World History WWII
Battle of Kursk
The Battle of Kursk was a World War II engagement between German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front near Kursk in the Soviet Union during July and August 1943. The German offensive was code-named Operation Citadel and led to one of the largest armoured clashes in history, the Battle of Prokhorovka. The German offensive was countered by two Soviet counter-offensives, Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev and Operation Kutuzov. For the Germans, the battle represented the final strategic offensive they were able to mount in the east. For the Soviets, the victory gave the Red Army the strategic initiative for the rest of the war.
Chiang Kai-shek
A Chinese political and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China between 1928 and 1975.
Blitzkrieg
A German term for "lightning war," blitzkrieg is a military tactic designed to create disorganization among enemy forces through the use of mobile forces and locally concentrated firepower. Its successful execution results in short military campaigns, which preserves human lives and limits the expenditure of artillery.
Winston Churchill
A British politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955 and fought against the Axis in WWII.
Hideki Tojo
A general of the Imperial Japanese Army, the leader of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and the 40th Prime Minister of Japan during much of World War II, from October 17, 1941 to July 22, 1944.
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945.
Invasion of Sicily
After defeating Italy and Germany in the North African Campaign (November 8, 1942-May 13, 1943) of World War II (1939-45), the United States and Great Britain, the leading Allied powers, looked ahead to the invasion of occupied Europe and the final defeat of Nazi Germany. The Allies decided to move next against Italy, hoping an Allied invasion would remove that fascist regime from the war, secure the central Mediterranean and divert German divisions from the northwest coast of France where the Allies planned to attack in the near future. The Allies' Italian Campaign began with the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. After 38 days of fighting, the U.S. and Great Britain successfully drove German and Italian troops from Sicily and prepared to assault the Italian mainland.
The United States
After the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on the American naval fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the U.S. was thrust into World War II (1939-45), and everyday life across the country was dramatically altered. Food, gas and clothing were rationed. Communities conducted scrap metal drives. To help build the armaments necessary to win the war, women found employment as electricians, welders and riveters in defense plants. Japanese Americans had their rights as citizens stripped from them. People in the U.S. grew increasingly dependent on radio reports for news of the fighting overseas. And, while popular entertainment served to demonize the nation's enemies, it also was viewed as an escapist outlet that allowed Americans brief respites from war worries.
Siege on Leningrad
After the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, a German army surrounded the city of Leningrad in an extended siege beginning that September. In subsequent months, the city sought to establish supply lines from the Soviet interior and evacuate its citizens, often using a hazardous "ice and water road" across Lake Ladoga. A successful land corridor was created in January 1943, and the Red Army finally managed to drive off the Germans the following year. Altogether, the siege lasted nearly 900 days and resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million civilians.
Vichy France and Territories
Algeria, Corsica, France (2/5), and Morocco.
The Soviet Union
Although relations between the Soviet Union and the United States had been strained in the years before World War II, the U.S.-Soviet alliance of 1941-1945 was marked by a great degree of cooperation and was essential to securing the defeat of Nazi Germany. Without the remarkable efforts of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, the United States and Great Britain would have been hard pressed to score a decisive military victory over Nazi Germany.
The Atomic Bombs "Little Boy"-Uranium Bomb "Fat Man"-Plutonium Bomb
At approximately 8.15am on 6 August 1945 a US B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, instantly killing around 80,000 people. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, causing the deaths of 40,000 more. The dropping of the bombs, which occurred by executive order of US President Harry Truman, remains the only nuclear attack in history. In the months following the attack, roughly 100,000 more people died slow, horrendous deaths as a result of radiation poisoning.
Auschwitz Concentration and Death Camp
Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, opened in 1940 and was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps. Located in southern Poland, Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for political prisoners. However, it evolved into a network of camps where Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state were exterminated, often in gas chambers, or used as slave labor. Some prisoners were also subjected to barbaric medical experiments led by Josef Mengele (1911-79). During World War II (1939-45), more than 1 million people, by some accounts, lost their lives at Auschwitz. In January 1945, with the Soviet army approaching, Nazi officials ordered the camp abandoned and sent an estimated 60,000 prisoners on a forced march to other locations. When the Soviets entered Auschwitz, they found thousands of emaciated detainees and piles of corpses left behind.
