World War Ii Battle Photo Saipan Mariana Pacific Islands Vintage Wwii Yanks

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (808) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176284773220 WORLD WAR II BATTLE PHOTO SAIPAN MARIANA PACIFIC ISLANDS VINTAGE WWII YANKS. A VINTAGE ORIGINAL PHOTO MEASURING APPROXIMATELY  8 1/4 X 11 3/4 INCHES  FROM 1944 DEPICTING  YANK FIGHTERS TRANSFER WOUNDED ON SAIPAN
The American invasion of the Japanese stronghold of Saipan in the western Pacific was an incredibly brutal battle, claiming 55,000 soldiers’ and civilians’ lives in just over three weeks in the summer of 1944. The U.S. Marines spearheaded the amphibious landing, encountering a fierce and well-prepared resistance from the Japanese troops who controlled the commanding heights looming over the beach. Artillery, snipers and automatic weapons took a deadly toll with casualties mounting under the remorseless barrage. Marines later commented on the precision of the Japanese mortars and artillery fire. A battalion caught out in the open took heavy casualties as it desperately tried to dig in and find shelter, with one of its officers recalling: “it’s hard to dig a hole when you’re lying on your stomach digging with your chin, your elbows, your knees, and your toes. … (But) it is possible to dig a hole that way, I found.” Such was a precarious beachhead established on the first day of the invasion. The amphibious landing at Saipan drew on the lessons of previous conquests in Tarawa in November 1943 and the Kwajalein and Eniwetok atolls in the Marshall Islands in early 1944. Next up was the Mariana Islands of Guam, Saipan and Tinian, part of the island-hopping campaign adopted by the U.S. that struck deeper into the Japanese defenses, bypassing some well-fortified islands and cutting off their supply lines. Saipan was almost equidistant from the Marshall Islands and Japan, nearly 2,100 km, putting much of the archipelago within B-29 bomber range. Unlike the flat atolls, Saipan had topography and was a relatively large 185 sq. km. It had been administered by Japan since it was taken from Germany and Tokyo was awarded a mandate by the League of Nations in 1920. Although Japan had already withdrawn from the League in 1933 due to criticism of its invasion of Manchuria, it fortified Saipan from 1934 in violation of the mandate terms, making it a formidable target. The Saipan invasion was code-named Operation Forager and involved practice landings, and training with explosives and flamethrowers for three months. The U.S. forces confronted about 30,000 Japanese troops, double pre-invasion estimates. On June 14, some of the battleships that had been severely damaged during the attack on Pearl Harbor and since repaired, commenced the softening-up phase, pounding the Japanese defenses with their heavy guns, launching shells nearly the size of a VW Beetle. It was payback time. RELATED STORIES Battle of Saipan: beginning of the end The U.S. forces faced an implacable foe ready to die rather than surrender and from the outset everyone knew this would be a bloodbath. On the second night, the Japanese counterattacked with 44 tanks, losing 24 of them to the marines’ intense fusillade. In the first four days alone, the marines suffered 5,000 casualties. On June 17, with the main Japanese fleet steaming for a showdown in the Marianas, U.S. carriers were deployed to meet them while transport and supply ships were withdrawn from their offshore support positions in Saipan. On June 19, in what military historians dub the “Great Mariana’s Turkey Shoot,” the U.S. decimated the Japanese carrier task force, sinking three carriers and shooting down 330 of the 430 planes launched and preventing relief of the Japanese forces on Saipan. The U.S. supply ships returned, but the Japanese were cut off. The U.S. confronted a tactical nightmare of ravines, caves, cliffs and hills earning nicknames such as Hell’s Pocket, Death Valley and Purple Heart Ridge. With such favorable terrain for the dug-in defenders, the U.S. resorted to unorthodox methods. One marine observed: “The flame thrower tanks were spouting their napalm jets upward into … caves. It was quite a sight!” Many civilians died in the battle. U.S. forces didn’t always distinguish between noncombatants and combatants when entering caves or hearing movement or voices in the jungle because Japanese troops used civilians as decoys to ambush American soldiers. The brutality of the conflict is also evident in video footage that captures the tragedy of Japanese civilians committing suicide by jumping off a cliff into the ocean. The suicides in Saipan drew considerable attention and praise in Japan. A correspondent from the Yomiuri praised the women who committed suicide with their children by jumping from the cliff, writing that they were, “the pride of Japanese women.” He even went so far as to call it, “The finest act of the Showa period.” Similarly, Tokyo University professor Hiraizumi Kiyoshi gushed in the Asahi Shimbun, “100 or 1,000 instants of bravery emit brilliant flashes of light, an act without equal in history.” Based on numerous wartime diaries and essays, Donald Keene highlights the conspiracy of silence about the gathering decline in Japan’s war fortunes in “So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish.” “Not until Japan had suffered severe defeats, especially at Saipan, were voices heard warning of disaster, and even then were muted, for fear of being overheard by the feared military police,” Keene wrote. In order to bolster morale, the government invented victories and enemy losses, a web of deceit that blinded the public and leaders to the real situation. After Saipan fell, the B-29s corrected this fallacy. As later happened in Okinawa, Imperial troops encouraged and instigated group suicides, warning of the horrible fate that awaited anyone captured by the invaders. The Japanese commander, Gen. Yoshitsugu Saito, reportedly said: “There is no longer any distinction between civilians and troops. It would be better for them to join in the attack with bamboo spears than be captured.” Gen. Saito, wounded and knowing the battle was lost, committed suicide in his cave on July 6 after ordering a final banzai charge. The following day, 3,000 troops, including any wounded who could still limp or crawl their way to death, obeyed orders and mounted a final mass banzai charge. These troops were annihilated, but not before inflicting heavy casualties on the American forces. By July 9, mopping up operations were completed. Given the horrific carnage and atrocities endured and inflicted, there is an odd ring to the chivalry claimed in the aftermath of the battle. “Several times when we tried to feed newly captured women and children first, the male would shove them aside and demand to be first for rations,” one soldier noted. “A few raps to the chest with a rifle butt soon cured them of that habit.” Of the 71,000 U.S. troops that landed, nearly 3,000 were killed and more than 10,000 wounded. Out of the entire Japanese garrison of 30,000 troops, only 921 prisoners were captured; the rest died. The Japanese commanders, and some 5,000 others committed suicide rather than surrender. It could have been much worse. As one survey concluded, the “unfinished state of the Japanese defenses was, in fact, a critical factor in the final American victory on Saipan. The blockading success of far-ranging submarines of the U.S. Navy had drastically reduced the supplies of cement and other construction materials destined for elaborate Saipan defenses, as well as the number of troop ships carrying Japanese reinforcements to the island.” One Japanese POW observed during an interrogation that had the American assault come three months later, the island would have been impregnable and thus the casualty rate much higher. The subsequent Battle of Okinawa (April 1-June 22, 1945) nearly a year later demonstrated how deadly improved defenses could be for the invaders, defenders and civilians. There, as many as 200,000 Okinawan civilians died in the prolonged conflagration, perhaps one-third of the entire population, along with 77,000 Japanese and 14,000 American soldiers. Background  When it happened, in June and July 1944, the conquest of Saipan became the most daring—and disturbing—operation in the U.S. war against Japan to date.1 And when it was over, the United States held islands that could place B-29 bombers within range of Tokyo. Since the fall of the Marshall Islands to the Americans a few months earlier, both sides began to prepare for an American onslaught against the Marianas and Saipan in particular. The Americans decided that the best course of action was to invade Saipan first, then Tinian and Guam. They set D-day for 15 June, when Navy Sailors would deliver Marines and Soldiers to Saipan’s rugged, heavily fortified shores. The Navy’s involvement bookended the operation: naval vessels and personnel ferried Marines and Soldiers to the beaches and then, after ground combat was over, took leading positions in the administration of the occupation. Planning The logistical demands of the invasion of Saipan were dizzying. Planners had to see to it that 59 troopships and 64 LSTs could land three divisions’ worth of men and equipment on an island 2,400 miles from the base at Guadalcanal and 3,500 miles from Pearl Harbor.2 These challenges aside, Navy, Marine Corps, and Army leadership anticipated a quick campaign based on intelligence they were receiving about enemy troop levels on Saipan. American personnel in Hawaii ran their final rehearsals in May.3 Unfortunately, the Marines and Army had conducted most of their training separately. The results: conflicting tactics, conflicting expectations, and serious confusion.4 Adding to the complexity of the operation, a sizeable Japanese population lived on Saipan. The invasion would be the Americans’ first encounter of this kind, which meant that the action would entail new dangers and dreadful responsibilities. In preparation, troops received training in rudimentary Japanese.5 Preparatory Activities Air raids began in February 1944, when the Navy’s Fast Carrier Force destroyed some of the island’s docks. “That area was all in flames because the Japanese had a lot of storage tanks there,” remembers Marie Soledad Castro, then a young girl resident on Saipan and whose father was a dockworker.6 The raids continued. “One of my older brothers, Shiuichi, was killed during one of these air raids,” reports Vicky Vaughan. “We never found his body,” she continues; “like so many, he just disappeared.”7 In May, there were strikes on Marcus and Wake Islands to secure the approach to Saipan. By 8 June, a great assemblage of Navy ships arrived in the Marianas region from various points in the east, from Majuro in the Marshalls to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.8 Having hobbled Japanese air forces in the region by 11 June and, in the two days before D-Day, bombarded Saipan’s coasts, conducted risky but invaluable reconnaissance, and blown up parts of the coastal reefs, the Navy was now ready to land American personnel on the island.9 Initial Landings Before dawn on D-day, 15 June, Sailors prepared a grand breakfast for the Marines of the 2nd and 4th Divisions, and then it was time to board the amphibian tractors.10 Fifty-six of these vehicles proceeded in lines of four toward the eight beaches that had to be stormed. Thirty-thousand Japanese personnel, with their artillery, held their fire as the tractors gained the reefs and arrived in the lagoon.11 And then, with a deafening roar of Japanese artillery, it became clear that the preparatory bombardment of the shoreline defenses, which had started at dawn, had not done enough.12 These installations were hidden well in Saipan’s coastal topography, which featured high ground within range of the lagoon and the reefs, a natural obstacle to U.S. vessels and a natural focal point for Japanese fire.13 Deadly complications besieged U.S. forces all at once. The intensity of the enemy’s fire resulted in one area becoming overcrowded with Marines trying to get a footing on shore. This mass of U.S. personnel became an easy target for mortars and other projectiles.14 Nevertheless, the Marine divisions managed to get to dry ground before H-hour had passed.15 Then came another nasty surprise. The amphibian tractors were not functioning as planned. Their armor was not heavy enough to withstand the barrage from Japanese artillery, and their agility on rough ground proved lacking.16 Troops scattered in several directions as hilltop snipers tried to pick them off one by one. Of the four commanders of the 2nd Marine Division’s initial assault battalion, none escaped this phase of the battle unharmed.17 Eventually, troops and their officers reestablished order and proceeded apace. Landings continued into the night. USS Twining (DD-540), on patrol in the channel between Saipan and Tinian, afforded its Sailors a “nightmarish” perspective on the beaches. “We were close,” Lieutenant William VanDusen remembers: “Heavier ships were firing over our heads onto the beach. There were flares being dropped by Japanese planes.” Earlier that day, Twining had added to the melee when her guns “hit a large ammunition dump” on shore, as VanDusen describes it. The facility “exploded with a tremendous cloud of smoke and flame.”18 Japanese resistance proved far greater than anticipated, not least of all because the latest intelligence reports had underestimated troop levels.19 In reality, troop levels, in excess of 31,000 men, were as much as double the estimates.20 For at least a month, Japanese forces had been fortifying the island and bolstering its forces. Although U.S. submarines had managed to sink most of the transports to Saipan from Manchuria, the majority of these troops survived to supplement a full 13,000 men to the 15,000 or so already on site.21 D-day casualties were high—as many as 3,500 men in the first 24 hours of the invasion but—in spite of these, there were now 20,000 combat-ready troops on shore by sunset with more to come.22 These reinforcements could not arrive too soon, as the Japanese defense doubled down and changed tack by deploying tanks and infantry in the relative darkness of night.23 Conditions improved the following day when the next group of battleships arrived to bombard the coast anew.24 And yet, in the cool light of morning, it became clear that the Marines had not succeeded in reaching their assigned line in the sand. Fortunately for the Americans, the Japanese had not succeeded, either, in their efforts to repulse the invaders. In the Philippine Sea At this pivotal juncture in the operation, Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith, USMC (V Amphibious Force commander), Admiral Raymond Spruance (Fifth Fleet commander), and Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner (amphibious and attack forces commander) conferred nearby.25 In response to conditions on the ground, they postponed the invasion of Guam so that the Marine division tasked with conquering it could be diverted to Saipan. They also called in the operation’s reserves, the Army’s 27th Infantry Division.26 The unexpected difficulties on the beaches also prompted Admiral Spruance to bolster the naval defense by committing still more ships to the operation. To safeguard this veritable armada, he ordered that transports and supply ships clear the area by nightfall and head east out of harm’s way.27 Spruance had good reason to worry, not necessarily about the beachheads, which appeared to be secure before D-day-plus-1 had ended, but about the First Mobile Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy. “The [Japanese] are coming after us,” Spruance said, and they were bringing with them 28 destroyers, 5 battleships, 11 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 9 carriers (5 fleet, 4 light) with somewhere near 500 aircraft total.28 The resulting engagement—the Battle of the Philippine Sea of 19–20 June—resulted in a decisive U.S. victory that nearly eliminated Japan’s ability to wage war in the air. Then it was back to Saipan, where U.S. military personnel still needed reinforcements and materiel.29 Indeed, just hours after the Philippine Sea engagement had ended, the Saipan landings resumed. Attack transport Sheridan (APA-51) was among the first of the ships to return. For days, Sailors had been watching the action on the shore from Sheridan’s decks. This got easier to decipher at dusk when the tracers came out, according to Lieutenant j.g. Harris Martin. The Americans’ flamethrowers, too, shone brightly amid the carnage: “We could see some of our landing craft being hit by Japanese artillery and we watched Japanese tanks as they counterattacked from the low hills”.30 Securing the Interior The center of Saipan, no more than six or so miles from the farthest coast, is mountainous, but the rest of the island consisted mostly in open farmland, almost all of it planted with sugarcane and therefore inhabited.31 Uncultivated lands—about 30 percent of the island’s surface—featured dense thickets and even denser grasslands. These, plus the fields of sugarcane, made taking and holding ground particularly slow going.32 The population of Saipan was diverse: Japanese colonists mingled and even intermarried with descendants of indigenous islanders, who themselves often descended from German and other European settlers of the pre-Japanese period.33 In 1919, having been lost by the Germans to the Japanese, Saipan fell under a League of Nations mandate to Japan, at which point the Japanese government began to encourage settlement on Saipan’s lucrative, sugarcane-laden soil. By February 1944, it was obvious even to the island’s children that something terrible was about to happen: “Just before the invasion took place,” remembers one civilian whose girlhood was spent on the island, “several trucks with Japanese soldiers [drove] up to our school, and the next day we had to take our classes under a mango tree. Later, when the bombs began to fall, classes ended for good.”34 The subsequent invasion occasioned a refugee crisis on the island and, soon, some of the most harrowing experiences any civilian would face in the course of the war. Cristino S. Dela Cruz, an islander who later joined the U.S. Marines, remembers the day, on the eve of invasion, when Japanese troops confiscated his family’s house in Garapan. Dela Cruz’s family fled inland, as did so many others, to the apparent safety of an adjacent ridge. Then the Americans landed nearby, and the Dela Cruz family’s ordeal really began. A hole in the ground provided the only cover. There the family and several others subsisted for a week on rice, coconuts, and a small supply of salted fish as the battle raged around them. Two of the Dela Cruz’s daughters died in a bombing. One of the young sons succumbed to sniper fire just as the family was surrendering to U.S. Marines, who were trying to load everyone onto a truck bound for the relative safety of an American lines.35 Still less fortunate families did not find a cave or a hole