agreement and launched a full-scale invasion of Czechoslovakia

When the UK and France again did nothing, Nazi Germany set their sights on the German-majority
portions of Poland taken from Germany after World War I

After the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the UK and France declared war on Germany,
and while fighting would not commence for another seven months, World War II officially began in Europe
 The European Theatre
Initially, Hitler wanted to avoid war with the two Western powers and attack Slavic lands for German ‘living
space’ as a part of his perceived racial struggle

However, using the blitzkrieg tactics, and sweeping behind the Allied forces through the Ardennes Forest
during the Battle of France, France was forced to surrender within a few months

Thinking he had won in Western Europe, Hitler then attacked his temporary ally, the Soviet Union, in 1941,
despite jointly invading Poland with the USSR and promising peace in the Nazi-Soviet Non-aggression Pact

In Eastern and Southern Europe, Hitler and the Nazis setup deathcamps (Auschwitz,
Treblinka, etc.) designed to kill all Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, and other ‘inferior’ peoples

While Nazi Germany made swift gains, the USSR absorbed the initial offensive and
began to counterattack Germany in 1942-43 following a long, costly victory at Stalingrad

Following an Allied D-Day invasion at Normandy, France in 1944, the US,

UK, and USSR closed in on Berlin, which surrendered to the Allies in 1945
 Anglo-American Innovation
Axis advances were halted in part due to several innovations
developed by the British and Americans during World War II

To drastically reduce the effect of German Luftwaffe bombing raids

on Great Britain, the invention of radar helped scout attacks, as
well as allowed civilians take shelter before bombing commenced

Additionally, the invention of sonar helped British and American

ships to locate, void, or destroy German and Japanese submarines

Lastly, code breaking greatly aided the Allied forces as both

the German and Japanese codes were broken relatively early

The Polish Resistance were able to steal a German enigma machine (their primary encoding mechanism),
and Alan Turing and his associates essentially invented the modern computer to break the code daily

For the Japanese, the Americans broke their code early on; the American code was never broken, as
the US utilized Navajo Speakers to protect the code with a language the Japanese knew nothing about
 The End of World War II
While the expansion of the allied Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) reach their maximum in 1942, the American and
Soviet victories at Midway in the Pacific and Stalingrad in Europe respectively turned the tide

In the Pacific, the US victory at Midway in 1942 established American naval supremacy, and, despite heavy
Japanese resistance, the US Navy slowly retook Japanese-occupied territories over the next three years

To avoid a costly invasion of Japan, the United States opted to issue Japan a
chance to surrender before unleashing the world’s first atomic bomb: a bomb
developed by a top-secret US nuclear program known as the Manhattan Project

When Japan refused to surrender, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki; Japan promptly surrendered in September 1945, thus ending World War II