Battle of New Britain (Rabaul)
Beginning in the summer of 1943 during World War II (1939-1945), U.S. forces in the Pacific launched Operation Cartwheel, a series of amphibious assaults aimed at encircling the major Japanese base at Rabaul, on the island of New Britain in the southwest Pacific. General Douglas MacArthur led the Allied advance through New Guinea, while Admiral William "Bull" Halsey led a simultaneous northward advance in the Solomon Islands. The two-pronged campaign was able to neutralize Rabaul by March 1944, effectively cutting it off from the rest of Japan's island positions in the Pacific.
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician, journalist, and leader of the National Fascist Party, ruling the country as Prime Minister from 1922 until his ousting in 1943.
Italy
Benito Mussolini dreamed of creating a new Roman Empire in the Mediterranean.
Axis-Controlled Areas
Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France (3/5), Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Tunisia, Yugoslavia, and some of the Soviet Union. (Japan side) Burma, Dutch Indies, French Indochina, Korea, Malaya, Manchukuo, Philippine Islands, Sarawak, Thailand, and part 0f China.
Allied-Controlled Areas
Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Trans-Jordan
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, commonly known by his initials FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States. A Democrat, he won a record four elections and served from March 1933 to his death in April 1945. He was a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic depression and total war. His program for relief, recovery and reform, known as the New Deal, involved the great expansion of the role of the federal government in the economy. A dominant leader of the Democratic Party, he built the New Deal Coalition that united labor unions, big city machines, white ethnics, African Americans, and rural white Southerners. The Coalition realigned American politics after 1932, creating the Fifth Party System and defining American liberalism for the middle third of the 20th century.
Bombing of Dresden
From February 13 to February 15, 1945, during the final months of World War II (1939-45), Allied forces bombed the historic city of Dresden, located in eastern Germany. The bombing was controversial because Dresden was neither important to German wartime production nor a major industrial center, and before the massive air raid of February 1945 it had not suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15, the city was a smoldering ruin and an unknown number of civilians—estimated at somewhere between 35,000 and 135,000-were dead.
Sudetenland
German name to refer to those northern, southwest, and western areas of Czechoslovakia.
Axis
Germany, Italy, Japan
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States. As the final running mate of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, Truman succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when Roosevelt died after months of declining health. Under Truman, the Allies successfully concluded World War II; in the aftermath of the conflict, tensions with the Soviet Union increased, marking the start of the Cold War.
US6 Studebaker Truck
In 1940, with war looming, General Motors Corp. developed a six-wheel drive (6×6) truck that entered U.S. Army service as the CCKW350. GIs called it the "Deuce and a Half," in reference to its 2½-ton cargo capacity. By war's end GMC had produced more than a half-million Deuces, fitted with a variety of configurations aft of the cab, including a cargo bed, water and gas tanks, enclosed vans, air compressors, dump bodies and a tractor mount for hauling semitrailers. GMC's primary consumer for the truck was the Army. International Harvester built its own version, the M-5H-6, for the U.S. Navy and Marines, while Studebaker built the US6 model primarily for the Allies through the Lend-Lease program.
Battle of the Bulge
In December 1944, Adolf Hitler attempted to split the Allied armies in northwest Europe by means of a surprise blitzkrieg thrust through the Ardennes to Antwerp. Caught off-guard, American units fought desperate battles to stem the German advance at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and Bastogne. As the Germans drove deeper into the Ardennes in an attempt to secure vital bridgeheads, the Allied line took on the appearance of a large bulge, giving rise to the battle's name. Lieutenant General George S. Patton's successful maneuvering of the Third Army to Bastogne proved vital to the Allied defense, leading to the neutralization of the German counteroffensive despite heavy casualties.
Battle of Arnhem
In September 1944, after the victorious end of the Normandy campaign, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery devised a daring operation to open the way to the Ruhr by seizing a bridgehead north of the Rhine, at Arnhem. On September 17, Operation Market, the largest airborne and glider operation in history (five thousand aircraft) was carried out by three Allied airborne divisions. Operation Garden was the ground side in which the Thirtieth (British) Corps was to link up with the British First Airborne at Arnhem by thrusting north along a narrow corridor opened by the U.S. Eighty-second and 101st Airborne Divisions. Then, the remainder of British Second Army would rapidly assault the Ruhr, thus hastening the collapse of the Third Reich and likely ending the war in 1944.
Battle of Kwajalein
In late January 1944, a combined force of U.S. Marine and Army troops launched an amphibious assault on three islets in the Kwajalein Atoll, a ring-shaped coral formation in the Marshall Islands where the Japanese had established their outermost defensive perimeter in World War II. Kwajalein Island and the nearby islets of Roi and Namur were the first of the Marshall Islands to be captured by U.S. troops, and would allow the Pacific Fleet to advance its planned assault on the islands and its drive towards the Philippines and the Japanese home islands.
