(Parte 1) - BACKGROUND TO THE WAR; THE ROAD TO WAR; WAR IN EUROPE AND NORTH AFRICA: AXIS SUPREMACY, 1939-42.

World War II commenced as a localized conflict in eastern Europe and expanded until it merged with a confrontation in the Far East to form a global war of immense proportions. The war began in Europe on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany attacked Poland, and ended on Sept. 2, 1945, with the formal surrender of Japan aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Involving most of the world's major powers as belligerents, it also included many smaller states on both sides and had a great impact on neutral nations. The victorious Allies included the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth of Nations, France, the United States, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and China. The losing side comprised Germany, Italy, and Japan, as well as smaller nations. The opponents clashed in two major areas: Europe, including the coast of North Africa and the North Atlantic; and Asia, including the Central and Southwest Pacific, China, Burma, and Japan. The belligerents fought over the central issue of Axis expansion, which was halted at the cost of many millions of military and civilian casualties.

Background To War
After the horrors of World War I, the 1920s seemed to augur a long era of international stability, liberal constitutionalism, and economic prosperity, but serious diplomatic, political, and economic problems remained unsolved. The Great Depression of the 1930s brought these problems to the fore and helped create an environment in which militaristic authoritarianism flourished.

The 1920s. International agreements reached during the 1920s appeared to portend future peace. The Washington Conference (1921-22) fixed the ratio of capital ships among the powers and declared open and equal access to China. The Locarno Pact (1925) and the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928) presented the prospect of arbitration as an alternative to force in Europe. Meanwhile, the League of Nations, which had been established in 1919, provided procedures designed to isolate any would-be aggressor and to promote disarmament. The United States did not join the League.

Despite the portents for peace, Italy, Germany, and Japan were dissatisfied nations in which dangerous tendencies toward bellicose nationalism threatened constitutional government and world order.

In Italy, which had obtained little for its efforts on the victorious side in World War I, internal disorder combined with diplomatic frustration to overturn (1922) the fragile, shallow-rooted parliamentary system in favor of the Fascist movement of Benito Mussolini. Harboring territorial ambitions, Mussolini established a corporate state founded on chauvinistic nationalism.

The harsh terms imposed on Germany at the end of World War I by the Versailles Treaty were deeply resented in that nation. The democratic Weimar Republic, as a product of German defeat, bore the onus of association with the treaty. Antidemocratic and violently nationalistic right-wing organizations and even private armies, such as the virulently anti-Semitic storm troopers SA of Adolf Hitler flourished immediately after the war.

Like Italy, Japan had been on the winning side in World War I. Many Japanese were also dissatisfied with their country's international status, believing that Japan should be the dominant power in East Asia. This view was particularly common among military officers participating in a revival of nationalism incorporating Shinto, emperor worship, and glorification of warrior virtues. Although Japan had a liberal, pro-Western government during the 1920s, the military remained influential. From about 1927, nationalistic military officers began appearing in cabinet posts and pressing for a more aggressive China policy.

Depression and Frustration. Optimism thrived during the prosperity of the 1920s, but it was a prosperity flawed by, among other things, overextension of credit and inadequate worker purchasing power. When economic well-being gave way to depression in 1929, the shock discredited constitutional government in those nations lacking a strong liberal tradition and already bedeviled by frustrated nationalists. Leaders complained in Germany, Italy, and Japan that their nations did not have fair access to raw materials, markets, and capital investment areas, all of which were necessary for their economic health. They argued that their nations were the victims of economic warfarewith its protective tariffs, managed currencies, and cutthroat competitionand that they had been left behind in the race for economic self-sufficiency and a favorable balance of trade. They made it plain that they would fight, if necessary, for a better economic status.

Because they felt that democracy had failed, the people of those countries looked with increasing favor on antidemocratic elements that glorified war as the means of national salvation. In Italy, Mussolini's cries that Italians needed both colonies and glory struck a responsive chord. In Germany, Hitler's National Socialists gained power in 1933. Meanwhile, Japanese militarists won a preponderant influence in the inner circle of their government.

The Democracies on the Eve of Aggression. The major democratic powers - the United States, Great Britain, and France - were not prepared to cope with the challenges to peace posed by the dissatisfied nations. They accepted the international order established by the Versailles Treaty but were unwilling to defend it. Many in the democracies were disillusioned by World War I. The idealistic goals of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson had not been achieved, and it seemed to some that the war had been promoted by war profiteers and deceptive propaganda. The Versailles Treaty was widely regarded as unfair to Germany. Furthermore, the enormous casualties of World War I had aroused pacifist sentiment. Finally, while the depression spurred dissatisfied nations toward expansionism, it turned the democracies inward as they became preoccupied with reviving their economies. Hoping to avert another war, the United States adopted neutrality laws, the British sought to appease the dictatorial regimes, and the French tried to secure themselves behind a network of alliances and the defensive fortress of the Maginot Line.

The Road To War
Territorial aggrandizement by Japan in China, by Fascist Italy in Ethiopia, and by Nazi Germany in central and eastern Europe brought the world to war. The League of Nations failed to take decisive action to curb armaments or to stem aggression. The Western powers long pursued policies of neutrality and appeasement until it became clear that the expansionist nations would not rest content with their gains.

Manchurian Crisis, 1931. At the Washington Conference (1921-22), Japan had concurred in guaranteeing China's territorial integrity and recognizing the Open Door Policy - that the China trade was open to all nations. Despite this pledge, Japan's extreme nationalists looked longingly to the Chinese province of Manchuria, a huge area of great potential wealth. On Sept. 18, 1931, Japanese soldiers stationed in southern Manchuria were involved in a minor clash with Chinese troops. Japan used the incident as an excuse to spread its forces throughout Manchuria, subduing the region by January 1932 and establishing the puppet state of Manchukuo. The League of Nations condemned Japan in 1933 but imposed no sanctions. Japan withdrew from the League.

Hitler Rearms Germany. German chancellor Adolf Hitler abandoned the efforts of his predecessors to ease the provisions of the Versailles Treaty through a policy of reconciliation with the World War I victors. Instead, he unilaterally tore up the treaty. Hitler took Germany out of the League in 1933 and began a massive program to build up the German army, navy, and air force. In March 1935 he restored universal military service. The democracies did not react, and Britain even concluded a naval agreement with Germany in 1935 that permitted greater German naval strength than that allowed by the Versailles Treaty. In 1936, Hitler sent troops into the demilitarized Rhineland.

Conquest of Ethiopia, 1935-36. Italy had unsuccessfully attempted to conquer Ethiopia in 1896. Mussolini, seeking easy foreign victories to galvanize his country, attempted to avenge that still-rankling defeat by sending forces into Ethiopia from Italian Eritrea on Oct. 3, 1935. Another thrust came from Italian Somaliland. Throwing mechanized troops against untrained and poorly armed Ethiopians, the Italians completed the conquest in 1936. With Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, Ethiopia was organized as Italian East Africa. Although the League of Nations imposed an embargo against Italy, it failed to include a vital item, oil, thereby discrediting itself again.

Spanish Civil War, 1936-39. In July 1936 began the Spanish Civil War, a conflict between Spain's liberal-leftist republican coalition government and rightists led by Gen. Francisco Franco. The war soon brought international repercussions. Hitler and Mussolini sent planes, troops, and supplies to Franco, while Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin gave military equipment to the republicans. The United States adhered to a policy of strict neutrality, and Britain and France, anxious to prevent a general war, forbade the shipment of war material to the republic. Thousands of anti-Fascist volunteers from Britain and the United States went to Spain, however, to serve with the republicans and were organized with Soviet Comintern aid.

Cooperation between Germany and Italy in Spain helped cement the vague Rome-Berlin Axis, an understanding that they had concluded in 1936. Franco's victory (1939) strengthened Hitler's and Mussolini's positions in the Mediterranean. In 1936 the Japanese concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany, and a year later Italy joined; this grouping prefigured the later alliance structure of the general war.

Renewal of Japanese Aggression, 1937. A Chinese-Japanese military clash (July 7, 1937) at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing (Peking) provided the pretext for an all-out Japanese campaign of conquest in China. By 1939, Japan controlled populous eastern China.

Reacting to events in China, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke in October 1937 of the need to "quarantine the aggressors." A strong negative response to this call indicated the wide extent of isolationist sentiment in the United States. Not until 1940 did Japanese expansionism begin to draw the attention of the American public.

Anschluss with Austria, 1938. Proclaiming the unity of the German people, Hitler from 1934 sought Anschluss ("union") between Germany and his native Austria. In February 1938 he forced Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, under threat of invasion, to admit Nazis into his cabinet. On Mar. 12, 1938, Hitler invaded Austria and incorporated it into his Third Reich.

Czechoslovakia and Appeasement, 1938. Almost immediately afterward, the Nazi regime began agitating on behalf of the Sudeten Germans - who lived in pockets of western Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland - claiming that they were a persecuted minority. The Czech government made numerous concessions to the Sudeten Germans, but in September 1938, Hitler demanded the immediate cession of the Sudetenland to Germany. On September 29-30, Britain and France (which was Czechoslovakia's ally) agreed at the Munich Conference to yield to Hitler, who promised to make no further territorial demands in Europe. Czechoslovakia was excluded from participation at Munich. Unlike Austria, Czechoslovakia was democratic, and its president, Eduard Benes, was prepared to resist Hitler, but the two western European democracies insisted on submission.

British prime minister Neville Chamberlain hailed the Munich agreement as bringing "peace for our time". In March 1939, however, Hitler destroyed what remained of Czechoslovakia by occupying Bohemia-Moravia and making Slovakia a German protectorate. He also took Memel from Lithuania and began threatening the Polish Corridor, a narrow strip of land that separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany. In the meantime, Italy occupied and annexed (April 1939) Albania.

End of Appeasement, 1939. The Western powers could no longer avoid acknowledging that Hitler's promises were worthless and that his territorial ambitions were not restricted to German-speaking areas but might be limitless. Desperately, Britain and France began to prepare military resistance to Nazi expansionism. In the spring of 1939 they both guaranteed Poland against German aggression. They also sought to begin negotiations with the USSR, whose earlier efforts to form an anti-Axis coalition they had rebuffed.

Stalin, however, had become convinced that Britain and France were conspiring to help throw the full weight of German strength against the USSR. Therefore, despite their bitterly antagonistic ideologies, he sought an accommodation with Hitler. On Aug. 23, 1939, Germany and the USSR signed the 10-year Nazi-Soviet Pact of nonaggression. A secret protocol provided for the division of Poland and the Baltic States between the signatories.

For a delighted Hitler the treaty meant that he would not have to fight a war on two fronts, because Stalin was giving him the way to move against Poland. Britain and France would be without major allies as they belatedly prepared to defend that beleaguered country.

The War in Europe and North Africa: Axis Supremacy, 1939-42
In the early years of the war Germany swept through western Europe and threatened to encircle the Mediterranean through offensives in North Africa and penetration into the Balkans. Britain, although stunned, had not been subdued. The Germans turned against their Soviet allies in the summer of 1941 and invaded the USSR, but Soviet forces stubbornly resisted the German advance. Late that year the United States entered the war on the Allied side, offering hope for the anti-Axis forces.

German and Soviet Attacks on Poland. On Sept. 1, 1939, the German military machine struck decisively at Poland, in what was known as a blitzkrieg (lightning war). High-speed panzer (tank) units pushed across the borders, blasting holes in the Polish lines. From the skies Luftwaffe (air force) bombers destroyed the Polish air force, damaged communications lines, and prevented the Poles from moving reinforcements, supplies, and ammunition to the front lines. Then German foot soldiers moved forward to hold the conquered ground. Meanwhile, Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3.

On Sept. 17, 1939, Soviet troops marched into Poland. The Polish government and high command escaped into exile the next day. The Soviets halted at a line running from East Prussia down to the Bug River. Hitler and Stalin then partitioned the conquered country: the USSR occupied the eastern half, populated by Ukrainians and White Russians as well as Poles; the Germans took the western half, which included Gdansk (Danzig) and the Polish Corridor.

In late September and early October, Stalin forced the Baltic States - Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania - to accept garrisons of Soviet troops within their borders. The following year, elections held under Soviet auspices resulted in the incorporation of the three nations into the USSR as constituent republics.

Russo-Finnish War. Finland, however, resisted Soviet pressures, and on Nov. 28, 1939, the USSR denounced its nonaggression pact with that country. Two days later Red Army troops invaded Finland. The Finns put up a surprisingly spirited and at first effective resistance in this Russo-Finnish War, or Winter War. At the end of February 1940, however, the Soviets moved their best troops into battle, and the Finns began to give way to the sheer force of numbers. In March the invaders breached the defensive Mannerheim Line, and Finland was forced to relinquish strategic ports, a naval base, and airports. Meanwhile, in December 1939 the League of Nations condemned the USSR for its action in Finland and expelled it.

