World+Events

World Events

What Do Players Learn? While preparing for and playing WORLD EVENTS, players learn about the major political and cultural events of the most recent calendar year. They learn to be aware of what is happening to them, their country, and their world. In addition, players learn to research a particular Theme that varies from year to year and to prepare notes and study materials about that Theme. Examples of past Themes include "Women in World History," "The 1960's," "The Civil War," and "Space Exploration." Players learn how the events in the Theme affected people at the time and how those issues still affect them today. The knowledge gained from playing WORLD EVENTS leads to more informed and responsible future citizens.


 * Please check the Academic Games website for the list of requirements for the themed rounds involving World War II.**


 * Add pertinent information for the reference booklet below.

**__Why did the U.S join the war? __** 

Introduction
Though determined to maintain its neutrality, the United States was gradually drawn closer to the war by the force of events. To save Britain from collapse the Congress voted [|lend-lease] aid early in 1941. In Aug., 1941, President Franklin Delano [|Roosevelt] met Churchill on the high seas, and together they formulated the [|Atlantic Charter] as a general statement of democratic aims. To establish bases to protect its shipping from attacks by German submarines, the United States occupied (Apr., 1941) Greenland and later shared in the occupation of Iceland; despite repeated warnings, the attacks continued. Relations with Germany became increasingly strained, and the aggressive acts of Japan in China, Indochina, and Thailand provoked protests from the United States. Efforts to reach a peaceful settlement were ended on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan without warning attacked [|Pearl Harbor], the Philippines, and Malaya. War was declared (Dec. 8) on Japan by the United States, the Commonwealth of Nations (except Ireland), and the Netherlands. Within a few days Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

** Pearl Harbor **


 * The United States Japan **
 * = Strength = ||
 * 8 battleships, 6 cruisers, 29 destroyers, 9 submarines, ~390 planes || 6 carriers, 2 battleships, 3 cruisers, 9 destroyers, 441 planes, 6 midget submarines ||
 * ** Casualties ** ||
 * 2,403 killed; 5 battleships sunk; 3 battleships, 3 cruisers, 3 destroyers damaged; 188 planes destroyed; 155 planes damaged || 29 planes destroyed, 55 airmen killed, 5 midget submarines sunk, 9 submariners killed, 1 captured. ||



 On [|November 26] [|1941] a fleet including six [|aircraft carriers] commanded by Japanese Vice Admiral [|Chuichi Nagumo] left Hitokappu Bay in the [|Kuril Islands] and headed for Pearl Harbor under strict [|radio] silence. On the morning of [|December 7], [|1941] , that fleet's planes bombed all the US military air bases on the island (the biggest was the [|US Army] air base at [|Hickam Field] ), and many of the ships anchored at Pearl, including " [|Battleship Row] ". Nearly every plane on the ground was destroyed; only a few fighters got airborne and offered any opposition. Twelve battleships and other ships either were sunk or damaged, 188 aircraft were destroyed, 155 were damaged and 2,403 Americans lost their lives. The [|battleship] [|USS //Arizona//] exploded and sank with a loss of over 1,100 men, nearly half of the Americans dead. Its hull became, and remains, a memorial to those lost that day, most of whom remain within the ship. The [|first shots fired] and the first casualties in the attack on Pearl Harbor actually occurred when [|USS //Ward//] attacked and sank a Japanese [|midget submarine]. There were five [|Ko-hyoteki class] midget submarines which planned to torpedo US ships after the bombing started. None of the subs made it back safely, and only four out of the five have since been found. Of the ten sailors aboard the five submarines, nine died and the only survivor, [|Kazuo Sakamaki], was captured; he became the first [|prisoner of war] captured by the Americans in World War II. Recent photographic analysis by the [|United States Naval Institute] indicates a high likelihood that one midget submarine managed to enter the harbor, and successfully fired a torpedo into the [|USS West Virginia]. The final disposition of this submarine is unknown. [|[1]] (//http://www.usni.org/navalhistory/Articles99/Nhrodgaard.htm//) The Japanese aircraft carriers were: [|//Akagi//], [|//Hiryu//] , [|//Kaga//] , [|//Shokaku//] , [|//Soryu//] , [|//Zuikaku//]. Together they had a total of 441 planes, including fighters, torpedo-bombers, dive-bombers, and fighter-bombers. Of these, 29 were lost during the battle. The planes attacked in two waves, and Nagumo decided to forgo a third attack in favor of withdrawing. The first attack on Pearl Harbor was at 07:53 [|7 December] [|Hawaiian Time] which was 03:23 [|December 8] [|Japanese Standard Time] (see [|The Pearl Harbor Strike Force, Note] (//http://www.friesian.com/pearl.htm//) ). Japanese troops started to move across the frontier of the New Territories of [|Hong Kong] at dawn on [|December 8] [|1941][|[2]] (//http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=history/secondwar/asia/invasion//). [|Hong Kong Time] is one hour behind //Japanese Standard Time//, so the attack on Pearl Harbor was part of a [|theater] wide near simultaneous coordinated attack and was not a precursor 24 hours before the attacks in Asia, which the dates at first glance seems to imply.

** Strategy **

The purpose of the attack on Pearl Harbor was to neutralize [|American naval power] in the Pacific, if only temporarily. Admiral [|Yamamoto Isoroku] himself suggested that even a successful attack would gain only a year or so of freedom of action. Japan had been embroiled in a war with [|China] for some years (starting in 1937) and had seized [|Manchuria] some years before. Planning began for a Pearl Harbor attack in support of further military advances in January 1941, and training for the mission was underway by mid-year when the project was finally judged worthwhile after some Imperial Navy infighting.

The two attack sorties flown by the Japanese approached from different directions. The US radar which detected them 200 miles away was at the top of this map. Part of the Japanese plans for the attack included breaking off negotiations with the US prior (and only just prior) to the attack. Diplomats from the Japanese Embassy in [|Washington], including special representative Saburu Kurusu, had been conducting extended talks with the State Department regarding the US reactions to the Japanese move into [|Indochina] in the summer. Just before the attack, a long message was sent to the Embassy from the Foreign Office in [|Tokyo] (encyphered with the [|Purple] machine), with instructions to deliver it to [|Secretary Hull] just before the attack was scheduled to begin (i.e., 1 PM Washington time). Because of decryption and typing delays, the Embassy personnel could not manage to do so; the long message breaking off negotiations was delivered well after the intended time, and well after the attack had actually begun. The late delivery of the note contributed to US outrage about the attack, and is a major reason for [|Roosevelt] 's famous characterization of that day as "… a date which will live in infamy". Yamamoto seems to have agreed; he was unhappy about the botched timing. He is commonly thought to have said, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve", but this seems to be a quote made for the movie, [|Tora! Tora! Tora!]. See [|Isoroku Yamamoto's sleeping giant quote] for more information. Even though the quote may not have been said by Yamamoto, it did seem to capture his feelings about the attack.

[|Battleship Row] presented an attractive concentration of targets. Both parts of the final message had been decrypted by the US well before the Japanese Embassy had managed to finish, and it was the decrypt of the second part which prompted General [|George Marshall] to send his famous warning to Hawaii that morning — the one that was actually delivered, by a young Japanese-American cycle messenger, to General [|Walter Short] at Pearl Harbor several hours after the attack had ended (there had been difficulties with the Army's communications, and transmission delays by commercial cable, and it had somehow lost its "urgent" marking during its travels). **Outcome/Effects** In terms of its strategic objectives the attack on Pearl Harbor was, in the short to medium term, a spectacular success which eclipsed the wildest dreams of its planners and has few parallels in the military history of any era. Due to its grievous losses at Pearl Harbor and in the subsequent

Japanese invasion of the Philippines, for the next six months, the United States Navy was unable to play any significant role in the [|Pacific War]. With the US [|Pacific Fleet] essentially out of the picture, Japan was free of worries about the other major Pacific naval power. It went on to conquer southeast Asia, the entire southwest Pacific and to extend its reach far into the [|Indian Ocean]. In the longer term, however, the Pearl Harbor attack was an unmitigated strategic disaster for Japan. Indeed Admiral Yamamoto, whose idea the Pearl Harbor attack was, had predicted that even a successful attack on the US Fleet would not and could not win a war with the US, as American productive capacity was too large. One of the main Japanese objectives was to destroy the three American [|aircraft carriers] stationed in the Pacific, but these were not present — //[|Enterprise]// was returning, //[|Lexington]// had sortied a few days prior, and //[|Saratoga]// was in San Diego following a refit at [|Puget Sound Naval Shipyard]. Putting most of the US battleships out of commission, was widely regarded—in both Navies and by most observers worldwide—as a tremendous success for the Japanese. The elimination of the battleships left the US Navy with no choice but to put its faith in aircraft carriers and submarines, these being most of what was left—and these were the tools with which the US Navy halted and then reversed the Japanese advance. The loss of the battleships turned out to be less important than almost everyone thought before (in Japan) and just after (in Japan and the US) the attack. President [|Franklin D. Roosevelt] signed the Declaration of War against Japan on the day following the attack. Probably most significantly, the Pearl Harbor attack immediately galvanized a divided nation into action as little else could have done. Overnight, it united the US with the goal of fighting and winning the war with Japan, and it probably made possible the unconditional surrender position taken by the [|Allied Powers]. Some historians believe that Japan was doomed to defeat by the attack on Pearl Harbor itself, regardless of whether the fuel depots and machine shops were destroyed or if the carriers had been in port and sunk.

US response
On [|December 8], [|1941], the [|US Congress] [|declared war on Japan] with [|Jeannette Rankin] being the only dissenting vote. [|Franklin D. Roosevelt] signed the declaration of war shortly afterward, calling the previous day "a date which will live in infamy." The [|US Government] continued and intensified its military mobilization, and started to convert to a [|war economy]. A related question is why [|Nazi Germany] declared war on the [|United States] [|December 11], [|1941] immediately following the Japanese attack. [|Hitler] was under no obligation to do so under the terms of the [|Axis Pact], but did so regardless. This doubly outraged the American public and allowed the United States to greatly step up its support of the [|United Kingdom], which delayed for some time a full US response to the setback in the Pacific. **Aftermath** Despite the perception of this battle as a devastating blow to America, only five ships were permanently lost to the Navy. These were the battleships [|USS //Arizona//], [|USS //Oklahoma//], the old battleship [|USS //Utah//] (then used as a target ship), and the destroyers [|USS //Cassin//] and USS //Downes//; nevertheless, much usable material was salvaged from them, including the two aft main turrets from the //Arizona//. Four ships sunk during the attack were later raised and returned to duty, including the battleships [|//USS California//], [|USS //West Virginia//] and [|USS //Nevada//]. Of the 22 Japanese ships that took part in the attack, only one survived the war. There are many who say that the Japanese would have been wise to have attacked with a third strike to destroy the oil storage facilities, machine shops and dry docks at Pearl Harbor, including several senior officers on Nagumo's ships or flying in the strikes. Destruction of these facilities would have greatly increased the US Navy's difficulties as the nearest immediately usable Fleet facilities would have been several thousand miles east of Hawaii on the West Coast of the States. Nagumo declined to order a third strike for several reasons: Despite the debacle of unpreparedness including locked ammunition lockers, undispersed aircraft, etc, there were American military personnel who served with distinction in the incident. An ensign got his ship underway from a dead start during the attack. One ship got underway with only four officers onboard, all ensigns, none of which had more than a year's sea duty. That destroyer operated for four days at sea before her commanding officer caught up with her. Probably the most famous is [|Doris Miller], an [|African-American] sailor who went beyond the call of duty during the attack when he took control of an unattended [|machine gun] and used it in defense of the base. He was awarded the [|Navy Cross]. Anti-aircraft performance during the second strike was much improved over that during the first. Two-thirds of the Japanese losses happened during the second wave.
 * losses during the second strike had been more significant than during the first, a third strike could have been expected to suffer still worse losses.
 * the first two strikes had essentially used all the previously prepped aircraft available, so a third strike would have taken some time to prepare, allowing the Americans time to, perhaps, find and attack Nagumo's force. The location of the American carriers was and remained unknown to Nagumo.
 * the Japanese pilots had not practiced attack against the Pearl Harbor shore facilities and organizing such an attack would have taken still more time, though several of the strike leaders urged a third strike anyway.
 * the fuel situation did not permit remaining on station north of Pearl Harbor much longer. The Japanese were acting at the limit of their logistical ability to support the strike on Pearl Harbor. To remain in those waters for much longer would have risked running unacceptably low on fuel.
 * the timing of a third strike would have been such that aircraft would probably have returned to their carriers after dark. Night operations from aircraft carriers were in their infancy in 1941, and neither the Japanese nor anyone else had developed reliable technique and doctrine.
 * the second strike had essentially completed the entire mission, neutralization of the American Pacific Fleet.
 * there was the simple danger of remaining near one place for too long. The Japanese were very fortunate to have escaped detection during their voyage from the [|Inland Sea] to Hawaii. The longer they remained off Hawaii, the more danger they were in, e.g., from a lucky US Navy submarine, or from the absent American carriers.
 * the carriers were needed to support the main Japanese attack, toward the "Southern Resources Area", where they were intending to capture oil and other supplies. The Japanese government had been reluctant to allow the attack at all as it took air cover from the southern thrust, and Nagumo was under strict orders not to risk his command any more than necessary. As the war games during the planning of the attack had predicted that 2-4 carriers might be lost in the attack Nagumo must have been very happy to suffer no losses, and didn't want to push his luck.

