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The Poles were defeated swiftly by the German Blitzkrieg (lightning war).When the Russians invaded
eastern Poland, resistance collapsed. On 29 September Poland was divided up between
Gennany and the USSR (as agreed in the pact of August 1939). -
Hitler's troops occupied Denmark and landed at the main Norwegian ports in April 1940,rudely shattering the apparent calm of the 'phoney war'. -
This was fought in the air, when Goering's Luftwaffe tried to destroy the Royal Air Force
(RAF) as a preliminary to the invasion of Britain. The Germans bombed harbours, radar
stations, aerodromes and munitions factories; in September they began to bomb London,
in retaliation, they claimed, for a British raid on Berlin. The RAF inflicted heavy losses on
the Luftwaffe when it became clear
that British air power was far from being destroyed, Hitler called off the invasion. -
Germany attacks on Holland, Belgium and France were launched simultaneously on 10 May,
and again Blitzkrieg methods brought swift victories. The Dutch, shaken by the bombing
of Rotterdam, which killed almost a thousand people, surrendered after only four days.
Belgium held out for longer, but her surrender at the end of May.
The Germans now swept southwards: Paris was captured on 74 June and France
surrendered on 22 June -
In April 1941 Hitler's forces invaded Greece, the day after 60 000 British, Australian
and New Zealand troops had arrived to help the Greeks. The Germans soon captured
Athens, forcing the British to withdraw, and after bombing Crete, they launched a parachute invasion of the island; again the British were forced to evacuate -
It was Blitzkrieg on an awesome scale,Riga,Smolensk and Kiev were captured but the German forces failed to capture Leningrad and Moscow. They were severely hampered by the heavy rains of October, which turned the Russian roads into
mud, and by the severe frosts of November and December. Even in the spring of 1942 no progress was made in the north and centre as Hitler decided to concentrate on a major drive south-eastwards towards the Caucasus to seize the oilfields. -
The USA was brought into the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (their naval base in the Hawaiian Islands).
The attack had important results:It gave the Japanese control of the Pacific and It caused Hitler to declare war on the USA -
At Midway Island in the Pacific the Americans beat off a powerful Japanese attack because they had broken the Japanese radio code and knew exactly when and where the attack was to be launched.Midway proved to be a crucial turning point in the battle for the Pacific: the loss of their carriers and strike planes seriously weakened the Japanese. Gradually the Americans began to recover the Pacific islands. -
At El Alamein in Egypt Rommel's Afrika Korps were driven back by the British Eighth Army. This battle was the culmination of several engagements fought in the El Alamein area: first the Axis advance was temporarily checked when Rommel tried to break through he was halted again at Alam Halfa finally, seven weeks later in the October battle, he was chased out of Egypt for good by the British and New Zealanders. El Alamein victory was another turning point in the war. -
This was the first stage in the Axis collapse. British and American troops landed in Sicily from the sea and air (10 July 1943) and quickly captured the whole island. This caused the downfall of Mussolini, who was dismissed by the king. Allied troops crossed to Salerno,Reggio and Taranto on the mainland and captured Naples (October 1943).Marshal Badoglio, Mussolini's successor, signed an armistice and brought Italy into the war on the Allied side.Italy provided air bases for bombing the Germans. -
It was the most controversial action.German cities suffered badly. Sometimes raids seem to have been carried out to undermine civilian morale, as when about 50 000 people were killed during a single night raid on Dresden (February1945). the Americans launched a series of raids on Japan, in a single raid on Tokyo, 80 000 people were killed and a quarter of the city was destroyed. The Allied strategic air offensive was one of the decisive reasons for the Axis defeat. -
Between December 1941,when the first Jews were killed at Chelmno in Poland, and May 1945 when the Germans surrendered, some 5.7 million Jews were murdered, along with hundreds of thousands of
non-Jews - gypsies, socialists, communists, homosexuals and the mentally handicapped. -
On 6 August 1945 the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing perhaps
as many as 84 000 people and leaving thousands more slowly dying of radiation poisoning. Three days later they dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, which killed perhaps
another 40 000; after this the Japanese government surrendered.
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