That allowed the defenders to send up their own pilots to intercept the attackers. The Germans had developed their own radar technology, but the British developed much better techniques for integrating the intelligence obtained from radar to guide tactical decisions.
The Manhattan Project, the top-secret project to develop the first atomic bombs, was one of the most ambitious and expensive military research projects in history. This map shows the sites where the most important Manhattan Project work was conducted.
A key site was in Oak Ridge, TN, where the military constructed facilities for separating uranium. The center for British code-breaking was Bletchley Park, an estate about 50 miles northwest of London. Here, a team of brilliant mathematicians and code-breakers, backed by as many as 9, support staff predominantly women , analyzed coded enemy messages that had been transmitted by radio. American code-breakers enjoyed similar success in cracking Japanese codes.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, US commander Dwight Eisenhower, and other observers all gave these code-breaking efforts a major share of the credit for winning the war. This map shows the modern-day Bletchley Park, which has been turned into a museum. While American and British scientists were inventing the atomic bomb, German scientists were creating a super-weapon of their own: the long-range V-2 rocket.
Between September and April , the Germans fired around 3, V-2 rockets at Allied targets, killing at least 7, people. It was expensive, and unlike bombers it could only be used once.
V-2 rockets were not accurate enough to reliably hit high-value military targets. Many of the German scientists who had built the V-2 went on to build rockets for the American space program. The turning point in the Pacific war came in June , when American and Japanese naval forces met near the American-held Midway Islands. The Japanese attacked the islands, hoping to provoke a battle with what they expected to be an inferior American fleet.
But the Americans had cracked the Japanese codes, so they knew exactly what they were up to. On June 4, four Japanese aircraft carriers on the left in this map engaged three American ones at right. The Japanese made the mistake of launching an initial strike against land-based forces on Midway rather than against the American carriers. That allowed the US to launch the first carrier-to-carrier attack of the battle. The results were devastating: all four Japanese carriers suffered fatal blows.
The single remaining Japanese carrier managed to cripple the American carrier Yorktown , which sank the next day. Still, the battle marked a turning point in the Pacific War. The Japanese, whose navy had previously dominated the Pacific, struggled to replace the carriers it lost at Midway. A growing fleet of American aircraft carriers soon had the Japanese on the defensive. In October , American and Japanese forces fought one of the biggest and most dramatic naval battles of the war.
The Americans were trying to retake the Philippines, and they decided to begin by taking the island of Leyte. By this point, the Japanese were severely outgunned, but they staged a last, desperate effort to ward off defeat.
The Japanese divided their forces up into three groups. One group of Japanese ships approached from the west and were attacked by American aircraft carriers 1 on the map. Toward 3 on the map. Meanwhile, the final group of Japanese ships attacked from the south, drawing additional American ships away 2 on the map. That left the American invasion force in the Leyte Gulf vulnerable. The middle Japanese group steamed east and caught the few remaining ships by surprise.
The Americans were desperately outgunned and lost several ships. The Japanese could have inflicted more damage, but their commander lost his nerve. Fearing that more powerful American ships were about to return from the south, he broke off his own attack and retreated after a little more than 2 hours of fighting. The Japanese not only failed to stop the invasion in the Philippines, they lost so many ships that they would never again be able to launch an attack of this scale.
As the war in the Pacific reached its final phase in early , American bombers began firebombing major Japanese cities. A single attack in Tokyo on the night of March , killed more than , people. It may have been the single deadliest air raid of the entire war. In the summer of , the Japanese military situation was hopeless. The US Navy controlled the waters around Japan and could bomb its cities with impunity.
Yet the Japanese refused to surrender, hoping that by holding out they could negotiate more favorable terms. This map shows the devastating consequences. The trauma of these attacks — and fears that America might drop atomic bombs on Tokyo next — led to Japanese surrender on August 14, When reports began to come in about the mass slaughter of Jews, many in the West dismissed it as propaganda — exaggerated reports of enemy atrocities were common during World War I.