Struggle in the Atlantic, 1939-40. From the very beginning of World War II, as in World War I, control of the seas was to be a critical factor in its outcome. Immediately upon the declaration of war the British Royal Navy took control of the seas and within a few weeks drove German merchant ships off the oceans into neutral ports. As in World War I the Germans replied with a methodical and destructive submarine campaign. The war was scarcely under way when a German U-boat sank (Sept. 3, 1939) the Athenia, a Canadian liner bound for Montreal. The sinking resulted in the loss of 112 lives, including those of 28 Americans. During the first 2 months of the war 67 British merchant ships were sunk. On Oct. 14, 1939, a German U-boat penetrated the defenses of Scapa Flow, the British naval base in the Orkney Islands, and sank the battleship Royal Oak; 833 lives were lost. The Germans also used long-range bombers and sea raiders.

To meet this threat the British organized a convoy system similar to that used in the late stages of World War I. Large groups of merchant ships were protected by aircraft in the early stages of their voyages and were then escorted by destroyers through the mid-Atlantic. The use of new detection devices known as radar and ASDIC, or sonar, facilitated the destruction of German surface and undersea craft. In surface warfare the British had considerable success from the beginning. The destruction of the German pocket battleship Graf Spee off Montevideo, Uruguay, on Dec. 17, 1939, was a significant blow, for the ship had already sunk nine Allied ships. The struggle that later became known as the Battle of the Atlantic would be a long one. Not until 1943 could the Allies claim to have contained Germany's Atlantic sea power.

Denmark and Norway. After Hitler's speedy triumph in Poland, a period known as the Phony War followed in western Europe. Hitler proposed a peace conference, but the proposal was immediately rejected, and the 6-month lull was occupied with strategic planning. Hitler turned his attention to the Scandinavian peninsula, control of which would give him air bases for later attacks on Britain as well as harbors from which his rapidly increasing submarine fleet could operate in Atlantic waters. Moreover, control of Denmark and Norway would ensure the Germans a valuable source of foods such as fish and dairy products, while depriving the British of these food products. Most important of all, Norwegian routes would give Hitler access to Swedish iron ore, critical for Germany's war effort.

Early on the morning of Apr. 9, 1940, German troops swept across the Danish border. Overwhelmed and unable to resist effectively, the Danes soon capitulated. While Denmark was being overrun a German task force left Baltic ports, steamed up the Kattegat into the Skagerrak, and entered Oslo Fjord. At the same time, the Luftwaffe struck at Oslo's airport, while air transports dropped troops and guns to the ground. A parachute battalion, the first to be used in war, captured the airfield. British and French troops came to Norway's aid but succeeded only in seizing Narvik (May 28) after a month-long battle. The German conquest of Norway was completed when the Allies withdrew on June 9, 1940.

Churchill Assumes Power. Reverses in Norway caused the fall of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who was replaced on May 10 by Winston Churchill, a staunch opponent of appeasement in the 1930s. Before Parliament three days later the new prime minister offered Britons nothing but "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" in a relentless fight against Nazi Germany. Through this and many subsequent inspirational addresses, Churchill helped rally his country in Britain's darkest days against what he believed was a mortal threat to world civilization.

The Low Countries. Next on Hitler's timetable were the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Possession of the Low Countries would give Nazi Germany not only vast industrial resources but, more important, advance bases for coming assaults on France and Britain. An attack through the Low Countries also would divert Allied troops to the area, where they could be easily cut off. With Belgium in his hands Hitler could outflank the vaunted defensive Maginot Line, which ran parallel to the Rhine River and then north to a point near the Belgian frontier. He could then move into France across the unfortified Belgian border.

On May 10, 1940, German troops moved into the Low Countries. Luxembourg, with no defensive forces, was occupied without any resistance. Both the Dutch and Belgians fought back. Receiving the brunt of the opening offensives, the Dutch mined bridges, blocked roads, and flooded wide areas. Without sufficient planes and tanks, they relied on British and French expeditionary forces for assistance, but far too little help came and it came too late. Nazi mechanized forces moved with such speed that the Dutch were overwhelmed within 5 days. Their government, led by Queen Wilhelmina, fled to England.

The Belgians lasted only 2 weeks longer. French and British troops moved in but could not stem the German blitzkrieg. German tanks moved with great speed as parachutists dropped on the Dutch countryside and infantry troops pushed forward. To avoid further bloodshed King Leopold III ordered his troops to cease resistance and to lay down their arms in unconditional surrender on May 28, 1940.

Collapse of France. During the winter of 1939-40 the French army and the German Wehrmacht faced one another in what was regarded satirically as the sitzkrieg, or sit-down war. The world waited in anticipation of a major conflict between two powerful forces. On May 13, 1940, a bridgehead was established at Sedan, considered the gateway to France, and then suddenly, on May 16, a day after the Dutch capitulation, the German blitzkrieg was released on northern France. German mechanized forces outflanked the Maginot Line, surprised the Allies by attacking through the wooded Ardennes rather than the Belgian plain, and drove the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from the Continent at Dunkirk (Dunkerque). On June 5 the Germans launched another offensive southward from the Somme. They entered Paris unopposed on June 14 and forced France to sign an armistice at Compiègne on June 22, 1940.

The fall of France was an extraordinary victory for Hitler. The supposedly unbeatable French army had melted away before the onslaught of his mobile units, with their convincing display of mechanized power. Nazi Germany then occupied most of France and permitted the establishment of a friendly government at Vichy, in central France on the Allier River.

The Vichy Government was headed by Marshal Henri Pétain, hero of World War I, and Pierre Laval, a collaborationist. Disgruntled French patriots rallied around Gen. Charles de Gaulle, who pronounced himself leader of the Free French.

During the early months of the war Benito Mussolini maintained Italy's neutrality. When France was about to fall he decided to join the Nazis. Declaring war on the Allies on June 10, 1940, he invaded southern France in what U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt described as a "stab-in-the-back".

Dunkirk Retreat. During the Belgian campaign the Germans drove rapidly across southeastern Belgium and turned toward Abbeville on the French coast, thereby isolating Allied troops. The BEF and its French comrades appeared to be doomed. While some of the troops of the French First Army sold their lives in a fierce rearguard action, from British ports sailed one of the strangest armadas in history - composed of destroyers, motor launches, private yachts, old ferries, steamers, even fishing smacks, about 850 vessels in all. While planes of the Royal Air Force (RAF) provided an umbrella over the scene to drive off German bombers, the fleet of British vessels moved to Dunkirk and proceeded to evacuate about 338,000 British, French, and Belgian troops from May 26 to June 4, 1940. Not only was a military disaster turned into a propaganda victory, but several hundred thousand experienced troops were saved for future action against the Axis.

Battle of Britain. Hitler, anticipating further eastern conquests, hoped that Britain would accept German control of the Continent and seek peace. But Britain shunned the chancellor's overtures of July 1940, and, in August, Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe began an all-out attack on British ports, airfields, and industrial centers and, finally, on London. The goal was to crush British morale and wipe out the RAF in preparation for Operation Sea Lion, an invasion of England.

The Battle of Britain was the first great air battle in history. For 57 nights London was attacked by an average force of 160 bombers. The outnumbered RAF, employing the effective Spitfire fighter and aided by radar, destroyed 1,733 aircraft while losing 915 fighters. German air power could not continue sustaining such heavy losses, and in October, Operation Sea Lion was postponed indefinitely.

The Balkans. Following the unexpected quick victory over France, Hitler turned east to the Balkans, a critical area for food and oil supplies. Penetration of this area would enable him to use overland transportation of these goods to help Germany withstand the effects of the British blockade of its shipping. Hitler moved first against Romania; in June 1940 the Soviets, who coveted Romania's substantial oil resources, had seized Bessarabia and northern Bucovina. To settle territorial disputes among the Balkan nations that might give the Soviets an opportunity for further intervention, Hitler in August ordered Romania to yield land to Bulgaria and Hungary and in September forced King Carol II of Romania to abdicate. In November, Hitler brought Romania and Hungary into the Axis alliance. At the same time, he began efforts to force Bulgaria and Yugoslavia into the Axis orbit, and this goal was achieved in 1941. Of the Balkan states only Greece remained firmly on the side of the Allies.

Mussolini, who had not been consulted on the division of Romania, decided to enhance his influence within the Axis alliance by unilaterally subjugating Greece. On Oct. 28, 1940, he began sending 200,000 troops into Greece from his puppet state Albania, expecting a speedy and overwhelming victory. Mussolini's attack was poorly planned, however, and the Greeks, although they lacked mechanized equipment and had an obsolete air force, turned on the invaders and by mid-November expelled them and penetrated into Albania.

Embarrassed by Mussolini's plight, concerned about the British troops and aircraft that had moved into the area to aid Greece, and displeased with Bulgaria's and Yugoslavia's reversion to neutralist positions, Hitler moved into the Balkans. On Apr. 6, 1941, he sent a blitzkrieg spearhead into Yugoslavia, where the pro-Nazi regime of Prince Paul had just been overthrown. The Germans struck at Belgrade and forced the surrender of the country on April 17. Simultaneously, he moved troops into Greece to smash through the defensive Metaxas Line. British forces withdrew from the Greek mainland, and by the end of the month all of mainland Greece was overrun by German forces.

The New Order. On Sept. 27, 1940, Japan was brought back into the German-Italian-Japanese grouping of the Anti-Comintern Pact, as the three nations signed a 10-year military and economic alliance, the Tripartite Pact, known as the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis. Hitler regarded Japan as a buffer against the United States as well as a distraction for the USSR.

By May 1941 the Germans and their Axis allies dominated almost all of the non-Soviet European continent. Most of the territory was occupied by German troops and subject to the authority of the ruthless SS (Schutzstaffel) and Gestapo. With Europe in their grip, the Nazis proceeded to exploit its resources for the benefit of Germany regardless of the consequences for the conquered peoples. Economic wealth was pillaged for German use, and industrial plants were geared to meet German war needs. Millions of both eastern and western Europeans were sent to work in Germany's war plants in the largest forcible displacement of populations in history. Political dissidents and members of groups ranking low on the Nazi racial scale, such as Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies, were interned in concentration camps by the millions. Ultimately, at least 6 million were systematically exterminated.

Crete. The British still held the strategic island of Crete. On May 20, 1941, in a powerful display of offensive air tactics, 3,500 German paratroopers were dropped on the island. Most were killed, but a second wave of 3,000 quickly captured key defenses and overwhelmed the remaining British troops, the last of which were evacuated on May 31. Hitler now had in his possession a strategic Mediterranean island for the dispatch of reinforcements and supplies to his desert troops in North Africa, which were poised for an eastward assault against Egypt and the Suez Canal.

Near East. In the Near and Middle East the Allies were faced with the crucial problem of protecting their lifelines. In April 1941, British troops moved into Iraq to suppress a Nazi-inspired coup and secure the valuable oil fields there. When the French Vichy Government allowed the Germans to use Syria (a French mandate) as a base, British troops, together with Free French comrades, entered Syria from Iraq in June and imposed an armistice giving Britain control over Syria and Lebanon. In August both Britain and the USSR (by then a British ally) occupied Iran and forced its pro-German ruler, Reza Shah Pahlavi, to abdicate on Sept. 16, 1941, in favor of his son Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Reza Shah was sent out of the country.

North African Campaign, 1940-41. Italy's entrance into the war changed the entire scene in the Mediterranean region; previously a minor theater of war, the area now became tremendously important. Mussolini had made no secret of his desire to construct a huge Mediterranean empire at the expense of the British. He planned to move one army northward from Italian East Africa and send a second army eastward into Egypt from Libya. He hoped to catch the British in an African vise and eliminate them from the shores of the Mediterranean.

Mussolini's first step was to overrun British Somaliland, defended only by a small garrison, in August 1940. But his triumph was short-lived, for by the next summer the British not only had recaptured that territory but had driven the Italians from their East African possessions, thereby securing the Suez Canal from an attack from the south.

Meanwhile, in September 1940, Mussolini moved a second army of Italians and North African troops across the Libyan border to establish themselves about 100 km (60 mi) inside Egypt. The British struck back in December in a surprise attack that carried them halfway across Libya by early February 1941. Once again Mussolini needed Hitler's assistance. In March 1941, Germany's Afrika Korps, commanded by Gen. Erwin Rommel, arrived at Tripoli. By mid-April, Rommel had reconquered all of Libya except Tobruk; his exploits earned him the nickname the "Desert Fox".

At the same time, Mussolini's hopes of making the Mediterranean an Italian lake were being dashed. The British maintained their command of the Mediterranean by smashing a large part of the French fleet at Oran, Algeria (July 1940), to ensure that it would not fall into Axis hands (unlike other French fleets, it had refused to submit to seizure by the British after the fall of France). The British also damaged the Italian fleet at Taranto, Italy (November 1940), and at Cape Matapan, Greece (March 1941).

