World War Two: Not Quite in a Nutshell

World War Two: Not Quite in a Nutshell

Closely adapted from an article by Bruce Robinson at http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/ww2_summary_01.shtml

[ NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE MATERIAL IN YOUR TEXTBOOK ]

Timeline -- (click to download timeline)

1933 - 1939

Hitler rises to power in Germany.

Persecution of Jews

Growth of the Hitler Youth

1936

Hitler re-arms the Rhineland bordering France.

Hitler and Mussolini assist Franco in Spanish Civil War. Canadians formed MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion and fought against Franco against wishes of Canadian government.

1938

Hitler invokes an Anschluss or union of Austria and Germany

League of Nations adopts policy of appeasement, fearing threat of another war worse than Hitler’s actions.

Munich Conference, where British Prime Minister Chamberlain agrees to Hitler’s occupation of Sudetenland.

Hitler’s occupation of Sudentenland section of Czechoslovakia (occupied mainly by German speaking people)

Hitler proceeded with occupation of Czechoslovakia by force but without battle.

1939

Hitler signs non-aggression pact with Russia.

Hitler invades Poland on 1 September. Britain and France declare war on Germany two days later. Canada declares war September 10.

British Commonwealth Air Training Plan set up to use Canadian skies to train commonwealth pilots.

Supply convoys of the Merchant Marine sent from Canada to Britain. Their defence, by the Royal Canadian Navy, against German submarines and warships became known as the Battle of the Atlantic.

1940

Rationing starts in Britain.

Air Ferry program begun to fly planes from Canada to Britain.

German 'Blitzkrieg' or lightning war overwhelms Belgium, Holland and France.

Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister of Britain.

British Expeditionary Force evacuated from Dunkirk by small ships and boats from Britain.

British victory in Battle of Britain (August to October) forces Hitler to postpone Operation Sea Lion invasion plans.

1941

Hitler begins Operation Barbarossa - the invasion of Russia. Reaches outskirts of Moscow, Leningrad.

The Blitz continues against Britain's major cities.

Camp X, a Special Training School near Whitby, Ontario, opened (for three years) to train spy agents for British.

The sinking of the Bismark, a large German battleship. Allies take Tobruk in North Africa, and resist German attacks.

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, and the US enters the war.

Canadians attempt to defend Hong Kong against overwhelming Japanese force

1942

Afrika Corps controls north Africa and attempts to move east through Egypt.

Germany suffers setbacks at Stalingrad and El Alamein.

Singapore falls to the Japanese in February - around 25,000 prisoners taken.

Conscription plebecite by Canadian government; 65% voted that government should decide

Evacuation of all Japanese living within 62 km of British Columbia coast and relocation of 23,000 Japanese-Canadians to camps in the interior.

Continued attacks on Germany by Allied Bomber Command from Britain.

American naval victory at Battle of Midway, in June, marks turning point in Pacific War.

Mass murder of Jewish people at Auschwitz begins The Holocaust.

Battle of Dieppe; a disaster for Canadians; German coastal defences in France too strong

1943

Surrender at Stalingrad after a winter of fighting marks Germany's first major defeat in its advance on Russia..

Allied victory in North Africa campaign enables invasion of Sicily and Italy to be launched.

Italy surrenders, but Germany takes over the battle. Battle of Ortona: street to street, house to house fighting by Canadians

British and Indian forces fight Japanese in Burma.

1944

Soviet offensive gathers pace in Eastern Europe.

D Day (6 June, 1944): the Allied invasion of Normandy, in France. Canadians land at Juno Beach, Americans land at Utah and Omaha beaches, British land at Sword and Gold beaches. Paris is liberated in August.

Guam liberated by the US .Okinawa, and Iwo Jima bombed.

1945

Auschwitz liberated by Soviet troops.

The Yalta Conference was held by Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt

Canadians assigned to the liberation of the Netherlands.

Germany launches V-1 “buzz bombs” and V-2 “rockets” against London

The Fall of Berlin to the Russians. Hitler commits suicide and Germany surrenders on 7 May.

Truman becomes President of the US on Roosevelt's death, and Attlee replaces Churchill as Prime Minister of Britain.

After atomic bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrenders on 14 August.

