1. Early World War II

2. Who’s Who? Axis Powers: Germany  Adolph Hitler
Italy  Benito Mussolini
Japan  Hideki Tojo

3. Who’s Who? Allied Powers:
Great Britain  Neville Chamberlain; Winston Churchill
United States  Franklin D. Roosevelt; Harry S. Truman
France  Charles de Gaulle
Soviet Union  Joseph Stalin

4. Early Axis Advances 1937  Japan attacks China
Hitler creates a new type of military strategy known as “Blitzkrieg” or lightning war
Uses this strategy to invade Poland
April 1940  Hitler launches new blitzkrieg against Denmark and Norway
May 1940  Germany invades France
Allied troops are forced to evacuate at the beaches at Dunkirk
France signs an armistice on June 22, 1940

5. Early Axis Advances
Summer 1940  Japan demands right to exploit economic resources in French Indochina
August 1940  Germany begins invasion of Britain by air using the Luftwaffe (German air force)
Battle of Britain
Bombed British air and naval bases, harbors, communication centers, and war industries
September 1940  Germans began to bomb British cities as well, hoping to break British morale
By June 1941, Hitler gives up on his attempts to invade Britain after the Royal Air Force is able to successfully defend Britain

6. Early Axis Advances
1941  General Rommel, a German military leader, invades North Africa
1941  Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary join the axis powers
April 1941  Hitler seized Greece and Yugoslavia
June 22, 1941  Hitler invades USSR, known as “Operation Barbarossa”
Massive attack along a 1,800 mile line
Germans captured 2 million Russian soldiers
Harsh Russian winter forced German soldiers back because they had no winter uniforms
December 1941  Counter-attack by Soviets
By 1943, Hitler abandons Soviet invasion

8. Japan at War
December 7, 1941  Japanese aircrafts attack the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii
Surprise attack damaged or destroyed 18 ships and created 3,500 American casualties
Same day, Japanese attacked the Philippines and Malaya
Occupied a number of small islands in the Pacific

9. Japan at War
On the Bataan Peninsula and the island of Corregidor, the resistance was fierce
Japanese forced American and Filipino soldiers on a 60-mile march
Bataan Death March
Thousands died from starvation or mistreatment before reaching the prison camp

11. Japan’s New Community Japan declared a community of nations
Called the new community the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”
Japan announced intention to liberate areas of Southeast Asia from Western colonial rule

12. A Global War
Prime Minister Tojo hoped that a lightning strike at American bases would destroy the U.S. fleet in the Pacific
Japanese thought of Americans as soft and were convinced that the Roosevelt administration would accept Japanese domination in the Pacific
However, attack on Pearl Harbor brought the American people together and President Roosevelt convinced Congress to declare war on Japan on December 8, 1941