The War for Europe and North Africa

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The War for Europe and North Africa
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I. The U.S. and Britain Join Forces

• Arcadia Conference - Dec. 22, 1941 - Churchill
  arrives at White House to meet with FDR - what do
  they decide?

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B. The Battle of the Atlantic

• Germanys u-boats were successful at the start of
  the war - sinking 681 ships in 1942
• Allied ships began traveling in convoys (groups
  of ships traveling together) protected by
  destroyers equipped with sonar and airplanes
  equipped with radar
• With this improved tracking, the Allies were able
  to find and destroy German u-boats faster than
  they could build them

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II. The Eastern Front and the Mediterranean

• A. The Battle of Stalingrad
• Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June of 1941
  and using blitzkrieg kept right on rolling
• By Nov. 1941 they are stopped on the outskirts of
  Moscow and Leningrad
• By the summer of 1942, Hitler decides to go south
• a drive into the southern USSR would secure
  control of the oil-rich Caucasus Mts., as well as
  the Volga River, a backbone of Soviet
  transportation from Central Asia.

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Stalingrad (continued)

• Hitler now decided to wipe out Stalingrad, a
  major industrial center on the Volga River. By
  the summer of 1942, German armies were knocking
  on the doors to the city.
• The German Luftwaffe paved the way with nightly
  bombing raids over the city. Stalin ordered the
  citizens to stand strong no matter what!
• Bitter hand to hand urban fighting took place

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Snipers

• Vasily Zaitsev story told in the fictional
  movie Enemy at the Gates

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• By September, the Germans controlled 9/10 of the
  city
• Then the cold winter set in.
• Soviets launched a counterattack and surrounded
  the rest of the German army
• On January 31, 1943 90,000 German soldiers
  surrendered
• Between 150,000 and 200,000 died
• Over 1.1 million Soviet soldiers killed - major
  turning point - now the Soviets are able to
  advance westward toward Germany

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After the war, in the 1960s, a colossal monument
of Mother Russia" was erected on Mamayev Kurgan,
the hill overlooking the city.
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B. The North African Front

• Stalin wants Hitler and Churchill to open up
  another front while the Battle of Stalingrad is
  underway.
• Operation Torch invasion of North Africa, which
  was held by the German-dominated Vichy French
  Government
• Nov. 8, 1942 Allied forces land at Casablanca,
  Oran, and Algiers and go after Erwin Rommels
  Afrika Korps

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• Allied strategy was to trap Rommel as he
  retreated from El Alamein to Tunisia and so
  secure the Mediterranean Sea for shipment of
  supplies to the Soviet Union
• Afrika Korps surrendered on May 12, 1943
• Axis lost control of Africa and the Mediterranean
  with this loss

Erwin Rommel
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C. The Italian Campaign

• After taking over northern Africa, the Allied
  forces were now ready to attack what Churchill
  called the soft underbelly of the Axis Italy,
  Yugoslavia, and Eastern Europe
• Mussolini is arrested and stripped of power but
  is later rescued by German paratroopers at his
  mountain prison and flown off to Munich

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• The Allied landings at Salerno, Italy, in
  September 1943 and at Bloody Anzio the
  following January gave American troops the
  hardest fighting they had in Europe
• In the end, it took 18 months of mud and mountain
  warfare before the Allies were able to drive the
  Germans from the Italian peninsula
• So what happened to Mussolini?
• Italian partisans recaptured him on April 28,
  1945 trying to sneak across Austrian border with
  his mistress and killed them. Their bodies were
  hung upside down in a plaza in Milan. They were
  not mourned.
• Partisans were members of the underground
  resistance a rebel group movement that
  existed in Nazi-held countries

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III. The Allies Liberate Europe

• As Allied forces marched through Europe, plans
  for invading Hitlers fortress went into play.
  Before the Allies could mount their cross-channel
  invasion of France, they had to control the air.
• From October 1943 through May 1944, the Americans
  bombed Germany by day, the British bombed them by
  night
• By June 1944, the Allies had a 30-1 superiority
  over the German air force.