**Could the attack have been prevented?** In the Autumn of 1941**, General Short** sent a [|coded] message to Washington DC clearly stating that he was taking measures to guard against sabotage, but not an attack. However, Short had changed his Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) without informing Washington. Therefore, when Washington read the message it clearly stated that Short was taking measures to guard against an attack by the Japanese. This caused Washington to assume that Short better understood the situation than he actually did. Shortly before the attack, the Americans squandered at least three opportunities to discover that it was coming, starting with a delayed communique from Washington to Hawaii. As peace negotiations were breaking down with the Japanese, Washington sent increasingly serious warnings of possible attacks in the Pacific to authorities at Pearl Harbor. This included a message headed with the words "This is a War Warning" received on December 2. When the government intercepted directions for the Japanese Embassy to destroy their records, it became clear that an attack somewhere was imminent. General George Marshall's ultimate warning to Pearl Harbor the day before the strike was tragically delayed, by a series of weather and bureaucratic snafus, and did not reach General Short in time for more defensive action to occur. More immediately, the army radar station on the north shore of Oahu actually detected the approach of the Japanese planes. Unfortunately a smaller group of American transport planes were expected at about the same time. The radar sightings were therefore discounted, apparently by relatively junior and inexperienced servicemen, and never reached Kimmel and Short. Finally, the discovery and elimination of the mini-submarines by U.S. Navy patrol ships, such as the **USS Ward** might have alerted Pearl Harbor authorities that a larger scale attack might be coming. This last warning also went unheeded, as top level authorities awaited confirmation of the sightings and sinkings. Believing that Germany was a greater threat to the future of the Western world than Japan, the British and American Joint Staff adopted a policy of “Germany first” in early 1942. Although Hitler's armies were already deeply engaged in the Soviet Union, Germany still had powerful armies available in Italy and France for the defense of the Western front. But even as plans were underway for the invasion of North Africa, a dangerous situation arose in the Pacific. Hawaii was clearly needed as a staging base for American forces making their way into the South Pacific to attack the Japanese. **General MacArthur** had evacuated from the Philippines to Australia, and the forward location for a force buildup closer to the Japanese defenses was thereby on that continent. But along the sea lane from Hawaii to southern Australia lay the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island chain. In the summer of 1942 American intelligence discovered that the Japanese were preparing an airfield on the Guadalcanal Island from which they could easily attack American shipping en route to Australia. The island was lightly defended, and the decision was made to land the **1st Marine Division under General A.A. Vandegrift** on Guadalcanal and hold that vital spot against further Japanese development. In August 1942 the Marines went ashore against light resistance. But the Japanese were not willing to give up Guadalcanal without a fight, and Japanese air attacks hindered the landing of equipment and materiel. By August 20 Marines had completed the construction of the airfield, renamed **Henderson Field**, which gave the troops close air support. The Japanese fleet, skilled at night warfare, cruised up and down the island chain wreaking havoc on the American troops ashore with heavy bombardments and driving off the American fleet, leaving the Marines short of supplies. Japanese infantry repeatedly attacked the Marine positions, and an extensive battle involving the Marines and a Japanese division raged during October, 1942. Reinforced by units from the Second Marine Division, **General Vandegrift** expanded the Marines' perimeter, pushing the Japanese out of artillery range of the airfield. The bloody struggle went on until February 1943 when Guadalcanal was finally secured, though the Japanese were able to evacuate 13,000 troops from the island. The fighting on Guadalcanal was a new experience for the Marines, who were not as familiar with jungle warfare as their Japanese opponents. They quickly became acquainted with Japanese tactics, their ferocity, their use of stealth in probing and raiding defensive positions and their grim determination to fight to the death. The battle for Guadalcanal went down in the annals of the Marine Corps's most famous battles as it became the first stepping stone in the march across the Central Pacific toward the Japanese homelands. ** Coral Sea and Midway: The Tide Turns in the Pacific ** The factor that kept the attack on Pearl Harbor from being a total disaster was that the American aircraft carriers were out at sea on December 7 and thus were not damaged. Although the ship shock and surprise of Pearl Harbor were deeply felt, the United States was not completely unprepared for war—President Roosevelt and Congress had begun beefing up the armed forces as early as 1940. But there was a lot of catching up to do. Both the Germans and Japanese had been fighting for years and were thus experienced in warfare. Desiring to make at least a symbolic response to Japan for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, the military command decided to make a daring raid on Tokyo in April, 1945. Under the command of General Jimmy Doolittle, a group of B-25 bombers were carried aboard the carrier //USS Hornet// far into the western Pacific. From there they were launched and flew over the home island of Japan where they dropped their bombs and proceeded on to China. Although the damage was minimal, the raid boosted American morale. In May and June of 1942 two great sea battles marked to the turning point in the war in the Pacific. On May 7 and 8 the Battle of the Coral Sea was fought, the first naval battle in history in which the surface ships were not within sight of each other and did not participate in the battle directly against the opposing fleets. Although some of the Navy aircraft squadrons suffered losses, and naval aviators took the fight to the Japanese, sinking one and Japanese aircraft carrier and damaging two others along with several other ships. Although the Americans lost the aircraft carrier Lexington at Coral Sea, the battle prevented the Japanese fleet from continuing their advance into the Southern Pacific, by which they had hoped to cut the American supply lines to Australia. Following Coral Sea the Japanese attempted to seize Midway Island in June, 1942, but again the United States Navy rose to the occasion. Although the Americans suffered heavy losses early in the engagement when they had trouble locating the Japanese carrier force, they finally caught a glimpse of the Japanese carriers while they were in the processing of rearming and refueling their planes between strikes. The dive bombers swooped down through the clouds and dealt a crippling blow to the Japanese fleet, sinking four aircraft carriers and destroying 275 planes. The twin defeats meant that the Hawaiian Islands remained secure and placed the United States Navy in a position where it could begin to carry the battle to the enemy instead of fighting a defensive war. ** U.S. Troops Land in North Africa Although the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came as a shock to most Americans, it cannot be said that America was completely unprepared for war. The first peacetime draft in American history had been instituted in 1940, and the size of the Army and Navy were being expanded, and new equipment was being tested and built. Americans had watched nervously as Germany overran Poland, Denmark, Norway and France and were then stunned when Germany turned and invaded Russia in the summer of 1941 just months before Pearl Harbor. Few thought that America would be able to avoid war indefinitely.
 * The first U.S. ground offensive of World War II **
 * The North African Campaign: Operation Torch

But being somewhat prepared for war and being in a war are two different things, and with the attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war on the United States a few days later, America and her British allies were facing a two-front war of huge proportions. The the joint American and British staffs quickly adopted a policy of Germany first, based on a prior understanding between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. Hitler's Luftwaffe was pounding Great Britain, and although much of the British army had been spared by the “Miracle of Dunkirk,” Britain was stretched very thin. Reluctantly or not, the United States and Great Britain had accepted the Soviet Union as an ally in the fight against Nazi Germany. From the beginning, Soviet Premier Stalin had urged the Western powers to open a second front to take pressure off the Russian armies being driven back by Hitler's legions. Plans called for an eventual cross-channel invasion against the continent of Europe, but in 1942 such a move was out of the question. Thus the background was established for Operation Torch. Lieutenant General Dwight Eisenhower, who had been a major only a few years before, suddenly found himself in command of the first American offensive operation against Hitler's Germany in World War II. The British had been fighting the Italians and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps on that continent throughout 1942, and the joint staffs decided that the first American operation would be an invasion of western North Africa. Although North Africa was removed from the continent of Europe, control of the Mediterranean was considered vital to the British. Thus securing North Africa was strategically important. The landings in North Africa began on November 8, 1942. At first the Americans, untested in battle, with equipment that was not yet up to the combat standards of a fast, mechanized mobile war, fared poorly. At the Battle of Kasserine Pass Americans suffered a humiliating defeat under poor leadership. Generals George S. Patton and Omar Bradley, however, weeded out incompetent commanders and began to restore the morale and combat effectiveness of the American armies. With Field Marshall Montgomery's great victory at El Alamein in May 1943 and the Americans applying more pressure on the German armies to the west, North Africa was finally secured. The fighting in North Africa for the American army can be seen as a sort of on-the-job training exercise, though it was fierce and brutal fighting all the same. General Rommel was taken back to Germany and eventually given command on the Western front. General Patton went on to command the U.S. Third Army, one of America's superior fighting units during the war, and General Eisenhower rose to the position of the Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces in Europe. With North Africa secured, the next target for the allies was the Italian peninsula, which would be reached via an interim assault on the island of Sicily.

** Because Italy's military forces were not nearly as powerful as those of Germany, the decision to continue the advance through Italy—the so-called “soft underbelly” of Europe, made sense. The Italian Army had suffered large losses in North African, including a number of its best divisions. The Americans were less enthusiastic about attacking Sicily than the British, whose focus was on maintaining control of the Mediterranean to ensure contact with the Middle East. Sicily was heavily defended and therefore the German staff was surprised when Sicily was attacked. Operation Husky, as the attack on Sicily was named, involved two airborne divisions and eight ground divisions which would land from the sea. The airborne operations, always complicated and difficult, did not fare well, but the landings on the south coast of Sicily were very successful. General Patton's Third Army advanced up the western side of the island while British General Montgomery's forces advanced east of Mount Etna; both armies were advancing toward Messina on the northeastern tip of the island of Sicily, just across the Strait of Messina from the toe of the Italian boot. German and Italian resistance was stiff in the mountainous terrain, which required the Allies to use a series of amphibious “hooks” to get around heavily defended areas. The campaign in Sicily began on July 9, 1943 and by August 11 the German and Italian forces had evacuated their remaining troops and equipment to the Italian peninsula as Patton and Montgomery entered Messina.. The capture of Sicily did no serious harm to the German and Italian forces, most of which were evacuated, but it did cause the Italian government to rethink its loyalty to Hitler's Germany. Not long after the fall of Sicily the Italian government decided to throw in its lot with the Allies. In September 1943 the Allies began their invasion of Italy when American troops landed at Salerno. Prior to that General Montgomery's Eighth British Army had begun its invasion of the toe of the Italian boot just across from Sicily. General Marshall and the American staff in Washington had been hesitant to invest large forces in Italy because they believed that an invasion of northwestern Europe, which eventually took place on D-Day, June 6, 1944, was the quickest route to the defeat of Germany. But Hitler had sent substantial forces into Italy, and in order to keep them from reinforcing the western defenses, the Allied staffs felt it was necessary for the Italian operation to move forward to keep that portion of the German Army tied down.. Field Marshal Kesselring, the German commander in Italy, made excellent use of the rugged terrain of Italy which favored the defense. The combination of mountains, rivers and deep valleys made it very difficult for the Allies to advance against the well placed defenders. The American Fifth Army under the command of General Mark Clark began advancing up the coast after the initially successful landings, but they were soon met by strong German counterattacks. As allied reinforcements continued to arrive, however, the Germans were obliged to withdraw to the north. In October the American Fifth and British Eighth Armies established a line across the Italian peninsula and began to advance on a united front. The winter of 1943-44 proved a difficult one for the allied forces as a combination of terrain and weather made the advance extremely slow and painful. In January 1944 the Allies executed a second landing at Anzio designed to disrupt the German forces from the rear. Impeding the allied advance was the great fortress monastery of Cassino, which lay on the path to Rome. Throughout early 1944 the allied advance in Italy was slow, and at times the entire operation seemed in jeopardy. During the spring, however, allied commanders used a combination of maneuver and close air support, eventually captured Monte Cassino, and fought their way into Rome, which they entered on June 4, 1944. The German Army under Kesselring was obliged continued to retreat northward and withdrew to a position 150 miles north of Rome. The Allies, however, were unable to pursue closely because Operation Overlord (D-Day) and Operation Dragoon, the invasion of Southern France which was to serve as a distracter for the main D-Day operations, were about to get underway, and allied troops were withdrawn from Italy to participate in those landings. ** Battle of the Philippine Sea **  The irreverent name given to the  **Battle of the Philippine Sea**  in the Marianas reflects the fact that by the end of the battle in June, 1944, Japanese naval air power had been virtually neutralized, a process that had begun at Midway in 1942. Japanese losses throughout this Pacific campaign had been growing greater ever since the  latter days of the Guadalcanal campaign. By the spring of 1944 Japan had rebuilt its navy with newly trained pilots and felt prepared to embark upon an operation designed to re-gain the balance of power vis-à-vis the American Navy. Japanese Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, in command of six aircraft carriers, five battleships, seven heavy cruisers in addition to destroyers and support vessels, headed for the Marianas. Ozawa had certain advantages over the Americans, including the fact that his aircraft had a much greater range than those of the U.S. Navy. Since Admiral Spruance’s naval forces had the primary mission of protecting the American troops involved in the invasion of Saipan, Spruance was limited in his ability to maneuver to intercept the Japanese. The Battle of the Philippine Sea took place on June 19-21, 1944, and June 19 became memorable date in U.S. naval history. Admiral Ozawa was planning to get assistance from land-based aircraft from the island of Guam, still under Japanese control, and on the morning of June 19 his carrier-based aircraft were launched for their first mission against the U.S. fleet. By about 10 o'clock on June 19 U.S. Navy radar located the Japanese fleet and launched interceptor aircraft. As the Japanese warplanes approached the American fleet for their attack, the Americans pounced on them and immediately destroyed over 50 aircraft. None of the attacking Japanese planes ever reached the American aircraft carriers, their primary objective. While the air battle was going on, two United States submarines, the //Albacore// and the //Cavalla//, sank two of the Japanese aircraft carriers, the //Shokaku// and //Taiho//, the latter of which was the largest and newest Japanese aircraft carrier. The second Japanese air raid involved 130 Japanese airplanes, and the American defenders shot down 98 of them. About 20 Japanese planes got through and closed on the American battle fleet, but most were destroyed by antiaircraft fire from destroyers and battleships. A third raid resulted in no Japanese losses as the pilots failed to locate the American fleet. Later that morning the Japanese launched a fourth large raid consisting of 82 aircraft, but only nine of them survived. Meanwhile U.S. naval aircraft attacked the Japanese facilities on Guam. The Battle of the Philippine Sea was the largest aircraft carrier battle of the World War 2 and was significantly larger than the Battle of Midway. In the “Great Marianas turkey shoot” Admiral Ozawa’s forces lost 346 aircraft and two aircraft carriers; 30 American planes were shot down and one battleship was struck by a bomb which did minor damage. All of those first four raids occurred on the first day of the battle, and now the American Navy was in pursuit of the Japanese. In the ensuring fights the Japanese lost 65 more of the aircraft which had survived the first day's fighting. By June 22, when the Japanese fleet retreated to the anchorage in Okinawa, they had only 35 aircraft left out of the 430 with which they had started the assault on the American Navy. Three aircraft carriers had been sunk and, most important, over 400 new aviators had been lost and could not be replaced in time for the next battle, which was that of Leyte Gulf. The Battle of the Philippine Sea solidified the Allied hold on the Marianas Islands. Once Saipan was secured Marines quickly captured Guam and Tinian. The 77th Infantry Division of the United States Army also participated in the invasion of Guam. Those terrible losses of the Marianas and a major portion of the Japanese Navy led to the resignation of General Tojo and his cabinet on July 18, 1944. Although the invasions of the Philippines, Okinawa the home islands of Japan lay ahead, it was clear that the momentum was overwhelmingly on the side of the Allies.
 * Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
 * “The Marianas Turkey Shoot” **

