2.  Identify
the reasons why the U.S.
government decided to focus on the
defeat of Germany rather than Japan, and
to assess the wisdom of this decision
 List
and explain the significance of the
most important military engagements
 Describe
the nature of fighting on the
European Front during WWII.

3.  Dictator- a person exercising absolute power with
unrestricted control and no hereditary
 Selective Service Act- Made men between 18 and
45 liable for military service and required all men
between 18 and 65 to register for the draft.
 Casablanca Conference- Meeting held to plan the
European Strategy of the Allies during WWII.
 Operation Overlord- Allied invasion of Normandy,
France.
 VE Day- Victory in Europe, May 8th 1945

4.  Although it was the Japanese who
attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, U.S.
military planners decided that Germany,
not Japan, was to be the primary target of
operations.
 American forces were to maintain a
largely defensive posture in the Pacific
while forces were massed in the British
Isles for an invasion of Europe.

5.  Selective Service Act
• 1.8 Million when war declared
• Months later, 3.9 million
 Patriotism
 Anger towards Axis
 Desire for Adventure
 Joblessness
• 1945; Peaked to more than 15 million
 216,000 were women

6. 1 Million African Americans Enlisted
• Segregated units; often cooks or laborers
 350,000 Hispanic Americans
• Most decorated
 Native Americans
• Marine Signal Corp Code
 Messages were sent in Navajo
 Japanese Americans
• 442 Regiment was most decorated unit

7.  1943 Casablanca Conference
• Allies agreed to fight Axis powers
• Unconditional Surrender
 Surrender without concessions
 United States v. Japan
 Allies v. Nazi Germany

8.  Nonaggression Pact of 1939
• Stalin distrusted Hitler
 Germans invaded on June 22, 1941
• Blitzkrieg tactics
• Starvation of residents
• Freezing to death

9.  July 42-February
1943
 Cited as the turning
point in the war
 One of the bloodiest
in the history of
warfare with nearly
two million Captured German
casualties. Prisoners of War
 Soviet Victory

10.  The decision was made, therefore, to land
U.S. and British troops in North Africa,
where Axis forces threatened to overrun
British-held Egypt.
• by the spring of 1943 the German and Italian
forces in North Africa had surrendered.

11.  November 1942 American and British
forces land in North Africa (Operation
Torch)
 Allies were victorious by May 1943
 Used land to invade Sicily and Italy when
the fascist government fell from power
 Italy announced unconditional surrender
September 9, 1943

13.  June 5, 1944
 Fake
invasions of vessels and fake
bombers
• Also fake messages
 Germansthought nothing of it because of
bad weather

14.  D-Day, June 6, 1944
 Largest combined land/sea/air invasion
(amphibious) in history
 176,000 allied soldiers went ashore along
60 mile stretch of Normandy beaches
 122,000 Allies KIA
 114,000 Germans KIA

17.  5000 Vessel Armada
 30,000 vehicles on board
 300 planes dropped 13,000 bombs
 5,000 tons of gasoline needed for first
twenty days
 Captured Germans were sent to
American POW camps
• 33 in Texas alone

18.  American troops broke through German
lines in the well-known “Battle of the Bulge”
 1944-January 1945
 Would become the final European offensive
• Soviet encircled the entire city
• Entered city quickly
 Berlin’s defenders finally surrendered May
2nd.
 May 8th, 1945 would be celebrated at VE (Victory in
Europe) Day.

19.  Success
• Base to sweep Germans out of France
 Booming Industry
 Paris Liberated August 25, 1944
 Exhausted German Troops

21.  Death of Hitler
 VE Day
 Manhattan Project
 Atomic Bombings
 VJ Day
 Formation of United Nations
• Put in chronological order.
• Summarize the details of the events which ended
the war.

