World War II

Global Empires at War

Japan: industralization and military strength

• 1937 invasion of China
• The Rape of Nanking
• Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere

Hitler's War Aims

• Lebensraum
• Racial Conquest
• Aryans vs. Slavs
• Anti-Communism
• The Elimination of the Jews: the Holocaust

1939

• Invasion of Czechoslovakia
• Nazi-Soviet Pact
• Poland--September 1939
• Blitzkrieg
• Killing of Polish Civilians
• Polish Jews

Britain and France: Empires go to War with Germany

1940

• France: French Empire Falls to Hitler
• Tanks
• Dunkirk: defeat into Victory
• Winston Churchill
• Britain alone: The Battle of Britain
  • Spitfire
  • Radar

Hitler's New Order

• German Superiority
• Anti-semitism
• Wannsee Conference Jan 1942
• Concentration Camps
• Auschwitz: Extermination Camps

1941

Soviet Union

• Barbarossa
• General Zhukov

The United States

• Isolationism and Imperialism
• Pearl Harbor: December 7, 1941
• Total War Against Japan...and Hitler
• Anti-Japanese Racism

1942

• North Africa
• Rommel
• Montgomery
• Stalingrad
• Red Army

1943

• Russian Advance
• American Advance in Southeast Asia
• V-2

1944

• Normandy
• Fire Bombing of Germany and Japan
  • Dresden before after
  • Tokyo Fire Bombing
• Concentration Camps
• Rape

1945

• Yalta
• Death of Roosevelt
• April 1945--Hitler, Mussolini
• Hiroshima
• Origins of Cold War