World War II?

Question

Was Hiroshima and Nagasaki chosen as bomb targets becuase they were military depots or because many civilians lived there?

but there are sources stating that the bombs were purposefully used on civilians. so what is the truth?

Answer 1

The Americans, first time used in REAL CONDITIONS the atomic bomb and they chosen same REAL targets like Hiroshima and Nagasaki cities.
!!! Have in your mind, any NEW weapon is OK only if it is tested in a real warfare (NOT in a military polygon). This is ...

Answer 2

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were hit for both reasons...they were hit for their civilians for pay back, on pearl harbor, where many of americans died, and yet they chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they where the main ports of manufactury, military, and weaponry. but know this, that the japaness surended, but the americans transmitted the words wrong or the other way around, and we bombed them. for no reason, except PH Hawaii..this is true, i learnned it in world history class...

Answer 3

The point was not to kill civilians, the thought was to eliminate the industry base that supported Japan's war efforts. In order to run industries however, you need workers......and people tend to try to live close to work....it cuts down on the commute. Another factor was to break the fighting spirit of the Japanese.

Answer 4

It was done because the military was hot for an actual "effects on civilians" type test, and to scare the Russkies!

Answer 5

it was a psychological attack... to make the Japanese accept total surrender..

I don't think they were consulted between bombings... and probably the second bomb was unnecessary.


by the way... SS Makesh.. you really do need to quote your source when you violate copyright law.

Answer 6

Both.
They were primary arms manufacturing areas, however they were run mostly by Korean POW's (and many slave workers)

Both cities were also "virgin targets" and had been bypassed by previous conventional bombing missions.

Answer 7

because they were easy to target and didn't have enough air support to counter an air strike

Answer 8

World War II
n. (Abbr. WWII)
A war fought from 1939 to 1945, in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, China, and other allies defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan.

World War Ii

World War II began in 1939 as a conflict between Germany and the combined forces of France and Great Britain, and eventually included most of the nations of the world before it ended in August 1945. It caused the greatest loss of life and material destruction of any war in history, killing twenty-five million military personnel and thirty million civilians. By the end of the war, the United States had become the most powerful nation in the world, the possessor of atomic weapons. The war also increased the power of the Soviet Union, which gained control of Eastern Europe and part of Germany.

World War II was caused in large part by the rise of totalitarian regimes in Germany and Italy and by the domination of the military in Japan. In Germany, Adolf Hitler, head of the National Socialist or Nazi party, became chancellor in 1933. Within a short time, he had assumed dictatorial rule. Hitler broke the Versailles Treaty, which had ended World War I and disarmed Germany, and proceeded with a massive buildup of the German armed forces. Hitler believed that the German people were a master race that needed more territory. His first aim was to reunite all Germans living under foreign governments. In 1936 he reclaimed the Rhineland from French control and in 1938 annexed Austria to Germany. That same year he took over the German areas of Czechoslovakia and in 1939 annexed all of that country.

Though France and Great Britain had acquiesced to Germany's actions, they soon realized that Hitler had greater ambitions. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany. With the invasion of Poland, World War II had begun. Poland was quickly defeated, and for a period of time a "phony war" ensued, with neither side making any military moves. This changed in the spring of 1940, when Germany invaded Holland, Belgium, and France. Again, German military forces overwhelmed their opponents, leaving Great Britain the only outpost against Germany.

During the 1930s the United States government had avoided involvement in European affairs. This traditional policy of "isolationism" became more problematic after the war began in 1939. President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved away from an isolationist foreign policy and sought to assist Great Britain and France, while keeping the United States a neutral party to the conflict. This led to the repeal of the arms embargo in the Neutrality Act of 1939 (22 U.S.C.A. § 441), allowing the sale of military equipment to Great Britain and France.

After the fall of France to Germany in 1940, Roosevelt became even more determined to assist Great Britain. He persuaded Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Act of 1941 (55 Stat. 31). Lend-Lease provided munitions, food, machinery, and services to Great Britain and other Allies without immediate cost.

