August 1945: Allied victory over Japan

In late July 1945, after Japan refused to recognize the Potsdam Declaration or surrender, the USA decided to use nuclear weapons to force Japanese surrender. Prior to their use, the USA informed Japan that, unless they surrendered, some of their most important cities were going to be destroyed; flyers were dropped on Japanese cities warning civilians to evacuate, but most of these were destroyed and evacuated was largely prohibited by Japanese authorities. On 6 August 1945, the city of Hiroshima was destroyed with an atomic bomb, resulting in at least 100,000 casualties, mostly civilians. The Japanese still refused to surrender, so, on 9 August 1945, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing upwards of 50,000 people, almost entirely civilians. On the same day, the USSR invaded Manchukuo. After several days of consultations, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on 14 August 1945.

The decision to use the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was largely based on the American experience during the Battle of Okinawa. The only one of the Home Islands to experience invasion, the Battle of Okinawa saw extremely high rates of Allied casualties as well as a massive civilian death toll. The USA felt that any invasion of the other Home Islands would be even worse. When the use of atomic weapons became an option in July 1945, the US leadership believed that it was likely to produce fewer casualties, on both sides, than an invasion. The use of the atomic bomb also had the added benefit of demonstrating the weapon to the Soviet Union, which the USA hoped would cow the Soviets and discourage them from aggression after the end of the war.

At this point in the conflict, Japan knew that it was going to lose the Second World War, the question was under what conditions it would surrender. The Japanese leadership was divided between a faction that wanted to concede to the Allied demand of unconditional surrender and a faction, including Emperor Hirohito, that was willing to continue fighting until the Allies accepted peace on more conciliatory terms. This second ‘hardline’ faction planned to secure a more lenient peace deal either through negotiations with the USSR or by inflicting such high casualties during the Allied invasion of the Home Islands that they were forced to offer better terms. Even after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the hardline faction still felt that it could secure better terms on the assumption that the US did not have another atomic bomb and that the USSR could still be negotiated with. The second atomic bombing in Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo ended both of these hopes, as it was felt that the Soviets could no longer be negotiated with and that the Allies now had a means of destroying Japanese cities without the need for a costly invasion. Despite trying to regain power in a military coup, the hardline faction had lost the support of Emperor Hirohito after these events and, with his vote being decisive, Japan decided to surrender unconditionally.

The surrender of Japan marks the end of the Second World War, which lasted for 8 years in Asia and 6 in Europe. At the time of Japanese surrender, Japanese troops still occupied large portions of eastern China and almost the entirety of Southeast Asia. The course of politics following Japanese surrender was largely structured by the question of who would replace the Japanese as the governing authority in these places. The Japanese Empire itself, in Japan, Korea, and the Pacific Islands, was occupied by the USA, which set about creating a new democratic, constitutional government for Japan and preparing Japanese colonies for independence.

April 1945: Battle of Okinawa

Okinawa is the largest of the Ryukyu Islands, which are considered the southernmost of the Japanese Home Islands. In preparation for an invasion of the other Home Islands, the Allies invaded Okinawa on 1 April 1945. Fighting on Okinawa was particularly intense, resulting in over 75,000 Allied casualties and over 100,000 Japanese casualties. In addition, half of the civilian population of 300,000 died during the battle; some through crossfire, others as military casualties after being impressed by the Japanese. The Allies managed to seize Okinawa on 2 July 1945.

The high cost in casualties and material, and the refusal of the Japanese to evacuate or shelter the civilian population, convinced the USA that any future invasion of the Home Islands would have a similarly high cost. The Battle of Okinawa was taken as the example for what any invasion of the Home Islands would resemble. This convinced the Allies to delay the invasion of Kyushu until at least November 1945 due to the strength necessary for the operation. It also encouraged alternative strategies to force Japanese surrender, including the use of atomic weapons.

May 1945: Allied victory in Europe

Following massive breakthroughs on both the Eastern and Western Fronts, Soviet forces attacked Berlin on 16 April 1945. When it became clear that Germany would be unable to resist, Hitler and most of the German leadership committed suicide. After the Soviet army captured Berlin on 2 May 1945, the remainder of the Germany army conducted a fighting retreat so they could surrender to the western Allies rather than the USSR. The German government, reconstituted around Admiral Karl Dönitz and represented by General Alfred Jodl, unconditionally surrendered on 8 May 1945.

The German position in 1945 was extremely weak on both fronts. The failure of the Battle of the Bulge had exhausted the last of the fuel resources and most of the ammunition on the Western Front. The Eastern Front was in disarray, with hundreds of thousands of German soldiers trapped in Courland and the remainder divided between fronts in Austria, northwestern Hungary, and Poland. The Allies launched coordinated attacks on both fronts in January and February 1945. The Western Allies crossed the Rhine while the USSR attacked through Poland, stopping just shy of Berlin. A new Allied combined assault was launched in March April 1945, with the Soviets attacking Berlin and the Western Allies, trapping the main German army in the Ruhr, advancing to the Elbe River.

In the final days of the war, the Allies had an overwhelming and obvious advantage. A lack of resources, manpower, and low morale caused German lines to rapidly collapse in the face of the Allied advance. Facing imminent defeat and capture, Hitler and most of his senior officials committed suicide on 30 April 1945 and the following days. Control of the German government and armies reverted to Dönitz and Jodl, two of the highest-ranking Nazis still alive.

Rather than immediately surrendering, Dönitz and Jodl continued a fighting retreat along the Eastern Front with the objectives of protecting German civilians fleeing from the Soviet army and surrendering the majority of remaining German forces to the Western Allies rather than to the Soviets. The Soviet advance into Poland and Germany had been accompanied by mass war crimes against civilians and execution of POWs, so, to avoid this fate for more German civilians and soldiers, Dönitz and Jodl sought to surrender to Western Allies rather than the USSR. Dönitz and Jodl finally surrendered on 8 May 1945, with the German army in the Courland Pocket surrendering on 9 May after being informed of Jodl’s surrender.

