WORLD WAR II The Price of Freedom
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 3 4 5 7 9
Pearl Harbor
Campaign in North Africa
Italian Cul-de-sac
Storming fortress Europe
D-Day
Fighting for France
11 12 13 15 16 18
Battle of the Bulge
On towards Berlin
Miracle at Midway
Across the Pacific
The Final Blows
Victory and Peace
America Enters the War
Pearl Harbor At 7:55 a.m on December 7, 1941, the quiet of a Sunday morning was shattered by the drone of low-flying planes, then thundering explosions and strafing gunfire, and then wailing sirens and antiaircraft fire. Nearly 200 Japanese bombers, torpedo planes, dive-bombers, and fighters swarmed over Hawaii’s Oahu Island, pummeling U.S. ships and aircraft. An hour later a second wave attacked. By 10 a.m., eighteen ships were listing or sunk in the oil-slicked, burning waters of Pearl Harbor; more than 300 aircraft were destroyed or damaged; nearly 2,500 Americans were dead and more than 1,000 were wounded. On December 8, President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan. Congress did so, and the president signed the declaration of war the same day. On December 11, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States. For Americans, the global war that had been raging for two years was just beginning.
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The Mediterranean Theater
Campaign in North Africa In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill were becoming personal allies. They agreed to destroy Germany first, then Japan. With Germany battling Russia, U.S. war planners wanted to open a second front in German-occupied France. But Roosevelt deferred to Churchill: the Allies would first attack in the Mediterranean, the “soft underbelly” of Nazi-occupied Europe. In 1942, untested U.S. troops joined the British, who had been battling Italian and German advances in North Africa for two years. Supported by hundreds of warships and support vessels, plus bombers and fighters, Allied troops put ashore along Africa’s northern coast. Then they pushed east to join the fight against Axis strongholds in Tunisia. Allied air, naval, and ground forces, initially outmatched and often stopped, gradually isolated the Axis army. Months of brutal fighting ended in the war’s first Allied victory, and taught green U.S. troops and commanders hard truths about real combat.
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Italian Cul de Sac Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that Italy promised the best approach to Nazi Europe. In July 1943, half-a-million Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen were deployed in a massive amphibious assault against German and Italian forces on Sicily, a rocky island just south of Italy’s “boot.” British and American commanders—often at odds and fiercely competitive—struggled to coordinate operations. U.S. Lieutenant General George S. Patton was determined to best British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. In what Patton considered “a horse race in which the prestige of the U.S. Army is at stake,” he raced up the island’s west side. Patton reached Messina, Sicily’s northernmost port, before Montgomery—just after Axis troops had escaped. Lightly resisted landings in Italy in September belied the bloody struggle that lay ahead. It took nine months for Allied forces to claw their way to Rome, and they never reached Germany. By the end of the war, Allied casualties in Italy topped 300,000.
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American war planners had long wanted to make a direct assault on northwest Europe, but the British had refused. Roosevelt deferred to Churchill, and neither heeded appeals from Joseph Stalin—who was battling Nazi expansion eastward into Russia—to open a second front in the west. But in spring 1943, the British relented. The Allies agreed to launch an assault across the English Channel into France. In the summer of 1943, the U.S. Army Air Corps expanded daylight bombing runs against industrial targets in Germany and occupied Europe. Squadrons of bombers flew hundreds of miles—far beyond the range of available fighter escorts—to attack oil fields, refineries, and factories. Dozens of planes and their crews were lost. In early 1944, finally accompanied by protective escorts, bombers struck aircraft plants and rail networks. By the spring of 1944, a year of Allied bombing had weakened Germany’s war machine. The Allies finally were ready to strike directly at the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe.
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D day On the choppy waters of the English Channel, nearly 7,000 Allied navy and merchant vessels pushed toward the beaches of Normandy. Overhead, 12,000 bombers and fighter planes poured inland. Soldiers loaded with gear were crowded into open landing craft—tired, cold, stiff, soaked in sea spray. Many were seasick. Wave after wave of troops waded ashore, some in neck-deep water. They were met by withering fire from concrete pillboxes atop high bluffs. Left and right, soldiers fell, blown to bits. Survivors clawed their way forward, securing an Allied foothold in France.
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You are about to embark upon the great crusade toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of Liberty loving people everywhere march with you. I have full confidence in your courage devotion to duty and skill in battle. General Dwight D. Eisenhower June 6, 1944
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Fighting for France After D day, the Allies poured two million troops and tons of supplies, equipment, and munitions into France. Allied troops and armored divisions under the overall command of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower spread inland from the beach and air-drop zones in Normandy. They stormed enemy positions, traded fire across fields, and tramped along winding roads that were often littered with shattered wagons, abandoned bicycles, burned-out trucks and tanks, and the bloated bodies of enemy dead. In towns, many with bombed-out buildings and rubble-filled streets, they advanced door-to-door in close-quarters fighting, always alert for sniper fire. During the three-month advance, 37,000 Allied infantry were killed. Meanwhile Allied bombing and strafing battered German defenses. In August, amphibious landings from the Mediterranean poured troops and supplies diverted from Italy into southern France. On August 29, 1944, U.S. infantrymen marched down the streets of Paris. They were greeted with cheers and kisses as residents celebrated the city’s liberation from German occupation. France had fallen to the Nazis in 1940, but an internal resistance movement had struggled to sabotage occupying forces and overthrow the German-backed Vichy government. By late summer of 1944, as Allied troops neared the city, freedom fighters took to the streets and Allied commanders dispatched a French armored division to the city. In days, the commander of German forces in Paris surrendered. By mid-September, the Allies were in control of Belgium and stood ready to strike Germany.