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A. D-Day

• The invasion of France on D-Day, June 6, 1944
  carried the code name of Operation Overlord
• Took 2 years to plan General Dwight D.
  Eisenhower in charge
• Largest amphibious operation in history
• 176,000 troops
• 4,000 landing craft (LCVPs Landing Craft
  Vehicle, Personnel
• 600 warships
• 11,000 planes

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Andrew Jackson Higgins

• Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to Higgins as
  the man who won the war for us.
• The designer of the LCVPs
• Owned company in New Orleans, employed 30,000
  workers produced over 20,000 LCVPs
• Had a sign in assembly line that said The Man
  Who Relaxes is Helping the Axis

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Atlantic Wall

• Germans had 250,000 troops that were protected by
  every available type of underwater mines, tank
  traps, guns mounted in concrete

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Operation Fortitude

•    "Fortitude" was a plan by the Allies to dupe
  the Germans about the date and place of the
  Normandy invasion. Fortitude South, the primary
  mission, took place in Britain. The hope was that
  the Germans, thinking the Allied attack would
  come in the Pas-de-Calais area, would believe
  that British and American troops were present in
  Kent, across the Channel from Pas-de-Calais.   Th
  e Allies massed fake landing craft in creeks and
  harbors near Kent. They positioned inflatable
  rubber tanks in the fields, and a papier mache
  oil-pumping head near Dover. Plywood vehicles and
  guns were lined along the roads. Trucks drove in
  convoys back and forth across the region. From
  the air, it all looked real, even down to the
  camouflage.   On the ground, technicians
  maintained radio traffic between phony units.
  Double agents planted stories and gave fake
  documents to known German spies.    The
  deception worked, and was maintained by the
  Allies. While the real force invaded Normandy,
  Allied planes dropped silver foil to give the
  impression of massed planes and ships crossing
  from Dover. Long after June 6, Hitler believed
  that the Normandy assault was a diversion meant
  to induce him to move from the Pas-de-Calais. He
  kept his best troops there until the end of
  July.   

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Paratroopers
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• Doublecross and schoolmaster info
• The Allied forces tricked the Germans one day
  before the attack by bombing a section of the
  beach that the Germans shifted their main forces
  there
• Allied forces were almost wiped out at Omaha
  Beach
• Within a month, the Allies had landed 567,000
  tons of supplies and 170,000 vehicles through
  floating beaches codenamed mulberries
• By September 1944, France, Belgium, Luxembourg,
  and part of the Netherlands had been liberated
• There had been talk of the war being over that
  year

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If anyone ever asks you about heroes, tell them
about these men that gave their lives on June 6,
1944.
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B. Battle of the Bulge

• 3 things upset the Allied Timetable
• Nazis in Antwerp, Belgium held out longer than
  expected (American tanks ran out of gas under
  the command of General George Patton)
• An airborne landing at Arnhem in the Netherlands
  fizzled badly
• The enemy counter-attacked
• On December 16, under the cover of fog, German
  troops hit an 8 mile front along the Belgium
  border of the Ardennes Forest
• The area was thinly defended by inexperienced
  American troops who held out in their places
  until Christmas, until the Germans broke through
  the line in one spot, creating a bulge
• Then relief arrived, and American planes took to
  the air again to push them back

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A Meeting at the Elbe

• At the end of March 1945, the western Allies
  crossed the Rhine river, the last major obstacle
  between them and the heart of Germany
• In April, the Soviets entered the outskirts of
  Berlin after having pushed the Germans back for
  more than 1000 miles.
• On April 25, American and Soviet troops crossed
  the Elbe River to shake hands with their fellow
  Allies

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The End of Hitler

• To not be captured by Allied forces, Hitler
  committed suicide by shooting hipself on April
  30, 1945. (his wife took poison) Both of their
  bodies were burned to completely avoid capture.
• 2 days later, Berlin fell to the Soviets
• On May 7, General Eisenhower accepted the
  unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. The
  next day, V-E Day (Victory in Europe) marked the
  official end to one part of the war