**  The Battle of the Belgian Bulge:   Hitler's Last Stand   ** “Nuts”—General Anthony McAuliffe, on being asked to surrender at Bastogne.

December, 1944. Disappointed via his generals and ability to defeat the Allied landings in Normandy or retard their advance across France and through Belgium and the Netherlands, Hitler decided to launch a massive counterattack against the Americans and British in December, 1944. Using English-speaking German soldiers dressed in American uniforms and other forms of deception delivers planners did their best to conceal the impending attack and to confuse Allied defenders once the fighting had begun. Because the Americans and British advance so rapidly had been slow down only by lack of gasoline and other supplies, they had perhaps grown complacent, believing that the German army was ready to fold. A combination of faulty intelligence and bad weather, which hampered the operation of reconnaissance aircraft, the Germans were able to strike the Americans completely by surprise. What became known as the Battle of the Bulge began on December 16, 1944, as German divisions attacked on a 60 mile front. Because the American forces had suffered substantial losses and were therefore banned with many inexperienced troops, the Germans were able to advance rapidly. Numerous small units were cut off and surrounded though they continued to fight. General Eisenhower rushed an airborne division into the city of Bastogne, which had been surrounded. Closing in on the Americans the Germans sent an envoy to the airborne commander General Anthony C. McAuliffe. As the German officer made the offer known via an American aid, General McAuliffe German uttered his famous one word response: “Nuts!” When the German negotiator asked the American Navy for a clarification, not understanding what the word meant, the American offered a more blunt translation: “Go to hell!” As the weather cleared the Germans were hampered by air attacks and their own shortage of supplies. At one point German tanks ran out of fuel within a few hundred yards of a fuel dump containing thousands of gallons of gasoline. The difficult engagement costs the Americans heavily and they suffered approximately 70 5000 casualties. The results of all the fighting was a large balls in the American nine lines, from which the battle took its name. The German counteroffensive had a sobering effect on the American unit commanders, who now realize that the Germans were by no means through fighting. A rapid shift in the attacking direction of the third Army relieved Bastogne and the American advance toward the Rhine resumed. By the end of January all be lost territory had been recaptured an additional German counterattacks had also been blunted. The advance toward the Rhine continued. On March 7, 1945, members of the ninth US armored division discovered that the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen and had not been destroyed by the Germans and thus a foothold across the Rhine River suddenly became available. Americans fought their way across the bridge under intense fire, and following counterattacks the Germans attempted to destroy it. Although the bridge and eventually collapsed from the demolitions placed on it, pontoon bridges were set up alongside the rare road bridge, and within a week elements of several Army divisions had crossed to the east bank and were fighting on Germans soil. ** Operation Overlord: The Invasion of France, 1944 **

Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, commonly referred to as D-Day, was the largest amphibious operation ever conducted and perhaps the most complicated military maneuver ever undertaken. The mere numbers are staggering: Planning for the Normandy operation had been going on for months. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was in overall command of the Allied forces. British Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery was in command of the Allied land forces. General Omar N. Bradley commanded the American forces. General George S. Patton's Third Army was held out of the initial landings, partly as a ruse and partly because of his behavior problems which irritated General Eisenhower. (General Patton had made a troublesome public speech about postwar issues that had reverberated all the way back to Congress, even after General Eisenhower had cautioned the outspoken general about such things.) The Third Army landed several weeks later and assisted in the Allied breakout from the Normandy beachhead.
 * The Allies landed 156,000 troops in one day, including 73,000 Americans, on the beaches and dropped 15,000 airborne troops behind enemy lines;
 * Operation Neptune, the naval component of D-Day, involved 7,000 vessels, including 4000 transport ships, 1200 warships, countless small landing craft and about 200,000 personnel;
 * Air support for the invasion involved 11,590 aircraft;
 * The airborne (parachute and glider) drops involved 2395 aircraft and 867 gliders of the RAF and USAAF.
 * Hundreds of thousands more military and civilian personnel supported the operation throughout the Allied nations, including underground workers in France.
 * By D-Day + 5, June 11, the Allies had landed 326,547 troops, 54,186 vehicles and 104,428 tons of supplies.

German commanders were Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Prior to the invasion the Allies had engaged in extensive counterintelligence operations by creating a large volume of false radio traffic and even going to the extent of creating phony assembly areas on the ground packed with dummy vehicles and weapons. German intelligence had never been quite sure exactly where the landings were to take place, and the foul weather preceding and following D-Day contributed to their suspicion that the Normandy landings were not the real thing. The German staff in Berlin was so uncertain about the scope of the Normandy landings that they failed to notify Hitler until hours after the invasion had begun. The actual operation began just after midnight on June 6, 1944, when British and American airborne forces landed behind the German defenses known as the Atlantic Wall on the Cherbourg Peninsula. At daybreak the US First Army and British Second Army as well as Canadian, Polish, and French troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. The landings for the most part went more smoothly than had been hoped, but the V Corps of the First US Army on Omaha Beach met fierce resistance, though they managed to get a foothold about one mile deep by the end of the first day. From an editorial in the //Washington Post// , June 6, 2007: // On the day before the invasion of France, the supreme allied commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, wrote a note to be read in the event of the mission's failure and put it in his wallet. It said simply, "Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.” // When General Eisenhower received the first reports of the landings, his main concern was linking the American units that had landed on Omaha and Utah beaches and connecting them with the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions, whose drops had been widely scattered. Eisenhower visited with the British and American ground commanders regularly and established a headquarters in Normandy early in July. Allied efforts were aided by the fact that the successful allied counterintelligence operations had led the Germans to believe that the Normandy invasion was not the main assault, with the result that an entire German army was held in reserve for several weeks. While British forces tied up the main German resistance in the Caen area throughout June and early July, the American forces consolidated their hold on the Cherbourg Peninsula, since the port of Cherbourg was needed for the unloading of supplies. In July the American forces were ready to attempt a breakout from the positions they had gained since D-Day. General Patton's third Army had been moved into France, and the American First and Third Armies were reorganized for tactical advantage. By late July the Allies were well on the move toward Paris. As the American armored units which consumes huge quantities of ammunition and fuel continued to drive the Germans back, keeping the advanced combat units supplied remains a huge challenge. Special motor transport units were established with trucks of fuel and supplies being driven virtually nonstop by teams of drivers who were organized into a unit known as the “Red Ball Express.” The fact that American units were filled with bright young men was varying skills was a positive factor in solving various logistical and technical problems. One example of American ingenuity came to the fore when it was discovered that tanks often had difficulty traversing irrigated agricultural areas because of lack of traction. A young engineer in the ranks suggested that much of the defensive material on the beaches which had been dismantled by engineers could be used to solve the problem by welding onto the sides of the tanks strips of metal which would dig into the turf and give the tanks better traction. Also apparent during the massive offensive was the force of matériel supplied by American factories. Countless tons of ammunition and spare parts, vehicles, weapons, communications equipment and every other conceivable item needed for soldiers in battle arrived in huge quantities. An apocryphal story told of the incident of a German counterattack which had briefly captured at American position. A German intelligence officer noticed a package containing a birthday cake which had been mailed to a soldier from his family. Furious at the implication he demanded to know of his commander how Germany could hope to win a war when they were running short of fuel while the Americans could manage to get a fresh birthday cake to the front lines in a matter of days.

Tensions existed from time to time between General Montgomery and the American commanders, and General Eisenhower often found himself acting as referee in what can be described as politico-military squabbles. Not only did he have to deal with strong-willed, hotheaded generals such as George Patton, he also had to deal with the French forces under General Charles de Gaulle. Eisenhower's initial plan had called for the bypassing of the city of Paris because it had no strategic or tactical significance. General de Gaulle, however, had other ideas, and thus the assault was reorganized to include the recapture of Paris, which occurred on August 25, 1944. The rapid advance of the American and British forces in August and September, 1944, lead to shortages in critical supplies, especially gasoline. Armored vehicles and trucks were consuming minions of gallons and transporting it strains the resources of the quartermaster troops to their limit. As the Allies study plans for the advance toward the Rhine tensions once against arose as different commanders put forth plausible plans for the advance. The difficulty while others that there were not enough supplies to go around and General Eisenhower was faced with the problem of deciding where to allocate resources. He was in a no-win situation, for no matter who received the lion's share of ammunition and gasoline, complaining was sure to follow. Into the month of October various strategies were considered and as occurred frequently major units underwent reorganizations to take advantage of the abilities of the different divisions. As winter approached the Allies settle down to prepare for the final assault on Germany itself.

**Airborne Landing Begins**
Allied airborne forces began the invasion of Europe shortly after 00:00 hours. First in were the elite pathfinder units, who marked out drop zones on the ground for the rest of their divisions. Landing by parachute and glider, British and American paratroops deployed on the flanks of the invasion zones to seize important bridges and road junctions. British 6th Airborne Division successfully captured and held Pegasus Bridge on the eastern flank, preventing German reinforcement of the beaches and securing an exit route for the invasion force.

**Heavy Bombing Raids**
At 03:00 hours Allied bombers launched massive raids against German defensive positions in Normandy. The complete air superiority of the Allies meant that the bombers were almost entirely unchallenged as they chose their targets.

**Allied Invasion Fleet Arrives**
The Allied armada of 3,000 landing craft, 2,500 other ships, and 500 naval vessels arrived off the coast of Normandy at 04:00 hours. The warships, including seven battleships and eighteen coastal cruisers, commenced bombardment of coastal defenses in the region of the five beaches selected as landing sites.

**U.S. Landings Begin**
The Allies would attempt to land on five beaches in the early stages of D-Day, codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. Later in the day, when the beaches were secure, they would attempt to link-up to create a single salient of the four easternmost beachheads. U.S. landings at Utah and Omaha began at 06:30 hours - an hour before British and Canadian landings. Things immediately began to go wrong: at Utah, the tide carried the landing-craft away from their target beaches - by sheer luck this caused American troops to avoid heavier defenses, and the area was quickly secured with few casualties. At Omaha there was less luck. All but two of the amphibious tanks sank in the heavy seas, and German resistance was unexpectedly fierce. Casualties quickly began to mount as successive waves of American assault infantry became pinned-down on the beach.

**British and Canadian Landings Begin**
British and Canadian landings began at 07:25 hours. British landings at Sword and Canadian landings at Juno went well, with the beaches rapidly secured after only moderate resistance. At Gold, the British 50th Northumbrian Division had to fight hard to finally overcome German defenses. By midday, all three beaches were secure and reinforcements, including the 7th ‘Desert Rats’ Armored Divisions, began to unload. British forces advancing from Sword established contact with 6th Airborne Division defending Pegasus Bridge. Other troops, from the British 3rd and the Canadian 3rd Infantry Divisions pushed inland towards the Normandy town of Caen, their objective for D-Day.