U.S. interests in the Pacific were threatened by the rise of Japanese militarism in the 1930s. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 signaled a new direction for Japan. Its military leaders, who dominated the government, sought to conquer large parts of Asia. In 1936 and 1937 Japan signed treaties with Germany and Italy (headed by dictator Benito Mussolini), creating what was called the Axis powers.

In 1937 Japan began an undeclared war against China. When Japan occupied Indochina in 1940, the United States stopped exporting gasoline, iron, steel, and rubber to Japan and froze all Japanese assets in the United States. In the fall of 1941, the extremist Japanese general Hideki Tōjō became leader of the cabinet. His cabinet began planning a war with the United States, as Japan realized it could not attain its imperial goals without defeating the United States.

The devastating Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, resulted in a U.S. declaration of war on Japan the following day. Germany and Italy, as part of the Axis powers alliance, then declared war on the United States.

The attack on the United States led to severe consequences for Japanese Americans. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9,066, directing the forced relocation of all 112,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast (70,000 of them U.S. citizens) to detention camps in such places as Jerome, Arkansas, and Heart Lake, Wyoming. Roosevelt issued the order after military leaders, worried about a Japanese invasion, argued that national security required such drastic action.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the forced relocation in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 65 S. Ct. 193, 89 L. Ed. 194 (1944). Justice Hugo L. Black noted that curtailing the rights of a single racial group is constitutionally suspect but that in this case military necessity justified the exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. In retrospect, historians have characterized the removal and detention as the most drastic invasion of individual civil rights by the government in U.S. history.

The United States joined Great Britain and the Soviet Union in an alliance against Germany, Italy, and Japan. The Allies determined that priority would be given to defeating Germany and Italy. The Soviet Union, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, had signed a nonaggression pact with Germany in 1939, just days before Germany's invasion of Poland. In June 1941 Hitler renounced the agreement and invaded the Soviet Union. The Russian front would prove to be the bloodiest of the war, killing millions of civilians as well as millions of soldiers.

The Allies stemmed Axis advances in 1942. On the Russian front, the Soviet troops won a decisive victory at the Battle of Stalingrad. Following this battle, Soviet forces began the slow process of pushing the German army back toward its border. The U.S. Army achieved success in routing German forces from North Africa in 1942, paving the way for the invasion of Sicily and Italy in 1943.

On June 6, 1944 ("D-Day"), the Allies mounted an amphibious landing on France's Normandy coast. The D-Day invasion surprised the German military commanders, who did not expect an invasion at this location. In a short time, U.S. and British forces were able to break out of the coastal areas and move into France. U.S. forces liberated Paris on August 25.

Germany could not succeed in fighting a two-front war. By early 1945 it was clear that an Allied victory was inevitable. On April 30, 1945, with the Russian army entering Berlin, Hitler committed suicide. On May 7 Germany unconditionally surrendered.

The war in the Pacific was primarily a conflict between Japanese and U.S. forces. The U.S. Navy inflicted substantial damage to the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Following Midway, the U.S. forces began invading Japanese-held islands in the South Pacific. This was a slow and costly process because Japanese soldiers were taught to fight to the death. However, the process proved successful. From 1942 to 1945, U.S. forces invaded numerous islands, the last being Okinawa, which is close to the Japanese mainland. Despite fierce resistance, the U.S. forces prevailed.

In 1945 the U.S. military prepared for the invasion of Japan. Though a Japanese defeat appeared inevitable, an invasion would result in heavy U.S. casualties. President Harry S. Truman, who had become president in April 1945 after the death of President Roosevelt, approved the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. On August 6 the city of Hiroshima was bombed, and three days later Nagasaki was devastated by another nuclear attack. Japan opened peace negotiations on August 10 and surrendered on September 2.

Wartime conferences among Roosevelt, Stalin, and British prime minister Winston Churchill led to the creation of the United Nations in 1945. At the Yalta Conference in 1945, the leaders agreed to divide Germany, as well as the city of Berlin, into four zones of occupation, controlled by forces from the three countries and France. Germany was to have its industrial base rebuilt, but its armaments industries were to be abolished or confiscated. The leaders also approved the creation of an international court to try German leaders as war criminals, setting the stage for the Nuremberg trials. The Soviet army's occupation of Eastern Europe soon gave way to the creation of Communist governments under the influence of the Soviet Union.