The Atlantic, 1940-41. The defeat of France was a great boost for German sea power as French ports became bases for the U-boats. The effectiveness of U-boats increased during the autumn of 1940 as they began to move in wolf packs, long lines of submarines acting in concert to overwhelm enemy convoys. In addition, the Germans made use of long-range bombers. As a result British shipping losses increased dramatically during the last half of 1940.

Although the introduction of the small but useful corvette-class ship added to convoy protection, and the United States helped bolster the convoy system by agreeing (September 1940) to exchange 50 overage destroyers for 8 air bases in British possession, the number of U-boats was increasing, and British losses continued to mount sharply in 1941. New ships were being built in Britain, but the rate of loss exceeded the production rate. By the spring of 1941 the number of sinkings reached such a critical level that Churchill called the seaborne attacks the Battle of the Atlantic. Still the British managed to keep the sealanes open for desperately needed supplies from the United States.

In the midst of the havoc wrought upon Britain's trade, the country won an important morale-boosting victory. On May 24, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck the pride of Hitler's navy, sank the British battle cruiser Hood off Greenland. On May 27, however, the Bismarck was intercepted by a British task force while returning home and was sent to the bottom of the sea.

Invasion of the USSR, 1941. Since well before the war Hitler had looked toward the conquest of the Slavic peoples of eastern Europe and the USSR to provide the additional Lebensraum, or "living space", that he believed the German people needed. He hoped to establish German colonies in those regions, to be served by the despised Slavs.

For Hitler the Nazi-Soviet Pact had been merely a temporary arrangement to be abandoned eventually. After the defeat of France the German chancellor began planning an invasion of the USSR. To avoid fighting a two-front war Hitler first tried to make peace with Britain. After that attempt to clear the western front failed, he launched the Battle of Britain but again failed to put the British out of action.

Nevertheless, full-scale preparations for the invasion of the USSR began in December 1940, for Hitler did not believe that he was risking a two-front war. He felt that Britain, having been expelled from the Continent, no longer posed an offensive military threat. He was convinced that the greater menace came from the Soviets, who (in June 1940) had moved uncomfortably close to the Romanian oil fields.

Originally scheduled for mid-May of 1941, the invasion of the USSR, called Operation Barbarossa, was delayed until June 22 by Hitler's campaign in the Balkans. Launching a blitzkrieg with 121 divisions on a 3,200-km (2,000-mi) front from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the Germans employed a three-pronged assault. In the north they moved on Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) via the Baltic States. Moscow, the target of the German center, was approached by forces moving east to Smolensk. In the south the invaders marched toward Ukraine and Kiev, where they planned to turn south to the Crimea and cross the Don River to the Caucasus and to Stalingrad (Volgograd) on the Volga River. A smaller force of Romanians and Germans attacked in the extreme south.

As justification for the move Hitler accused the Kremlin of treachery, of threatening German frontiers, and of disseminating anti-German and pro-Communist propaganda. He alleged that the invasion was a crusade against Bolshevism; in addition, however, he was attracted by wheat, oil, and mineral supplies that would enable him to defy the British blockade. So certain was he of victory that he did not even bother to equip his troops for winter.

The onslaught took the Soviets entirely by surprise, and the Germans made startling progress. In the first 18 days the attackers advanced 640 km (400 mi), capturing 300,000 prisoners, 1,000 tanks, and 600 guns. During the first 48 hours alone the Soviets lost more than 2,000 aircraft. The northern forces had entered Leningrad province by July 10 and on August 31 were within 16 km (10 mi) of the city. In the center German troops took Minsk on June 30 and Smolensk, only 320 km (200 mi) from Moscow, in mid-July. Progress in the south was slowed by unexpectedly heavy resistance and rainy weather, but the invaders captured Kiev in late September. More than 1 million Soviet prisoners had been taken by the end of that month. The Soviets retreated, adopting a defense-in-depth strategy, but German victory seemed imminent.

The German invasion of the USSR signaled a change in the alliance structure. Despite his aversion to communism, Churchill promised Stalin economic and technical assistance against the Axis. On July 13, 1941, Moscow signed a mutual-aid pact with London. Offers of help also came from Washington. Italy and the Axis satellites - Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary - allied themselves with Germany. Vichy France broke off its diplomatic ties with Moscow. Britain severed (August 1) relations with Finland, which the Germans had used as one base for their invasion. Sweden had granted permission for German troops to cross its territory but announced its determination to remain neutral. Despite pressure from the USSR and from Britain, with whom it had an alliance, Turkey, too, proclaimed its neutrality. Japan, which had concluded a mutual nonaggression pact with the Soviets in April and was, in addition, a member of the Axis Pact, adopted a policy of watchful waiting.

Growing U.S. Involvement. From the beginning of the war in Europe, the sympathy of the American public was with the Allied cause; most Americans felt that a Nazi triumph would pose a grave threat to the United States. As German victory followed German victory, isolationist sentiment, originally strong, began to evaporate.

From 1935, U.S. neutrality acts had forbidden the selling of war supplies to belligerent countries. In November 1939 a revised neutrality law authorized the sale of war supplies on a cash-and-carry basis but forbade U.S. vessels and nationals from traveling in combat zones. This act was intended to prevent direct U.S. involvement in the war through the sinking of U.S. vessels, a problem that had spurred the nation's involvement in World War I. From the beginning of the war, however, the British dominated the seas; the cash-and-carry law thus had the effect of favoring the British cause.

The next year, President Roosevelt and the Congress began preparing for possible U.S. entry into the war. In September 1940 the first peacetime draft law in U.S. history provided for the registration of 17 million men. The Alien Registration Act of 1940 was aimed at curbing subversive activities. In March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, empowering the president to allow the shipment of vital war matériel to nations, primarily Great Britain, whose defense he considered to be necessary for U.S. security. Later that year the law was extended to include China and the USSR. The Americans also took measures to defend the Western Hemisphere by patrolling the Atlantic Ocean. American forces occupied Greenland and Iceland. In August and September 1941 the sinking of U.S.-owned ships led to a measure authorizing the arming of U.S. merchant vessels and permitting them to carry cargoes to belligerent ports.

The Atlantic Charter. On Aug. 14, 1941, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill held a conference on a war vessel off the coast of Newfoundland. The two agreed to present plans for a new world based on an end to tyranny and territorial aggrandizement, the disarmament of aggressors, and the fullest cooperation of all nations for the social and economic welfare of all. The Atlantic Charter was designed as a counterthrust to a possible new Hitler peace offensive as well as a statement of postwar aims. The next month, the USSR and 14 other anti-Axis countries endorsed the Atlantic Charter.

On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, provoking a U.S. declaration of war on Japan the following day. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. The European war now merged with the Pacific war into one global conflict.

The Arcadia Conference. From Dec. 22, 1941, to Jan. 14, 1942, the first Anglo-American conference after U.S. entry into the war was held in Washington, D.C. President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, and their staffs of military and civilian advisors solemnly agreed to wage war against the Axis until victory. At this meeting, known as the Arcadia Conference, they also agreed to give first priority to the European theater of war; to forge a constricting ring around Germany by air attack and blockade; to stage an eventual invasion of the European continent; and to land their forces in North Africa. The two powers also decided to form a Combined Chiefs of Staff, paving the way for the closest military collaboration between two sovereign states in history.

During the conference 26 countries, including the United States, Britain, the USSR, and China, signed a United Nations Declaration. The signatories endorsed the Atlantic Charter, agreed to use all of their military and economic resources to defeat the Axis, and pledged not to make a separate armistice or peace with their common enemies.

North Africa, 1941-42. Italian reverses in Tripoli led Hitler to send reinforcements in the winter of 194142 to his troops in North Africa. A British offensive called Operation Crusader (November 1941 to January 1942) pushed Rommel back to El Agheila in Libya, where he had begun his African offensive a year earlier.

On May 26, 1942, Rommel started a drive from Libya that brought him to El Alamein, about 105 km (65 mi) west of Alexandria, Egypt. Thanks largely to U.S. aid, including tanks and ammunition, the British were able to build up their Eighth Army under Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery. Then began a seesaw battle between Rommel and Montgomery back and forth across the Libyan Desert. In early September 1942 the confrontation came to a climax at Alam Halfa Ridge at the southern end of the British line at El Alamein. It was essential for the British to hold there, because El Alamein, at the edge of the impassable Qattara Depression, was the one position on the North African front that could not be outflanked. Plagued by minefields, a critical shortage of fuel and tanks, and British air superiority, the Desert Fox's frontal assault at Alam Halfa failed, and he withdrew his exhausted troops to Tunisia. Montgomery now began a massive buildup of his forces.

The Russian Front, 1941-42. By the fall of 1941, following the initial shock of the German invasion, Soviet resistance had stiffened. The performance of Soviet troops improved as the country mobilized to give the armed forces its total support. In the meantime German performance declined, as supply lines lengthened and soldiers became weary from continuous fighting. Stalin, abandoning Communist rhetoric, successfully aroused nationalist sentiment against the would-be conquerors. The Germans themselves helped stir such feelings by their ruthless behavior toward civilian populations, and partisan units began to form behind the invaders' lines.

In the north the Germans reached Leningrad in early September but faced heavy resistance. Furthermore, Hitler did not receive the full cooperation from Finland that he had expected. He decided to begin a siege of Leningrad, rather than to occupy it and sap his troops' strength with costly street fighting. On the southern front the invaders captured most of the Crimea in the fall. With badly extended supply lines and facing inclement weather, they reached neither Stalingrad nor the Caucasus. They took Rostov-on-Don, on November 21. The Soviets, however, in their first successful counteroffensive, pushed back the foe within the next few days.

After indecision and quarrels with his generals, Hitler decided that it was best to concentrate on a central offensive against Moscow. Following further delay the Germans finally started moving from Smolensk, but they were plagued by autumn rains and, in late November, by snowstorms and subzero temperatures. In early December the Germans entered the suburbs of Moscow. On December 6, however, Gen. Georgy Zhukov began a Soviet counteroffensive that forced back the surprised and tired Germans. He maintained the pressure on the Germans during the winter, pushing them back to 64 km (40 mi) from Moscow.

The German threat, however, had by no means been dissipated. In 1942, Hitler decided to mount a summer offensive on the southern front, believing that he could force the Soviets to surrender by depriving them of their oil fields in the Caucasus, and also provide Germany with critical petroleum supplies. The Germans marched forward in June. In early July they took Sevastopol, completing their conquest of the Crimea. In August they moved into the Caucasus. Meanwhile, the Sixth Army, led by Gen. Friedrich Paulus, marched toward Stalingrad, which the Germans hoped to use as a post for defending the German occupation of the Caucasus.

(Parte 2) - WAR IN THE PACIFIC AND EAST ASIA: JAPAN ON THE OFFENSIVE, 1941-42; WAR IN EUROPE AND NORTH AFRICA: TURNING OF THE TIDE, 1942-43; WAR IN THE PACIFIC AND EAST ASIA: BEGINNINGS OF ALLIED RECOVERY, 1942-43; WAR IN EUROPE: THE ALLIES ON THE OFFENSIVE, 1943-44.



The War in the Pacific and East Asia: Japan On the Offensive, 1941-42
When the nations of western Europe became embroiled in World War II, Japan began to expand into the Southeast Asian colonies of the European powers. After the United States retaliated with economic sanctions, Japan planned a concerted attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and other Pacific and Asian targets. For a time Japan was master of the central and western Pacific and East Asia.

Japanese Expansion and U.S. Response, 1940-41. Japan's invasion (1931) of Manchuria and its subsequent full-scale assault (1937) against China brought expressions of disapproval from the U.S. government. With public opinion strongly isolationist, however, the United States did not act to halt Japanese expansionism. Not until the outbreak of World War II in Europe and the escalation of Japanese aggression did the U.S. response become strong.

In 1940, Nazi Germany's march into western Europe opened up opportunities for Japan to consolidate its position in China and to penetrate Southeast Asia, thereby advancing the Japanese goal of dominating a "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere." After the fall of France, the Vichy Government accepted (August 1940) Japanese demands that aid through French Indochina to the Chinese resistance be cut off and that Japan be allowed to use air bases in Indochina. In September, Japanese troops moved into northern Indochina, and Japan joined the Axis. Meanwhile, with Britain fighting for its life and the Netherlands under Nazi occupation, Japan called on the British to close the Burma Road to supplies bound for China and pressed the Dutch East Indies for economic and political concessions. In July 1941, Japan occupied southern Indochinaan obvious prelude to further expansion in Southeast Asia, a rich source of rubber, tin, oil, quinine, lumber, foodstuffs, and other vital raw materials.

Japanese prime minister Prince Konoe Fumimaro hoped that the United States would accept Japan's actions, but in September 1940, President Roosevelt imposed an embargo on U.S. exports of scrap iron and steel to Japan. In July 1941 he froze all Japanese assets in the United States. This action virtually ended U.S.-Japanese trade, depriving Japan of vital oil imports.