Dönitz and Jodl’s surrender on 8 May 1945 marks the end of the Second World War in Europe. This conflict had lasted for 6 years and resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of soldiers and civilians. The genocide of European Jews and Romani was an integral part of the Second World War in Europe, devastating these and other oppressed communities. The Soviet advance into eastern Europe precipitated a final ethnic cleansing, with hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans being killed and 12 to 14 million others fleeing to Germany in fear of reprisals against their ethnic group. Following German surrender, Axis Europe was divided into occupation zones by the USSR and the Western Allies. These occupation zones hardened in the aftermath of the Second World War and formed the basis of the division of Europe during the Cold War.

March 1945: Firebombing of Japan begins

Since its capture of the Mariana Islands in November 1944, the USA had engaged in an extensive bombing campaign against Japan. This campaign had been targeted against Japanese industry, with the goal of destroying Japan’s capacity to wage war. These initial bombing raids were of limited effectiveness, as Japan moved much of its manufacturing capacity into smaller factories, often in private homes, that could not be easily targeted by aerial bombardment. In March 1945, the Allies adopted a new bombing doctrine, switching from daytime precision bombing to nighttime firebombing. Firebombing was massively successful in destroying Japanese industry; it also devastated huge areas of urban Japan and resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, including almost 100,000 in Tokyo alone.

Firebombing was adopted as the primary bombing doctrine of Allied forces in the Japan Theater as a reaction to the lack of success in degrading Japanese industry through precision bombing. By moving a considerable amount of manufacturing to smaller locations or homes, Japan managed to shelter its war industry from aerial bombardment, making precision bombing ineffective. A firebombing of Tokyo on 25 February 1945 was remarkably successful, so, in March 1945, US General Curtis LeMay approved a transition to a firebombing campaign.

Firebombing was remarkably successful at degrading Japan’s capacity to wage war. Most Japanese buildings were made of wood and were highly flammable, meaning that fires started by incendiary bombs would rapidly spread and consume large areas. Thinking that its control of Pacific and Chinese air bases would protect it from attack, Japan had failed to invest in either bomb shelters or adequate firefighting capacity, meaning that fires were poorly contained and caused massive damage and huge numbers of civilian deaths. The fires started by Allied bombing not only destroyed the dispersed manufacturing centers used for war industry, but also destroyed the economies and livelihoods of urban Japan, reducing millions to poverty and simultaneously increasing the burdens on the Japanese state and reducing its capacity to provide for them. The civilian death toll of firebombing was also seen as a positive by some Allied commanders, as it reduced morale and was thought likely to induce Japanese surrender.

December 1944: Battle of the Bulge

The last major German offensive of the Second World War, launched on 16 December 1944, was the Battle of Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Counteroffensive. The offensive was launched from the Ardennes at a weak point in the Allied line and attempted to split Allied forces. It failed to reach the Meuse River and created a salient that was then attacked by the Allies. At the end of the Battle of the Bulge, Germany had failed to achieve its objectives and had exhausted its last reserves of resources and manpower, opening the way for Allied invasion of Germany.

The Battle of the Bulge was conceived by Hitler as a way to inflict a major defeat on the Allies, in the hope that a costly defeat would force them to consider peace terms favorable to Germany. German leadership understood that they were losing and that, soon, the Soviets would capture Hungary and deprive Germany of its last source of oil, crippling its ability to maintain its war industry. To prevent defeat and occupation, Germany needed to negotiate a favorable peace deal, which they believed could only be secured by a major Allied defeat. This final offensive was planned for the Western Front as it was believed that the Americans had no stomach for high casualties and would seek to negotiate if Germany could inflict a severe defeat.

The German plan for the Battle of the Bulge was for a concentration of forces to gather in the Ardennes, which had been poorly garrisoned by the Allies, and then attack to the west, moving to Antwerp and cutting off Allied forces in Netherlands and northern Belgium from their main force. This encircled force could then be attacked, causing heavy Allied casualties, until the Americans used their role as the economic backer of the Allied war effort to force a peace settlement.

The German offensive in the Battle of the Bulge was initially successful, as there were few American defenders placed around the Ardennes. The 400,000 German soldiers overpowered Allied forces in eastern Belgium, inflicting 75,000 casualties. However, Allied reinforcements arrived to stymie the German attack and the offensive was halted before reaching the Meuse River. The German offensive had failed to reach Antwerp, so, instead of splitting the Allied force, it created a ‘bulge’ of exposed positions that were then attacked by reinforced Allied forces. The concentrated German troops in the ‘bulge’ suffered almost 80,000 casualties and were forced to retreat back into Germany.

Germany had marshaled the last of its limited resources to organize the Battle of the Bulge. The battle had failed in its goal of forcing the Allies to consider a negotiated peace and it had used manpower and materiel that Germany could not replace. The men killed and resources used in the Battle of the Bulge could not be used in the defense of Germany, severely weakening the Siegfried Line. At the end of the Battle of the Bulge, Germany had almost no fuel remaining on the Western Front and only one-third of the ammunition needed to continue effective operations. Neither of these resources could be replaced, resulting in a relative weak and ineffective defense of Germany. Moreover, those resources devoted to the Battle of the Bulge could not be deployed on the Eastern Front, preventing Germany from effectively blocking the Soviet offensive through Poland and into eastern Germany.