(click to download event summaries)

Events of 1939

Three years of mounting international tension - encompassing the Spanish Civil War, the Anschluss (union) of Germany and Austria, Hitler's occupation of the Sudetenland and the invasion of Czechoslovakia - culminated in the German invasion of Poland on 1 September. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. While the USA proclaimed neutrality, it continued to supply Britain with essential supplies, and the critical Battle of the Atlantic between German U-Boats and British naval convoys commenced.

Western Europe was eerily quiet during this 'phoney war'. Preparations for war continued in earnest, but there were few signs of conflict, and civilians who had been evacuated from London in the first months drifted back into the city. Gas masks were distributed, and everybody waited for the proper war to begin.

In eastern Europe and Scandinavia, however, there was nothing phoney about the war. With the Ribbentrop Pact of non-aggression signed between the Soviet Union and Germany in late August, Russia followed Germany into Poland in September. That country was carved up between the two invaders before the end of the year, and Russia continued this aggression by going on to invade Finland.

The British Commonwealth Air Training program was established in Canada to train pilots needed in fighter planes and bombers in Europe.

Events of 1940

Rationing was introduced in Britain early in the New Year, but little happened in western Europe until the spring. The 'winter war' between Russia and Finland concluded in March, and in the following month Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.

Denmark surrendered immediately, but the Norwegians fought on - with British and French assistance - surrendering in June only once events in France meant that they were fighting alone.

On 10 May - the same day that Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister of the UK - Germany invaded France, Belgium and Holland, and western Europe encountered the Blitzkrieg - or 'lightning war'.

Germany's combination of fast armoured tanks on land, and superiority in the air, made a unified attacking force that was both innovative and effective. Despite greater numbers of air and army personnel - and the presence of the British Expeditionary Force - the Low Countries and France proved no match for the Wehrmacht (German Army) and the Luftwaffe (German Air Force). Holland and Belgium fell by the end of May; Paris was taken two weeks later.

British troops retreated from the invaders in haste, and some 226,000 British and 110,000 French troops were rescued from the channel port of Dunkirk only by a ragged fleet, using craft that ranged from pleasure boats to Navy destroyers. All their military equipment had to be left behind. Had they not been rescued, the war would have unfolded quite differently.

In France an armistice was signed with Germany. The French surrendered in the same railway car in which the Germans had surrendered to the French and British in 1918. A “puppet” French Vichy government - under a hero of World War One, Marshall Pétain - was established in control in the 'unoccupied' part of southern and eastern France, with Germany in control in the rest of the country.

Charles de Gaulle, as the leader of the Free French, fled to England to continue the fight against Hitler . But it looked as if that fight might not last too long. Having conquered France, Hitler turned his attention to Britain, and began preparations for an invasion. For this to be successful, however, he needed air superiority over the English Channel, and he charged the Luftwaffe with destroying British air power and coastal defenses.

The Battle of Britain, lasting from July to September, was the first to be fought solely in the air. Germany lacked planes but had many pilots (a great number of whom were Canadian). In Britain, the situation was reversed, but - crucially - it also had an early form of radar. This, combined with the German decision to switch the attacks from airfields and factories to the major cities, enabled the Royal Air Force to squeak a narrow victory, maintain air superiority and ensure the - ultimately indefinite - postponement of the German invasion plans. Of these pilots, Winston Churchill said, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

The 'Blitz' or bombing of Britain's cities lasted throughout the war, saw the bombing of Buckingham Palace and the near-destruction of Coventry, and claimed some 40,000 civilian lives. Some advance warning was available through decoding of the German’s signals translated into code by the Enigma device. A team of mathematicians and cryptographers at Bletchley Park (code-named Ultra), along with one of the first computers (Colossus) provided additional information about German plans throughout the rest of the war in Europe.

An Air Ferry program was established to fly planes manufactured in North America to Britain. Many of the pilots in the Air Ferry program were women.

Events of 1941

With continental Europe under Nazi control, and Britain safe - for the time being - the war took on a more global dimension. Following the defeat of Mussolini's Italian armies by the British in Greece and North Africa, German forces arrived in North Africa in February, and invaded Greece and Yugoslavia in April.

