The Germans had lost the war. At least, that is how any rational leader would have viewed it. But Adolf Hitler was no longer rational--if he ever had been. Hitler ordered his soldiers to fight to the last man, and he reinforced his thinning lines with underage boys and overage men. Although the Germans continued to retreat, resistance was always fierce. Then, on December 16, 1944, General Gerd von Rundstedt (1875-1953) led a desperate counteroffensive, driving a wedge into Allied lines through the Ardennes on the Franco-Belgian frontier. With German forces distending the Allied line westward, the ensuing combat was called the Battle of the Bulge. The U.S. First and Third armies--the latter led brilliantly by General George S. Patton (1885-1945)--pushed back the bulge, which was wholly contained by January 1945. The battle was the last great German offensive, and it was Germany's last chance to stop the Allies' advance into its homeland.
Toward V-E Day
During February 1945, General Patton sped his armored units to the Rhine River and, after clearing the west bank, captured the bridge at Remagen, near Cologne, on March 7. Allied forces crossed this bridge and at other points along the Rhine, and were now poised to make a run for Berlin. However, General Eisenhower, believing Hitler would make his last stand in the German south, chose to head for Leipzig. With U.S. troops just 96 miles west of Berlin, the Supreme Allied Commander sent a message to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, telling him that he was leaving the German capital to the Red Army.
While the British and Americans had been closing in from the West, the Soviets had executed a massive assault on the German's Eastern Front. By the end of January, the Red Army had pushed through Poland into Germany itself. In truth, little was left of Berlin. A combination of U.S. and British air power and Soviet artillery had razed the capital of Hitler's vaunted "Thousand-Year Reich." On April 16, 1945, Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov moved his troops into Berlin. Many German soldiers and civilians, terrified of the vengeance the Soviets might exact, fled westward to surrender to the Americans and the British.
Indeed, Germans could have found few places of refuge in the spring of 1945, for the entire world was learning of war crimes committed on an unimaginably vast scale. In their drive toward Berlin, the Allies liberated one Nazi concentration camp after another--centers of extermination to which Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, and others deemed by the Reich as "undesirable" had been sent for extermination. Such names as Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Belsen, and Dachau seared themselves into history. The Nazis bad not been content with conquest; they intended nothing less than genocide.
Westbound Soviet and eastbound American troops met at the river Elbe on April 25, 1945. Five days later, Adolf Hitler, holed up in a bunker beneath the shattered streets of Berlin, shot himself. On May 7, 1945, senior representatives of Germany's armed forces surrendered to the Allies at General Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims. The very next day came a formal unconditional surrender. From the pages of American newspapers, headlines shouted the arrival of V-E--Victory in Europe--Day.
Fat Man and Little Boy
German scientists discovered the possibility of nuclear fission--a process whereby the tremendous energy of the atom might be liberated--in 1938. Fortunately for the world, Hitler's tyranny drove many of Germany's best thinkers out of the country, and the nation's efforts to exploit fission in a weapon came to nothing. Three Hungarian-born American physicists--Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller--were all intimately familiar with what a man like Hitler could do. They asked America's single most prestigious physicist, Albert Einstein (a fugitive from Nazi persecution), to write a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him of Germany's nuclear weapons research.
Late in 1939, FDR authorized the atomic bomb development program that became known as the Manhattan Project. Under the military management of General Leslie R. Groves (1896-1970) and the scientific direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), the program grew to vast proportions and employed the nation's foremost scientific minds. A prototype bomb--called "the gadget" by the scientists--was completed in the summer of 1945 and was successfully detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945.
At this time, the Allies were planning the final invasion of Japan, which, based on the bloody experience of "island hopping," was expected to add perhaps a million more deaths to the Allied toll. President Truman therefore authorized the use of the terrible new weapon against Japan. On August 6, 1945, a lone B-29 bomber dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, obliterating the city in three-fifths of a second. Three days later, "Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki, destroying about half the city.
On August 10, the day after the attack on Nagasaki, Japan sued for peace on condition that the emperor be allowed to remain as sovereign ruler. On August 11, the Allies replied that they and they alone would determine the future of Emperor Hirohito. At last, on August 14, the emperor personally accepted the Allied terms. A cease-fire was declared on August 15, and on September 2, 1945, General MacArthur presided over the Japanese signing of the formal surrender document on the deck of the U.S. battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.
The Least You Need to Know
Never before or since World War II have Americans fought with such unanimity and singleness of purpose.
If ever a war was a contest of good versus evil, such was World War II, and America's role in achieving victory elevated the nation to "superpower" status in the postwar political order.
Main Event
The Japanese military was guided by the code of the Samurai warrior, as ancient as it was harsh. To be killed in battle was an honor, but to be taken prisoner, a disgrace. Accordingly, the Japanese treated its prisoners of war as dishonored men. America learned this fact the hard way when U.S. and Filipino soldiers who surrendered at Corregidor on April 9, 1942, were sent on a forced march to captivity in Bataan. The infamous Bataan Death March resulted in the deaths of 10,000 P. 0 W. s because of abuse and starvation.
