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Chapter 25 Growing Aggression and World War II |
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Section
4 |
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In
January 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt met in the Moroccan city of
Casablanca. There, they agreed to seek “unconditional surrender” from
each of the Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan. Allied troops had
landed in Morocco only two months before the meeting, taking control of
the country from Vichy France. With that operation, events had begun to
turn against the Axis. Turning
Points in Europe The
turning of the tide against Hitler began in North Africa. By mid-1942,
Rommel and his Afrika Korps had advanced nearly 200 miles into Egypt. Short of
supplies and overextended, however, in late October the Germans were
forced to retreat by counterattacking British and Australian forces under
General Bernard Montgomery. Soon Rommel also found himself under attack
from the west, where a joint Allied force of American, British, and Free
French troops under American General George S. Patton had taken control of
Morocco and Algeria from Vichy forces and begun to move east. The trapped Afrika
Korps put up a tough defense in Tunisia, but by May 1943 the Allies
had full control of North Africa. Stalingrad
and Kursk.
The Soviets also began to make headway against the Germans in early 1943.
A year earlier, Hitler had ordered some German forces southward to capture
the Soviet oil fields of the Caucasus. One group took the city of
Stalingrad on the Volga River. In the fall of 1942, however, the Soviets
counter-attacked and surrounded Stalingrad. A German officer described the
intense fighting that raged in the city for three months: “eighty-eight
days and eighty-eight nights of hand-to-hand struggle....Stalingrad is no
longer a town. By day its is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke;
it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night
arrives, one of those scorching, howling, bleeding nights, the dogs plunge
into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of
Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest
storms cannot bear it for long; only men endure.”[xliii] Italy.
Also in July 1943, British and American forces from North Africa landed on
Sicily. By the end of August they controlled the island and in September
they began landing troops on the Italian mainland. Thoroughly demoralized
by their losses in North Africa, the same month as the Allied landings in
Sicily the Grand Fascist Council deposed Mussolini and placed him under
arrest. When the Italian Government announced Italy’s surrender,
however, German forces rescued Mussolini and disarmed the Italian army.
Taking control of the defense of Italy, the Germans put up stiff
resistance as Allied forces advanced north up the Italian peninsula. In
January 1944, Allied troops tried to outflank the resistance by landing
behind the Axis lines at Anzio. After months of bloody fighting, on June 5
Allied troops entered Rome. Nazi resistance remained strong, however.
Germans continued to hold positions in northern Italy until the spring of
1945, when members of the Italian resistance finally recaptured and
executed Mussolini. The
Cross-Channel Invasion With
German forces retreating in the south and east, and with the Atlantic sea
routes finally secure against the German Navy, in the spring of 1944
British and American leaders decided the time had come to invade France
from Britain. As part of their preparations, they stepped up their use of strategic
bombing, the use of air power to attack the economic ability of an
enemy to wage war. Strategic bombing proved particularly effective against
German oil facilities, causing Hitler himself to complain early in 1944: “The
enemy has struck us at one of our weakest points. If they persist at it
this time, we will soon no longer have any fuel production worth
mentioning. Our one hope is that the other side has an Air Force General
Staff as scatterbrained as ours!”[xliv] Eventually,
Allied bombers cut German production of aviation fuel dramatically,
helping to cripple the Luftwaffe
.[xlv] D-Day.
The ultimate success of the cross-Channel invasion also owed much to the
leadership of General Dwight Eisenhower, the American general in overall
command of the multinational effort. To increase the advantage of
surprise, he chose not to cross the Channel at its narrowest point
(between Dover and Calais) but farther west. On the night of June 5-6,
1944, he launched Operation “Overlord,” the invasion of Europe, and a
massive fleet of 700 warships and 2,700 support ships left British ports
bound for the coast of Normandy.
On the morning of June 6, 1944—D-Day—more
than 2,500 landing craft carrying thousands of American, British, and
Canadian troops swarmed the French beaches. Heavy seas made the landings
difficult and the Allies faced fierce resistance from the German
defenders. One landing craft operator described a typical scene: “We
hit two mines going in.... They didn’t stop us, although our ramp was
damaged and an officer standing on it was killed. We grounded on a
sandbank. The first man off was a commando sergeant in full kit [carrying
all his gear]. He disappeared like a stone in six feet of water.... The
beach was strewn with wreckage, a blazing tank, bundles of blankets and
kit, bodies and bits of bodies.”[xlvi]
Despite suffering thousands of casualties, the Allies continued
their assault. By the end of the day some 155,000 Allied
troops—including Poles and Free French—were ashore.[xlvii]
Tens of thousands would soon follow. The Germans proved unable to push
them back, particularly because Hitler overruled his own generals and
refused to allow reinforcements from Calais to be shifted to the main
battle in Normandy. Hitler was convinced that the Normandy landings were
merely a feint, and that the real invasion would come in Calais. His
miscalculation gave the Allies the time they needed to establish a
beachhead.
