Hey there and welcome back to Heimler’s
History.
And we’ve been going through Unit 7 of AP
World History and in the last video we talked
about the causes of World War II.
And in this video I reckon we ought to talk
about how that war was actually carried on.
So if you’re ready to get them brain cows
milked, I’m ready right along with you.
Let’s get to it.
Now before we begin, let me just mention a
resource that’s going to help you study
for your class and get a 5 on your exam in
May.
It’s the AP World History Ultimate Review
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All right, enough of that, let’s talk about
World War II.
Now in general, World War II is similar in
a lot of ways to World War I.
For starters, like World War I, it was a total
war, which means that all the people fighting
leveraged all of their resources, both military
and domestic, in order to fight.
Also, like World War I, those who fought in
World War II brought new technologies to bear
on the task of killing lots of people, maybe
most significantly, atomic weaponry.
And yet another similarity was the colonial
armies who fought yet again for their parent
countries.
Okay, now those are some broad themes, now
let’s get down into the specifics.
And let’s start with Japan.
Now, if you’ll recall, Japan had been acting
on its imperialistic ambitions for a long
time before World War II started, and the
recipients of said ambition was especially
Korea and China.
And the funny thing about imperial nations
gobbling up territories is that it turns out
to be the kind of food that doesn’t satisfy
your hunger but intensifies it.
And so the natural place for Japan to continue
its imperial expansion would be in the Siberian
region of Soviet Russia.
But because of the stupid Nonagression Pact
signed by Russia and Germany, the latter of
which was the ally of Japan, they couldn’t
expand into Russia.
And so, Japan decided to expand into Southeast
Asia instead.
But as it turned out many of the places into
which Japan was extending its reach were places
controlled by Western nations.
So as a result, the United States, for example,
imposed harsh economic sanctions on Japan
which hurt them significantly.
And thus began a Japanese plot to attack America
and make them submit to Japan’s imperialist
ambitions.
But we’ll have to leave that there for a
minute and come back to it.
Meanwhile in the European theater, war had
broken out in 1939 and Germany used this opportunity
to start gobbling up territory for itself.
And their chief method of doing so was the
blitzkrieg, which when being translated means,
lightning war.
It was a method of waging war which relied
on shock and awe campaigns headed by armored
tanks and airstrikes that dealt massive blows
to the enemy in a very short amount of time.
And by the end of 1939 Poland fell to the
Germans and they split that prize with the
Russians because of the terms of their Non
Aggression Pact.
So German success in Poland led to the Germans
conquering Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands,
Belgium, and France and much more.
And not surprisingly, Britain feared that
they would be next, and so they asked the
United States for help.
Now up to this point the U.S. had been neutral
in the war.
But when Britain came asking for help, they
responded with the Lend-Lease Act by which
they sent huge amounts of war material to
Britain.
And after this all notions of all U.S. neutrality
were gone.
I mean they were still sitting on the sidelines
of the war, but after this it was clear who
they were rooting for.
Now as it turns out, Germany did attempt an
invasion of Britain.
They began by attacking military targets,
but soon changed directions and bombed cities
filled with civilians.
Now to be fair, The British had done the very
same thing to the Germans in Berlin.
But the German invasion of Britain was ultimately
a failure.
And so Hitler and the Germans then turned
their sights on Russia.
And on June 22, 1941 Germany launched an invasion
of the Soviet Union which, of course, was
a violation of the Non-aggression Pact between
the two partners.
Russia was taken by surprise and Germany made
huge advances into the Russian territory.
And finally they made it to the outskirts
of Leningrad and there, the Soviets successfully
held off the German pressure for almost three
years.
But in that time, Germans had to contend with
the profoundly cold Russian winters, and many
of their troops starved or froze to death
as a result.
“You fell victim to one of the classic blunders.
The most famous of which is, ‘never get
involved in a land war in Asia.’
But only slightly less well known is this:
Never go against a Cicilian when death is
on the line!”
Anyway, while the Germans are freezing in
Russia, let’s go check in with Japan and
see what they're up to.
