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"D-Day" and "Operation Neptune" redirect here. For other uses, see D-Day (disambiguation) and Operation Neptune (disambiguation).

Normandy landings

Part of Operation Overlord and the Western Front of World War II

Into the Jaws of Death 23-0455M edit.jpg

Into the Jaws of Death: Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment, US 1st Infantry Division wading ashore on Omaha Beach on the morning of 6 June 1944

Date 6 June 1944

Location

Normandy, France

49°20′N 0°34′WCoordinates: 49°20′N 0°34′W

Result Allied victory[9]

Territorial

changes Five Allied beachheads established in Normandy

 

Belligerents

Allies

 United Kingdom[1]

 United States[1]

 Canada[1]

 France[2]

 Australia[3]

 Czechoslovakia[4]

 Poland[2]

 Belgium[5]

 Netherlands[5]

 Norway[2]

 New Zealand[1]

 Greece[6]

 South Africa[7]

 Germany[8]

Commanders and leaders

United Kingdom Bernard Montgomery

United Kingdom Miles Dempsey

United Kingdom Trafford Leigh-Mallory

United Kingdom Bertram Ramsay

United Kingdom Arthur Tedder

United States Dwight D. Eisenhower

United States Omar Bradley

Nazi Germany Gerd von Rundstedt

Nazi Germany Erwin Rommel

Nazi Germany Hugo Sperrle

Nazi Germany Karl Dönitz

Nazi Germany Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg

Nazi Germany Friedrich Dollmann

Nazi Germany Hans von Salmuth

Nazi Germany Wilhelm Falley †

Units involved

United States First Army

Omaha Beach:

V Corps

1st Infantry Division

29th Infantry Division

Utah Beach:

VII Corps

4th Infantry Division

82nd Airborne Division

90th Infantry Division

101st Airborne Division

United Kingdom Second Army

Gold Beach:

XXX Corps

50th Infantry Division

Juno Beach

I Corps

3rd Canadian Infantry Division

Sword Beach:

I Corps

3rd Infantry Division

6th Airborne Division

Nazi Germany 5th Panzer Army

South of Caen:

21st Panzer Division logo.svg 21st Panzer Division

Nazi Germany 7th Army

Omaha Beach:

352nd Infanterie-Division logo.jpg 352nd Infantry Division

Utah Beach:

709th Infanterie-Division Logo 1.svg 709th Static Division

Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches:

716th Infanterie-Division Logo.svg 716th Static Division

Strength

156,000 soldiers[a]

195,700 naval personnel[10] 50,350+[11]

170 coastal artillery guns (Includes guns from 100mm to 210mm, as well as 320mm rocket launchers.).[12]

Casualties and losses

10,000+ casualties; 4,414 confirmed dead[b]

185 M4 Sherman tanks[13] 4,000–9,000 killed, wounded, missing or captured[14]

vte

Operation Overlord

(Battle of Normandy)

Prelude

Atlantic WallBodyguard FortitudeZeppelinTitanicTaxable, Glimmer & Big DrumCombined Bomber OffensivePointblankTransport PlanPostage AbleTarbrushTigerFabius

Airborne assault

British Sector

Tonga Caen canal and Orne river bridgesMerville BatteryMallard

American Sector

AlbanyBostonChicagoDetroitElmira

Normandy landings

American Sector

OmahaUtahPointe du Hoc

Anglo-Canadian Sector

GambitSwordJunoGoldPort-en-Bessin

Logistics

American Operation ChastityBritish MulberryPluto

Ground campaign

American Sector

Brécourt ManorGraignesSaint-LôCarentan Hill 30Cherbourg Naval

Anglo-Canadian Sector

CaenBrévillePerch Villers-BocageLe Mesnil-PatryNormandy massacres Ardenne AbbeyDouvresMartletEpsomWindsorCharnwoodJupiter2nd OdonAtlanticGoodwoodVerrières Ridge

Breakout

CobraSpringBluecoatTotalizeLüttichTractableHill 262ChamboisFalaiseSaint-MaloBrestMantes-GassicourtParisLa Rochelle

Air and Sea operations

UshantLa CaineCherbourgPierres NoiresAudierne Bay

Supporting operations

DingsonSamwestTitanicCooneyBulbasketHoundsworthLoytonJedburghDragoonWallace & Hardy

Aftermath

Cemeteries

The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France (and later Western Europe) and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.

Planning for the operation began in 1943. In the months leading up to the invasion, the Allies conducted a substantial military deception, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the main Allied landings. The weather on D-Day was far from ideal, and the operation had to be delayed 24 hours; a further postponement would have meant a delay of at least two weeks, as the invasion planners had requirements for the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that meant only a few days each month were deemed suitable. Adolf Hitler placed Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in command of German forces and of developing fortifications along the Atlantic Wall in anticipation of an Allied invasion. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt placed Major General Dwight D. Eisenhower in command of Allied forces.

The amphibious landings were preceded by extensive aerial and naval bombardment and an airborne assault—the landing of 24,000 American, British, and Canadian airborne troops shortly after midnight. Allied infantry and armoured divisions began landing on the coast of France at 06:30. The target 50-mile (80 km) stretch of the Normandy coast was divided into five sectors: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Strong winds blew the landing craft east of their intended positions, particularly at Utah and Omaha. The men landed under heavy fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches, and the shore was mined and covered with obstacles such as wooden stakes, metal tripods, and barbed wire, making the work of the beach-clearing teams difficult and dangerous. Casualties were heaviest at Omaha, with its high cliffs. At Gold, Juno, and Sword, several fortified towns were cleared in house-to-house fighting, and two major gun emplacements at Gold were disabled using specialised tanks.

The Allies failed to achieve any of their goals on the first day. Carentan, Saint-Lô, and Bayeux remained in German hands, and Caen, a major objective, was not captured until 21 July. Only two of the beaches (Juno and Gold) were linked on the first day, and all five beachheads were not connected until 12 June; however, the operation gained a foothold that the Allies gradually expanded over the coming months. German casualties on D-Day have been estimated at 4,000 to 9,000 men. Allied casualties were documented for at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead. Museums, memorials, and war cemeteries in the area now host many visitors each year.

Background

After the German Army invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin began pressing his new allies for the creation of a second front in western Europe.[15] In late May 1942, the Soviet Union and the United States made a joint announcement that a "... full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent tasks of creating a second front in Europe in 1942."[16] However, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill persuaded U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to postpone the promised invasion as, even with U.S. help, the Allies did not have adequate forces for such an activity.[17]

Instead of an immediate return to France, the western Allies staged offensives in the Mediterranean Theatre of Operations, where British troops were already stationed. By mid-1943, the campaign in North Africa had been won. The Allies then launched the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and subsequently invaded the Italian mainland in September the same year. By then, Soviet forces were on the offensive and had won a major victory at the Battle of Stalingrad. The decision to undertake a cross-channel invasion within the next year was taken at the Trident Conference in Washington in May 1943.[18] Initial planning was constrained by the number of available landing craft, most of which were already committed in the Mediterranean and Pacific.[19] At the Tehran Conference in November 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill promised Stalin that they would open the long-delayed second front in May 1944.[20]

Meeting of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), 1 February 1944. Front row: Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder; General Dwight D. Eisenhower; General Sir Bernard Montgomery. Back row: Lieutenant General Omar Bradley; Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay; Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory; Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith.