November 1944: US victory in the Mariana Islands

After fighting across the Pacific in an ‘island hopping’ campaign to capture the naval and air bases necessary to progress to the next island, the USA captured the last of the Mariana Islands from Japan on 27 November 1944. These islands were the closest chain before reaching the Ryukyu islands, the southernmost of the Japanese Home Islands.

The capture of the Mariana Islands was significant because the island hosts the farthest airfields capable of attacking the Japanese Home Islands. Prior to this point, any attack on the Home Islands would either have to come through occupied China or via an exposed aircraft carrier. The capture of the Mariana Islands meant that American aircraft could now directly attack the Home Islands from a safe base. It is at this point that the bombing of the Home Islands begins.

The American bombing campaign against Japan, once begun, was intense and resulted in massive material damage and widespread loss of life in Japan. Japan had presumed its control of the few airfields in the vicinity of the Home Islands and so never developed a robust civil defense network. As a result, there were very few bomb shelters, most cities were unprepared to recover from bombing, and military facilities were not adequately prepared with anti-aircraft guns. This intensity of the American bombing campaign will only increase from this point onward.

October 1944: German occupation of Hungary

After hearing that the Hungarian regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, had been negotiating an armistice with the USSR, Germany forced him to resign on 16 October 1944. Following the removal of Horthy, Germany placed the country under the control of Ferenc Szalasi, the leader of the fascist Arrow Cross Party. Hungary remained a member of the Axis under the Szalasi government until its occupation by the USSR in February and March 1945.

Earlier that year, in March 1944, Germany had occupied key locations in Hungary after Hitler discovered that the Hungarian Prime Minister, Mikos Kallay, was holding discussions on the possibility of surrendering to the Allies. Horthy had remained Hungarian regent only by acquiescing to the occupation of his country, which he viewed as a fait accompli, but resented the Germans and resolved to get Hungary out of the Second World War. Horthy continued negotiations for an armistice with the USSR, carried out through his son, Miklos Jr.

Germany sought to prevent the surrender of Hungary, particularly after Romania and Bulgaria had defected to the Allies. Once Hitler became aware of Horthy’s negotiations with the Soviets, he ordered Horthy’s removal. On 14 October 1944, SS men kidnapped Horthy’s son. Hearing of this kidnapping, Horthy announced on the radio on 15 October that he had secured an armistice with the USSR. Shortly afterwards, Horthy was confronted by German soldiers and surrendered. The Arrow Cross, which had already been informed of the planned coup by the Germans, seized the radio station and countermanded Horthy’s announcement. Some Hungarian armies, most prominently that under Bela Miklos, defected to the USSR, but most continued to fight for the Axis. On 16 October, Horthy was forced to resign and pass the regency to Szalasi. Horthy made this decision, politically, based on a belief that resistance would be futile due to German occupation and, personally, on the threats to his son’s life if he did not submit.

The occupation of Hungary by German forces in March 1944 initiated the Holocaust in Hungary as Hungary’s Jews, who had previously been protected under Horthy’s rightist government, were deported to death camps. Roughly 400,000 Jews had been killed between March and October 1944. The rate of killing increased after Szalasi came to power, as his Arrow Cross Party murdered over 30,000 Jews and Romani and sent an additional 80,000 Jews to the death camps. The scale of the Holocaust in Hungary thus greatly expanded as a result of the German occupation and the removal of Horthy.

The removal of Horthy and his replacement with Szalasi kept Hungary in the Axis camp for several additional months, protecting Germany’s southern flank and securing German access to Hungarian oil reserves. If Germany had not removed Horthy, and occupied the country in March 1944, it is almost certain that Hungary would have surrendered to the Allies. Strategically, Hungary’s Carpathian Mountains formed a formidable natural barrier to Soviet advance into the key industrial areas of Austria and Czechia, where a huge portion of Germany’s arms industry was located. The surrender of Hungary also would have cut off the German retreat from Yugoslavia and Greece, leaving over a million German soldiers trapped in the Balkans. After the surrender of Romania, Hungary was Germany’s only significant source of oil. Without access to the oil fields around Lake Balaton, Germany would be unable to sustain its war effort on a scale large enough to resist Allied advance.

August 1944: Surrender of Romania

On 23 August 1944, King Mihai of Romania conspired with senior generals and the opposition political parties in the country to remove Romanian Prime Minister Ion Antonescu from power. Upon the arrest of Antonescu and the success of the coup, King Mihai left the Axis, which Romania had joined in 1941, and joined the Allies.

By 1943, at which point Italy had surrendered and the Germans were being pushed back across the Eastern Front, it was increasingly clear that an Allied victory was not only possible, but likely; this was even more true come 1944. Although the Nazis fought until the end, most other members of the Axis lacked their ideological commitment and began looking for ways to reduce their exposure if the Allies did win. This issue was all the more pressing in countries like Romania, which would be facing a Soviet invasion if they did not manage to work out a deal with the Allies.

After the tremendous success of Operation Bagration in Summer 1944, the Soviet line was pushed to the edges of Romania and, with the initiation of operations around Chișinău and Iași in August 1944, large portions of Romania were threatened with imminent Soviet occupation. It was clearly to all levels of Romanian leadership, including Antonescu, that, unless a peace was concluded with the Allies, Romania would be invaded and occupied by the Soviets.

Antonescu recognized the threat posed by the USSR and was conducting negotiations with the Allies to surrender, but did not act quickly or decisively enough for other Romanian powerbrokers. Hopes that Antonescu would have Romania join the Allies were stymied by his refusal to surrender without first informing Hitler, he felt that anything else would be a betrayal; and a belief that he could secure better terms from the Allies by delaying surrender until Romania won a major victory over the Soviets. King Mihai and many senior generals were unwilling to wait and worried that Antonescu was opening them up to German occupation. The opposition parties had the extra motivation of benefitting politically from the end of Antonescu’s dictatorship. When Antonescu refused to surrender on the request of King Mihai, he was arrested to remove an obstacle to Romania’s joining the Allies.

gRomania’s defection to the Allies deprived the Germans of their major source of oil, which was essential to both war industry and maintaining their high mechanized army. The Ploieșt oil fields were the largest in Europe and main source of oil for Germany. The loss of these fields crippled the German armaments industry, resulting in shortages through the remainder of the war, and reduced German capacity to use their mechanized units. 

