U.S.II.15

==USII.15 Analyze how German aggression in Europe and Japanese aggression in Asia contributed to the start of World War II and summarize the major battles and events of the war. On a map of the world, locate the Allied powers (Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States) and Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan).==

How did German and Japanese aggression contribute to the start of World War II? What were some of the major batlles and events?
==-Factors in the peace settlement (primarily the Treaty of Versailles) after WWI left Germany and Japan in turmoil and the rest of the world susceptible to the actions of an aggressive power who did not want to resolve disputes agreeably.==
 * The creation of the League of Nations, a bold step towards international cooperation, was left incomplete since the organization had no power to enforce any decision militarily or to compel any of its members to act. When its invasion of Manchuria was challenged by the League, Japan simply withdrew from the organization.
 * The Great Depression caused global economic hardship which was most acute in countries like Germany, where inflation rose at a staggering pace. Germans suffering extreme economic hardship often saw Hitler and Nazism as a last chance.
 * The allied countries of Great Britain, France, USSR, and the United States were still reeling from their losses in WWI and had no appetite for military action.

-German and Japanese aggression exploited these weaknesses in their own countries and the world by creating an alluring alternative in global conquest.
===A. Fascism is a form of government in which the needs of the individual and other interests are subjugated to the needs of the state and in which an authoritarian leader or ruling body seeks to advance a nationalistic agenda based on the ethnic and cultural values of the ascendant segment of the population.===
 * In Italy, where the word was coined from the Latin word //fasces// (an ancient Roman symbol of power), fascism was introduced by //il Duce// (“the leader”), Benito Mussolini. Mussolini and the fascists came to power in 1921-22 by first winning 35 seats in the Italian parliament and then having thousands of followers in black shirts march on Rome, causing the Italian king to let them form a new government. In addition to a strictly-ordered society, Mussolini promised the Italian people a new Roman Empire and launched an invasion of Ethiopia in 1935.
 * In Germany, Adolf Hitler, having written the rambling, racist //Mein Kampf//Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) in prison for his part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, exploited a 1932 National Socialist Party (Nazi) election victory and the ailing health of von Hindenburg to achieve appointment as chancellor in January 1933. Seeking racial supremacy and //lebensraum//lebensraum (“living space”) for the German people, Hitler (calling himself the //Fuhrer//Fuhrer, or ‘leader’) and the Nazis embarked on a campaign which would directly controvert many of the central provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.

===B. The Treaty of Versailles (Articles 42 and 43) expressly stipulated that the Rhineland (the region of Western Germany which surrounds the Rhine River) would be demilitarized and act as an unarmed buffer “guaranteeing” French security from her traditional adversary Germany and allowing France and avenue through which to aid her allies Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania in the event of German aggression. On March 7, 1936, Hitler sent a contingent of 20,000 troops to begin rearming the region with more to follow. French and British public opinion did not favor a military response and an opportunity to keep Hitler in check was lost.=== ===C. Hitler dreamed of uniting German-speaking people into one nation. In February of 1938, he invited Austrian chancellor von Schuschnigg to meet with him at his Berchtesgaden villa in Bavaria. Hitler intimidated the Austrian into signing an agreement to bring Austrian Nazis into his government. When the chancellor later reneged, Hitler’s troops marched into Austria, forced von Schluschnigg’s resignation, and declared the //Anschluss//Anschluss, or union, of Austria and Germany. Annexation of a mountainous region in Western Czechoslovakia inhabited in part by German-speakers known as the Sudetenland, was Hitler’s next aim. Though the French had a mutual aid agreement with the Czechs, the prime ministers of France and Britain, Daladier and Chamberlain, met with Hitler in 1938 and signed the Munich Pact, handing over the Sudetenland in exchange for (in Chamberlain’s infamous words) “peace in our time”. On March 15, 1939, German troops advanced against the remainder of Czechoslovakia. On September 1 of that same year, Hitler for the first time unleashed his //blitzkrieg//blitzkrieg, or ‘lightning war’ on Poland. Although this blatant aggression did finally provoke Britain and France to declare war against Germany, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, took a portion of Poland for themselves, and the battle for Poland was over before the allies could even mobilize.=== ===D. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, Japan had become the dominant foreign power in the Manchuria industrial region of northern China. On September 18, 1931, junior officers in the Japanese army blew up a section of railway (owned by Japan) nearby a Chinese army outpost and then used this ‘Mukden Incident’ and the need to protect Japanese business interests as a pretext for invading. Manchuria was soon under Japanese control but open war did not begin between the two nations until 1937. Japanese advances around Shanghai in the summer of 1937 met stiff Chinese resistance, which upset Japanese plans. After finally achieving victory at Shanghai, 50,000 Japanese soldiers marched on Nanking. Taking the capital in only four days, the Japanese had orders to “kill all captives” and what happened over the following six weeks is sometimes regarded as the worst single atrocity in the World War II era. The Rape of Nanking consisted of “citywide burnings, drownings, strangulations, rapes, thefts and massive property damage” and took the lives of half of the population of 600,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians.===

E. Some major events and battles of the war

 * Pearl Harbor- On December 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy”(according to FDR), Japanese planes flew a raid on the U.S. Naval yard at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii which swiftly crippled the U.S. Navy by sinking or badly damaging 18 ships and destroying 350 planes. Around 2400 people were killed and another 1178 injured. This was the end of American isolationism and the following day Congress declared war on Japan at the president’s urging and three days later Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S..
 * Midway-A Japanese invasion force heading for Hawaii was assembling near Midway, a strategic Pacific island, when their communications were intercepted by forces under Admiral Nimitz. Nimitz ordered his carrier planes to “inflict maximum damage on the enemy” and Japan lost four aircraft carriers which they could not replace, a cruiser, and 322 planes.
 * D-Day-On June 6, 1944, Allied forces (American, Canadian, and British) landed on the beaches of Normandy to begin the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe in the largest sea-land-air operation in history. German retaliation was withering but within a month the Allies had managed to land a million soldiers. On July 25, massive bombardment opened a gap for General Patton and the Third Army to advance toward Paris. On August 25, the French capital was liberated after four years of Nazi occupation and all of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and most of Netherlands were freed by the end of September.
 * Okinawa-Shortly after Roosevelt’s death, the Japanese made a final bloody stand at Okinawa with 1900 kamikazes sinking or damaging more than 300 ships and killing more than 5000 Allied seamen. When the fighting was over on June 22, 1945, more than 7600 Americans had died but the Japanese had lost a staggering 110,000 lives.
 * The Battle of the Bulge- Hitler conceived a dramatic counterattack as the Allies pushed from Normandy toward the European interior and his elite SS troops broke the American line near Antwerp in a dense fog. As they moved to the west, German troops captured 120 American GIs and summarily executed many of them. The Germans fought ferociously to expand the “bulge” they had made in the Allied invasion line for a month but afterward the German war effort was exhausted.
 * Iwo Jima-More than 6000 Marines died taking this tremendously fortified island in the Pacific but it was of great strategic importance because from Iwo Jima a heavily-laden bomber can reach Japan.
 * Yalta Conference- In February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met on the Crimean Peninsula to discuss their visions for a postwar world order. The groundwork for the United Nations was laid, based on the principles of the Atlantic Charter and Stalin agreed to enter the war against Japan after Germany was defeated (in exchange for some japanese islands). Stalin also agreed to allow free elections in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe.
 * Potsdam Conference- President Truman met with Churchill and Stalin in July 1945 outside Berlin and outlined the dismantling of Nazi Germany and the procedures of the Nuremburg Trials to punish the perpetrators of Nazi atrocities.