World War II – Legends of America

World War II – Legends of America

Okay, let’s talk about World War II. This thing was HUGE. Like, the biggest, baddest armed conflict in human history. We’re talking over 30 countries getting involved, from tiny little nations to massive empires. It all kicked off in 1939 when Nazi Germany decided to be a bully and invade Poland. That set the stage for six years of pure chaos and bloodshed.

On one side, you had the Allies – France, Britain, the U.S., the Soviet Union (yeah, them), and China. They were up against the Axis powers: Nazi Germany, Japan, and Italy. Imagine the Thanksgiving dinner arguments in that group! The fighting wasn’t just in one place, either. It was all over the map – Africa, Asia, Europe, and even out on the high seas. Seriously, you couldn’t escape this thing.

The Seeds of Destruction

So, how did all this mess even start? Well, Germany was in a pretty bad place after World War I. They were politically and economically unstable, and they were still super bitter about losing the last war and getting stuck with the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Enter Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. They promised to make Germany great again, and people ate it up.

Hitler wasn’t just talk, either. In the mid-1930s, he started secretly rearming Germany, which was a big no-no according to the treaty. He also made some shady alliances with Italy and Japan, mostly to stick it to the Soviet Union. Oh, and he even jumped into the Spanish Civil War just to stir up more trouble. Basically, Hitler was the ultimate drama queen.

Europe’s Hot Mess

World War I didn’t really solve anything in Europe. It just left a bunch of unresolved issues and a power vacuum waiting to be filled. The war had wrecked a lot of the democratic institutions, which made it easy for dictators like Hitler to rise to power. And when the Great Depression hit in 1929, it was the final nail in the coffin for democracy in Germany.

In 1933, Hitler took over with his National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party. They were all about being super nationalistic, anti-democracy, and, of course, anti-Semitic. Hitler basically said, "Peace out, parliament!" and became a dictator. He started building up the German military like crazy and wanted to undo the Versailles Treaty, get back lost German territory, and bring all those German-speaking folks living in other countries back "home."

Hitler’s big plan was to grab "living space" for the German "master race" in Eastern Europe. He was a total risk-taker, using bluffing and military tricks to cover up Germany’s weaknesses. He was good at playing the other European powers against each other to get what he wanted without starting a war. In 1935, he teamed up with the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and announced their Rome-Berlin alliance, aka the Axis.

Meanwhile, over in the Far East, Japan was eyeing China and Southeast Asia for their natural resources. But the European colonial powers and the U.S. were kind of blocking their expansion. So, Japan, Italy, and Germany became buddies, facing off against the Western democracies who were desperate to avoid another war and the Soviet Union, whose Communist government nobody really trusted.

America’s "Meh" Attitude

After World War I, the U.S. was like, "Nah, we’re good." They rejected the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations and mostly ignored what was going on in the rest of the world. They didn’t think they’d get dragged into another big war, except maybe with Japan. The isolationists in Congress even passed the Neutrality Act of 1937, which made it illegal for the U.S. to trade with countries at war.

American policy was all about defending the homeland, and the Navy was supposed to be the first line of defense. The Army was just supposed to be a small core that could be built up if someone actually made it past the Navy and the coastal defenses. The National Defense Act of 1920 authorized a big army of 280,000, but Congress never actually gave them enough money to reach that size. Most of the money went to the Air Corps. So, the Army was small, isolated, and full of long-serving volunteers stationed in random garrisons around the U.S., Hawaii, the Philippines, and Panama.

But, even though the Army was small and underfunded, they were still thinking about the future. They experimented with tanks, motorized vehicles, air-ground cooperation, and flying troops around. They even started looking into amphibious warfare. The Signal Corps was working on better radio communications, and the artillery guys were practicing some pretty advanced fire control techniques. Plus, they were drawing up war plans and figuring out how to mobilize industry and manpower if things went south.

Colonel George C. Marshall, who was in charge of the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, handpicked a bunch of young officers to be future leaders. But, despite all this, the Army was still totally unprepared for the war that broke out in Europe on September 1, 1939.

The Shooting Starts

In March 1938, German troops marched into Austria and made it part of the Reich. Then, in September, Hitler started complaining about how ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia were being "oppressed" and said that war was coming. England and France met with Hitler and made Czechoslovakia give up its border regions to Germany to keep the peace. But, of course, it was all a lie. In March 1939, Hitler took over the rest of Czechoslovakia by force and then set his sights on Poland.

Even though Britain and France had promised to protect Poland, Hitler and Josef Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union, signed a secret non-aggression pact in August 1939. Stalin bought himself some time to build up his strength, and Hitler got a free pass to deal with Poland. World War II officially started when Hitler’s army invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.

