WW II Essay Example For Students

WW II Essay World War II World War II was one of the deadliest and most destructivewars this world has seen. The origins of the war were in Germany whereAdolf Hitler became the leader and started ethnic cleansing, killing anyJewish person, gypsy, homosexual or any other person whom he consideredinferior. Another cause of the war was the attempted invasion of Ethiopiaby Italy, which they eventually occupied in 1936 despite British and Frenchopposition. Germany appeared to be winning the war, taking over theRhineland, Czechoslovakia,France, Belgium and other pieces of land, up until 1942 when the tidesturned in favor of the Allies. The Japanese naval airpower was devastatedby the Americans and Hitler had recently been defeated at Moscow. Shortlyafter Italy was defeated and expelled from the war and Germanys forceswere slowly deteriorated. The war officially ended when the Japanesesurrendered following the detonation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima andNagasaki. Hitler began holding meetings with o thers who thought like him,blaming Jewish people for the problems in Europe. The Communistscontinually tried to break up the meetings of the group who came to beknown as the National Socialist Party in 1923. TheNational Socialist Party, led by Goering, Hess, Rosenberg, and Roehm, wasoutraged with France for occupying the Ruhr. In 1924 Hitler was sentencedto a four-year prison term for a demonstration where twenty people werekilled. He only ended up serving thirteen months of the term but itprovided sufficient time for him to outline his book Mein Kampf, whichmeans My Struggle in German. The President of the German State, MarshalHindenburg, was eighty-three years old as of 1930 and was persuaded to viewHitler as the nextChancellor of the Reich. Hitler was called to Berlin by the President andonJanuary thirtieth, 1933 he became the Chancellor of Germany. Hitlers firstacquisition was his reoccupation of the Rhineland, a small portion ofwesternGermany in 1936. Just three years later Ger man soldiers had already takenoverCzechoslovakia. In early September of the same year Germany took overPoland,France and Great Britain declare war on Germany, and Norway, Portugal,Spain, and Ireland all declare neutrality. Later in the year Turkey signs apact withBritain and France giving them mutual assistance and the Soviets attackFinland. In April of 1940 the Danish king announced that Norway was surrendering toGermany and one month later Belgium does the same. France, under constantattack, gave into Germany in mid June. Italy, sided with Germany, decidesthat it needs control of the Suez Canal so it invades Egypt on Septemberthirteenth. In October after Hitlers constant nagging, Spain joins the war in exchangefor military, agricultural, and territorial demands. On June twenty-second,1941Germany begins Operation Barbarossa, the code name for the invasion of theU.S.S.R. Hitlers plan was to have his army, 3,200,000 men, split intothree groups; one moving north towards Leningrad, one moving towardsMoscow, and one moving south towards Kiev. By the time his army had takenKiev it was alreadySeptember and as they moved north towards Moscow winter set in early. Hitlers forces were stuck in the bitter cold of winter. In December aSoviet counter-attack forced the Germans to withdraw from Moscow. This wasthe first sign that Hitlers powerful army could in fact be stopped andthat he was bound to make a mistake at some time. Another Allied force, theBritish, were also having good luck. In Libya the British were able tosplit the army under Rommel, forcing him to retreat. Early in the morningof December seventh, 1941 a fleet of 189 Japanese aircraft began attackingPearl Harbor, Hawaii. The first wave of planes destroyed anything it couldfind, including American aircraft, battleships, destroyers, cruisers, andsubmarines. The second wave followed shortly and attacked everything thefirst wave had missed. Anti-aircraft fire was able to deter a third wave,but an incredible amount of damage had already happened. In only one hour,forty five minutes the Japanese air forces wrecked and capsized twobattleships and three were resting on the bottom. Nineteen w ar ships hadbeen hit and 150 aircraft had been disabled. In all over 2,400American lives were lost, 2,086 from the Navy and 237 from the Army. As aresult of the bombing of Pearl Harbor the United States, with many of theLatinAmerican countries, declared war on Germany, Japan and Italy. Although manycountries declared war against the Axis nations, only the United States,Brazil, and Mexico actually sent troops to fight. At this point the warstarted to turn in favor of the Allies. The first major win for theAmerican forces was at theBattle of the Coral Sea. After the dust settled at Coral Sea the Japaneselost three heavy cruisers, two destroyers, and more than twenty otherships. Just a month later the Americans won another decisive battle atMidway. American forces spotted the Japanese fleet before it was able to doany extensive damage to the island. By the end of the battle the Japanesewere in full retreat after the loss of four carriers, two large cruisers,three destroyers, and variou s other auxiliary craft. In the U.S.S.R. theGermans had resumed their offensive, now with their primary target asCaucasus, for the oil, and their secondary target as Stalingrad. TheGermans had a chance to attack Stalingrad while it was nearly defenseless,however they waited and attacked after Soviet reinforcements arrived. Itappeared as though they would capture Caucasus but a fuel shortage plaguedthem. In October 1942 the German army had lost twenty-two divisions and therest were ordered by Hitler to fight to the last man against the reinforcedSoviets. 