**British and Canadian forces push inland**
At 12:00 hours Allied troops were beginning to push inland from the beaches at four of the five landing zones. At Omaha, however, things had gone badly wrong. Regimental Combat Teams from the 1st US Infantry Division had lost tank and engineer support on the approach to the beach. Specially-modified amphibious tanks had sunk with their crews in the heavy seas. Landing-craft struggled to reach the beach under heavy fire while dodging underwater obstacles. They had also run up against the veteran 352nd German Infantry Division, which Allied intelligence had failed to locate. Progress was eventually made when small, isolated groups of American soldiers, landing away from the main target beaches, pushed inland and were able to attack German defenses from the flank and rear. But although Americans now had the upper-hand, the beach was still not secure at 12:00 hours. A total of 2,400 Americans were killed or wounded on Omaha beach, and by the end of the day they had penetrated only 2,000 yards inland. Meanwhile the rest of the beaches had been safely captured. The British 3rd Division began its advance toward its D-Day objective, Caen, at approximately 12:00 hours. Units advancing from Gold and Juno beaches linked-up, before driving south towards Bayeaux. American troops of the 4th Infantry Division landing at Utah took less than 200 casualties on D-Day, and after they had broken through light German defenses on the coastline pushed inland through the marshes to make contact with the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions.

**Hitler Authorizes German Counter-Attack**
As British infantry pushed inland attempting to reach their objectives before the end of the day, they came under heavy German counter-attack. This was the German 21st Panzer Division, attempting to drive a wedge between Canadian and British forces advancing from Juno and Sword. Because British armor was still en route, caught up in the traffic jams on the beaches, it was left to British anti-tank gunners to repel the German attack. This they achieved, but there was now no question of reaching Caen that day. At approximately 16:00 hours at Fuhrer Headquarters, Hitler at last realized the Normandy landings were not a feint intended to draw his reserve divisions away from Pas de Calais, and committed 1st SS Panzer Corps to the fighting in Normandy.

D-Day Ends
The Allies have successfully established a lodgement area in Occupied Europe. Although not all objectives have been secured, the landings have been a success. By the end of D-Day, the Allies had landed 130,000 troops by sea and 29,000 troops by air. Determined resistance, German counter-attacks and bottlenecks at beach exits prevented the Allies achieving all objectives. British 3rd Infantry Division was 3 miles short of Caen, and American troops were struggling to get off the beach at Omaha. Nor had the four eastern landing beaches been established as a single salient. Nevertheless, the Allies had acquired a toehold in Europe and under the cover of overwhelming air superiority, reinforcements and supplies began to pour in.

** The Battle for Okinawa ** The battle for Okinawa was the largest battle in the Pacific in World War II, and the landings on the island were supported by the most powerful fleet ever assembled. The invasion of Okinawa was set for April 1, 1945, and pre-invasion bombings from Saipan had been going on for weeks. The island of Okinawa itself is larger than many of the islands which had previously been attacked. It is shaped something like a large combination banana and hourglass, with thick, uninhabited tropical jungle in the northern half and a heavily populated built-up area in the south, at the center of which is the capital city of Naha, which lies below a mountain topped by Shuri Castle. The population of Okinawa in 1945 was approximately half a million Okinawan natives, mostly civilians, who, although Okinawa was part of Japan, were separate race from the Japanese. Given the size of the island the invasion force was large, consisting of three Marine divisions and four U.S. Army infantry divisions with a fifth U.S. infantry division in reserve, in all approximately 300,000 combat and support troops. Marine Lt. General Roy Geiger and Army. Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, who commanded the Army divisions, were both experienced combat commanders and got a long quite well, in contrast to the friction that had occurred during some previous Army and Marine joint operations. The supporting fleet for the battle of Okinawa consisted of 40 large and small aircraft carriers, 18 battleships and hundreds of destroyers and cruisers. There were several airfields on the island and the Americans anticipated that they would be fiercely defended by the 100,000 troops in the Okinawa Garrison. The Japanese plan was to let the Americans get ashore and then lure them into situations in which they could not be well supported by naval gunfire. The low mountains and gullies, in which natural and artificial caves protected had been prepared for defending troops and headquarters, made such a plan practical. The Japanese had also learned the lesson that defending against landings in close proximity to the beach areas was extremely costly. The initial landings near the center of the island were virtually unopposed, and by the evening of the first day 50,000 troops were safely ashore. During the first few days of the invasion the resistance remained light. Within a matter of hours Americans had captured two of the airfields at Yonton and Kadena. But by the end of the first week the Army troops ran into fierce resistance north of the city of Naha. For days the American soldiers and Marines hammered at the heart of the Japanese defenses, and fierce Japanese counterattacks were repulsed with heavy casualties among the Japanese, but the defenses around the Shuri Castle mountain remained extremely strong. While the fighting went on ashore, the Navy had to deal with the latest wave of Japanese defensive tactics, that of the fanatical kamikaze aircraft. Hundreds of kamikaze pilots flew their planes directly into the American ships, causing heavy casualties, especially among the ring of destroyers on picket duty around the invasion force. In addition to the kamikaze attacks the Japanese sent the giant battleship //Yamato// against the Americans in a last desperate attempt to protect the island which lay only a few hundred miles from Japan. The fighting on land continued throughout May and into the middle of June until the Army and Marines finally secured the islands. By the 21st of June 7,000 US soldiers and Marines had been killed, including General Buckner. Five thousand sailors died in the kamikaze attacks and thousands more were wounded. On the islands 70,000 Japanese soldiers had died as well as 80,000 Okinawan civilians. An entire Japanese army had been destroyed and hundreds of planes and the battleship //Yamato// had been lost, but there was little sense of relief because the battle had been one of the most costly of the war. Now that the Philippines had been secured the Central Pacific forces under Admiral Nimitz and the Southwest Pacific forces under General MacArthur were converging on a joint objective: the invasion of Japan. Tensions would grow between Army and Navy staffs, both of which had developed their own strategic, tactical and supply methods during the course of the war. With guidance from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, however, the staffs of Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur began to plan for an invasion of Japan. Meanwhile B-29 bombers from the island of Saipan continued to rain destruction on the Japanese homeland. Although the Japanese still had an army of hundreds of thousands on the Chinese mainland, the Japanese Navy had been reduced to the point where any chance of moving soldiers back to the Japan itself would hardly have been possible. Although the invasion of Japan never took place, the initial assaults on the southern island of Kyushu would have involved over 700,000 men and casualties were expected to be in excess of 200,000. The first operation against Japan was scheduled for November 1945, and the main invasion of the large island of Honshu for February or March 1946. The two operations combined would have involved over one million men. The Japanese were prepared to defend their homeland by all means available, including the employment of “all able-bodied Japanese regardless of sex.” Every Japanese citizen was commanded to be prepared to sacrifice his or her life in suicide attacks against the invaders, and explosives such as Molotov cocktails and other improvised weapons were being prepared. But as the invasion of Okinawa was being wrapped up, final preparations were underway in Alamogordo, New Mexico, for the testing of the first atomic bomb. ** The Capture of Iwo Jima ** Copyright © 2006, Henry J. Sage

As of this writing a new movie, //Flags of our Fathers// , about the battle of Iwo Jima has just been released. A Japanese film about the same battle is due out within a few months. Because of the famous photograph by Joe Rosenthal of the flag raising on Mount Suribachi and the statue by Felix de Weldon which stands in Arlington, Virginia, overlooking Memorial Bridge and the District of Columbia, Iwo Jima is one of the most famous battles of World War II and probably the most famous battle in the Asian theater. The fame is well deserved, for it is clear that Iwo Jima was one of the toughest battles fought by the Marines in World War II. The small island of Iwo Jima lies about 600 miles south of Tokyo. The island is mostly flat, but at its southern tip Mount Suribachi, an extinct volcano, rises over 500 feet from which the entire island and its beaches can be observed. By February 1945, Iwo Jima was one of the chief Japanese defensive strongholds which had not yet been captured. Its capture was designed to help bring the Pacific war to a successful conclusion. The planned attack on Iwo Jima had four objectives: Before Marines landed on Iwo Jima, the Navy had conducted the longest and most intensive bombardment given any ground objective in the Pacific during the war. Starting with air strikes in 1944, which may have served in part to drive the Japanese defenders deeper under ground, the blasting of the island continued through the morning of 19 February 1945. The Japanese commander on Iwo Jima recognized that the volcanic soil on the island could be mixed with cement to form a very strong form of concrete. The Japanese had over 21,000 men on the island and about 500 heavy weapons, all of which were positioned in reinforced concrete bunkers and caves. Because Iwo Jima was actual Japanese territory, the American commanders knew that it would be defended as fiercely as anything they had previously encountered. The Marine units in the invasion of Iwo Jima were the V Amphibious Corps which consisted of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Marine Divisions. Although Navy ships, including five battleships, bombarded the island of Iwo Jima heavily for three days before the landings began, it became clear once the Marines were ashore that many of the defenses had been untouched. Because the Japanese defenders had dug so deeply into the earth, the bombardments had not touched them. On the morning of D-Day, February 19, 1945, an additional heavy bombardment commenced in advance of the landings, which began at around 8:30. As the troops went ashore they immediately encountered soft volcanic ash, which made advancing very tedious. But because the bombardments had neutralized the defenses close to the beaches the initial assault was not heavily attacked, but the farther the Marines got inland, the more deadly the defensive fires became. Japanese mortar and artillery dropped shells on the beach, causing casualties even among men who were already wounded and who had been evacuated back to the beach. Despite those difficulties the Marines landed 30,000 men on the first day of the invasion. Mount Suribachi, the lonely height on the southern end of the island of Iwo Jima, was the objective of the 28th Marine regiment. Japanese observers on the top of the mountain were using their advantageous position to direct artillery onto the Marine invaders. On the second day of the assault, the 28th Marines attacked the mountain, which was covered with defensive bunkers, machine gun pillbox positions and caves. After three days of difficult fighting the Marines finally reached the top of the mountain and a small flag was raised. The photographer who took the picture of the first flag raising and had his camera knocked out of his hand and destroyed by a grenade, but he saved the film. As he was heading down the mountain, looking for another camera, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal arrived and discovered that the Marines were about to raise a larger flag which could be seen all over the island and by the ships still offshore. Rosenthal snapped the picture of the second flag raising and it became one of the most famous photographs of war ever taken and the model for the bronze statue that stands near Arlington Cemetery just outside Washington. Stories that the second flag raising was staged were put to rest long ago. Rosenthal was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Those unfamiliar with the history of Iwo Jima are inclined to believe that the flag raising was the culmination of a battle, but it was only the beginning. In the three weeks of fighting to take the island the Marines lost almost 7,000 men killed and almost 20,000 wounded: the Japanese had inflicted more than one casualty for every soldier defending the island. Almost all of the 21,000 Japanese defenders were killed in the battle. One of the main objectives of taking Iwo Jima had been to capture the airstrips and engineers in Navy Seabees began working on the airfields even before the island was fully captured. But soon after the fighting ended the airfield on Iwo became operational as an emergency landing strip for B-29s that had been flying from Saipan to bomb the home islands of Japan. By the time the war was over more than 2,400 emergency landings had taken place on Iwo Jima and many fliers’ lives had thus been saved. When the fighting on Iwo Jima was over, Admiral Nimitz wrote, “Among the Americans who served on Iwo island uncommon valor was a common virtue.” When considering that the island of Iwo Jima is only 7-1/2 square miles in size, it is clear that a great deal of heroism occurred in a very small place. Allied Forces move toward the Philippines ** Of all the quotations attributed to famous military leaders, General Douglas MacArthur's “I shall return” ranks with the best known. General MacArthur had been the American military commander of forces in the Philippines since 1935 and had grown to love the Islands and the people. When ordered by President Roosevelt in March 1942 to remove himself in order to take over command of operation in the Southwest Pacific area, MacArthur vowed to come back to liberate the Philippines from Japanese control. Immediately after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they had turned on the Philippines, and despite heroic resistance by the Americans and the Philippine army, the Islands finally fell in April 1942. MacArthur was evacuated secretly by a patrol torpedo boat and made his famous promise upon his arrival in Australia. Meanwhile the Americans, who had established a final line of defense at Bataan, were forced to surrender to superior Japanese forces. Many prisoners suffered and died during the infampus Bataan death march, and many more spent three gruesome years in Japanese prison camps. MacArthur's plans to move back toward the Philippines were hampered by the fact that the American and British staffs in Washington and London were struggling to allocate scarce resources while honoring their joint commitment to conquer Germany first. The attack on Guadalcanal had been necessitated by the threat of the Japanese airfield under construction, and the Pacific commanders insisted in keeping the pressure on Japan, a decision which was finally agreed upon by Allied leaders during the Casablance Conference of January 1943, the same conference at which President Roosevelt adn Prime Min ister Churchill agree on the policy of “unconditional surrender.” While the Navy and Marines under Admiral Halsey and the Army units under his command moved through the Solomons, the Gilberts and beyond, General MacArthur's Army units and Australian forces were preparing to advance toward the Philippines along the northern coast of New Guinea. MacArthur had pointed out the advantage of that second route in that it would provide for land-based air cover along the way. The double-pronged advance—the Southwest Pacific route and the Central Pacific drive had the merit of keeping Japanese forces divided and of providing opportunities for surprise. The advance through New Guinea began in April 1944. MacArthur followed the same general strategy adopted by Halsey in the Central Pacific—leapfrogging over lesser points of resistance to cut them off, leaving them for Australian forces to neutralize. After several initial landings MacArthur’s troops established a large base at Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea. From there they moved westward up the coast, gradually getting closer to their objective of the Philippines. As the Japanese moved to reinforce western New Guinea with aircraft from the Marianas, they discovered that the Americans were preparing to attack the Marianas, leaving the Japanese forces stretched very thin. By late July 1944 Allied forces were at the western tip of New Guinea and began planning for the assault on the Philippines, just as the Marines and Army were capturing [|Saipan, Tinian and Guam] in the Marianas. ** MacArthur returns to the Philippines ** <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; letter-spacing: 0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.0pt;">As American forces began to moved near the Philippines in late 1944, Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet conducted a lengthy battle against Japanese carrier and shore-based aircraft. But the Japanese Navy, which had suffered continuous losses since the battles of Coral Sea and Midway, was not the same navy and naval air force that had attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Japanese losses during this phase of fighting were over 500 aircraft lost, considerable sunk shipping and damaged base facilities. Japanese reporting on the battle, however, was wildly exaggerated, leaving Japanese commanders in the Philippines to think that American naval and air power had been severely damaged. In fact, the opposite was true. When the force assembled for the invasion of Leyte, the initial objective on the Philippines, gathered at Hollandia in October, 1944, it was one of the most powerful naval and military assemblies in history. The Allied force consisted of over 700 ships and 160,000 troops, including battleships, cruisers, escort carriers and destroyers, as well as the amphibious assault vessels. On October 20, 1944 the assault force approached the Philippines through Leyte Gulf. The VII Amphibious force began its landings at 10:00 o'clock, and at one that afternoon General MacArthur left the //USS Nashville// and went ashore from a landing craft, wading through the surf with his staff in their freshly pressed khaki uniforms. Although fighting raged nearby, General MacArthur ignored it and announced over the radio: "People of the Philippines, I have returned! By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil." Two days later General MacArthur and Philippine President Osmeña announced that civilian government had been restored to the Philippines. Meanwhile, as the American forces in the Philippines expanded from their initial beachhead a Japanese fleet was heading for Leyte under Admiral Kurita. For three days, October 23-26, 1944, what remained of the Imperial Japanese fleet engaged the American fleet under Admiral Halsey in the <span style="font-size: 11pt; letter-spacing: 0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">**Battle of Leyte Gulf**. During the action the Japanese lost 4 aircraft carriers, 3 battleships, 10 cruisers, 11 destroyers and one submarine, and virtually every Japanese ship engaged in the battle was damaged. The Japanese also lost 500 aircraft and 10,000 sailors and airmen. As the Allies consolidated their position in the Philippines the Japanese Navy retreated northward in the direction of Japan in preparation for the assaults on Okinawa in the Ryuku Islands, which would be the last step before the Allies were in a position to invade Japan itself. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Fighting continued in the Philippines throughout 1945. In early January General MacArthur's forces on Leyte approached the main Philippine Island of Luzon. In a series of landings American troops went ashore and closed in on Manila Bay and the capital city. In late February as the Americans were closing in, the Japanese commander ordered a fierce suicidal defense which resulted in the destruction of many buildings in the city of Manila. By the time the American army had driven all the Japanese out, over 16,000 Japanese soldiers had been killed. Although the Americans now controlled the Philippine Islands, various strong points remained in Japanese hands until the end of the war in August 1945.
 * “Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue.” **
 * To ** ** provide fighter cover for bombing missions against Japan. **
 * To deny this strategic outpost to the enemy. **
 * To create defensive airbases to protect positions in the Marianas. **
 * To provide air fields for staging heavy bomber raids against Japan. **
 * The Southwest Pacific Drive

