World War II: Axis Powers Advance and Allied Victory
Invasion of the Soviet Union
In his desire to dominate Europe, and unable to occupy Britain, Hitler decided to change his war scenario. In 1941, he attacked the Soviet Union without a declaration of war. The German army (Wehrmacht) achieved great victories and reached Leningrad in the north. In the south, they occupied Ukraine, and in the center, they arrived at the gates of Moscow. As the Germans penetrated deeper into Russia, they experienced increasing difficulties in supplying and communicating with their armies. The Soviet defense resisted, and in December, they fought with troops from Siberia. Hitler’s forces were driven back. It was their first land defeat, comparable to that suffered in the Battle of Britain.
Intervention by Japan
Japan, pushing a policy of imperialist expansion, had conquered much of China. An ally of Germany and Italy, Japan occupied the Netherlands and French colonies in Asia. On December 7, 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked, without warning, Pearl Harbor, causing the U.S. entry into the war against the Axis. Since then, the three Allied leaders (U.S. President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Churchill, and Soviet leader Stalin) agreed to coordinate their actions against the common enemy. In the months after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese captured territories in Southeast Asia. Allied victories in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in the Pacific marked the beginning of the Japanese retreat.
Allied Victory (1942-1945)
The defeats of El-Alamein, Stalingrad, and Midway marked the withdrawal of the fascist armies on all fronts. In the battle of El Alamein, British troops of Marshal Montgomery defeated General Rommel. In the battle of Stalingrad, the defeat of the Wehrmacht marked the beginning of the German withdrawal from the USSR. Germans and Italians surrendered in Tunisia. All of North Africa was then in the hands of the Allies, who invaded southern Italy. This provoked the fall of Mussolini’s Fascist regime, his arrest, and the signing of an armistice between Italy and the Allies. The Germans addressed the situation, and the country was divided: in the south, a pro-Allied government was formed, and in the north, a Fascist government headed by Mussolini, who had been freed by the military police of the Nazi Party (SS). This government was called the Republic of Salò. To open a large western front, the Allies planned a large landing in northern France. On June 6, 1944, known as D-Day, the Allies landed in Normandy. From that moment, the Germans had to defend two main fronts: France and the USSR. Paris was liberated, and most of France, in late 1944. The terrible battle of Berlin, fought in 1945 by Germans and Soviets, ended the Nazi resistance. Hitler committed suicide, and days earlier, Mussolini had been arrested and executed in northern Italy.
The End
To avoid huge losses in the assault on the Japanese archipelago, the U.S. government, headed by Truman after Roosevelt’s death, decided to use the atomic bomb. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945, were razed by the launch of separate nuclear bombs. In September, Japan capitulated.
Important
The Allies held several conferences to define the new map of Europe. The first was in Tehran in 1943. The Conference of Yalta (USSR) in 1945 agreed on the future of Germany after the end of the war. The last one was in Potsdam in 1945, and it revealed clear differences between the Western Allies and the Soviets regarding their future areas of influence in Europe. This marked the beginning of the Cold War.