Battle of Attu
In the Battle of Attu, the main conflict of the Aleutian Islands Campaign during World War II (1939-45), American and Japanese armies fought from May 11 to May 30, 1943, for control of Attu, a small, sparsely inhabited island at the far western end of Alaska's Aleutian chain in the North Pacific. In June 1942, Japan had seized Attu and its neighbor Kiska, then established garrisons on the remote, U.S.-owned islands. The reason for taking Attu and Kiska, known for their barren, mountainous terrain and harsh weather, might have been to divert U.S. forces during Japan's attack on Midway Island (June 4-7, 1942) in the central Pacific. It's also possible the Japanese believed holding the two islands would prevent the U.S. from invading Japan via the Aleutians. Either way, the Japanese occupation was a blow to American morale. In May 1943, U.S. troops finally retook Attu and in August reclaimed Kiska.
Battle of Tarawa
In the Battle of Tarawa (November 20-23, 1943) during World War II (1939-45), the U.S. began its Central Pacific Campaign against Japan by seizing the heavily fortified, Japanese-held island of Betio in the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. The 18,000 U.S. Marines sent to tiny Betio were expected to easily secure it; however, problems quickly arose. Low tides prevented some U.S. landing crafts from clearing the coral reefs that ringed the island. Japanese coastal guns pounded the snagged vessels and desperate Marines gave up on freeing the boats and instead waded toward shore-hundreds of yards away- through chest-deep water amidst enemy fire. Despite heavy resistance from the 4,500 Japanese troops dug in on Betio, the Marines finally took the island after a bloody, 76-hour battle in which both sides suffered heavy casualties.
Battle of the Aleutian Islands
In the Battle of the Aleutian Islands (June 1942-August 1943) during World War II (1939-45), U.S. troops fought to remove Japanese garrisons established on a pair of U.S.-owned islands west of Alaska. In June 1942, Japan had seized the remote, sparsely inhabited islands of Attu and Kiska, in the Aleutian Islands. It was the only U.S. soil Japan would claim during the war in the Pacific. The maneuver was possibly designed to divert U.S. forces during Japan's attack on Midway Island (June 4-7, 1942) in the central Pacific. It's also possible the Japanese believed holding the two islands could prevent the U.S. from invading Japan via the Aleutians. Either way, the Japanese occupation was a blow to American morale. In May 1943, U.S. troops retook Attu and three months later reclaimed Kiska, and in the process gained experience that helped them prepare for the long "island-hopping" battles to come as World War II raged across the Pacific Ocean.
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France, also known as the Fall of France, was the successful German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, defeating primarily French forces. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb, German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes and then along the Somme valley to cut off and surround the Allied units that had advanced into Belgium. When British and adjacent French forces were pushed back to the sea by the highly mobile and well-organized German operation, the British government decided to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force as well as several French divisions at Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo.
Rhineland
Under the terms of Versailles, the Rhineland had been made into a demilitarized zone. Germany had political control of this area, but she was not allowed to put any troops into it. Therefore, many Germans concluded that they did not actually fully control the area despite it being in Germany itself.
Italian Campaign
In the final push to defeat the Axis powers of Italy and Germany during World War II (1939-45), the U.S. and Great Britain, the leading Allied powers, planned to invade Italy. Beyond their goal of crushing Italian Axis forces, the Allies wanted to draw German troops away from the main Allied advance through Nazi-occupied northern Europe to Berlin, Germany. The Italian Campaign, from July 10, 1943, to May 2, 1945, was a series of Allied beach landings and land battles from Sicily and southern Italy up the Italian mainland toward Nazi Germany. The campaign seared into history the names of such places as Anzio, Salerno and Monte Cassino, as Allied armies severed the German-Italian Axis in fierce fighting and threatened the southern flank of Germany. The Allied advance through Italy produced some of the most bitter, costly fighting of the war, much of it in treacherous mountain terrain.
Neutral Nations
Ireland, Portugal, SP. Morocco, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey.
Battle of El Alamein
The Battle of El Alamein marked the culmination of the World War II North African campaign between the British Empire and the German-Italian army. Deploying a far larger contingent of soldiers and tanks than the opposition, British commander Bernard Law Montgomery launched an infantry attack at El Alamein on Oct. 23, 1942. German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel returned to battle from illness and tried to halt the tide, but the British advantage in personnel and artillery proved too overwhelming. After Hitler blocked an initial retreat in early November, Rommel managed to escape annihilation by withdrawing his men to Tunisia.