in which to hide. As survivor Manuel T. Sablan explains, “We had no shovels, no picks, just a machete, so we cut some wood and used that as picks.”36 Vicky Vaughan and her family did not even get so far as that. They became trapped under their own house until Japanese soldiers, in search of a defensible position, pushed them out into the open. With the battle underway, Vicky watched the grisly deaths of her family members before herself falling victim to the American onslaught: “I felt something hot on my back. They were using flamethrowers, and my back had been burned. I screamed hysterically.”37 To many civilian families, neither surrender nor survival were available. To surrender, a person would have to run into the crossfire, as Vicky’s family discovered. And to do so would expose one to the real danger of murder at the hands of Japanese forces, who forbade surrender on pain of death. Escolastica Tudela Cabrera remembers when Japanese soldiers arrived “at our cave with their big swords and said if anybody went to the Americans, they would cut our throats.”38 Threats like these, which happened in the context of the apparent impossibility of reaching safety, prompted entire families to commit suicide, as U.S. Marines and Soldiers reported.39 Japanese military personnel, too, opted for suicide, rather than face execution at the hands of their own compatriots for attempting to surrender to the Americans. The worst scenes played out atop the cliffs at the island’s northern tip. “The Japanese [were] jumping from the cliffs at Marpi Point,” remembers Lieutenant VanDusen, who watched the scenes from aboard Twining: “We could see our men in their camouflage uniforms talking to them with loudspeakers, trying to convince them that no harm would come to them, but obviously this was to no avail.”40 The Aftermath When it was all over, Saipan could be declared secure. The date was 9 July, more than three weeks since the start of the invasion.41 Now began the work of tending and processing the prisoners, both civilian and military. Lieutenant j.g. Martin, who had landed on D-Day-plus-5, helped set up and administer the island’s internment and displaced persons camp. “The Marines were bringing in prisoners even before we got there,” he says, and in the beginning, “everybody was kept under guard no matter if they were Japanese, Korean, or Chamorros,” the term for indigenous islanders. Eventually, Martin and the others had the idea of separating these groups, not least of all because conflict persisted after years of exploitation by the Japanese. Moreover, the Chamorros, as well as people of mixed ancestry, Japanese troops, and Korean combatants, who had been drafted into the Japanese forces, now held differing legal status with respect to the laws of war and the United States.42 Among their many tasks, Martin and his fellow Navy and Army officers had to distinguish among prisoners, some of whom held more than one status at once. Meanwhile, Navy civil engineers (Seabees) delineated a plan for the camp and ordered the construction of shelters and other facilities. “They were pretty flimsy buildings,” recalls Martin, with “corrugated tin roofs and . . . open at the sides.”43 Drainage, especially from the privies, was of serious concern.44 An inmate’s experience of Camp Susupe, as it was called, depended largely on his or her ethnicity, gender, and combat status. Antonieta Ada, a girl of mixed Japanese-Chamorro parentage, describes the place as absolutely “awful.” When, finally, her Chamorro father managed to locate Antonieta and have her transferred to his people’s section of the camp, things changed for the young girl: “The Chamorro camp seemed to have better accommodations and better food,” she attests. Antonieta’s Japanese mother was not so fortunate. As a fully Japanese adult civilian, she had to remain in the Japanese section. “I saw my Japanese mother only once after my arrival in Camp Susupe,” says Antonieta. “She was very weak and could hardly talk. She died not long after that.” Antonieta’s brother also had to remain in the Japanese section, which appears to have been the practice in these situations. After the war, he would be forcibly repatriated to Japan.45 Chamorro people with no Japanese family reported a different set of experiences and feelings—primarily relief and even gratitude. “In Camp Susupe,” according to Marie Soledad Castro, “we were so thankful that the Americans came and saved our lives. There was a rumor at that time that the Japanese were going to throw all the Chamorros in a big hole and kill them. We felt that the Americans were God-sent.”46 Wages of War The invasion of Saipan was horrific. When it ended, at least 23,000 Japanese troops were dead, and more than 1,780 had been captured.47 Nearly 15,000 civilians languished in U.S. custody. Finally, 22,000 Japanese, Okinawans, Koreans, and Chamorro civilians—as well as those of mixed ancestry—had fallen victim to murder, suicide, or the crossfire of battle.48 The Americans suffered 26,000 casualties, 5,000 of which were deaths.49 Yet the American victory was decisive. Japan’s National Defense Zone, demarcated by a line that the Japanese had deemed essential to hold in the effort to stave off U.S. invasion, had been blown open.50 Japan’s access to scarce resources in Southeast Asia was now compromised, and the Caroline and Palau islands now appeared to be ready for the taking.51 As historian Alan J. Levine points out, the capture of the Marianas amounted to a “decisive break-in” on the level of the nearly concurrent Allied breakthrough at Normandy and the Soviet breakthrough in Eastern Europe, which portended the siege of Berlin and the destruction of the Third Reich, Japan’s principal ally.52 The global context of the defeat was not lost on the Japanese command or the Japanese public, but now there were more immediate vulnerabilities to consider.53 On 15 June, the same day as Saipan’s D-day, American forces accomplished the first long-range bombing raid on Japan from bases in China. With Saipan’s airfields soon to be operational (as well as those of Tinian and Guam, which the Americans would surely get in due course) and with Japanese air power having been all but eliminated in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, there was no protecting the home islands from aerial bombardment.54 The Battle of Saipan was a battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought on the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands from 15 June to 9 July 1944. The Allied invasion fleet embarking the expeditionary forces left Pearl Harbor on 5 June 1944, the day before Operation Overlord in Europe was launched. The U.S. 2nd Marine Division, 4th Marine Division, and the Army's 27th Infantry Division, commanded by Lieutenant General Holland Smith, defeated the 43rd Infantry Division of the Imperial Japanese Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito. The loss of Saipan, with the deaths of at least 29,000 troops and heavy civilian casualties, precipitated the resignation of Prime Minister of Japan Hideki Tōjō and left the Japanese archipelago within the range of United States Army Air Forces B-29 bombers. Contents 1 Background 2 Opposing forces 2.1 American order of battle 2.2 Japanese order of battle 3 Battle 4 Further resistance 5 Civilian casualties 6 American military awards 7 Aftermath 8 Memorial 9 In popular culture 10 See also 11 Notes 12 Further reading 12.1 Books 12.2 Web 13 External links Background This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Battle of Saipan" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) In the campaigns of 1943 and the first half of 1944, the Allies had captured the Solomon Islands, the Gilbert Islands, the Marshall Islands and the Papuan Peninsula of New Guinea. This left the Japanese holding the Philippines, the Caroline Islands, the Palau Islands, and the Mariana Islands. It had always been the intention of the American planners to bypass the Carolines and Palauan islands and to seize the Marianas and Taiwan. From these latter bases, communications between the Japanese archipelago and Japanese forces to the south and west could be cut. From the Marianas, Japan would be well within the range of an air offensive relying on the new Boeing B-29 Superfortress long-range bomber with its operational radius of 3,250 mi (5,230 km). While not part of the original American plan, Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Southwest Pacific Area command, obtained authorization to advance through New Guinea and Morotai toward the Philippines. This allowed MacArthur to keep his personal pledge to liberate the Philippines, made in his "I shall return" speech, and also allowed the active use of the large forces built up in the southwest Pacific theatre. The Japanese, expecting an attack somewhere on their perimeter, thought an attack on the Caroline Islands most likely. To reinforce and supply their garrisons, they needed naval and air superiority, so Operation A-Go, a major carrier attack, was prepared for June 1944. Opposing forces Further information: Battle of Saipan order of battle US Naval commanders for Operation Forager Vice Adm. Raymond A. Spruance Rear Adm. Richmond Kelly Turner V Amphibious Corps commanders Lieut. Gen. Holland M. Smith Maj. Gen. Harry Schmidt Marine division commanders on Saipan Maj. Gen. Thomas E. Watson Maj. Gen. Clifton B. Cates Navajo codetalkers played a key role in directing naval gunfire onto Japanese positions. American order of battle U.S. Fifth Fleet[6] Admiral Raymond A. Spruance in heavy cruiser Indianapolis Joint Expeditionary Force (Task Force 51) Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner in amphibious command ship Rocky Mount Northern Attack Force (Task Force 52) Vice Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner in amphibious command ship Rocky Mount V Amphibious Corps Commanding General (thru 12 Jul): Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith Commanding General (after 12 Jul): Major General Harry Schmidt Chief of Staff: Brigadier General Graves B. Erskine Northern sector (Red and Green beaches): 2nd Marine Division (21,746 officers and enlisted) Commanding General: Major General Thomas E. Watson Asst. Div. Commander: Brigadier General Merritt A. Edson 2nd Marine Regiment (Infantry) Commanding Officer: Colonel Walter J. Stuart Executive Officer: Lieut. Col. John H. Griebel 6th Marine Regiment (Infantry) Commanding Officer: Colonel James P. Riseley Executive Officer: Lieut. Col. Kenneth F. McLeod 8th Marine Regiment (Infantry) Commanding Officer: Colonel Clarence R. Wallace Executive Officer: Lieut. Col. Jack P. Juhan 10th Marine Regiment (Artillery) Commanding Officer: Colonel Raphael Griffin Executive Officer: Lieut. Col. Ralph E. Forsyth 18th Marine Regiment (Engineers) Commanding Officer: Lieut. Col. Ewart S. Laue 1st Battalion, 29th Marine Regiment[7] Commanding Officer: Lieut. Col. Rathvon M. Tompkins (to 2 Jul) then Lieut. Col. Jack P. Juhan Amphibious Unit: 715th Amphibian Tractor Bttn. (Army) Southern sector (Blue and Yellow beaches): 4th Marine Division (21,618 officers and enlisted) Commanding General (thru 12 Jul): Major General Harry Schmidt Commanding General (after 12 Jul): Major General Clifton B. Cates Asst. Div. Commander: Brigadier General Samuel C. Cumming 14th Marine Regiment (Artillery) Commanding Officer: Colonel Louis G. DeHaven Executive Officer: Lieut. Col. Randall M. Victory 20th Marine Regiment (Engineers) Commanding Officer: Lieut. Col. Nelson K. Brown Executive Officer: Captain William M. Anderson 23rd Marine Regiment (Infantry) Commanding Officer: Colonel Louis R. Jones Executive Officer: Lieut. Col. John R. Lanigan 24th Marine Regiment (Infantry) Commanding Officer: Colonel Franklin A. Hart Executive Officer: Lieut. Col. Austin R. Brunelli 25th Marine Regiment (Infantry) Commanding Officer: Colonel Merton J. Batchelder Executive Officer: Lieut. Col. Clarence J. O'Donnell Amphibious Units: 708th Amphibian Tank Bttn. (Army), 773rd Amphibian Tractor Bttn. (Army), 534th Amphibian Tractor Bttn. (Army) Army (landed D+1): 27th Infantry Division (16,404 officers and enlisted) Commanding General (thru 24 Jun): Major General Ralph C. Smith Commanding General (24 Jun thru 28 Jun): Major General Sanderford Jarman Commanding General (after 28 Jun): Major General George W. Griner 105th Infantry Regiment 106th Infantry Regiment 165th Infantry Regiment Artillery: 104th Field Artillery Bttn., 105th Field Artillery Bttn., 106th Field Artillery Bttn., 249th Field Artillery Bttn. Engineers: 102nd Engineer Combat Bttn., 502nd Engineer Combat Bttn. XXIV Corps Artillery Commanding General: Brigadier General Arthur M. Harper 1st Provisional Gun Group 225th Field Artillery Howitzer Group Navy UDT 5, UDT 6, UDT 7 Japanese order of battle Vice Adm. Chūichi Nagumo, commander of Imperial forces in the Marianas Lt. Gen. Saito Yoshitsugu, commander of Imperial forces on Saipan Central Pacific Area Fleet HQ[8] Commanding officer: Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo (self-inflicted gunshot 6 July) Chief of staff: Rear Admiral Hideo Yano (seppuku 7 July) 31st Army Commanding officer: Lieutenant General Hideyoshi Obata (on inspection tour of Guam during battle; seppuku there 11 August) 14th Air Fleet Defenses of Saipan Commanding General: Lieutenant General Saito Yoshitsugu (seppuku 7 July) 43rd Infantry Division 118th Infantry Regiment 135th Infantry Regiment 136th Infantry Regiment 47th Independent Mixed Brigade 316th Independent Infantry Battalion 317th Independent Infantry Battalion 318th Independent Infantry Battalion Other units: 3rd Independent Mountain Artillery Regiment 9th Tank Regiment (of 1st Tank Division) 3rd Battalion, 9th Independent Mixed Regiment 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment 25th Antiaircraft Artillery Regiment 14th Independent Mortar Battalion 17th Independent Mortar Battalion Miscellaneous straggler units Battle Map showing the progress of the Battle of Saipan Red Beach 2 at 13:00 Marines march through Garapan, 6 July 1944 Marines take cover behind a M4 Sherman tank while clearing Japanese forces from the northern end of the island of Saipan. 8 July 1944. Holding a Colt M1911, a Marine moves cautiously through the jungle of Saipan. July 1944. A Marine talks a terrified Chamorro woman and her children into abandoning their refuge. Battle of Saipan - US Navy docked GAG03 Japanese cannon at Saipan, after battle Japanese beach defense Map of U.S. landings, Saipan encircled The bombardment of Saipan began on 13 June 1944. 15 battleships were involved, and 165,000 shells were fired. Seven modern fast battleships delivered 2,400 16 in (410 mm) shells, but to avoid potential minefields, fire was from a distance of 10,000 yd (9,100 m) or more, and crews were inexperienced in shore bombardment. The following day the eight older battleships and eleven cruisers under Admiral Jesse B. Oldendorf replaced the fast battleships but were lacking in time and ammunition.[9] The landings[10] began at 07:00 on 15 June 1944. More than 300 LVTs landed 8,000 Marines on the west coast of Saipan by about 09:00. Eleven fire support ships covered the Marine landings. The naval force consisted of the battleships Tennessee and California, the cruisers Birmingham and Indianapolis, the destroyers Norman Scott, Monssen, Coghlan, Halsey Powell, Bailey, Robinson, and Albert W. Grant. Careful artillery preparation — placing flags in the lagoon to indicate the range — allowed the Japanese to destroy about 20 amphibious tanks, and they strategically placed barbed wire, artillery, machine gun emplacements, and trenches to maximize the American casualties. However, by nightfall, the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions had a beachhead about 6 mi (10 km) wide and 0.5 mi (1 km) deep.[11] The Japanese counter-attacked at night but were repulsed with heavy losses. On 16 June, units of the U.S. Army's 27th Infantry Division landed and advanced on the airfield at Ås Lito. Again the Japanese counter-attacked at night. On 18 June, Saito abandoned the airfield. The invasion surprised the Japanese high command, which had been expecting an attack further south. Admiral Soemu Toyoda, Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), saw an opportunity to use the A-Go force to attack the U.S. Navy forces around Saipan. On 15 June, he gave the order to attack. But the resulting battle of the Philippine Sea was a disaster for the IJN, which lost three aircraft carriers and hundreds of planes. The garrisons of the Marianas would have no hope of resupply or reinforcement. Without resupply, the battle on Saipan was hopeless for the defenders, but the Japanese were determined to fight to the last man. Saito organized his troops into a line anchored on Mount Tapotchau in the defensible mountainous terrain of central Saipan. The nicknames given by the Americans to the features of the battle — "Hell's Pocket", "Purple Heart Ridge" and "Death Valley" — indicate the severity of the fighting. The Japanese used many caves in the volcanic landscape to delay the attackers, by hiding during the day and making sorties at night. The Americans gradually developed tactics for clearing the caves by using flamethrower teams supported by artillery and machine guns. The operation was marred by inter-service controversy when Marine General Holland Smith, unsatisfied with the performance of the 27th Division, relieved its commander, Army Major General Ralph C. Smith. However, General Holland Smith had not inspected the terrain over which the 27th was to advance. Essentially, it was a valley surrounded by hills and cliffs under Japanese control. The 27th took heavy casualties and eventually, under a plan developed by General Ralph Smith and implemented after his relief, had one battalion hold the area while two other battalions successfully flanked the Japanese.[12] By 6 July, the Japanese had nowhere to retreat. Saito made plans for a final suicidal banzai charge. On the fate of the remaining civilians on the island, Saito said, "There is no longer any distinction between civilians and troops. It would be better for them to join in the attack with bamboo spears than be captured." At dawn of the 7th, a group of 12 men carrying a great red flag in the lead, the remaining able-bodied troops — about 4,000 men — charged forward in the final attack. Amazingly, behind them came the wounded, with bandaged heads, crutches, and barely armed. The Japanese surged over the American front lines, engaging both Army and Marine units. The 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th Infantry Regiment were almost destroyed, losing well over 650 killed and wounded. However, the fierce resistance of these two battalions, as well as that of Headquarters Company, 105th Infantry, and of supply elements of 3rd Battalion, 10th Marine Artillery Regiment, resulted in over 4,300 Japanese killed and resulted in 2,000 dead US soldiers. For their actions during the 15-hour Japanese attack, three men of the 105th Infantry Regiment were awarded the Medal of Honor, Lt. Col. William O'Brien, Cpt. Ben L. Salomon, Pvt. Thomas A. Baker, all posthumously. The attack on July 7th would be the largest Japanese Banzai charge in the Pacific War.