While the bombing of British and German cities continued, and the gas chambers at Auschwitz were put to use toward Hitler’s “final solution” (extermination of the Jews), Hitler invaded Russia. Operation Barbarossa, as the invasion was called, began on 22 June. The initial advance was swift, with the fall of Sebastopol at the end of October, and Moscow coming under attack at the end of the year.

The bitter Russian winter, however, like the one that Napoleon had experienced a century and a half earlier, crippled the Germans. The Soviets counterattacked in December and the Eastern Front stagnated until the spring.

Winter in the Pacific, of course, presented no such problems. The Japanese, tired of American trade embargoes, mounted a surprise attack on the US Navy base of Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, on 7 December. They used bombs and special torpedoes and tactics to destroy much of the American 6^th Fleet anchored in harbour. Fortunately (or some say by design) there were no American aircraft carriers in harbour.

The attack by the Japanese ensured that global conflict commenced, with Germany declaring war on the US, a few days later. Within a week of Pearl Harbor, Japan had invaded the Philippines, Burma and southern China. The Pacific war was on.

At Hong Kong Canadian forces numbering about 2,000 joined with British and Indian forces in attempting to hold off the much more numerous and powerful Japanese forces. Canadian casualties were 290 dead, 493 wounded. Of the rest taken prisoner, 300 or more subsequently died at the hands of the Japanese.

The sinking of the British battleship Hood was followed closely by the sinking of the Bismark, a large German battleship. The Bismark would have been a major threat to the supply convoys.

Camp X, a Special Training School near Whitby, Ontario, was opened on 6 December (for three years) to train spy agents for the British, to drop behind enemy lines. It was also intended as a communications link between Canada and the not-then-at-war United States.

Events of 1942

The first Americans arrived in England in January - 'Over paid, over sexed and over here' as the gripe went - to assist in the European war. In North Africa, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps began their counter-offensive, capturing Tobruk, in Libya, in June.

The Canadian government once again considered conscription. A vote of the people was held and the overwhelming response in all but Quebec was supportive of conscription. Prime Minister King promised “not necessarily conscription, but conscription if necessary”.

The Blitz intensified in both England and Germany, with the first thousand-bomber air raid on Cologne , and German bombing of British cathedral cities.

Groups of U boats travelled in “wolfpacks”, attacking the convoys successfully in the waters around Britain and, as the war advanced, in mid-Atlantic, and eventually off the coast of North America. Convoys were guarded by destroyers and the much smaller Canadian-made corvettes (built for coastal waters not for the open ocean), which were armed with depth charges and hedgehog mortars for anti-submarine warfare.

In the Pacific, the Japanese continued their expansion into Borneo, Java and Sumatra. The 'unassailable' British fortress of Singapore fell rapidly in February, with around 25,000 prisoners taken, many of whom would die in Japanese camps in the years to follow.

But June saw the peak of Japanese expansion. The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first battle between aircraft carriers. It stopped an invasion of New Guinea and possibly Australia. The Battle of Midway, in which US sea-based aircraft destroyed four Japanese carriers and a cruiser, marked the turning point in the Pacific War.

The second half of the year also saw a reversal of German fortunes. British 8^th Army forces under General Montgomery gained the initiative in North Africa at El Alamein, ending a two year period in which British and German-Italian forces won and lost ground against each other. American and British forces landed in Morocco and Algeria and began moving east. Russian forces counterattacked at Stalingrad in November, surrounding the Germans and cutting off their supply lines. The news of mass murders of Jewish people by the Nazis reached the Allies, and the US pledged to avenge these crimes.

The British devised a plan to attack the French town of Dieppe and offered the Canadians - tired of endless training in England - the main role. Many “mistakes” were made in the planning, from timing which would defeat the element of surprise to inadequate naval artillery support. The raid was carried out on 18/19 August. An accidental contact with a German coastal convoy led to a firefight which alerted the Germans. On landing on the beach the Canadians discovered they were heavily under fire. The tanks that had landed with the troops could not negotiate the gravel beach. Out of the 5500 Canadians who landed only 2200 returned to England (600 of whom were wounded), 907 had been killed and about 1900 had been taken prisoner.

Events of 1943

February saw German surrender at Stalingrad: the first major defeat of Hitler's armies. Battle continued to rage in the Atlantic, and one four-day period in March saw 27 merchant vessels sunk by German U-boats.