Battle of Okinawa
Last and biggest of the Pacific island battles of World War II, the Okinawa campaign (April 1—June 22, 1945) involved the 287,000 troops of the U.S. Tenth Army against 130,000 soldiers of the Japanese Thirty-second Army. At stake were air bases vital to the projected invasion of Japan. By the end of the 82-day campaign, Japan had lost more than 77,000 soldiers and the Allies had suffered more than 65,000 casualties—including 14,000 dead.
P-51 Mustang
The North American Aviation P-51 Mustang is an American long-range, single-seat fighter and fighter-bomber used during World War II, the Korean War and other conflicts.
Battle of Saipan
On June 15, 1944, during the Pacific Campaign of World War II (1939-45), U.S. Marines stormed the beaches of the strategically significant Japanese island of Saipan, with a goal of gaining a crucial air base from which the U.S. could launch its new long-range B-29 bombers directly at Japan's home islands. Facing fierce Japanese resistance, Americans poured from their landing crafts to establish a beachhead, battle Japanese soldiers inland and force the Japanese army to retreat north. Fighting became especially brutal and prolonged around Mount Tapotchau, Saipan's highest peak, and Marines gave battle sites in the area names such as "Death Valley" and "Purple Heart Ridge." When the U.S. finally trapped the Japanese in the northern part of the island, Japanese soldiers launched a massive but futile banzai charge. On July 9, the U.S. flag was raised in victory over Saipan.
Great Britain
On June 17, 1940, the defeated French signed an armistice and quit World War II. Britain now stood alone against the power of Germany's military forces, which had conquered most of Western Europe in less than two months. But Prime Minister Winston Churchill rallied his stubborn people and outmaneuvered those politicians who wanted to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. But Britain's success in continuing the war would very much depend on the RAF Fighter Command's ability to thwart the Luftwaffe's efforts to gain air superiority. This then would be the first all-air battle in history.
Battle of Peleliu
On September 15, 1944, U.S. Marines fighting in World War II (1939-45) landed on Peleliu, one of the Palau Islands of the western Pacific. Over the next several weeks, ferocious Japanese resistance inflicted heavy casualties on U.S. troops before the Americans were finally able to secure the island. Though the controversial attack on Peleliu resulted in a higher death toll than any other amphibious assault in U.S. military history, Allied commanders and troops learned important lessons that would benefit them during the invasion of the Philippines and the Japanese home islands.
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, commencing on 22 June 1941. Over the course of the operation, about four million soldiers of the Axis powers invaded Soviet Russia along a 2,900 km front, making it the largest invasion in the history of warfare. In addition to troops, the Germans employed some 600,000 motor vehicles and between 600-700,000 horses. The operation was driven by Adolf Hitler's ideological desire to conquer the Soviet territories as outlined in Mein Kampf. It marked the beginning of the rapid escalation of the war, both geographically and in the formation of the Allied coalition.
Operation Overlord/D-Day/Battle of Normandy
Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied western Europe during World War II. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings. A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than three million allied troops were in France by the end of August.
Operation Uranus
Operation Uranus was the codename of the Soviet strategic operation in World War II which led to the encirclement of the German Sixth Army, the Third and Fourth Romanian armies, and portions of the German Fourth Panzer Army. The operation formed part of the ongoing Battle of Stalingrad, and was aimed at destroying German forces in and around Stalingrad. Planning for Operation Uranus had commenced as early as September 1942, and was developed simultaneously with plans to envelop and destroy German Army Group Center and German forces in the Caucasus. The Red Army took advantage of the German army's poor preparation for winter, and its forces in the southern Soviet Union were overstretched, using weaker Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian armies to guard their flanks; the offensives' starting points were established along the section of the front directly opposite Romanian forces. These Axis armies lacked heavy equipment to deal with Soviet armor.
Partisans
Resistance Fighters
Joseph Stalin
Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953 and helped the Allies in WWII.
Genocide
Te deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
Battle of Anzio
The 1944 Battle of Anzio stemmed from the Allied attempt to draw German troops off the Gustav Line during Operation Shingle. An expeditionary force commanded by U.S. Major General John P. Lucas secured a beachhead near Anzio and Nettuno on Italy's west coast, but his divisions were quickly contained by German Field Marshall Albert Kesselring. A succession of attacks resulted in heavy casualties on both sides, though no budge in the stalemate for four months. The Allies finally broke out of the beachhead in late May, facilitating the advance that led to the eventual capture of Rome.
