Newspaper WWII // Universal Contemporary History

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A RECAP OF


WORLD WAR II


1. Germany’s invasion of Poland (1939) On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion. From East Prussia and Germany in the north and Silesia and Slovakia in the south, German units, with more than 2,000 tanks and over 1,000 planes, broke through Polish defenses along the border and advanced on Warsaw in a massive encirclement attack. After heavy shelling and bombing, Warsaw surrendered to the Germans on September 27, 1939. Britain and France, standing by their guarantee of Poland's border, had declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939. Nazi

Germany occupied the remainder of Poland when it invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Poland remained under German occupation until January 1945.



2. Interrupted progress Following the declaration of war by France and Britain to Germany, the Western Front remained dormant for more than seven months, a period that was dubbed jokingly War or Phony War. Germany, needed raw materials to fuel its war industry. Iron was an essential material for its war

3. Italian and German Invasion This started when concluding his conquest of Western Europe; Hitler had succeeded and avoids twofront war that they feared.

industry and did not. Scandinavian iron depended, so began the occupation of Denmark and Norway from 1940. In response to the invasion and how fruit signed nonaggression pact with the Soviets, the USSR occupies over 1940, part of Poland, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Romanian region of Bessarabia and Bukovina.

Then it is known that he was ready to launch their invasion to the Soviet Union. Benito Mussolini, the Italian Duce, ally of Hitler, knowing that during the First World War, the Western powers had


condemned Italy to have no part in the division of territories because it had been a second-rate power, decided to intervene. Then in September of 1940, Italian forces stationed in Libya, cross the border with Egypt and attack British forces that where guarding the Suez Canal appetizing. A month later, in October, the Italian forces penetrated in Greece in order to establish strategic bases in the Balkans. In both invasions, luck was adverse to the Italian armies, as the Greek resistance, supported by British forces, was so tough that shortly Greek and British armies had vacated the Italians in Greece and Albania were entering where there match the Italian attack.


The maneuvers of Mussolini, Hitler angered that he had to completely change his plans. Requests for help

from Mussolini had to be treated

4. Operation Barbarossa


Beginning on 22 June 1941, over four million soldiers of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a 2,900 km (1,800 mi) front the largest invasion in the history of warfare. This ambitious operation was driven by Adolf Hitler's diabolic desire to conquer the Soviet territories as embodied in General plan Ost. This marked the beginning of the pivotal phase in deciding the victors of the war. Unfortunately the Germans tactically speaking won resounding victories and occupied some of the most important economic areas of the Soviet Union like Ukraine. In fact, the German advance had been so fast that it had compromised the whole army’s supply and communication lines. Despite these successes, the German offensive stalled on the outskirts of Moscow and was then pushed back by a Soviet counter offensive without even having taken the city. Hitler had recognized that his most difficult decision was what to do after his forces had broken through the Stalin Line – move north, south or continue east? The Operation Barbarossa's failure led Hitler's demands for further operations inside the USSR, all of which eventually failed. As a conclusion Operation Barbarossa was the largest military operation in history in both manpower and casualties. And most importantly, Operation Barbarossa opened up the Eastern Front, to which more forces were committed than in any other theater of war in world history.


5. Attack on Pearl Harbor (1941) The attack on Pearl Harbor was executed by the Imperial Japanese Army on the morning of December 7th of 1941. The surprise attack on the Oahu Island in Hawaii was aimed to the USA navy and the air forces defending the zone. This attack led to the United States entry into World War II. Their objective was to neutralize the U.S. Pacific Fleet to occupy the occidental colonies on Southeast Asia to break the economic seizure to which Japan had been submitted to since the last year. Once the U.S. had been debilitated, Japan would try to negotiate peace with favorable conditions. Even though the Japanese empire won, they were not able to obtain a decisive victory. The attack destroyed 13 war ships and 188 aircrafts, it left 2.403 militaries and 68 citizens dead. After the attack, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and four days later, Hitler declared war on the U.S.