While the Germans were stomping through western Poland, Soviet troops came in from the east to grab their share. France and Britain declared war on Germany and started mobilizing their forces. But then, nothing really happened for a while. This period of quiet became known as the Phony War. It seemed like World War II was going to be just like World War I, but with better hats.

But, a few military thinkers had some new ideas about using tanks. Guys like the British Sir Basil Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller, the Frenchman Charles de Gaulle, the American George S. Patton, and the Germans Oswald Lutz and Heinz Guderian believed that tanks could bring back quick victories on the battlefield. Only the Germans thought of putting tanks into big divisions with infantry, artillery, engineers, and other support troops all moving together. And only Lutz and Guderian got the support they needed from their government.

In the spring of 1940, the Germans put their theories to the test. They attacked Norway and Denmark in April, invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg in May, and broke through France later that month. Their tank columns sliced through the English Channel, trapping British and French troops in northern France and Belgium. The French army, which was dealing with low morale, bad leadership, and terrible communications, fell apart. The British evacuated their troops from Dunkirk, losing most of their equipment. The Germans marched into Paris on June 14, and the French government surrendered. The success of the German Blitzkrieg forced everyone else to rethink their military strategies.

With northern France under German control and a puppet government in charge in the south, Hitler sent the Luftwaffe to bomb England’s airfields and cities to prepare for an invasion. Britain’s survival was on the line. From July to October 1940, the Royal Air Force, even though they were outnumbered, fought off the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. The British Navy also fought German submarines in the North Atlantic to keep the sea lanes open. In the end, the British were so stubborn that Hitler had to give up his plans to invade England.

In February, Hitler sent troops under Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel to help the Italians fight the British in North Africa. German forces also helped the Italians in the Balkans, defeating a British expedition in Greece, and German paratroopers seized the island of Crete. Then, in June 1941, Hitler turned on his "ally," the Soviet Union, and invaded with everything he had.

German tanks pushed deep into Soviet territory, heading towards Leningrad, Moscow, and Ukraine, and cutting off entire Soviet armies. But, despite taking huge losses, the Soviets kept retreating and resisting. The Germans had expected a quick win, but winter came and they weren’t ready. Their advance stopped just 30 miles from Moscow, and the Soviets launched a massive counterattack.

The Germans held on and started their offensive again the following spring. The Soviets, now fighting for their lives, faced the bulk of the German army, over 200 divisions. The front lines stretched for 2,000 miles, from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea. The casualties were in the millions. Both sides committed terrible atrocities, mistreating prisoners, enslaving civilians, and, in the case of the Jews, committing genocide.

Back in the U.S., preparations for war were slow. General George C. Marshall became Chief of Staff in 1939, but the Army was still struggling to defend the country. Defending places like the Philippines seemed impossible. In early 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt started a limited preparedness campaign because he was worried that a hostile power could set up air bases in the Western Hemisphere and attack the Panama Canal or the U.S. The Army Air Corps got more powerful, and military leaders came up with new war plans to deal with the growing international threats. The focus of military policy shifted from defending the U.S. to defending the entire hemisphere.

After the war started in Europe, Roosevelt declared a limited emergency and increased the size of the Regular Army and the National Guard. Congress changed the Neutrality Act to allow the sale of weapons to France and Britain. These big orders helped to get American industry ready for war production. The Army focused on equipping its regular forces and held its first large-scale maneuvers in 1940.

The quick defeat of France and the possible collapse of Britain sped up defense preparations. Roosevelt transferred a bunch of World War I weapons to France and Britain in the spring of 1940. In September, he agreed to give Britain 50 old destroyers in exchange for bases in the Atlantic and Caribbean. In March 1941, Congress repealed some parts of the Neutrality Act. The Lend-Lease Act, which allowed the President to sell, transfer, or lease war goods to any country whose defense was important to the U.S., basically ended neutrality. Roosevelt said that the U.S. would become the "arsenal of democracy."

In the spring of 1941, American and British military representatives held their first joint staff conferences to talk about strategy if the U.S. got involved in the war, which seemed more and more likely. They agreed that if the U.S. entered the war, they would focus on defeating Germany first. Roosevelt authorized naval patrols in the western Atlantic, and in July, American troops replaced British forces guarding Iceland.

Meanwhile, General Marshall and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson made plans to expand the Army to 1.5 million men. On August 27, 1940, Congress approved calling up the National Guard and the reserves. A few weeks later, they passed the Selective Service and Training Act, the first peacetime draft in American history. By mid-1941, the Army had reached its planned strength, with 27 infantry, five armored, two cavalry divisions, 35 air groups, and a bunch of support units. But it was still far from ready to fight against experienced and well-equipped enemies overseas.