The defection of Romania to the Allies created an opening in German lines that forced Germany to retreat from Greece and Yugoslavia. Together with Hungary and Nazi forces in occupied Poland, Romania had formed the new dimension of the Eastern Front in 1944, shielding German positions in Greece and Yugoslavia from direct attack. With the loss of Romania, these positions became untenable and Germany was forced to abandon Greece and Yugoslavia, having its force retreat to more defensible positions in Hungary and Croatia.

The defection of Romania to the Allies represents part of a broader collapse of the European Axis, whereupon it becomes increasingly clear that Germany is going to lose the war and that its co-belligerents should seek a way out. In September 1944, a Communist coup succeeded in Bulgaria largely because of the failure of that country’s leadership to join the Allies. Hungary tried to make similar moves as Romania, prompting a German occupation of the country. Allied clemency toward Romania and Italy was instrumental in provoking a larger breakdown of the European Axis, as other governments now felt certain that they would get a better outcome by surrendering to the Allies than from continuing to fight with the Axis.

June 1944: Soviets launch Operation Bagration

In coordination with the Allied invasion of Normandy, the Soviets launched Operation Bagration on 23 June 1944 to recapture Belarus and prepare the way for an invasion of Germany. Soviet forces succeeded in encircling and destroying or forcing the surrender of the majority of Germany’s Army Group Center by the end of June and, by July, had advanced to the Vistula River. The success of Operation Bagration destroys the Axis frontline and forces a retreat into Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states.

Soviet campaigns in 1943 and 1944, launched following victory at the Battle of Stalingrad, expelled the Axis from large parts of Ukraine, created a ‘Belarusian balcony’ with a large exposed salient. The Soviets recognized this strategic vulnerability and sought to further weaken the German defensive position by misleading the Germans into believing they would attack western Ukraine. This deception worked and German transferred large numbers of its limited forces to Ukraine in Summer 1943.

Even before the movement of significant numbers of soldiers to Ukraine in Summer 1943, the Germans were badly outnumbered in Belarus. Due to losses suffered previously in the war, German units across the Eastern Front were far below strength and Germany lacked the manpower to replace these losses. The Soviets also had a vast superiority in armament. The reconstruction of Soviet industry in the Urals, combined with American aid through Lend Lease, allowed the Soviets to supply their army with more tanks, artillery, and motorized transport than before, whereas Germany was largely unable to replace the losses it suffered on the Eastern Front. Whereas Germany had been forced to rely on diminishing resources on the Eastern Front, the Soviet capacity to field and arm large armies had increased; the USSR dedicated greater resources to Operation Bagration than the Axis had to Operation Barbarossa. During Operation Bagration, the Soviets had three-times as many soldiers, nine-times as many tanks, and almost sixty-times as many aircraft as the Germans. This gave the Soviet army an overwhelming advantage in any engagement, particularly due to their domination of the air domain.

The German disadvantage in manpower and materiel was exacerbated by the concentration of German forces at designated strongpoints and Hitler’s refusal to allow commanders to retreat from those points to prevent encirclement. In response to manpower shortages, the Germans concentrated in designated strongpoints. However, the Soviets were uninterested in seizing those points and instead attacked around the strongpoints to capture the rear of the German lines and encircle German forces. On orders from Hitler, German soldiers were not allowed to retreat, allowing them to be trapped in their strongpoints and resulting in tens of thousands of Germans being killed or captured, as it Vitebsk and Bobruysk. As a result of this encirclement strategy, the majority of Germany’s Army Group Center was destroyed and the USSR was able to recapture Belarus and force a retreat along the entire Axis frontline.

Germany was unable to recover from the losses it suffered during Operation Bagration. At this point in the war, the Axis was already suffering from its lack of manpower and equipment in comparison to the Allies. The death or capture of approximately 300,000 soldiers further weakened the Axis frontlines and widened the disparity with the Allies. Soviets losses during Operation Bagration were even higher, but the Soviets could replace these losses, whereas the Axis could not. The success of Operation Bagration brought the Soviet frontline into Poland, setting the Soviets up for the capture of Berlin. Soviet success in rapidly pushing back the German frontline in subsequent campaigns was largely due to the weakness of that frontline as a result of the losses inflicted upon Germany during Operation Bagration.

June 1944: Allied invasion of Normandy

In coordination with Operation Bagration, undertaken by the USSR, the Allies invaded Normandy on 6 June 1944. The invasion of Normandy was launched from prepared sites on the south coast of Britain, with Allied landings in Normandy establishing beachheads and pushing inland. Once beachheads were secured, additional forces were brought over the English Channel. By August 1944, over 2 million Allied soldiers were deployed in France and had reopened operations against the Axis on the Western Front.

The plan for an invasion over the English Channel had existed since American entry into the war in December 1941. The USA and the USSR proposed an invasion of western Europe across the English Channel as soon as the USA entered the Second World War as a way of relieving pressure on the USSR. Britain, however, had opposed this plan because it feared that a direct attack on western Europe would result in a defeat reminiscent of the Battle of Dunkirk and the Battle of Le Havre. Britain and the USA came to a compromise in 1942, with Britain agreeing to an invasion of western Europe in 1944 at the latest in return for America agreeing to an invasion of North Africa. In 1944, Britain had to fulfill its promise and approved an invasion of northern France.

