HS07 (long)

British and American involvement in the world military conflicts. (WWI,
WWII)

WWI

The United Kingdom

Germany nearly defeated the Allies, Britain and France, in the first few weeks of war in 1914.

It had better trained soldiers, better equipment and a clear plan of attack/The French army

and the small British force were fortunate to hold back the German army at the River Marne,

deep inside France. Four years of bitter fighting followed, both armies living and fighting in

the trenches, which they had dug to protect their men.

Apart from the Crimean War this was Britain's first European war for a century and the

country was quite unprepared for the terrible destructive power of modern weapons. At first

all those who joined the army were volunteers. But in 1916 the government forced men to

join the army whether they wanted to or not. A few men, mainly Quakers, refused to fight.

For the first time, a government accepted the idea that men had the right to refuse to fight if

they believed fighting to be wrong. But the war went on, and the number of deaths

increased. On 1 July 1916 Britain attacked German positions on the River Somme. By the

evening it had lost 20,000 dead and 40,000 wounded. In fact, five months of fighting from 1

July 1916 cost Britain 400,000, France 200,000 and Germany 500,000 dead and wounded. At

Passchendaele, the following year, the British army advanced five miles at the cost of

another 400,000 dead and wounded. Modern artillery and machine guns had completely

changed the nature of war. The invention of the tank and its use on the battlefield to break

through the enemy trenches in 1917 could have changed the course of the war. It would

have led to fewer casualties if its military value had been properly understood at the time.

In the Middle East the British fought against Turkish troops in Iraq and in Palestine, and at

Gallipoli, on the Dardanelles. There, too, there were many casualties, but many of them

were caused by sickness and heat. It was not until 1917 that the British were really able to

drive back the Turks.

Somehow the government had to persuade the people that in spite of such disastrous

results the war was still worth fighting. The nation was told that it was defending the weak

(Belgium) against the strong (Germany), and that it was fighting for democracy and freedom.

At the same time popular newspapers, using large print, memorable short sentences and

emotional language, encouraged the nation to hate Germany, and to want Germany's

destruction. National feelings were even stronger in France, which had already been badly

defeated by Germany in 1871. As a result, when Germany offered to make peace at the end

of 1916, neither the British nor the French government welcomed the idea. Both were

prisoners of the public feelings they had helped to create.

The war at sea was more important than the war on land, because defeat at sea would have

inevitably resulted in British surrender. From 1915 German submarines started to sink

merchant ships bringing supplies to Britain. At the battle of Jutland, in 1916, Admiral Jellicoe

successfully drove the German fleet back into harbor. At the time it was said, with some

truth, that Admiral Jellicoe was the only man on either side who could have lost the war in a

single afternoon. If Germany's navy had destroyed the British fleet at Jutland, Germany

would have gained control of the seas around Britain, forcing Britain to surrender. In spite of

this partial victory German submarines managed to sink 40 per cent of Britain's merchant

fleet and at one , point brought Britain to within six weeks of -starvation. When Russia,

following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, made peace with Germany, the German generals

hoped for victory against the Allies. But German submarine attacks on neutral shipping drew

America into the war against Germany. The arrival of American troops in France ended

Germany's hopes, and it surrendered in November 1918.

By this time Britain had an army of over five million men, but by this time over 750,000 had

died, and another two million had been seriously wounded. About fifty times more people

had died than in the twenty-year war against Napoleon. Public opinion demanded no mercy

for Germany.

In this atmosphere, France and Britain met to discuss peace at Versailles in 1919. Germany

was not invited to the conference, but was forced to accept its punishment, which was

extremely severe. The most famous British economist of the time, John Maynard Keynes,

argued that it was foolish to punish the Germans, for Europe's economic and political

recovery could not take place without them. But his advice was not accepted.