America Gets Punched in the Face

On December 7, 1941, while the German armies were freezing outside of Moscow, Japan suddenly dragged the U.S. into the war by attacking the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the Philippines. The day after the attack, Congress declared war on Japan with only one dissenting vote. On December 11, Hitler declared war on the U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt called on Congress to immediately and massively expand the armed forces. But two years of neglect couldn’t be fixed in a few days.

The war became global when the other Axis powers declared war on the U.S. Japan quickly invaded and occupied most of Southeast Asia, Burma, the Netherlands East Indies, and a bunch of Pacific islands. After the U.S. naval victory at the Battle of Midway in 1942, U.S. forces started pushing towards Japan, island by island.

As American troops in the Pacific fell to the Japanese in the spring of 1942, military leaders in Washington worked to create a headquarters to direct the war effort and turn the inexperienced ground and air units into fighting forces. In early 1942, the Joint Chiefs of Staff became the committee of military leaders that advised the President and coordinated strategy with the British. In March, the War Department General Staff was reorganized, and the Army was split into three major commands: the Air Forces, Ground Forces, and Service Forces. Thirty-seven Army divisions were in training, but only one was fully trained, equipped, and ready to go by January 1942. Army planners thought that victory would require an Army of almost nine million men organized into 215 combat divisions. They were right about the manpower, but they ended up with only 90 divisions that they could support on the battlefields.

Lieutenant General Lesley J. McNair, the head of the Army Ground Forces and a big fan of mobile warfare, oversaw the development of armored and airborne divisions. He also reorganized the existing divisions, turning the old "square" division based on four infantry regiments into a lighter, more maneuverable triangular division with three infantry regiments. Because there wasn’t enough Allied shipping space, there were limits on the size and capabilities of Army units. The new tables of organization emphasized being lean and mobile, sometimes at the expense of fighting power. Housing, training areas, and equipment were all in short supply. American industry had to support the nation’s Allies and its own military expansion. Britain needed a lot of weapons and equipment, and lend-lease aid helped to mechanize the Soviet Army. Amphibious warfare required a lot of landing craft and support ships. The first U.S. troops arrived in the British Isles in January 1942, but it took almost a year before they saw action. In the meantime, air power was the only way for the Allies to strike Germany. The Royal Air Force started its air offensive against Germany in May 1942, and on July 4, the first American crews participated in air raids.

In early 1942, British and American leaders agreed to focus on Europe first. General Marshall wanted to build up American forces in Great Britain and maybe launch a diversionary attack on the continent in the fall. The U.S. and its Allies stopped Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific.

The British and Americans defeated Italian and German forces in North Africa by 1943. Then, the Allies invaded Sicily and Italy, forcing the overthrow of the Fascist government in July 1943. But fighting against the Germans continued in Italy until 1945. In the Soviet Union, the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 marked the end of the German advance, and Soviet reinforcements gradually pushed the German armies back.

The massive Allied invasion of Western Europe started with the Normandy Campaign in western France in 1944, and the Allies eventually occupied Germany in 1945.

After Soviet troops pushed German forces out of the Soviet Union, they advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania. They had occupied the eastern third of Germany by the time Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945.

In the Pacific, the Allies invaded the Philippines in 1944, followed by the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. The U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and Japan surrendered on September 2, ending the war.

The Mess Left Behind

The U.S. came out of the war with military commitments all over the world, including the occupation of Germany and Japan and overseeing Allied interests in liberated areas. Almost 13 million Americans were in uniform at the end of the war, over eight million of them soldiers. But everyone wanted to go back to normal and dismantle the military. Families wanted the government to "bring the boys home," and soldiers wanted to get out as soon as possible. The U.S.’s monopoly on the atomic bomb seemed to be all the power they needed. Some people even thought that the bomb made armies and navies obsolete.

President Roosevelt died in April 1945, right before the end of the war. The new President, Harry S. Truman, tried to resist the pressure to demobilize too quickly. Truman wanted to keep an army of 1.5 million, a navy of 600,000, and an air force of 400,000. But Congress and the American public didn’t want to pay for it. Within five months of the victory over Japan, 8.5 million servicemen and women had been discharged. By June of the following year, there were only two full Army divisions ready to deploy in an emergency. By 1947, the Army had shrunk to just 700,000, making it the sixth-largest army in the world.

But things had changed too much for the Army to go back to being small and isolated. Millions of veterans remembered their service with pride. The beginning of the Cold War, especially the Berlin blockade of 1948, showed the need to stay strong. The Army had become too important to American life and security to be reduced again. And it wouldn’t be long before new conflicts showed that atomic power had its limits and that ground forces were still necessary.

World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, involving more nations and costing more money than any other war. A total of 70 million people served in the armed forces, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were even higher, with at least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and six million European Jews killed. The war cost the United States a million casualties and almost 400,000 deaths. It had a huge impact on both domestic and foreign affairs. The war ended the Great Depression and unemployment and greatly expanded the government’s role in American life.