Allied success in the invasion of Normandy rested on an overwhelming advantage in manpower and equipment. The Allies achieved their initial beachheads through total air superiority and the assistance of naval bombardment. Once these beachheads were established, the Allies could send across a huge force to establish numerical superiority in northern France. By the end of July, over 1 million Allied troops were landed in northern France; by the end of August, this was over 2 million.

The invasion of Normandy opened up a third front against the Axis, in addition to the Eastern Front and the Italian Theater. The invasion forced the Axis to divert forces to France from other fronts, preventing the Axis from reinforcing the Eastern Front during Operation Bagration. The Allied pressure from the invasion, combined with the subsequent invasion of France’s Mediterranean coast on 15 August 1944, forced the outnumbered Axis armies to retreat back to Germany and Italy to shorten their defensive lines, essentially surrendering France to the Allies. This additional front in western Europe benefited the Allies, as another front forced the Axis to split their numerically inferior forces across multiple theaters, giving the Allies local superiority of forces in each theater.

France had served as a major submarine hub for the German navy and the main base for launching attacks against transatlantic shipping, particularly the Lend Lease supply convoys to Britain. The recapture of French naval bases by the Allies eliminated much of the German threat to Allied shipping, allowing for more Lend Lease supplies to reach Britain and the Western Front.

The invasion of Normandy, combined with the invasion of southern France in August 1944, resulted in the Allied liberation of France. The return of Charles de Gaulle’s Free French government to Metropolitan France involved the transfer of France’s extensive industry and natural resources, especially coal and steel, from Axis to Allied control. French industry and resources had been crucial to the Axis war effort and the Allied recapture of France further increased the disparity in the resources and industry available to war industry in the Axis versus the Allies.

January 1944: Soviet victory at Leningrad

The Siege of Leningrad, initiated in September 1941, was lifted on 27 January 1944. The initial stage of the siege was lifted in January 1943 during Operation Iskra, which opened up a land corridor to Leningrad and allowed for easier transmission of food. The bombardment of the city was not ended, however, until a general offensive in the surrounding region in January 1944 pushed the Germans back from Leningrad’s southern reaches.

By 1944, the tide had turned on the Eastern Front and the Soviets carried out offensives from Leningrad to the Caucasus. The major difference was increasingly a disparity in materiel: the Axis had limited supplies, long supply lines exposed to disruption by partisans, and faced shortages of essentials needed for winter warfare; the Soviets had both rebuild their industrial capacity east of the Urals and were receiving enormous amounts of American aid through the Lend-Lease program. The Soviets were able to mount offensives across the entirety of the Eastern Front and, rather than take unacceptable casualties in areas with limited strategic value, the Axis retreated.

The Soviet victory in Leningrad marks the second major Axis defeat on the Eastern Front after the Battle of Stalingrad. Both battles were significant for the number of lives lost in intense urban combat. The Axis defeat at Leningrad marks an intensification of the Axis retreat along the Eastern Front, as the Soviets will make significant gains from this point onward. The recapture of Leningrad was also a great symbolic victory for the USSR, which had recaptured the city where the Russian Revolution began.

September 1943: Surrender of Italy

Beginning with the Allied invasion of Sicily on 10 June 1943, the Allies invaded Italy, quickly capturing much of the south. On 25 June, King Vittorio Emanuele III deposed Mussolini and had him arrested. Italy then announced its switch from the Axis to the Allied side, signing an armistice with the Allies on 8 September 1943. In response, German troops invaded and occupied northern and central Italy, freed Mussolini, and reestablished him at the head of a new Italian government in Salo.

Italy, despite its military weakness, was one of the primary belligerents of WWII and the invasion of Italy was seen as a crucial part of defeating the Axis. The capture of North Africa in Operation Torch had paved the way for an invasion of Italy. Moreover, British and American forces were already in the Mediterranean as a result of that previous operation.

Once the invasion of Italy began, Italian forces proved reluctant to fight Americans and largely incapable of resistance. The Italian aristocracy, which still dominated the highest ranks of the Italian military through reliably royalist generals, had always opposed Mussolini and consistently opposed his expansionist policies and warmongering. To this group of Italian generals, the Allied invasion of Italy was the final proof of the disastrous consequences of Mussolini’s policies. Not wanting to fight a war that would devastate their country and that they had always opposed, the King and his generals overthrew Mussolini and made peace with the USA.

To Germany, the surrender of Italy was a strategic disaster, as it would have allowed the Allies to invade Germany directly through the Alpine passes and would have given them access to German rear lines in France and the Balkans. To avert this scenario, Germany invaded Italy itself and created a new Italian government. Mussolini, although opposed by the senior ranks of the military, was still largely popular among the population and common soldiers, particularly in northern Italy. Germany’s move to occupy most of Italy was thus largely successful.

The defection of Italy to the Allied side is significant because Italy was the first of many Axis powers to do so. The sense in late 1943 was that the Axis was likely to lose the war and the surrender of Italy demonstrated that the Allies would act leniently toward surrendering belligerents. This encouraged the defection of additional countries from the Axis in the following months.

February 1943: Soviet victory at Stalingrad

The Battle of Stalingrad ended on 2 February 1943 with the surrender of the German 6th Army to Soviet forces. The battle had lasted for over 5 months and resulted in over 2 million casualties. The decisive change in the battle had occurred on 23 November 1942, when, after losing Stalingrad itself to Axis forces earlier that month, the Soviet army cut off the German 6th Army in Stalingrad from the rest of the Axis lines, beginning the Siege of Stalingrad. After over two months of deprivation and constant attack, the 6th Army surrendered the city to the USSR and its 91,000 remaining soldiers became POWs.

