Who was the leader of Great Britain in WW2, who was also a friend of FDR?

FDR and Churchill decided to go after Germany first. Which was not a reason for defeating Germany first?

Some people thought that demanding an unconditional surrender from Germany was a mistake. Why might it be a mistake.

THE BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

German UBoats sink Allied ships	American ship building in WWII The U.S. built ships faster than the Germans could sink them

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler ordered submarine raids against ships along America's East Coast. Unprotected American ships proved to be easy targets . In the first four months of 1942, the Germans sank 87 U.S. ships off the Atlantic shore . Seven months into the year, German wolf packs had destroyed a total of 681 Allied ships in the Atlantic. Something had to be done or the war would be lost at sea

The Allies responded by organizing their cargo ships into convoys, or groups for mutual protection, as they had done in the First World War. The convoys were escorted across the Atlantic by destroyers equipped with sonar for detecting submarines underwater and by airplanes that used radar to spot Uboats on the ocean's surface . With this improved tracking, the Allies were able to find and destroy German U-boats faster than the Germans could build them. In May 1943, Admiral Karl Doenitz, the commander of the German U-boat offensive, reported that his losses had "reached an unbearable height."

At the same time, the United States launched a crash shipbuilding program. Between 1939 and 1940, the United States had built only 102 ships. By early 1943, though, 140 Liberty ships alone were being produced each month . For the first time in the war, launchings of Allied cargo ships began to outnumber sinkings.

By mid-1943, the tide of the Battle of the Atlantic had turned in the Allies favor. A happy Churchill reported to the House of Commons that June "was the best month [at sea] from every point of view we have known in the whole 46 months of the war."

What was the greatest threat to the U.S. and Great Britain in the Atlantic in 1941 and 1942

Why was the war in the Atlantic ocean important?

How did the Allies respond to the German threat in the Atlantic

The Eastern Front and the Mediterranean

By the summer of 1943, the Allies began to see victories on land as well. The first great turning point came in the Battle of Stalingrad.

THE BATTLE OF STALINGRAD
The initial German push into the Soviet Union had stalled in front of Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in early 1942. With the German war machine running low on oil, Hitler changed his tactics. He sent his Sixth Army south with two objectives: (1) to seize the rich Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains, and (2) to capture Stalingrad (now Volgograd), a major industrial center on the Volga River. Once the Germans controlled Stalingrad, they could cut the movement of military supplies along the Volga River to Moscow.

For three months the Germans pressed in on Stalingrad, conquering it house by house in brutal hand-to-hand combat. By the end of September, they controlled nine-tenths of the city-or what was left of it.

In November, the Soviets launched a massive counterattack. Hitler's military advisers begged him to order a retreat before the Sixth Army was trapped. The Fuehrer, every bit as stubborn as Stalin, refused, shouting, "I won't go back from the Volga." The Germans were ordered to stand and fight to the last man

The fighting continued as winter turned Stalingrad into a frozen wasteland. "We just lay in our holes and froze, knowing that 24 hours and 48 hours later we should be shivering precisely as we were now," wrote a German soldier, Benno Zieser. "But there was now no hope whatsoever of relief, and that was the worst thing of all." On February 2, 1943, Zieser and some 91,000 other frost-bitten, lice-ridden, half-starved German troops surrendered. They were all that was left of the army of 330,000 that had come to Stalingrad what seemed like a lifetime ago

In defending Stalingrad, the Soviets lost a total of 1,250,000 soldiers and civilians- more than all American casualties during the entire war. Despite the staggering death toll, the Soviets' victory on the Volga marked a turning point in the war in the east. From that point on, the Soviet army began to move steadily westward toward Germany.

Why was the Battle of Stalingrad important to the war in Europe

Why was Germany defeated at Stalingrad?

THE NORTH AFRICAN FRONT

General Erwin Rommel	General George Patton

While the battle of Stalingrad raged, Stalin pressured Britain and America to open a "second front" in western Europe. He argued that an invasion across the English Channel would force Hitler to divert troops from the Soviet front. Churchill and Roosevelt didn't think the Allies had enough troops. Instead, they launched Operation Torch, an invasion of Axis-controlled North Africa, commanded by American general Dwight D . Eisenhower.