World War II, 1939–45, worldwide conflict involving every major power in the world. The two sides were generally known as the Allies and the Axis.
Causes and Outbreak

This second global conflict resulted from the rise of totalitarian, militaristic regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan, a phenomenon stemming in part from the Great Depression that swept over the world in the early 1930s and from the conditions created by the peace settlements (1919–20) following World War I.

After World War I, defeated Germany, disappointed Italy, and ambitious Japan were anxious to regain or increase their power; all three eventually adopted forms of dictatorship (see National Socialism and fascism) that made the state supreme and called for expansion at the expense of neighboring countries. These three countries also set themselves up as champions against Communism, thus gaining at least partial tolerance of their early actions from the more conservative groups in the Western democracies. Also important was a desire for peace on the part of the democracies, which resulted in their military unpreparedness. Finally, the League of Nations, weakened from the start by the defection of the United States, was unable to promote disarmament (see Disarmament Conference); moreover, the long economic depression sharpened national rivalries, increased fear and distrust, and made the masses susceptible to the promises of demagogues.

The failure of the League to stop the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1931 was followed by a rising crescendo of treaty violations and acts of aggression. Adolf Hitler, when he rose to power (1933) in Germany, recreated the German army and prepared it for a war of conquest; in 1936 he remilitarized the Rhineland. Benito Mussolini conquered (1935–36) Ethiopia for Italy; and from 1936 to 1939 the Spanish civil war raged, with Germany and Italy helping the fascist forces of Francisco Franco to victory. In Mar., 1938, Germany annexed Austria, and in Sept., 1938, the British and French policy of appeasement toward the Axis reached its height with the sacrifice of much of Czechoslovakia to Germany in the Munich Pact.

When Germany occupied (Mar., 1939) all of Czechoslovakia, and when Italy seized (Apr., 1939) Albania, Great Britain and France abandoned their policy of appeasement and set about creating an “antiaggression” front, which included alliances with Turkey, Greece, Romania, and Poland, and speeding rearmament. Germany and Italy signed (May, 1939) a full military alliance, and after the Soviet-German nonaggression pact (Aug., 1939) removed German fear of a possible two-front war, Germany was ready to launch an attack on Poland.

World War II began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany, without a declaration of war, invaded Poland. Britain and France declared war on Germany on Sept. 3, and all the members of the Commonwealth of Nations, except Ireland, rapidly followed suit. The fighting in Poland was brief. The German blitzkrieg, or lightning war, with its use of new techniques of mechanized and air warfare, crushed the Polish defenses, and the conquest was almost complete when Soviet forces entered (Sept. 17) E Poland. While this campaign ended with the partition of Poland and while the USSR defeated Finland in the Finnish-Russian War (1939–40), the British and the French spent an inactive winter behind the Maginot Line, content with blockading Germany by sea.


World War II

A war fought from 1939 to 1945 between the Axis powers — Germany, Italy, and Japan — and the Allies, including France and Britain, and later the Soviet Union and the United States. The war began when the Germans, governed by the Nazi party, invaded Poland in September 1939 (see invasion of Poland). Germany then conquered France, using blitzkrieg tactics, and forced a desperate British withdrawal at Dunkirk. The Germans tried to wear down the British by heavy bombing, but the British withstood the attacks (see Battle of Britain). The Soviet Union signed a treaty with Adolf Hitler but entered the war on the side of the Allies after Germany invaded Russia in 1941. The United States was drawn into the war in 1941, when the Japanese suddenly attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. Japan made extensive conquests in east Asia but was checked by American victories at the Battle of Midway Island and elsewhere. The German invasion of Russia was halted at the Battle of Stalingrad. Allied forces took much of Italy in 1943, forcing its surrender. Beginning with the invasion of Normandy in 1944 (see D-Day), the Allies liberated France from German occupation and pressed on in Europe, defeating the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge and elsewhere. Germany surrendered in May 1945 (see V-E Day). The war in the Pacific ended in September 1945 (see V-J Day), after the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the aftermath of World War II, more constructive and less punitive measures were applied to the defeated countries than after World War I (see Marshall Plan, Nuremberg trials, and United Nations).