The Allies considered four sites for the landings: Brittany, the Cotentin Peninsula, Normandy, and the Pas-de-Calais. As Brittany and Cotentin are peninsulas, it would have been possible for the Germans to cut off the Allied advance at a relatively narrow isthmus, so these sites were rejected.[21] With the Pas-de-Calais being the closest point in continental Europe to Britain, the Germans considered it to be the most likely initial landing zone, so it was the most heavily fortified region.[22] But it offered few opportunities for expansion, as the area is bounded by numerous rivers and canals,[23] whereas, landings on a broad front in Normandy would permit simultaneous threats against the port of Cherbourg, coastal ports further west in Brittany, and an overland attack towards Paris and eventually into Germany. Normandy was hence chosen as the landing site.[24] The most serious drawback of the Normandy coast—the lack of port facilities—would be overcome through the development of artificial Mulberry harbours.[25] A series of modified tanks, nicknamed Hobart's Funnies, dealt with specific requirements expected for the Normandy Campaign such as mine clearing, demolishing bunkers, and mobile bridging.[26]

The Allies planned to launch the invasion on 1 May 1944.[23] The initial draft of the plan was accepted at the Quebec Conference in August 1943. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was appointed commander of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.[27] General Bernard Montgomery was named commander of the 21st Army Group, which comprised all land forces involved in the invasion.[28] On 31 December 1943, Eisenhower and Montgomery first saw the plan, which proposed amphibious landings by three divisions with two more divisions in support. The two generals insisted that the scale of the initial invasion be expanded to five divisions, with airborne descents by three additional divisions, to allow operations on a wider front and to hasten the capture of Cherbourg.[29] The need to acquire or produce extra landing craft for the expanded operation meant that the invasion had to be delayed to June.[29] Eventually, thirty-nine Allied divisions would be committed to the Battle of Normandy: twenty-two U.S., twelve British, three Canadian, one Polish, and one French, totalling over a million troops.[30]

Operations

Operation Overlord was the name assigned to the establishment of a large-scale lodgement on the continent. The first phase, the amphibious invasion and establishment of a secure foothold, was codenamed Operation Neptune.[25] To gain the air superiority needed to ensure a successful invasion, the Allies undertook a bombing campaign (codenamed Operation Pointblank) that targeted German aircraft production, fuel supplies, and airfields.[25] Elaborate deceptions, codenamed Operation Bodyguard, were undertaken in the months leading up to the invasion to prevent the Germans from learning the timing and location of the invasion.[31]

The landings were to be preceded by airborne operations near Caen on the eastern flank to secure the Orne River bridges and north of Carentan on the western flank. The Americans, assigned to land at Utah Beach and Omaha Beach, were to attempt to capture Carentan and Saint-Lô the first day, then cut off the Cotentin Peninsula and eventually capture the port facilities at Cherbourg. The British at Sword and Gold Beaches and Canadians at Juno Beach would protect the U.S. flank and attempt to establish airfields near Caen on the first day.[32][33] (A sixth beach, code-named "Band", was considered to the east of the Orne.[34]) A secure lodgement would be established with all invading forces linked together, with an attempt to hold all territory north of the Avranches-Falaise line within the first three weeks.[32][33] Montgomery envisaged a ninety-day battle, lasting until all Allied forces reached the River Seine.[35]

Deception plans

Shoulder patches were designed for units of the fictitious First United States Army Group under George Patton.

See also: D-Day naval deceptions

Under the overall umbrella of Operation Bodyguard, the Allies conducted several subsidiary operations designed to mislead the Germans as to the date and location of the Allied landings.[36] Operation Fortitude included Fortitude North, a misinformation campaign using fake radio traffic to lead the Germans into expecting an attack on Norway,[37] and Fortitude South, a major deception involving the creation of a fictitious First United States Army Group under Lieutenant General George S. Patton, supposedly located in Kent and Sussex. Fortitude South was intended to deceive the Germans into believing that the main attack would take place at Calais.[31][38] Genuine radio messages from 21st Army Group were first routed to Kent via landline and then broadcast, to give the Germans the impression that most of the Allied troops were stationed there.[39] Patton was stationed in England until 6 July, thus continuing to deceive the Germans into believing a second attack would take place at Calais.[40]

Many of the German radar stations on the French coast were destroyed in preparation for the landings.[41] In addition, on the night before the invasion, a small group of Special Air Service operators deployed dummy paratroopers over Le Havre and Isigny. These dummies led the Germans to believe that an additional airborne landing had occurred. On that same night, in Operation Taxable, No. 617 Squadron RAF dropped strips of "window", metal foil that caused a radar return which was mistakenly interpreted by German radar operators as a naval convoy near Le Havre. The illusion was bolstered by a group of small vessels towing barrage balloons. A similar deception was undertaken near Boulogne-sur-Mer in the Pas de Calais area by No. 218 Squadron RAF in Operation Glimmer.[42][3]

Weather

Main article: Weather forecasting for Operation Overlord

The invasion planners determined a set of conditions involving the phase of the moon, the tides, and the time of day that would be satisfactory on only a few days in each month. A full moon was desirable, as it would provide illumination for aircraft pilots and have the highest tides. The Allies wanted to schedule the landings for shortly before dawn, midway between low and high tide, with the tide coming in. This would improve the visibility of obstacles on the beach while minimising the amount of time the men would be exposed in the open.[43] Eisenhower had tentatively selected 5 June as the date for the assault. However, on 4 June, conditions were unsuitable for a landing: high winds and heavy seas made it impossible to launch landing craft, and low clouds would prevent aircraft from finding their targets.[44]

Surface weather analysis map showing weather fronts on 5 June

Group Captain James Stagg of the Royal Air Force (RAF) met Eisenhower on the evening of 4 June. He and his meteorological team predicted that the weather would improve enough for the invasion to proceed on 6 June.[45] The next available dates with the required tidal conditions (but without the desirable full moon) would be two weeks later, from 18 to 20 June. Postponement of the invasion would have required recalling men and ships already in position to cross the English Channel and would have increased the chance that the invasion plans would be detected.[46] After much discussion with the other senior commanders, Eisenhower decided that the invasion should go ahead on 6 June.[47] A major storm battered the Normandy coast from 19 to 22 June, which would have made the beach landings impossible.[44]

Allied control of the Atlantic meant German meteorologists had less information than the Allies on incoming weather patterns.[41] As the Luftwaffe meteorological centre in Paris was predicting two weeks of stormy weather, many Wehrmacht commanders left their posts to attend war games in Rennes, and men in many units were given leave.[48] Field Marshal Erwin Rommel returned to Germany for his wife's birthday and to petition Hitler for additional Panzer divisions.[49]

German order of battle

Nazi Germany had at its disposal fifty divisions in France and the Low Countries, with another eighteen stationed in Denmark and Norway. Fifteen divisions were in the process of formation in Germany.[50] Combat losses throughout the war, particularly on the Eastern Front, meant that the Germans no longer had a pool of able young men from which to draw. German soldiers were now on average six years older than their Allied counterparts. Many in the Normandy area were Ostlegionen (eastern legions)—conscripts and volunteers from Russia, Mongolia, and other areas of the Soviet Union. They were provided mainly with unreliable captured equipment and lacked motorised transport.[51][52] Many German units were under strength.[53]

In early 1944, the German Western Front (OB West) was significantly weakened by personnel and materiel transfers to the Eastern Front. During the Soviet Dnieper–Carpathian offensive (24 December 1943 – 17 April 1944), the German High Command was forced to transfer the entire II SS Panzer Corps from France, consisting of the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions, as well as the 349th Infantry Division, 507th Heavy Panzer Battalion and the 311th and 322nd StuG Assault Gun Brigades. All told, the German forces stationed in France were deprived of 45,827 troops and 363 tanks, assault guns, and self-propelled anti-tank guns.[54] It was the first major transfer of forces from France to the east since the creation of Führer Directive 51, which eased restrictions on troop transfers to the eastern front.[55]

The 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler", 9th, 11th, 19th and 116th Panzer divisions, alongside the 2nd SS Panzer Division "Das Reich", had only arrived in March–May 1944 to France for extensive refit after being badly damaged during the Dnieper-Carpathian operation. Seven of the eleven panzer or panzergrenadier divisions stationed in France were not fully operational or only partially mobile in early June 1944.[56]

German Supreme commander: Adolf Hitler

Oberbefehlshaber West (Supreme Commander West; OB West): Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt

(Panzer Group West: General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg)

Army Group B: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

7th Army: Generaloberst Friedrich Dollmann

LXXXIV Corps under General der Artillerie Erich Marcks

Cotentin Peninsula

Allied forces attacking Utah Beach faced the following German units stationed on the Cotentin Peninsula:

709th Infanterie-Division Logo 1.svg 709th Static Infantry Division under Generalleutnant Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben numbered 12,320 men, many of them Ostlegionen (non-German conscripts recruited from Soviet prisoners of war, Georgians and Poles).[57]

729th Grenadier Regiment[58]

739th Grenadier Regiment[58]

919th Grenadier Regiment[58]

Grandcamps Sector

Americans assaulting Omaha Beach faced the following troops:

352nd Infanterie-Division logo.jpg 352nd Infantry Division under Generalleutnant Dietrich Kraiss, a full-strength unit of around 12,000 brought in by Rommel on 15 March and reinforced by two additional regiments.[59]

914th Grenadier Regiment[60]

915th Grenadier Regiment (as reserves)[60]

916th Grenadier Regiment[60]

726th Infantry Regiment (from 716th Infantry Division)[60]

352nd Artillery Regiment[60]

Allied forces at Gold and Juno faced the following elements of the 352nd Infantry Division:

914th Grenadier Regiment[61]

915th Grenadier Regiment[61]

916th Grenadier Regiment[61]

352nd Artillery Regiment[61]

Forces around Caen

Allied forces attacking Gold, Juno, and Sword Beaches faced the following German units:

716th Infanterie-Division Logo.svg 716th Static Infantry Division under Generalleutnant Wilhelm Richter. At 7,000 troops, the division was significantly understrength.[62]

736th Infantry Regiment[63]

1716th Artillery Regiment[63]

21st Panzer Division logo.svg 21st Panzer Division, (south of Caen) under Generalmajor Edgar Feuchtinger included 146 tanks and 50 assault guns, plus supporting infantry and artillery.[64]

100th Panzer Regiment[61] (at Falaise under Hermann von Oppeln-Bronikowski; renamed 22nd Panzer Regiment in May 1944 to avoid confusion with 100th Panzer Battalion) [65]

125th Panzergrenadier Regiment[61](under Hans von Luck from April 1944)[66]

192nd Panzergrenadier Regiment[61]

155th Panzer Artillery Regiment[61]

Atlantic Wall

Main articles: Atlantic Wall and English Channel

Map of the Atlantic Wall, shown in yellow

  Axis and occupied countries

  Allies and occupied countries

  Neutral countries

Czech hedgehogs deployed on the Atlantic Wall near Calais

Alarmed by the raids on St Nazaire and Dieppe in 1942, Hitler had ordered the construction of fortifications all along the Atlantic coast, from Spain to Norway, to protect against an expected Allied invasion. He envisioned 15,000 emplacements manned by 300,000 troops, but shortages, particularly of concrete and manpower, meant that most of the strongpoints were never built.[67] As it was expected to be the site of the invasion, the Pas de Calais was heavily defended.[67] In the Normandy area, the best fortifications were concentrated at the port facilities at Cherbourg and Saint-Malo.[29] Rommel was assigned to oversee the construction of further fortifications along the expected invasion front, which stretched from the Netherlands to Cherbourg,[67][68] and was given command of the newly re-formed Army Group B, which included the 7th Army, the 15th Army, and the forces guarding the Netherlands. Reserves for this group included the 2nd, 21st, and 116th Panzer divisions.[69][70]

Rommel believed that the Normandy coast could be a possible landing point for the invasion, so he ordered the construction of extensive defensive works along that shore. In addition to concrete gun emplacements at strategic points along the coast, he ordered wooden stakes, metal tripods, mines, and large anti-tank obstacles to be placed on the beaches to delay the approach of landing craft and impede the movement of tanks.[71] Expecting the Allies to land at high tide so that the infantry would spend less time exposed on the beach, he ordered many of these obstacles to be placed at the high water mark.[43] Tangles of barbed wire, booby traps, and the removal of ground cover made the approach hazardous for infantry.[71] On Rommel's order, the number of mines along the coast was tripled.[29] The Allied air offensive over Germany had crippled the Luftwaffe and established air supremacy over western Europe, so Rommel knew he could not expect effective air support.[72] The Luftwaffe could muster only 815 aircraft[73] over Normandy in comparison to the Allies' 9,543.[74] Rommel arranged for booby-trapped stakes known as Rommelspargel (Rommel's asparagus) to be installed in meadows and fields to deter airborne landings.[29]

German armaments minister Albert Speer notes in his 1969 autobiography that the German high command, concerned about the susceptibility of the airports and port facilities along the North Sea coast, held a conference on 6–8 June 1944 to discuss reinforcing defences in that area.[75] Speer wrote:

In Germany itself we scarcely had any troop units at our disposal. If the airports at Hamburg and Bremen could be taken by parachute units and the ports of these cities seized by small forces, invasion armies debarking from ships would, I feared, meet no resistance and would be occupying Berlin and all of Germany within a few days.[76]

Armoured reserves

Rommel believed that Germany's best chance was to stop the invasion at the shore. He requested that the mobile reserves, especially tanks, be stationed as close to the coast as possible. Rundstedt, Geyr, and other senior commanders objected. They believed that the invasion could not be stopped on the beaches. Geyr argued for a conventional doctrine: keeping the Panzer formations concentrated in a central position around Paris and Rouen and deploying them only when the main Allied beachhead had been identified. He also noted that in the Italian Campaign, the armoured units stationed near the coast had been damaged by naval bombardment. Rommel's opinion was that because of Allied air supremacy, the large-scale movement of tanks would not be possible once the invasion was under way. Hitler made the final decision, which was to leave three Panzer divisions under Geyr's command and give Rommel operational control of three more as reserves. Hitler took personal control of four divisions as strategic reserves, not to be used without his direct orders.[77][78][79]

Allied order of battle

D-day assault routes into Normandy

Commander, SHAEF: General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Commander, 21st Army Group: General Bernard Montgomery[80]

U.S. zones

Commander, First Army: Lieutenant General Omar Bradley[80]

The First Army contingent totalled approximately 73,000 men, including 15,600 from the airborne divisions.[81]

Utah Beach

US VII Corps SSI.png VII Corps, commanded by Major General J. Lawton Collins[82]

4th Infantry Division SSI.svg 4th Infantry Division: Major General Raymond O. Barton[82]

82nd Airborne Division CSIB.svg 82nd Airborne Division: Major General Matthew Ridgway[82]

90th Infantry Division.patch.svg 90th Infantry Division: Brigadier General Jay W. MacKelvie[82]

US 101st Airborne Division patch.svg 101st Airborne Division: Major General Maxwell D. Taylor[82]

Omaha Beach

V Corps.svg V Corps, commanded by Major General Leonard T. Gerow, making up 34,250 men[83]

1st Infantry Division SSI (1918-2015).svg 1st Infantry Division: Major General Clarence R. Huebner[84]

29th Infantry Division SSI.svg 29th Infantry Division: Major General Charles H. Gerhardt[84]

British and Canadian zones

Royal Marine Commandos attached to 3rd Infantry Division move inland from Sword Beach, 6 June 1944

Commander, Second Army: Lieutenant General Sir Miles Dempsey[80]

Overall, the Second Army contingent consisted of 83,115 men, 61,715 of them British.[81] The nominally British air and naval support units included a large number of personnel from Allied nations, including several RAF squadrons manned almost exclusively by overseas air crew. For example, the Australian contribution to the operation included a regular Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) squadron, nine Article XV squadrons, and hundreds of personnel posted to RAF units and RN warships.[85] The RAF supplied two-thirds of the aircraft involved in the invasion.[86]

Gold Beach

XXX Corps 1944-1945 shoulder flash.jpg XXX Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General Gerard Bucknall[87]

50 inf div -vector.svg 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division: Major General D.A.H. Graham[87]

Juno Beach

Main article: Juno Beach order of battle

I Corps.svg British I Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General John Crocker[88]

3rd Canadian Infantry Division Patch (Modern Correct Pantone).png 3rd Canadian Division: Major General Rod Keller[88]

Sword Beach

I Corps.svg British I Corps, commanded by Lieutenant General John Crocker[89]

British 3rd Infantry Division2.svg 3rd Infantry Division: Major General Tom Rennie[89]

UK 6th Airborne Division Patch.svg 6th Airborne Division: Major General R.N. Gale[89]

79th armoured division badge.jpg 79th Armoured Division: Major General Percy Hobart[90] provided specialised armoured vehicles which supported the landings on all beaches in Second Army's sector.