Initially, the Axis armies had been successful in taking Stalingrad by early November 1942, but Soviet Generals Georgiy Jukov and Aleksandr Vasilevskiy noticed that the flanks supporting the German 6th Army were thinly spread and drawn from the relatively weak armies of Italy, Romania, and Hungary. Thus, they decided to encircle Axis forces in Stalingrad by destroying these supporting armies holding the flanks, a maneuver designated Operation Uranus.

The leadership of the German 6th Army was not unaware of the danger that encircle posed to their forces nor would they have been unable to react to Operation Uranus, but Hitler had given specific orders not to retreat and that Stalingrad must be held at all costs. Therefore, despite their capability, the 6th Army did not attempt to retreat in November 1942 and never attempted to break out of the siege. It thus stayed encircled and cut off from necessary supplies except by air drops.

Soviet victory at Stalingrad marks a turning point in the Eastern Front of the Second World War, as the Germans now begin to be pushed back by the Soviets. The Battle of Stalingrad was immensely costly to both sides, but the Germans did not have manpower reserves on the scale of the USSR and thus had difficulty replacing their losses at Stalingrad. German tried to replace the soldiers lost at Stalingrad by transferring soldiers from western Europe, weakening its defenses there. Even then, this transfer of troops was not sufficient to restart the German advance; the Axis will not move beyond the Leningrad-Stalingrad line. The end of the Battle of Stalingrad also ends the Axis threat to Baku and the Soviet oil supply. This outcome guarantees continued Soviet access to oil, the loss of which would have been devastating for the Soviet war effort.

November 1942: Allied invasion of North Africa

On 8 November 1942, the Allies carried out coordinated landings at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers with the intention of capturing French North Africa, code-named Operation Torch. After brief resistance, the Vichy French forces in North Africa, under Admiral François Darlan, surrendered to the Allies on 10 November in exchange for retaining administration of North Africa. Allied troops that advanced toward Tunisia and Libya.

All of the Allies agreed on the need to conduct some operation against the European Axis to relieve pressure on the USSR. America favored an invasion of France across the English Channel, but Britain preferred to attack somewhere peripheral to Europe. Britain was still traumatized by its retreat from Dunkirk during the Battle of France and wanted to avoid attacking Europe until Germany was weaker. Eventually, in return for a British promise to an invasion of France by 1944 at the latest, the USA agreed to an invasion of North Africa. An invasion of North Africa would restore British lines of communication in the Mediterranean, stop Axis attacks on Egypt, and relieve pressure on the USSR.

The Vichy French in North Africa initially resisted the Allied invasion, but it quickly became clear that the overwhelming superiority of the Allies in numbers and armament made resistance futile. Darlan was a republican and disagreed with the Vichy government; he was overwhelmingly concerned with French interests in North Africa. As a result, Darlan was willing to betray Vichy France so long as his administration in North Africa was kept intact.

Darlan’s surrender to the Allies prompted major changes in the status of France and French possessions. Now isolated from Metropolitan France, the French colonial administration in West Africa announced its support for the Free French. As a result, the Axis was unable to benefit from the manpower and resources of France’s colonial empire. Darlan’s surrender also undermined German trust in the Vichy government, leading Germany and Italy to invade and occupy Vichy France out of a fear that the Vichy government might surrender and leave the Mediterranean coast exposed to an Allied invasion.

Allied success in Operation Torch achieved all of the Allies’ strategic goals: pressure on the Soviets was relieved, Axis operations against Egypt were disrupted, and British lines of communication were restored across the Mediterranean. Operation Torch marked a major turning point in the Middle Eastern Theater, as Axis forces rapidly lost ground. The capture of North Africa also provided a base for future invasions of Europe; the invasion of Italy in September 1943 and the invasion of Vichy France in August 1944 were both launched from bases in North Africa.

August 1942: Battle of Guadalcanal

The Battle of Guadalcanal, fought in and around the Solomon Islands between 7 August 1942 and 8 February 1943, was the first Allied land campaign in the Pacific Theater. Allied victory in Guadalcanal marks the beginning of the ‘island hopping’ or ‘leapfrogging’ campaign in the Pacific, by which Allied forces captured Japanese-held islands one-by-one to gradually expand the range of air and naval operations, eventually reaching the Home Islands.

In their rapid invasion of Southeast Asia and Oceania following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had seized control of the Solomon Islands and were, in August 1942, constructing an air base on Guadalcanal. The Japanese intended to use this air base to attack shipping between the USA and Australia, thus isolating Australia and forcing its surrender. The USA recognized the threat this air base posed to Australia and invaded Guadalcanal in an attempt to prevent the Japanese from completing this air base.

Fighting on Guadalcanal and the rest of the Solomon Islands was costly in both casualties and the loss of military equipment, with both Japan and the Allies experiencing major losses. Although some of these losses were the result of naval combat and fierce jungle fighting, the majority of casualties were a result of disease or infection due to the tropical climate; only a quarter of casualties during the Battle of Guadalcanal were the result of combat. The high rate of losses favored the Allies because, unlike Japan, the USA was able to swiftly and easily replace manpower and equipment. The losses that Japan suffered during the Battle of Guadalcanal not only could not be replaced during the fighting there, but also could not be replaced before the end of the war. The losses suffered by Japan during the Battle of Guadalcanal and other engagements in the Pacific drained its manpower and resources and forced Japan to conduct only defensive operations in the Pacific Theater for the remainder of the war.