** The Central Pacific Drive ** <span style="font-size: 12pt; letter-spacing: 0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 6.5pt; msobidifontsize: 6.5pt; msospacerun: yes;"> The American drive across the Central Pacific against Japan was led by the Navy under **Admiral Chester W. Nimitz**, at the center of which were the six Marine divisions and additional army units. Once Guadalcanal was secured, planners came up with an idea of leapfrogging across the string of defended Japanese islands, not wanting to use valuable resources to capture every stronghold along the way. Starting with each secured island they drew a circle out to the maximum range of adequate air support for the ground troops and selected a target on the outer rim. The strategy of “island hopping” had benefits. Once the remote island was secured, any Japanese forces remaining on the intermediate islands had been effectively neutralized. Without air support of their own there was no way they could affect the Allied advance. The strategy also aided a more rapid advance, since larger areas of the South Pacific were brought more rapidly under control. During the advance the United States Navy was waging its own campaign against the Imperial Japanese Navy, fought heavily with carrier aircraft. Meanwhile American and Japanese submarines played their role in attempting to neutralize the opposing fleets. That effective island-hopping strategy, however, did not mean that taking the islands themselves was any easier. Although the Marines perfected their amphibious techniques further with each landing, the Japanese were well dug in and defended their island strongholds with ferocity. **Major Battles** **Bougainville** The next stop for the Marines in the Pacific once Guadalcanal was secured was the island at the other end of the Solomons chain, Bougainville. The strip of ocean in the center of the island was known as “the Slot,” and Japanese ships moved up and down threatening American forces on the islands. The capture of Bougainville would help secure the Central Pacific area and advance the campaign toward the overall objective of Japan itself. On November 1, 1943, Marines went ashore at Empress Augusta Bay for the landing on the island of Bougainville. The Japanese had 60,000 troops on the southern part of the island who were supported by air and naval forces from Rabaul on New Britain Island. Shortly after the landings the Navy under Admiral Halsey launched an air strike from carriers against Rabaul, relieving the pressure on the American troops. Bougainville was a battle that saw some of the fiercest fighting of World War II, and after the Americans left for their next operations, Australian troops continued to fight Japanese on Bougainville until the war ended.

**The Gilberts: Makin and Tarawa** Tarawa Atoll itself is a collection of coral islands in a triangular shape roughly 12 x 18 miles. Its location made it a major steppingstone on the drive towards the home island of Japan. Japan had seized the Gilberts in 1941 and had been busily building defenses since that time. The islands of Makin and Betio are also part of the Gilberts. As Army forces under General Douglas MacArthur moved along the northern coast of New Guinea, the Navy and Marines prepared for an assault on the Gilbert Islands to the north of Guadalcanal. Tarawa became one of the bloodiest battles fought by the Marines during the war. The island was very heavily fortified and several days of naval bombardment failed to dislodge most of the defenders. The Second Marine Division landed on Betio, the main island of the Tarawa atoll on November 22, 1943, after a three-hour bombardment. Betio was a strong fortress of bunkers made from coconut logs and coral cement. It contained the only airfield on the atoll and was defended by well-trained Japanese soldiers. The landing area was protected by intersecting fields of fire. Hampered by coral reefs which required the Marines to wade for long distances to get to shore, the first wave of attackers suffered almost 100% casualties. With the use of flamethrowers to drive defenders out of underground bunkers, the Marines worked their way painfully along the atoll. The final victory at Tarawa followed a “Banzai” or suicide attack by the fierce Japanese defenders. Although the Japanese commander had claimed that it would take years for an enemy to capture Tarawa, the American Marines accomplished it in 76 hours. Although the fighting in Tarawa lasted only four days, 1000 Marines were killed and 3000 wounded. Back in the United States the government had restricted newsreels in movie theaters, the primary source of visual news in an era preceding television, from showing American casualties. But as the telegrams continued to arrive to the families of fallen fighting men, the restrictions were lifted, and the first newsreels showing American casualties were those from the Battle of Tarawa. The action at Tarawa continued to place pressure on Japanese defenders as the drive through the [|Southwest Pacific] along the New Guinea coast was taking shape, and the Japanese found it increasingly difficult to defend both areas. The assault of the Marshall Islands open a new phase of the Pacific war, for now the Americans were attacking islands that had been awarded to Japan at the end of the first world war and which they had occupied before 1941. The target selected for the man assault on the Marshalls was the Kwajalein Atoll, which was in the center of the islands. It was located approximately 600 miles northwest of Tarawa. A secondary objective was the In addition to the transports which would carry the troops, aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers also ported the assault with air attacks and naval bombardment prior to the landings. The overall commander of the operation was Major General Holland M. Smith, commander of the Marine V (5th) Amphibious Corps, known within the Marine Corps as “Howlin’ Mad” because of his ferocious temper. The main elements of the assault force would be the fourth Marine division in the seventh infantry division of the United States Army. D-Day for the invasion of the Marshalls was January 31, 1944. Following a heavy pre-landing bombardment Marines and army troops landed on various islands of the Atoll and set up artillery batteries to support the landings on more heavily defended beaches. Since the Kwajalein Atoll is very narrow the Japanese defended close to the beaches, using strong counterattacks. After days of fierce fighting almost all of the Japanese defenders had been killed, and within days of the first invasion Marine ground troops had repaired the Japanese airfield for use by Marine aircraft. By mid-February the first Japanese mandated islands were in American hands. Next it was on to Saipan and the Marianas, another step closer to Japan itself. Eniwetok Atoll. Knowing that the Japanese defenders had possessed the Marshall Islands for 20 years prior to the start of the war made American planners aware of the fact that the landing would not be easy. All they had learned from guadalcanal and Tarawa would be considered in planning the assault.
 * The Marshalls: Kwajalein **

