World War II: Allied Pushback

• Section 4 discusses the Allies pushing back the Axis powers during World War II.
• The Allies achieved victories on all fronts.

Casablanca Conference

• Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in Casablanca.
• A wartime strategy was planned: increase bombing of Germany and attack Sicily.

D-Day

• The Allied invasion of France, took place on June 6, 1944.

General MacArthur's Strategy

• Involved taking back islands in the Pacific one at a time.

Vocabulary

• Amphtrac: amphibious tractor
• Kamikaze: divine wind

Key People and Terms

• Casablanca Conference: Meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill to plan wartime strategy.
• Operation Overlord: Allied invasion of France.
• D-Day: June 6, 1944, the day of the Allied invasion of France.
• Omar Bradley: General who commanded American forces landing at Omaha and Utah.
• Guadalcanal: Island in the Pacific, site of a major battle between American and Japanese forces.
• An event can approximately occur due to the size of the world in terms of time and space.
• Military operations often use a code to maintain secrecy and security.
• The military can pose a great threat for a country and world.

US Two Fronted War

• The United States fought a two-front war in Europe and the Pacific.
• Germany was bombed, leading to oil shortages, railroad system damage, and aircraft factory damage.
• Allied troops took Italy in a campaign that lasted almost a year.
• Leaders from the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union planned Operation Overlord.
• In the Pacific, the U.S. adopted a two-pronged attack.
• The Philippines were retaken, and advanced toward Japan by island-hopping in the central Pacific.

Striking Back at the Third Reich

• The Casablanca Conference involved Roosevelt and Churchill planning a wartime strategy.
• The strategy included increased bombing of Germany and an attack on Sicily.
• The Allies realized they could mount a large-scale invasion from the sea after the attack on North Africa in November 1942.
• Landing troops in Europe and the Pacific was necessary to win the war.
• In January 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed at the Casablanca Conference to increase the bombing of Germany.
• The goal was to destroy the German military, industrial, and economic system, and undermine German morale.
• The Allies agreed to attack the Axis on the island of Sicily.
• The Allies had been bombing Germany before the Casablanca Conference.
• Britain's Royal Air Force had been dropping an average of 2,300 tons of explosives on Germany every month before the conference.
• The U.S. Eighth Army Air Force had joined the campaign in the summer of 1942, dropping an additional 1,500 tons of bombs by the end of the year.
• Between January 1943 and May 1945, the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Eighth Army Air Force dropped approximately 53,000 tons of explosives on Germany every month.
• The bombing campaign caused a severe oil shortage and wrecked the railroad system, also destroying aircraft factories so Germany could not replace losses.
• By the time the Allies landed in France, they had total control of the air.

Striking at the Soft Underbelly

• As the bombing campaign intensified, the invasion of Sicily moved ahead.
• General Dwight D. Eisenhower was in charge of the invasion, with Generals Patton and Montgomery leading the ground forces.
• The invasion began on July 10, 1943, and the Allied troops made it ashore with few casualties despite bad weather
• A new vehicle, the DUKW (amphibious truck), proved effective in bringing supplies and artillery to soldiers on the beach.
• General Patton's tanks captured the western half of Sicily eight days after the troops landed.
• Patton's troops headed east, staging end-runs around German positions, while the British attacked from the south.
• The Germans evacuated the island by August 18.
• The attack on Sicily created a crisis in the Italian government, leading to the arrest of Mussolini.
• On September 8, 1943, the Italian government publicly announced Italy's surrender, leading American troops to land at Salerno.
• German troops seized control of northern Italy, attacked the Americans at Salerno, and put Mussolini back in power.
• The German army took up positions near Cassino to stop the Allied advance and the Allies landed at Anzio.
• Ultimately, the Allies broke through the lines at Cassino and Anzio, capturing Rome less than two weeks later.
• Fighting in Italy continued until May 2, 1945, costing the Allies more than 300,000 casualties.

Roosevelt Meets Stalin at Tehran

• Stalin agreed to meet with Roosevelt and Churchill in Tehran, Iran, in late 1943.
• Stalin promised a full-scale offensive against the Germans when the Allies invaded France in 1944.
• Roosevelt and Stalin agreed to break up Germany after the war.
• Stalin promised to help the U.S. defeat Japan once Germany was beaten, and accepted Roosevelt's proposal to create an international organization for peace.