In November 1942, some 107,000 Allied troops, the great majority of them Americans, landed in Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers in North Africa. Soon after General George Patton took leadership of the American forces. Pattons troops and tanks sped eastward, chasing the Afrika Korps led by General Erwin Rommel, the legendary Desert Fox. After months of heavy fighting, the last of the Afrika Korps surrendered in May 1943. British general Harold Alexander sent a message to Churchill, reporting that "All enemy resistance has ceased. We are masters of the North African shores ."

Who was the leader of American forces in North Africa that defeated the Germans?

Who was the great German General in North Africa known as the Dessert Fox? He was Hitters favorite general but later became involved in  a plot to kill Hitler.

THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN
Even before the battle in North Africa was won, Roosevelt, Churchill, and their commanders met in Casablanca to decide where to strike next. The Americans argued that the best approach to victory was to assemble a massive invasion fleet in Britain and to launch it across the English Channel, through France, and into _ the heart of Germany. Churchill, however, thought it would be safer to first attack Italy, "the soft underbelly of the Axis." The Allies compromised. They would push ahead with plans for the cross-channel invasion ; meanwhile, Allied troops would invade Italy.

Roosevelt and Chruchill at Casablanca	Mussolini and Mistriss hung

The Italian campaign got off to a good start with the capture of Sicily in the summer of 1943 . By then, the Italians were weary of war. On July 25, 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III summoned the Fascist dictator and prime minister Benito Mussolini to his palace and stripped him of power. "At this moment," the king told Il Duce, "you are the most hated man in Italy." As he left the palace, Mussolini was arrested, and Italians began celebrating the end of the war.

But their cheers were premature. Hitler responded by seizing control of Italy, reinstalling Mussolini as its leader, and ordering German troops to dig in and hold firm. It took 18 months of miserable fighting in the mud and mountains for the Allies to drive the Germans from Italian soil. One of the hardest battles the Allies encountered in Europe was fought less than 40 miles from Rome . This battle, "Bloody Anzio," lasted four months-until the end of May 1944-and left about 25,000 Allied and 30,000 Axis soldiers dead.

On April 28, 1945, partisans who had ambushed a Nazi convoy found Mussolini disguised as a German soldier in one of the trucks . The next day, they shot Il Duce and hung his body in a Milan square. At the time of his arrest in 1943, Mussolini had prophetically described his own fate : "From dust to power and from power back to dust."  The Allies Liberate Europe

As Allied troops pushed northward through Italy, the Soviet army moved westward into Poland. Meanwhile, in England, General Eisenhower organized -- - Operation Overlord, the planned invasion of Hitler's "fortress Europe ."

After the defeat of Germany in North Africa, where did Churchill and Roosevelt meet to decide where to attack Germany next.

Who was the Fascist Axis leader of Italy in World War II?

Where did the Allies begin their attack on the Axis in Italy

At Casablanca the Allies had to decide how to attack Germany next. What two places did they have to choose from?

D-DAY

For two years the United States and Britain had been building an invasion force of ships, landing craft, and nearly 3 million troops to attack Axis forces on the other side of the English Channel. Eisenhower hoped to take the Axis by surprise and pinpointed the relatively lightly fortified Normandy peninsula as the focus of the assault. To make reinforcement of the German forces more difficult once the invasion began, the Allies bombed northern France's supply routes-roads, bridges, and rail lines-for a month and a half before the planned assault.

D-Day, the day of the invasion, had originally been set for June 5, but had weather forced a delay. Banking on a forecast for clearing skies, Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for the next day-and June 6, 1944, became a day that will live in history.

Three divisions parachuted down behind German lines during the night, and British, American, and Canadian troops fought their way ashore at five points along the 60-mile stretch of beach . With 156,000 troops, 4,000 landing craft, 600 warships, and 11,000 planes, it was the largest land-sea-air operation in history. Despite the massive air and sea bombardment by the Allies before the invasion, German retaliation was brutal, particularly at Omaha Beach. "People were yelling, screaming, dying, running on the beach, equipment was flying everywhere, men were bleeding to death, crawling, lying everywhere, firing coming from all directions," soldier Felix Branham wrote of the scene there . "We dropped down behind anything that was the size of a golf ball."