Saipan, Tinian, Guam, and Peleliu  ** The Mariana Islands, which include the islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian lie about 1200 miles west northwest of Kwajalein and about 1350 miles south of Tokyo. The decision to attack to marry and this was based upon a desire to keep pressure on the Japanese in the Central Pacific and to create air bases from which bombers could attack Japan directly. With the Marshalls as a base from which to operate, the attack on the Marianas was feasible. The leapfrog strategy was beginning to pay off. The United States had acquired the island of Guam as a result of the Spanish-American war, but the remainder of the Marianas had been in Germany's possession until after the First World War, when they were awarded to Japan. One of Japan's first objectives after the outbreak of World War II was the capture of Guam. The Japanese had constructed to air bases on the island of Saipan. Because the United States forces had been advancing so rapidly through the Central Pacific, the defenses on Saipan were not as far developed as the Japanese had hoped, though the Japanese had substantial troop concentrations totaling about 29,000 throughout the Marianas. A task force of approximately 800 vessels was assembled to carry soldiers and Marines from bases over 1000 miles away to the Marianas landings. Both Navy and Marine planners that continued to refine the techniques of amphibious warfare, and improvements in supporting equipment and Landing craft had continued apace. The overall commander of the operation was Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, USN, Commander Fifth Fleet. Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith was in command of the entire landing force for the attack on the Marianas. Coordination of the invasion it was complex, as troops came from as far away as Hawaii. Prior to the invasion, as was done at the previous objectives, naval gunfire and aircraft were used to soften up the defenses of the islands. Saipan was bombed heavily on June 12 and 13, 1944, and naval gunfire operating directly against the shore targets began on the 13th. As had been the case in the past, however, many heavily fortified and well dug in Japanese defensive positions remained intact. On June 15 and 16th the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions and the 27th Army division landed on Saipan. With a large number of troops in a relatively confined area, confusion ensued on the beaches as units became mixed up, but the Marines were aware of their objectives and advanced resolutely in the face of heavy defensive fire. During the first night ashore the landing force encountered Japanese counterattacks, which were successfully repulsed. On D-Day plus 1 additional troops were landed in the advance continued relentlessly for over three weeks until the island of Saipan was secured. Within a few days after the end of the Saipan operation the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions moved in the neighboring island of Tinian, which was taken in a matter of approximately 2 weeks, and by the middle of August the island of Guam was also secured. The recapture of Guam, a former possession of the United States, was a high point of the Pacific war. Once the islands were secured a large air base was prepared from the Japanese space that had existed prior to the landing, and B-29 bombers were soon using Saipan as a launch point for raids on the home islands of Japan. On August 6, 1945, the B-29 named the Enola Gay took off from Saipan and dropped the first atomic bomb in history on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. ** Peleliu ** The island of Peleliu in the Palau Islands lies between the Mariana Islands and the Philippines and was initially considered an important objective in the overall advance through the Western Pacific. In retrospect it has been suggested that it might have been well to bypass the Palau Islands, but Admiral Nimitz never canceled the operation, and it went forward. Initial intelligence suggested that Peleliu would be a relatively easy target, but such was not the case. The terrain on the island consisted of coral ridges in which caves had been dug and reinforced with concrete and other obstacles. Thus the pre-invasion bombardments did little damage to the Japanese defenders. The first Marine division landed on September 15, 1944 and the Marines found the going extremely tough. Fighting in extreme heat with temperatures will over 100 degrees, Marines found advancing physically troublesome over the sharp coral, which could even cut through boots. Marines had captured the airfield which was the main objective by September 30, but there were still many Japanese on the island and the fighting continued into November. The assault on Peleliu cost over 1,000 killed and 5,000 wounded. The job of the Americans was made slightly easier because the Japanese were beefing up defenses in the Philippines and the Ryukus (Okinawa); nevertheless, the fighting on Peleliu was some of the most brutal of the war. inside Stalingrad. As the Russian winter set in, the 6th Army weakened rapidly from cold, starvation, and ongoing Soviet attacks, but was forbidden to surrender by [|Adolf Hitler]. During December, a German attempt to break the encirclement failed, and subsequently all attempts at supply collapsed. By early February 1943, German resistance in Stalingrad had ceased, and the surrounded 6th Army had been destroyed. 1) The **Battle of Arnhem** was a famous [|Second World War] [|military engagement] fought in and around the [|Dutch] towns of [|Arnhem], [|Oosterbeek], [|Wolfheze], [|Driel] and the surrounding countryside from the 17–26 September 1944. 2)  The **Battle of the Atlantic** was the longest continuous [|military campaign] of [|World War II], (though some say it was a series of naval [|military campaigns] and [|offensives]) running from 1939 through to the defeat of [|Nazi] [|Germany] in 1945, and was at its height from mid-1940 through to the end of 1943. The Battle of the Atlantic pitted [|U-boats] and other [|warships] of the [|German Navy] (//[|Kriegsmarine]//) against [|Allied] [|convoys]. 3) ** Operation Barbarossa ** (German: //Unternehmen Barbarossa//) was the [|code name] for [|Germany]'s invasion of the [|Soviet Union] during [|World War II] that began on 22 June 1941.Over 4.5 million troops of the [|Axis powers] invaded the USSR along a 2,900 km (1,800 mile) front. 4)  The **Ardennes Offensive; Battle of the Bulge** (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was a major German offensive (//die Ardennenoffensive//), launched towards the end of [|World War II] through the forested [|Ardennes Mountains region] of Belgium (and more specifically of [|Wallonia]: hence its French name, //Bataille des Ardennes//), France and Luxembourg on the [|Western Front]. 5) The third **Battle of Changsha** (December 24, 1941 – January 15, 1942) was the first major offensive in China by [|Imperial Japanese] forces following the [|Japanese attack on the Western Allies]. 6)  The **Battle of the Coral Sea**, fought during May 4–8, 1942, was a major [|naval battle] in the [|Pacific Theater] of [|World War II] between the [|Imperial Japanese Navy] and [|Allied] naval and air forces from the [|United States] (U.S.) and [|Australia]. The battle was the first fleet action in which [|aircraft carriers] engaged each other. It was also the first naval battle in history in which neither side's ships sighted or fired directly upon the other. 7) The **Battle of Crete** ([|German]: **// Luftlandeschlacht um Kreta //** ) was a battle during [|World War II] on the [|Greek] island of [|Crete]. The battle began on the morning of 20 May 1941, when [|Nazi Germany] launched an [|airborne invasion] of Crete under the code-name **Unternehmen Merkur** ("Operation Mercury") Greek and [|Allied forces] along with Cretan civilians defended the island. 8)  The **Battle of Dražgoše** ([|Slovene]: // dražgoška bitka // ) was a [|Second World War] [|battle] between [|Slovene] [|partisans] (NOVJ) and [|Nazi Germany] [|armed forces], which took place between [|January 9] and [|January 11], [|1942], in the [|Slovenian] village of [|Dražgoše]. This battle was the first direct confrontation of [|the war] between the two. 9) The **Guadalcanal Campaign**, also known as the  ** Battle of Guadalcanal **, was fought between August 7, 1942 and February 9, 1943 on and around the island of [|Guadalcanal] in the [|Pacific theater] of [|World War II]. Fiercely contested on the ground, at sea, and in the air, the [|campaign] was the first major offensive launched by [|Allied] forces against the [|Empire of Japan]. 10)  The **Battle of Iwo Jima** (February 19 – March 26, 1945), or  ** Operation //Detachment// ** , was a battle in which the United States fought for and captured [|Iwo Jima] (lit. Sulfur Island) from [|Japan]. The battle produced some of the fiercest fighting in the [|Pacific Campaign] of [|World War II]. 11) The **Battle of the Java Sea** was a major [|naval battle] of the [|Pacific campaign] of [|World War II]. [|Allied] navies suffered a disastrous defeat at the hand of the [|Imperial Japanese Navy], on [|February 27], 1942, and in secondary actions over successive days. The [|American-British-Dutch-Australian Command] (ABDA) commander, Admiral [|Karel Doorman] was killed.   12)  The **Battle of Kursk** refers to [|German] and [|Soviet] operations on the [|Eastern Front] of [|World War II] in the vicinity of the city of [|Kursk] in July and August 1943. It remains both the largest series of [|armoured clashes], including the [|Battle of Prokhorovka], and the costliest single day of [|aerial warfare] to date. 13) The **Battle of Leyte** in the [|Pacific campaign] of [|World War II] was the invasion and conquest of [|Leyte] in the [|Philippines] by [|American] and [|Filipino] [|guerrilla] forces under the command of General [|Douglas MacArthur], who fought against the [|Imperial Japanese Army] in the Philippines led by General [|Tomoyuki Yamashita] from 17 October to 31 December 1944. 14) The **Battle of Leyte Gulf**, also called the "Battles for Leyte Gulf", and formerly known as the "Second Battle of the Philippine Sea", is generally considered to be the largest naval battle of [|World War II] and also one of the [|largest naval battles in history]. 15)  The **Battle of Manila** from 3 February to 3 March 1945, fought by American, [|Filipino] and [|Japanese] forces, was part of the Philippines' 1945 campaign. The one-month battle, which culminated in a terrible bloodbath and total devastation of the city, was the scene of the worst [|urban fighting] in the [|Pacific theater], and ended almost three years of Japanese military occupation in the Philippines (1942–1945). The city's capture was marked as General [|Douglas MacArthur]'s key to victory in the campaign of reconquest. 16) The **Battle of Manners Street** refers to a riot involving American servicemen and New Zealand servicemen and civilians outside the [|Allied Services Club] in Manners Street, [|Wellington], [|New Zealand] in 1943. The club was a social centre, open to all military personnel. 17)  ** Operation Market Garden ** (September 17–25, 1944) was an [|Allied] military operation, fought in the [|Netherlands] and [|Germany] in [|World War II]. It was the largest airborne operation of all time. 18) The **Battle of Midway** is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the [|Pacific Campaign] of [|World War II]. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the [|Battle of the Coral Sea] and seven months after [|Japan]'s [|attack on Pearl Harbor], the [|United States Navy] decisively defeated an [|Imperial Japanese Navy] (IJN) attack against [|Midway Atoll], inflicting irreparable damage on the Japanese navy and seizing the strategic initiative. 19)  The **Battle of Monte Cassino** (also known as the **Battle for Rome** and the **Battle for Cassino**) was a costly series of four battles during [|World War II], fought by the [|Allies] with the intention of breaking through the [|Winter Line] and seizing [|Rome]. 20) The **Battle of Moscow** ( [|German]: // Schlacht um Moskau // ) is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km sector of the [|Eastern Front] during [|World War II]. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942. 21)  ** The Battle of Nanos ****, ** took place in 1942, when 800 [|Italian] soldiers laid siege to 50 [|Slovenian] partisans during [|World War II]. 22) ** Operation Overlord ** was the code name for the invasion of [|western Europe] during [|World War II] by [|Allied] forces. The operation began on 6 June 1944 with the [|Normandy Landings] (commonly known as [|D-Day]) when an airborne assault preceded an [|amphibious assault]. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the [|English Channel] on 6 June, and more than 3 million troops had landed by the end of August. 23)  The **Battle of Okinawa**, also known as **Operation Iceberg**, was fought on the [|Ryukyu Islands] of [|Okinawa] and was the largest [|amphibious assault] in the [|Pacific Theater] of [|World War II]. Nearly 60,000 troops stormed ashore on the initial invasion. The 82 day long battle lasted from late March until June 1945. ** “Typhoon of Steel" ** 24) The **Battle of Peleliu**, codenamed **Operation Stalemate II**, was fought between the United States and Imperial Japan in the [|Pacific Theater] of [|World War II], from September to November 1944 on the island of [|Peleliu]. 25)  The **attack on Pearl Harbor** (or //Hawaii Operation//, //Operation Z//, as it was called by the [|Japanese] [|Imperial General Headquarters]) was an unannounced [|military strike] conducted by the [|Japanese] [|navy] against the [|United States]' [|naval base] at [|Pearl Harbor], [|Hawaii], on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941 (Hawaiian time, December 8 by [|Japan Standard Time]), later resulting in the United States becoming militarily involved in [|World War II]. 26) The **Battle of the Philippine Sea** (aka "The Great Marianas [|Turkey Shoot]") was a decisive naval battle of [|World War II], and the largest aircraft carrier battle in history. It was fought between the navies of the United States and the [|Empire of Japan] 27)  The **Battle of Poljana** (Monday [|May 14] - Tuesday [|May 15], [|1945] ) was the last battle of [|World War II] in [|Europe]. It started at [|Poljana], near the village of [|Prevalje] in [|Yugoslavia], and was the culmination of a series of engagements between the [|Yugoslav Partisans] and a large retreating Axis column, numbering in excess of 30,000 men. 28) The **Battle of Stalingrad** was a major battle of [|World War II] in which [|Nazi Germany] and its allies fought the [|Soviet Union] for control of the city of [|Stalingrad] (now Volgograd) in southwestern Russia. The battle took place between 17 July 1942 and 2 February 1943, and is often cited as one of the turning points of the war. The battle was the [|bloodiest in the history of warfare], with combined casualties estimated at nearly two million. The battle involved more participants than any other, and was marked by brutality and disregard for military and [|civilian casualties] by both sides. The German offensive to take Stalingrad, the battle inside the city and the Soviet counter-offensive—which eventually trapped and destroyed the [|German 6th Army] and other [|Axis] forces around the city—was the first substantial German land defeat of World War II. The German offensive to capture Stalingrad proceeded rapidly in the late summer of 1942, supported by [|Luftwaffe] bombing which reduced much of the city to rubble. However, the German offensive bogged down in house-to-house fighting; despite controlling over 90% of the city at times, the [|Wehrmacht] was unable to dislodge the last Soviet defenders, who clung tenaciously to the west bank of the [|Volga River] as the weather turned rainy and cold. In November 1942, the [|Red Army] launched [|Operation Uranus], a two-pronged attack on the exposed flanks of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad. This operation dramatically turned the tables, as the weakly held German flanks collapsed and the German 6th Army was [|cut off and surrounded] inside Stalingrad. As the Russian winter set in, the 6th Army weakened rapidly from cold, starvation, and ongoing Soviet attacks, but was forbidden to surrender by [|Adolf Hitler]. During December, a German attempt to break the encirclement failed, and subsequently all attempts at supply collapsed. By early February 1943, German resistance in Stalingrad had ceased, and the surrounded 6th Army had been destroyed. 29) The **Battle of [|Tarawa]** was a battle in the [|Pacific Theatre] of [|World War II], largely fought from November 20 to November 23, 1943. It was the second time the [|United States] was on the offensive (the [|Battle of Guadalcanal] had been the first), and the first offensive in the critical central Pacific region. 30)  The **Battle of Tassafaronga**, sometimes referred to as the **Fourth Battle of Savo Island** or, in Japanese sources, as the **Battle of Lunga Point**, was a nighttime [|naval battle] that took place November 30, 1942 between [|United States] (US) [|Navy] and [|Imperial Japanese] [|Navy] warships during the [|Guadalcanal campaign]. The battle took place in [|Ironbottom Sound] near the [|Tassafaronga] area on [|Guadalcanal]. 31) The **Siege of Tobruk** was a lengthy confrontation between [|Axis] and [|Allied] forces in North Africa during the [|Western Desert Campaign] of the [|Second World War]. The siege started on 10 April 1941, when [|Tobruk] was attacked by an Italian-German force under [|Lieutenant General] [|Erwin Rommel] and continued for 240 days, when it was relieved by the [|Eighth Army] during [|Operation Crusader]. 32)  The **Tunisia Campaign** (also known as the **Battle of Tunisia**) was a series of battles that took place in [|Tunisia] during the [|North African Campaign] of the [|Second World War], between [|Axis] and [|Allied] forces. The Allies consisted primarily of [|British Imperial Forces] along with [|American] and the [|French Army]. 33) The **Warsaw Uprising** was a struggle by the [|Polish Home Army] to liberate [|Warsaw] from [|Nazi German] occupation during [|World War II]. The Uprising began on 1 August 1944, as part of a nationwide rebellion, [|Operation Tempest]
 * The Mariana and Caroline Islands