The political leaders of the war included Winston Churchill of Britain, Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Mussolini of Italy, Franklin D. Roosevelt of the United States, and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union. The military leaders included Charles De Gaulle of France; Bernard Montgomery of Britain; Hermann Goering and Erwin Rommel of Germany; Tito of Yugoslavia; and Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, William Halsey, Douglas MacArthur, Chester Nimitz, and George Patton of the United States.

World War II

I. United States' Entry into the War

When the Japanese seized Manchuria and then invaded China and began a drive to the south, they put their country on the road to war with the United States. But this aggression was at least in part a result of the West's efforts to weaken Japan as an economic rival after World War I. The Great Depression, Japan's population explosion, and the need to find new resources and markets to continue as a first-rate power were other causes of the invasion.

Neither Japan nor America would have come to the brink of war except for the social and economic disruption of Europe after World War I and the rise of communism and fascism. These two sweeping forces brought about the tragedy of war between Japan and America. Unfortunately both countries were inept negotiators driven by paranoiac fear--Japan, fear of communism from both Russia and Mao Tse-tung, and America, fear of the "yellow peril."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt brought their differences to a head on the night of July 26, 1941. After learning that the Japanese army had pushed into Indochina, he froze all Japanese assets in America. In consequence, not only did all trade with the United States cease, but the fact that America had been Japan's major source of oil imports now left Japan in an untenable position.

On September 6 an imperial conference was convened in Tokyo to decide on war or peace. Traditionally the emperor was supposed to remain silent. Instead Hirohito recited a poem of peace written by his grandfather. Startled, the military leaders promised to give first consideration to diplomacy. Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoye was forced to resign, and it was suggested that Gen. Hideki Tojo, the war minister, replace him. Only he could control the army. Tojo, although shocked by the offer, accepted and was ordered to "go back to blank paper," that is, to start with a clean slate and negotiate with America for peace.

Despite protests from the military, a new offer was sent to Washington on November 20. Japan promised not to make any more aggressive moves south, and once peace was restored with China or a general peace in the Pacific established, all troops would be pulled out of Indochina. In the meantime Japan would at once move all troops in southern Indochina to the north of that country. In return, America was to sell Japan a million tons of aviation gasoline. Roosevelt was so impressed that he wrote out a reply in pencil and sent it to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. The secretary passed on copies to Chiang Kai-shek and Winston Churchill. Both protested so forcefully that the message was never sent to the Japanese. On November 26 news came of another Japanese expedition to Indochina, and the president "fairly blew up" when informed by Hull. In place of Roosevelt's earlier message a harsh note was sent calling for Japan to withdraw all military forces from China and Indochina. It was regarded as an insult by the Japanese cabinet. It is possible that if Hull had sent Roosevelt's original note Japan would have either come to some agreement with America or been forced to debate the issue, thus compelling postponement of an attack until the spring of 1942 because of weather conditions. By this time it would have been obvious that Moscow would not fall. This would dangerously weaken the Axis and cause the Japanese leaders to reconsider a Pearl Harbor attack at such an inauspicious moment. Then the implausible series of chances and coincidences that led to December 7 might not have occurred.

A war that could possibly have been avoided now broke out because of mutual misunderstanding and language difficulties, along with Japanese opportunism, irrationality, pride, and fear and American racial prejudice, distrust, ignorance of the Orient, self-righteousness, and pride.

Bitter political controversy had clouded the issue of war or peace in America. The interventionists, convinced that the nation's future safety depended on its helping crush the aggressor nations, had pushed through Congress the Lend-Lease Act committing America to unlimited aid, "short of war," to the enemies of the Axis. The United States would be the "arsenal of democracy." The opponents of intervention included strange bedfellows: the right-wing America Firsters of Charles Lindbergh, Senator William E. Borah, and the German-American Bund, the "American peace mobilization" of the Communist and Labor parties, and the traditionally isolationist Midwest, which, though sympathetic to Great Britain and China, wanted no part of a shooting war.

