21.5: The Turn of the Tide

Over 50 nations and 100 million soldiers were involved in World War II. Countries were considered 'neutral', an axis, or an ally power during the conflict. The major powers are shown in the image above.

Fighting in Africa, Asia, and Europe

Despite the power of Britain, the US, and the USSR, the Axis war effort continued with amazing success well into 1942. In North Africa, General Erwin Rommel ("the Desert Fox") pushed to within a few hundred miles of the Suez Canal in Egypt, threatening to cut the Allies off from a vital oil supply. Once the winter of 1941 - 1942 was over, the Germans continued to advance into Soviet territory, endangering the rebuilt factories and Soviet oil fields in the Caucuses. Japan, meanwhile, took advantage of the success of the Pearl Harbor attack and occupied dozens of islands across the Pacific. The next week witnessed a series of Allied victories, which turned the tide of the war.

In the Pacific, two major naval engagements spelled disaster for Japan. In May of 1942, at the Battle of the Coral Sea, U.S. forces defeated a Japanese invasion force targeting Australia and drove the Japanese fleet back. In June of 1942, at the Battle of Midway, U.S. forces sank four Japanese aircraft carriers. The U.S. had the industrial capacity to rebuild, whereas there was no way that Japan could do so. From that point on, U.S. forces slowly but steadily "island hopped" across the Pacific, driving Japanese forces from the islands they had occupied.

In October 1942, British forces managed to decisively defeat and push back the Germans in Egypt. The U.S. army joined the European forces, which sent the Germans into retreat from North Africa. By July 1943, the Allies were poised to bring the fight to Italy itself. Vichy French territories in North Africa had fallen after an ineffectual resistance earlier, in November 1942, which led Hitler to order the complete occupation of France the same month. T

The “real” turn of the tide occurred in the Soviet Union. In late 1942, a huge German army was dispatched against the city of Stalingrad near the Black Sea. For months, Russian and Ukrainian civilians and soldiers fought the Germans in brutal street battles, with the people of Stalingrad often engaging German tanks armed only with grenades, handguns, and Molotov cocktails. This action provided time for the main Soviet army to assemble. In February 1943, a German general directly disobeyed Hitler and surrendered. In the Russian theater, the Germans were not in their element. Urban warfare was not the same as Blitzkrieg.

Later that year an enormous Soviet army led by 9,000 tanks defeated a German army near the city of Kursk, 500 miles south of Moscow. Kursk is often considered to be the “real” turning point in the Soviet war, since the Germans were consistently on the retreat after it. The battle saw the Germans beaten “at their own game” – they were able to employ Blitzkrieg tactics, but the Russians now had anti-tank military hardware and tactics that rendered it much less effective.

Some historians believe that the USSR broke the back of the Nazi war machine. At the cost of about 25 million lives, the Soviets stopped, pushed back, and ultimately destroyed the large majority of German military forces. For comparison, the Battle of Alamein in Egypt involved about 300,000 troops from both sides combined, while Stalingrad saw over 2 million troops and hundreds of thousands of Soviet civilian combatants. Most German forces were always committed to the eastern front after the invasion of the USSR. Without the incredible sacrifice of the Soviet people, the US and Britain would have been forced to take on the full strength not just of Germany and Italy, but of the various German puppet states and allies (e.g. Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria) within the Axis.

Traveling back to Europe... With Italian forces in shambles and the Fascist government in disarray, the Italian king dismissed Mussolini in July 1943. The new Italian government quickly made peace with the Allies. As a result, for the next year, the Allies swiftly invaded and pushed through Italy towards Germany.

By 1944, Germany was clearly on the defensive. On June 6, 1944, known as D-Day, British, American, and Canadian forces launched a surprise invasion across the English Channel (over 150,000 on the first day alone). After securing the coastline, the Allies steadily pushed against the Germans, suffering serious casualties in the process as the Germans refused to give up ground without brutal fighting. By April 1945, the Allies were within striking distance of Berlin. On May 7, about a week after Hitler committed suicide in his bunker, Germany surrendered.

Meanwhile, the fighting in the Pacific continued for months. By March 1945, U.S. planes targeted civilian and military targets with incendiary bombs in Japan. It took two months for U.S. forces to take the island of Okinawan, resulting in about 100,000 Japanese and 65,000 American casualties. Military strategists worried that an invasion of Japan would result in a horrendous loss of life. This ultimately led to the deployment of the most terrible weapon ever invented by the human species: nuclear arms.

The Manhattan Project, a secret military operation housed in a former boarding school in Los Alamos, New Mexico, succeeded in creating and then detonating an atomic bomb on July 16. U.S. President Truman warned Japan that it faced “prompt and utter destruction” if it did not surrender. When it did not, he authorized the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 8). Hundreds of thousands died either in the initial blasts or from radiation poisoning in the months that followed. At the behest of the Japanese emperor, negotiations began a few days later, with Japanese representatives signing an unconditional surrender on September 2.

Figure 21.4.1: A photograph of the infamous “mushroom cloud” following the atomic blast that destroyed Hiroshima.