** Jan 6, 1944 ** - Soviet troops advance into Poland.
 * Dec 7, 1941 ** - [|Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor]; [|Hitler issues the Night and Fog decree.]
 * Dec 8, 1941 ** - [|United States] and Britain declare war on Japan.
 * Dec 11, 1941 ** - [|Germany declares war on the United States.]
 * Dec 16, 1941 ** - Rommel begins a retreat to El Agheila in North Africa.
 * Dec 19, 1941 ** - Hitler takes complete command of the German Army.
 * Jan 1, 1942 ** - Declaration of the United Nations signed by 26 Allied nations.
 * Jan 13, 1942 ** - Germans begin a U-boat offensive along east coast of USA.
 * Jan 20, 1942 ** - [|SS Leader Heydrich holds the Wannsee Conference to coordinate the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."]
 * Jan 21, 1942 ** - Rommel's counter-offensive from El Agheila begins.
 * Jan 26, 1942 ** - First American forces arrive in Great Britain.
 * In April ** - [|Japanese-Americans sent to relocation centers.]
 * April 23, 1942 ** - German air raids begin against cathedral cities in Britain.
 * May 8, 1942 ** - German summer offensive begins in the Crimea.
 * May 26, 1942 ** - Rommel begins an offensive against the Gazala Line.
 * May 27, 1942 ** - SS Leader Heydrich attacked in Prague.
 * May 30, 1942 ** - First thousand bomber British air raid (against Cologne).
 * In June ** - Mass murder of Jews by gassing begins at Auschwitz.
 * June 4, 1942 ** - Heydrich dies of wounds.
 * June 5, 1942 ** - Germans besiege Sevastopol.
 * June 10, 1942 ** - [|Nazis liquidate Lidice in reprisal for Heydrich's assassination.]
 * June 21, 1942 ** - Rommel captures Tobruk.
 * June 25, 1942 ** - Eisenhower arrives in London.
 * June 30, 1942 ** - Rommel reaches El Alamein near Cairo, Egypt.
 * July 1-30 ** - First Battle of El Alamein.
 * July 3, 1942 ** - Germans take Sevastopol.
 * July 5, 1942 ** - Soviet resistance in the Crimea ends.
 * July 9, 1942 ** - Germans begin a drive toward Stalingrad in the USSR.
 * July 22, 1942 ** - First deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to concentration camps; Treblinka extermination camp opened.
 * Aug 7, 1942 ** - British General Bernard Montgomery takes command of Eighth Army in North Africa.
 * Aug 12, 1942 ** - Stalin and Churchill meet in Moscow.
 * Aug 17, 1942 ** - First all-American [|air attack] in Europe.
 * Aug 23, 1942 ** - Massive German air raid on Stalingrad.
 * Sept 2, 1942 ** - Rommel driven back by Montgomery in the Battle of Alam Halfa.
 * Sept 13, 1942 ** - Battle of Stalingrad begins.
 * Oct 5, 1942 ** - [|A German eyewitness observes SS mass murder.]
 * Oct 18, 1942 ** - Hitler orders the execution of all captured British commandos.
 * Nov 1, 1942 ** - [|Operation Supercharge (Allies break Axis lines at El Alamein).]
 * Nov 8, 1942 ** - Operation Torch begins (U.S. invasion of North Africa).
 * Nov 11, 1942 ** - Germans and Italians invade unoccupied Vichy France.
 * Nov 19, 1942 ** - Soviet counter-offensive at Stalingrad begins.
 * Dec 2, 1942 ** - Professor Enrico Fermi sets up an atomic reactor in Chicago.
 * Dec 13, 1942 ** - Rommel withdraws from El Agheila.
 * Dec 16, 1942 ** - Soviets defeat Italian troops on the River Don in the USSR.
 * Dec 17, 1942 ** - British Foreign Secretary Eden tells the British House of Commons of mass executions of Jews by Nazis; U.S. declares those crimes will be avenged.
 * Dec 31, 1942 ** - Battle of the Barents Sea between German and British ships
 * Jan 2/3 ** - Germans begin a withdrawal from the Caucasus.
 * Jan 10, 1943 ** - Soviets begin an offensive against the Germans in Stalingrad.
 * Jan 14-24 ** - [|Casablanca conference between Churchill and Roosevelt.] During the conference, Roosevelt announces the war can end only with an unconditional German surrender.
 * Jan 23, 1943 ** - [|Montgomery's Eighth Army takes Tripoli.]
 * Jan 27, 1943 ** - First bombing raid by Americans on Germany (at Wilhelmshaven).
 * Feb 2, 1943 ** - Germans surrender at Stalingrad in the first big defeat of Hitler's armies.
 * Feb 8, 1943 ** - Soviet troops take Kursk.
 * Feb 14-25 ** - Battle of Kasserine Pass between the U.S. 1st Armored Division and German Panzers in North Africa.
 * Feb 16, 1943 ** - Soviets re-take Kharkov.
 * Feb 18, 1943 ** - Nazis arrest White Rose resistance leaders in Munich.
 * March 2, 1943 ** - Germans begin a withdrawal from Tunisia, Africa.
 * March 15, 1943 ** - Germans re-capture Kharkov.
 * March 16-20 ** - Battle of Atlantic climaxes with 27 merchant [|ships sunk] by German U-boats.
 * March 20-28 ** - Montgomery's Eighth Army breaks through the Mareth Line in Tunisia.
 * April 6/7 ** - Axis forces in Tunisia begin a withdrawal toward Enfidaville as American and British forces link.
 * April 19, 1943 ** - [|Waffen SS attacks Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto.]
 * May 7, 1943 ** - Allies take Tunisia.
 * May 13, 1943 ** - German and Italian troops surrender in North Africa.
 * May 16, 1943 ** - Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto ends.
 * May 16/17 ** - British air raid on the Ruhr.
 * May 22, 1943 ** - Dönitz suspends U-boat operations in the North Atlantic.
 * June 10, 1943 ** - 'Pointblank' directive to improve Allied bombing strategy issued.
 * June 11, 1943 ** - Himmler orders the liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in Poland.
 * July 5, 1943 ** - Germans begin their last offensive against Kursk.
 * July 9/10 ** - [|Allies land in Sicily.]
 * July 19, 1943 ** - Allies bomb Rome.
 * July 22, 1943 ** - Americans capture Palermo, Sicily.
 * July 24, 1943 ** - British bombing raid on Hamburg.
 * July 25/26 ** - Mussolini arrested and the Italian Fascist government falls; Marshal Pietro Badoglio takes over and negotiates with Allies.
 * July 27/28 ** - Allied air raid causes a firestorm in Hamburg.
 * Aug 12-17 ** - Germans evacuate Sicily.
 * Aug 17, 1943 ** - American daylight air raids on Regensburg and Schweinfurt in Germany; Allies reach Messina, Sicily.
 * Aug 23, 1943 ** - Soviet troops recapture Kharkov.
 * Sept 8, 1943 ** - Italian surrender is announced.
 * Sept 9, 1943 ** - Allied landings at Salerno and Taranto.
 * Sept 11, 1943 ** - Germans occupy Rome.
 * Sept 12, 1943 ** - Germans rescue Mussolini.
 * Sept 23, 1943 ** - Mussolini re-establishes a Fascist government.
 * Oct 1, 1943 ** - Allies enter Naples, Italy.
 * Oct 4, 1943 ** - [|SS Reichsführer Himmler gives speech at Posen.]
 * Oct 13, 1943 ** - Italy declares war on Germany; Second American air raid on Schweinfurt.
 * Nov 6, 1943 ** - Russians recapture Kiev in the Ukraine.
 * Nov 18, 1943 ** - Large British air raid on Berlin.
 * Nov 28, 1943 ** - [|Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin meet at Teheran.]
 * Dec 24-26 ** - Soviets launch offensives on the Ukrainian front.
 * Jan 17, 1944 ** - [|First attack toward Cassino, Italy.]
 * Jan 22, 1944 ** - Allies land at Anzio.
 * Jan 27, 1944 ** - Leningrad relieved after a 900-day siege.
 * Feb 15-18 ** - Allies bomb the monastery at Monte Cassino.
 * Feb 16, 1944 ** - [|Germans counter-attack against the Anzio beachhead.]
 * March 4, 1944 ** - Soviet troops begin an offensive on the Belorussian front; First major daylight bombing raid on Berlin by the Allies.
 * March 15, 1944 ** - Second Allied attempt to capture Monte Cassino begins.
 * March 18, 1944 ** - British drop 3000 tons of bombs during an [|air raid] on Hamburg, Germany.
 * April 8, 1944 ** - Soviet troops begin an offensive to liberate Crimea.
 * May 9, 1944 ** - Soviet troops recapture Sevastopol.
 * May 11, 1944 ** - Allies attack the Gustav Line south of Rome.
 * May 12, 1944 ** - Germans surrender in the Crimea.
 * May 15, 1944 ** - Germans withdraw to the Adolf Hitler Line.
 * May 25, 1944 ** - Germans retreat from Anzio.
 * June 5, 1944 ** - Allies enter Rome.
 * June 6, 1944 ** - [|D-Day landings.]
 * June 9, 1944 ** - Soviet offensive against the Finnish front begins.
 * June 10, 1944 ** - [|Nazis liquidate the town of Oradour-sur-Glane in France.]
 * June 13, 1944 ** - [|First German V-1 rocket attack on Britain.]
 * June 22, 1944 ** - Operation Bagration begins (the Soviet summer offensive).
 * June 27, 1944 ** - [|U.S. troops liberate Cherbourg.]
 * July 3, 1944 ** - 'Battle of the Hedgerows' in Normandy; Soviets capture Minsk.
 * July 9, 1944 ** - British and Canadian troops capture Caen.
 * July 18, 1944 ** - [|U.S. troops reach St. Lô.]
 * July 20, 1944 ** - German assassination attempt on Hitler fails.
 * July 24, 1944 ** - Soviet troops liberate first concentration camp at Majdanek.
 * July 25-30 ** - Operation Cobra (U.S. troops break out west of St. Lô).
 * July 28, 1944 ** - Soviet troops take Brest-Litovsk. U.S. troops take [|Coutances].
 * Aug 1, 1944 ** - Polish Home Army uprising against Nazis in Warsaw begins; U.S. troops reach Avranches.
 * Aug 4, 1944 ** - Anne Frank and family arrested by the Gestapo in Amsterdam, Holland.
 * Aug 7, 1944 ** - Germans begin a major counter-attack toward Avranches.
 * Aug 15, 1944 ** - Operation Dragoon begins (the Allied invasion of Southern France).
 * Aug 19, 1944 ** - Resistance uprising in Paris.
 * Aug 19/20 ** - Soviet offensive in the Balkans begins with an attack on Romania.
 * Aug 20, 1944 ** - [|Allies encircle Germans in the Falaise Pocket.]
 * Aug 25, 1944 ** - [|Liberation of Paris.]
 * Aug 29, 1944 ** - Slovak uprising begins.
 * Aug 31, 1944 ** - Soviet troops take Bucharest.
 * Sept 1-4 ** - [|Verdun, Dieppe, Artois, Rouen, Abbeville, Antwerp and Brussels liberated by Allies.]
 * Sept 4, 1944 ** - Finland and the Soviet Union agree to a cease-fire.
 * Sept 13, 1944 ** - [|U.S. troops reach the Siegfried Line.]
 * Sept 17, 1944 ** - [|Operation Market Garden begins] (Allied airborne assault on [|Holland]).
 * Sept 26, 1944 ** - Soviet troops occupy Estonia.
 * Oct 2, 1944 ** - Warsaw Uprising ends as the Polish Home Army surrenders to the Germans.
 * Oct 10-29 ** - Soviet troops capture Riga.
 * Oct 14, 1944 ** - Allies liberate Athens; Rommel commits suicide.
 * Oct 21, 1944 ** - [|Massive German surrender at Aachen.]
 * Oct 30, 1944 ** - Last use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
 * Nov 20, 1944 ** - French troops drive through the 'Beffort Gap' to reach the Rhine.
 * Nov 24, 1944 ** - French capture Strasbourg.
 * Dec 4, 1944 ** - Civil War in Greece; Athens placed under martial law.
 * Dec 16-27 ** - [|Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes.]
 * Dec 17, 1944 ** - [|Waffen SS murder 81 U.S. POWs at Malmedy.]
 * Dec 26, 1944 ** - Patton relieves [|Bastogne].
 * Dec 27, 1944 ** - Soviet troops besiege Budapest.

Jan 1-17 - Germans withdraw from the Ardennes.
President Roosevelt dies. Truman becomes President.
 * Jan 16, 1945 ** - U.S. 1st and 3rd Armies link up after a month long separation during the Battle of the Bulge.
 * Jan 17, 1945 ** - Soviet troops capture Warsaw.
 * Jan 26, 1945 ** - Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz.
 * Feb 4-11 ** - [|Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin meet at Yalta.]
 * Feb 13/14 ** - Dresden is destroyed by a firestorm after Allied bombing raids.
 * March 6, 1945 ** - Last German offensive of the war begins to defend oil fields in Hungary.
 * March 7, 1945 ** - [|Allies take Cologne and establish a bridge across the Rhine at Remagen.]
 * March 30, 1945 ** - Soviet troops capture Danzig.
 * In April ** - [|Allies discover stolen Nazi art and wealth hidden in salt mines.]
 * April 1, 1945 ** - U.S. troops encircle Germans in the Ruhr; [|Allied offensive in North Italy.]
 * April 12, 1945 ** - [|Allies liberate Buchenwald] and Belsen concentration camps;
 * April 16, 1945 ** - Soviet troops begin their final attack on Berlin; Americans enter Nuremberg.
 * April 18, 1945 ** - German forces in the Ruhr surrender.
 * April 21, 1945 ** - Soviets reach Berlin.
 * April 28, 1945 ** - Mussolini is captured and hanged by Italian partisans; Allies take Venice.
 * April 29, 1945 ** - [|U.S. 7th Army liberates Dachau.]
 * April 30, 1945 ** - [|Adolf Hitler commits suicide.]
 * May 2, 1945 ** - German troops in Italy surrender.
 * May 7, 1945 ** - [|Unconditional surrender of all German forces to Allies.]
 * May 8, 1945 ** - [|V-E (Victory in Europe) Day.]
 * May 9, 1945 ** - Hermann Göring is captured by members of the U.S. 7th Army.
 * May 23, 1945 ** - SS Reichsführer Himmler commits suicide; German High Command and Provisional Government imprisoned.
 * June 5, 1945 ** - Allies divide up Germany and Berlin and take over the government.
 * June 26, 1945 ** - [|United Nations Charter is signed in San Francisco.]
 * July 1, 1945 ** - U.S., British, and French troops move into Berlin.
 * July 16, 1945 ** - First U.S. atomic bomb test; Potsdam Conference begins.
 * July 26, 1945 ** - Atlee succeeds Churchill as British Prime Minister.
 * Aug 6, 1945 ** - First atomic bomb dropped, on Hiroshima, Japan.
 * Aug 8, 1945 ** - Soviets declares war on Japan and invade Manchuria.
 * Aug 9, 1945 ** - [|Second atomic bomb dropped, on Nagasaki, Japan.]
 * Aug 14, 1945 ** - [|Japanese agree to unconditional surrender.]
 * Sept 2, 1945 ** - [|Japanese sign the surrender agreement;] [|V-J (Victory over Japan) Day.]
 * Oct 24, 1945 ** - United Nations is officially born.
 * Nov 20, 1945 ** - [|Nuremberg war crimes trials begin.]