On Sept. 6, 1941, an imperial conference met in Tokyo to consider worsening relations with the United States. Emperor Hirohito and Prime Minister Konoe favored a continuation of negotiations in Washington, D.C. The war minister, Gen. Tojo Hideki, however, believed that the United States was determined to throttle Japan, that war was inevitable, and that it would be preferable to begin the conflict sooner rather than later. Tojo's views had wide support within the Japanese military.

At the insistence of the war party, Konoe was given six weeks to reach a settlement with the United States and was to insist on a set of minimum demands: immediate cessation of economic sanctions, a free hand for Japan in China, and rights for Japan in Indochina. With no progress occurring in the negotiations, Konoe resigned on October 16 and was replaced by Tojo, whose cabinet decided to wait only until the end of November for a diplomatic breakthrough.

Talks between U.S. secretary of state Cordell Hull and Japanese emissaries remained stalled. U.S. cryptographers had broken Japan's major diplomatic code, and U.S. authorities knew that rejection of the minimum demands would mean war. Even so, on November 26, Hull formally reiterated the U.S. position. Japan, he said, must withdraw from China and Indochina, recognize the Chiang Kai-shek regime in China, renounce territorial expansion, and accept the Open Door policy of equal commercial access to Asia. An imperial conference on December 1 set the Japanese war machine in motion.

Pearl Harbor. The United States expected the first blow to be in the Philippines or Southeast Asia. Japan had made plans for a devastating aerial strike against the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, in the Hawaiian Islands. In late November a powerful Japanese task force left the Kuril Islands; on December 2 it received a coded message issuing the attack order. The undetected Japanese force arrived off the Hawaiian Islands on the morning of December 7. In two successive waves more than 350 Japanese bombers, torpedo planes, and fighters struck. Altogether, 18 U.S. ships (including 5 battleships) were sunk or disabled. At one stroke, U.S. naval power in the Pacific was crippled. Fortunately for the Americans, their aircraft carriers were on missions elsewhere. The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps lost 2,117 men, the Army lost 218, and 68 civilians were killed. More than 1,200 were wounded. About 200 aircraft were destroyed, most on the ground. The Japanese lost 29 planes.

The next day, President Roosevelt told a joint session of Congress that December 7 was "a date which will live in infamy". Congress voted to declare war on Japan. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

Japanese Conquests, 1941-42. The blow at Pearl Harbor was but one of a series of Japanese strikes throughout the Far East. Almost simultaneously, Japanese naval and air forces attacked Wake Island, Guam, British Malaya (now Malaysia), Singapore, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Burma (now Myanmar), Thailand, and the Philippines.

Guam, a tiny, U.S.-held island only about 1,850 km (1,150 mi) south of Tokyo and within a short distance of the Japanese-mandated Marianas, was unfortified. At dawn on Dec. 8, 1941, a flight of Japanese bombers struck at the island. Two days later a task force stormed ashore. Without antiaircraft guns or coastal batteries, the small U.S. garrison surrendered. On Wake Island, another U.S. possession, a small marine detachment held off the first Japanese landing attempt, on Dec. 11, 1941, but the Japanese returned in overwhelming force and captured the island on December 23. The fall of Guam and Wake Island cut off the U.S. communications line between Hawaii and the Philippines.

As Japanese power expanded in the Pacific, the last Allied naval force in the area was dealt a crippling blow. After the disaster at Pearl Harbor, Washington hoped that help would come from the British Royal Navy in the southwestern Pacific. The new battleship Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser Repulse were berthed at Singapore. As soon as he heard of Japanese landings in Malaya, British vice-admiral Tom Phillips put to sea with his two capital ships and an escort force but without air cover. Spotted by Japanese planes on Dec. 9, 1941, about 80 km (50 mi) from the coast of Malaya and only about 240 km (150 mi) from Singapore, the British warships were sunk the next day.

After taking the vulnerable British crown colony of Hong Kong on Dec. 25, 1941, the Japanese demonstrated their skill in jungle warfare in their Malayan campaign, which culminated in the capture (Feb. 15, 1942) of Singapore, key to British and Dutch defenses in the Far East. From December 1941 to February 1942 the Japanese systematically employed air power and ground forces to destroy Allied positions in the Dutch East Indies. Then Japanese ships heavily damaged an Allied fleet in a series of engagements in the Java Sea. This victory left the way open for conquest of the Dutch islands, which were surrendered in March 1942.

By now the strategy of the Japanese was clear. While destroying Allied sea power in the Pacific, they would simultaneously win access to Malaya, the East Indies, and other Southeast Asian areas, all of which had critical supplies of raw materials.

Burma. In December 1941, Japanese forces penetrated southern Burma from Thailand and took Victoria Point. They drove the small British garrison back into the capital, Rangoon, but on Mar. 7, 1942, the British evacuated there as the Japanese pushed them northward; the Japanese occupied the city on March 8. Meanwhile, the Chinese attempted to bolster the Allied position in Burma by sending in Lt. Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, of the United States, Chiang Kai-shek's newly appointed chief of staff, who arrived in mid-March. Commanding the Fifth and Sixth Chinese armies in Burma, Stilwell made the mistake of staying too long in southern Burma, where he was cut off from the Burma Road by the Japanese in April. After covering the British retreat into India, Stilwell's forces themselves beat an arduous retreat back to India and China.

Also assisting in the Burmese effort was Gen. Claire L. Chennault and his group of volunteer pilots, who set up headquarters 240 km (150 mi) from Rangoon. From Dec. 19, 1941, to July 4, 1942, Chennault's Flying Tigers destroyed 297 Japanese planes and killed 500 of the enemy.

By mid-May almost all of Burma was under Japanese control; the British had abandoned most of their heavy equipment. Even worse, the Burma Road - the only land route for delivering supplies to China - was now sealed off. In August 1942 the Japanese set up a puppet Burmese government.

Philippines. The ousting of Americans from the Philippines, a potential base for attacks on Japan, was an essential Japanese goal. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commanding 55,000 Filipinos and Americans, attempted to hold the islands. Controlling both sea and air, the Japanese began landing in force on Luzon, the main island, on Dec. 22, 1941. On December 27, and continuing the next day, successive waves of Japanese aircraft struck at Manila. On Jan. 2, 1942, the Japanese took the city and the naval base of Cavite.

Unable to meet the Japanese head-on, MacArthur ordered a retreat to the Bataan Peninsula, which offered prospects of a stand until help could arrive. The Japanese found the reduction of Bataan slow and costly, but the process of attrition, along with dysentery and malaria, took a severe toll on the ranks of Filipinos and Americans. Only a small trickle of supplies reached the defenders of Bataan. Late in February 1942 the situation was so serious that President Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to escape and proceed to Australia to take supreme command of the Allied forces in the southwestern Pacific. "I shall return", said MacArthur upon leaving.

Lt. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright, who was left behind to command the Filipino-American force, tried to continue the hopeless stand, but on Apr. 9, 1942, the defenders accepted defeat. Shortly afterward, the remaining 3,500 troops retreated to join the defenders of the island fortress of Corregidor. Here they held out until May 6, 1942.

U.S. War Effort. Following Pearl Harbor the U.S. economy was placed immediately on a war footing, and its industrial productivity plant played a crucial role in the global conflict. All key industries were put on a 24-hour day and a 7-day week. Within a year after Pearl Harbor, U.S. war production equaled that of all Axis nations together and by the beginning of 1943 was well ahead of that of the Axis powers. During the war the United States manufactured 296,000 planes, 87,000 tanks, and 2.4 million trucks, as well as millions of rifles and millions of tons of artillery shells. From Jan. 1, 1942, the nation produced 28 million U.S. tons of shipping, enabling the Allies to replace vessels lost to the enemy.

The War in Europe and North Africa: Turning of the Tide, 1942-43
In 1942-43 the German offensive in the USSR ended at Stalingrad, and the Allies won the North African campaign, secured the Atlantic for their shipping, and were winning the battle of the skies. The days of German supremacy in the European theater were over.

El Alamein. In Egypt, after defeating Rommel at Alam Halfa in early September 1942, the British Eighth Army remained in the vicinity of El Alamein. Preparing for a showdown with Rommel, Montgomery was reinforced with men and U.S. equipment, while most German transports heading for Benghazi in Libya were sunk by British ships and planes. Although the Germans had lost the battle of supply, Hitler insisted that Rommel hold fast. To confuse the Axis troops, Montgomery began a vast deception operation, quietly building up supply dumps on the northern lines and staging a diversionary buildup in the south. Meanwhile, Rommel was on sick leave in Germany.

On the night of Oct. 23, 1942, Montgomery began a 5-hour, thousand-gun artillery barrage. Then two British columns moved forward to cut a deep salient into the German lines. Rommel returned on October 25 and immediately counterattacked. His troops stood firmly for nearly 2 weeks, but after being bombed day and night, pounded by fast new tanks and by artillery, and endangered by advancing infantry, they finally had to abandon the battlefield and retreat to Tunisia.

Allied Invasion of North Africa. On Nov. 8, 1942, U.S. and British forces landed in strength in French Morocco and Algeria. Timed to coincide with Montgomery's offensive, the operation placed them in a position to attack Rommel's Afrika Korps from the west. It also was a partial concession to Stalin, who was calling for a second front in Europe to relieve pressure on his troops. The operation was complicated by political factors. The British were given a role subordinate to that of the U.S. commanders. U.S. general Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led the Operation Torch landing, hoped to win the support of Vichy officials in North Africa, who had been angered by the British destruction of French warships at Oran in 1940. Furthermore, Eisenhower left French general Charles de Gaulle, regarded by Vichy as a traitor, out of the campaign. After a token resistance the French joined in the struggle against the Axis, leading to the German occupation of Vichy France. The success of Operation Torch meant that the Germans in North Africa now faced pressure from both east and west.

Casablanca Conference. To arrange the union of the two Allied operations in North Africa and to plan subsequent strategy, Roosevelt and Churchill met at the Casablanca Conference (January 1943) on the Moroccan coast. Stalin, who claimed that he had been promised a European second front by the spring of 1942, refused to attend. The conferees agreed that a cross-Channel invasion of Europe was still out of the question in 1943. Instead, they decided to arrange the union of the two Allied operations in North Africa and to follow up that campaign with an invasion of Sicily. They concurred that, pending a second front, strategic bombing of German industry would be intensified. An attempt was also made to establish a working agreement between Gen. Henri Giraud, French high commissioner of the Vichy Government, and de Gaulle, but their relationship remained cool.

At the conclusion of the conference, Roosevelt announced that Allied policy was to impose "unconditional surrender" on Germany. This announcement apparently represented an effort to satisfy Stalin, who feared that Britain and the United States would seek a compromise peace. German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels effectively used this Allied decision in exhorting the German people to fight to the end. Critics later argued that the Germans might have surrendered earlier than they did had a less harsh term been used.

Allied Victory in North Africa. Within a few days after the Operation Torch landings, Eisenhower sent his Anglo-American-French forces racing for Tunisia, where Hitler had concentrated reinforcements and supplies. Eisenhower hoped to take the port cities of Tunis and Bizerte and put North Africa firmly under Allied control. For a time he fought a holding action until he could get heavy reinforcements and Montgomery could approach from the south. In mid-February 1943, Rommel suddenly struck at the American lines and drove 80 km (50 mi) through the U.S. positions at Kasserine Pass. The Axis drive, however, lost its momentum within a few days.

On Mar. 20, 1943, Montgomery attacked Rommel at the defensive Mareth Line, and on April 4, Eisenhower's First Army joined Montgomery's Eighth Army near Gafsa. Allied forces began to overrun Axis troops from the west and south. The Germans were gradually pushed into the northeast corner of Tunisia. On May 7, 1943, both Tunis and Bizerte fell to the Allies. Five days later, more than a quarter of a million Germans and Italians surrendered.

Stalingrad. In the USSR bitter fighting ensued as the German Sixth Army under Paulus advanced on Stalingrad, the great industrial city along the Volga. On Aug. 23, 1942, German troops reached the Volga not far above Stalingrad, and the Luftwaffe began heavy bombing of the city with high explosives and incendiaries. There were 40,000 casualties within a few hours in Stalingrad.

From Moscow came Stalin's order to hold Stalingrad; fresh reserves were rushed to the city. At this critical moment Hitler made a strategic error: instead of moving on the city, he ordered panzer forces, which could have taken it, to be diverted to the south. When he recalled his tanks two weeks later, the gate to Stalingrad was closed.

In mid-September 1942, large numbers of German troops entered the city, and the fighting became a street-by-street, block-by-block, house-by-house combat. In October the Germans captured the southern and central parts of the city and were thrusting at the industrial sectors of the north. Hand-to-hand fighting took place in cellars, sewers, and factories. The Soviet casualty rate reached its peak in mid-October, and the defenders of Stalingrad appeared trapped.