The Allied capture of Guadalcanal was the first of the ‘island hopping’ campaigns that brought the USA closer to its strategic objectives of the Philippines and the Japanese Home Islands. The range of naval vessels and aircraft was limited during the Second World War, meaning that the capture of long-distance objectives usually required the capture of air and naval bases closer to the starting location first. In addition to this logistical necessity, Allied forces in the Pacific Theater also pursued ‘leapfrogging’, by which only strategic islands were invaded and large concentrations of Japanese troops elsewhere were ignored. These strategies defined combat in the Pacific Theater, as Allied forces pursued Japan through the Solomon Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago to the Philippines, and through the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, the Caroline Islands, the Mariana Islands, and the Iwo Islands to the Japanese Home Islands.

Allied victory in the Battle of Guadalcanal convinced Roosevelt to abandon his strict adherence to a ‘Europe First’ policy and approve further offensive operations against Japan simultaneous with Allied operations in Europe. Prior to the Battle of Guadalcanal, Roosevelt believed that the USA only had the resources to conduct offensive operations in one theater at a time and, in deference to the needs of Britain and the USSR, the USA would prioritize Europe. Exceptions were only made to prevent major strategic defeats, such as the disruption of supply lines to Australia. Allied victory at Guadalcanal convinced Roosevelt that American forces could fight simultaneously in both theaters. The approval of Allied offensives in the Pacific Theater shortened the war by years and meant that Japan’s defeat followed Germany’s defeat by months rather than years.

August 1942: Battle of Stalingrad begins

The Battle of Stalingrad, today Volgograd, was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the Second World War and also marked the highpoint of German advance into the USSR. Beginning on 23 August 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad was the site of the largest Soviet resistance to the German offensive launched in the Summer of 1942. The Battle of Stalingrad would determine whether or not the USSR was able to hold its southern front and whether its main lines would be cut off from the Caucasus. Over the course of fighting, roughly 2 million soldiers died.

This goal of the Axis offensive had been capturing Baku and seizing the Soviet Union’s oil supplies. At the time, Baku was one of the largest oil fields in the world and accounted for 80% of all Soviet oil production. The loss of Baku would have crippled the USSR’s ability to continue the war and its capture by Germany would have bolstered that country’s warfighting capabilities. As both Germany and the USSR had heavily mechanized armed forces, control of these oil reserves was vital for victory in the war. However, German lines were stretched too thin in the Caucasus to actually capture Baku, as significant numbers of troops were needed to face off against Soviet defenders in Stalingrad. The fate of Baku was thus determined in Stalingrad.

American internment of Japanese (beginning c. 1942)

Following America’s entry into the Second World War, there was an executive order issued by President Roosevelt on 19 February 1942 that all Japanese nationals and all Americans of Japanese descent were to be interned away from the Pacific coast. This internment lasted until the end of the war in 1945 and affected around 120,000 people, of whom around 75,000 were American citizens. Most internees were not allowed to retain their property and often had to sell it off for small amounts, leaving many internees impoverished upon release.

The order for the internment of Japanese nationals was fairly standard, with similar orders being issued for the internment of German and Italian nationals, but the internment of American citizens on the basis of descent was exceptional. Many Americans along the Pacific coast felt that Japanese-Americans were untrustworthy and would choose Japan over the USA. The Pacific coast was seen as vulnerable to sabotage because of the potential of a Japanese naval invasion and because of the concentration of vital military industries in cities along the Pacific coast. Removing the Japanese from the Pacific coast and into the interior would protect those facilities from sabotage by Japanese agents.

The concern about Japanese-Americans constituting a ‘fifth column’ comes from an intense anti-Asian racism in the West, particularly in California. Chinese immigration to the USA had been banned since 1882 and Japanese immigration was essentially prohibited under the quota system imposed in 1924. Japanese and other Asians were seen as driving down wages, competing for scarce resources, and threatening the identity of the USA as a ‘White nation’. As a result of these preexisting racist tensions, many residents of the Pacific coast already wanted the Japanese gone from their communities, in part to seize their land and businesses for themselves. These racist motivations explain why US politicians from the West were so quick to suggest the internment of the Japanese and why it was extended to American citizens as well as enemy aliens.

June 1942: Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway, taking place on 4 June 1942, was a major naval engagement between the USA and Japan and a turning point in the Pacific Theater of World War II. American aircraft carriers surprised the Japanese fleet at Midway and destroyed several Japanese capital ships, including aircraft carriers. The American victory at Midway marked the end of Japanese naval expansion in the Pacific.

The Japanese attack on Midway was intended to seize the strategic island as a way of threatening Hawaii and to draw out the carriers of the US Pacific Fleet to a battle where they could be destroyed. The Pearl Harbor attack had failed to sink any American aircraft carriers, which had been deployed elsewhere at the time. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto believed that Midway was so strategically vital to the defense of Hawaii that the USA would be forced to fight for it, allowing Japan to destroy the carriers that had escaped the Pearl Harbor attack. The destruction of the US Pacific Fleet carrier group would give Japan overwhelming naval supremacy across the Pacific. The capture of Midway Atoll itself would allow Japan to permanently threaten Hawaii, denying the islands as a staging ground for American movements into the Pacific.

The Japanese naval contingent at Midway possessed firepower superior to its American counterpart, but the USA had an advantage in that the Japanese force was not aware of the American force until hours before the start of the battle. The Japanese force had been undertaking operations to capture Midway Atoll when the Americans were sighted, forcing the Japanese to rapidly re-equip their aircraft for naval combat. The Japanese could not make the adjustment quickly enough and the Japanese carriers were sunk before their own planes could take off. American naval air forces were then able to inflict a major defeat on the remainder of the Japanese fleet.