22.  For Example:
• The Death of Mussolini.
•Former dictator of Italy
•Overthrown from government in 1943 (disliked?)
Death of Mussolini •Was hung by Italian partisans along with his wife
April 28, 1945 •12 fascists were also hung
•Even after his death, people would continue to spit on him and shot him.
BBC News, “On This Day”:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/sto
ries/april/28/newsid_3564000/3564529.stm

23. It was in the night and I was sleeping, and my sergeant came
running and said, "There are a thousand different ships
coming in the English Channel.“
There was thousands of ships, and we could see landing boats
of American troops. Then came thousands of men at one
time coming on land and running over the beach. This is the
first time I shoot on living men, and I go to the machine gun
and I shoot, I shoot, I shoot! For each American I see fall,
there came ten hundred other ones!
The final company in the first assault wave, Company E, landed
its six boats between a mile and two miles left of its
designated beach, which was Easy Green.

24. As our teams were called, we assembled on the landing craft and were
lowered into the water, and it was tremendously rough and the spray from
the sea was cold, and it came over the sides of the landing craft and
nearly everybody got soaked. We were taking water from the rough sea
over the bow, and we were bailing to try to keep afloat. Some of the
landing craft sank before they got in because of the rough sea. In fact, we
picked up some of our buddies who had floundered eight or nine miles
from shore, and we had taken them on as extra cargo; and some that we
should have picked up or would have liked to have picked, we left
because we didn't have room. We hoped somebody else would.
It was a terrible ride to the beach. Over to our right, the battleship Texas was
firing into the cliffs, and every time that big fourteen inch gun went off, a
tremendous tsunami swamped our boat, and the water would come over
the side and just soak us and make our seasickness worse.
As we got in to one thousand yards offshore, we started taking some mortar
shells and some artillery. They were just over our bow and exploding off
to our side, and we could also hear the small arms as we got in a little
closer -- the small arms were firing at us.

25. We proceeded toward the beach, and many of the fellows got sick. The water was quite
rough. It was a choppy ride in, and we received a lot of spray.
Our boat was one of six of A Company in the first wave, and when we got to the beach, or
close to it, the obstacles erected by the Germans to prevent the landing were fully in
view, as we were told they would be, which meant the tide was low.
I was the rifle sergeant and followed Lieutenant Anderson off the boat, and we did what we
could rather than what we had practiced doing for so many months in England. There
was a rather wide expanse of beach, and the Germans were not to be seen at all, but they
were firing at us, rapidly, with a great deal of small-arm fire.
As we came down the ramp, we were in water about knee high, and we started to do what
we were trained to do -- move forward, and then crouch and fire. One of the problems
was we didn't quite know what to fire at. I saw some tracers coming from a concrete
emplacement which to me looked mammoth. I never anticipated any gun emplacements
being that big. I attempted to fire back at that, but I had no concept of what was going on
behind me. There was not much to see in front of me except a few houses, and the water
kept coming in so rapidly, and the fellows I was with were being hit and put out of action
so quickly that it become a struggle to stay on one's feet. I abandoned my equipment,
which was very heavy.

26. I floundered in the water and had my hand up in the air, trying to get my balance,
when I was first shot. I was shot through the left hand, which broke a knuckle, and
then through the palm of the hand. I felt nothing but a little sting at the time, but I
was aware that I was shot. Next to me in the water, Private Henry G. Witt was rolling
over towards me. "Sergeant, they're leaving us here to die like rats. Just to die like
rats." I certainly wasn't thinking the same thing, nor did I share that opinion. I didn't
know whether we were being left or not.
I made my way forward as best I could. My rifle jammed, so I picked up a carbine and
got off a couple of rounds. We were shooting at something that seemed
inconsequential. There was no way I was going to knock out a German concrete
emplacement with a .30-caliber rifle. I was hit again, once in the left thigh, which
broke my hip bone, and a couple of times in my pack, and then my chin strap on my
helmet was severed by a bullet. I worked my way up onto the beach, and staggered
up against a wall, and collapsed there. The bodies of the other guys washed ashore,
and I was one live body amongst many of my friends who were dead and, in many
cases, blown to pieces.