General Zhukov had been gathering reserves around the city, however, and on November 19 the attack that he and generals A. M. Vasilevsky and N. N. Voronov had planned was launched. By late November the German Sixth Army was itself caught in the damaged city. An angered Hitler refused to permit Paulus to retreat, despite the latter's desperate calls.

In January 1943 the Russians opened a shattering bombardment with 7,000 pieces of artillery and a devastating air assault. Paulus surrendered on February 2, and from the rubble of Stalingrad emerged 100,000 starved German troops. Nearly 300,000 Germans had been killed in the Battle of Stalingrad.

Resistance in Europe. As Germany suffered military defeats, it also faced increasing difficulties inside occupied Europe. At first, resistance to German occupation occurred on a modest scale, in part because many believed the Nazis to be invincible. But after the Battle of Britain and later Axis setbacks, anti-Nazi activity in occupied countries increased. Organized groups, aided by British and, later, American intelligence, killed officials and soldiers, wrecked trains, blew up ammunition dumps, sabotaged factories, provided useful information to the Allies, and helped escaped prisoners of war and downed Allied pilots. Many who were not active in the resistance helped shelter and protect those who were. Having spread his forces over a large area and treated many of the conquered peoples with unprecedented cruelty, Hitler could not crush the resistance despite the extremely harsh retaliatory measures taken by his administrators.

Battle of the Atlantic, 1942-43. Early in 1942, German U-boats were sinking more Allied shipping than ever. From January to June, they destroyed 3 million U.S. tons, much of this along the U.S. coast. Soon, however, the productivity of the U.S. war economy began to neutralize the German effort. In August 1942 the construction rate of new Allied ships at last reached the level of Allied losses, and in December it permanently surpassed it. As more and longer-range planes were built, air support was extended to all but the mid-Atlantic region. There, escort carriers started providing air cover for convoys in March 1943. New types of radar also facilitated the detection of enemy ships. From the spring of 1943 the U-boats were, finally, held in check.

Germany's surface ships were hamstrung by the British blockade, although in February 1942 the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen broke through it. The British retaliated in March by sending commandos to destroy the locks at Saint-Nazaire, a French port at the mouth of the Loire and the only Atlantic port suitable for the repair of Germany's bigger ships.

Allied Strategic Bombing. Aided by rapid production of aircraft in the United States, the Allied forces began making major air raids on Germany in 1942. The Royal Air Force attacked the cities of the Ruhr Valley, a major center of German heavy industry, in crippling raids. In May 1942 the first RAF 1,000-bomber raid was directed against the Rhenish city of Cologne, destroying much of the city. In the summer of 1942 the U.S. Army Air Force joined in the operations against Germany. U.S. B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators concentrated on daylight precision bombing of industrial targets, whereas the British struck at night. Most raids were still small and of limited destructiveness, however. Although the German Luftwaffe had played a major role in the early campaigns of the war, its effectiveness declined precipitously after the Battle of Britain.

Not until after the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, when Churchill and Roosevelt decided to place greater stress on strategic bombing, did the Allies begin winning air superiority in Europe. The Combined Bomber Offensive was launched, and the bombing became better organized and more intensive. In the summer of 1943, for example, three-quarters of Hamburg was destroyed in combined raids. Round-the-clock bombing mounted steadily until all Germany was subjected to massive air raids. As the effectiveness of the U.S. fighter escorts increased, the Luftwaffe became less and less able to counter the air attacks.

The War in the Pacific and East Asia: Beginnings of Allied Recovery, 1942-43
In 1942-43 the Allies thwarted Japanese efforts to expand farther southward and eastward and began their island-hopping campaign toward Japan.

Doolittle Raid. A few weeks after Pearl Harbor, Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle proposed an air attack on Tokyo. Although his superior officers were skeptical, Doolittle was given permission to attempt this seemingly foolhardy venture. With a group of enthusiastic volunteers, he secretly prepared for the special mission.

On the morning of Apr. 18, 1942, Doolittle and his force of 16 North American B-25 medium bombers took off from the aircraft carrier Hornet and wave-hopped toward the Japanese homeland. Flying at treetop level, they raided military installations and then headed for China. Doolittle's raid had all the elements of a superstunt, but it also had important effects on both Japanese and American morale. The Japanese public, having been assured that their country was invulnerable to attack, was astonished and shocked by the unexpected raid. The Americans, regarding it as the first installment of retribution for Pearl Harbor, were cheered.

Battle of the Coral Sea. Able temporarily to roam at will throughout the Pacific, the Japanese turned to Australian waters. Early in May 1942 a U.S. observation plane sighted a great Japanese armada in the Coral Sea, which separates Australia from the Solomon Islands. The Japanese ships were stationed there to secure Japan's hold on New Guinea and the Solomons and thus ensure the cutting of U.S. supply lanes to Australia.

The Battle of the Coral Sea, on May 4-8, 1942, was the first naval engagement in history in which surface ships did not exchange a shot. The carrier forces were evenly matched, but the American fliers forced the Japanese to beat a hasty retreat. More than 25 Japanese ships were sunk or disabled. Damage to its heavy carriers hampered Japan's operations for the next several months. The confrontation in the Coral Sea, the first defeat for the Japanese in the South Pacific, thwarted the extension of Japan's power southward.

Battle of Midway. The Japanese quickly rallied their forces after the defeat in the Coral Sea. Their Naval General Staff, seeking to stretch Japan's outer perimeter eastward and destroy what was left of the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, decided to strike at the island of Midway. About 1,800 km (1,100 mi) northwest of Pearl Harbor, Midway was regarded as the sentry for Hawaii. The Japanese hoped to make it a key outpost of their new perimeter. The Naval Command organized the largest naval operation in its history, assembling a task force of 200 ships and 600 planes.

Counting on total surprise, Japanese strategists were certain that this huge force was more than enough to destroy what remained of the U.S. fleet in the Pacific. Its effectiveness was undermined, however, by U.S. intelligence, which consistently broke Japanese codes and ciphers during the war, giving the Americans advance warning of every step taken by the task force.

On the afternoon of June 3, 1942, a patrol plane sighted the Japanese force approaching Midway. The next day a hundred Japanese bombers took off from their carriers and headed for Midway. In wait for the invaders was a strong force of American torpedo planes and fighters. The U.S. aircraft rose from the decks of the carriers Hornet, Yorktown, and Enterprise and sank 4 Japanese carriers. Appalled by the loss of his carriers, Adm. Yamamoto Isoroku turned back his great armada. U.S. planes pursued the retiring ships, inflicting great damage. Within 4 days Japanese losses, in addition to the 4 aircraft carriers, included 2 heavy cruisers and 3 destroyers heavily damaged and 322 planes (280 on sinking carriers). The Americans paid a heavy price, too, losing the carrier Yorktown, a destroyer, and 147 aircraft. Midway remained in American hands, and the Japanese fleet was so severely damaged that Japan's war effort changed from an offensive thrust to a holding operation.

Ledo Road in Burma. The China-Burma-India theater was given low priority by the Allied command, as the Japanese, with dogged persistence, pushed the British back toward the borders of India and China and the foothills of the Himalayas. No major offensive was undertaken in Burma until 1944. With the Burma Road closed from April 1942, however, an alternative means of sending supplies to Chiang Kai-shek was needed. A spectacular 5-hour airlift to China over the forbidding Himalayan barrier, the "Hump", could deliver only 3,200 tons of supplies a month by February 1943. At Stilwell's suggestion, work began in December 1942 on the famed new Burma Road, or Ledo Road, from Ledo in India to the old Burma Road beyond Mytkyina. Thousands of Chinese went to work on the 2-year task of carving out a new road in the treacherous mountains.

Stilwell resumed fighting in northern Burma in 1943, aided by two guerrilla groups, the British Chindits, or Wingate Raiders (under Orde Wingate), and the American Merrill Marauders (under Frank D. Merrill). These forces protected the Ledo Road and prevented the Japanese from moving into India.

The Allies Take the Offensive: Guadalcanal. After Midway the Japanese turned south to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as preliminaries to an eventual all-out assault on Australia. In early July they began the construction of an airstrip on Guadalcanal in the southern Solomons in an attempt to cut off the U.S. lifeline to Australia.

On Aug. 7, 1942, a powerful U.S. task force appeared off the Solomons. After a heavy bombardment, U.S. Marines stormed ashore on Guadalcanal and its satellite islands. They established a beachhead the next day and seized the unfinished airfield. Japanese resistance, however, in the air, on land, and at sea, launched from a base at Rabaul, soon was intensified. To subjugate Guadalcanal, the Americans underwent six months of vicious fighting on land and seven engagements at sea. There the U.S. Marines received their first test of jungle warfare, the special type of fighting that was to take place on a score of strategic islands as the Americans closed in on the Japanese home islands. The Americans were still about 4,800 km (3,000 mi) from Tokyo, but they had successfully initiated the kind of combat and the island-hopping strategy that would get them there.

Solomons-New Guinea Ladder. U.S. strategy turned to the key Japanese air and naval base of Rabaul on the eastern tip of New Britain Island, located just east of New Guinea. Rabaul was a powerful stronghold, shielded by numerous bases on surrounding islands. The U.S. command rejected a direct assault on Rabaul as too costly and decided instead to neutralize it by air attack and then outflank it. This goal was to be accomplished by a two-pronged offensive up the Solomons and New Guinea ladder. On the Solomons side, Americans would push northward from one island to another. On the New Guinea front, U.S. and Australian troops under the command of General MacArthur would make their way up the east coast. Both prongs would be covered by powerful air support.

The advance in the Solomons began at Guadalcanal in late February 1943. On February 21, American assault troops took the Russell Islands, 96 km (60 mi) northwest of Guadalcanal. Striking back, the Japanese sent an air armada from bases in the northern Solomons to choke off the invasion of New Georgia Island. The air confrontation cost them heavily. Simultaneous clashes at sea resulted in additional heavy Japanese losses. By mid-August 1943 the Americans had possession of Rendova Island, Munda (on New Georgia Island), and the island of Vella Lavella.

On the opposite side of the ladder, MacArthur moved his forces northward up New Guinea, planning to cross over to New Britain to isolate and outflank Rabaul from the west. Progress was slow in the coastal swamps and rugged mountain terrain, but in January 1943 the Americans captured strategic points on New Guinea's Papuan peninsula. Soon they threatened the Japanese positions at Lae and Salamaua, on Papua near the western tip of New Britain.

Battle of the Bismarck Sea. Japanese strategists sent troops to reinforce Lae and Salamaua, but on Mar. 34, 1943, U.S. B-24 Liberators and B-17 Flying Fortresses attacked the troop transports and their naval escorts, destroying most of them. More than 3,500 Japanese soldiers and sailors died. The Allies lost only 5 aircraft. The Battle of the Bismarck Sea struck a crucial blow against Japanese power in the Southwest Pacific.

Rabaul Neutralized. A U.S. amphibious force landed at Nassau Bay in eastern New Guinea on June 30 and by early October had captured Lae, Salamaua, and Finschhafen. In December they crossed to the southwestern tip of New Britain Island. The advance in the Solomons reached Bougainville in November, putting Allied planes within easy reach of Rabaul, which by the end of 1943 was eliminated as an offensive threat. More than 100,000 veteran Japanese troops were left stranded at Rabaul and in the surrounding area. In a little more than a year the Allies had made significant gains in the Southwest Pacific and had achieved their goal of cutting off Japanese troops beyond hope of rescue.

Strategy for Advance to Japan. In the summer of 1943 a disagreement arose among Allied strategists on the method for opening the route to the Japanese home islands. General MacArthur, the Southwest Pacific commander, favored an approach along the New Guinea-Philippines axis. But Adm. Chester Nimitz, Central Pacific commander, believed it best to capture key Central Pacific islands to win strategic air and naval bases that would be used to cut Japan off from its empire.

The Combined Chiefs of Staff gave priority to Nimitz's design, but elements of both plans were to be employed. Nimitz's forces would island-hop through the Gilberts (now Kiribati), Marshall Islands, Caroline Islands, and Mariana Islands. MacArthur would capture northern New Guinea and islands lying between New Guinea and Mindanao, the southernmost island of the Philippines.

Tarawa. The Central Pacific offensive, a U.S. operation, began at the Gilbert Islands. In November, U.S. task forces moved on Tarawa and Makin islands. Makin was invaded and cleared of enemy troops within 4 days. At Tarawa, however, about 5,000 experienced Japanese jungle fighters were prepared to battle to the death. On Nov. 20, 1943, an equal number of U.S. marines landed. Air support, not properly coordinated with the landing, did not substantially weaken the defenders. Fighting was ferocious and casualties high. When Tarawa was taken (November 23), only 17 Japanese and 129 Korean workers remained to be taken prisoner out of the original garrison.