[13][4] By 16:15 on 9 July, Admiral Turner announced that Saipan was officially secured.[14] Saito, along with commanders Hirakushi and Igeta, committed suicide in a cave. Vice-admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the naval commander who led the Japanese carriers at Pearl Harbor, also committed suicide in the closing stages of the battle. He had been in command of the Japanese naval air forces stationed on the island. In the end, almost the entire garrison of troops on the island — at least 29,000 — died. For the Americans, the victory was the most costly to date in the Pacific War: out of 71,000 who landed, 2,949 were killed and 10,464 wounded.[15][16] Future Hollywood actor Lee Marvin was among the many Americans wounded. He was serving with "I" Company, 24th Marine Regiment, when he was hit by shrapnel in the buttocks by Japanese mortar fire during the assault on Mount Tapochau. He was awarded the Purple Heart and was given a medical discharge with the rank of private first class in 1945.[17] Further resistance While the battle officially ended on July 9, Japanese resistance still persisted with Captain Sakae Ōba and 46 other soldiers who survived with him during the last banzai charge.[18][19] After the battle, Oba and his soldiers led many civilians throughout the jungle of the island to escape capture by the Americans, while also conducting guerrilla-style attacks on pursuing forces. The Americans tried numerous times to hunt them down but failed due to their speed and stealth. In September 1944, the Marines began conducting patrols in the island's interior, searching for survivors who were raiding their camp for supplies.[19] Although some of the soldiers wanted to fight, Captain Ōba asserted that their primary concerns were to protect the civilians and to stay alive to continue the war. At one point, the Japanese soldiers and civilians were almost captured by the Americans as they hid in a clearing and ledges of a mountain, some were less than 20 feet (6.1 m) above the heads of the Marines, but the Americans failed to see them.[18] Oba's holdout lasted for over a year (approximately 16 months) before finally surrendering on December 1, 1945, three months after the official surrender of Japan. Oba was so successful in his resistance that the Marines nicknamed him the "Fox", and once even caused the reassignment of a commander.[18] Civilian casualties Being a former Spanish and then German territory, Saipan became a Mandate of Japan by the League of Nations after World War I, and thus, a large number of Japanese civilians lived there — at least 25,000.[20] The U.S. erected a civilian prisoner encampment on 23 June 1944 that soon had more than 1,000 inmates. Electric lights at the camp were conspicuously left on overnight to attract other civilians with the promise of three warm meals and no risk of accidentally being shot in combat.[20] Weapons and the tactics of close quarter fighting also resulted in high civilian casualties. Civilian shelters were located virtually everywhere on the island, with very little difference noticeable to attacking marines. The standard method of clearing suspected bunkers was with high-explosive and/or high-explosives augmented with petroleum (e.g., gelignite, napalm, diesel fuel). In such conditions, there were high civilian casualties.[21] More than 1,000 Japanese civilians committed suicide in the last days of the battle to take the offered privileged place in the afterlife, some jumping from places later named "Suicide Cliff" and "Banzai Cliff". These would become part of the National Historic Landmark District as Landing Beaches; Aslito/Isley Field; & Marpi Point, Saipan Island, designated in 1985. Today the sites are a memorial and Japanese people visit to console the victims' souls.[22][23] American military awards Robert H. McCard Main article: Robert H. McCard Robert H. McCard On 16 June 1944, Gunnery Sergeant Robert H. McCard, a U.S. Marine, killed sixteen enemies while sacrificing himself to ensure the safety of his tank crew. McCard was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. The USS Robert H. McCard (DD-822), a Gearing-class destroyer, was named in his honor. Harold G. Epperson Main article: Harold G. Epperson On 25 June 1944, PFC Harold G. Epperson, part of the 2nd Marine Division, threw himself on a grenade to contain the blast from killing members of his squad. For his bravery and sacrifice, PFC Epperson was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.[24] Epperson's Medal of Honor was presented to his mother in a ceremony on Wednesday, 4 July 1945 in Tiger Stadium, Massillon, Ohio. The USS Epperson (DD-719), a Gearing-class destroyer, was named in his honor. William O'Brien Main article: William J. O'Brien (Medal of Honor) When the 1st Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment came under attack from a much larger enemy force on 7 July, Lieutenant Colonel William O'Brien refused to leave the front lines even after being wounded, and continued to lead his men until being overrun and killed. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on 9 May 1945, for his actions throughout the battle for Saipan. The U.S. Army ship USAT Col. William J. O'Brien, which served in the Pacific Ocean at the end of World War II, was named in his honor. Thomas A. Baker Main article: Thomas Baker (Medal of Honor) On 7 July, Private Thomas A. Baker and his comrades from the 1st Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment, came under attack by a large Japanese force. Although seriously wounded early in the attack, he refused to be evacuated and continued to fight in the close-range battle until running out of ammunition. When a comrade was wounded while trying to carry him to safety, Baker insisted that he be left behind. At his request, his comrades left him propped against a tree and gave him a pistol, which had eight bullets remaining. When American forces retook the position, they found the pistol, now empty, and eight dead Japanese soldiers around Baker's body. Baker was posthumously promoted to sergeant and, on 9 May 1945, awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions throughout the battle for Saipan.[25] He was buried at Gerald B. H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetery in Schuylerville, New York.[26] Ben L. Salomon Main article: Ben L. Salomon On 7 July 1944, Army Captain Ben L. Salomon, the battalion dentist of 2nd Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment, 27th Infantry Division aided the evacuation of wounded soldiers. After defending his unarmed patients from four Japanese soldiers, he manned a machine gun post and effectively repelled numerous enemy forces to enable the evacuation of wounded personnel. When his body was recovered after the battle, 98 dead Japanese soldiers were found in front of his position. For gallantry in battle, Captain Ben L. Salomon was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in May 2002.[27] Salomon was the third Jewish service member to be awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II. Guy Gabaldon Main article: Guy Gabaldon Isely Field, filled with B-29 bombers, mid-1945 PFC Guy Gabaldon, of Headquarters and Service Company, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, was a Mexican-American from Los Angeles. He is officially credited with capturing more than 1,000 Japanese prisoners during the battle. PFC Gabaldon, who was raised by Japanese-Americans, used a combination of street Japanese and guile to convince soldiers and civilians alike that U.S. troops were not barbarians, and that they would be well treated upon surrender. For his outstanding bravery, which earned him the nickname, "The Pied Piper of Saipan," Gabaldon received a Silver Star, which was upgraded to the Navy Cross.[28] During the war, his commanders had requested that he receive the Medal of Honor for his actions; however, his initial award was the Silver Star. In 1998, efforts were re-initiated to secure the Medal of Honor for PFC Gabaldon.[29] The effort was ongoing in 2006.[30] Aftermath Although major fighting had officially ceased on 9 July, pockets of Japanese resistance continued. In September 1944, U.S. Marines began patrols into the island interior in order to bring in civilians and soldiers still holding out in the jungles. A group led by Captain Sakae Oba managed to evade capture for more than 512 days until surrendering to American forces on 1 December 1945, three months after the official surrender of Japan. In February 2011, a film about Oba, Oba: The Last Samurai, was released in Japan. With the capture of Saipan, the American military was now only 1,300 mi (1,100 nmi; 2,100 km) away from the home islands of Japan. The victory would prove to be one of the most important strategic moments during the war in the Pacific Theater, as the Japanese archipelago was now within striking distance of United States' B-29 bombers.[31] From this point on, Saipan would become the launch point for retaking other islands in the Mariana chain and the invasion of the Philippines in October 1944. Four months after capture, more than 100 B-29s from Saipan's Isely Field were regularly attacking the Philippines, the Ryukyu Islands and the Japanese mainland. In response, Japanese aircraft attacked Saipan and Tinian on several occasions between November 1944 and January 1945. The U.S. capture of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945) ended further Japanese air attacks. The loss of Saipan was a heavy blow to both the military and civilian administration of Prime Minister of Japan Hideki Tōjō. According to one Japanese admiral: "Our war was lost with the loss of Saipan." U.S. Marine Corps General Holland Smith said: "It was the decisive battle of the Pacific offensive [...] it opened the way to the Japanese home islands."[32] Shortly after Saipan was taken, a meeting at the Imperial General Headquarters was convened where it was decided that a symbolic change of leadership should be made: Tōjō would step aside and Emperor Hirohito would have less involvement in day-to-day military affairs, even though he was defined as both head of state and the Generalissimo of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces according to the Meiji Constitution of 1889. The general staff believed it was now time to distance the Imperial House of Japan from blame as the tide of war turned against the Japanese.[20] Although Tōjō agreed to resign, Hirohito blocked his resignation because he considered Tōjō to be Japan's strongest war leader. But after Tōjō failed to shuffle his Cabinet due to excessive internal hostility, he conceded defeat.[20] On 18 July, Tōjō again submitted his resignation, this time unequivocally. His entire cabinet resigned with him.[33] Former IJA General Kuniaki Koiso became Prime Minister on 22 July. However, due to the legacy of Saipan, Koiso was nothing more than a titular Prime Minister, and was prevented by the Imperial General Headquarters from participating in any military decisions.[34] Saipan also saw a change in the way Japanese war reporting was presented on the home front. Initially, as the battle started, Japanese accounts concentrated on the fighting spirit of the IJA and the heavy casualties it was inflicting on American forces. However, any reader familiar with Saipan's geography would have known from the chronology of engagements that the U.S. forces were relentlessly advancing northwards. No further mention of Saipan was made following the final battle on 7 July, which was not initially reported to the public.[35] However, after Tōjō's resignation on 18 July, an accurate, almost day-by-day, account of the defeat on Saipan was published jointly by the Army and Navy. It mentioned the near total loss of all Japanese soldiers and civilians on the island and the use of "human bullets". The reports had a devastating effect on Japanese opinion; mass suicides were now seen as defeat, not evidence of an "Imperial Way".[36] This was the first time Japanese forces had accurately been depicted in a battle since Midway, which had been proclaimed a victory.[36] After the war concluded, apologists for Hirohito asserted that the order encouraging the civilians of Saipan to commit suicide for benefits in the afterlife had in fact been forged, along with other incriminating orders."[20] Memorial Suicide Cliff and Banzai Cliff, along with a number of surviving isolated Japanese fortifications, are recognized as historic sites on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The cliffs are also part of the National Historic Landmark District Landing Beaches; Aslito/Isley Field; & Marpi Point, Saipan Island, which also includes the American landing beaches, the B-29 runways of Isley Field, and the surviving Japanese infrastructure of the Aslito and Marpi Point airfields. The American Memorial Park on Saipan commemorates the U.S. and Mariana veterans of the Mariana Islands campaign. In popular culture The novel Away All Boats, from which a film was made, was based on the author's personal experiences on an attack transport. One long section gives a very detailed account of the battle as seen by the crew members both on board and on shore. The film Oba: The Last Samurai depicted the last banzai charge of the Japanese during the war, and the holdout of Captain Sakae Ōba. The novel Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy begins with a character purchasing land on Saipan near the Banzai Cliff where his parents and siblings jumped to their deaths. Saipan features heavily in the rest of the novel. See also Battle of Saipan order of battle Maritime Heritage Trail – Battle of Saipan Windtalkers USS Saipan (CVL-48) USS Saipan (LHA-2) On June 15, 1944, during the Pacific Campaign of World War II (1939-45), U.S. Marines stormed the beaches of the strategically significant Japanese island of Saipan, with a goal of gaining a crucial air base from which the U.S. could launch its new long-range B-29 bombers directly at Japan’s home islands. Facing fierce Japanese resistance, Americans poured from their landing crafts to establish a beachhead, battle Japanese soldiers inland and force the Japanese army to retreat north. Fighting became especially brutal and prolonged around Mount Tapotchau, Saipan’s highest peak, and Marines gave battle sites in the area names such as “Death Valley” and “Purple Heart Ridge.” When the U.S. finally trapped the Japanese in the northern part of the island, Japanese soldiers launched a massive but futile banzai charge. On July 9, the U.S. flag was raised in victory over Saipan. U.S. Commanders Focus on Taking Saipan In the spring of 1944, U.S. forces involved in the Pacific Campaign invaded Japanese-held islands in the central Pacific Ocean along a path toward Japan. An armada of 535 U.S. ships with 127,000 troops, including 77,000 Marines, had taken the Marshall Islands, and American high command next sought to capture the Mariana Islands, which formed the critical front line for Japan’s defense of its empire. Did you know? When U.S. forces stormed the beaches of Saipan on June 15, 1944, 800 African-American Marines unloaded food and ammunition from landing vehicles and delivered the supplies under fire to troops on the beach. They were the first African-American Marines to see combat in World War II. U.S. commanders reasoned that taking the main Mariana Islands–Saipan, Tinian and Guam–would cut off Japan from its resource-rich southern empire and clear the way for further advances to Tokyo. At Saipan, the island nearest to Japan, U.S. forces could establish a crucial air base from which the U.S. Army’s new long-range B-29 Superfortress bombers could inflict punishing strikes on Japan’s home islands ahead of an Allied invasion. American commanders decided to make the first Mariana landing on Saipan, the largest of the Mariana Islands. Saipan, which had been under Japanese rule since 1920, had a garrison of approximately 30,000 Japanese troops, according to some accounts, and an important airfield at Aslito. Marine General Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith (1882-1967) was given a plan of battle and ordered to take the island in three days. After the invasion of Saipan, according to the plan, U.S. forces would quickly move to seize Guam and Tinian. However, American intelligence services had greatly underestimated Japanese troop strength on Saipan. The Landing and First Phase of the Battle On the morning of June 15, 1944, a large fleet of U.S. transport ships gathered near the southwest shores of Saipan, and Marines began riding toward the beaches in hundreds of amphibious landing vehicles. Battleships, destroyers and planes had pounded key targets in pre-assault bombardments, but they had missed many gun emplacements along the beach cliffs. Subsequently, Marines headed straight into exploding bombs and streaming gunfire. In “Breaching the Marianas: the Battle for Saipan,” author John C. Chapin, a Marine on Saipan, described the chaos around him that morning, with its “bodies lying in mangled and grotesque positions; blasted and burned out pillboxes; the burning wrecks of LVTs [landing vehicles] …; the acrid smell of high explosives; the shattered trees; and the churned up sand littered with discarded equipment.” Despite the heavy resistance they faced, 8,000 Marines managed to reach the shore that first morning. By the end of the day, some 20,000 troops had established a beachhead on Saipan; however, the U.S. had suffered approximately 2,000 casualties in the process. The next morning, the troops were joined by U.S. Army reinforcements and began pushing inland toward Aslito Airfield and Japanese forces in the southern and central parts of the island. On June 18, American troops continued to spread out across the island even as their offshore naval protection departed to head off the Japanese Imperial Fleet that had been sent to aid in the defense of Saipan. Death Valley and Purple Heart Ridge After having failed to stop the American landing on Saipan, the Japanese army retreated to Mount Tapotchau, the mountain peak that dominates the island. Located at the center of Saipan, Mount Tapotchau is the island’s highest point, rising some 1,550 feet. In intensive fighting, U.S forces gradually drove the Japanese defense from their nearly impregnable position in the heights. As the battle raged, Smith ordered a contingent of troops to assault Japanese positions by moving across a large, much exposed valley. Soon to be designated “Death Valley,” the area was bordered by a ridge where well-protected, heavily armed Japanese soldiers fired directly down on the approaching Americans. The Marines dubbed the ridge “Purple Heart Ridge” for the many American casualties sustained there. Fighting their way through rugged jungle terrain, Marines finally won control of Mount Tapotchau by the end of June. The Japanese were forced to retreat further