Coordination with the French Resistance

Members of the French Resistance and the US 82nd Airborne division discuss the situation during the Battle of Normandy in 1944.

Through the London-based État-major des Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur (French Forces of the Interior), the British Special Operations Executive orchestrated a campaign of sabotage to be implemented by the French Resistance. The Allies developed four plans for the Resistance to execute on D-Day and the following days:

Plan Vert was a 15-day operation to sabotage the rail system.

Plan Bleu dealt with destroying electrical facilities.

Plan Tortue was a delaying operation aimed at the enemy forces that would potentially reinforce Axis forces at Normandy.

Plan Violet dealt with cutting underground telephone and teleprinter cables.[91]

The resistance was alerted to carry out these tasks by messages personnels transmitted by the BBC's French service from London. Several hundred of these messages, which might be snippets of poetry, quotations from literature, or random sentences, were regularly transmitted, masking the few that were actually significant. In the weeks preceding the landings, lists of messages and their meanings were distributed to resistance groups.[92] An increase in radio activity on 5 June was correctly interpreted by German intelligence to mean that an invasion was imminent or underway. However, because of the barrage of previous false warnings and misinformation, most units ignored the warning.[93][94]

A 1965 report from the Counter-insurgency Information Analysis Center details the results of the French Resistance's sabotage efforts: "In the southeast, 52 locomotives were destroyed on 6 June and the railway line cut in more than 500 places. Normandy was isolated as of 7 June."[95]

Naval activity

Main article: List of Allied warships in the Normandy landings

D-Day planning map, used at Southwick House near Portsmouth

Large landing craft convoy crosses the English Channel on 6 June 1944

Naval operations for the invasion were described by historian Correlli Barnett as a "never surpassed masterpiece of planning".[96] In overall command was British Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, who had served as Flag officer at Dover during the Dunkirk evacuation four years earlier. He had also been responsible for the naval planning of the invasion of North Africa in 1942, and one of the two fleets carrying troops for the invasion of Sicily the following year.[97]

The invasion fleet, which was drawn from eight different navies, comprised 6,939 vessels: 1,213 warships, 4,126 landing craft of various types, 736 ancillary craft, and 864 merchant vessels.[81] The majority of the fleet was supplied by the UK, which provided 892 warships and 3,261 landing craft.[86] In total there were 195,700 naval personnel involved; of these 112,824 were from the Royal Navy with another 25,000 from the Merchant Navy; 52,889 were American; and 4,998 sailors from other allied countries.[81][10] The invasion fleet was split into the Western Naval Task Force (under Admiral Alan G. Kirk) supporting the U.S. sectors and the Eastern Naval Task Force (under Admiral Sir Philip Vian) in the British and Canadian sectors.[98][97] Available to the fleet were five battleships, 20 cruisers, 65 destroyers, and two monitors.[99] German ships in the area on D-Day included three torpedo boats, 29 fast attack craft, 36 R boats, and 36 minesweepers and patrol boats.[100] The Germans also had several U-boats available, and all the approaches had been heavily mined.[43]

Naval losses

At 05:10, four German torpedo boats reached the Eastern Task Force and launched fifteen torpedoes, sinking the Norwegian destroyer HNoMS Svenner off Sword Beach but missing the British battleships HMS Warspite and Ramillies. After attacking, the German vessels turned away and fled east into a smoke screen that had been laid by the RAF to shield the fleet from the long-range battery at Le Havre.[101] Allied losses to mines included the American destroyer USS Corry off Utah and submarine chaser USS PC-1261, a 173-foot patrol craft.[102]

Bombardment

Map of the invasion area showing channels cleared of mines, location of vessels engaged in bombardment, and targets on shore

Bombing of Normandy began around midnight with more than 2,200 British, Canadian, and U.S. bombers attacking targets along the coast and further inland.[43] The coastal bombing attack was largely ineffective at Omaha, because low cloud cover made the assigned targets difficult to see. Concerned about inflicting casualties on their own troops, many bombers delayed their attacks too long and failed to hit the beach defences.[103] The Germans had 570 aircraft stationed in Normandy and the Low Countries on D-Day, and another 964 in Germany.[43]

Minesweepers began clearing channels for the invasion fleet shortly after midnight and finished just after dawn without encountering the enemy.[104] The Western Task Force included the battleships Arkansas, Nevada, and Texas, plus eight cruisers, twenty-eight destroyers, and one monitor.[105] The Eastern Task Force included the battleships Ramillies and Warspite and the monitor Roberts, twelve cruisers, and thirty-seven destroyers.[2] Naval bombardment of areas behind the beach commenced at 05:45, while it was still dark, with the gunners switching to pre-assigned targets on the beach as soon as it was light enough to see, at 05:50.[106] Since troops were scheduled to land at Utah and Omaha starting at 06:30 (an hour earlier than the British beaches), these areas received only about 40 minutes of naval bombardment before the assault troops began to land on the shore.[107]

Airborne operations

The success of the amphibious landings depended on the establishment of a secure lodgement from which to expand the beachhead to allow the build-up of a well-supplied force capable of breaking out. The amphibious forces were especially vulnerable to strong enemy counter-attacks before the arrival of sufficient forces in the beachhead could be accomplished. To slow or eliminate the enemy's ability to organise and launch counter-attacks during this critical period, airborne operations were used to seize key objectives such as bridges, road crossings, and terrain features, particularly on the eastern and western flanks of the landing areas. The airborne landings some distance behind the beaches were also intended to ease the egress of the amphibious forces off the beaches, and in some cases to neutralise German coastal defence batteries and more quickly expand the area of the beachhead.[108][109]

The U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were assigned to objectives west of Utah Beach, where they hoped to capture and control the few narrow causeways through terrain that had been intentionally flooded by the Germans. Reports from Allied intelligence in mid-May of the arrival of the German 91st Infantry Division meant the intended drop zones had to be shifted eastward and to the south.[110] The British 6th Airborne Division, on the eastern flank, was assigned to capture intact the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne, destroy five bridges over the Dives 6 miles (9.7 km) to the east, and destroy the Merville Gun Battery overlooking Sword Beach.[111] Free French paratroopers from the British SAS Brigade were assigned to objectives in Brittany from 5 June until August in Operations Dingson, Samwest, and Cooney.[112][113]

BBC war correspondent Robert Barr described the scene as paratroopers prepared to board their aircraft:

Their faces were darkened with cocoa; sheathed knives were strapped to their ankles; tommy guns strapped to their waists; bandoliers and hand grenades, coils of rope, pick handles, spades, rubber dinghies hung around them, and a few personal oddments, like the lad who was taking a newspaper to read on the plane ... There was an easy familiar touch about the way they were getting ready, as though they had done it often before. Well, yes, they had kitted up and climbed aboard often just like this—twenty, thirty, forty times some of them, but it had never been quite like this before. This was the first combat jump for every one of them.[114]

United States

Gliders are delivered to the Cotentin Peninsula by Douglas C-47 Skytrains. 6 June 1944

Main article: American airborne landings in Normandy

The U.S. airborne landings began with the arrival of pathfinders at 00:15. Navigation was difficult because of a bank of thick cloud, and as a result, only one of the five paratrooper drop zones was accurately marked with radar signals and Aldis lamps.[115] Paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, numbering over 13,000 men, were delivered by Douglas C-47 Skytrains of the IX Troop Carrier Command.[116] To avoid flying over the invasion fleet, the planes arrived from the west over the Cotentin Peninsula and exited over Utah Beach.[117][115]

Paratroops from 101st Airborne were dropped beginning around 01:30, tasked with controlling the causeways behind Utah Beach and destroying road and rail bridges over the Douve River.[118] The C-47s could not fly in a tight formation because of thick cloud cover, and many paratroopers were dropped far from their intended landing zones. Many planes came in so low that they were under fire from both flak and machine-gun fire. Some paratroopers were killed on impact when their parachutes did not have time to open, and others drowned in the flooded fields.[119] Gathering together into fighting units was made difficult by a shortage of radios and by the bocage terrain, with its hedgerows, stone walls, and marshes.[120][121] Some units did not arrive at their targets until afternoon, by which time several of the causeways had already been cleared by members of the 4th Infantry Division moving up from the beach.[122]

