Global+War+Second+Two+1941-9142

Global War Part Two 1941-1942

Awesomeness: Original: This is a Toondo that I've made depicting the U-boats effectiveness and causing a battle of the atlantic. The little stick at the last slide is to represent a horoscope even though I am not sure if U-boats have horoscopes, but toondo had no submarines so I had to improvise by using a picture of a lookout light post. Anyways this little cartoon was basically to show the devastation that can be caused by a single U-boat, destroying multiple boat without even being seen. But soon the U-boats usefulness ran out in 1943 as the British and American navy were prepared for them.

Not Original: This here is a picture of the German U-boat. These boats were a turning point for oceanic battles as they can hunt ships underneath the waves without being detected and were a huge problem to Britiain and the United States Navy. As you read below you'll find that these boats will not be as effective or as much as a threat by 1943 as the British and United States navy are more prepared and manages to be even with the power of the U-boats.

The Great Fatherland War: Why Did Germany Attack the USSR?
 * Germany and USSR signed a pact in 1939 where the two countries would remain peaceful and when Germany invades Poland, the USSR gets half of Poland.
 * Even though Hitler signed the pact with Stalin and the USSR, he did not sign it for friendship and in truth he hated communism and longed to destroy the Soviet Union.
 * The only reason why Hitler signed the pact was so that Stalin and the USSR would not attack or stop the German invasion of Poland while Stalin signed it because while he knew that Hitler hated the soviet and communism, Russia was not ready to fight and the pact gave Stalin time to prepare the country for future warfare.
 * By the start of 1941, the USSR was no longer useful to Hitler and he was ready to begin invading Stalin's country.

Operation Barbarossa
 * Operation Barbarossa began on June 22th 1941 and was the start of the German invasion on the USSR.
 * The Germans used the Blitzkrieg tactics and the German army entered with 3.2 million men.
 * The German army defeated and obliterated most of the Russian air force while the planes and men were still on the ground and took over half a million prisoners, and at the same time secured a huge quantity of supplies.
 * Stalin announces a Scorched Earth tactic. It was basically an order to destroy everything in the areas where the German Army is invading and not to leave a single supply or anything of use to the German army.
 * Even with the Scorched Earth tactic, the USSR could not hold back the German invasion and the army was advancing to the capital, Moscow.

How The USSR Was Saved
 * The USSR let nothing be left behind to the Germans. All the factories were moved out of German reach and were setup to make equipment and weapons necessary for the war.
 * What happened during the French revolution repeated itself: The Russian winter saved the USSR as the German army was not ready for the condition of the winter. Many men froze to death and the army was put on halt and the weapons were rendered useless under the conditions.
 * In 1941 the USA and Britain sent troops to Russia to help the USSR and in 1942 the three countries signed a collaboration together.
 * The Behavior and cruelty of the German army strengthened the Russian's people will to survive. Millions of the Russians were taken prisoner and taken back to German for slave labour and millions, especially the jews and the communists were massacred by the Nazi Special Action Groups.Soon resistance groups known as the Partisans were created and many men and women joined to become fighters to fight against the German threat.

War Spreads To The Far East: United States and japan
 * In 1939 The United States did not respond to the war, but instead kept to themselves. The Neutrality Laws isolated the United States from the rest of the countries and had barely spend any money on the armed forces.
 * The US Navy was smaller than the Japanese Imperial Navy and Japan spent the 1930's expanded their armies to gain land and resources.during 1931 to 1941 Japan occupied parts of CHina and then the French Indo-China and they spent so much on the armed forces that they were the third largest armed force in the world.

The End Of US Isolation
 * The United States passed a Lend-Lease Act in 1941 where the United States could provide Britain with war supplies and other good while Britain pays them. The lend-lease act eventually was also given to the USSR to help them against Germany.
 * Eventually the United States also aided China and stopped trading precious items with Japan, such as oil. Japan depended on USA for 90% of its oil and the United States stated the ban will be lifted when Japan makes peace with China. Japan refused and a conference was held but ended with a deadlock.

Japan Attacks Pearl harbour
 * Since the United States stopped trading with Japan, Japan in the end arranged a surprise attack on the US navy fleet stationed at Pearl harbour in Hawaii.
 * On december 7th 1941, three hundred and sixty torpedo planes and bombers and within two hours the US pacific fleet was destroyed.
 * Luckily for the United States navy, the Navy's carriers unharmed as they were not in port, and the carriers prove to be more deadly than battleships later in the war and also the Japanese did not destroy the huge oil storage tanks that supplied the Navy.