Apart from hatred of Germany, there was great sorrow for the dead. The destruction had

been terrible. As one young soldier wrote shortly before he himself died, "Everywhere the

work of God is spoiled by the hand of man." Wives had lost their husbands, children had lost

their fathers, parents had lost their sons. It was natural for a nation in these circumstances

to persuade itself that the war had somehow been worth it. Those who died in battle have

been remembered ever since in these words:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.

"For the Fallen", Laurence Binyon 1869-1943

There was also anger about the stupidity of war, best expressed by Britain's "war poets". As

the most famous of them, Wilfred Owen, wrote, shortly before he himself died on the

battlefield, "My subject is War, and the pity of War." The poems written by young poet-

soldiers influenced public opinion, persuading many that the war had been art act against

God and man. "Never again" was the feeling of the nation when it was all over.

When peace came there were great hopes for a better future. These hopes had been

created by the government, itself, which had made too many promises about improved

conditions of life for soldiers returning from the war. As soon as the war had ended, the

government started a big programme of building homes and improving health and

education. But there was far less progress than people had been led to hope for.

The United States of America

In August 1914, a war started on the continent of Europe. It was the beginning of a struggle

that lasted for more than four years, brought death to millions of people and changed the

history of the world. At the time people called the conflict the Great War. Later it was called

the First World War.

The main countries fighting the war were, on one side, France, Great Britain and Russia.

They were known as the Allies. On the other side the main countries were Germany and

Austria, who were called the Central Powers.

Most Americans wanted to keep out of the war. They saw it as a purely European affair that

was not their concern. When President Wilson said that they should be "impartial in thought

as well as in action," most people were ready to agree with him.

But Americans found it difficult to stay impartial for long. In the first days of the war the

German government sent its armies marching into neutral Belgium. This shocked many

Americans. They were even more shocked when newspapers printed reports-often false or

exaggerated-of German cruelty towards Belgian civilians.

From the very beginning of the war the strong British navy prevented German ships from

trading with the United States. But trade between the United States and the Allies grew

quickly. By 1915 American factories were making vast quantities of weapons and munitions

and selling them to Britain and France.

German leaders were determined to stop this flow o armaments to their enemies. They:

announced in February 1915, that they would sink all Allied merchant ships in the seas

around the British Isles. On a hazy afternoon in May, a big British passenger ship called the

Lusitania

was nearing the end of its voyage from the United States to Britain. Suddenly,

without any warning, it was hit by a torpedo from a German submarine. Within minutes the

Lusitania

was sinking. More than 1,000 passengers went with it to the bottom of the ocean.

One hundred and twenty-eight of those passengers were Americans.

The sinking of the Lusitania made Americans very angry. Some began to think that Germany

would do anything to win the war. But most still wanted peace. President Wilson made

strong protests to the German government. For a time the Germans stopped the submarine

attacks.

Another thing that angered Americans was the so-called Zimmerman telegram. At the

beginning of 1917 many Americans were still strongly against becoming involved in the

First World War. To people on the Great Plains, in Texas or in California, Europe seemed very

far away. European quarrels, they believed, were none of their business.

Then, on March 1, 1917, newspapers all over the United States printed a sensational story.

The story claimed that Arthur Zimmermann, the German Foreign Secretary, had tried to

persuade -Mexico and Japan to attack the United States.

The affair had begun on January 16. Zimmermann had sent a secret telegram to the German

ambassador in Mexico. The telegram told the ambassador to invite the Mexican government

to sign an alliance with Germany. The idea was that if the United States went to war with

Germany, the Mexicans should attack the Americans from the south. Mexico's reward would

be the return of all the lands it had lost to the United States in 1848. Zimmermann also

wanted Mexico to invite Japan to join the anti-American alliance.

Zimmermann's telegram was intercepted and decoded by British agents. On February 24,

when Americans were already angry at Germany for starting submarine attacks again, the

British gave Wilson a copy of the telegram. Wilson was furious. He told the newspapers.