north, marking the turning point in the Battle of Saipan. Banzai Charge: July 6 By early July, the forces of Lieutenant General Yoshitsugu Saito (1890-1944), the Japanese commander on Saipan, had retreated to the northern part of the island, where they were trapped by American land, sea and air power. Saito had expected the Japanese navy to help him drive the Americans from the island, but the Imperial Fleet had suffered a devastating defeat in the Battle of the Philippine Sea (June 19-20, 1944) and never arrived at Saipan. Realizing he could no longer hold out against the American onslaught, Saito apologized to Tokyo for failing to defend Saipan and committed ritual suicide. Before his death, however, Saito ordered his remaining troops to launch an all-out, surprise attack for the honor of the emperor. Early on the morning of July 6, an estimated 4,000 Japanese soldiers shouting “Banzai!” charged with grenades, bayonets, swords and knives against an encampment of soldiers and Marines near Tanapag Harbor. In wave after wave, the Japanese overran parts of several U.S. battalions, engaging in hand-to-hand combat and killing or wounding more than a thousand Americans before being repelled by howitzers and point-blank machine-gun fire. It was the largest banzai charge of the Pacific war, and, as was the nature of such an attack, most Japanese troops fought to their death. However, the suicidal maneuver failed to turn the tide of the battle, and on July 9, U.S. forces raised the American flag in victory over Saipan. Aftermath of the Battle The brutal three-week Battle of Saipan resulted in more than 3,000 U.S. deaths and over 13,000 wounded. For their part, the Japanese lost at least 27,000 soldiers, by some estimates. On July 9, when Americans declared the battle over, thousands of Saipan’s civilians, terrified by Japanese propaganda that warned they would be killed by U.S. troops, leapt to their deaths from the high cliffs at the island’s northern end. The loss of Saipan stunned the political establishment in Tokyo, the capital city of Japan. Political leaders came to understand the devastating power of the long-range U.S. bombers. Furthermore, many of Saipan’s citizens were Japanese, and the loss of Saipan marked the first defeat in Japanese territory that had not been added during Japan’s aggressive expansion by invasion in 1941 and 1942. Worse still, General Hideki Tojo (1884-1948), Japan’s militaristic prime minister, had publicly promised that the United States would never take Saipan. He was forced to resign a week after the U.S. conquest of the island. World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, massacres, and disease. In the wake of the Axis defeat, Germany and Japan were occupied, and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders. The causes of World War II are debated, but contributing factors included the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts, the rise of fascism in Europe and rising European tensions since World War I. World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland. The United Kingdom and France subsequently declared war on Germany on 3 September. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union had partitioned Poland and marked out their "spheres of influence" across Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan (with other countries later). Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, and the fall of France in mid-1940, the war continued primarily between the European Axis powers and the British Empire, with war in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz of the UK, and the Battle of the Atlantic. On 22 June 1941, Germany led the European Axis powers in an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front, the largest land theatre of war in history. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with the Republic of China by 1937. In December 1941, Japan attacked American and British territories with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific, including an attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor which resulted in the United States declaring war against Japan. The European Axis powers declared war on the United States in solidarity. Japan soon captured much of the western Pacific, but its advances were halted in 1942 after losing the critical Battle of Midway; later, Germany and Italy were defeated in North Africa and at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. Key setbacks in 1943—including a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland, and Allied offensives in the Pacific—cost the Axis powers their initiative and forced them into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned towards Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945, Japan suffered reversals in mainland Asia, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key western Pacific islands. The war in Europe concluded with the liberation of German-occupied territories and the invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the fall of Berlin to Soviet troops, Hitler's suicide, and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the refusal of Japan to surrender on the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (issued 26 July 1945), the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, on 6 August, and Nagasaki, on 9 August. Faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese archipelago, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, and the Soviet Union's declared entry into the war against Japan on the eve of invading Manchuria, Japan announced on 10 August its intention to surrender, leading to the de facto end of World War II. Japan signed the surrender document on 2 September 1945. World War II changed the political alignment and social structure of the globe. The United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts,[1] with the victorious great powers—China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—becoming the permanent members of its Security Council. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century-long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia. Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion. Political and economic integration, especially in Europe, began as an effort to forestall future hostilities, end pre-war enmities and forge a sense of common identity. Contents 1 Start and end dates 2 Background 2.1 Europe 2.2 Asia 3 Pre-war events 3.1 Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935) 3.2 Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) 3.3 Japanese invasion of China (1937) 3.4 Soviet–Japanese border conflicts 3.5 European occupations and agreements 4 Course of the war 4.1 War breaks out in Europe (1939–40) 4.2 Western Europe (1940–41) 4.3 Mediterranean (1940–41) 4.4 Axis attack on the Soviet Union (1941) 4.5 War breaks out in the Pacific (1941) 4.6 Axis advance stalls (1942–43) 4.7 Allies gain momentum (1943–44) 4.8 Allies close in (1944) 4.9 Axis collapse and Allied victory (1944–45) 5 Aftermath 6 Impact 6.1 Casualties and war crimes 6.2 Genocide, concentration camps, and slave labour 6.3 Occupation 6.4 Home fronts and production 6.5 Advances in technology and warfare 7 See also 8 Notes 9 Citations 10 References 11 External links Start and end dates See also: Timeline of World War II Timelines of World War II Chronological Prelude (in Asiain Europe) 1939194019411942 194319441945 onwards By topic Diplomacy Declarations of war EngagementsOperations Battle of Europe air operations Eastern FrontManhattan Project United Kingdom home front Surrender of the Axis armies vte It is generally considered that in Europe World War II started on 1 September 1939,[2][3] beginning with the German invasion of Poland and the United Kingdom and France's declaration of war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of the war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937,[4][5] or the earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria, on 19 September 1931.[6][7] Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously, and the two wars became World War II in 1941.[8] Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935.[9] The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939.[10] Others view the Spanish Civil War as the start or prelude to World War II.[11][12] The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945 (V-J Day), rather than with the formal surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945, which officially ended the war in Asia. A peace treaty between Japan and the Allies was signed in 1951.[13] A 1990 treaty regarding Germany's future allowed the reunification of East and West Germany to take place and resolved most post-World War II issues.[14] No formal peace treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union was ever signed,[15] although the state of war between the two countries was terminated by the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, which also restored full diplomatic relations between them.[16] Background Main article: Causes of World War II Europe World War I had radically altered the political European map, with the defeat of the Central Powers—including Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire—and the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, which led to the founding of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the victorious Allies of World War I, such as France, Belgium, Italy, Romania, and Greece, gained territory, and new nation-states were created out of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman and Russian Empires. The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930 To prevent a future world war, the League of Nations was created during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The organisation's primary goals were to prevent armed conflict through collective security, military and naval disarmament, and settling international disputes through peaceful negotiations and arbitration.[17] Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I,[18] irredentist and revanchist nationalism emerged in several European states in the same period. These sentiments were especially marked in Germany because of the significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all its overseas possessions, while German annexation of other states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of the country's armed forces.[19] The German Empire was dissolved in the German Revolution of 1918–1919, and a democratic government, later known as the Weimar Republic, was created. The interwar period saw strife between supporters of the new republic and hardline opponents on both the right and left. Italy, as an Entente ally, had made some post-war territorial gains; however, Italian nationalists were angered that the promises made by the United Kingdom and France to secure Italian entrance into the war were not fulfilled in the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy, repressed socialist, left-wing and liberal forces, and pursued an aggressive expansionist foreign policy aimed at making Italy a world power, and promising the creation of a "New Roman Empire".[20] Adolf Hitler at a German Nazi political rally in Nuremberg, August 1933 Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, eventually became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933 when Paul Von Hindenburg and the Reichstag appointed him. He abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a massive rearmament campaign.[21] Meanwhile, France, to secure its alliance, allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired as a colonial possession. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Territory of the Saar Basin was legally reunited with Germany, and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, accelerated his rearmament programme, and introduced conscription.[22] The United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front in April 1935 in order to contain Germany, a key step towards military globalisation; however, that June, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions. The Soviet Union, concerned by Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of Eastern Europe, drafted a treaty of mutual assistance with France. Before taking effect, though, the Franco-Soviet pact was required to go through the bureaucracy of the League of Nations, which rendered it essentially toothless.[23] The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August of the same year.[24] Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno treaties by remilitarising the Rhineland in March 1936, encountering little opposition due to the policy of appeasement.[25] In October 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Rome–Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy joined the following year.[26] Asia The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese Communist Party allies[27] and new regional warlords. In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Empire of Japan, which had long sought influence in China[28] as the first step of what its government saw as the country's right to rule Asia, staged the Mukden Incident as a pretext to invade Manchuria and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.[29] China appealed to the League of Nations to stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations after being condemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two nations then fought several battles, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until the Tanggu Truce was signed in 1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, and Chahar and Suiyuan.[30] After the 1936 Xi'an Incident, the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on a ceasefire to present a united front to oppose Japan.[31] Pre-war events Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935) Main article: Second Italo-Ethiopian War Benito Mussolini inspecting troops during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935 The Second Italo-Ethiopian War was a brief colonial war that began in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war began with the invasion of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia) by the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia), which was launched from Italian Somaliland and Eritrea.[32] The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and its annexation into the newly created colony of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI); in addition it exposed the weakness of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia were member nations, but the League did little when the former clearly violated Article X of the League's Covenant.[33] The United Kingdom and France supported imposing sanctions on Italy for the invasion, but the sanctions were not fully enforced and failed to end the Italian invasion.[34] Italy subsequently dropped its objections to Germany's goal of absorbing Austria.[35] Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) Main article: Spanish Civil War The bombing of Guernica in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, sparked fears abroad in Europe that the next war would be based on bombing of cities with very high civilian casualties. When civil war broke out in Spain, Hitler and Mussolini lent military support to the Nationalist rebels, led by General Francisco Franco. Italy supported the Nationalists to a greater extent than the Nazis did: altogether Mussolini sent to Spain more than 70,000 ground troops and 6,000 aviation personnel, as well as about 720 aircraft.[36] The Soviet Union supported the existing government of the Spanish Republic. More than 30,000 foreign volunteers, known as the International Brigades, also fought against the Nationalists. Both Germany and the Soviet Union used this proxy war as an opportunity to test in combat their most advanced weapons and tactics. The Nationalists won the civil war in April 1939; Franco, now dictator, remained officially neutral during World War II but generally favoured the Axis.[37] His greatest collaboration with Germany was the sending of volunteers to fight on the Eastern Front.[38] Japanese invasion of China (1937) Main article: Second Sino-Japanese War Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during the Battle of Shanghai, 1937 In July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese imperial capital of Peking after instigating the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China.[39] The Soviets quickly signed a non-aggression pact with China to lend materiel support, effectively ending China's prior co-operation with Germany. From September to November, the Japanese attacked Taiyuan, engaged the Kuomintang Army around Xinkou,[40][unreliable source?] and fought Communist forces in Pingxingguan.[41][42] Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best army to defend Shanghai, but after three months of fighting, Shanghai fell. The Japanese continued to push the Chinese forces back, capturing the capital Nanking in December 1937. After the fall of Nanking, tens or hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants were murdered by the Japanese.[43][44] In March 1938, Nationalist Chinese forces won their first major victory at Taierzhuang, but then the city of Xuzhou was taken by the Japanese in May.[45][unreliable source?] In June 1938, Chinese forces stalled the Japanese advance by flooding the Yellow River; this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese to prepare their defences at Wuhan, but the city was taken by October.[46] Japanese military victories did not bring about the collapse of Chinese resistance that Japan had hoped to achieve; instead, the Chinese government relocated inland to Chongqing and continued the war.[47][48] Soviet–Japanese border conflicts Main article: Soviet–Japanese border conflicts Red Army artillery unit during the Battle of Lake Khasan, 1938 In the mid-to-late 1930s, Japanese forces in Manchukuo had sporadic border clashes with the Soviet Union and Mongolia. The Japanese doctrine of Hokushin-ron, which emphasised Japan's expansion northward, was favoured by the Imperial Army during this time. With the Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol in 1939, the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese War[49] and ally Nazi Germany pursuing neutrality with the Soviets, this policy would prove difficult to maintain. Japan and the Soviet Union eventually signed a Neutrality Pact in April 1941, and Japan adopted the doctrine of Nanshin-ron, promoted by the Navy, which took its focus southward, eventually leading to its war with the United States and the Western Allies.[50][51] European occupations and agreements Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured just before signing the Munich Agreement, 29 September 1938 In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming more aggressive. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria, again provoking little response from other European powers.