Declaration Of War
 * On December 8th of 1941, Britain and the United States declared war on Japan. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and eight other countries soon joined them and all declared war on Japan.
 * The Tripartite Pact were a pact of Germany, Japan, and Italy and that they would not attack each other and help each other in war. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States after the United States declared war on Japan and the United States immediately declared war on the two other countries.

Japan Conquers Asia
 * Japan continues to invade China and even though the United States and Britain had forces stationed there, but they suffered lost after lost.
 * Hong Kong surrendered to Japan on Christmas Day On February 15th, the Japanese forces took over Singapore, capturing 140,000 British prisoners and the empire troops. The Dutch East Indies fell on March 9th. The American troops stationed in the Philippines surrendered after a Japanese siege and the British colony of Burma fell at the end of May. Within six months of attacking Pearl Harbour, the Japanese forces had all of South-East Asia and the Western Pacific in their control as well as seizing plenty of supplies they need from the land they gained.

War At Sea: Sea Battles
 * On December 1939 the first major sea battle happened between British warships and German pocket battleships in the River Plate in South America.
 * In May 1941 the Germans started making squadrons of warships based in the French port of Brest. It was to attack the British convoys in the Atlantic with their ships Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, Gneisenau, and Scharnhorst.
 * Bismarck and Prinz Eugen were sailing out of the Baltic on May 18th but British aircraft managed to spot their move. A royal navy of seventeen ships began chasing them and eventually Bismarck went down, but Prinz Eugen managed to join the two other ships and the three began attacking British shipping before returning to the Baltics in 1942.

The Menace Of The U-Boats
 * Another huge threat to the British ships were the German submarines, also known as U-boats. U-boats are a great threat as they stay underwater unseen and can hunt ships with torpedoes.
 * The German U-boats had been a huge threat since the beginning of the war, with one single U-boat destroying the battleship Royal Oak after penetrating the Royal Navy's Harbour in October 1939.
 * The U-boat menace increased after the fall of France because the Germans can now use French ports as bases to attack ships in the Atlantic.
 * The British ships began traveling in covnoys as a way to repel U-boat attacks but the Germans soon organized wolf packs of fifteen to twenty U-boats and by the start of 1941 many British ships were suck.

The Battle Of The Atlantic
 * The battle of the atlantic grew when the United States joined the war in December 1941 and since the United States involvement the German U-boats began attacking the American ships on the US east coast, in the Caribbean and then in the Gulf of Mexico.
 * By 1943, the Americans and the British benefitted from a new inventions such as the High Frequency Direction Finding, also known as Huff Duff. It detects every short radio signals from the surfaced U-boats, allowing convoys to direct out of the U-boat area.
 * The Allies also discovered an "enigma" coding machine on a captured U-boat and this allowed the British Intelligence could then decipher the Ultra codes the German uses to give orders to the U-Boats.
 * Despite the new inventions and weapons the Allied forces manage to find, they were still losing the battle of the atlantic and in March 1943 forty U-boats attacked two allied convoys and twenty-one ships were sunk with only the loss of one U-boat.
 * Germany began massing U-boats to attack slow convoys in 1943 but by this time the Allied ships were prepared and managed to fend off the U-boat threat.
 * Soon by May 1943 the battle of the atlantic was a turning point and the German U-boats failed to cut the British supply lines across the ocean.

Summary Germany began attacking the USSR and even though at first the Russians would fall, the USSR manages to fend off the German army with their Russian winter, aid from Britain and America, and the strengthening of will of the Russian people and army. Japan bombs Pearl Harbour due to conflict with America and the United States ban on trading with Japan, and it prompts the United States to join the war and declare war on the Axis powers. Japan continues to conquer much of Asia and was able to defeat the British and American forces there and gain a huge amount of land. The battle of the Atlantic begins with the new threat of the German U-boats, which in turn causes the invention of the Huff Duff and other new weapons in order to defeat the menace of the U-boats, and by 1943 the threat of the U-boats has diminished and was in even fight with the allied naval force.

Question Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbour? What invention was created as a result of a need to rebel the U-boat attacks? Why did Stalin agree to Hitler's Pact and why did Hitler attack afterwards anyways? What were the four factors that managed to save the USSR from being overtaken by the Germans? What was the Scorched Earth tactic?