Landing in France

• The Allied invasion of France took place on June 6, 1944, known as D-Day.
• Roosevelt had to choose the commander for Operation Overlord.
• Roosevelt selected General Eisenhower to command the invasion.
• Germany believed the Allies would land in Pas-de-Calais, so the Allies placed decoys there.
• The real target was Normandy.
• By the spring of 1944, over 1.5 million American soldiers, 12,000 airplanes, and more than 5 million tons of equipment had been sent to England.
• The invasion had to begin at night, ships had to arrive at low tide, and low tide had to come at dawn.
• The paratroopers would be dropped behind enemy lines.
• The weather had to be good.
• The first opportunity lasted from June 5 to 7, 1944.
• Heavy cloud cover, strong winds, and high waves made it impocsible to land on June 5.
• Eisenhower gave the order to proceed on June 6, 1944.

The Longest Day

• Nearly 7,000 ships set sail for the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944 carrying more than 100,000 soldiers
• 23,000 paratroopers were dropped inland.
• Allied fighter-bombers raced up and down the coast causing damage and chaos.
• Warships fired down on the beaches, code-named "Utah," "Omaha," "Gold," "Sword," and "Juno.”"
• The American landing at Utah Beach went well with less than 200 casualties and the landing went inland in three hours.
• The British and Canadian landings also went well.
• The American assault almost disintegrated at Omaha Beach and troops were killed/wounded.
• More landing craft later arrived and the Americans gained ground, with troops sending the message “Troops formerly pinned down on beaches . . . [are] advancing up heights behind beaches."
• There were nearly 35,000 American troops at Omaha, 23,000 at Utah, and 75,000 British and Canadian troops on shore.

Driving the Japanese Back

• General MacArthur's strategy involved taking back islands in the Pacific one at a time so he Japanese could be pushed back.
• There was taking place in Britain military leaders were developing a strategy to defeat Japan.
• A two-pronged atack was planned out.
• The Pacific Fleet, commanded by Admiral Nimitz, would advance through the central Pacific by hopping from one island to the next.
• General MacArthur's troops would advance through the Solomon Islands, capture the north coast of New Guinea, and launch an invasion to retake the Philippines.

Island-Hopping in the Pacific

• By the fall of 1943, the navy was ready to launch its island-hopping campaign.
• Many of the islands were coral reef atolls poseing a problem.
• Five thousand U.S. Marines landed Tarawa Atoll needing to wade ashore was very dangerous to them.
• One in three made it ashore due to Japanese fire
• One vehicle had been able to cross the reef and was Named the “Alligator," the amphibious tractor, or amphtrac was used to rescue people in swamps.
• The assault on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands was more easy. This time all of the troops used the amptracs to take more ground.
• After the Marshall Islands, the navy targeted the Mariana Islands to to use Marianas as a base for B-29 Superfortress to bomb japan.
• Nimitz decided to invade three of the Mariana Islands: Saipan, Tinian, and Guam.
• In August 1944 A few months later, B-29 bombers began bombing Japan.

MacArthur Returns to the Philippines

• As the forces under Nimitz hopped across the central Pacific, General MacArthur's troops began their own campaign in the southwest Pacific. The invasion of Guadalcanal in August 1942 was the start.
• MacArthur ordered his forces to capture the Japanese base at Hollandia on the north coast of New Guinea.
• MacArthur seized the island of Morotai before the Philippines.
• In October 1944, over 700 ships carrying over 160,000 troops sailed for Leyte Gulf in the Philippines.
• On October 20, the troops began to land on Leyte and MacArthur spoke into the microphone to the people saying"People of the Philippines, I have returned",
• The Japanese sent ships and warriors to stop the invasion.
• The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle in history and the kamikaze pilots appeared causing devistation.
• In March 1945 It was a gruelling process of battle, the troops did not capture Manila unti
• The Japanese had been defeated.

The Allies pushed back the Axis powers, securing victories on all fronts. Key events included the Casablanca Conference, where Roosevelt and Churchill planned strategy, and D-Day, the invasion of France. General MacArthur led the island-hopping strategy in the Pacific.