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Battle of the Bulge On December 16, 1944, Allied troops were massed along miles of the German border when the Nazis mounted a surprise offensive in the forests of Belgium. The Allied line bulged, but did not break. A month of bitter fighting in winter cold and deep snow cost the Allies nearly 80,000 casualties; some 20,000 Americans were killed. The battle further depleted Germany’s disappearing resources and fighting forces; its army by now was deploying boys, many younger than sixteen. But the Germans’ desperate resolve hardened, setting the stage for a bloody battle for Berlin and the German homeland.
On Towards Berlin
In early spring of 1945, Allied infantry and armored divisions, in concert with a massive, merciless bombing campaign, pushed toward Berlin from both west and east. Millions of Allied troops advanced across Germany, breaking through German defenses and taking thousands of prisoners of war. Along the way, they freed Allied prisoners of war from prison camps. During the war nearly 94,000 Americans, about 200,000 Britons, and 5,700,000 Soviets were taken prisoners of war by Nazi Germany. While English and American captives were sometimes mistreated, Slavs considered racially inferior by the Germans were routinely brutalized, starved, left to die of disease, or executed. Allied forces also liberated concentration and death camps where Nazis had killed six million Jews and five million more “undesirables”: Gypsies, disabled persons, homosexuals. Inside the camps, troops found piles of gaunt dead bodies, and some emaciated survivors. In the first week of May, following Adolph Hitler’s suicide on April 30, the Nazi regime collapsed. Berlin fell to the Soviets, and Axis armies in Italy gave up. On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered, and the war for Europe was over.
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The Pacific Theater
Miracle at Midway While fires still roiled out of control at Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces attacked more targets in the Pacific. Over the next three weeks, they swept across eastern Asia nearly to Australia, and invaded the Philippines. Because the Allies had agreed to give highest priority to defeating Germany and Italy, resources for combating Japan were limited. Still, the Allies began fighting back. On April 18, 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle led sixteen B-25 bombers, launched from an aircraft carrier more than 600 miles out to sea, on a daring raid on Tokyo. Most of his planes hit targets in the capital. Although the raid caused modest damage, it embarrassed the Japanese government and greatly boosted U.S. morale. In June 1942, the Japanese attacked the Midway Islands as a step toward taking Hawaii. But U.S. forces, having broken Japanese codes, lay in wait for their enemy. When the two fleets clashed, the Japanese seemed to be winning, easily destroying two waves of U.S. attack planes. Then a few U.S. dive bombers caught the Japanese carriers with planes refueling and sank three of them. Another was damaged and later sank. Although the United States also lost a carrier, it was easily replaced by U.S. industry. The Japanese never fully recovered.
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Across the Pacific
In 1943, the U.S. Army and Navy jointly began a two-pronged attack through the central Pacific and across New Guinea to the Philippines. In the central Pacific, vast ocean areas separated critical island bases. Fast carrier task forces and army bombers attacked the targeted islands while slower amphibious forces made bloody assaults on island strongholds. Once captured, the islands became airfields and supply hubs for the next attack. In the south, Allied forces continued west around Rabaul, bound for the Philippines, supported by the Army Air Forces and, at times, the central Pacific Fleet. Island assaults began with massive bombardments from ships and aircraft against shore positions. Forces landed in specially designed landing craft, many of which could move up on the beach itself before unloading. Once on the beach, the men fought their way inland, attacking enemy troops spread out in caves, bunkers, and fortified heights, often suffering heavy losses. Their weapons included not only mortars, rifles, and machine guns, but also fearsome flamethrowers. In October 1944, General Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines (he was forced to evacuate in March 1942) and began pushing back the Japanese. The Japanese islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa fell in March and June of 1945.
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The Final Blows In March 1945, U.S. Army Air Forces intensified their strategic bombing campaign over Japan. Instead of flying high-altitude daylight runs against industrial targets, they began low-flying nighttime attacks on cities, with incendiary bombs. Firestorms devastated property and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. On the night of March 9–10, for example, U.S. bombers destroyed sixteen square miles of Tokyo and killed close to 100,000 men, women, and children. By mid-June, most of Japan’s major cities were gutted. Aerial mines were dropped in harbors while the U.S. Navy launched carrier air attacks against coastal targets. Still the Japanese fought on. An invasion of Japan appeared inevitable.
As the war in the Pacific drew to a close, Allied troops liberated American and European civilians who had been interned by the Japanese in occupied Asian countries. Among the internees were nearly 14,000 U.S. businessmen, missionaries, and teachers and their families. Held captive from Manchuria to Indochina, they endured deplorable conditions, and often cruel treatment at the hands of guards. By the time they were rescued, starvation rations had reduced many of them to living skeletons who had to be carried to safety.
In July 1945, President Truman made his controversial decision to use atomic weapons that had been developed secretly during the war by Manhattan Project scientists. More than one million troops were moving to invade Japan when the first bomb destroyed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. On August 9, a second atomic bomb leveled Nagasaki, and Japan surrendered.
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The Allies celebrated the collapse of Germany and victory in Europe on V-E day, May 8, 1945. Across Britain, Europe, and the United States, jubilant crowds took to the streets, their elation—and relief—tempered by the knowledge that war still raged in the Pacific. But the celebrating was unrestrained on August 15, 1945, when Japan admitted defeat. “This is the day we have been waiting for since Pearl Harbor,” said President Harry Truman. “This is the day when Fascism finally dies.” Surrender documents were signed on September 2 in a ceremony aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Peace was won, but an uncertain future lay ahead. Although the American economy was booming and the nation’s spirits were high, eight years of war had left cities worldwide in ruin, economies in shambles, and civilian populations displaced and ripe for unrest. The United States championed the establishment of the United Nations (chartered in June, 1945), daring to hope that it would keep world peace and safeguard U.S. economic and political interests worldwide.
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“Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices.� ~President Harry S. Truman
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