The War in Europe: the Allies On the Offensive, 1943-44
By 1944, after the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, the Soviet advance in the east, and the establishment of a second front with the Normandy landing, Germany was in full retreat.

Invasion of Sicily. Meeting in Washington in mid-May 1943 at the conference code-named Trident, Roosevelt and Churchill confirmed the invasion of Sicily, decided on a cross-Channel invasion of France for early May 1944, and agreed to step up the airlift of supplies to China and to go ahead with plans to retake Burma. To implement the first of these goals, Operation Husky was put into action under the command of Eisenhower's deputy, British general Harold Alexander. First, the little island of Pantelleria, Italy's fortified base midway between Tunisia and Sicily, was bombed into submission from sea and air. A month later, on July 9-10, 1943, British and American forces landed in Sicily in a combined action.

Although German and Italian troops in Sicily had expected the invasion, the date and precise landing points were complete tactical surprises. Italians surrendered in great numbers. The Germans, however, began a spirited defense, and for a time the success of the invasion was in doubt. After initial difficulties at Gela, the U.S. Seventh Army swung across the center and west of the island and took Palermo on July 22. The British Eighth Army, reinforced by Canadians, plodded up the east coast against strong German resistance and took Catania on August 5. Both armies moved on Messina, which was taken on Aug. 17, 1943.

On July 25, 1943, Mussolini was overthrown in a surprise development, and Marshal Pietro Badoglio assumed the post of head of the government. Italians throughout the country demanded peace. Suspecting (with good reason) that the Italians might defect, the Germans seized all strategic centers on the Italian mainland and awaited an Allied invasion of the peninsula.

Italian Campaign. Not until after the Sicilian invasion was the Allied decision made to strike at the Italian mainland. On Sept. 3, 1943, British and U.S. forces moved across the Strait of Messina to the toe of the Italian peninsula. A week later, the U.S. Fifth Army, under Gen. Mark W. Clark, landed on the beaches of Salerno (about 240 km/150 mi south of Rome); within a month southern Italy was under the control of the Allies. Naples fell on Oct. 1, 1943. Now, however, German resistance stiffened, and the Allied campaign bogged down. By the end of the year the Allied forces were still closer to Naples than to Rome. About 130 km (80 mi) south of Rome the Germans had set up a strong defensive line, the Gustav, or Winter, Line.

At Algiers, on the day of the invasion (September 3), the Badoglio regime secretly signed an armistice with the Anglo-American forces. The Italian capitulation was announced on September 8, and on October 13 the Badoglio government declared war on Germany. In the meantime, however, the Germans had rescued Mussolini from imprisonment, and he was installed as the head of a puppet regime in northern Italy.

Eastern Front. Meanwhile, on the eastern front, the Germans, after their loss of the Battle of Stalingrad, were unable to mount a crushing offensive. At that point (February 1943) the Germans and their allies had lost 850,000 dead or captured since the beginning of the Soviet invasion (in the summer of 1941).

After several months of retrenchment Gen. Erich von Manstein launched a desperate summer counterattack against the Soviets in the south. The situation had changed slightly in the Germans' favor since Stalingrad. They had shortened their lines, while the Soviet troops were stretched over a massive front with a bulge westward around Kursk. On July 5, 1943, the Germans, using their new Tiger and Panther tanks, struck at this Soviet salient. Hitler committed more than 1,000 planes against the Red Army's enormous concentration of troops, artillery pieces, and tanks. The encounter developed into one of the largest and most vicious armor battles ever fought. More than 3,000 tanks were engaged on the grasslands. On July 12, 1943, the Soviets, favored by a seemingly endless supply of troops and tanks, moved in fresh tank divisions, and the advantage finally swung to the Russians. Manstein, having lost 70,000 men, half his tanks, and more than 1,000 planes, was forced to withdraw.

The Germans pulled back to strong defensive lines. As they retreated, the Soviets launched a new offensive northward toward Orel, which they captured on Aug. 4, 1943. They also captured Kharkov (Kharkiv; August 23), Poltava (September 22), and Smolensk (September 25). Kiev was liberated in early November. Manstein's forces were being severely reduced by the steady Russian advance, but Hitler still refused to allow a massive withdrawal, leaving his now-outnumbered troops to the grinding Soviet military machine.

The Soviet advance halted temporarily as winter set in, but once the roads and waterways were firmly frozen an enormous Soviet counteroffensive began along the entire eastern front. In mid-January 1944 the 890-day siege of Leningrad was relieved after Soviet troops reestablished land communications with the city. Since September 1941 the people of Leningrad had withstood German artillery and air bombardment. More than 200,000 of them had been killed in the siege; a half million more died from cold, starvation, and exhaustion, although for a time the city had been tenuously supplied across frozen Lake Ladoga.

As the Red Army pressed westward, it took Riga and Vilna in the north and was crossing into East Prussia by mid-July. In the center the Germans had withdrawn from Minsk by July. In the south the entire Crimea was in Soviet hands by May. By mid-July 1944 the Soviets were deep into Poland and by the end of August had crossed into the Balkans. As the Red Army approached the suburbs of Warsaw, the resistance in the Polish capital led a revolt (August-October) against the German occupiers in an unsuccessful attempt to gain control of the city before the Soviets arrived.

Collapse of Italy. In early 1944 the Allied armies in Italy were slowed down because of difficult terrain and stubborn German resistance. On Jan. 22, 1944, in an attempt to catch the Germans in a pincer movement, 50,000 U.S. troops were landed at Anzio between the German Gustav Line to the south and Rome 53 km (33 mi) to the north. Unable to move forward immediately, the troops settled on the beachhead. Under Gen. Albert Kesselring, eight German divisions moved to form a powerful perimeter around Anzio. After repeated attacks, which included the destruction of the old monastery at Monte Cassino, the Allies managed to break the German lines. On June 4, 1944, Rome fell to the Allies. In the ensuing months, the Germans retreated from one defensive line to another as Allied troops pushed cautiously but irresistibly north toward Tuscany. Not until early 1945 did the Allied forces reach the heights overlooking the Po River valley. Mussolini was captured by anti-Fascist partisans near Lake Como on Apr. 28, 1945. He and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were shot, and their bodies were taken to Milan, the city where fascism had first taken root, and displayed in the public square.

Tehran Conference. During 1943, while the campaign in Italy was under way, Allied leaders met in two significant conferences to plan a grand assault on France and to map out other aspects of their strategy against the Axis. At the first Quebec Conference, held in mid-August, Roosevelt and Churchill confirmed the decision to establish a second front in France and approved specific plans for a landing at Normandy - to take place on May 1, 1944.

At the Tehran Conference, from Nov. 28 to Dec. 1, 1943, Stalin met with Churchill and Roosevelt for the first time, and the date for the invasion, code-named Operation Overlord, was confirmed. Stalin agreed to launch a simultaneous attack on Germany's eastern front. At Tehran, Stalin was also assured that a second invasion of France (from the Mediterranean), known as Operation Anvil, would take place. He reaffirmed that the Soviets would join in the fight against Japan after Germany was defeated but asserted that the USSR wanted Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and a year-round Pacific port on the mainland of Asia. The postwar restoration of Iran was also discussed.

Normandy Invasion. As they prepared for a cross-Channel assault on France, the Western Allies built up on British soil one of the largest and most powerful invasion forces in history. For 2 months before the landing, while troops, equipment, and supplies poured into Britain, the Allied air forces bombed railroads, bridges, airfields, and fortifications in France and Belgium and continued their attacks on German industrial centers.

Postponed by delays in gathering the necessary landing equipment and by weather and tidal conditions, Operation Overlord, with Eisenhower in command, began on June 6, 1944, afterward known as D-Day. Throughout the preceding night, paratroopers were dropped behind German coastal defenses to sever communications and seize key defense posts. Hundreds of warships and innumerable small craft supported the invasion.

Between 6:30 and 7:30 , waves of Allied troops moved ashore between Cherbourg and Le Havre in history's largest amphibious operation, involving approximately 5,000 ships of all kinds. About 11,000 Allied aircraft operated over the invasion area. More than 150,000 troops disembarked at Normandy on D-Day. Because all major French ports in the north were mined and fortified, the Allies improvised two artificial harbors, with pontoons, breakwaters, and sunken ships. One of the harbors was destroyed by a severe Atlantic gale, but the other worked perfectly. Twenty pipelines below the Channel were used to bring in critical supplies of gasoline for the tanks.

The Germans had anticipated an Allied invasion of western Europe at about this time but were surprised by its location. Gen. Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of German forces in the West, had expected the Allies to take the shortest water route and land at Pas de Calais. A British intelligence operation called Ultra, having broken key German ciphers, learned of his misapprehension. To capitalize on the situation, the Allies stationed a phantom army in Kent that reinforced Rundstedt's mistaken opinion. It may also have influenced Hitler to decide against sending reserve panzer divisions to Normandy, a decision that greatly facilitated the landing and the establishment of beachheads.

Yet the Germans struck back vigorously. For more than a month they resisted while Allied forces were being built up on the crowded beaches. The defenders were under a severe handicap, however, because Hitler had been forced to send many of his troops from France to the eastern front, where the Soviets were on the offensive.

Campaigns in France. To trap the Germans in a pincer movement, the Allies had decided on a second landing in the south of France. On Aug. 15, 1944, a fleet of Allied warships appeared off the French Mediterranean coast between Toulon and Cannes. Following a heavy bombardment they unloaded an army of U.S. and French troops. Speedily taking Marseille and Nice, the Allies headed northward along the Rhône River. German troops in western France were now threatened with isolation.

The huge Allied force that had set ashore on the Normandy coastlinemore than a million men within 3 weeks of D-Daygradually extended its width but not its depth. Cherbourg was captured on June 27, 1944, giving the Allies a major port for the flow of men and supplies. On July 25, Allied troops broke through the German lines between Caen and Saint Lô and then fanned out into open country. The Germans counterattacked at Avranches but were contained by U.S. troops. The heavily armored U.S. Third Army, led by Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, turned the German left flank at Avranches, broke into Brittany, and then moved northeast to the Seine River, to outflank Paris on the south.

To avoid expected loss of life, Eisenhower intended to bypass Paris. The French resistance fighters inside the city and French troops in the liberation army, however, called for a quick and clean capture of their capital. On August 19, Eisenhower changed his mind on receiving word of an uprising in Paris. He sent the Free French Second Armored Division, supported by U.S. troops, into the city. Paris fell to the Allies on August 25 without great damage because the German commandant, Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz, disobeyed Hitler's orders to "fight to the last man" and to raze the city.

Western Offensive toward Germany. As the Allied commanders planned final strategy for the assault on Germany, a disagreement arose among them. Montgomery urged a "big thrust" of all concentrated Allied armor through Belgium to the Ruhr, but Eisenhower, although he agreed to give initial priority to such a drive, decided that the earlier plan of simultaneous advance by all the separated armies should thereafter be resumed. In early September the British liberated Brussels, and U.S. troops crossed the German frontier at Eupen. On October 21, the U.S. First Army took Aachen - the first city within Germany's prewar borders to fall to the Allies. Meanwhile, the invasion forces from Normandy and southern France joined near Dijon. The Allies now had a continuous front from Belgium down to neutral Switzerland.

German resistance stiffened, however, in the last months of 1944. In late September a British airborne division was dropped behind German lines across the Rhine near Arnhem in the Netherlands. The operation incurred heavy casualties: of the 10,000 troops landed, more than 1,000 were killed and at least 6,400 were taken prisoner. The Allied offensive ground to a temporary halt.

On Dec. 16, 1944, General von Rundstedt launched a counteroffensive, known as the Battle of the Bulge, which took the Allies by surprise. With a quarter of a million men and a massive panzer force, he hit the center of the Allied lines at the thinly held Ardennes area. In 8 days the Germans cut deeply into Allied-held territory. Eisenhower ordered Patton and his Third Army to turn north toward the fighting. In clearing weather Allied air power, which had been grounded at the start of the counterattack, now hit hard at the Germans. In early January 1945 the German thrust was contained. The last great German offensive in the West had failed to terminate the Allied drive to the heartland of Germany.

Air War. After the successful landings in Normandy, the Allied Combined Bomber Command turned its full attention once again to targets inside Germany. By the end of 1944 it had seriously curbed German oil production. The Luftwaffe, with diminishing resources and pilots, tried to strike back. In late December, 800 German aircraft attacked Allied-held airfields in northern Europe, taking a toll of 100 aircraft. The Allies, however, were able to replace their losses immediately; the Germans were down to their last reserves.