A campaign of mass murder, organized from the highest levels of the Nazi regime, killed around 6 million Jews. The Nazis dispatched death squads into occupied territories, where they would kill as many as 30, people in a single operation. They also organized a network of death camps to aid in the slaughter. This map shows the results. More than 80 percent of Jews in Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia were killed, as were large numbers in Hungary, Austria, and Romania.
A smaller but still significant percentage of Jews in Italy and France perished. Notably, Denmark north of Germany was under German occupation, yet few of its Jews perished.
After the war, hundreds of Nazi officials were convicted of war crimes for their role in the Holocaust. The newly-formed United Nations adopted a resolution calling for the region to be divided between a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. When Britain ended its supervision of Palestine in May 14, , the Jews declared the creation of a new state of Israel. The new state was not recognized by its neighbors; Egypt, Jordan, and Syria all attacked the next day.
The Israelis won the war, gaining control of more territory than they would have received under the UN proposal and creating many Palestinian refugees.
European countries liberated from the Nazis by British, French, or American troops were allowed to become independent, democratic nations. In contrast, the Soviets installed Communist client states in their areas of occupation. This tension was most acute in Germany, which was carved up into four zones of influence — one each for the British, French, Russians, and Americans.
The Soviet zone became the authoritarian East Germany. But awkwardly, the German capital of Berlin, which had also been divided into four zones, was miles inside the Communist zone. In , in an effort to seize control over all of Berlin, Stalin stopped allowing surface shipping between West Germany and the Western-occupied sections of Berlin.
The West responded with the Berlin Airlift, delivering vast quantities of supplies to the West Berliners by air.
After a year, the Soviets relented and lifted their blockade, allowing goods to be delivered by truck and rail once again. But West Berlin would be surrounded by a hostile Communist government for another 40 years.
After the war, the Korean Peninsula became divided much as Germany had been. The southern half of the peninsula was administered by the United States, while the Soviet Union took control in the north. The United States intervened to defend South Korea and not only repelled the invasion force but continued on to invade into the north. That triggered an intervention from China, which helped push the Americans back to the south.
The war ended with an armistice signed in Since then, South Korea has evolved into a wealthy, liberal democracy, while North Korea has one of the most repressive and economically backwards regimes on the planet. Not only did Japanese conquests shatter the European aura of invincibility, but non-whites resented the way their white rulers had treated them as second-class citizens during the war.
India gained independence from Britain relatively peacefully in Guerilla fighters in Vietnam drove the French out between and An insurgency in Algeria forced France to give up that territory in , and France granted most of its other African possessions independence in Featured Content. Tags Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics.
Browse A-Z Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically. For Teachers Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust.
Wise — International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. About This Site. Glossary : Full Glossary. Key Facts. More information about this image. Formation of the Axis Alliance Although the Axis partners never developed institutions to coordinate foreign or military policy as the Allies did, the Axis partners had two common interests: Territorial expansion and foundation of empires based on military conquest and the overthrow of the post- World War I international order; and The destruction or neutralization of Soviet Communism.
Glossary Terms. Consider different examples. How did each nation's choice support its own national goals? Which countries that joined the Axis alliance supported or resisted Nazi racial ideology? What were the motivations for either choice?
Allied Powers. The other countries that eventually followed suit and walked in the footsteps of the top three Axis Powers were: Austria Bulgaria Ethiopia Hungary The Republic of China Romania Slovakia Other Countries World War II had many changes in who supported who, and countries went from neutrality to solid support for one side over the other.
Hitler was confronted by France and Britain. September 3, War erupted on this day. December 17, Germany attacked Uruguay. Churchill became the ruler of Britain instead of Chamberlain. May 12, Germans attacked France. June 10, Italy attacks Britain and France and ultimately invades French borders. June 14, Germany invades Paris , France.
June 22, Germany and France come together in the city of Compiegne. November 14, England is attacked by Nazi Germany. Japan takes control of Singapore. February 19, Concentration camps are opened all over the United States for retaining Japanese Americans. April 9, United States of America retreats from the Philippines. June 10, Nazi Germany invades Czechoslovakia. November 8, British and American troops invade North Africa.
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