Troops of the 82nd Airborne began arriving around 02:30, with the primary objective of capturing two bridges over the River Merderet and destroying two bridges over the Douve.[118] On the east side of the river, 75 per cent of the paratroopers landed in or near their drop zone, and within two hours they captured the important crossroads at Sainte-Mère-Église (the first town liberated in the invasion[123]) and began working to protect the western flank.[124] Because of the failure of the pathfinders to accurately mark their drop zone, the two regiments dropped on the west side of the Merderet were extremely scattered, with only four per cent landing in the target area.[124] Many landed in nearby swamps, with much loss of life.[125] Paratroopers consolidated into small groups, usually a combination of men of various ranks from different units, and attempted to concentrate on nearby objectives.[126] They captured but failed to hold the Merderet River bridge at La Fière, and fighting for the crossing continued for several days.[127]

Reinforcements arrived by glider around 04:00 (Mission Chicago and Mission Detroit), and 21:00 (Mission Keokuk and Mission Elmira), bringing additional troops and heavy equipment. Like the paratroopers, many landed far from their drop zones.[128] Even those that landed on target experienced difficulty, with heavy cargo such as Jeeps shifting during landing, crashing through the wooden fuselage, and in some cases crushing personnel on board.[129]

After 24 hours, only 2,500 men of the 101st and 2,000 of the 82nd Airborne were under the control of their divisions, approximately a third of the force dropped. This wide dispersal had the effect of confusing the Germans and fragmenting their response.[130] The 7th Army received notification of the parachute drops at 01:20, but Rundstedt did not initially believe that a major invasion was underway. The destruction of radar stations along the Normandy coast in the week before the invasion meant that the Germans did not detect the approaching fleet until 02:00.[131]

British and Canadian

Main articles: Operation Tonga and Operation Mallard

An abandoned Waco CG-4 glider is examined by German troops

The first Allied action of D-Day was the capture of the Caen canal and Orne river bridges via a glider assault at 00:16 (since renamed Pegasus Bridge and Horsa Bridge). Both bridges were quickly captured intact, with light casualties by the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Regiment. They were then reinforced by members of the 5th Parachute Brigade and the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion.[132][133] The five bridges over the Dives were destroyed with minimal difficulty by the 3rd Parachute Brigade.[134][135] Meanwhile, the pathfinders tasked with setting up radar beacons and lights for further paratroopers (scheduled to begin arriving at 00:50 to clear the landing zone north of Ranville) were blown off course and had to set up the navigation aids too far east. Many paratroopers, also blown too far east, landed far from their intended drop zones; some took hours or even days to be reunited with their units.[136][137] Major General Richard Gale arrived in the third wave of gliders at 03:30, along with equipment, such as antitank guns and jeeps, and more troops to help secure the area from counter-attacks, which were initially staged only by troops in the immediate vicinity of the landings.[138] At 02:00, the commander of the German 716th Infantry Division ordered Feuchtinger to move his 21st Panzer Division into position to counter-attack. However, as the division was part of the armoured reserve, Feuchtinger was obliged to seek clearance from OKW before he could commit his formation.[139] Feuchtinger did not receive orders until nearly 09:00, but in the meantime on his own initiative he put together a battle group (including tanks) to fight the British forces east of the Orne.[140]

Only 160 men out of the 600 members of the 9th Battalion tasked with eliminating the enemy battery at Merville arrived at the rendezvous point. Lieutenant Colonel Terence Otway, in charge of the operation, decided to proceed regardless, as the emplacement had to be destroyed by 06:00 to prevent it firing on the invasion fleet and the troops arriving on Sword Beach. In the Battle of Merville Gun Battery, Allied forces disabled the guns with plastic explosives at a cost of 75 casualties. The emplacement was found to contain 75 mm guns rather than the expected 150 mm heavy coastal artillery. Otway's remaining force withdrew with the assistance of a few members of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion.[141]

With this action, the last of the D-Day goals of the British 6th Airborne Division was achieved.[142] They were reinforced at 12:00 by commandos of the 1st Special Service Brigade, who landed on Sword Beach, and by the 6th Airlanding Brigade, who arrived in gliders at 21:00 in Operation Mallard.[143]

Beach landings

Map of the beaches and first day advances

Tanks

Some of the landing craft had been modified to provide close support fire, and self-propelled amphibious Duplex-Drive tanks (DD tanks), specially designed for the Normandy landings, were to land shortly before the infantry to provide covering fire. However, few arrived in advance of the infantry, and many sank before reaching the shore, especially at Omaha.[144][145]

Utah Beach

Main article: Utah Beach

Carrying their equipment, U.S. assault troops move onto Utah Beach. Landing craft can be seen in the background.

Utah Beach was in the area defended by two battalions of the 919th Grenadier Regiment.[146] Members of the 8th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division were the first to land, arriving at 06:30. Their landing craft were pushed to the south by strong currents, and they found themselves about 2,000 yards (1.8 km) from their intended landing zone. This site turned out to be better, as there was only one strongpoint nearby rather than two, and bombers of IX Bomber Command had bombed the defences from lower than their prescribed altitude, inflicting considerable damage. In addition, the strong currents had washed ashore many of the underwater obstacles. The assistant commander of the 4th Infantry Division, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the first senior officer ashore, made the decision to "start the war from right here," and ordered further landings to be re-routed.[147][148]

The initial assault battalions were quickly followed by 28 DD tanks and several waves of engineer and demolition teams to remove beach obstacles and clear the area directly behind the beach of obstacles and mines. Gaps were blown in the sea wall to allow quicker access for troops and tanks. Combat teams began to exit the beach at around 09:00, with some infantry wading through the flooded fields rather than travelling on the single road. They skirmished throughout the day with elements of the 919th Grenadier Regiment, who were armed with antitank guns and rifles. The main strongpoint in the area and another 1,300 yards (1.2 km) to the south were disabled by noon.[149] The 4th Infantry Division did not meet all of their D-Day objectives at Utah Beach, partly because they had arrived too far to the south, but they landed 21,000 troops at the cost of only 197 casualties.[150][151]

Pointe du Hoc

US Rangers scaling the wall at Pointe du Hoc

Pointe du Hoc, a prominent headland situated between Utah and Omaha, was assigned to two hundred men of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Rudder. Their task was to scale the 30 m (98 ft) cliffs with grappling hooks, ropes, and ladders to destroy the coastal gun battery located at the top. The cliffs were defended by the German 352nd Infantry Division and French collaborators firing from above.[152] Allied destroyers Satterlee and Talybont provided fire support. After scaling the cliffs, the Rangers discovered that the guns had already been withdrawn. They located the weapons, unguarded but ready to use, in an orchard some 550 metres (600 yd) south of the point, and disabled them with explosives.[152]

The Rangers fended off numerous counter-attacks from the German 914th Grenadier Regiment. The men were isolated, and some were captured. By dawn on 7 June, Rudder had only 90 men able to fight. Relief did not arrive until 8 June, when members of the 743rd Tank Battalion and others arrived.[153][154] By then, Rudder's men had run out of ammunition and were using captured German weapons. Several men were killed as a result, because the German weapons made a distinctive noise, and the men were mistaken for the enemy.[155] By the end of the battle, the Rangers casualties were 135 dead and wounded, while German casualties were 50 killed and 40 captured. An unknown number of French collaborators were executed.[156][157]

Omaha Beach

Main article: Omaha Beach

U.S. assault troops in an LCVP landing craft approach Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944.