A combination of long-range aircraft and the code-breakers at Bletchley, however, were inflicting enormous losses on the U-boats. Convoys were also able to avoid the now known locations of the submarine wolfpacks. Towards the end of May Admiral Dönitz withdrew the German fleet from the contended areas - the Battle of the Atlantic was effectively over.

In mid-May German and Italian forces in North Africa surrendered to the Allies, who used Tunisia as a springboard to invade Sicily in July. By the end of the month Mussolini had fallen, and in September the Italians surrendered to the Allies, prompting a German invasion into northern Italy.

Mussolini was audaciously rescued by a German task force, led by Otto Skorzeny, and established a fascist republic in the north. German troops also engaged the Allies in the south - the fight through Italy was to prove slow and costly.

The Battle of Ortona, on the east coast of Italy was fought mainly by the Canadians. In street to street, house to house fighting the Canadians advanced against highly fortified German positions, manned by elite German paratroopers, and eventually succeeded. Over 2339 Canadians were dead or wounded. According to a CBC war correspondent at the scene, Matthew Halton, “Measured on the scale of the last war –te Somme, for example, or Passchendaele – or the enormous scale of the fighting in Russia, this was not a big battle, but it was the biggest ever fought by Canadians. Neither in this war nor in any other has there been anything more bitter and intense. The Canadians beat two of the finest German divisions that ever marched in a long fury of fire and death ending in the appalling week of Ortona. The glory and sorrow is not all Canada’s. This was an Eighth Army battle; British, New Zealand and Indian troops had heavy fighting in the centre and on the left. But the main role was assigned to Canada on the right flank, and the quality of this battle had something special”.

In the Pacific, US forces overcame the Japanese at Guadalcanal, and British and Indian troops began their guerrilla campaign in Burma. American progress continued in the Aleutian Islands, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

As the Russian advance on the Eastern Front gathered pace, recapturing Kharkov and Kiev from Germany, Allied Bomber Command planes began to attack German cities in enormous daylight air raids. The opening of the Second Front in Europe, long discussed and always postponed, was being prepared for the following year.

Events of 1944

With advances in Burma, New Guinea and Guam, Japan began its last offensive in China, capturing further territory in the south to add to the acquisitions made in central and northern areas following the invasion of 1938. However, their control was limited to the major cities and lines of communication, and resistance - often led by the Communists - was widespread.

The Allied advance in Italy continued with landings at Anzio, in central Italy, in January. It was a static campaign. The Germans counter-attacked in February and the fighting saw the destruction of the medieval monastery at Monte Cassino after Allied bombing. Only at the end of May did the Germans retreat from Anzio. Rome was liberated in June, the day before the Allies' 'Operation Overlord', now known as the D-Day landings.

Allied Bomber Command kept up the pressure with daytime and nighttime raids on Germany. The Luftwaffe was partially withdrawn from France in defence of the German cities, giving the Allies almost complete air superiority over the Normandy coast.

On 6 June (D-Day) - as “Operation Overlord” got underway - some 6,500 vessels landed over 130,000 British, American and Canadian forces on five beaches on the Normandy coast: code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Sword, and Juno (where the Canadians landed). Some 12,000 aircraft ensured air superiority for the Allies - bombing German defenses, and providing cover. Hundreds of ships provided artillery support, and hundreds of landing craft brought troops and weapons to the beaches. Gliders dropped paratroops well into enemy territory. Sherman tanks, adapted to float, advanced to the beaches and landed in support of the troops. The pessimistic predictions that had been made of massive Allied casualties were not borne out. On Utah beach 23,000 troops were landed, with 197 casualties, and most of the 4,649 American casualties that day occurred at Omaha beach, where the landing was significantly more difficult to achieve, meeting with fierce German resistance (as shown in the first 20 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan). On Juno Beach, at the town of Courseulles-sur-mer, the Canadians negotiated the defenses laid out by the Germans. This meant working their way around iron stakes with explosive charges (designed to destroy the landing craft) minefields, and barbed wire, all while under fire from the Germans.

Once a beach-head had been established, additional supplies would be needed. The allies had manufactured two prefabricated piers, called Mulberries, which could be attached to breakwaters artificially made by the invading forces. This prevented the necessity of capturing a port city, none of which that would be suitable existed on that part of the Normandy coast.