People who wanted to keep the United States out of the war, and those who favored

Germany, said that the telegram was a forgery, a British trick. But their efforts to claim that

the story was untrue collapsed when Zimmermann himself said: "It is true."

The Zimmermann telegram turned American opinion more strongly in favor of the Allies.

This was especially true in the previously uninterested western parts of the country. These

were the very areas that would have been threatened

In the autumn of 1916 American voters re-elected Wilson as President, mainly because he

had kept them out of the war. In January 1917, Wilson made a speech to Congress. In it he

appealed to the warring nations of Europe to settle their differences and make "a peace

without victory." This, he said, was the only kind of peace that could last.

But by now American bankers had lent a lot of money to the Allies. And American military

supplies were still pouring across the Atlantic. Germany's war leaders feared that, unless the

flow of supplies was stopped, their country would be defeated. Only nine days after Wilson's

speech they again ordered their submarines to begin sinking ships sailing towards Allied

ports. This time the order included neutral vessels.

In the next few weeks German submarines sank five American ships. With German

torpedoes sending American sailors to their deaths in the grey waters of the Atlantic, Wilson

felt that he had no choice. On April 2, 1917, he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.

Wilson's aim was not simply to defeat Germany. He saw the war as a great crusade to ensure

the future peace of the world. For him the war would become a war "to make the world safe

for democracy, the war to end all wars."

When the United States declared war on Germany the American army was a small force of

only 200,000 soldiers. Millions more men had to be recruited, trained, equipped and shipped

across the Atlantic to Europe. All this took time. A full year passed before many American

soldiers were available to help the European Allies.

In the spring of 1918 the German armies began a last desperate offensive against the French

and the British. Their aim was to win the war before the new American army was ready to

fight. By July they were within a few miles of Paris.

The Allies were in great danger. They placed all their armies under one commander, the

French general Foch. Luckily for Foch, American soldiers began to arrive at the battlefront to

strengthen his forces. Soon over a million of them had joined in the battles against the

Germans.

In August 1918, the Allied armies counter-attacked. The German armies were driven back

towards their own frontiers. In October the German government asked for peace. On

November 11, 1918, German and Allied leaders signed an armistice, an agreement to stop

fighting. The bloodiest and most destructive war the world had ever known was over.

By January 1919, President Wilson was in Europe. He was there to help to work out a peace

treaty. He was greeted by cheering crowds in the Allied capitals and spoken of as "Wilson

the Just."

But when Wilson met other Allied leaders to work out the details of the treaty, the welcome

became less friendly. The French leader, Georges Clemenceau, thought that Wilson lacked

experience in international affairs. Worse still, the American President did not seem to

realize this. "How can I talk to a fellow who thinks himself the first man in two thousand

years to know anything about peace on earth?" asked Clemenceau.

Both Wilson and Clemenceau wanted to make sure that a war like the First World War never

happened again. Wilson wanted to do this by writing a treaty that did not leave the Germans

with lots of grievances. He believed that if the Germans thought they had not been treated

fairly; they might one day start a war of revenge. Clemenceau thought differently. He

believed there was only one way to make a peace that would last. The Germans had to be

made so weak that they would never have the strength to fight again.

After much arguing, and without consulting the Germans, the Allied leaders agreed on a

peace treaty. They called it the Versailles Treaty, after the palace near Paris where it was

signed in May 1919.

The Versailles Treaty was harder in its treatment of the Germans than Wilson had wanted:

Among other things it made them take all the blame for the war. It also made them agree to

pay for all the damage that the war had caused. These "reparation" payments were fixed at

many millions of dollars.

Wilson was disappointed with much of the Versailles Treaty. But he returned to the United

States with high hopes for part of it. This was a scheme that he believed could still make his

dream of a world without war come true. It was a plan to set up a League of Nations.

The League of Nations was to be an organization where representatives of the world's

nations would meet and settle their differences by discussion instead of war. It had taken

Wilson months of hard bargaining to persuade the other Allied leaders to accept this plan.