[52] Encouraged, Hitler began pressing German claims on the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a predominantly ethnic German population. Soon the United Kingdom and France followed the appeasement policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and conceded this territory to Germany in the Munich Agreement, which was made against the wishes of the Czechoslovak government, in exchange for a promise of no further territorial demands.[53] Soon afterwards, Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia to cede additional territory to Hungary, and Poland annexed Czechoslovakia's Zaolzie region.[54] Although all of Germany's stated demands had been satisfied by the agreement, privately Hitler was furious that British interference had prevented him from seizing all of Czechoslovakia in one operation. In subsequent speeches Hitler attacked British and Jewish "war-mongers" and in January 1939 secretly ordered a major build-up of the German navy to challenge British naval supremacy. In March 1939, Germany invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it into the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a pro-German client state, the Slovak Republic.[55] Hitler also delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania on 20 March 1939, forcing the concession of the Klaipėda Region, formerly the German Memelland.[56] German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (right) and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, 23 August 1939 Greatly alarmed and with Hitler making further demands on the Free City of Danzig, the United Kingdom and France guaranteed their support for Polish independence; when Italy conquered Albania in April 1939, the same guarantee was extended to the Kingdoms of Romania and Greece.[57] Shortly after the Franco-British pledge to Poland, Germany and Italy formalised their own alliance with the Pact of Steel.[58] Hitler accused the United Kingdom and Poland of trying to "encircle" Germany and renounced the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact.[59] The situation reached a general crisis in late August as German troops continued to mobilise against the Polish border. On 23 August, when tripartite negotiations about a military alliance between France, the United Kingdom and Soviet Union stalled,[60] the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany.[61] This pact had a secret protocol that defined German and Soviet "spheres of influence" (western Poland and Lithuania for Germany; eastern Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia for the Soviet Union), and raised the question of continuing Polish independence.[62] The pact neutralised the possibility of Soviet opposition to a campaign against Poland and assured that Germany would not have to face the prospect of a two-front war, as it had in World War I. Immediately after that, Hitler ordered the attack to proceed on 26 August, but upon hearing that the United Kingdom had concluded a formal mutual assistance pact with Poland and that Italy would maintain neutrality, he decided to delay it.[63] In response to British requests for direct negotiations to avoid war, Germany made demands on Poland, which only served as a pretext to worsen relations.[64] On 29 August, Hitler demanded that a Polish plenipotentiary immediately travel to Berlin to negotiate the handover of Danzig, and to allow a plebiscite in the Polish Corridor in which the German minority would vote on secession.[64] The Poles refused to comply with the German demands, and on the night of 30–31 August in a confrontational meeting with the British ambassador Nevile Henderson, Ribbentrop declared that Germany considered its claims rejected.[65] Course of the war For a chronological guide, see Timeline of World War II. See also: Diplomatic history of World War II War breaks out in Europe (1939–40) Main article: European theatre of World War II Soldiers of the German Wehrmacht tearing down the border crossing into Poland, 1 September 1939 On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland after having staged several false flag border incidents as a pretext to initiate the invasion.[66] The first German attack of the war came against the Polish defenses at Westerplatte.[67] The United Kingdom responded with an ultimatum to Germany to cease military operations, and on 3 September, after the ultimatum was ignored, Britain and France declared war on Germany,[68] followed by Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada. During the Phoney War period, the alliance provided no direct military support to Poland, outside of a cautious French probe into the Saarland.[69] The Western Allies also began a naval blockade of Germany, which aimed to damage the country's economy and the war effort.[70] Germany responded by ordering U-boat warfare against Allied merchant and warships, which would later escalate into the Battle of the Atlantic.[71] Soldiers of the Polish Army during the defence of Poland, September 1939 On 8 September, German troops reached the suburbs of Warsaw. The Polish counter offensive to the west halted the German advance for several days, but it was outflanked and encircled by the Wehrmacht. Remnants of the Polish army broke through to besieged Warsaw. On 17 September 1939, two days after signing a cease-fire with Japan, the Soviet Union invaded Poland[72] under the pretext that the Polish state had ostensibly ceased to exist.[73] On 27 September, the Warsaw garrison surrendered to the Germans, and the last large operational unit of the Polish Army surrendered on 6 October. Despite the military defeat, Poland never surrendered; instead, it formed the Polish government-in-exile and a clandestine state apparatus remained in occupied Poland.[74] A significant part of Polish military personnel evacuated to Romania and Latvia; many of them later fought against the Axis in other theatres of the war.[75] Germany annexed the western and occupied the central part of Poland, and the Soviet Union annexed its eastern part; small shares of Polish territory were transferred to Lithuania and Slovakia. On 6 October, Hitler made a public peace overture to the United Kingdom and France but said that the future of Poland was to be determined exclusively by Germany and the Soviet Union. The proposal was rejected,[65] and Hitler ordered an immediate offensive against France,[76] which was postponed until the spring of 1940 due to bad weather.[77][78][79] Finnish machine gun nest aimed at Soviet Red Army positions during the Winter War, February 1940 After the outbreak of war in Poland, Stalin threatened Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with military invasion, forcing the three Baltic countries to sign pacts that stipulated the creation of Soviet military bases in these countries. In October 1939, significant Soviet military contingents were moved there.[80][81][82] Finland refused to sign a similar pact and rejected ceding part of its territory to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union invaded Finland in November 1939,[83] and the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations.[84] Despite overwhelming numerical superiority, Soviet military success during the Winter War was modest,[85] and the Finno-Soviet war ended in March 1940 with some Finnish concessions of territory.[86] In June 1940, the Soviet Union occupied the entire territories of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,[81] and the Romanian regions of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region. In August 1940, Hitler imposed the Second Vienna Award on Romania which led to the transfer of Northern Transylvania to Hungary.[87] In September 1940, Bulgaria demanded Southern Dobruja from Romania with German and Italian support, leading to the Treaty of Craiova.[88] The loss of one-third of Romania's 1939 territory caused a coup against King Carol II, turning Romania into a fascist dictatorship under Marshal Ion Antonescu with a course set firmly towards the Axis in the hopes of a German guarantee.[89] Meanwhile, Nazi-Soviet political rapprochement and economic co-operation[90][91] gradually stalled,[92][93] and both states began preparations for war.[94] Western Europe (1940–41) Main article: Western Front (World War II) German advance into Belgium and Northern France, 10 May-4 June 1940, swept past the Maginot Line (shown in dark red) In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to protect shipments of iron ore from Sweden, which the Allies were attempting to cut off.[95] Denmark capitulated after a few hours, and Norway was conquered within two months[96] despite Allied support. British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the resignation of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who was replaced by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940.[97] On the same day, Germany launched an offensive against France. To circumvent the strong Maginot Line fortifications on the Franco-German border, Germany directed its attack at the neutral nations of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.[98] The Germans carried out a flanking manoeuvre through the Ardennes region,[99] which was mistakenly perceived by Allies as an impenetrable natural barrier against armoured vehicles.[100][101] By successfully implementing new Blitzkrieg tactics, the Wehrmacht rapidly advanced to the Channel and cut off the Allied forces in Belgium, trapping the bulk of the Allied armies in a cauldron on the Franco-Belgian border near Lille. The United Kingdom was able to evacuate a significant number of Allied troops from the continent by early June, although abandoning almost all their equipment.[102] On 10 June, Italy invaded France, declaring war on both France and the United Kingdom.[103] The Germans turned south against the weakened French army, and Paris fell to them on 14 June. Eight days later France signed an armistice with Germany; it was divided into German and Italian occupation zones,[104] and an unoccupied rump state under the Vichy Regime, which, though officially neutral, was generally aligned with Germany. France kept its fleet, which the United Kingdom attacked on 3 July in an attempt to prevent its seizure by Germany.[105] London seen from St. Paul's Cathedral after the German Blitz, 29 December 1940 The air Battle of Britain[106] began in early July with Luftwaffe attacks on shipping and harbours.[107] The United Kingdom rejected Hitler's peace offer,[108] and the German air superiority campaign started in August but failed to defeat RAF Fighter Command, forcing the indefinite postponement of the proposed German invasion of Britain. The German strategic bombing offensive intensified with night attacks on London and other cities in the Blitz, but failed to significantly disrupt the British war effort[107] and largely ended in May 1941.[109] Using newly captured French ports, the German Navy enjoyed success against an over-extended Royal Navy, using U-boats against British shipping in the Atlantic.[110] The British Home Fleet scored a significant victory on 27 May 1941 by sinking the German battleship Bismarck.[111] In November 1939, the United States was taking measures to assist China and the Western Allies and amended the Neutrality Act to allow "cash and carry" purchases by the Allies.[112] In 1940, following the German capture of Paris, the size of the United States Navy was significantly increased. In September the United States further agreed to a trade of American destroyers for British bases.[113] Still, a large majority of the American public continued to oppose any direct military intervention in the conflict well into 1941.[114] In December 1940 Roosevelt accused Hitler of planning world conquest and ruled out any negotiations as useless, calling for the United States to become an "arsenal of democracy" and promoting Lend-Lease programmes of aid to support the British war effort.[108] The United States started strategic planning to prepare for a full-scale offensive against Germany.[115] At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact formally united Japan, Italy, and Germany as the Axis powers. The Tripartite Pact stipulated that any country, with the exception of the Soviet Union, which attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all three.[116] The Axis expanded in November 1940 when Hungary, Slovakia and Romania joined.[117] Romania and Hungary later made major contributions to the Axis war against the Soviet Union, in Romania's case partially to recapture territory ceded to the Soviet Union.[118] Mediterranean (1940–41) Main article: Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of World War II Soldiers of the British Commonwealth forces from the Australian Army's 9th Division during the siege of Tobruk; North African campaign, September 1941 In early June 1940, the Italian Regia Aeronautica attacked and besieged Malta, a British possession. From late summer to early autumn, Italy conquered British Somaliland and made an incursion into British-held Egypt. In October, Italy attacked Greece, but the attack was repulsed with heavy Italian casualties; the campaign ended within months with minor territorial changes.[119] Germany started preparation for an invasion of the Balkans to assist Italy, to prevent the British from gaining a foothold there, which would be a potential threat for Romanian oil fields, and to strike against the British dominance of the Mediterranean.[120] In December 1940, British Empire forces began counter-offensives against Italian forces in Egypt and Italian East Africa.[121] The offensives were highly successful; by early February 1941, Italy had lost control of eastern Libya, and large numbers of Italian troops had been taken prisoner. The Italian Navy also suffered significant defeats, with the Royal Navy putting three Italian battleships out of commission by means of a carrier attack at Taranto, and neutralising several more warships at the Battle of Cape Matapan.[122] German Panzer III of the Afrika Korps advancing across the North African desert, April-May 1941 Italian defeats prompted Germany to deploy an expeditionary force to North Africa and at the end of March 1941, Rommel's Afrika Korps launched an offensive which drove back the Commonwealth forces.[123] In under a month, Axis forces advanced to western Egypt and besieged the port of Tobruk.[124] By late March 1941, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact; however, the Yugoslav government was overthrown two days later by pro-British nationalists. Germany responded with simultaneous invasions of both Yugoslavia and Greece, commencing on 6 April 1941; both nations were forced to surrender within the month.[125] The airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete at the end of May completed the German conquest of the Balkans.[126] Although the Axis victory was swift, bitter and large-scale partisan warfare subsequently broke out against the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, which continued until the end of the war.[127] In the Middle East in May, Commonwealth forces quashed an uprising in Iraq which had been supported by German aircraft from bases within Vichy-controlled Syria.[128] Between June and July, they invaded and occupied the French possessions Syria and Lebanon, with the assistance of the Free French.[129] Axis attack on the Soviet Union (1941) Main article: Eastern Front (World War II) European theatre of World War II animation map, 1939–1945 – Red: Western Allies and the Soviet Union after 1941; Green: Soviet Union before 1941; Blue: Axis powers With the situation in Europe and Asia relatively stable, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union made preparations for war. With the Soviets wary of mounting tensions with Germany and the Japanese planning to take advantage of the European War by seizing resource-rich European possessions in Southeast Asia, the two powers signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941.[130] By contrast, the Germans were steadily making preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union, massing forces on the Soviet border.[131] Hitler believed that the United Kingdom's refusal to end the war was based on the hope that the United States and the Soviet Union would enter the war against Germany sooner or later.[132] On 31 July 1940 Hitler decided that the Soviet Union should be eliminated and aimed for the conquest of Ukraine, the Baltic states and Byelorussia.[133] However, other senior German officials like Ribbentrop saw an opportunity to create a Euro-Asian bloc against the British Empire by inviting the Soviet Union into the Tripartite Pact.[134] In November 1940, negotiations took place to determine if the Soviet Union would join the pact. The Soviets showed some interest but asked for concessions from Finland, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Japan that Germany considered unacceptable. On 18 December 1940, Hitler issued the directive to prepare for an invasion of the Soviet Union.[135] German soldiers during the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Axis powers, 1941 On 22 June 1941, Germany, supported by Italy and Romania, invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, with Germany accusing the Soviets of plotting against them. They were joined shortly by Finland and Hungary.[136] The primary targets of this surprise offensive[137] were the Baltic region, Moscow and Ukraine, with the ultimate goal of ending the 1941 campaign near the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, from the Caspian to the White Seas. Hitler's objectives were to eliminate the Soviet Union as a military power, exterminate Communism, generate Lebensraum ("living space")[138] by dispossessing the native population[139] and guarantee access to the strategic resources needed to defeat Germany's remaining rivals.[140] Although the Red Army was preparing for strategic counter-offensives before the war,[141] Operation Barbarossa forced the Soviet supreme command to adopt a strategic defence. During the summer, the Axis made significant gains into Soviet territory, inflicting immense losses in both personnel and materiel. By mid-August, however, the German Army High Command decided to suspend the offensive of a considerably depleted Army Group Centre, and to divert the 2nd Panzer Group to reinforce troops advancing towards central Ukraine and Leningrad.[142] The Kiev offensive was overwhelmingly successful, resulting in encirclement and elimination of four Soviet armies, and made possible further advance into Crimea and industrially developed Eastern Ukraine (the First Battle of Kharkov).[143] Soviet civilians leaving destroyed houses after a German bombardment during the Battle of Leningrad, 10 December 1942 The diversion of three quarters of the Axis troops and the majority of their air forces from France and the central Mediterranean to the Eastern Front[144] prompted the United Kingdom to reconsider its grand strategy.