It took the Allies until August finally to secure Normandy. In
mid-August, however, they broke through the German lines and began the
liberation of France. Allied troops also landed in southern France and
began to advance north. On August 25, Allied troops entered Paris. Other
Allied forces began to advance into the Low Countries. In early September,
the first American troops crossed into Germany from Luxembourg. Allied
victory in Europe.
In December 1944, however, as the main Allied force approached the German
frontier from Belgium, the German army struck back. The Germans had
managed secretly to mass a large force of tanks in the Ardennes forest. In
mid-December, under cover of bad weather, they attacked, catching the
Allies by surprise. The ensuing “Battle of the Bulge” cost each side
about 800,000 casualties before the Allies were able to throw the Germans
back. Nevertheless, the attack only delayed the Allied advance by about
six weeks. By mid-March 1945, the Allies were across the Rhine and
advancing steadily into the heart of Germany.
In the meantime, the Soviet army had swept across Poland and
entered Germany from the east. In April, they began their final drive on
the German capital. By April 25, they had encircled Berlin and begun to
advance toward its center. During intense street-to-street fighting Hitler
remained in his bunker under the Reichstag building in the center of the
city. On April 29, the he committed suicide rather than face defeat. By
May 2, the Soviet army had control of Berlin. The next day, American and
Soviet forces finally met near Wittenberg in northern Germany. On May 7,
German authorities accepted Allied terms for unconditional surrender.
Hostilities in Europe formally ended on May 8, 1945. The
War in the Pacific and Asia While
the war in Europe was fought largely on land, in Asia and the Pacific the
war was fought both on land and at sea. As in Europe, it began with a
string of Japanese victories and a fairly steady Japanese advance. Once
the United States had declared war, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that
they would prosecute the war in Europe first, while simply trying to
defend their positions in the Pacific. Despite the political decision to
tackle Germany first, however, early in 1942 Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, a
Texan with a long and distinguished record in the United States Navy, was
appointed Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific fleet.
From the very beginning, Nimitz planned a complex, three part naval
strategy designed to carry the war to the Japanese home islands and
achieve an allied victory. First, American submarines would attack
Japanese shipping in an effort to cut off Japan from its oil supply in the
East Indies. Second, the United States had to establish supremacy on the
surface in order to secure its primary bases of operation in the
Pacific—Hawaii and Australia. Third, American naval and land forces
would take the offensive, seizing one Pacific island after another,
advancing ever closer to Japan itself. The object of Nimitz’s
island hopping was to provide bases close enough to Japan’s home
islands to subject them to aerial bombardment and ultimately to invasion. The
Coral Sea and Midway. The
United States Navy began submarine operations against Japanese shipping
immediately after Pearl Harbor. Throughout 1942, Nimitz worked to achieve
the second part of his strategy. At the Battle of the Coral Sea, in May,
American and Australian forces held off a Japanese fleet advancing against
Australia. Although tactically the battle proved a draw, the Japanese navy
had failed to control of the waters around Australia and was forced to
retreat. In early June, the United States Navy achieved a decisive victory
against Yamamoto’s carrier force off Midway Island northwest of Hawaii.
The battle of Midway removed the Japanese threat to U.S. forces in
the eastern Pacific but Japanese aircraft based in the Solomon Islands
still threatened the sea routes to Australia. In July, American and
Australian forces landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomons. After months of
heavy fighting, they finally took control of the island in February 1943.
With Hawaii and Australia now secure, in late 1943 Nimitz began
“island-hopping” toward Japan.
