HitlerMussoliniStalin Rise to power Methods to keep power Pre-WWII conquest for land

 Hitler calls for lebensraum “living space” for German people  Take over lands of inferior peoples (Slavs & Poles) & occupy German speaking lands of Europe  European leaders try appeasement to avoid war with Germany  Germany begins building a large army & producing weapons in 1933 –violating the Treaty of Versailles  Anschluss of 1938, Germany enters Austria  “Peace for our time” –English Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain gets Hitler to agree to stop “annexing” parts of Europe on September 30, 1938  Next day, Germany occupies the Sudetenland (Czechoslovakia)

 with the invasion of Poland  Days before Hitler signs nonaggression pact with USSR  USSR will not stop German attacks in Europe  France & GB declare war on Germany  Spring of 1940 –Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium & France invaded

 August –October,1940 Battle of Britain  “the Blitz” (blitzkrieg=lightning war) bombing  Germany uses U-boats to prevent supplies from reaching Britain  British hold out with radar & US supplied food & weapons thru the Lend-Lease Act

 December 7 th, 1941  “A date that will live in infamy”  Japan attacks US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii  Punish U.S. for banning the sale of oil to Japan  Gen. Hideki Tojo also attacks the Philippines and several islands in the Pacific held by US  Isolationism: refusal to be involved in political events abroad -ends for US

 June 1941, Hitler sends 3 million men into Russia  Blitzkrieg effective at first  By autumn still had not conquered Moscow, Stalingrad, Leningrad (St. Petersburg)  USSR cuts off all supplies to Stalingrad  Stalin “sieges a siege” -winter ▪ 1 million Soviets die ▪ Out of 250,000 Germans: 90,000 captured, nearly 100,000 died

 German navy is small  Largest warship of it’s time “The Bismarck” destroyed by British in less than 2 weeks  Germany relies on U-boats to disrupt supply lines and enigma code to send secret communications  By 1943, the U.S. can out-produce destroyed airplanes and ships

 German-Italian Afrika Korps has many early wins, but has vulnerable supply lines  Allies want control of Suez Canal to get Middle East oil supplies  Battle of El Alamein (1942), German General Erwin Rommel loses to British due to lack of supplies  By May 1943, American, French & British troops control all of Africa

 Japanese control much of the Pacific  b/c they’re well supplied & near home  US Navy severely weakened by Pearl Harbor attack  Capture more than 70,000 Allies – Bataan Death March  Battle of Midway -1 st Allied Victory due to code breaking  Allies begin “island hopping” –Battle of Guadalcanal  Japan retaliates with Kamikazes

 Soviets push west from Stalingrad; US, British, French push east from the Atlantic  D-day: Allied attack of Normandy, France  June 6, 1944  150,000 men landed on the same day by sea & air  Germayn continues to fight for 11 more months  V-E Day, May 7, 1945 war in Europe en ds

 Long tradition of anti-Semitism in Europe  Nuremburg Laws passed in 1937 to exclude Jews from mainstream German life  Kristallnacht “night of broken glass”: November 1938 in Germany & Austria  Jewish homes & businesses vandalized  Synagogues destroyed  25% of Jewish men in Germany arrested

 Ghettos –walled off sections of cities where all Jews had to live  Concentration camps  From France, Poland & other German held territory –Jews put on trains to work in slave labor camps in Eastern Europe  Used to produce necessities for the army  Those who were not “essential” –the old, sick and young children were gassed & cremated  Death marches  Hitler’s ultimate goal was to exterminate “the Jewish race”

 US bombing raids of Tokyo begin in summer 0f 1944  Battle of Iwo Jima & Battle of Okinawa  Japanese fight to the death and heavy American losses  July, 1945 US asks for Japanese surrender  Atomic Bomb  Aug. 6, 1945 bombing of Hiroshima  Aug. 9, 1945 bombing of Nagasaki  V-J Day Japan surrenders, August 15, 1945