Battle of Iwo Jima
The American amphibious invasion of Iwo Jima during World War II stemmed from the need for a base near the Japanese coast. Following elaborate preparatory air and naval bombardment, three U.S. marine divisions landed on the island in February 1945. Iwo Jima was defended by roughly 23,000 Japanese army and navy troops, who fought from an elaborate network of caves, dugouts, tunnels and underground installations. Despite the difficulty of the conditions, the marines wiped out the defending forces after a month of fighting, and the battle earned a place in American lore with the publication of a photograph showing the U.S. flag being raised in victory.
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain is the name given to the Second World War air campaign waged by the German Air Force against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940. The Battle of Britain was the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces, and was also the largest and most sustained aerial bombing campaign to that date.
Battle of Midway
The Battle of Midway was a crucial and decisive naval battle in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, only six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea, the United States Navy under Admirals Chester Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A. Spruance decisively defeated an attacking fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy under Admirals Isoroku Yamamoto, Chuichi Nagumo, and Nobutake Kondo near Midway Atoll, inflicting devastating damage on the Japanese fleet that proved irreparable. Military historian John Keegan called it "the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare." It was Japan's first naval defeat since the Battle of Shimonoseki Straits in 1863.
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia, on the eastern boundary of Europe.
B-17 Flying Fortress
The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engine heavy bomber aircraft developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps.
CV-9 Essex Carrier
The Essex design was in general superb. The ships were able to absorb massive increases in AA guns, ammunition allowances, aircraft munitions and equipment, etc. Postwar they could accommodate rebuilds that allowed them to operate modern jet aircraft throughout the Cold War. The only real weakness in the design was the wooden, unarmored flight deck, which made the ships very vulnerable to aircraft attack. This was considered an acceptable tradeoff, compared to the RN's armored flight decks and much smaller air wings. One flaw in the design was the ventilation system, which allowed smoke to rapidly spread throughout the ship. This problem was fixed during postwar reconstructions.
German 88 Artillery Gun
The German 88 mm guns became the most famous and feared artillery pieces of the Second World War. They appeared in a whole series of forms ranging from anti-aircraft to anti-tank and tank-guns, including several self-propelled platforms. Although primarily anti-aircraft guns they gained an awesome reputation as anti-tank weapons, a reputation that remains to this day. Terry Gander, in this in-depth, highly illustrated study, tells the story of the 88 from its first manifestations during the Great War to its clandestine development in Sweden, its production in Germany, its first 'multi-role' initiation during the Spanish Civil War and its part in the campaigns of 1939-40. As well as a detailed technical description of the gun and its development, his book features vivid accounts of the 88 in action in many of the main theaters of the Second World War, in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany, and on the Eastern Front.
F6F Hellcat
The Grumman F6F Hellcat was a carrier-based fighter aircraft conceived to replace the earlier F4F Wildcat in United States Navy service. The Hellcat was an erstwhile rival of the faster Vought F4U Corsair for use as a carrier based fighter.
The Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was a genocide in which approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Some historians use a definition of the Holocaust that includes the additional five million non-Jewish victims of Nazi mass murders, bringing the total to approximately eleven million. Killings took place throughout Nazi Germany and German-occupied territories.
Luftwaffe
The Luftwaffe was the aerial warfare branch of the German Wehrmacht during World War II. After the German Empire's World War I-era army air force, the Imperial German Army Air Service or in German, the Luftstreitkräfte from October 1916 onwards, and the naval air units of the Kaiserliche Marine, collectively named the Marine-Fliegerabteilung, had been disbanded by May 1920 under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the Luftwaffe was reformed on 26 February 1935 and grew to become one of the strongest, most doctrinally advanced, and most battle-experienced air forces in the world when World War II started in Europe in September 1939. After the defeat of the Third Reich, the Luftwaffe was disbanded in 1946.
Mitsubishi A6M Zero
The Mitsubishi A6M Zero is a long-range fighter aircraft, manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945.
Grand Alliance
The US, Great Britain, The Soviet Union
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
The United States dropped the Atomic Bomb on these cities.