Omaha, the most heavily defended beach, was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division and 29th Infantry Division.[158] They faced the 352nd Infantry Division rather than the expected single regiment.[159] Strong currents forced many landing craft east of their intended position or caused them to be delayed.[160] For fear of hitting the landing craft, U.S. bombers delayed releasing their loads and as a result most of the beach obstacles at Omaha remained undamaged when the men came ashore.[161] Many of the landing craft ran aground on sandbars, and the men had to wade 50–100m in water up to their necks while under fire to get to the beach.[145] In spite of the rough seas, DD tanks of two companies of the 741st Tank Battalion were dropped 5,000 yards (4,600 m) from shore; however, 27 of the 32 flooded and sank, with the loss of 33 crew.[162] Some tanks, disabled on the beach, continued to provide covering fire until their ammunition ran out or they were swamped by the rising tide.[5]

Casualties were around 2,000, as the men were subjected to fire from the cliffs above.[163] Problems clearing the beach of obstructions led to the beachmaster calling a halt to further landings of vehicles at 08:30. A group of destroyers arrived around this time to provide fire support so landings could resume.[164] Exit from the beach was possible only via five heavily defended gullies, and by late morning barely 600 men had reached the higher ground.[165] By noon, as the artillery fire took its toll and the Germans started to run out of ammunition, the Americans were able to clear some lanes on the beaches. They also started clearing the gullies of enemy defences so that vehicles could move off the beach.[165] The tenuous beachhead was expanded over the following days, and the D-Day objectives for Omaha were accomplished by 9 June.[166]

Gold Beach

British troops come ashore at Jig Green sector, Gold Beach

The first landings on Gold Beach were set for 07:25 because of the differences in the tide between there and the U.S. beaches.[167] High winds made conditions difficult for the landing craft, and the amphibious DD tanks were released close to shore or directly on the beach instead of further out as planned.[168] Three of the four guns in a large emplacement at the Longues-sur-Mer battery were disabled by direct hits from the cruisers HMS Ajax and Argonaut at 06:20. The fourth gun resumed firing intermittently in the afternoon, and its garrison surrendered on 7 June.[169] Aerial attacks had failed to hit the Le Hamel strongpoint, which had its embrasure facing east to provide enfilade fire along the beach and had a thick concrete wall on the seaward side.[170] Its 75 mm gun continued to do damage until 16:00, when an Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers (AVRE) tank fired a large petard charge into its rear entrance.[171][172] A second casemated emplacement at La Rivière containing an 88 mm gun was neutralised by a tank at 07:30.[173]

Meanwhile, infantry began clearing the heavily fortified houses along the shore and advanced on targets further inland.[174] The No. 47 (Royal Marine) Commando moved toward the small port at Port-en-Bessin and captured it the following day in the Battle of Port-en-Bessin.[175] Company Sergeant Major Stanley Hollis received the only Victoria Cross awarded on D-Day for his actions while attacking two pillboxes at the Mont Fleury high point.[176] On the western flank, the 1st Battalion, Royal Hampshire Regiment captured Arromanches (future site of Mulberry "B"), and contact was made on the eastern flank with the Canadian forces at Juno.[177] Bayeux was not captured the first day because of stiff resistance from the 352nd Infantry Division.[174] Allied casualties at Gold Beach are estimated at 1,000.[81]

Juno Beach

Royal Canadian Naval Beach Commando "W" land on Mike Beach sector of Juno Beach, 8 July 1944

The landing at Juno Beach was delayed because of choppy seas, and the men arrived ahead of their supporting armour, suffering many casualties while disembarking. Most of the offshore bombardment had missed the German defences.[178] Several exits from the beach were created, but not without difficulty. At Mike Beach on the western flank, a large crater was filled using an abandoned AVRE tank and several rolls of fascine, which were then covered by a temporary bridge. The tank remained in place until 1972 when it was removed and restored by members of the Royal Engineers.[179] The beach and nearby streets were clogged with traffic for most of the day, making it difficult to move inland.[180]

Major German strongpoints with 75 mm guns, machine-gun nests, concrete fortifications, barbed wire, and mines were located at Courseulles-sur-Mer, St Aubin-sur-Mer, and Bernières-sur-Mer.[181] The towns had to be cleared in house-to-house fighting.[182] Soldiers on their way to Bény-sur-Mer, 3 miles (5 km) inland, discovered that the road was well covered by machine gun emplacements that had to be outflanked before the advance could proceed.[183] Elements of the 9th Canadian Infantry Brigade advanced to within sight of the Carpiquet airfield late in the afternoon, but by this time their supporting armour was low on ammunition so the Canadians dug in for the night. The airfield was not captured until a month later as the area became the scene of fierce fighting.[184] By nightfall, the contiguous Juno and Gold beachheads covered an area 12 miles (19 km) wide and 7 miles (10 km) deep.[185] Casualties at Juno were 961 men.[186]

Sword Beach

British troops take cover after landing on Sword Beach.

On Sword Beach, 21 of 25 DD tanks of the first wave were successful in getting safely ashore to provide cover for the infantry, who began disembarking at 07:30.[187] The beach was heavily mined and peppered with obstacles, making the work of the beach clearing teams difficult and dangerous.[188] In the windy conditions, the tide came in more quickly than expected, so manoeuvring the armour was difficult. The beach quickly became congested.[189] Brigadier Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat and his 1st Special Service Brigade arrived in the second wave, piped ashore by Private Bill Millin, Lovat's personal piper.[190] Members of No. 4 Commando moved through Ouistreham to attack from the rear a German gun battery on the shore. A concrete observation and control tower at this emplacement had to be bypassed and was not captured until several days later.[191] French forces under Commander Philippe Kieffer (the first French soldiers to arrive in Normandy) attacked and cleared the heavily fortified strongpoint at the casino at Riva Bella, with the aid of one of the DD tanks.[191]

The 'Morris' strongpoint near Colleville-sur-Orne was captured after about an hour of fighting.[189] The nearby 'Hillman' strongpoint, headquarters of the 736th Infantry Regiment, was a large complex defensive work that had come through the morning's bombardment essentially undamaged. It was not captured until 20:15.[192] The 2nd Battalion, King's Shropshire Light Infantry began advancing to Caen on foot, coming within a few kilometres of the town, but had to withdraw due to lack of armour support.[193] At 16:00, the 21st Panzer Division mounted a counter-attack between Sword and Juno and nearly succeeded in reaching the Channel. It met stiff resistance from the British 3rd Division and was soon recalled to assist in the area between Caen and Bayeux.[194][195] Estimates of Allied casualties on Sword Beach are as high as 1,000.[81]

Aftermath

Situation map for 24:00, 6 June 1944

The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, with nearly 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating.[196] Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day,[197] with 875,000 men disembarking by the end of June.[198] Allied casualties on the first day were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead.[199] The Germans lost 1,000 men.[14] The Allied invasion plans had called for the capture of Carentan, Saint-Lô, Caen, and Bayeux on the first day, with all the beaches (other than Utah) linked with a front line 10 to 16 kilometres (6 to 10 mi) from the beaches; none of these objectives were achieved.[33] The five beachheads were not connected until 12 June, by which time the Allies held a front around 97 kilometres (60 mi) long and 24 kilometres (15 mi) deep.[200] Caen, a major objective, was still in German hands at the end of D-Day and would not be completely captured until 21 July.[201] The Germans had ordered French civilians other than those deemed essential to the war effort to leave potential combat zones in Normandy.[202] Civilian casualties on D-Day and D+1 are estimated at 3,000.[203]

The Allied victory in Normandy stemmed from several factors. German preparations along the Atlantic Wall were only partially finished; shortly before D-Day Rommel reported that construction was only 18 per cent complete in some areas as resources were diverted elsewhere.[204] The deceptions undertaken in Operation Fortitude were successful, leaving the Germans obliged to defend a huge stretch of coastline.[205] The Allies achieved and maintained air supremacy, which meant that the Germans were unable to make observations of the preparations underway in Britain and were unable to interfere via bomber attacks.[206] Infrastructure for transport in France was severely disrupted by Allied bombers and the French Resistance, making it difficult for the Germans to bring up reinforcements and supplies.[207] Some of the opening bombardment was off-target or not concentrated enough to have any impact,[161] but the specialised armour worked well except on Omaha, providing close artillery support for the troops as they disembarked onto the beaches.[208] Indecisiveness and an overly complicated command structure on the part of the German high command were also factors in the Allied success.[209]