On November 20, the United States Navy and Marines assaulted the
Gilbert Islands, landing on Tarawa. The Japanese had heavily fortified the
tiny atoll. The assault cost some 3,500 American dead and wounded plus
some 5,000 Japanese casualties. The slow island-to-island advance toward
Japan had just begun. Beyond the Gilberts lay the Marshall, Mariana,
Volcano, and Bonin Islands. Tarawa and the battle for the Gilberts,
however, provided American naval planners with invaluable lessons for
those future operations. The
War in East Asia. While
the war raged at sea in the Pacific, on the Asian mainland the struggle
also continued. In their efforts to conquer China the Japanese had
encountered enormous difficulties. Although Japan controlled most of the
coastal areas, China’s Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-Shek, in
loose cooperation with the Communists of Mao Zhe Dong, continued to resist
from the interior. Japanese leaders also had to worry about the
possibility of Soviet intervention from the north. Some two million
Japanese troops thus remained pinned down in China throughout the war. India,
Burma, and Malaya. Supplies
to China’s Nationalist government came primarily from Allied bases
located in India and Burma. In addition to halting this flow of supplies,
Japan saw a chance to enhance its own prestige in Asia, and to gain access
for themselves to new sources of manpower and strategic resources, by
overthrowing British rule in India. Indeed, throughout Asia the Japanese
called on all the peoples of the European colonial empires to rise up
against the imperialists and join Japan’s “Greater East Asia
Co-Prosperity Sphere.”
In January 1942, the Japanese army invaded Burma on its way toward
India, beginning three years of difficult jungle and mountain fighting
against stubborn British and Indian forces. Further south, other Japanese
forces invaded Malaya, aiming for the strategic port city of Singapore. By
February 1942, they had pushed all the way down the Malay Peninsula. On
February 15 the British garrison in Singapore surrendered to the Japanese.
As the Japanese advanced during 1942, the Chinese nationalist
government of General Chiang Kai-Shek began to call for more Allied
assistance in their own war effort. At a time when the Soviet Union in
particular was trying to drum up enthusiasm among the American people for
its own war effort, Chinese leaders also determined to make their case for
assistance. One of their most eloquent advocates was Madame Chiang,
General Chiang’s wife. [BIO]
Madame Chiang Kai-Shek.
Born Soong Meiling, Madame Chiang was the daughter of a prominent backer
of China’s revolutionary Nationalist leader, Sun Yat-sen. She spent her
teenage years in the United States, graduating from Wellesley College in
1917. Returning to China, she became active in the local politics of
Shanghai, serving on a child labor committee. In 1927, she married Chiang
Kai-Shek, who had sought the arrangement largely to establish a link with
the influential Soong family and to enhance his standing in Chinese
politics. When war broke out with Japan, Madame Chiang’s American
experience also proved a valuable tool of diplomacy.
In late 1942, Madame Chiang traveled to the United States to make a
speaking tour in order to raise public awareness of the war in China and
its importance to an Allied victory. In February 1943, she was invited to
address the Senate. Speaking in perfect English, she delivered a speech
stressing the convergence of Chinese an d American interests: “I
feel that if the Chinese people could speak to you in your own tongue, or
if you could understand our tongue, they would tell you that basically and
fundamentally we are fighting for the same cause; that we have identity of
ideals; that the ‘four freedoms’ your President proclaimed to the
world, resound throughout our vast land as the gong of freedom...and the
death knell of the aggressors.”[xlviii] Madame Chiang received a standing ovation. She had clearly impressed her audience. “I never saw anything like it,” said one member of Congress. “Madame Chiang had me on the verge of bursting into tears.”[xlix] Already committed to helping China against the Japanese, Allied leaders could do little more than they already had. Madame Chiang’s visit, however, led to increased public support for the Chinese Nationalist Government among the American people. The
Final Push Against Japan After
securing the Gilberts during the winter of 1943-1944, Nimitz had continued
his push up through the central Pacific toward Japan. In June 1944,
American naval forces liberated the Marshall Islands from Japan and landed
on Saipan in the Marianas. They secured the rest of the Marianas during
July, retaking Guam and capturing Tinian. In combination with America’s
new long-range bomber, the B-29, taking the Marianas finally provided air
bases within range of Japan itself. Late in 1944, American B-29s began
flying missions against targets in the Japanese home islands. Leyte
Gulf. Farther
south, forces under General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of allied
forces in the southwest Pacific, began the liberation of the Philippines.
Some strategists argued Allied forces should by-pass the Philippines.
However, Macarthur argued that taking the islands would allow the Allies
to dominate the South China Sea and choke off Japan’s supply line to the
East Indies. Macarthur also stressed the moral importance of freeing the
thousands of American and Filipino prisoners held by the Japanese in the
Philippines.