Now he faced a battle to persuade Congress and the American people to accept it, too.

Wilson knew that this would not be easy. Many Americans were against their country

becoming permanently involved in the problems of Europe. And they were suspicious of the

League of Nations. Wouldn't joining such an organization mean that the United States might

be dragged into quarrels, perhaps even wars, that were none of its business?

Wilson tried to remove such fears. But as the months passed it began to seem that he was

failing to do so. After another trip to Europe he returned to America, tired and ill. But he

boarded a special train and set off on a speaking tour of the western United States to plead

for the League.

The tour was never completed. On September 25, 1919, the exhausted Wilson suffered a

severe stroke. He was taken back to Washington, his health broken forever. In March 1920,

the Senate voted against the United States joining the League of Nations, and the idea was

dropped.

From his invalid's armchair in the White House a sick and disappointed Wilson spoke the last

words on the subject. "We had a chance to gain the leadership of the world. We have lost it

and soon we shall be witnessing the tragedy of it all."

President Wilson always insisted that the United States was fighting the First World War

against the German people but against their warlike leaders. In January 1918, he outlined his

ideas for a just and lasting peace in a speech to the United States Senate. These ideas were

called the Fourteen Points.

Among other things, Wilson's Fourteen Points required nations to stop making secret

agreements, to reduce their military forces and armaments, to trade freely with one another

and to draw up new national boundaries that would allow the separate peoples of Europe to

rule themselves. It was in the Fourteen Points, also, that Wilson first suggested the League of

Nations.

When the German government asked for peace in October 1918, it hoped that the Allies

would base their terms on the Fourteen Points. But other Allied leaders regarded some of

Wilson's ideas as idealistic nonsense. The French leader, Clemenceau, compared the

Fourteen Points sarcastically to the Christian religion's Ten Commandments. "Mr. Wilson

bores me with his Fourteen Points," he grumbled. "Why, God Almighty has only ten!"

In the end the Fourteen Points had much less influence on the terms of the Versailles Treaty

than Wilson had hoped for. Some people still believe that this was a tragedy. They say that

the post-war world would have been a better and a safer place if the Fourteen Points had*

been followed more closely. Others disagree. They believe that the world would have been

safer if the Fourteen Points had been less closely followed.

WWII

The United Kingdom

The people of Britain watched anxiously as German control spread over Europe in the 1930s.

But some had foreseen this dangerous situation. They believed that the reasons for German

expansion could be found in the harsh peace terms forced on Germany by the Allies in 1919,

and the failure to involve it in the post-war political settlement. In 1920 the Allies had

created the League of Nations which, it was hoped, would enable nations to cooperate with

each other. Although the League did not forbid war, its members agreed to respect and

preserve the borders and territory of all other members. But in 1935 Italy invaded Abyssinia

(Ethiopia), a fellow member of the League. Britain and France were anxious to win Italy's co-

operation against Hitler, who was illegally rearming Germany, and therefore decided against

taking action against Italy as the rules of the League required them to do. This failure to use

the League's authority had serious results. Italy's Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, and Hitler

realised that Britain and France lacked the will to make sure the standards the League

demanded of its members were followed.

For the next four years Germany, Italy and their ally in the Far East, Japan, took advantage of

this weakness to seize territory of interest to them. There was good evidence that the

demands of Germany could not be satisfied. But in order to avoid war in 1938, the British

Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, accepted and co-operated in the takeover of German-

speaking parts of Czechoslovakia by Germany. Chamberlain returned from meeting Hitler in

Munich. He reassured Britain that he had Hitler's written promise that Germany had no

more territorial ambitions, in the memorable words, "peace for our time". Six months later

Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia. Britain, realising that war was inevitable, gave

a guarantee of support to Poland if Germany invaded.

Chamberlain was widely blamed for his "appeasement" of Germany. But he expressed the

feelings of many people in Britain, to avoid war at all costs. As one of his opponents, Ernest

Bevin, generously said in 1941, "If anyone asks me who was responsible for the British policy

leading up to the war, I will, as a Labour man myself, make the confession and say, 'All of us.'