Gen Dwight Eisenhower	General Omar Bradley	Gen George Patton

Despite heavy casualties, the Allies held the beachheads. Within a month, they had landed a million troops, 567,000 tons of supplies, and 170,000 vehicles in France . On July 25, General Omar Bradley unleashed massive air and land bombardment against the enemy giving General George Patton and his Third army the gap they needed to advance. On August 23, they reached the Seine River south of Paris . Two days later, French resistance troops and American troops liberated the French capital from four years of German occupation. Patton announced this joyous event to his commander in a message that read, "Dear Ike: Today I spat in the Seine."

By September 1944, the Allies had freed France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and much of the Netherlands. This good news-and the American people's desire not to "change horses in midstream"-helped elect Roosevelt to an unprecedented fourth term in November, along with his new moderate running mate, Senator Harry S . Truman.

What was D day?

What body of water did the Allies have to cross in the D Day invasion?

The D Day invasion forced the Germans to divert forces the war in _____

THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE
In October 1944, Americans captured their first German town, Aachen. Hitler responded with a surprising counterattack . He ordered his troops to break through the Allied lines and to recapture the Belgian port of Antwerp. This bold move, the Fuehrer hoped, would disrupt the enemy's supply lines and demoralize the Allies. Also, Hitler was devloping new weapons, such as the atomic bomb, jet planes and rockets. He thought this battle would hold back the allies long enough for him to finish developing his new weapons.

On December 16, under cover of dense fog, eight German tank divisions broke through weak American defenses along an 80-mile front. The resulting dent in the Allied lines gave this desperate last ditch offensive its name, the Battle of the Bulge. As the Germans swept westward, they captured 120 American GIs near Malmedy. Elite German troops-the SS troopers-herded the prisoners into a field and mowed them down with machine guns and pistols . Private Homer Ford was one of the 43 who somehow survived.

General Anthony McAuliffe	American troops led by Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe made a heroic stand at the Belgian town of Bastogne. Surrounded and badly outnumbered, McAuliffe received a surrender demand from the Germans . His reply was just one word:.............. "Nuts!"

The initial success of the German offensive was due mainly to their ability to keep the Allies off guard. The battle raged for a month. When it was over, the Germans had been pushed back and little seemed to have changed . But, in fact, things had taken a decisive turn. The Germans had lost 120,000 troops, 600 tanks and assault guns, and 1,600 planes in the Battle of the Bulge-men and weapons they could not replace . Also, the Germans ran out of fuel and could not continue the battle. From that point on, the Nazis could do little but retreat .

What was the Battle of the Bulge?

Where did the German attack in the Battle of the Bulge stall

What did General Anthony McAuliffe say to the Germans when they offered him surrender?

LIBERATION OF THE DEATH CAMPS

Meanwhile, Allied troops pressed eastward into the German heartland, and the Soviet army pushed westward across Poland toward Berlin . Soviet troops were the first to come upon one of the Nazi death camps, in July 1944. As the Soviets drew near a camp called Majdanek in Poland, SS guards worked feverishly to bury and burn all evidence of their crimes . But they ran out of time. When the Soviets entered Majdanek, they found a thousand "living corpses," the world's largest crematorium, and a storehouse containing 800,000 shoes. "This is not a concentration camp," reported a stunned Soviet war correspondent, "it is a gigantic murder plant." The Americans who later liberated death camps in Germany were equally overwhelmed.

What did the SS do as the Allied armies advanced toward Germany and over-ran the death camps.

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

By April 25, 1945, the Soviet army had stormed Berlin. As Soviet shells burst overhead, the city panicked. The Soviet soldiers went on a killing and raping spree.

In his underground headquarters in Berlin, Hitler prepared for the end. On April 29, he married Eva Braun, his longtime companion . The same day, he wrote out his last address to the German people. In it he blamed the Jews for starting the war and his generals for losing it. "I myself and my wife choose to die in order to escape the disgrace of . . . capitulation [surrender]," he said. "I die with a happy heart aware of the immeasurable deeds of our soldiers at the front." The next day Hitler shot himself while his new wife swallowed poison.

In accordance with Hitler's orders, the two bodies were carried outside, soaked with gasoline, and burned. A week later, General Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich. On May 8, 1945, the Allies celebrated V-E Day-Victory in Europe Day. The first part of the war was finally over.

What was the end of the war in Europe called?

On what date did the War in Europe end?