American victory at Midway allowed the American naval presence in the Pacific to survive and inflicted such great material losses upon the Japanese that Japan was forced to halt its offensive operations in the Pacific Theater. Japanese victory at Midway would have destroyed the American ability to contest Japan in the Pacific Theater until either the transfer of the Atlantic Fleet or the construction of a new fleet, giving Japan several months of operational freedom. The capture of Midway would have also permanently threatened Hawaii, preventing the USA from using it as a staging point for operations in the Pacific Theater, and exposed the strategic industries of the Pacific Coast to attack. American victory at Midway denied these opportunities to Japan and inflicted severe losses on the Japanese fleet. Japan lacked the industrial resources of the USA and had great difficulty in replacing the losses suffered at the Battle of Midway. As a result of its losses at the Battle of Midway, Japan lacked the naval forces for its planned offensives, ending Japanese expansion in the Pacific and placing it on the defensive in the Pacific Theater for the remainder of the Second World War.

Japanese slave labor system (beginning c. 1942)

Beginning in 1942, Japan rationalized the slave labor system that existed in Korea and Manchukuo and extended it to all its occupied territories. Laborers, often relocated to work camps near mines, factories, construction projects, were forcibly conscripted from across Japanese-occupied Asia to extract the raw materials and manufacture the goods needed for the Japanese war effort. At its height, this slave labor system encompassed tens of millions of Asian civilians as well as hundreds of thousands of Allied POWs. It was the largest slave labor system in history, surpassing chattel slavery in the Americas and the slave labor system established by the Nazis in eastern Europe. Those enslaved by the Japanese were worked under brutal conditions, with casualty rates often exceeding 25% and being accompanied by starvation, beating, and injury.

The introduction of slave labor on a massive scale in 1942 was a direct result of the labor shortages in Japan as a result of the war. Japan was at a disadvantage in the Second World War, as it had a comparatively small population and, as a result, mobilizing a large army created a severe labor shortage. Labor shortages already existed as a result of Japanese commitments in the China Theater, but the expansion of the conflict into the Pacific and Southeast Asia further strained Japan’s manpower resources. To mobilize more men as soldiers, Japan needed to replace their labor in factories, mines, farms, etc. Japan replaced its own labor reservoirs with slave labor drawn from areas it occupied. These slaves worked in the mines, fields, and factories so that Japanese men could fight the war.

The rapid creation of the world’s largest slave system was possible because the Japanese viewed other Asians and foreign POWs as their racial inferiors. Japanese leaders largely subscribed to the race theory of Shumei Okawa, who held that the ‘Yamato race’ of Japan was superior to all other racial groups and, as the most developed of the ‘Asiatic races’, Japan should dominate Asia. This race theory justified the treatment of non-Japanese as subhuman, including their enslavement, by making the domination of others by the Japanese seem like part of the natural order.

The Japanese slave system was crucial to the longevity and size of the Japanese war effort in the Second World War. If Japan was restricted to only its own labor resources, it could not have fielded so large an army and navy. Moreover, Japan would have been unable to produce war materiel at a sufficient rate without using slave labor to extract raw resources and manufacture necessary goods. The Japanese war economy was dependent upon slave labor and could not have been sustained with free labor, as the resultant increase in the demand for consumer goods would have exceeded the capacity of the Japanese economy. By supplying labor while keep demand for consumer goods extremely low, through intentional privation sometimes extending to starvation, slave labor allowed Japan to maintain an economy and a war machine far larger than its population and resources could have otherwise sustained.

December 1941: Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia

Alongside its attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Japan initiated an invasion of the Philippines, Burma, Malaysia, Thailand, and the East Indies in December 1941. This campaign was successful in capturing the East Indies, Philippines, and Malaysia, while Thailand joined the Axis. Fighting continued in Burma for the remainder of the war, although Japan was successful in taking over the main arteries of the country by May 1942. Japan remained in possession of Southeast Asia, with the exception of its loss of Burma in late 1944, until the time of its surrender in August 1945.

The primary motivation for the expansion of the Second World War in Asia was Japan’s own resource shortages. The USA declared an oil embargo against Japan in August 1941, depriving them of their main source of fuel. Japan needed another source of oil to continue its war against China and the only available option was the oil fields in the Netherlandish East Indies. Japan intended to invade the East Indies and, thus, seize control of its oil supply. In doing so, Japan would have invaded an Allied nation -- Netherlands -- and would almost certainly trigger war with Britain and France. Thus, Japan intended to simultaneously strike against all European colonial possessions in Southeast Asia. The Philippines, an American colony, was attacked for a similar reason, that it posed a security threat now that Japan had declared war on the USA.

Seizing the American and European colonial possessions in Southeast Asia both provided Japan with badly needed raw materials and deprived the Allies of naval and air bases from which they could potentially threaten Japan. Of particular importance were Manila, Hong Kong, and Singapore; the capture of these ports depleted the capacity of any outside power to operate in Southeast Asia. Their capture thus guaranteed Japanese maritime and air supremacy in Southeast Asia, a situation that persisted until the end of the war. In the case of some colonies, particularly Malaysia and the East Indies, they also provided resources important to war industry, like rubber and tin.

Another motivation in the Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia was expanding the blockade against the Guomindang. Following the capture of all major Chinese ports by 1939 and the closure of the Kunming–Haiphong railway in 1940, the Guomindang had become dependent on access through the Burma Road to supplement military aid from the USSR. By invading Burma, the Japanese were able to cut this connection and leave the Guomindang with only Soviet aid and whatever American aid could be flown over the Himalayas. Japanese maritime dominance in Southeast Asia also strengthened the effectiveness of the existing blockade around southern China.

The invasion of Southeast Asia was a massive boon to Japan by giving it the resources without which it would have been forced to stop fighting. Japan managed to continue fighting the Second World War because of its access to the resources of Malaysia and the East Indies. Similarly, those resources were deprived from the European Allies, forcing them to depend even more heavily on the USA for supplies. The invasion also directly connects the war in Europe and the war in Asia for the first time, as now Japan is also at war with the European Allies, rather than just China or the USA.