6. The Coral Sea and Midway: the turning point It was the first modern naval battle in which the torpedoes were not involved nor cannons. It was just about fighting aircraft carriers, that had their bases

or airports in New Guinea (Japanese) and Australia (allies). It was the first Allied victory that stopped the Japanese movement. Japan continued advancing across the Pacific on the island of Midway. The Allied fleet used a special machine to decode the signals and


intercept Japanese navalsecret message. Then they found out the plan. The plan was to bomb enemy Midway Island. While the Japanese bombers attacked the island, the Allied fleet raided the Japanese and sank many ships. On May 7 their planes were located in a section of the Japanese fleet in the Coral Sea, attacked and managed to sink a carriers. The next day a second force located and attacked so severely that retreated. In summer the U.S. fleet had recovered from its losses in Pearl Harbor (December 1941).


7. Fights in North Africa Fighting in North Africa started 5 years ago with the Italian Fort Capuzzo occupation by British forces in June 1940. This was followed by an Italian offensive and British counteroffensive. When the Italians suffered terrible defeats, the German Africa corps came to her aid. After a series of battles tug of war for control of Libya and parts of Egypt, British forces under the command of General Bernard Montgomery pushed the Axis forces into Tunisia. In mid-1942, with the Allied landings of Operation Torch in North West Africa , and after some fighting against the forces of Vichy France (who later joined the Allies),

Commonwealth and U.S. forces took in a pincer movement Axis forces in northern Tunisia, where they were forced to surrender. Making the Axis forces fight on a second front in North Africa, the Western Allies somehow helped the Soviet Union, which fought against the Axis on the Eastern Front. The information obtained from Ultra operation to decipher encrypted messages was an important aid to the Allied victory on this front.


8. Almost there! Allied invasion of Italy and France Starting with the Invasion of Sicily in July of 1943, and culminating in the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion of Normandy, Allied forces took the fight to the Axis powers in many locations across Western Europe. The push into Italy began in Sicily, but soon made it to the Italian mainland, with landings in the south. The Italian government (having recently ousted Prime Minister Benito Mussolini) quickly signed an armistice with the Allies -- but German forces dug in and set up massive defensive lines across Italy, prepared to halt any armed push to


the north. After several major offensives, the Allies broke through and captured Rome on June 4, 1944. Two days later on D-Day, the largest amphibious invasion in history took place. Nearly 200,000 Allied troops boarded 7,000 ships and more than 3,000 aircraft and headed toward Normandy. Some 156,000 troops landed on the French beaches, 24,000 by air and the rest by sea, where they met stiff resistance from welldefended German positions across 50 miles of French coastline. After several days of intense warfare, Allied troops gained tenuous holds on several beaches, and they were able to dig in with reinforcements and bombardment. By the end of June, Allies were in firm control of Normandy, and on August 25, Paris was liberated by the French Resistance with help from the French Forces of the Interior and the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. In September, the Allies launched another major invasion, Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne operation of its time, in which tens of thousands of troops descended on the Netherlands by parachute and glider. Though the landings were successful, troops on the ground were unable to take and hold their targets, including bridges across the Rhine River. Despite that setback, by late 1944, the Allies had successfully established a Western Front and were preparing to advance on Germany. (http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/10/world-war-ii-the-allied-invasion-of-europe/100160/)


While under attack of heavy machine gun fire from the German coastal defense forces, American soldiers wade ashore off the ramp of a U.S. Coast Guard landing craft, during the Allied landing operations at Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, 1944.


After the French Resistance staged an uprising on August 19, American and Free French troops made a peaceful entrance on August 25, 1944. Here, four days later, soldiers of Pennsylvania's Twenty-eighth Infantry Division march along the Champs-Elysees, with the Arc de Triomphe in the background.

9. End of WW2 (1945) On April 8, 1945, the liberation of people inside concentration camps began, this ended on May 7, when the last group of people were taken out. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy was incapable of conducting operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent. On August 6, 1945, the United States

dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and soon after midnight on August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union invaded the Imperial Japanese state of Manchukuo. Later that same day, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the city of Nagasaki. The combined shock of these events caused


Emperor Hirohito to intervene and order the Big Six to accept the terms for ending the war on August 14. The surrender ceremony was held on September 2, 1945, aboard the United States Navy battleship USS Missouri (BB-63), at which officials from the Japanese government signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, thereby ending the hostilities in World War II.




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