Many Germans continued to hope that Hitler would unveil at the proper time some secret weapon of shattering power that would turn the tide of battle in Germany's favor. In 1944 two deadly Vergeltungswaffen ("vengeance weapons") were ready for use against the Allies. On June 13, 1944, just 7 days after D-Day, Hitler ordered the release of the first V-1 flying bombs, or "buzz bombs", from bases along the French coast in the Pas de Calais sector. They were aimed at London in an effort to terrorize the civilian population. The robot bombs whined across the English Channel at 645 km/h (400 mph) on a predetermined course. RAF pilots became adept at shooting them down. Altogether, about half of the V-1s sent off to London from northern France and Belgium reached the city; the bombs killed nearly 6,000 Londoners, injured 40,000 others, and destroyed more than 75,000 homes.

The heavier and more deadly supersonic V-2 rocket was put into action on Sept. 8, 1944. From bases in the Low Countries the V-2 hurtled toward London at 5,600 km/h (3,500 mph). With its 1-ton warhead, the V-2 buried itself into the ground and exploded violently. Of the more than 1,000 V-2s rained on England, about 500 hit London; they caused nearly 10,000 casualties. Although the "vengeance weapons" were deadly and caused much loss of life and property damage, they came too late to influence the course of the war.

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(Parte 3) - WAR IN EUROPE: GERMAN COLLAPSE, 1945; WAR IN THE PACIFIC AND EAST ASIA: DEFEAT OF JAPAN, 1944-45; RESULTS OF WORLD WAR II.



The War in Europe: German Collapse, 1945
During the first four months of 1945 a two-front trap closed in on Germany, forcing its surrender in early May. Meanwhile, the Allied leaders met to deal with the Far Eastern theater, to cope with problems concerning the liberated states of eastern Europe, and to establish terms under which postwar Germany would be occupied.

Soviet Advance to the Oder. With the Germans in the midst of their western counteroffensive, the Soviets, on Jan. 12, 1945, initiated a tremendous assault on the German lines in the east. Within 5 days they took what remained of Warsaw and 2 days later captured Kraków. In the north, Soviet troops swept across East Prussia and took Gdask (Danzig). By February the Soviets cut off the crucial coal-producing region of Upper Silesia and crossed the Oder River near Breslau (Wrocaw).

As the Soviets moved through Poland they came upon the notorious Auschwitz extermination camp, where as many as 2 million Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and members of other groups that the Nazi leaders deemed as "undesirables" had died in the crematoria.

Yalta Conference. From Feb. 4 to Feb. 11, 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at the Yalta Conference held in the Crimea. In eastern Europe, then being occupied by the Soviets, Stalin promised to establish provisional governments that would include all democratic elements and to hold free elections as soon as possible. The USSR, it was agreed, would receive eastern Poland, with Poland to be compensated at Germany's expense. Germany was to be divided into four zones of occupation, to be administered by the three major Allies and France.

In exchange for its declaration of war against Japan within 3 months of Germany's surrender, the USSR was to receive the southern half of Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, and special rights in the Manchurian ports of Dalian (Ta-lien) and Port Arthur (Lüshun). Later criticized as excessively generous to the Soviets, these concessions were made at a time when the Far Eastern conflict was expected to continue for many months after Germany's defeat.

Battle for Germany. In February 1945, Patton's fast-moving tanks cleared the entire west bank of the Rhine. The Americans captured intact a key bridge at Remagen near Cologne on March 7. Allied troops began to pour over it in strength and were soon crossing the Rhine at other points. With Montgomery poised in the north and Patton in the south, the Allies were now in a position to drive into Germany and head straight for Berlin.

Eisenhower, however, intent on pursuing the enemy and not aware of the political significance of Berlin, decided to head for Leipzig and then to concentrate his power on the supposed "national redoubt" in the south, where he expected Hitler to make a last stand. Thus, although U.S. forces reached the Elbe River on Apr. 12, 1945, and were only about 96 km (60 mi) from Berlin, Eisenhower informed Stalin that he was leaving the city to the Soviets. Systematic bombing by Soviet artillery and Allied air power operating from England reduced the German capital to ruins. The Luftwaffe, with its corps of pilots depleted, its airfields destroyed, and its fuel supply nonexistent, could not protect the city.

As part of the Anglo-American effort to disrupt German communications and support the Soviet drive from the east, massive bombing raids were carried out against other German cities in February 1945. The raids on Dresden (February 13-15) were especially destructive, and they were criticized then and later by those who objected to the indiscriminate bombing of population centers.

On Apr. 16, 1945, Zhukov launched his final attack on Berlin. By the end of the month the Soviets had penetrated to the center of the city. German soldiers and civilians, fearful of revenge expected from the Soviets, hastened to surrender to the Americans and the British in the belief that they would receive better treatment from the Western Allies. On Apr. 25, 1945, Soviet troops, who now encircled Berlin, met the Americans at Torgau on the Elbe.

German Surrender. While the Soviets were making their final drive on Berlin, Allied troops liberated one concentration camp after another. In April they reached Buchenwald as well as Bergen-Belsen - where they found 40,000 inmates barely alive and 10,000 unburied corpses - and Dachau, one of the worst extermination centers. A shock of amazed horror ran through the entire world at the extent of Hitler's "Final Solution", unprecedented in the entire history of civilization.

Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30. On May 7, 1945, representatives of Germany's armed forces capitulated to the Allies at Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims. The formal unconditional surrender came the next day in Berlin. Hitler's Third Reich had come to an end.

Potsdam Conference. The last wartime Allied conference was held at Potsdam, Germany, from July 17 to Aug. 2, 1945. Attending were Churchill, replaced by Clement Attlee during the conference; Harry S. Truman, successor to Roosevelt, who had died in April; and Stalin. They confirmed the Yalta plan for the division of Germany into four zones of occupation and reached agreement on plans for the de-Nazification, demilitarization, and democratization of Germany. Those Nazis and Nazi supporters guilty of war crimes or atrocities were to be tried. The conferees also called for the unconditional surrender of Japan. Truman informed Stalin that the United States had tested an atomic bomb that could be used against Japan.

Differences among the Allies also appeared at Potsdam. Britain and the United States refused to accept the pro-Soviet provisional government in Poland because they did not consider it to be democratically based. They called for free elections in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, whereas Stalin demanded that the Western Allies recognize the puppet regimes established by the Soviets in those nations. Disagreements also arose over German reparations and other matters.

The War in the Pacific and East Asia: Defeat of Japan, 1944-45
In 1944 and 1945 the Allies completed the Central Pacific campaign, took the Philippines, bombed Japan, and penetrated the Japanese home islands. By the summer of 1945, Allied victory was only a matter of time; it was hastened when the United States perfected the atomic bomb and dropped two of the devices on Japan.

The Marshalls and Carolines. Northwest of the Gilberts, athwart the Japanese lifeline to Tokyo, lay the larger archipelago of the Marshall Islands. Bypassing other islands in that group, U.S. task forces headed for Kwajalein, the world's largest atoll. Preliminary bombardment was extremely effective. On Feb. 1, 1944, the first of 40,000 Americans landed on Kwajalein; within a week the atoll had been taken. More than 8,000 Japanese were killed in the operation. Several weeks later another amphibious force captured the enemy air base at Enewetak (Eniwetok) atoll.

West of Kwajalein was the Japanese Gibraltar - the naval base of Truk in the Caroline Islands. For some time the Japanese had been sending reinforcements and supplies from Truk to New Britain, New Guinea, and the Solomons, and Truk posed a threat to the campaign in the Marshalls. On Feb. 17, 1944, an air armada took off from U.S. carriers and made a blistering attack on the Japanese naval base. About 250 enemy planes and 200,000 U.S. tons of Japanese merchant shipping were destroyed, and Truk itself was rendered useless. The U.S. victories on the Marshalls and the Carolines meant that the outer perimeter of the new Japanese empire had been pierced.

Burma. In August 1943 the British admiral Lord Mountbatten became head of the new Southeast Asia command and began planning a campaign to retake Burma. A drive from India into southern Burma started auspiciously in November 1943 but was halted early in 1944. In March 1944 the Japanese in Burma initiated an offensive into India to break up the British forces that were gathering there against them. The British, supplied by the RAF, withstood a long siege at Imphal, finally breaking it in July. Meanwhile, construction of the Ledo Road continued. Possession of Myitkyina, the road's northernmost terminus, was essential. Stilwell began moving southward toward the town early in 1944. Backed by air support superior to his enemy's, he repelled a Japanese northward offensive and in August captured Myitkyina. The road (approximately 750 km/470 mi long) was completed on Jan. 7, 1945.

Saipan and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The island-hopping tactics of the Americans through the Central Pacific proceeded with an attack on the Marianas in the north. There the U.S. objectives were Guam and Saipan. After a sea and air pounding, Saipan was invaded by 20,000 U.S. Marines on June 15, 1944. Altogether, the Americans landed 125,000 troops, compared with the 32,000 Japanese on the island. By June 18 the Japanese forces were split in half.

News of the disaster at Saipan moved strategists in Tokyo to order the destruction of the U.S. fleet supporting the Saipan assault. On June 19, 1944, a mobile Japanese task force moved to engage the U.S. ships between the Philippines and the Marianas. The result was the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the biggest carrier engagement of the war. U.S. submarines sank two Japanese flattops, torpedo aircraft accounted for another carrier, and U.S. planes destroyed more than 350 Japanese aircraft in what came to be known as "the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot".

Liberation of the Philippines. Next, the American naval command wanted Admiral Nimitz's Central Pacific forces to move northwestward toward Japan. President Roosevelt decided in July, however, that they should turn southwestward and join MacArthur, who was approaching the Philippines, for an all-out assault on those islands. MacArthur by then had taken almost all of New Guinea, and in September he seized Morotai in the Moluccas. After the Central Pacific campaign ended with the fall of Saipan and Guam in early August, Nimitz's fleet moved to capture the Palau Islands off the southern Philippines.

In the Battle of Leyte Gulf, fought Oct. 23-25, 1944, the Japanese fleet failed to destroy transports landing American soldiers on the island of Leyte. By the end of October, Japanese forces had been driven from southern and northeastern Leyte. For 2 months, however, they fought relentlessly on the rest of the island. The struggle for Leyte recapitulated on a giant scale the bloody clashes on the Pacific islands. After mid-December, organized resistance finally ended.

In early January 1945 the U.S. Sixth Army was moved by transports through Surigao Strait and into the Mindanao and Sulu seas. After 3 days of bombardment by sea and air the Americans stormed ashore at Lingayen, Luzon, on January 9. Again the Japanese defenders resisted fiercely, but they were forced to retreat to the mountains in the north and east. The pace of the U.S. advance continued as additional landings were made in western and southern Luzon. All U.S. columns now converged on Manila. On March 4 the battle for Luzon ended with the final clearance of Manila by American forces. Meanwhile, U.S. parachutists dropped on Corregidor and took the fortress. On July 5, MacArthur announced that the campaign for the liberation of the Philippines was ended. Not only had the Japanese Imperial Army lost more than 400,000 of its best troops in the campaign, but with the fall of the Philippines, Japan's supply lines were cut.

Victory in Burma. In December 1944 the British 14th Army, led by Gen. William Joseph Slim, moved from India into Burma. One corps pushed south through western Burma, and another went north, seizing Kalewa on the Chidwin River. The British then joined up with American-led Chinese forces and opened up the original Burma Road in January 1945. Mandalay was captured in March, and Rangoon fell on May 3. The Japanese retreated to the Thai border.

China. In the first half of 1944 the Japanese in China won control of the remaining railway running south from Hangzhou (Hangchow) to Guangzhou (Canton) and seized airfields in southeast China from which American volunteer pilots had attacked the Japanese. By the end of the year they had cut China in half, dominating a land route from Korea to Malaya. The defense of China was complicated by serious differences between General Stilwell and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, which led to Stilwell's recall.

The Chinese Nationalists, trained and led by American advisors, finally mounted an offensive in the spring and summer of 1945. By this time the Japanese on the mainland were so weakened that they had begun to relinquish their hold on China. The Allies slowly captured a series of important airfields. As Japanese power waned, Chinese Nationalists and Communists became embroiled in a protracted political and military struggle.

Japan near Defeat. In early 1945, Japan was on the verge of collapse. About 1.5 million Japanese troops remained in the home islands, with another 3 million in the Pacific or in China and Manchuria; the Japanese air fleet, however, had been severely mauled. The navy had lost 11 battleships, 19 aircraft carriers, 34 cruisers, nearly 150 submarines, and many other combat craft. The merchant fleet had been drastically reduced.

With one naval and air defeat after another, supply lines extended for impossible distances, and raw materials cut off, Japan could not hold out much longer. In a new development, American fliers operating from the Marianas began in November 1944 the strategic bombing of Japanese airfields, industrial targets, and naval installations. The bombing intensified in 1945 as the Allies captured air bases in the home islands.