[145] In July, the UK and the Soviet Union formed a military alliance against Germany[146] and in August, the United Kingdom and the United States jointly issued the Atlantic Charter, which outlined British and American goals for the post-war world.[147] In late August the British and Soviets invaded neutral Iran to secure the Persian Corridor, Iran's oil fields, and preempt any Axis advances through Iran toward the Baku oil fields or India.[148] By October, Axis operational objectives in Ukraine and the Baltic region were achieved, with only the sieges of Leningrad[149] and Sevastopol continuing.[150] A major offensive against Moscow was renewed; after two months of fierce battles in increasingly harsh weather, the German army almost reached the outer suburbs of Moscow, where the exhausted troops[151] were forced to suspend their offensive.[152] Large territorial gains were made by Axis forces, but their campaign had failed to achieve its main objectives: two key cities remained in Soviet hands, the Soviet capability to resist was not broken, and the Soviet Union retained a considerable part of its military potential. The blitzkrieg phase of the war in Europe had ended.[153] By early December, freshly mobilised reserves[154] allowed the Soviets to achieve numerical parity with Axis troops.[155] This, as well as intelligence data which established that a minimal number of Soviet troops in the East would be sufficient to deter any attack by the Japanese Kwantung Army,[156] allowed the Soviets to begin a massive counter-offensive that started on 5 December all along the front and pushed German troops 100–250 kilometres (62–155 mi) west.[157] War breaks out in the Pacific (1941) Main article: Pacific War Following the Japanese false flag Mukden Incident in 1931, the Japanese shelling of the American gunboat USS Panay in 1937, and the 1937–38 Nanjing Massacre, Japanese-American relations deteriorated. In 1939, the United States notified Japan that it would not be extending its trade treaty and American public opinion opposing Japanese expansionism led to a series of economic sanctions, the Export Control Acts, which banned U.S. exports of chemicals, minerals and military parts to Japan and increased economic pressure on the Japanese regime.[108][158][159] During 1939 Japan launched its first attack against Changsha, a strategically important Chinese city, but was repulsed by late September.[160] Despite several offensives by both sides, the war between China and Japan was stalemated by 1940. To increase pressure on China by blocking supply routes, and to better position Japanese forces in the event of a war with the Western powers, Japan invaded and occupied northern Indochina in September 1940.[161] Japanese soldiers entering Hong Kong, 8 December 1941 Chinese nationalist forces launched a large-scale counter-offensive in early 1940. In August, Chinese communists launched an offensive in Central China; in retaliation, Japan instituted harsh measures in occupied areas to reduce human and material resources for the communists.[162] The continued antipathy between Chinese communist and nationalist forces culminated in armed clashes in January 1941, effectively ending their co-operation.[163] In March, the Japanese 11th army attacked the headquarters of the Chinese 19th army but was repulsed during Battle of Shanggao.[164][unreliable source?] In September, Japan attempted to take the city of Changsha again and clashed with Chinese nationalist forces.[165][unreliable source?] German successes in Europe encouraged Japan to increase pressure on European governments in Southeast Asia. The Dutch government agreed to provide Japan with some oil supplies from the Dutch East Indies, but negotiations for additional access to their resources ended in failure in June 1941.[166] In July 1941 Japan sent troops to southern Indochina, thus threatening British and Dutch possessions in the Far East. The United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western governments reacted to this move with a freeze on Japanese assets and a total oil embargo.[167][168] At the same time, Japan was planning an invasion of the Soviet Far East, intending to capitalise off the German invasion in the west, but abandoned the operation after the sanctions.[169] Since early 1941 the United States and Japan had been engaged in negotiations in an attempt to improve their strained relations and end the war in China. During these negotiations, Japan advanced a number of proposals which were dismissed by the Americans as inadequate.[170] At the same time the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands engaged in secret discussions for the joint defence of their territories, in the event of a Japanese attack against any of them.[171] Roosevelt reinforced the Philippines (an American protectorate scheduled for independence in 1946) and warned Japan that the United States would react to Japanese attacks against any "neighboring countries".[171] The USS Arizona was a total loss in the Japanese surprise air attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Sunday 7 December 1941. Frustrated at the lack of progress and feeling the pinch of the American–British–Dutch sanctions, Japan prepared for war. Emperor Hirohito, after initial hesitation about Japan's chances of victory,[172] began to favour Japan's entry into the war.[173] As a result, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe resigned.[174][175] Hirohito refused the recommendation to appoint Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni in his place, choosing War Minister Hideki Tojo instead.[176] On 3 November, Nagano explained in detail the plan of the attack on Pearl Harbor to the Emperor.[177] On 5 November, Hirohito approved in imperial conference the operations plan for the war.[178] On 20 November, the new government presented an interim proposal as its final offer. It called for the end of American aid to China and for lifting the embargo on the supply of oil and other resources to Japan. In exchange, Japan promised not to launch any attacks in Southeast Asia and to withdraw its forces from southern Indochina.[170] The American counter-proposal of 26 November required that Japan evacuate all of China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with all Pacific powers.[179] That meant Japan was essentially forced to choose between abandoning its ambitions in China, or seizing the natural resources it needed in the Dutch East Indies by force;[180][181] the Japanese military did not consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil embargo an unspoken declaration of war.[182] Japan planned to seize European colonies in Asia to create a large defensive perimeter stretching into the Central Pacific. The Japanese would then be free to exploit the resources of Southeast Asia while exhausting the over-stretched Allies by fighting a defensive war.[183][184] To prevent American intervention while securing the perimeter, it was further planned to neutralise the United States Pacific Fleet and the American military presence in the Philippines from the outset.[185] On 7 December 1941 (8 December in Asian time zones), Japan attacked British and American holdings with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific.[186] These included an attack on the American fleets at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, landings in Malaya,[186] Thailand and the Battle of Hong Kong.[187] The Japanese invasion of Thailand led to Thailand's decision to ally itself with Japan and the other Japanese attacks led the United States, United Kingdom, China, Australia, and several other states to formally declare war on Japan, whereas the Soviet Union, being heavily involved in large-scale hostilities with European Axis countries, maintained its neutrality agreement with Japan.[188] Germany, followed by the other Axis states, declared war on the United States[189] in solidarity with Japan, citing as justification the American attacks on German war vessels that had been ordered by Roosevelt.[136][190] Axis advance stalls (1942–43) US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill seated at the Casablanca Conference, January 1943 On 1 January 1942, the Allied Big Four[191]—the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom and the United States—and 22 smaller or exiled governments issued the Declaration by United Nations, thereby affirming the Atlantic Charter,[192] and agreeing not to sign a separate peace with the Axis powers.[193] During 1942, Allied officials debated on the appropriate grand strategy to pursue. All agreed that defeating Germany was the primary objective. The Americans favoured a straightforward, large-scale attack on Germany through France. The Soviets were also demanding a second front. The British, on the other hand, argued that military operations should target peripheral areas to wear out German strength, leading to increasing demoralisation, and bolster resistance forces. Germany itself would be subject to a heavy bombing campaign. An offensive against Germany would then be launched primarily by Allied armour without using large-scale armies.[194] Eventually, the British persuaded the Americans that a landing in France was infeasible in 1942 and they should instead focus on driving the Axis out of North Africa.[195] At the Casablanca Conference in early 1943, the Allies reiterated the statements issued in the 1942 Declaration and demanded the unconditional surrender of their enemies. The British and Americans agreed to continue to press the initiative in the Mediterranean by invading Sicily to fully secure the Mediterranean supply routes.[196] Although the British argued for further operations in the Balkans to bring Turkey into the war, in May 1943, the Americans extracted a British commitment to limit Allied operations in the Mediterranean to an invasion of the Italian mainland and to invade France in 1944.[197] Pacific (1942–43) Map of Japanese military advances through mid-1942 By the end of April 1942, Japan and its ally Thailand had almost fully conquered Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, and Rabaul, inflicting severe losses on Allied troops and taking a large number of prisoners.[198] Despite stubborn resistance by Filipino and US forces, the Philippine Commonwealth was eventually captured in May 1942, forcing its government into exile.[199] On 16 April, in Burma, 7,000 British soldiers were encircled by the Japanese 33rd Division during the Battle of Yenangyaung and rescued by the Chinese 38th Division.[200] Japanese forces also achieved naval victories in the South China Sea, Java Sea and Indian Ocean,[201] and bombed the Allied naval base at Darwin, Australia. In January 1942, the only Allied success against Japan was a Chinese victory at Changsha.[202] These easy victories over the unprepared US and European opponents left Japan overconfident, as well as overextended.[203] In early May 1942, Japan initiated operations to capture Port Moresby by amphibious assault and thus sever communications and supply lines between the United States and Australia. The planned invasion was thwarted when an Allied task force, centred on two American fleet carriers, fought Japanese naval forces to a draw in the Battle of the Coral Sea.[204] Japan's next plan, motivated by the earlier Doolittle Raid, was to seize Midway Atoll and lure American carriers into battle to be eliminated; as a diversion, Japan would also send forces to occupy the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.[205] In mid-May, Japan started the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign in China, with the goal of inflicting retribution on the Chinese who aided the surviving American airmen in the Doolittle Raid by destroying Chinese air bases and fighting against the Chinese 23rd and 32nd Army Groups.[206][207] In early June, Japan put its operations into action, but the Americans, having broken Japanese naval codes in late May, were fully aware of the plans and order of battle, and used this knowledge to achieve a decisive victory at Midway over the Imperial Japanese Navy.[208] US Marines during the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the Pacific theatre, 1942 With its capacity for aggressive action greatly diminished as a result of the Midway battle, Japan chose to focus on a belated attempt to capture Port Moresby by an overland campaign in the Territory of Papua.[209] The Americans planned a counter-attack against Japanese positions in the southern Solomon Islands, primarily Guadalcanal, as a first step towards capturing Rabaul, the main Japanese base in Southeast Asia.[210] Both plans started in July, but by mid-September, the Battle for Guadalcanal took priority for the Japanese, and troops in New Guinea were ordered to withdraw from the Port Moresby area to the northern part of the island, where they faced Australian and United States troops in the Battle of Buna–Gona.[211] Guadalcanal soon became a focal point for both sides with heavy commitments of troops and ships in the battle for Guadalcanal. By the start of 1943, the Japanese were defeated on the island and withdrew their troops.[212] In Burma, Commonwealth forces mounted two operations. The first, an offensive into the Arakan region in late 1942, went disastrously, forcing a retreat back to India by May 1943.[213] The second was the insertion of irregular forces behind Japanese front-lines in February which, by the end of April, had achieved mixed results.[214] Eastern Front (1942–43) Red Army soldiers on the counterattack during the Battle of Stalingrad, February 1943 Despite considerable losses, in early 1942 Germany and its allies stopped a major Soviet offensive in central and southern Russia, keeping most territorial gains they had achieved during the previous year.[215] In May, the Germans defeated Soviet offensives in the Kerch Peninsula and at Kharkov,[216] and then launched their main summer offensive against southern Russia in June 1942, to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus and occupy the Kuban steppe, while maintaining positions on the northern and central areas of the front. The Germans split Army Group South into two groups: Army Group A advanced to the lower Don River and struck south-east to the Caucasus, while Army Group B headed towards the Volga River. The Soviets decided to make their stand at Stalingrad on the Volga.[217] By mid-November, the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad in bitter street fighting. The Soviets began their second winter counter-offensive, starting with an encirclement of German forces at Stalingrad,[218] and an assault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow, though the latter failed disastrously.[219] By early February 1943, the German Army had taken tremendous losses; German troops at Stalingrad had been defeated,[220] and the front-line had been pushed back beyond its position before the summer offensive. In mid-February, after the Soviet push had tapered off, the Germans launched another attack on Kharkov, creating a salient in their front line around the Soviet city of Kursk.[221] Western Europe/Atlantic and Mediterranean (1942–43) American 8th Air Force Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombing raid on the Focke-Wulf factory in Germany, 9 October 1943 Exploiting poor American naval command decisions, the German navy ravaged Allied shipping off the American Atlantic coast.[222] By November 1941, Commonwealth forces had launched a counter-offensive, Operation Crusader, in North Africa, and reclaimed all the gains the Germans and Italians had made.[223] In North Africa, the Germans launched an offensive in January, pushing the British back to positions at the Gazala line by early February,[224] followed by a temporary lull in combat which Germany used to prepare for their upcoming offensives.[225] Concerns the Japanese might use bases in Vichy-held Madagascar caused the British to invade the island in early May 1942.[226] An Axis offensive in Libya forced an Allied retreat deep inside Egypt until Axis forces were stopped at El Alamein.[227] On the Continent, raids of Allied commandos on strategic targets, culminating in the disastrous Dieppe Raid,[228] demonstrated the Western Allies' inability to launch an invasion of continental Europe without much better preparation, equipment, and operational security.[229][page needed] In August 1942, the Allies succeeded in repelling a second attack against El Alamein[230] and, at a high cost, managed to deliver desperately needed supplies to the besieged Malta.[231] A few months later, the Allies commenced an attack of their own in Egypt, dislodging the Axis forces and beginning a drive west across Libya.[232] This attack was followed up shortly after by Anglo-American landings in French North Africa, which resulted in the region joining the Allies.[233] Hitler responded to the French colony's defection by ordering the occupation of Vichy France;[233] although Vichy forces did not resist this violation of the armistice, they managed to scuttle their fleet to prevent its capture by German forces.[233][234] The Axis forces in Africa withdrew into Tunisia, which was conquered by the Allies in May 1943.[233][235] In June 1943, the British and Americans began a strategic bombing campaign against Germany with a goal to disrupt the war economy, reduce morale, and "de-house" the civilian population.[236] The firebombing of Hamburg was among the first attacks in this campaign, inflicting significant casualties and considerable losses on infrastructure of this important industrial centre.[237] Allies gain momentum (1943–44) U.S. Navy SBD-5 scout plane flying patrol over USS Washington and USS Lexington during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, 1943 After the Guadalcanal Campaign, the Allies initiated several operations against Japan in the Pacific. In May 1943, Canadian and US forces were sent to eliminate Japanese forces from the Aleutians.[238] Soon after, the United States, with support from Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islander forces, began major ground, sea and air operations to isolate Rabaul by capturing surrounding islands, and breach the Japanese Central Pacific perimeter at the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.[239] By the end of March 1944, the Allies had completed both of these objectives and had also neutralised the major Japanese base at Truk in the Caroline Islands. In April, the Allies launched an operation to retake Western New Guinea.[240] In the Soviet Union, both the Germans and the Soviets spent the spring and early summer of 1943 preparing for large offensives in central Russia. On 5 July 1943, Germany attacked Soviet forces around the Kursk Bulge. Within a week, German forces had exhausted themselves against the Soviets' deeply echeloned and well-constructed defences,[241] and for the first time in the war, Hitler cancelled an operation before it had achieved tactical or operational success.