The bombs at Pearl Harbor brought Americans together, but the honeymoon ended when Roosevelt put the blame for Pearl Harbor on the commanders in Hawaii, Adm. Husband Kimmel and Gen. Walter Short. To quell protests the president appointed Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts to head a Pearl Harbor inquiry. It found Kimmel and Short the principal culprits. Rather than ending the dispute this stirred vigorous protests, which resulted in several minor inquiries followed by major army and navy inquiries in the summer of 1944. When a Naval Intelligence officer testified that key messages indicating a possible raid on Pearl Harbor had been destroyed, and two army officers revealed that they had been forced to change testimony concerning Gen. George C. Marshall, both the army and the navy courts concluded that the principal blame lay in Washington. These conclusions were kept from the public.

After the war Congress held public hearings that convinced the majority of Americans that Kimmel and Short should carry the burden of blame and that Roosevelt and Marshall had done their best to prevent war with a nation run by bandits. Most historians agreed with these findings, but there was evidence to suggest that the truth had been distorted by reversions of testimony, cover-ups, and outright lies. There was evidence, for instance, that President Roosevelt knew as early as December 2, 1941, that Japanese carriers were approaching Pearl Harbor. According to the testimony of Capt. Johan Ranneft, naval attaché of the Netherlands in Washington, he was informed by U.S. Naval Intelligence on December 2 that two Japanese carriers were halfway between Japan and Hawaii. Four days later they were some three hundred to four hundred miles from Pearl Harbor. He reported this to his government and wrote the details in his war diary. Of course, where the carriers were going and for what purpose was unclear.

Roosevelt had been assured by Marshall that Oahu was the strongest fortress in the world and any enemy task force would be destroyed. The president, therefore, took a calculated risk and lost. This was understandable, but if he instigated a cover-up, as some evidence indicates, that was a serious offense. Perhaps the whole truth will never be known.

II. Events and Results

Adolf Hitler's plan to seize all of Europe was set into motion on March 7, 1936, when he sent troops into the demilitarized Rhineland in violation of earlier treaties. The British did not seriously consider taking action and the French feared to do so. Ironically, the fuehrer had given orders to retreat if challenged by the French; thus, his occupation of the Rhineland was accomplished by default. Then followed moves into Austria, where he was greeted with enthusiasm, and into Czechoslovakia. Finally on September 1, 1939, his forces invaded Poland. This at last brought a declaration of war from England.

As Poland was about to fall, the opportunistic Joseph Stalin occupied the eastern half of the country. On September 28, the two dictators signed a nonaggression treaty. With his rear thus protected, Hitler made plans to invade the West and in May 1940 sent troops across the borders of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. Caught by surprise, the British and French were soon overwhelmed. The survivors of a British expeditionary force escaped across the English Channel, and the French capitulated on June 22.

Now Hitler prepared to turn on his ally, Stalin, and so become the master of all Europe. When massive air raids on England failed to subdue the stubborn British, he sought to bring them to the negotiating table by capturing Gibraltar. This would not only keep the Royal Navy out of the Mediterranean, thus ensuring Hitler's takeover of North Africa and the Middle East, but drastically lengthen England's lifelines to the Far East. Britain would be forced to surrender and become a silent partner in his crusade against Jewish Bolshevism.

All he needed was Francisco Franco's permission to transport troops through Spain. But to his dismay, the Spanish dictator, though he seemed to agree, kept stalling. He did nothing, thus saving Gibraltar for England. Besides fear of aligning himself with a possible loser, Franco had a compelling personal motive. He was part Jewish.

This setback was followed by another when Italy's Benito Mussolini, who so far had avoided going to war, attempted to seize the Balkans and failed. Hitler felt compelled to do so himself before his attack on Russia could safely be launched; this forced him to postpone that invasion for at least a month. It finally began on June 22, 1941. Great advances were made until early October, and then sleet turned into snow and the mud froze. The cold intensified, and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt radioed Hitler that his troops must retreat or "they will be destroyed." Instead the fuehrer ordered the attack to continue and was caught completely off balance on the night of December 4 when the Soviets launched a massive counteroffensive. Hitler not only lost Moscow but appeared destined to suffer Napoleon's fate in the winter snows of Russia. Despondent, he admitted to Gen. Alfred Jodl that "victory could no longer be achieved."