War memorials and tourism

At Omaha Beach, parts of the Mulberry harbour are still visible, and a few of the beach obstacles remain. A memorial to the U.S. National Guard sits at the location of a former German strongpoint. Pointe du Hoc is little changed from 1944, with the terrain covered with bomb craters and most of the concrete bunkers still in place. The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial is nearby, in Colleville-sur-Mer.[210] A museum about the Utah landings is located at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, and there is one dedicated to the activities of the U.S. airmen at Sainte-Mère-Église. Two German military cemeteries are located nearby.[211]

Pegasus Bridge, a target of the British 6th Airborne, was the site of some of the earliest action of the Normandy landings. The bridge was replaced in 1994 by one similar in appearance, and the original is housed on the grounds of a nearby museum complex.[212] Sections of Mulberry Harbour B still sit in the sea at Arromanches, and the well-preserved Longues-sur-Mer battery is nearby.[213] The Juno Beach Centre, opened in 2003, was funded by the Canadian federal and provincial governments, France, and Canadian veterans.[214] The British Normandy Memorial above Gold Beach was designed by the architect Liam O'Connor and opened in 2021.[215]

The Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery

The Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery

 

The La Cambe German war cemetery, near Bayeux

The La Cambe German war cemetery, near Bayeux

 

The Bayeux Commonwealth war cemetery

The Bayeux Commonwealth war cemetery

 

The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, overlooking Omaha Beach

The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, overlooking Omaha Beach

See also

World War II portal

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

D-Day Daily Telegraph crossword security alarm

Exercise Tiger, a rehearsal for the landings that resulted in many deaths

List of Allied warships in the Normandy landings

Martha Gellhorn, the only woman to land at Normandy on D-Day

References

Notes

 The official British history gives an estimated figure of 156,115 men landed on D-Day. This comprised 57,500 Americans and 75,215 British and Canadians from the sea and 15,500 Americans and 7,900 British from the air. Ellis, Allen & Warhurst 2004, pp. 521–533.

 The original estimate for Allied casualties was 10,000, of which 2,500 were killed. Research under way by the National D-Day Memorial has confirmed 4,414 deaths, of which 2,499 were American and 1,915 were from other nations. Whitmarsh 2009, p. 87.

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 Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 292.

 Whitmarsh 2009, p. 70.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 289–290.

 Beevor 2009, p. 129.

 Wilmot 1997, pp. 272–273.

 Wilmot 1997, pp. 274–275.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 312–313.

 Wilmot 1997, p. 275.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, Map, pp. 314–315.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 317.

 Beevor 2009, pp. 133–135.

 Beevor 2009, p. 135.

 Wilmot 1997, p. 276.

 Beevor 2009, p. 131.

 Wilmot 1997, p. 277.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 239–240.

 Beevor 2009, p. 143.

 Beevor 2009, p. 138.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 244–245.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 248–249.

 Beevor 2009, pp. 143, 148.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 326–327.

 Wilmot 1997, p. 283.

 Beevor 2009, p. 74.

 Ellis, Allen & Warhurst 2004, pp. 521–533.

 Whitmarsh 2009, p. 104.

 Whitmarsh 2009, p. 87.

 Horn 2010, p. 13.

 Wilmot 1997, p. 360.

 Flint 2009, p. 102.

 Flint 2009, p. 336.

 Wilmot 1997, p. 290.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 343.

 Wilmot 1997, p. 289.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 36.

 Wilmot 1997, p. 291.

 Wilmot 1997, p. 292.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 346.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, pp. 346–348.

 Mémorial Pegasus.

 Ford & Zaloga 2009, p. 352.

 Zuehlke 2004, pp. 349–350.

 O'Connor 2021.

Bibliography

Ambrose, Stephen (1994) [1993]. D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-67334-5.

Beevor, Antony (2009). D-Day: The Battle for Normandy. New York; Toronto: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-02119-2.

Bickers, Richard Townshend (1994). Air War Normandy. London: Leo Cooper. ISBN 978-0-85052-412-3.

Brown, Anthony Cave (2007) [1975]. Bodyguard of Lies: The Extraordinary True Story Behind D-Day. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot. ISBN 978-1-59921-383-5.

Caddick-Adams, Peter (2019). Sand and Steel: A New History of D-Day. London: Hutchinson. ISBN 978-1-84794-8-281.

Churchill, Winston (1951) [1948]. Closing the Ring. The Second World War. Vol. V. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OCLC 396150.

Corta, Henry (1952). Les bérets rouges [The Red Berets] (in French). Paris: Amicale des anciens parachutistes SAS. OCLC 8226637.

Corta, Henry (1997). Qui ose gagne [Who dares, wins] (in French). Vincennes, France: Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre. ISBN 978-2-86323-103-6.

"D-Day and the Battle of Normandy: Your Questions Answered". ddaymuseum.co.uk. Portsmouth Museum Services. Archived from the original on 29 June 2013. Retrieved 18 April 2014.

Douthit, Howard L. III (1988). The Use and Effectiveness of Sabotage as a Means of Unconventional Warfare – An Historical Perspective from World War I Through Vietnam (PDF) (MSc thesis). Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio: Air Force Institute of Technology. Archived (PDF) from the original on 8 January 2020. Retrieved 8 January 2020.

Ellis, L.F.; Allen, G.R.G.; Warhurst, A.E. (2004) [1962]. Butler, J.R.M (ed.). Victory in the West, Volume I: The Battle of Normandy. History of the Second World War United Kingdom Military Series. London: Naval & Military Press. ISBN 978-1-84574-058-0.

Escott, Beryl E. (2010). The Heroines of SOE: Britain's Secret Women in France. Stroud, Gloucestershire: History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-5661-4.

Flint, Edward R (2009). The development of British civil affairs and its employment in the British Sector of Allied military operations during the Battle of Normandy, June to August 1944 (PhD thesis). Cranfield, Bedford: Cranfield University; Cranfield Defence and Security School, Department of Applied Science, Security and Resilience, Security and Resilience Group. hdl:1826/4017. OCLC 757064836.

Folliard, Edward T. (12 June 1942). "Molotov's Visit to White House, Postwar Amity Pledge Revealed". The Washington Post.

Ford, Ken; Zaloga, Steven J. (2009). Overlord: The D-Day Landings. Oxford; New York: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-84603-424-4.

Francois, Dominique (13 October 2013). Normandy: From D-Day to the Breakout: June 6 – July 31, 1944. Minneapolis: Voyageur Press. ISBN 978-0-7603-4558-0.

Garner, Tom (4 June 2019). "D-Day's forgotten Greeks". History of War. Retrieved 15 February 2021.

Gilbert, Martin (1989). The Second World War: A Complete History. New York: H. Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-1788-5.

Goldstein, Donald M.; Dillon, Katherine V.; Wenger, J. Michael (1994). D-Day: The Story and Photographs. McLean, Virginia: Brassey's. ISBN 978-0-02-881057-7.

Holland, James (5 June 2014). "D-Day: Exploding the myths of the Normandy landings". edition.cnn.com. CNN.

Hooton, Edward (1999) [1997]. Eagle in Flames: The Fall of the Luftwaffe. London: Arms and Armour. ISBN 978-1-86019-995-0.

Horn, Bernd (2010). Men of Steel: Canadian Paratroopers in Normandy, 1944. Toronto: Dundurn Press. ISBN 978-1-55488-708-8.

Liedtke, Gregory (2 January 2015). "Lost in the Mud: The (Nearly) Forgotten Collapse of the German Army in the Western Ukraine, March and April 1944". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 28 (1): 215–238. doi:10.1080/13518046.2015.998134. ISSN 1351-8046. S2CID 144324751.

Margaritis, Peter (2019). Countdown to D-Day: The German Perspective: The German High Command in Occupied France, 1944. Philadelphia; Oxford, UK: Casemate. ISBN 978-1-61200-769-4.

Morison, Samuel Eliot (1962). History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Vol. 11. The invasion of France and Germany, 1944–1945. Boston: Little, Brown. OCLC 757924260.