Iwo Jima and Okinawa. A tiny island of volcanic ash, Iwo Jima, was one of the most strategic locations in the Western Pacific. Only 1,200 km (750 mi) from Tokyo, it would be for the Americans an invaluable refueling base or emergency landing field for heavy bombers going to or returning from Japan. The Japanese turned Iwo Jima into a fortress defended by 23,000 picked soldiers. For 74 consecutive days the Allies bombarded the island before 30,000 U.S. Marines went ashore on Feb. 19, 1945. After some of the war's bloodiest fighting, they reached the peak of Mount Suribachi on February 23 and had secured the island by mid-March. The Japanese lost 21,000 killed; only 200 were taken prisoner.

The next objective was Okinawa, the main island of the southern Ryuku Archipelago; Allied strategists were attracted by its airfields within about 560 km (350 mi) of Japanese cities. In the Pacific theater's largest amphibious operation, the first of the 172,000 troops of the U.S. Tenth Army began moving ashore on April 1. Within three weeks they held four-fifths of the island, but organized Japanese resistance continued until June 21. The Japanese lost 100,000; many committed suicide to avoid capture. U.S. casualties included 12,000 dead or missing. The door to Japan was now open.

Kamikazes. In the Japanese code of warfare, defeat was unthinkable and shameful. Nonetheless, Japan faced imminent subjugation. Desperately seeking to turn the tide of battle, Japan began to employ suicide as an official weapon. Young pilots were asked to join the Kamikaze Corps, whose members were to crash their bomb-laden planes into Allied ships. Volunteers were plentiful.

The kamikaze pilots began operating at Leyte Gulf in October 1944. At Okinawa they made 1,500 individual attacks. Altogether, they sank 34 naval craft, none larger than a destroyer, and damaged 358 others. Despite the fury of their assaults, they did not affect the outcome of the war.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the end of July 1945 almost half of Tokyo had been destroyed, and scores of Japanese cities had been leveled by strategic bombing. Preparations were being made for an Allied invasion. On July 16, however, the work of the U.S. Manhattan Project came to fruition when an atomic bomb was successfully tested at Alamogordo, N.Mex. President Truman decided in favor of using the weapon to end the war quickly unless Japan surrendered. From Potsdam on July 26, Truman, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek issued an ultimatum demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan. It did not mention the bomb. Japan decided to continue the war.

On Aug. 6, 1945, an atomic bomb with an explosive force greater than 20,000 U.S. tons of TNT was dropped by a B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, which had a population of about 300,000. At least 78,000 people were killed outright, 10,000 were never found, and more than 70,000 were injured. Almost two-thirds of the city was destroyed. On August 9, the day after the USSR declared war on Japan, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki (by the B-29 bomber Bock's Car), which had a population of 250,000. About 40,000 people were killed, and roughly the same number were injured.

Surrender. On August 10, Japan sued for peace on the condition that the emperor's position as sovereign ruler be maintained. The next day the Allies stated that the future status of the emperor must be determined by them. At the behest of the emperor, an imperial conference on August 14 accepted the Allied terms. The next day, U.S. forces were ordered to cease fire. On Sept. 2, 1945, Japanese representatives signed the formal document of surrender on the deck of the U.S. battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.

Results of World War II
World War II further undermined the old European state system, which had already been dealt a heavy blow in World War I. France lost its role as the leading power on the European continent, and Britain could no longer fulfill its traditional role of maintaining a balance of power. The area of decisive global power shifted from its old western European locus. The United States and the USSR emerged as the two top-level global powers. Any spirit of compromise that had existed during the war soon paled as the two nations pursued their separate and sometimes conflicting goals. U.S. industrial output, responding to the release of pent-up demand, doubled in the 5 years after 1945. The USSR, which had suffered heavier casualties than all the other Allied nations combined, initiated a series of 5-year plans to promote economic recovery. Mutual distrust and suspicion of the goals of each other's economic and political systems were accentuated between the two powers. Fear of Soviet expansionist aims and disagreements over the settlement of eastern Europe led to cold war and to new kinds of international tensions.

Casualties and Expenditures. In loss of lives, World War II was the costliest war in history. No adequate figures exist, and estimates can be only roughly approximate. Probably between 15 and 20 million military personnel were killed in action. Among the Axis powers, Germany suffered about 3.5 million battle dead, Japan 1.5 million, and Italy 200,000. Among the Allies the USSR had the heaviest battle casualties, as many as 7.5 million dead. China lost 2.2 million combatants from July 1937. The British lost more than 300,000 dead, the United States 292,000, and France 210,000.

Civilian dead numbered approximately 25 million. The USSR lost more than 10 million, China at least 6 million, France 400,000, the United Kingdom 65,000, and the United States 6,000. On the Axis side, Germany suffered the loss of 500,000 civilians, Japan 600,000, and Italy 145,000. In addition, about 6 million Jews, mostly from eastern Europe, were put to death by the Nazis.

Expenditures for war materials and armaments totaled at least $1.154 trillion. The United States alone spent about $300 billion on its war effort, Germany about $231 billion. Added to these enormous costs incurred by governments was the tremendous material damage done to property of all kinds, any estimate of which would be futile.

War-Crimes Trials. The United States, Britain, France, and the USSR, acting through an International Military Tribunal, cooperated in conducting an international trial of Nazi party and German military leaders for crimes against humanity and world peace during World War II. The Nuremberg Trials, conducted from November 1945 to October 1946 at the site of Nazi party rallies, resulted in the sentencing of 12 men to death, including Hermann Goering. Three were given life imprisonment, 4 others received prison sentences, and 3 were acquitted. In addition, the four occupying powers conducted trials of lesser German wartime leaders in their respective occupation zones.

The United States held similar trials for Japanese wartime leaders from June 1946 to November 1948. Death sentences were meted out to 7 military leaders, including former prime minister Tojo Hideki. Sixteen received life sentences, and 2 others received prison terms. The United States established regional tribunals to try other Japanese wartime leaders.

United Nations. During the war the five major Allied powers, including China, agreed to establish a new international peacekeeping organization to replace the ineffectual League of Nations. At the Dumbarton Oaks Conference of 1944, a tentative charter was drawn up, although agreement was not reached on the USSR's demand for a broad veto power for each of the five nations on the organization's Security Council. At a conference in San Francisco from April to June 1945, attended by delegates from 50 nations, agreement was attained on the scope of the veto power, and the United Nations was established.

Postwar Germany. Although the Allies cooperated in holding the war-crimes trials and establishing the United Nations, a serious rift developed during the postwar years between the USSR and the other major Allies over the former's creation of puppet regimes in eastern Europe and over other issues. The division was reflected in the failure of the Allies to formulate a peace treaty with Germany or to establish an effective central administration for the four occupation zones into which Germany and its capital, Berlin, were divided. Instead, in 1949 the Western powers consolidated their sectors into the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), a constitutional democracy; the Soviets established the Communist-run German Democratic Republic in their eastern zone.

Austrian Settlement. Like Germany, Austria and its capital, Vienna, were divided into four zones. As with Germany, cold-war antagonism hampered the formulation of a peace treaty. In 1955 a treaty was worked out; the USSR exacted heavy reparations in return, although the preamble treated Austria as a liberated nation and not a defeated one. Austria received independence, and the four-power occupation was terminated.

Italy and the Smaller European Axis Powers. In 1946 the four Allies worked out peace treaties with Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Finland. All the treaties were signed and became effective in 1947. Italy lost all of its African possessions and its privileges in China and had to cede European territory to France, Greece, and Albania. The other Axis powers, except Bulgaria, also lost territory. All five nations were required to pay reparations.

Postwar Japan. The occupation of Japan was simplified by the fact that the United States was the sole occupying power. An administration headed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur promoted democratic government through a 1946 constitution that denied the emperor his former divine status and made him a constitutional monarch. Attempts were made to decentralize economic power through land reform and the dissolution of large industrial and banking combinations.

Agreement on a peace treaty was delayed because of demands made by the USSR, although that nation's last-minute declaration of war against Japan had had no impact on the conflict. In 1951 a peace treaty with Japan signed by 50 nations, led by the United States but excluding the Soviet bloc, required Japan to abandon claims to China and to renounce the use of force to settle international disputes. It did not impose reparations and did not recognize Soviet occupation of the Kuril Islands or southern Sakhalin. When the treaty went into effect the following year, Japan regained full sovereignty.

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SIXTY YEARS SINCE WORLD WAR II

In early May countries across Europe observed the 60th anniversary of one of the crucial dates of the 20th century - the end of World War II. The bloodiest and the most destructive conflict in human history began with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939 and ended with Japan's surrender in September 1945. By the time the fighting drew to a close, more than 100 million people - many of them civilians - had been killed across the globe.

In Europe the hostilities ceased on May 8 and 9, 1945, and since then the continent has generally seen peaceful times - except for ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In remembrance of the sacrifices made during World War II, several major cities - including Paris, Brussels, Prague, and Berlin - staged elaborate ceremonies. The final and largest such spectacle took place in Moscow, where military parades, speeches, concerts, air shows, battle reenactments, and fireworks marked the occasion. Each city featured a contingent of its country's few remaining World War II veterans, mostly men in their eighties and nineties who will not likely live to see another such commemoration.

In the western half of Europe, the 1945 end to the war was cause for celebration - the event ushered in a period of peace, freedom, and prosperity for many in the region. Having learned the historic lesson of World War I - after which the humiliation of the defeated nation, Germany, had contributed to Adolf Hitler's rise to power - U.S., French, and British leaders had decided to treat the vanquished country differently. A massive U.S. assistance program known as the Marshall Plan helped rebuild the western part of Germany and much of war-torn Europe, and played a key role in the gradual transformation of the former Nazi state into a democracy. Western European cooperation and integration was another important element in that development. The result was a stable and affluent region that continues to flourish today.

The end of the war did not have such a profoundly positive effect for central and eastern Europe, where one of the four major victors of World War II, the Soviet Union, quickly imposed harsh Communist rule. Under the repressive system, millions were imprisoned, persecuted, or killed for their beliefs, and personal freedoms were severely curtailed. The Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, had been overrun by the Soviet Red Army in 1940, one year before Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and then remained part of the Communist empire until its fall in 1991. It is no wonder that the Baltics refused to participate in this year's Moscow celebrations. The Baltic political leaders have repeatedly called on Russia, the self-declared successor of the Soviet Union, to apologize for the decades-long occupation of their countries, but the demand meets with a furious rejection by the overwhelming majority of Russians. The apology, if it ever comes, will probably have to wait for another generation.

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UN ASSEMBLY RECALLS HITLER AND STALIN AT VICTORY CEREMONY
Tuesday May 10, 2005

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations commemorated victims and victors of World War II on Monday, with speakers paying tribute to Allied sacrifices but also recalling Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's actions in eastern Europe. The session was initiated by Russia, which also organized larger ceremonies in Moscow, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe and the subsequent founding of the United Nations. The international body was formed with a mission to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war". "I wish to pay tribute to all the soldiers from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other nations who fought in the ranks of the Red Army", said Poland's Foreign Minister Adam Daniel Rotfeld, who then recited the names of Nazi concentration camps, many of them in Poland. But, he said, the "crimes of Stalinism are also horrific". He recalled the 1939 pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler that divided Poland, and Stalin's orders in 1940 to massacre several thousand Polish officers and intellectuals in the Katyn Forest. Rotfeld also criticized the 1938 Munich Agreement, signed by Germany, Britain, France and Italy, which paved the way for the partition of Czechoslovakia and German occupation. He called it a treaty "designed to channel German aggression eastward". After the fall of the Third Reich, Rotfeld said, "The first days of joy at the regaining of freedom gave way to 45 years of the subjugation of those states to the rule of Stalin's Soviet Union".
The Baltic nations, two of which irritated Russia by boycotting the Moscow ceremonies, were quick to make the same point. Gediminas Serksnys, Lithuania's U.N. ambassador, speaking on behalf of Latvia and Estonia, said, "The end of World War II marked the end of one totalitarian ideology, fascism. Yet another one, totalitarian Communism, expanded its domination". But Russia's U.N. ambassador, Andrei Denisov, said the war was "the biggest tragedy for the nations of Europe and the world, regardless of which side countries were on". Denisov had begun the U.N. events on Saturday in the General Assembly, where Yuri Temirkanov conducted the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra in Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7, composed during the German siege of Leningrad in 1941. Special guests were dozens of surviving beribboned Red Army veterans living in the United States. Germany's U.N. Ambassador Gunter Pleuger said, "atonement has been a defining element of German identity". "We have accepted full moral responsibility and we ask for forgiveness for the suffering that was inflicted upon other peoples by Germans, in the name of Germany", Pleuger said. "However large our efforts to assist victims were over the past 60 years, we are aware of the impossibility to compensate for the enormity of this suffering", he said. Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman said Israel, like the United Nations, was born out of the tragedy of the war "with the determination never to forget and never to allow the events of the war to reoccur. Noting that 20,000 World War II veterans lived in Israel, alongside of Holocaust survivors, he called them living witnesses to that "terrible time in history. Gillerman paid tribute to the millions of Russian military and civilian deaths, and to Allied soldiers who liberated the Nazi concentration camps.

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