On December 7 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, whereupon Hitler made still another mistake. He declared war on America, thus saving President Roosevelt from the risk of incurring the opposition of German-Americans by asking Congress to declare war on Germany first.

Two hours after the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes hit Clark Field, the main U.S. base in the Philippines, wiping out half of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's Far East air force. Within three days he had little air defense, and soon forty-three thousand Japanese troops landed 135 air miles north of Manila. MacArthur withdrew the bulk of his U.S.-Filipino forces to Bataan Peninsula and the adjoining island of Corregidor. After a bitter struggle the defenders of Bataan were driven back, and MacArthur was ordered to fly to Australia. On April 7 more than seventy-six thousand survivors on Bataan surrendered, and a month later Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, MacArthur's replacement, surrendered the remaining troops in the Philippines.

With Indochina, Thailand, and the chain of islands from Sumatra to Guadalcanal occupied, Japanese naval leaders decided that operations should be started against Australia and Hawaii. The army protested, but a surprise bombing of Tokyo by Col. James Doolittle in mid-April allowed Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto to prevail. Preparations were made to attack Midway Island, fifteen hundred miles northwest of Pearl Harbor. It was thought that this would all but wipe out the U.S. Pacific Fleet and leave Hawaii open to invasion.

But the Americans had broken the Japanese code, and Adm. Chester Nimitz was ready. In the most crucial sea battle of the war, U.S. Navy and Marine airmen sank four carriers on June 4. America now controlled the Pacific. The Japanese commanders had fought the battle too carefully. In contrast, Rear Adm. Raymond Spruance, bold at the right moment, had launched his strike early. What gave Spruance the chance to win was Nimitz back in Pearl Harbor. He had made all the right decisions before a shot was fired.

The spring of 1942 saw almost no change in Germany's military situation. The eastern front remained stagnant, and Gen. Erwin Rommel was not quite ready for a new offensive in North Africa. Still determined to crush Russia, Hitler ordered a drive into the Caucasus, but rains held it up until June. Then, encouraged by an early success, the fuehrer made another mistake. He decided to mount a major attack on Stalingrad, an industrial city on the Volga, while continuing the drive to the Caucasus. By mid-September double victory seemed certain--and then the Soviets' defense abruptly stiffened.

November proved to be a month of disaster. Although Hitler had ordered him not to retreat "one inch" from North Africa, Rommel was forced to withdraw. An even more critical reversal occurred at Stalingrad. On November 22 two arms of a tremendous Soviet pincer movement encircled the entire Sixth Army, and more than 200,000 German troops along with a hundred tanks, eighteen hundred big guns, and more than ten thousand vehicles were caught in a giant trap. On February 2, 1943, the Germans capitulated.

In the Far East the Americans were advancing on two fronts. While MacArthur slogged across New Guinea toward the Philippines, Nimitz's amphibious forces were leapfrogging from island to island in the Pacific. On August 7, 1942, U.S. Marines landed at Guadalcanal, and after five months of deadly battle, the Japanese survivors were evacuated by ship. Nimitz's forces continued toward Japan and by February 4, 1944, had reached the western limit of the Marianas, a chain of volcanic islands.

The next target was the most strategic island of the chain, Saipan. On June 15, 1944, two Marine divisions landed on the west coast and began pushing across Saipan to link up with G.I.s of the Twenty-seventh Division. This brought swift reaction from the Japanese navy. Vice Adm. Jisaburo Ozawa was ordered to annihilate Admiral Spruance's Task Force 58, but in a savage air battle on June 19 Ozawa lost 346 planes while shooting down only 50 Americans. In a bold stroke Japan's naval power had been fatally crippled. This crushing defeat doomed the defenders of Saipan, and it was all over a month later. Close to 22,000 Japanese civilians--two out of three--perished, many of them by suicide. Almost the entire garrison--at least 30,000--died. The Americans suffered 14,111 casualties. But the main island bastion protecting Japan's homeland had been won by the United States. More important, the lowlands of southern Saipan offered a base from which massive B-29 bombing raids could be launched at the heart of the Japanese empire, Tokyo.