Like Germany, Japan also won very rapid victories
in the Pacific theater.
And in their campaign to punish the United
States for all the economic sanctions, Japan
launched an attack on a U.S. military base
located in Hawaii by the name of Pearl Harbor.
On December 7, 1941 Japan dealt a devastating
blow to the Pacific fleet of the United States.
They assumed that such a blow would crush
the Americans into submitting to Japan’s
imperialist ambitions.
But that is emphatically not what it did.
The American public was outraged and demanded
retaliation and therefore President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration
of war on Japan, and he got it.
And because the U.S. declared war on Japan,
Germany took the occasion to go ahead and
declare war on the United States.
Okay, let’s take a break for a moment from
the fighting and see how things were carried
on during this war on the homefront.
As I mentioned before, this was a total war,
so that means people at home were involved
in the war effort too.
The United States had a powerful industrial
sector which they leveraged for the war effort
to produce ships, tanks, aircraft, guns, ammunition,
and significant in the Pacific theater, aircraft
carriers which allowed aircraft to take off
from the sea.
Like in World War I, women went to work in
the absence of the men who were off fighting.
And images like this one were created to inspire
women to keep up morale in the effort to win
the war.
Japan, by contrast, turned up its nose at
the American employment of women and refused
to put its own women to work.
Alright, that was a nice break, now back to
the fighting.
So as the war ground on the Axis powers began
to falter and lose ground.
In 1943 the Allies successfully defeated Italy
which led to the fall of Mussolini.
And then they turned their attention to the
liberation of France.
The chief effort here was the massive amphibious
invasion on France’s Normandy beach in 1944.
At great cost to their ranks, the Allied invaders
defeated the Germans and thus began their
march to liberate Paris.
And on August 25, 1944, the Nazis were finally
pushed out of Paris.
And after this, the Allied forces turned their
sights towards Germany.
Allied air raids had systematically destroyed
much of the German infrastructure and by March
of 1945, the Allied soldiers had crossed the
Rhine into Germany and were marching towards
Berlin.
Even at this, Hitler refused to surrender
and spent the final days of the war hiding
in a bunker.
And on April 30, 1945, when defeat became
inevitable, Hitler committed suicide.
And when the remaining German commanders could
see that there was nothing left for them to
do, Germany officially surrendered on May
8th, 1945 which became known as VE Day, or
Victory in Europe Day.
But at this point the war is still raging
over in the Pacific theater.
The United States was making some gains by
defeating the Japanese on several different
Pacific Islands.
But the Japanese emperor refused the demand
of unconditional surrender.
And it was at that point that the U.S. came
to a fork in the road.
Either they could attempt a mainland invasion
of Japan, or they could employ a new weapon
that they had been spending years developing,
namely, the atomic bomb.
Ultimately, they chose the atomic bomb.
And so on August 6th, 1945 President Truman
ordered the first atomic bomb to be dropped
on the Japanese town of Hiroshima.
And this bomb was unlike anything the world
had ever seen.
By releasing the energy of destabilized atoms,
the bomb exploded with the force of 15 kilotons
of dynamite.
And in the blink of an eye, Hiroshima was
reduced to dust along with most of its inhabitants.
But still the Japanese did not surrender.
And so three days later a second atomic bomb
was dropped on Nagasaki.
Together, the lower estimate of people killed
was about 140,000 and the high end was over
200,000.
It was a truly devastating way to end the
war.
But that’s exactly what it did.
On August 14th, 1945 Japan officially surrendered
and the war was over.
And this became known as VJ Day, or Victory
in Japan Day.
And although it’s true there was great rejoicing
all over the world that the war was finally
over, but the legacy of death and destruction
that it left in its wake was truly staggering.
It’s estimated that over 75 million people
died in the war, and up to two-thirds of those
were civilians.
And if that wasn’t enough, the end of World
War II actually created the occasion for a
new global conflict called the Cold War, but
we’ll have to get to that in another video.
Alright ya’ll, that’s what you need to
know about Unit 7 Topic 7 of AP World History.
If you want to get my Ultimate Review Packet,
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Heimler out.