Voice from the Past
For many Americans, the most stirring voice of the war was that of a Britisher, Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The man was so greatly admired in this country that, in 1963, Churchill was made an honorary citizen by act of Congress--a unique event in American history. His first address as prime minister was delivered on May 13, 1940:
"...I say to the House as I said to Ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.
"You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
"You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs--victory in spite of all terrors--victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival...
Stats
The Japanese characteristically fought to the death. Of the 5,000 Japanese troops defending Tarawa, only 17 were taken prisoner when the island fell on November 26.
Stats
Approximately 5,000 Allied ships, 11,000 Allied aircraft, and more than 150,000 troops participated in the June 6 D-Day landing.
Real Life
Dwight David Eisenhower, as Supreme Allied Commander, was the single most powerful military figure in World War II.
After World War II, Eisenhower served briefly as army chief of staff, wrote a memoir of the war (the 1948 Crusade in Europe), and served as president of Columbia University. In December 1950, President Harry S Truman named him military commander of NATO. Two years later, Eisenhower was tapped by the Republican party as its presidential candidate. He served two terms as, quite possibly, the most popular president in American history. Retiring to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1961, Eisenhower wrote a series of books. He died in 1969.
Ma
in Event
World War II was conducted with an unprecedented degree of cooperation among the Allies, whose leaders held several key strategic and political conferences during the conflict. One of the most important was the Yalta Conference, held from February 4 to February 11, 1945, in the Crimea. Here Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin planned the end of the war and laid a foundation for the postwar world. Stalin promised to establish provisional governments in the nations of eastern Europe now occupied by the Soviets, and he pledged to hold free, democratic elections as soon as possible.
The group agreed that the Soviet Union would annex eastern Poland and that Poland would be compensated by German war reparations. The conquered Germany would be divided into four zones of occupation, to be administered by the U.S., U.S.S.R., Britain, and France. Reluctant to enter the war against Japan, Stalin agreed that his nation would do so within three months of Germany's surrender. In exchange, the U.S.S.R. would receive the southern half of Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, and special rights in certain ports.
Stats
Civilian deaths in World War II exceeded 25 million, of whom 6 million were Jews systematically murdered by order of Adolf Hitler.
Main Event
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, elected to an unprecedented four terms as president of the United States and having seen his nation through the Depression and the blackest days of World War II, succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage on April 12, 1945. Roosevelt was succeeded by his vice president, Harry S Truman (1884-1972). Truman attended the last wartime Allied conference at Potsdam, Germany, during July 17-August 2 with Churchill (who was replaced by his successor, Clement Attlee, during the conference) and Stalin.
The conference crystallized plans for the postwar world, confirming the four-zone division of Germany, establishing plans for de-Nazification and demilitarization, and establishing a tribunal to prosecute those guilty of war crimes and atrocities. resolved that nothing less than unconditional surrender would end the war against Japan. Truman also revealed at Potsdam that the United States had successfully tested an atomic bomb, which could be used against Japan.
Stats
Dropped on Hiroshima, with a population of about 300,000, "Little Boy" killed 78,000 people instantly; 10,000 more were never found; more than 70,000 were injured; and many subsequently died of radiation-related causes. Nagasaki, with a population of 250,000, instantly lost some 40,000 people when "Fat Man" was dropped. Another 40,000 were wounded.
A COLD WAR AND A KOREAN WAR
(1944-1954)
In This Chapter
The U.N. and other postwar peace programs
Descent of the "Iron Curtain" and start of the Cold War
The CIA and McCarthyism
The Korean War
Rejoicing at the end of World War II was intense, but brief. The Soviet Union, portrayed by U.S. politicians and press alike as a valiant ally during the war, once again became an ideological and political enemy. The eastern European nations occupied by the Red Army became satellites of the U.S.S.R., and the postwar world found itself divided between the western democracies, led by the United States, and the eastern communist "bloc," dominated by the Soviets. It seemed as if the seeds of yet another war--World War III?--had been sown. At least Americans could take comfort in their sole possession of the atomic bomb...but that, too, would soon change.
Winning the Peace
It was clear to America's leaders that the Allies had won World War 1, only later to "lose the peace." They were determined to not make the same mistake again.
The Birth of the United Nations
During World War II, the powers aligned against the Axis called themselves the "United Nations." The concept that label conveyed held great promise; after all, had the League of Nations been a more effective body, World War Il might have been averted altogether. From August to October 1944, the United States, Great Britain, the U.S.S.R., and China met at a Washington, D.C., estate called Dumbarton Oaks to sketch out plans for a new world body. The wartime allies-plus France-would constitute a peacekeeping ("security") council, while the other nations of the world, though represented, would play secondary roles.
