Westbound Soviet and eastbound American troops met at the river Elbe on April 25, 1945. Five days later, Adolf Hitler, holed up in a bunker beneath the shattered streets of Berlin, shot himself. On May 7, 1945, senior representatives of Germany’s armed forces surrendered to the Allies at General Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims. The very next day came a formal unconditional surrender. From the pages of American newspapers, headlines shouted the arrival of V-E—Victory in Europe—Day.
Fat Man and Little Boy
German scientists discovered the possibility of nuclear fission—a process whereby the tremendous energy of the atom might be liberated—in 1938. Fortunately for the world, Hitler’s tyranny drove many of Germany’s best thinkers out of the country, and the nation’s efforts to exploit fission in a weapon came to nothing. Three Hungarian-born American physicists—Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller—were all intimately familiar with what a man like Hitler could do. They asked America’s single most prestigious physicist, Albert Einstein (a fugitive from Nazi persecution), to write a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him of Germany’s nuclear weapons research.
Late in 1939, FDR authorized the atomic bomb development program that became known as the Manhattan Project. Under the military management of General Leslie R. Groves (1896-1970) and the scientific direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), the program grew to vast proportions and employed the nation’s foremost scientific minds. A prototype bomb—called “the gadget” by the scientists—was completed in the summer of 1945 and was successfully detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945.
At this time, the Allies were planning the final invasion of Japan, which, based on the bloody experience of “island hopping,” was expected to add perhaps a million more deaths to the Allied toll. President Truman therefore authorized the use of the terrible new weapon against Japan. On August 6, 1945, a lone B-29 bomber dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, obliterating the city in three-fifths of a second. Three days later, “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki, destroying about half the city.
On August 10, the day after the attack on Nagasaki, Japan sued for peace on condition that the emperor be allowed to remain as sovereign ruler. On August 11, the Allies replied that they and they alone would determine the future of Emperor Hirohito. At last, on August 14, the emperor personally accepted the Allied terms. A cease-fire was declared on August 15, and on September 2, 1945, General MacArthur presided over the Japanese signing of the formal surrender document on the deck of the U.S. battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay.
The Least You Need to Know
Never before or since World War II have Americans fought with such unanimity and singleness of purpose.
If ever a war was a contest of good versus evil, such was World War II, and America’s role in achieving victory elevated the nation to “superpower” status in the postwar political order.
Main Event
The Japanese military was guided by the code of the Samurai warrior, as ancient as it was harsh. To be killed in battle was an honor, but to be taken prisoner, a disgrace. Accordingly, the Japanese treated its prisoners of war as dishonored men. America learned this fact the hard way when U.S. and Filipino soldiers who surrendered at Corregidor on April 9, 1942, were sent on a forced march to captivity in Bataan. The infamous Bataan Death March resulted in the deaths of 10,000 P. 0 W. s because of abuse and starvation.
Voice from the Past
For many Americans, the most stirring voice of the war was that of a Britisher, Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The man was so greatly admired in this country that, in 1963, Churchill was made an honorary citizen by act of Congress—a unique event in American history. His first address as prime minister was delivered on May 13, 1940:
“…I say to the House as I said to Ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.
“You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs—victory in spite of all terrors—victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival…
Stats
The Japanese characteristically fought to the death. Of the 5,000 Japanese troops defending Tarawa, only 17 were taken prisoner when the island fell on November 26.
Stats
Approximately 5,000 Allied ships, 11,000 Allied aircraft, and more than 150,000 troops participated in the June 6 D-Day landing.
Real Life
Dwight David Eisenhower, as Supreme Allied Commander, was the single most powerful military figure in World War II.
After World War II, Eisenhower served briefly as army chief of staff, wrote a memoir of the war (the 1948 Crusade in Europe), and served as president of Columbia University. In December 1950, President Harry S Truman named him military commander of NATO. Two years later, Eisenhower was tapped by the Republican party as its presidential candidate. He served two terms as, quite possibly, the most popular president in American history. Retiring to his farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1961, Eisenhower wrote a series of books. He died in 1969.
Main Event
World War II was conducted with an unprecedented degree of cooperation among the Allies, whose leaders held several key strategic and political conferences during the conflict. One of the most important was the Yalta Conference, held from February 4 to February 11, 1945, in the Crimea. Here Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin planned the end of the war and laid a foundation for the postwar world. Stalin promised to establish provisional governments in the nations of eastern Europe now occupied by the Soviets, and he pledged to hold free, democratic elections as soon as possible.
The group agreed that the Soviet Union would annex eastern Poland and that Poland would be compensated by German war reparations. The conquered Germany would be divided into four zones of occupation, to be administered by the U.S., U.S.S.R., Britain, and France. Reluctant to enter the war against Japan, Stalin agreed that his nation would do so within three months of Germany’s surrender. In exchange, the U.S.S.R. would receive the southern half of Sakhalin Island, the Kuril Islands, and special rights in certain ports.
Stats
Civilian deaths in World War II exceeded 25 million, of whom 6 million were Jews systematically murdered by order of Adolf Hitler.