While the Americans were taking Saipan, the Allies in Europe landed in Normandy on June 6. Hitler was taken by surprise, and within ten days the Allies had managed to land a million men and 500,000 tons of matériel. While the U.S. and British forces swept forward, an attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20 almost succeeded. On August 25 Paris was liberated, and by late autumn the Germans were driven back to their own borders.

Faced with disaster, Hitler made one final attempt to win in the West. The plan was to drive through the Ardennes and reach the English Channel, thus splitting the Americans and British. On the night of December 15 three German armies moved secretly to the line of departure. The next morning they struck, taking the Americans off guard. But after retreating for eight days, the U.S. troops regrouped and stopped the Nazis. The Battle of the Bulge soon ended with the Germans in full retreat. Two weeks later they suffered another defeat, and the Red Army crossed the Vistula.

Now Hitler was being crushed from two sides. He had a momentary flash of hope on April 12 upon learning that President Roosevelt had died. But as the Soviets approached his bunker, he realized the end had come and shot himself. When he died so did National Socialism and the "Thousand-Year Reich."

Adolf Hitler was probably the greatest mover and shaker of the twentieth century. Certainly no other human disrupted so many lives in our times or incurred so much hatred. He was driven by a number of forces. Blinded by gas in 1918, he had resolved that if he recovered his sight, he would abandon his goal of becoming an architect and enter politics. One night, like Saint Joan, he heard voices summoning him to save his country. All at once, as he recorded in Mein Kampf, "a miracle came to pass." He could see! He vowed he would become a politician and "bring Germany from the depths of despair to the greatness she deserved."

Like millions of frontline troops, Hitler believed that they had been betrayed by those back home--strikers, malingerers, Jews, politicians, profiteers. They had forced the generals to surrender and accept the unjust and shameful Versailles treaty. Soon he became convinced that the greatest enemy to his crusade for a new Germany was communism, which he believed had been engendered by Jews. Anti-Semitism had flourished throughout Europe for centuries, and Hitler found many adherents. Obsessed by his dream of cleansing the Continent of Jews, he became a warped archangel. He had intended the elimination of Jews to be his great gift to the world. Ironically, it would lead instead to the formation of a Jewish state.

In the Far East, also, there were impressive American victories. MacArthur, who had landed on Leyte in October 1944, had cleared the island of defenders by January 12, 1945. While he continued to advance toward Luzon, marines were wiping out the Japanese on the tiny but important island of Iwo Jima.

After Okinawa was occupied on July 12, the defeat of Japan was inevitable. Convinced that a direct attack on the four main islands of Japan would be too costly, President Harry S. Truman ordered the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At an imperial conference Emperor Hirohito announced that the time had come to bear the unbearable. On August 15 he informed his people over a nationwide radio hookup that Japan was surrendering.

World War II was, in fact, two separate wars. In the West Hitler had two aims: the first to seize all of Europe and North Africa so he could dominate the Mediterranean, and the second to wipe out communism and eliminate the Jews. His ally, Mussolini, had his own aims: domination of both the Mediterranean and the Balkans.

As for the Allies, both England and France fought to preserve their countries and stabilize Europe. Roosevelt's aim was broader: destruction of Nazism and establishment of democracy throughout Europe. The Soviet aim was to drive out the Nazis and emerge strong enough to continue communization of the world.

In the Far East the Americans fought to rid themselves of a foe who some thought threatened their Pacific island possessions and their own West Coast. In addition they were eager to aid Chiang Kai-shek's China. Some Americans also felt it was a good time to eliminate Japan as a serious economic rival.

As for the Japanese, they attacked Hawaii because it harbored the Pacific Fleet and was perceived as a spear aimed at their proposed conquest of Southeast Asia for oil.

The Allies won in Europe because of the blows inflicted on the Germans by the Russians, the endurance of the British, and the air and armaments superiority supplied by the might of American production. On the other hand, the victory in Europe resulted in a takeover of eastern Europe, despite Stalin's promises at Yalta, and a cold war between the Soviets and the democracies. In Asia victory resulted in the takeover of China and Manchuria by the People's Republic of China, chaos in Southeast Asia, and a division of Korea, with the Soviets in the North and the Americans in the South, that would lead to another war.