We refused absolutely to face the facts."

In September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, and Britain entered the war. The British felt

again that they were fighting for the weaker nations of Europe, and for democracy. They had

also heard about the cruelty of the Nazis from Jews who had escaped to Britain.

Few people realised how strong the German army was. In May 1940 it attacked, defeating

the French in a few days, and driving the British army into the sea. At Dunkirk, a small French

port, the British army was saved by thousands of private boats which crossed the English

channel. Dunkirk was a miraculous rescue from military disaster, and Britain's new Prime

Minister, Winston Churchill, persuaded the nation that it was a victory of courage and

determination at Britain's darkest hour. Although the army had lost almost all its weapons in

France, Churchill told the nation there could be no thought of surrender or peace

negotiation: "we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the

beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,

we shall fight on the hills; we shall never surrender:... until in God's good time the New

World, with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old." And

he offered his countrymen nothing but "blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

Everyone in Britain expected Germany to invade, but the British air force won an important

battle against German planes in the air over Britain. This, however, did not prevent the

German air force from bombing the towns of Britain. Almost one and a half million people in

London were made homeless by German bombing during the next few months. Once again

Churchill brilliantly managed to persuade a nation "on its knees" that it would still win.

The war had begun as a traditional European struggle, with Britain fighting to save the

"balance of power" in Europe, and to control the Atlantic Ocean and the sea surrounding

Britain. But the war quickly became worldwide. Both sides wanted to control the oil in the

Middle East, and the Suez Canal, Britain's route to India. In 1941 Japan, Germany's ally,

attacked British colonial possessions, including Malaya (Malaysia), Burma and India. As a

result, Britain used soldiers from all parts of its empire to help fight against Germany, Italy

and Japan. But the weakness of Britain was obvious to the whole world when its army

surrendered Singapore to Japan, described by Churchill as the worst surrender in British

history.

In 1941 Germany and Japan had made two mistakes which undoubtedly cost them the war.

Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and Japan attacked the United States, both quite

unexpectedly. Whatever the advantages of surprise attack, the Axis of Germany, Italy and

Japan had now forced onto the battlefield two of the most powerful nations in the world.

Britain could not possibly have defeated Germany without the help of its stronger allies, the

Soviet Union and the United States. By 1943 the Soviet army was pushing the Germans out

of the USSR, and Britain had driven German and Italian troops out of North Africa. Italy

surrendered quickly following Allied landings in July 1943. In 1944 Britain and the United

States invaded German-occupied France. They had already started to bomb German towns,

causing greater destruction than any war had ever caused before. Such bombing had very

doubtful military results. Dresden, a particularly beautiful eighteenth-century city, and most

of its 130,000 inhabitants, were destroyed in one night early in 1945. In May 1945, Germany

finally surrendered. In order to save further casualties among their own troops, Britain and

the United States then used their bombing power to defeat Japan. This time they used the

new atomic bombs to destroy most of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, two large Japanese cities.

Over 110,000 people died immediately and many thousands more died later from the after-

effects.

It was a terrible end to the war, and an equally terrible beginning to the post-war world. But

at the time there was great relief in Britain that the war had finally ended. It had lasted

longer than the First World War, and although less than half as many British troops had died

this time, the figures of over 303,000 soldiers and 60,000 civilians in air raids was a very

heavy price to pay for the mistakes of the inter-war years. The Soviet Union, Germany and

Japan paid a fair more terrible price, as did ethnic groups like the Jewish and gypsy peoples,

several million of whom were deliberately killed.

The United States of America

In the1930s every year seemed to bring a new war, or threat of war, somewhere in the

world. Leaders like the German dictator Hitler threatened other nations. Nations built more

tanks, warships and military aircraft. President Roosevelt spoke to the American people in

1937 about wars being fought in Spain and China. "Innocent peoples, innocent nations are

being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power and supremacy,” he warned. "If these things

come to pass [happen] in other parts of the world, let no one imagine that America will

escape."