The Dumbarton Oaks Conference was remarkably successful, except in regard to two major issues: the principle of unanimity among the security council members (Should action require unanimous consent?) and the Soviet demand for separate membership for each of its 16 republics. Meeting at Yalta in the Crimea, February 4-11, 1945, the Big Three--Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill--resolved their differences. The principle of unanimity was upheld, but Stalin reduced his separate membership demand from 16 to three: Russia, Ukraine, and Byelorussia. Later in the year, a formal United Nations Charter was drawn up and adopted by 50 nations at the San Francisco Conference. The charter became effective after a majority of the signatory nations ratified it on October 24, 1945. The United Nations, the most significant world body in history, had become a reality.
Germany Divided
Another element vital to winning the peace was the postwar treatment of Germany. American, British, and French leaders, mindful of how the punitive Treaty of Versailles had created the conditions that brought Hitler to power and plunged the world into the second great war of the century, did not clamor for revenge. On the other hand, the Soviet Union wanted more than revenge; it demanded the utter subjugation of Germany. For the present, Germany was carved up into four "zones of occupation," each under the control of a different ally: the United States, Britain, the U.S.S.R., and France. All the Allies agreed on instituting programs to "de-Nazify" Germany, purging it of individuals who might seek to resurrect the National Socialist party. The Allies further agreed to establish a tribunal for the trial and prosecution of those who committed war crimes.
Secretary Marshall's Plan
The single boldest step toward winning the peace was proposed on June 5, 1947, by George C. Marshall. The former army chief of staff, now secretary of state, described in an address at Harvard University a plan whereby the nations of Europe would draw up a unified scheme for economic reconstruction to be funded by the United States. Although the Soviet Union and its satellite nations were invited to join, in the growing chill of the Cold War, they declined. Sixteen western European nations formed the Organization for European Economic Cooperation to coordinate the program formally known as the European Recovery Program, but more familiarly called the Marshall Plan.
Winston Churchill called the Marshall Plan the "most unsordid" political act in history, but it was, above all, a political act. Although Marshall assured the Soviets that the plan was riot directed "against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos," it was a powerful economic salvo fired against communism. Having witnessed totalitarian regimes rush to fill the void of postwar economic catastrophe, Marshall and other U.S. leaders were eager to restore the war-ravaged economies of the West and even to stimulate growth. Economic well-being, they felt, was the strongest ally of democracy.
The United States poured some $13 billion into Europe and also established a massive Displaced Persons Plan, whereby almost 300,000 homeless Europeans (including many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust) immigrated to the United States and became citizens.
Curtain of Iron
On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill addressed tiny Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic," he declared, "an iron curtain has descended across the continent." The former prime minister's eloquent phrase took root, and Iron Curtain was used for more than 50 years to describe the economic, social, and military barriers created against the West by the Soviet Union and the communist countries of Eastern Europe.
"Containing" Communism
In 1823, President James Monroe issued his famous "Monroe Doctrine," warning European powers that the United States would act to halt any new attempts to colonize the Americas. In 1947, President Harry S Truman promulgated the "Truman Doctrine," warning the Soviet Union--whic
h supported a threatened communist takeover of Greece and Turkey--that the United States would act to halt the spread of communism wherever in the world it threatened democracy.
The Truman Doctrine had its basis in a proposal by State Department official George F. Kennan (b. 1904). The proposal stated that the most effective way to combat communism was to contain it, confronting the Soviet Union whenever and wherever it sought to expand its ideological influence. Thus the "Cold War" began in earnest, and with it, a National Security Act, passed in 1947. The act reorganized the War Department into the Department of Defense and also created the Central Intelligence Agency--perhaps the most controversial federal agency ever established. The CIA had as its mission covert intelligence gathering, which meant that the CIA sometimes functioned with neither executive nor legislative knowledge, let alone approval. In the name of fighting communism, the National Security Act had created the closest thing to a secret police (long a mainstay of oppressive eastern European regimes) this nation ever had.
Airlift to Berlin
Truman's policy of containment prompted the United States and its western allies to take a strong stand in Germany after the Soviet Union began detaining troop trains bound for West Berlin in March 1948. (Although Berlin was deep inside the Soviet sector of occupied Germany, the city, too, was divided into zones of Allied occupation.) In response, on June 7, the western allies announced their intention to create the separate, permanent capitalist state of West Germany. Two weeks later, the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin, protesting that because of its location in Soviet-controlled territory, West Berlin could not serve as the capital of West Germany.
Would the West back down? Would this be the start of World War III?
President Truman did not take armed action against the Soviets. Instead, he ordered an airlift, a spectacular chain of round-the-clock supply flights into West Berlin--272,000 flights over 321 days, carrying tons of supplies. The airlift was a political as well as logistical triumph, which caused the Soviet Union to lift the blockade. The event was also a vindication of the policy of containment, and in April 1949, it led to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization--NATO--a key defensive alliance of the western nations against the communist East.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to American History Page 31