[242] This decision was partially affected by the Western Allies' invasion of Sicily launched on 9 July, which, combined with previous Italian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini later that month.[243] Red Army troops in a counter-offensive on German positions at the Battle of Kursk, July 1943 On 12 July 1943, the Soviets launched their own counter-offensives, thereby dispelling any chance of German victory or even stalemate in the east. The Soviet victory at Kursk marked the end of German superiority,[244] giving the Soviet Union the initiative on the Eastern Front.[245][246] The Germans tried to stabilise their eastern front along the hastily fortified Panther–Wotan line, but the Soviets broke through it at Smolensk and by the Lower Dnieper Offensive.[247] On 3 September 1943, the Western Allies invaded the Italian mainland, following Italy's armistice with the Allies and the ensuing German occupation of Italy.[248] Germany, with the help of fascists, responded to the Armistice by disarming Italian forces that were in many places without superior orders, seizing military control of Italian areas,[249] and creating a series of defensive lines.[250] German special forces then rescued Mussolini, who then soon established a new client state in German-occupied Italy named the Italian Social Republic,[251] causing an Italian civil war. The Western Allies fought through several lines until reaching the main German defensive line in mid-November.[252] German operations in the Atlantic also suffered. By May 1943, as Allied counter-measures became increasingly effective, the resulting sizeable German submarine losses forced a temporary halt of the German Atlantic naval campaign.[253] In November 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and then with Joseph Stalin in Tehran.[254] The former conference determined the post-war return of Japanese territory[255] and the military planning for the Burma campaign,[256] while the latter included agreement that the Western Allies would invade Europe in 1944 and that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan within three months of Germany's defeat.[257] Ruins of the Benedictine monastery, during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Italian Campaign, May 1944 From November 1943, during the seven-week Battle of Changde, the Chinese forced Japan to fight a costly war of attrition, while awaiting Allied relief.[258][259][260][unreliable source?] In January 1944, the Allies launched a series of attacks in Italy against the line at Monte Cassino and tried to outflank it with landings at Anzio.[261] On 27 January 1944, Soviet troops launched a major offensive that expelled German forces from the Leningrad region, thereby ending the most lethal siege in history.[262] The following Soviet offensive was halted on the pre-war Estonian border by the German Army Group North aided by Estonians hoping to re-establish national independence. This delay slowed subsequent Soviet operations in the Baltic Sea region.[263] By late May 1944, the Soviets had liberated Crimea, largely expelled Axis forces from Ukraine, and made incursions into Romania, which were repulsed by the Axis troops.[264] The Allied offensives in Italy had succeeded and, at the expense of allowing several German divisions to retreat, on 4 June Rome was captured.[265] The Allies had mixed success in mainland Asia. In March 1944, the Japanese launched the first of two invasions, an operation against Allied positions in Assam, India,[266] and soon besieged Commonwealth positions at Imphal and Kohima.[267] In May 1944, British and Indian forces mounted a counter-offensive that drove Japanese troops back to Burma by July,[267] and Chinese forces that had invaded northern Burma in late 1943 besieged Japanese troops in Myitkyina.[268] The second Japanese invasion of China aimed to destroy China's main fighting forces, secure railways between Japanese-held territory and capture Allied airfields.[269] By June, the Japanese had conquered the province of Henan and begun a new attack on Changsha.[270] Allies close in (1944) American troops approaching Omaha Beach during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944 On 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day), after three years of Soviet pressure,[271] the Western Allies invaded northern France. After reassigning several Allied divisions from Italy, they also attacked southern France.[272] These landings were successful and led to the defeat of the German Army units in France. Paris was liberated on 25 August by the local resistance assisted by the Free French Forces, both led by General Charles de Gaulle,[273] and the Western Allies continued to push back German forces in western Europe during the latter part of the year. An attempt to advance into northern Germany spearheaded by a major airborne operation in the Netherlands failed.[274] After that, the Western Allies slowly pushed into Germany, but failed to cross the Rur river in a large offensive. In Italy, Allied advance also slowed due to the last major German defensive line.[275] German SS soldiers from the Dirlewanger Brigade, tasked with suppressing the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation, August 1944 On 22 June, the Soviets launched a strategic offensive in Belarus ("Operation Bagration") that almost completely destroyed the German Army Group Centre.[276] Soon after that, another Soviet strategic offensive forced German troops from Western Ukraine and Eastern Poland. The Soviets formed the Polish Committee of National Liberation to control territory in Poland and combat the Polish Armia Krajowa; the Soviet Red Army remained in the Praga district on the other side of the Vistula and watched passively as the Germans quelled the Warsaw Uprising initiated by the Armia Krajowa.[277] The national uprising in Slovakia was also quelled by the Germans.[278] The Soviet Red Army's strategic offensive in eastern Romania cut off and destroyed the considerable German troops there and triggered a successful coup d'état in Romania and in Bulgaria, followed by those countries' shift to the Allied side.[279] In September 1944, Soviet troops advanced into Yugoslavia and forced the rapid withdrawal of German Army Groups E and F in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia to rescue them from being cut off.[280] By this point, the Communist-led Partisans under Marshal Josip Broz Tito, who had led an increasingly successful guerrilla campaign against the occupation since 1941, controlled much of the territory of Yugoslavia and engaged in delaying efforts against German forces further south. In northern Serbia, the Soviet Red Army, with limited support from Bulgarian forces, assisted the Partisans in a joint liberation of the capital city of Belgrade on 20 October. A few days later, the Soviets launched a massive assault against German-occupied Hungary that lasted until the fall of Budapest in February 1945.[281] Unlike impressive Soviet victories in the Balkans, bitter Finnish resistance to the Soviet offensive in the Karelian Isthmus denied the Soviets occupation of Finland and led to a Soviet-Finnish armistice on relatively mild conditions,[282] although Finland was forced to fight their former ally Germany.[283] General Douglas MacArthur returns to the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte, 20 October 1944 By the start of July 1944, Commonwealth forces in Southeast Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges in Assam, pushing the Japanese back to the Chindwin River[284] while the Chinese captured Myitkyina. In September 1944, Chinese forces captured Mount Song and reopened the Burma Road.[285] In China, the Japanese had more successes, having finally captured Changsha in mid-June and the city of Hengyang by early August.[286] Soon after, they invaded the province of Guangxi, winning major engagements against Chinese forces at Guilin and Liuzhou by the end of November[287] and successfully linking up their forces in China and Indochina by mid-December.[288] In the Pacific, US forces continued to press back the Japanese perimeter. In mid-June 1944, they began their offensive against the Mariana and Palau islands and decisively defeated Japanese forces in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. These defeats led to the resignation of the Japanese Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo, and provided the United States with air bases to launch intensive heavy bomber attacks on the Japanese home islands. In late October, American forces invaded the Filipino island of Leyte; soon after, Allied naval forces scored another large victory in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history.[289] Axis collapse and Allied victory (1944–45) Yalta Conference held in February 1945, with Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin On 16 December 1944, Germany made a last attempt on the Western Front by using most of its remaining reserves to launch a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes and along the French-German border to split the Western Allies, encircle large portions of Western Allied troops and capture their primary supply port at Antwerp to prompt a political settlement.[290] By 16 January 1945, the offensive had been repulsed with no strategic objectives fulfilled.[290] In Italy, the Western Allies remained stalemated at the German defensive line. In mid-January 1945, the Red Army attacked in Poland, pushing from the Vistula to the Oder river in Germany, and overran East Prussia.[291] On 4 February Soviet, British, and US leaders met for the Yalta Conference. They agreed on the occupation of post-war Germany, and on when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan.[292] In February, the Soviets entered Silesia and Pomerania, while Western Allies entered western Germany and closed to the Rhine river. By March, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine north and south of the Ruhr, encircling the German Army Group B.[293] In early March, in an attempt to protect its last oil reserves in Hungary and to retake Budapest, Germany launched its last major offensive against Soviet troops near Lake Balaton. In two weeks, the offensive had been repulsed, the Soviets advanced to Vienna, and captured the city. In early April, Soviet troops captured Königsberg, while the Western Allies finally pushed forward in Italy and swept across western Germany capturing Hamburg and Nuremberg. American and Soviet forces met at the Elbe river on 25 April, leaving several unoccupied pockets in southern Germany and around Berlin. Ruins of the Reichstag in Berlin, 3 June 1945. Soviet troops stormed and captured Berlin in late April.[294] In Italy, German forces surrendered on 29 April. On 30 April, the Reichstag was captured, signalling the military defeat of Nazi Germany,[295] and the Berlin garrison surrendered on 2 May. Major changes in leadership occurred on both sides during this period. On 12 April, President Roosevelt died and was succeeded by his vice president, Harry S. Truman. Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans on 28 April.[296] On 30 April, Hitler committed suicide in his headquarters, and he was succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels. Total and unconditional surrender in Europe was signed on 7 and 8 May, to be effective by the end of 8 May.[297] German Army Group Centre resisted in Prague until 11 May.[298] In the Pacific theatre, American forces accompanied by the forces of the Philippine Commonwealth advanced in the Philippines, clearing Leyte by the end of April 1945. They landed on Luzon in January 1945 and recaptured Manila in March. Fighting continued on Luzon, Mindanao, and other islands of the Philippines until the end of the war.[299] Meanwhile, the United States Army Air Forces launched a massive firebombing campaign of strategic cities in Japan in an effort to destroy Japanese war industry and civilian morale. A devastating bombing raid on Tokyo of 9–10 March was the deadliest conventional bombing raid in history.[300] Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. In May 1945, Australian troops landed in Borneo, overrunning the oilfields there. British, American, and Chinese forces defeated the Japanese in northern Burma in March, and the British pushed on to reach Rangoon by 3 May.[301] Chinese forces started a counterattack in the Battle of West Hunan that occurred between 6 April and 7 June 1945. American naval and amphibious forces also moved towards Japan, taking Iwo Jima by March, and Okinawa by the end of June.[302] At the same time, a naval blockade by submarines was strangling Japan's economy and drastically reducing its ability to supply overseas forces.[303][304] On 11 July, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. They confirmed earlier agreements about Germany,[305] and the American, British and Chinese governments reiterated the demand for unconditional surrender of Japan, specifically stating that "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction".[306] During this conference, the United Kingdom held its general election, and Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister.[307] The call for unconditional surrender was rejected by the Japanese government, which believed it would be capable of negotiating for more favourable surrender terms.[308] In early August, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Between the two bombings, the Soviets, pursuant to the Yalta agreement, invaded Japanese-held Manchuria and quickly defeated the Kwantung Army, which was the largest Japanese fighting force.[309] These two events persuaded previously adamant Imperial Army leaders to accept surrender terms.[310] The Red Army also captured the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. On the night of 9-10 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced his decision to accept the terms demanded by the Allies in the Potsdam Declaration.[311] On 15 August, the Emperor communicated this decision to the Japanese people through a speech broadcast on the radio ("Gyokuon-hōsō", literally "Jewel Voice Broadcast").[312] On 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered, with the surrender documents finally signed at Tokyo Bay on the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, ending the war.[313] Aftermath Main articles: Aftermath of World War II and Consequences of Nazism Ruins of Warsaw in 1945, after the deliberate destruction of the city by the occupying German forces The Allies established occupation administrations in Austria and Germany, both initially divided between western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, respectively. However, their paths soon diverged. In Germany, the western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union officially ended in 1949, with the respective zones becoming separate countries, West Germany and East Germany. However, in Austria occupation continued until 1955, when a joint settlement between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union permitted the reunification of Austria as a neutral democratic state, officially non-aligned with any political bloc (although in practice having better relations with the Western Allies). A denazification programme in Germany led to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg trials and the removal of ex-Nazis from power, although this policy moved towards amnesty and re-integration of ex-Nazis into West German society.[314] Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war (1937) territory. Among the eastern territories, Silesia, Neumark and most of Pomerania were taken over by Poland,[315] and East Prussia was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union, followed by the expulsion to Germany of the nine million Germans from these provinces,[316][317] as well as three million Germans from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. By the 1950s, one-fifth of West Germans were refugees from the east. The Soviet Union also took over the Polish provinces east of the Curzon line,[318] from which 2 million Poles were expelled;[317][319] north-east Romania,[320][321] parts of eastern Finland,[322] and the three Baltic states were incorporated into the Soviet Union.[323][324] Defendants at the Nuremberg trials, where the Allied forces prosecuted prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity In an effort to maintain world peace,[325] the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on 24 October 1945,[326] and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 as a common standard for all member nations.[327] The great powers that were the victors of the war—France, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States—became the permanent members of the UN's Security Council.[328] The five permanent members remain so to the present, although there have been two seat changes, between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in 1971, and between the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before the war was over.[329] Post-war border changes in Central Europe and creation of the Communist Eastern Bloc Germany had been de facto divided, and two independent states, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany),[330] were created within the borders of Allied and Soviet occupation zones. The rest of Europe was also divided into Western and Soviet spheres of influence.[331] Most eastern and central European countries fell into the Soviet sphere, which led to establishment of Communist-led regimes, with full or partial support of the Soviet occupation authorities. As a result, East Germany,[332] Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Albania[333] became Soviet satellite states. Communist Yugoslavia conducted a fully independent policy, causing tension with the Soviet Union.[334] Post-war division of the world was formalised by two international military alliances, the United States-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.[335] The long period of political tensions and military competition between them, the Cold War, would be accompanied by an unprecedented arms race and number of proxy wars throughout the world.[336] In Asia, the United States led the occupation of Japan and administered Japan's former islands in the Western Pacific, while the Soviets annexed South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.[337] Korea, formerly under Japanese rule, was divided and occupied by the Soviet Union in the North and the United States in the South between 1945 and 1948. Separate republics emerged on both sides of the 38th parallel in 1948, each claiming to be the legitimate government for all of Korea, which led ultimately to the Korean War.[338] David Ben-Gurion proclaiming the Israeli Declaration of Independence at the Independence Hall, 14 May 1948 In China, nationalist and communist forces resumed the civil war in June 1946. Communist forces were victorious and established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, while nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan in 1949.