Spain and China seemed far away. Most Americans ignored Roosevelt's warning. They

believed that the best thing to do was to let foreigners solve their problems themselves.

Isolationists felt this particularly strongly. These were people who believed that Americans

should try to cut off, or isolate, the United States from the problems of the outside world.

Isolationist ideas were very strong in Congress in the 1930s. It passed a number of laws

called neutrality Acts. These said that American citizens would not be allowed to sell military

equipment, or money, to any nations at war. Even non¬-military supplies such as foodstuffs

would be sold to warring countries only if they paid cash for them and Collected them in

their own ships.

In 1939, war broke out in Europe. By the summer of 1940 Hitler's armies had overrun all of

western Europe. Only Britain—exhausted and short of weapons—still defied them. With

Hitler the master of Europe, and his ally, Japan, becoming ever stronger in Asia, Americans

saw at last the dangerous , position of the United States, sandwiched between the two.

Roosevelt had already persuaded Congress to approve the first peacetime military

conscription in American history and to suspend the Neutrality act. Now he sent Britain all

the military equipment that the United States could spare- rifles, guns, etc. Early in 1941 the

British ran out of money. In March Roosevelt persuaded Congress to accept his Lend Lease

Plan.

Lend Lease gave Roosevelt the right to supply military equipment and other goods to Britain

without payment. He could do the same for any country whose defense he considered

necessary to the safety of the United States. American guns, food and aircraft crossed the

Atlantic Ocean in large quantities. They played a vital part in helping Britain to continue to

fight against Hitler. When Hitler attacked

the Soviet Union in June 1941, Roosevelt used the Lend Lease scheme to send aid to the

Russians, too.

Fighting was also taking place in Asia at this time. Japanese forces had invaded Manchuria in

1931 and China in 1937. In July 1941. they also occupied the French colony of Indochina. This

alarmed the American government. It saw the growing power of Japan as a threat both to

peace in Asia and to American trading interests. Ever since the 1937 attack on China the

United States had been reducing its exports to Japan of goods that were useful in war-

aircraft and chemicals, for example. Now, in July 1941, it stopped all shipments of oil.

Japan faced disaster. It imported 80 percent of its oil from the United States. Without this

American oil its industries would be paralyzed. "Japan is like a fish in a pond from which the

water is being drained away," a senior naval officer told Emperor Hirohito.

In October, General Hideki Tojo became Japan's Prime Minister. Tojo was well known for his

belief that a sharp use of force was often the best way to solve disagreements. This had

earned him a nickname—the Razor. There was plenty of oil in Southeast Asia. Tojo decided

that Japan must seize

it-and must make it impossible for the Americans to use their Pacific battle fleet to stop

them.

On December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes roared in over Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the

American navy's main base in the Pacific Ocean. Their bombs and torpedoes sank or badly

damaged eight American battleships, blew up hundreds of aircraft and killed over 2,000

men.

When the Pearl Harbor attack took place, the United States and Japan were still at peace.

The United States declared war on Decern'b'er8, 1941. Since Germany was Japan's ally,

Hitler then declared war on the United States. The war in Europe and the war in Asia became

one war. Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States (the Allies) were the main countries

on one side. Germany and Japan (the Axis) were the main countries on the other.

The United States government organized the whole American economy towards winning the

war. It placed controls on wages and prices, and introduced high income taxes. Gasoline and

some foods were rationed. Factories stopped producing consumer goods such as

automobiles and washing machines, and started making tanks, bombers and other war

supplies. The government also spent a vast amount-two thousand million dollars-on a top-

secret research scheme. The scheme was code-named the Manhattan Project. By 1945

scientists working on the scheme had produced and tested the world's first atomic bomb.

