From Pearl Harbour to Normandy, from the deserts of North Africa to the ruins of Berlin, the final act of the Second World War was a relentless Allied advance that left no corner of the Axis empire untouched. Without losing momentum, we continue where we left off, for while Europe lay in ruins, the war in the Pacific was far from over.
US Entry into the War: The Atlantic
Charter
The day
after the Pearl Harbour attack, on December 8, 1941, the US officially entered
the war. America, which had initially remained neutral and only provided
military supplies to Britain through the "Lend-Lease Act," was now on
the battlefield with its entire industrial might.
However, just before the US physically entered the war, on August 14, 1941, British Prime Minister Churchill and US President Roosevelt published the Atlantic Charter, which would change the course of history. This charter promised that no territories would be gained after the war, that nations would determine their own destinies (self-determination), freedom of trade on the high seas, and total disarmament. The Atlantic Charter was the first and strongest foundation of the United Nations (UN) organization that would be established after the war.
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| Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill at the Atlantic Conference |
The Fall of North Africa and Italy
As the tide
of the war began to turn in favour of the Allies, the first major
counter-offensive against the German war machine took place in North Africa. A
massive force of 100,000 British and US troops, commanded by General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, made a successful landing on the coasts of Morocco and Algeria.
Although strong German reinforcements brought in via the Mediterranean by air
and sea put up a fierce resistance in Tunisia, the Axis forces were completely
crushed in North Africa by May 1943 after gruelling battles.
Without losing momentum, the Allies attacked what they saw as the “soft underbelly of Europe”, Italy (via Sicily), in July 1943. This heavy blow and relentless bombing brought an end to the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. With Italy’s unconditional surrender in September and the capture of its fleet at Malta, the Germans were forced to enter the peninsula to protect their southern borders and defend their former ally's territory, bringing them face-to-face with the Allies.
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| The British army in North Africa, 1942 |
The Liberation of Europe: The
Historic Normandy Landings
Following
North Africa and Italy, preparations began for a “Second Front” of
unprecedented scale to completely liberate Europe from Nazi occupation. In May
1944, a massive armada of 4,000 ships and landing craft was prepared for the
US, British, and Canadian troops gathered in southern England. While the
Germans, deceived by false intelligence, expected the attack to come from the
Strait of Dover (Calais), the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces, General
Eisenhower, gave the historic order: The target was the Normandy coast, located
between Cherbourg and Le Havre.
On the morning of June 6, 1944 (D-Day), the largest amphibious operation in history began, involving paratroopers, heavy bombers, and thousands of soldiers. Shattering the German defence lines and driving relentlessly west across Northern France, the Allies liberated Paris on August 25, 1944, tearing the Nazi shadow away from France.
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| Into the Jaws of Death: men of the 16th Infantry Regiment wade ashore on Omaha Beach |
The Fall of the Third Reich and the
Surrender of Germany
Following
the liberation of France and the Allied advance in Italy (the capture of
Florence in August 1944 and the breaching of the Pisa-Rimini defence line),
Germany was literally trapped.
By April 1945, as Allied armies crossed the Po River and advanced toward the Alps, Soviet armies simultaneously encircled Berlin from the east. Adolf Hitler, the man who set the whole world on fire, committed suicide in his bunker in his ruined capital, leaving his position to Admiral Karl Doenitz. Shortly after, with the official fall of Berlin on May 2, 1945, Germany hoisted the white flag, and the bloody war that had left Europe in ruins finally came to an end on the continent.
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| Atomic bomb mushroom clouds over Hiroshima (left) and Nagasaki (right) |
When the Sun Went Dark: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
On the
morning of August 6, 1945, at exactly 8:15 AM, an American bomber named “Enola
Gay” dropped the first atomic bomb, dubbed “Little Boy,” over the skies of Hiroshima. Within seconds, 60%
of the city was wiped off the map. While 140,000 people lost their lives
initially, this number reached 230,000 in the following years due to the
invisible and deadly effects of radiation.
While the
world was still reeling from this shock, just three days later, on August 9,
1945, at 12:02 PM, Nagasaki
was targeted. A plutonium bomb named “Fat Man,” possessing the power of a
massive 21 kilotons of TNT, instantly turned 75,000 people to ashes. Over the
next five years, just as many people died in agony from radiation poisoning or
were left permanently disabled.
Japan had
no strength left to resist. With Japan’s unconditional surrender on September
2, 1945, World War II, which had cost millions of lives, redrawn borders, and
left the world in ruins, officially and definitively came to an end.
World War II had ended, but the world it left behind was unrecognisable. Now came the harder question: what next? In our next chapter, we look at the conferences that tried to answer it and the fragile peace they attempted to build.