MacArthur’s arguments prevailed. He planned to land first in
Leyte Gulf in the southern Philippines. In October 1944, in preparation
for the assault, American naval forces engaged the Japanese in the
Philippine Sea. The “Battle of Leyte Gulf” proved to be history’s
largest naval engagement. In January 1945, Allied forces began landing on
Luzon, the main island in the Philippines. On March 3, they captured
Manila. Imphal
and Kohima. Meanwhile,
on the Asian mainland the British had by this time reversed the Japanese
advance on India. In early 1944, Japanese forces took up positions inside
India around Imphal and Kohima in the mountainous jungle province of
Assam. Quickly surrounding the invaders, however, by June 1944 British and
Indian troops had repulsed the Japanese and were steadily advancing back
into Burma supported by American forces. The battle for Imphal and Kohima
marked the failure of Japan’s attempt to conquer India. Henceforth, they
remained permanently on the defensive. Iwo
Jima and Okinawa.
In early 1945, Admiral Nimitz continued his advance up through the central
Pacific, seeking bases ever closer to Japan. In February 1945, American
marines assaulted Iwo Jima, one of the Volcano Islands. They encountered
fierce resistance from the Japanese. After several days of fighting the
Japanese commander recorded his determination to continue even in the face
of defeat: “We have not eaten nor drank for five days but our fighting
spirit is still running high. We are going to fight bravely until the
end.”[l]
Taking Iwo Jima cost almost 7,000 American lives. Nearly all 21,000 of the
Japanese on the island died. It was America’s most costly battle of the
war.
The tenacity encountered on Iwo Jima was typical of Japan’s final
defense. On April 1, 1945, American forces assaulted Okinawa, in the
Riyuku Islands immediately south of Japan’s home islands. In the battle
for Okinawa, American ships faced wave after wave of kamikaze attacks, suicide runs in which Japanese pilots flew
their aircraft directly into American ships. Some 110,000 Japanese troops
and between 70,000 and 160,000 of Okinawa’s 450,000 civilians died in
the course of the battle. As the end neared, all senior Japanese officers
on Okinawa committed ritual suicide, as did many subordinates and
civilians.[li]
Having taken Okinawa, American commanders began to plan an invasion
of Japan. The resistance encountered on Iwo Jima and Okinawa convinced
them that such an operation would prove extremely costly in both American
and Japanese lives. Fortunately for the Allies, however, a powerful new
weapon made invasion of the Japanese home islands unnecessary. The
Atomic Bomb.
In July 1945, Allied scientists and engineers working secretly in the
United States produced an alternative to the invasion of Japan. They had
developed a bomb of extraordinary power—a bomb whose blast could destroy
an entire city. Its power derived from atomic fission, the splitting of an
atom. The atomic bomb represented the culmination of a secret program
called the “Manhattan Project”, authorized by Roosevelt early in the
war.
On July 16, 1945 the first atomic bomb was successfully test
detonated in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Shortly afterward,
President Harry Truman, who had taken office after Roosevelt’s death
earlier in the year, ordered the use of atomic bombs against Japan. He
hoped to convince Japanese leaders of the futility of resistance and to
force their immediate surrender.
On August 6, 1945, a lone B-29, nicknamed the Enola
Gay by its crew, took off from the island of Tinian in the Marianas
bound for Hiroshima, an important industrial and military center in
southern Japan. Reaching the target, the Enola
Gay released the single atomic weapon it carried. The bomb detonated
2,000 feet above the city, flattening 42 square miles and killing 80,000
people outright. Others died later from the radiation released by the
atomic bomb.
Although the people killed at Hiroshima actually numbered fewer
than those killed in conventional air raids on other Japanese and German
cities, the psychological impact of a single bomb doing such enormous
damage was much greater. Japanese authorities, however, did not agree to
surrender after the bombing of Hiroshima. Consequently, on August 9,
another atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, a secondary
target since the plane’s crew could not locate their primary target. The
same day, the Soviet Union finally declared war on Japan and promptly
invaded Manchuria.
The next day, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito decided that surrender was
inevitable. On August 14th he ordered acceptance of the Allied
terms of unconditional surrender. The next day, for the first time, the
Japanese people heard the voice of the emperor they revered as a living
god as he explained his decision to the nation in a radio broadcast: “Should we continue
fighting in the war, it would cause not only the complete Annihilation of
our nation, but also the destruction of the human civilization. With this
in mind, how should I save billions of our subjects and their posterity,
and atone ourselves before the hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors?
...in accordance to the dictates of fate, I am willing to endure the
unendurable, tolerate the intolerable, for peace to last thousands of
generations.” In late August, an Allied fleet steamed into Tokyo Bay. There, aboard the American battleship USS Missouri, on September 2, 1945 Japanese representatives signed the formal document of surrender, witnessed by the representatives of the major Allied Powers. World War II had ended. |