Allied war planners agreed to concentrate on defeating Germany first. In 1942 the Soviet

Union was under heavy attack by the Germans. To help the Russians. American generals

recommended an early invasion of German-occupied France. But Winston Churchill, the

British Prime Minister, persuaded Roosevelt to attack the Germans first in the

Mediterranean region. Combined American and British forces landed in North Africa in

November 1942, and joined other British forces already fighting there. Together, the Allied

armies defeated the German general Rommel's Afrika Korps. In 1943 they invaded Sicily and

the mainland of Italy. After months of bitter fighting, on June 4, 1944. they freed Rome from

German control.

Two days later, on June 6, Allied troops invaded Normandy in German-occupied France.

Their Supreme Commander was the American general Eisenhower. The invasion was code-

named Operation Overlord. The day it took place was referred to as D-Day - D for

Deliverance. From early in the morning of D-Day hundreds of Allied landing craft emptied

their loads of men and weapons on to the flat Normandy beaches. German soldiers fought

hard to push the invaders into the sea. But they

failed. By the end of July Allied soldiers were racing across France. Paris was liberated on

August 24 and by September Allied forces had crossed Germany's western border.

But the Germans were not yet beaten. In December 1944, they launched a last fierce attack

in the Ardennes region of Belgium. They punched back the Allied front line in a bulge many

miles deep. This gave the battle its name- the Battle of the Bulge. It was a month before the

Allies could organize a counterattack and drive back the Germans.

The Battle of the Bulge proved to be the last German offensive of the Second World War. On

April 25, 1945, British and American soldiers met advancing Soviet troops on the banks of

the River Elbe in the middle of Germany. On April 30 Hitler shot himself. German soldiers

everywhere laid down their weapons and on May 5,1945, Germany surrendered.

In the Pacific Japanese armed forces won some striking early victories. In only a few months

they overran Southeast Asia and the islands of the western Pacific. By the summer of 1942

they had conquered over 1.5 million square miles of land, rich in raw materials and inhabited

by more than 100 million people. The conquered lands included the Philippines, where

thousands of American troops were trapped and forced to surrender.

Japan's first setback came in May 1942. In the Battle of the Coral Sea, aircraft from American

carriers drove back a big Japanese invasion fleet that was threatening Australia. In June the

Japanese suffered an even worse defeat. Their main battle fleet attacked an important

American base called Midway Island. Again American war planes beat them off with heavy

fosses. In the Battle of Midway the Japanese lost four aircraft carriers and many of their best

pilots.

By the beginning of 1943 the Americans and their Australian and British allies had agreed

upon a long-term plan to defeat the Japanese. They decided on a three-pronged attack.

From Australia one prong would push northwards towards Japan through the Philippines.

From Hawaii another prong would strike westwards through the islands of the central

Pacific. Finally, the two Pacific offensives would be supported by a drive through Burma into

the lands that the Japanese had conquered in Southeast Asia.

By June 1943, the Pacific offensives had begun. American forces advanced towards Japan by

"island hopping"-that is, they captured islands that were strategically important, but

bypassed others. In the remainder of 1943 and throughout 1944, Allied forces fought their

way closer to Japan itself. In June 1944, an enormous American task force won control of the

important Mariana Islands. In October American troops returned to the Philippines and cut

off Japan from its conquests in Southeast Asia.

By 1945 Japan was within range of air attacks. American bombers made devastating raids on

its cities. In June the island of Okinawa, less than 375 miles from the Japanese coast, fell to

the Americans. American troops prepared to invade Japan itself.

But the invasion never came. On July 16, 1945, Allied scientists at work on the Manhattan

Project tested the world's first atomic bomb. Even they were shocked by the result. They had

invented the most destructive weapon the world had ever seen. On August 6 an American

bomber dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A few days later, on

August 9, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Both cities were

devastated and nearly 200,000 civilians were killed. On August 1 4 the Japanese government

surrendered. The Second World War was over.