The Battle of Kursk took place in July [|1943]. Kursk was to be the biggest tank battle of [|World War Two] and the battle resulted in a severe crisis for [|Nazi Germany’s] war machine in [|Russia]. [|Operation Barbarossa] had shown the power of armoured warfare when [|Hitler] unleashed [|Blitzkrieg] on the Red Army. Together with aerial support, the Wehrmacht’s tanks had torn swathes through the masses of the Russia Army. The Russian (Red) Army had little in reserve and the Germans nearly made it to Moscow before the infamous Russian winter set in at the end of [|1941]. However, after the defeat at [|Stalingrad], the German army on the Eastern Front had been in retreat. If this retreat west continued, it would prove to Germany’s enemies that the nation’s military power had been fatally wounded at Stalingrad. A continued retreat would also encourage the work of the [|Russian partisans] massed in the west of their country – waiting to strike on a retreating army. Therefore, for the morale of the German Army, the German High Command had to organise a massive offensive against Russia – if only to prove that the German Armed Forces based in Russia were still mighty and a force to be reckoned with. A successful German offensive had obvious military consequences for the Germans. However, they also hoped to force through a political one. It was known that the Russians were becoming increasingly tired at the seeming unwillingness of Britain and America to open up a second front in the west. A defeat of Russia in the east might result in the collapse of any form of relationship between the Russians and the Allies in the west. This could only be to the advantage of the Germans. By the summer of [|1943], the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were increasingly well armed. The German industrial sector headed by Albert Speer, was expanding at a massive rate despite the [|bombing] of Germany by the Allies. In [|1942], Germany produced 5,700 medium and heavy tanks. In 1943, this had increased to 11,900. The production of planes had doubled between the two years; ammunition production had increased three-fold by 1943. By the summer of 1943, the Wehrmacht was also being equipped with new weaponry. The Tiger, King Tiger and Panther tanks were introduced as was the new Ferdinand self-propelled gun. The Luftwaffe received the Focke-Wolfe 190A fighter and the Henschel 129. The new equipment was matched by an increase in manpower. As there was no second front in the west – and the Germans predicted that there would not be in 1943 – men based in the west were moved to the Russian Front. By the summer of 1943, two-thirds of the German Army was based in Russia. By the summer of 1943, the Russians had steadily advanced east. However, a bulge had occurred south of Orel and north of Kharkov. At the centre of this bulge was Kursk. It was here, and to eradicate this bulge in preparation for a push east, that the Germans centred their attack in what was called ‘Operation Citadel’. If this bulge was not taken out, then there was every chance that the Russians would use the troops they had stationed there to launch an attack on the Germans at Orel and Kharkov – but attacking behind them, thus trapping the Germans between two Russian forces. [|Hitler] gave his support for the attack on April 15th, 1943. For the attack on Kursk, Germany had grouped 900,000 soldiers in the region, 10,000 artillery guns, 2,700 tanks and 2,000 aircraft. About 1/3rd of all Germany’s military strength was concentrated in the area. Elite Luftwaffe units were ordered there. Hitler ordered that “there must be no failure”. Reconnaissance planes photographed all the defensive systems that the Russians had built. However, Russia’s military leaders had not been sitting idly by. Their intelligence had alerted them to a massive German offensive; they knew where it would be, the numbers involved and near enough when it would start. They decided on a defensive strategy to allow the Germans to wear themselves out. The defence of Kursk was put into the hands of two generals – Rokossovsky and Vatutin. In preparation for a massive counter-offensive (and also to be used if the Germans were initially successful) a huge force of reserves was based in the rear led by Koniev. In charge of all these men was [|Marshall Zhukov]. The Russians had also placed vast numbers of men and equipment in the Kursk bulge. 1.3 million soldiers were based there, 20,000 artillery pieces, 3,600 tanks and 2,400 planes. The Russians had guessed where the Germans would try to use their tanks in depth – and placed a large number of their anti-tank artillery guns there. Trenches and other anti-tank traps were dug. The depth of defences included the laying of 400,000 mines, which equated to 2,400 anti-tank and 2,700 anti-personnel mines every mile – more than at the Battle of Moscow and the [|Battle of Stalingrad]. By June 1943, 300,000 civilians were helping the Russians build defences around the Kursk salient. They repaired 1,800 miles of road and dug thousands of miles of trenches. German prisoners captured by Russian shock troops before the battle actually started, told the Russians that the attack was to be on July 5th. To pre-empt the attack, the Russians launched a massive artillery bombardment at 02.00 on July 5th. This had an impact on the morale of the Germans as it was clear that their plan had been compromised. After the bombardment had finished, it took nearly two hours for the Germans to reorganise themselves. Germany started her attack at 04.30 with an artillery barrage. A tank and infantry attack started at 05.30 once air cover had arrived. The main thrust contained 500 tanks; heavy tanks at the front, supported by medium ones behind with infantry behind these. The Germans tried to break through on four occasions. They gained 6 miles of land in the first 24 hours of fighting but at a cost. 25,000 men had been killed or wounded, 200 tanks and self-propelled guns had been lost and 200 aircraft. A similar pattern occurred over the next few days. Ferocious German attacks were met with ferocious Russian defence. By July 10th, the German IX Army had lost 2/3rds of its tanks. Even the mighty Tiger tanks were falling victim to the Russians anti-tank guns. Russian tank commanders also quickly learned that if they attacked a Tiger side-on, its armour was thinner and more vulnerable. The greatest tank battle of [|World War Two] place on July 12th. In total, 1,500 tanks were involved at Prokhorovka, some 50 miles to the south-east of Kursk. By nightfall, the Germans had not achieved the desired breakthrough. They had lost another 350 tanks and 10,000 men. The strength of the Germans in the south of the Kursk salient had been broken and the Russians launched a major counter-offensive. By July 23rd, the Germans had been pushed back to where they had stated their attack. The initiative now lay with the Russians who had a forward momentum to their advantage. The Germans were literally on the back foot. On July 12th, the Russians launched another counter-offensive in the north of the salient in an effort to relieve Orel. They outnumbered the Germans two to one in all areas. Unable to call in reinforcements from their men fighting in the south, the Germans were unable to hold off the Russian offensive. By July 19th, the Russians had pushed forward 45 miles. The Russian Air Force ensured that the Luftwaffe was incapable of giving the army the support it needed. Faced with the collapse of its forces in Orel, General Model asked Hitler's permission to withdraw to the Hagen Line. Model warned Hitler that the Wehrmacht faced another Stalingrad if the withdrawal was not allowed. The German Army in and around Orel pulled back 60 miles in an effort to regroup. However, by the time the withdrawal had occurred, German troops were exhausted after constant harassment from the air by the Russian Air Force. By August 5th 1943, Orel was back in the hands of the Russians. The German retreat was severely hindered by [|partisans] who destroyed many miles of rail line which ensured that train engines piled up at rail heads, making them an easy target for the Russian Air Force. A similar situation occurred in the southern sector of the salient. Here the German Army was facing a formidable enemy that had the advantage of being on the offensive. In this sector, the Germans had 300,000 men and about 600 tanks. The Russians had nearly 1 million men in the region, including reserves, and many more tanks. Their counter-offensive in this sector started on August 3rd and two days later Russian forces entered Belgorod. The partisans who operated in this area derailed more than 1,000 train loads of troops in August - a major factor to explain why the Germans could not move their men around with ease. Morale among the German troops who fought in this sector plummeted. On August 13th, the Russians had broken through the outer defences of the city of Kharkov and by August 23rd, the city was liberated. The retaking of the city of Kharkov is seen as the end of the Battle of Kursk. The Battle of Kursk was to have major consequences for the Germans. It was the last major offensive they launched in Russia. Now, their forces only faced retreat and attempting to stop the onslaught of the Red Army. The material damage done to the German Army was massive - 500,000 men were killed, wounded or missing; vast amounts of armour had been lost.
 * The Battle of Kursk**

The Battle for Brittany took place between August and October [|1944]. After breaking out of the [|Normandy] beach head in June 1944, Brittany was targeted because of its naval bases at Lorient, St. Nazaire and Brest. [|U-boats] and surface raiders had used these bases, despite a [|bombing] campaign by the RAF, and the Germans had launched '[|Operation Cerberus]' from Brest in [|1942]. So their capture would have ended any concerns that the Allies might have had about their potential further use. They would also prove very useful to the Allies as they needed as many ports as they could to land the vast amount of supplies their men needed. The Americans were given the task of liberating Brittany. The US 8th Corps, led by General Middleton, moved east to west across the north of Brittany with Brest as their major target. The US 20th Corps, led by General Walker, moved south the Nantes. The plan was for both units to link up at Lorient. Once Brittany had been liberated, the Allies had decided to build a new harbour at Quiberon, south-west of Lorient. They had concluded that the Germans would destroy all the harbours in Brittany before the Americans could liberate them and that Quiberon, sheltered as it was from the Atlantic Ocean, would be a perfect place to construct a new harbour. With the Germans in disarray after [|D-Day], the drive into Brittany should have been relatively easy once the Cotentin Peninsula had been taken. The capture of the bridge at Pontaubault which crossed the River Sélune, south of Avranches, was a great bonus. However, arguments between [|Bradley] and [|Patton] as to how Brittany should be taken did not help the Americans. For example, as the US 8th Corps advanced, Middleton determined that he should keep up with his men to facilitate communication. However, Patton ordered that Middleton should stay near his army headquarters which resulted in him losing contact with his divisions very early on in the campaign. He wrote that his ability to contact his men was "practically nil". The 8th Corps rapidly advanced into northern Brittany. However, this success brought problems. The issue of communication is mentioned above. One other problem was the difficulty of supplying an army that was on the move. There was little time to set up supply bases and the whole issue of logistics became an ad hoc one. The advance of the 8th Corps also brought with it a problem that involved the [|French] [|Resistance]. Whereas the resistance had played a major but invisible role at [|D-Day] the campaign in Brittany was one where the French Resistance was to openly fight the Germans. A French officer based in London, Albert Eon, was flown in to lead the 20,000 men and women of the resistance based in Brittany. However, they needed modern equipment. This was parachuted in. The problem was that the Americans advanced so quickly that the equipment was frequently dropped in areas already taken by the Americans so that the resistance fighters had to wait for it to be moved up to them. Regardless of such glitches, the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) did have its triumphs. FFI troops attacked and captured the Vannes airfield using armoured jeeps brought in by gliders; 150 Frenchmen took important rail bridges at and near Morlaix. Groups of FFI openly accompanied the Americans - their local knowledge about the layout of the land was very important to the Americans. One reason for the speed of the Americans advance was German disarray after D-Day. Another reason was that the German commander in Brittany, General Fahrmbacher, had ordered all of his troops to the heavily defended ports - therefore, there were fewer Germans in the interior of Brittany than the Americans had thought. [|Hitler] had designated the ports as fortresses "to be defended to the last man, to the last cartridge". When the 20th Corps entered Nantes on August 6th, they found its port facilities in ruins. On the same day, the Americans got into the outskirts of Brest. Reconnaissance showed that any attack on the heart of the city would be a major one. Brest was, as Hitler had ordered, a fortress. The city did not actually fall until September 18th - some 5 weeks after the American 6th Armoured Division had got into the city's outskirts. The Americans faced similar problems at St. Malo on the northern coast of Brittany. Intelligence from the Resistance informed the Americans that the Germans had 10,000 men in the ports. However, the Americans decided that there were only 5,000. In fact, St. Malo was guarded by 12,000 German troops. Local dignitaries tried to persuade the German commander at St. Malo, General Andreas von Aulock, to surrender the ancient city. He refused. St. Malo was also heavily defended - as was the surrounding area. The Americans encountered fierce opposition but they gradually advanced to the city's citadel, where von Aulock had his headquarters. The construction of the citadel meant that 1000-pound bombs were of little use against its walls - likewise 1000-pound armour piercing bombs. A captured German army chaplain asked von Aulock to surrender his forces there. He refused with the comment "a German soldier does not surrender". The Americans brought up two 8-inch artillery guns that fired from just 1,500 meters directly onto port holes and vents. The Americans were preparing to drop napalm onto the citadel when Aulock surrendered with 400 men. The Americans found him "unbearably arrogant". However, von Aulock had succeeded in holding up the American advance by two weeks - even if the ancient city had been devastated - see photo above. The Americans faced a similar resolve in Brest. They, along with the FFI, had to attack and destroy over 75 strong points in the city. It was slow and time consuming work. By the time of Germany's surrender on September 18th, the Americans had lost 10,000 killed and wounded. Brest was destroyed - including its harbour. Rather than risk the same at Lorient and St. Nazaire, the Americans simply surrounded the ports for the rest of the war and kept the Germans where they were. Their surrender came at the end of the war. The need for the port facilities in Brittany became redundant when [|Antwerp] was captured in November.
 * The Battle for Brittany**