[339] In the Middle East, the Arab rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the creation of Israel marked the escalation of the Arab–Israeli conflict. While European powers attempted to retain some or all of their colonial empires, their losses of prestige and resources during the war rendered this unsuccessful, leading to decolonisation.[340][341] The global economy suffered heavily from the war, although participating nations were affected differently. The United States emerged much richer than any other nation, leading to a baby boom, and by 1950 its gross domestic product per person was much higher than that of any of the other powers, and it dominated the world economy.[342] The UK and US pursued a policy of industrial disarmament in Western Germany in the years 1945–1948.[343] Because of international trade interdependencies this led to European economic stagnation and delayed European recovery for several years.[344][345] At the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, the Allied nations drew up an economic framework for the post-war world. The agreement created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The Bretton Woods system lasted until 1973.[346] Recovery began with the mid-1948 currency reform in Western Germany, and was sped up by the liberalisation of European economic policy that the Marshall Plan (1948–1951) both directly and indirectly caused.[347][348] The post-1948 West German recovery has been called the German economic miracle.[349] Italy also experienced an economic boom[350] and the French economy rebounded.[351] By contrast, the United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin,[352] and although receiving a quarter of the total Marshall Plan assistance, more than any other European country,[353] it continued in relative economic decline for decades.[354] The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and material losses, also experienced rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era.[355] Japan recovered much later.[356] China returned to its pre-war industrial production by 1952.[357] Impact Main article: Historiography of World War II Casualties and war crimes Main article: World War II casualties Further information: List of war crimes committed during World War II World War II deaths Estimates for the total number of casualties in the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded.[358] Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians.[359][360][361] Many of the civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass bombings, disease, and starvation. The Soviet Union alone lost around 27 million people during the war,[362] including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths.[363] A quarter of the total people in the Soviet Union were wounded or killed.[364] Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses, mostly on the Eastern Front and during the final battles in Germany.[365] An estimated 11[366] to 17 million[367] civilians died as a direct or as an indirect result of Hitler's racist policies, including mass killing of around 6 million Jews, along with Roma, homosexuals, at least 1.9 million ethnic Poles[368][369] and millions of other Slavs (including Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), and other ethnic and minority groups.[370][367] Between 1941 and 1945, more than 200,000 ethnic Serbs, along with gypsies and Jews, were persecuted and murdered by the Axis-aligned Croatian Ustaše in Yugoslavia.[371] Concurrently, Muslims and Croats were persecuted and killed by Serb nationalist Chetniks,[372] with an estimated 50,000-68,000 victims (of which 41,000 were civilians).[373] Also, more than 100,000 Poles were massacred by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the Volhynia massacres, between 1943 and 1945.[374] At the same time, about 10,000–15,000 Ukrainians were killed by the Polish Home Army and other Polish units, in reprisal attacks.[375] Bodies of Chinese civilians killed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Nanking Massacre in December 1937 In Asia and the Pacific, the number of people killed by Japanese troops remains contested. According to R.J. Rummel, the Japanese killed between 3 million and more than 10 million people, with the most probable case of almost 6,000,000 people.[376] According to the British historian M. R. D. Foot, civilian deaths are between 10 million and 20 million, whereas Chinese military casualties (killed and wounded) are estimated to be over five million.[377] Other estimates say that up to 30 million people, most of them civilians, were killed.[378][379] The most infamous Japanese atrocity was the Nanking Massacre, in which fifty to three hundred thousand Chinese civilians were raped and murdered.[380] Mitsuyoshi Himeta reported that 2.7 million casualties occurred during the Sankō Sakusen. General Yasuji Okamura implemented the policy in Heipei and Shantung.[381] Axis forces employed biological and chemical weapons. The Imperial Japanese Army used a variety of such weapons during its invasion and occupation of China (see Unit 731)[382][383] and in early conflicts against the Soviets.[384] Both the Germans and the Japanese tested such weapons against civilians,[385] and sometimes on prisoners of war.[386] The Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers,[387] and the imprisonment or execution of thousands of political prisoners by the NKVD, along with mass civilian deportations to Siberia, in the Baltic states and eastern Poland annexed by the Red Army.[388] The mass bombing of cities in Europe and Asia has often been called a war crime, although no positive or specific customary international humanitarian law with respect to aerial warfare existed before or during World War II.[389] The USAAF bombed a total of 67 Japanese cities, killing 393,000 civilians, including from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and destroying 65% of built-up areas.[390] Genocide, concentration camps, and slave labour Main articles: The Holocaust, Nazi concentration camps, Extermination camp, Forced labour under German rule during World War II, Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany, Nazi human experimentation, and Gulag Schutzstaffel (SS) female camp guards removing prisoners' bodies from lorries and carrying them to a mass grave, inside the German Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945 Nazi Germany, under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, was responsible for the Holocaust (which killed approximately 6 million Jews) as well as for killing 2.7 million ethnic Poles[391] and 4 million others who were deemed "unworthy of life" (including the disabled and mentally ill, Soviet prisoners of war, Romani, homosexuals, Freemasons, and Jehovah's Witnesses) as part of a programme of deliberate extermination, in effect becoming a "genocidal state".[392] Soviet POWs were kept in especially unbearable conditions, and 3.6 million Soviet POWs out of 5.7 million died in Nazi camps during the war.[393][394] In addition to concentration camps, death camps were created in Nazi Germany to exterminate people on an industrial scale. Nazi Germany extensively used forced labourers; about 12 million Europeans from German-occupied countries were abducted and used as a slave work force in German industry, agriculture and war economy.[395] The Soviet Gulag became a de facto system of deadly camps during 1942–43, when wartime privation and hunger caused numerous deaths of inmates,[396] including foreign citizens of Poland and other countries occupied in 1939–40 by the Soviet Union, as well as Axis POWs.[397] By the end of the war, most Soviet POWs liberated from Nazi camps and many repatriated civilians were detained in special filtration camps where they were subjected to NKVD evaluation, and 226,127 were sent to the Gulag as real or perceived Nazi collaborators.[398] Prisoner identity photograph taken by the German SS of a Polish Catholic girl who died in Auschwitz. Approximately 230,000 children were held prisoner and used in forced labour and Nazi medical experiments. Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, many of which were used as labour camps, also had high death rates. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East found the death rate of Western prisoners was 27 per cent (for American POWs, 37 per cent),[399] seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.[400] While 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from the United States were released after the surrender of Japan, the number of Chinese released was only 56.[401] At least five million Chinese civilians from northern China and Manchukuo were enslaved between 1935 and 1941 by the East Asia Development Board, or Kōain, for work in mines and war industries. After 1942, the number reached 10 million.[402] In Java, between 4 and 10 million rōmusha (Japanese: "manual labourers"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in Southeast Asia, and only 52,000 were repatriated to Java.[403] Occupation Main articles: German-occupied Europe, Resistance during World War II, Collaboration with the Axis Powers, and Nazi plunder Polish civilians wearing blindfolds photographed just before their execution by German soldiers in Palmiry forest, 1940 In Europe, occupation came under two forms. In Western, Northern, and Central Europe (France, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and the annexed portions of Czechoslovakia) Germany established economic policies through which it collected roughly 69.5 billion reichsmarks (27.8 billion US dollars) by the end of the war; this figure does not include the sizeable plunder of industrial products, military equipment, raw materials and other goods.[404] Thus, the income from occupied nations was over 40 percent of the income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which increased to nearly 40 percent of total German income as the war went on.[405] Soviet partisans hanged by the German army. The Russian Academy of Sciences reported in 1995 civilian victims in the Soviet Union at German hands totalled 13.7 million dead, twenty percent of the 68 million persons in the occupied Soviet Union. In the East, the intended gains of Lebensraum were never attained as fluctuating front-lines and Soviet scorched earth policies denied resources to the German invaders.[406] Unlike in the West, the Nazi racial policy encouraged extreme brutality against what it considered to be the "inferior people" of Slavic descent; most German advances were thus followed by mass executions.[407] Although resistance groups formed in most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper German operations in either the East[408] or the West[409] until late 1943. In Asia, Japan termed nations under its occupation as being part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, essentially a Japanese hegemony which it claimed was for purposes of liberating colonised peoples.[410] Although Japanese forces were sometimes welcomed as liberators from European domination, Japanese war crimes frequently turned local public opinion against them.[411] During Japan's initial conquest, it captured 4,000,000 barrels (640,000 m3) of oil (~550,000 tonnes) left behind by retreating Allied forces; and by 1943, was able to get production in the Dutch East Indies up to 50 million barrels (7,900,000 m3) of oil (~6.8 million tonnes), 76 per cent of its 1940 output rate.[411] Home fronts and production Main articles: Military production during World War II and Home front during World War II Allies to Axis GDP ratio between 1938 and 1945 In Europe, before the outbreak of the war, the Allies had significant advantages in both population and economics. In 1938, the Western Allies (United Kingdom, France, Poland and the British Dominions) had a 30 percent larger population and a 30 percent higher gross domestic product than the European Axis powers (Germany and Italy); if colonies are included, the Allies had more than a 5:1 advantage in population and a nearly 2:1 advantage in GDP.[412] In Asia at the same time, China had roughly six times the population of Japan but only an 89 percent higher GDP; this is reduced to three times the population and only a 38 percent higher GDP if Japanese colonies are included.[412] The United States produced about two-thirds of all the munitions used by the Allies in World War II, including warships, transports, warplanes, artillery, tanks, trucks, and ammunition.[413] Though the Allies' economic and population advantages were largely mitigated during the initial rapid blitzkrieg attacks of Germany and Japan, they became the decisive factor by 1942, after the United States and Soviet Union joined the Allies, as the war largely settled into one of attrition.[414] While the Allies' ability to out-produce the Axis is often attributed[by whom?] to the Allies having more access to natural resources, other factors, such as Germany and Japan's reluctance to employ women in the labour force,[415] Allied strategic bombing,[416] and Germany's late shift to a war economy[417] contributed significantly. Additionally, neither Germany nor Japan planned to fight a protracted war, and had not equipped themselves to do so.[418] To improve their production, Germany and Japan used millions of slave labourers;[419] Germany used about 12 million people, mostly from Eastern Europe,[395] while Japan used more than 18 million people in Far East Asia.[402][403] Advances in technology and warfare Main article: Technology during World War II B-29 Superfortress strategic bombers on the Boeing assembly line in Wichita, Kansas, 1944 Aircraft were used for reconnaissance, as fighters, bombers, and ground-support, and each role was advanced considerably. Innovation included airlift (the capability to quickly move limited high-priority supplies, equipment, and personnel);[420] and of strategic bombing (the bombing of enemy industrial and population centres to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war).[421] Anti-aircraft weaponry also advanced, including defences such as radar and surface-to-air artillery. The use of the jet aircraft was pioneered and, though late introduction meant it had little impact, it led to jets becoming standard in air forces worldwide.[422] Although guided missiles were being developed, they were not advanced enough to reliably target aircraft until some years after the war. Advances were made in nearly every aspect of naval warfare, most notably with aircraft carriers and submarines. Although aeronautical warfare had relatively little success at the start of the war, actions at Taranto, Pearl Harbor, and the Coral Sea established the carrier as the dominant capital ship in place of the battleship.[423][424][425] In the Atlantic, escort carriers proved to be a vital part of Allied convoys, increasing the effective protection radius and helping to close the Mid-Atlantic gap.[426] Carriers were also more economical than battleships because of the relatively low cost of aircraft[427] and their not requiring to be as heavily armoured.[428] Submarines, which had proved to be an effective weapon during the First World War,[429] were anticipated by all sides to be important in the second. The British focused development on anti-submarine weaponry and tactics, such as sonar and convoys, while Germany focused on improving its offensive capability, with designs such as the Type VII submarine and wolfpack tactics.[430][better source needed] Gradually, improving Allied technologies such as the Leigh light, hedgehog, squid, and homing torpedoes proved victorious over the German submarines.[431] A V-2 rocket launched from a fixed site in Peenemünde, 21 June 1943 Land warfare changed from the static front lines of trench warfare of World War I, which had relied on improved artillery that outmatched the speed of both infantry and cavalry, to increased mobility and combined arms. The tank, which had been used predominantly for infantry support in the First World War, had evolved into the primary weapon.[432] In the late 1930s, tank design was considerably more advanced than it had been during World War I,[433] and advances continued throughout the war with increases in speed, armour and firepower.[434][435] At the start of the war, most commanders thought enemy tanks should be met by tanks with superior specifications.[436] This idea was challenged by the poor performance of the relatively light early tank guns against armour, and German doctrine of avoiding tank-versus-tank combat. This, along with Germany's use of combined arms, were among the key elements of their highly successful blitzkrieg tactics across Poland and France.[432] Many means of destroying tanks, including indirect artillery, anti-tank guns (both towed and self-propelled), mines, short-ranged infantry antitank weapons, and other tanks were used.[436] Even with large-scale mechanisation, infantry remained the backbone of all forces,[437] and throughout the war, most infantry were equipped similarly to World War I.[438] The portable machine gun spread, a notable example being the German MG34, and various submachine guns which were suited to close combat in urban and jungle settings.[438] The assault rifle, a late war development incorporating many features of the rifle and submachine gun, became the standard post-war infantry weapon for most armed forces.[439] Nuclear Gadget being raised to the top of the detonation "shot tower", at Alamogordo Bombing Range; Trinity nuclear test, New Mexico, July 1945 Most major belligerents attempted to solve the problems of complexity and security involved in using large codebooks for cryptography by designing ciphering machines, the most well known being the German Enigma machine.[440] Development of SIGINT (signals intelligence) and cryptanalysis enabled the countering process of decryption. Notable examples were the Allied decryption of Japanese naval codes[441] and British Ultra, a pioneering method for decoding Enigma benefiting from information given to the United Kingdom by the Polish Cipher Bureau, which had been decoding early versions of Enigma before the war.[442] Another aspect of military intelligence was the use of deception, which the Allies used to great effect, such as in operations Mincemeat and Bodyguard.[441][443] Other technological and engineering feats achieved during, or as a result of, the war include the world's first programmable computers (Z3, Colossus, and ENIAC), guided missiles and modern rockets, the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear weapons, operations research and the development of artificial harbours and oil pipelines under the English Channel.[444] Penicillin was first mass-produced and used during the war (see Stabilization and mass production of penicillin).[445] See also World War II portal War portal World portal Index of World War II articles Lists of World War II topics Outline of World War II Lists of World War II military equipment
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