Overall, the landings caught the Germans by surprise, and they were unable to counter-attack with the necessary speed and strength. Anything that was moving and German was liable to be attacked from the air. Hitler and his generals also held back some of his Panzer divisions, thinking the Normandy attack was a feint, and that a main attack would follow at Calais, at the narrowest part of the English Channel. Across from Calais, in Dover, the Allies had set up a fake encampment complete with empty tents, plywood planes, rubber inflatable tanks, etc. to give the illusion of a massive invasion force there. On D-Day boats towed large aluminum radar reflectors and planes dropped shreds of aluminum foil to give the impression to German radar operators that an invasion was underway there.

In the weeks following the landings Allied progress was slowed considerably, by the narrow lanes and thick hedgerows of the French countryside. Nevertheless, Cherbourg was liberated by the end of June. Paris followed two months later.

Hitler's troubles were compounded by a Russian counterattack in June. This drove 300 miles west to Warsaw, and killed, wounded or captured 350,000 German soldiers. By the end of August the Russians had taken Bucharest. Estonia was taken within months, and Budapest was under siege by the end of the year.

One glimmer of light for Germany came in the Ardennes, in France, where in December a German counteroffensive - the Battle of the Bulge - killed 19,000 Americans and delayed the Allies' march into Germany.

Once more there was a call for conscription. King went ahead with it, despite a crisis in cabinet.

Events of 1945

The New Year saw the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz, and the revelation of the sickening obscenity of the Holocaust, its scale becoming clearer as more camps were liberated in the following months.

The Soviet army continued its offensive from the east, while from the west the Allies established a bridge across the Rhine at Remagen, in March.

Canadian troops were assigned the task of liberating the coastal ports of northern France and Holland, particularly the Scheldt Estuary northwest of Antwerp, Belgium, an important area of ports that would be necessary to use for the final push to Germany. The terrain was called by British General Montgomery “appalling”. The campaign cost nearly 13,000 men killed, wounded or missing. In late March, as the British and Americans advanced into Germany, the Canadians were directed north into Holland to liberate the Dutch people, who the Germans were deliberately starving.

While the bombing campaigns of the Blitz were over, German V1 “buzzbombs or doodlebugs (an early form of cruise missile) and V2 rockets, both with explosive warheads, continued to drop on London. The return bombing raids on Dresden, which devastated the city in a huge firestorm, have often been considered misguided.

In February, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill held a conference at Yalta, on the Black Sea coast in Russia, to determine the post- war treatment of Germany and other issues. Stalin wanted territories in the east in exchange for joining the fight against Japan, and insisted there be severe reparations levied against Germany. Churchill was afraid severe penalties would leave Germany dependent on the Allies. Russia wanted Poland as a buffer between Russia and Germany.

Meantime, the Western Allies raced the Russians to be the first into Berlin. The Russians won, reaching the capital on 21 April. Hitler killed himself on the 30th, two days after Mussolini had been captured and hanged by Italian partisans. Germany surrendered unconditionally on 7 May, and the following day was celebrated as VE (Victory in Europe) day. The war in Europe was over.

In the Pacific, however, it had continued to rage throughout this time. The British advanced further in Burma, and in February the Americans had invaded Iwo Jima. The Philippines and Okinawa followed and Japanese forces began to withdraw from China. Plans were being prepared for an Allied invasion of Japan, but fears of fierce resistance and massive casualties (over a million predicted) prompted Harry Truman - the new American president following Roosevelt's death in April - to sanction the use of an atomic bomb against Japan.

Such bombs (made from Uranium mined primarily in Canada) had been in development in secret (The Manhatten Project) since 1942. On July a test of the atomic bomb was made at the Trinity site at Alamagordo, New Mexico. President Truman, at another conference with Stalin and Churchill, in Potsdam, Germany, was advised of the successful test. Stalin showed no surprise when informed cryptically that a new weapon had been tested. As it later turned out, he had a spy embedded in the Manhatten Project. On 6 August a Plutonium bomb (Fat Man) was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later a Uranium bomb (Little Boy) was dropped on Nagasaki. Both cities had been protected from previous bombing. No country could withstand such attacks, and the Japanese surrendered on 14 August, 1945.