Battle of Guadalcanel
The World War II Battle of Guadalcanal was the first major offensive and a decisive victory for the Allies in the Pacific theater. With Japanese troops stationed in this section of the Solomon Islands, U.S. marines launched a surprise attack in August 1942 and took control of an air base under construction. Reinforcements were funneled to the island as a series of land and sea clashes unfolded, and both sides endured heavy losses to their warship contingents. However, the Japanese suffered a far greater toll of casualties, forcing their withdrawal from Guadalcanal by February 1943.
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, but Japan and the United States had been edging toward war for decades. The United States was particularly unhappy with Japan's increasingly belligerent attitude toward China. The Japanese government believed that the only way to solve its economic and demographic problems was to expand into its neighbor's territory and take over its import market; to this end, Japan had declared war on China in 1937. American officials responded to this aggression with a battery of economic sanctions and trade embargoes. They reasoned that without access to money and goods, and especially essential supplies like oil, Japan would have to rein in its expansionism. Instead, the sanctions made the Japanese more determined to stand their ground. During months of negotiations between Tokyo and Washington, D.C., neither side would budge. It seemed that war was inevitable.
Battle of Leyte Gulf
This World War II clash followed the Allied landing at the Philippine island of Leyte in October 1944. The Japanese sought to converge three naval forces on Leyte Gulf, and successfully diverted the U.S. Third Fleet with a decoy. At the Suriago Strait, the U.S. Seventh Fleet destroyed one of the Japanese forces and forced a second one to withdraw. The third successfully traversed the San Bernadino Straight but also withdrew before attacking the Allied forces at Leyte. With much of its surface fleet destroyed in the battle, Japan was hamstrung in its ability to move resources from Southeast Asia to the home islands.
Battle of Coral Sea
This four-day World War II skirmish in May 1942 marked the first air-sea battle in history. The Japanese were seeking to control the Coral Sea with an invasion of Port Moresby in southeast New Guinea, but their plans were intercepted by Allied forces. When the Japanese landed in the area, they came under attack from the aircraft carrier planes of the American task force commanded by Rear Admiral Frank J. Fletcher. Although both sides suffered damages to their carriers, the battle left the Japanese without enough planes to cover the ground attack of Port Moresby, resulting in a strategic Allied victory.
Battle of Monte Cassino
This multi-faceted battle marked one of the longest and bloodiest engagements of the Italian campaign during World War II. After attempts to overcome the Germans in the Liri Valley and at Anzio ended in stalemate, the Allies struggled to capture the western anchor of the Gustav Line and the Roman Catholic abbey of Monte Cassino. Two more offensives, which resulted in the destruction of the abbey and aerial bombardment of the region, again failed to produce the desired result. Only with the launch of Operation Diadem in May 1944 did the Gustav Line finally collapse, with the Second Polish Corps succeeding in capturing the abbey.
German U-Boat
U-boats were German submarines that caused havoc in World War Two during the Battle of the Atlantic. U-boats were so damaging that Winston Churchill commented that it was the only time in World War Two that he thought Britain would have to contemplate surrendering.
Operation Torch
US and British forces, commanded by American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, carried out this campaign. Three task forces landed on the beaches near Casablanca on the Moroccan Atlantic Coast; near Oran in western Algeria; and near Algiers, more than 250 miles to the east in Algeria.
Nazi Germany
Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. Founded in 1919 as the German Workers' Party, the group promoted German pride and anti-Semitism, and expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the 1919 peace settlement that ended World War I (1914-1918) and required Germany to make numerous concessions and reparations. Hitler joined the party the year it was founded and became its leader in 1921. In 1933, he became chancellor of Germany and his Nazi government soon assumed dictatorial powers. After Germany's defeat in World War II (1939-45), the Nazi Party was outlawed and many of its top officials were convicted of war crimes related to the murder of some 6 million European Jews during the Nazis' reign.
Operation Pluto
Wartime planners knew that following D-Day - June 6, 1944 - Allied forces would need vast quantities of petroleum to continue the advance into Europe. Allied leaders also knew that petroleum tankers trying to reach French ports would be vulnerable to Luftwaffe attacks.
Imperial Japan
When Emperor Hirohito ascended to the throne in 1926, Japan was enveloped in a struggle between liberals and leftists on one side, and ultraconservatives on the other. In 1925, universal male suffrage was introduced, increasing the electorate from 3.3 to 12.5 million. Yet as the left pushed for further democratic reforms, right-wing politicians pushed for legislation to ban organisations that threatened the state by advocating wealth distribution or political change. This resulted in 1925's 'Peace Preservation Law', which massively curtailed political freedom.