22,500 German soldiers under Paulus surrendered inside Caucasusafter losing nearly 200,000, 100,000 dead and 91,000 captured. The onlylogical place the Allies could find to attack was Italy, but they first hadto go throughSicily which was guarded by two islands, Pantelleria and Lampedusa. Eventhough the attack on Pantelleria destroyed only two of the fifty-four shorebatteries, the Italians flew a white flag when a ship neared the isl and. IT IS A CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECT ON NATURE OR NURTURE HAS A MORE PROFOUND EssayBulgaria removed itself from the war the next day. The Axis forces wererapidly losing forces and the war. Hitler was able to concentrate 250,000troops to a small area near the U.S. VIII Corps without foreignintelligence knowing. Early in the morning of December sixteenth, 1944Hitlers army attacked and brought complete surprise to the Allies, it wasknown as the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler himself thought up the plan, butactions by the Allies turned a nearly devastating onslaught into a stunningvictory. Ardennes, Bastogne, and St. Vith were all very important placesduring the Battle of the Bulge. At their highest point the Germans camewithin a few miles of the Meuse River and unknowingly passed by an Allysupply within a quarter mile. Germany continued to pour troops into thebattle which stabilized by Christmas Eve. When the skies finally clearedthe Allies aircraft began bombing the German armor and trains, wh ich wereat a near standstill. Hitler eventually decided to withdraw from theArdennes on January twenty-first, but only after losing 120,000 men. IwoJima was an important tactical position in the Pacific War and theAmericans were willing to sacrifice much for it. They sent in 60,000officers, followed by theFifth Fleet. By February twenty-seventh, 1945 the Americans had won overhalf the island and on March fifteenth the fighting stopped after nearly20,000American casualties. Okinawa was the last island needed before the directattack of Japan itself. Okinawa was invaded and quickly destroyed, followedby theTenth Army moving towards Japan. It was here that the kamikaze technique,flying an airplane with a warhead attached to it, against war ships andother targets. The Tenth Army was the largest amphibious movement in the Pacific War,comprised of 1,427 ships. Okinawa was readily waiting for the arrival ofthe Americans on the south side of the island, with 100,000 soldiers and anintricate system of fortification in the coral and limestone rock. TheJapanese fleet then came out and intercepted the American fleet. TheSoviets, after rapidly expelling theGermans from their own country, took a little longer to move into Germany. TheSoviets did go full force, sending all four of their armies into Germany,north and south of Breslau. By mid-February they had already taken overBunslau, which is a mere 125 miles from Berlin. Zhukov reached Oder, thenPosen along the WartaRiver, within sixty miles of Berlin. During February of 1945 the armies inthe west were having trouble making it up the Rhine. The U.S. Third Corpsfollowed the Germans over the Rhine Bridge after being commanded to Getfive divisions across as quickly as possible. by Eisenhower. The Americanswere able to get across the bridge so quickly that the Germans didnt evenhave time to demolish it. The U.S. First and Ninth Armies linked on Aprilfirst nearPaderborn and held the German Army Group B and two corps of Group H incaptivity. After constant air attacks the remaining 325,000 men and 30general officers surrendered. The Third U.S. Army took Frankfurt, thenKassel. TheSeventh U.S. Army crossed the Rhine near Worms and joined with the ThirdnearDarmstadt. A s a result of this massive movement of Allied forces, theGerman defense in the west basically fell apart. Eisenhower decided to haltmany of his troops, knowing that the Soviet forces would be coming throughon the other side, fearful that the two allies might mistake each other forenemy. TheAmericans met the Soviets at Torgau on April twenty-fifth. The Soviet armycontinued onward toward Berlin and had the city enveloped the same day. Hitler, choosing not to flee with many of his advisers, committed suicideon April thirtieth, knowing that there were Soviet forces just above hisbunker. TheBerlin forces surrendered on May second. The war on the front next to Italywas surrendered on April twenty-ninth. Mussolini, the ex-dictator of Italyand his mistress, were killed after attempting to escape from imprisonment. On May fifth a representative of Doenitz, the inherited leader of Germany,offered a surrender of all troops in Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, andSchleswig-Holstein. Even though the war had ended in Europe, the battle in the Pacificcontinued. Bombing Japan seemed to be the most effective way to eat away at theJapanese forces. On July sixteenth, 1945 news that the nuclear bomb atAlamogordo, NewMexico, was a success was rushed to President Truman. Even though the bombwas originally intended for Berlin, Truman decided that the weapons couldalso be used to force a quick surrender in the Pacific. On July twenty-sixth America joined Britain and China in issuing an ultimatum forunconditional surrender. OnAugust sixth, after Japan ignored the ultimatum, a B-29 bomber appearedoverHiroshima and then sped away. A few moments later the first atomic bomb tobe dropped on humans detonated, killing and injuring about half the cityspopulation, 320,000 people. Three days later a second atomic bomb wasdropped onNagasaki. The second bomb did less damage, killing and injuring 80,000people because the bomb was off target. On August tenth the Japanesedeclared that they would accept the terms of the Potsdam ultimatum. Thesecond world war was off icially over on September second, aboard theMissouri where the Japanese signed a document ending all fighting.