Murray, Williamson (1983). Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe, 1933–45. Washington: Brassey's. ISBN 978-1-57488-125-7.

Napier, Stephen (2015). The Armoured Campaign in Normandy June–August 1944. Stroud: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7509-6473-9.

O'Connor, Mary (6 June 2021). "British Normandy Memorial unveiled in France to honour veterans". BBC. Retrieved 6 June 2021.

"Pegasus Bridge: The Bridge of the Longest Day". memorial-pegasus.org. Mémorial Pegasus D-Day Commemoration Committee. Archived from the original on 7 April 2014. Retrieved 6 September 2019.

A Study of Rear Area Security Measures. Washington: Special Operations Research Office, Counter-insurgency Information Analysis Center, United States Army. 1965.

Speer, Albert (1971) [1969]. Inside the Third Reich. New York: Avon. ISBN 978-0-380-00071-5.

Staff (5 June 2014). "D-Day: In the words of the BBC journalists". bbc.com. BBC News. Retrieved 10 June 2014.

Stanley, Peter (6 June 2004). "Australians and D-Day". Anniversary talks. Australian War Memorial. Archived from the original on 26 April 2014. Retrieved 8 January 2020.

Weigley, Russell F. (1981). Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany 1944–1945. Vol. I. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-13333-5.

Weinberg, Gerhard (1995) [1993]. A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-55879-2.

Whitmarsh, Andrew (2009). D-Day in Photographs. Stroud: History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-5095-7.

Wilmot, Chester (1997) [1952]. The Struggle For Europe. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. ISBN 978-1-85326-677-5.

Yung, Christopher D. (2006). Gators of Neptune: Naval Amphibious Planning for the Normandy Invasion. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-997-2.

Zaloga, Steven J; Johnson, Hugh (2005). D-Day Fortifications in Normandy. Oxford; New York: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-4728-0382-5.

Zaloga, Steven J. (2009). Rangers Lead the Way: Pointe-du-Hoc, D-Day 1944. Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 978-1-84603-394-0.

Zuehlke, Mark (2004). Juno Beach: Canada's D-Day Victory: June 6, 1944. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre. ISBN 978-1-55365-050-8.

Further reading

Badsey, Stephen (1990). Normandy 1944: Allied Landings and Breakout. Osprey Campaign Series. Vol. 1. Botley, Oxford: Osprey. ISBN 978-0-85045-921-0.

Buckley, John (2006). The Normandy Campaign: 1944: Sixty Years On. London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-20303-1.

Collier, Richard (1992). D-Day: 6 June 1944: The Normandy Landings. London: Cassell. ISBN 978-1-841-88031-0.

D'Este, Carlo (1983). Decision in Normandy: The Unwritten Story of Montgomery and the Allied Campaign. London: William Collins Sons. ISBN 978-0-00-217056-7.

Dolski, Michael; Edwards, Sam; Buckley, John, eds. (2014). D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration. Denton: University of North Texas Press. ISBN 978-1-57441-548-3.

Field, Jacob (2014). D-Day in Numbers: The Facts Behind Operation Overlord. London: Michael O'Mara Books. ISBN 978-1-782-43205-0.

Hastings, Max (1984). Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy. London: Joseph. ISBN 0-671-46029-3.

Holderfield, Randal J.; Varhola, Michael J. (2001). The Invasion of Normandy, June 6, 1944. Mason City, Iowa: Savas. ISBN 978-1-882810-45-1.

Holland, James (2019). Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France. New York: Grove Atlantic. ISBN 978-0-8021-4709-7.

Howarth, David (1959). Dawn of D-Day: These Men Were There, 6 June 1944. London: Collins.

Keegan, John (1994). Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-023542-5.

Meadows, Ian (2016). "South Africans in D-Day". South African Legion. Retrieved 9 April 2023.

Milton, Giles (2018). D-Day: The Soldiers' Story. London: John Murray. ISBN 978-1473649019.

Neillands, Robin (2002). The Battle of Normandy, 1944. London: Cassell. ISBN 978-0-304-35837-3.

Ryan, Cornelius (1959). The Longest Day. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-20814-1.

Stacey, C.P. (1946). Canada's Battle in Normandy: The Canadian Army's Share in the Operations, 6 June – 1 September 1944. Ottawa: King's Printer. OCLC 39263107.

Stacey, C.P. (1960). Volume III. The Victory Campaign, The Operations in North-West Europe 1944–1945 (PDF). Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War. Ottawa: Department of National Defence. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 December 2020. Retrieved 23 June 2014.

Tute, Warren; Costello, John; Hughes, Terry (1975). D-Day. London: Pan Books. ISBN 978-0-330-24418-3.

Whitlock, Flint (2004). The Fighting First: The Untold Story of The Big Red One on D-Day. Boulder: Westview Press. ISBN 978-0-8133-4218-4.

Zetterling, Niklas (2000). Normandy 1944: German Military Organisation, Combat Power and Organizational Effectiveness. Winnipeg: J.J. Fedorowicz Publishing. ISBN 978-0-921991-56-4.

External links

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for D-Day beaches.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Battle of Normandy landing sites.

The Normandy Invasion at the US Army Center of Military History

Neptune Operations Plan

Naval details for Overlord at Naval-History.Net

Documents on World War II: D-Day, The Invasion of Normandy at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home

Lt. General Omar Bradley FUSAG 12TH AG: June 6, 1944 D-Day Maps Omar Bradley D-Day Maps restored, preserved and Displayed at Historical Registry

Allied veterans remember D-Day

Naval History and Heritage Command

The short film Big Picture: D-Day Convoy to Normandy is available for free download at the Internet Archive.

Complete Broadcast Day: D-Day (June 6, 1944) from CBS Radio News, available at the Internet Archive

D-Day to D plus 3 (33m19s) on YouTube: US Department of Defense, Department of the Army footage from the US National Archives

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1939

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1943

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1944

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Operations

Overlord (overall plan)Neptune (assault plan)American airborne landings in NormandyAtlantic (Canada)Bluecoat (UK)Charnwood (UK and Canada)Cobra (US)Capture of Caen and Orne bridges (UK)Epsom (UK)Fortitude (Deception plan)Goodwood (UK)Greenline, Pomegranate and Express (UK)Jupiter (UK)Lüttich (German)Mallard (UK)Martlet (UK)Perch (UK)Spring (Canada)Titanic (UK)Tonga (UK 6th Airborne)Totalize (Canada, Poland, UK)Tractable (Canada, Poland, UK)Windsor (Canada)

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Landing points (W→E)

Utah (US)Omaha (US) Pointe du Hoc (US)Gold (UK)Juno (Canada)Sword (UK)

Logistics

American logistics in the Normandy campaignBritish logistics in the Normandy campaignMulberry harbourPluto (Pipe-Line Under The Ocean)Operation Chastity

Gun batteries

AmfrevilleAzevilleCrisbecqHoulgateLongues-sur-MerMaisyMervilleMont Canisy

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Falaise pocketHill 262Hillman FortressPegasus BridgeMilitary cemeteries in Normandy

See also

Atlantic WallD-DayD-Day naval deceptionsDieppe RaidHobart's FunniesRhino tankAllied forces in NormandyLiberation of Paris (France)Operation BodyguardOperation Dragoon (France, UK, US)Operation Jedburgh (France, UK, US)June 6, 1944, order of the dayPeople of Western Europe speechRommel's asparagusWeather forecasting for Operation Overlord

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Categories: 1944 in FranceAmphibious operations involving the United KingdomAmphibious operations involving the United StatesAmphibious operations involving CanadaAmphibious operations of World War IIBattle for CaenBattles and operations of World War II involving PolandBattles of World War II involving CanadaBattles of World War II involving FranceBattles of World War II involving the United KingdomBattles of World War II involving the United StatesConflicts in 1944Invasions by the United StatesJune 1944 eventsLanding operationsMilitary history of Canada during World War IINaval battles and operations of the European theatre of World War IINaval battles of World War II involving CanadaNaval battles of World War II involving PolandNaval battles of World War II involving the United KingdomOperation Overlord

World leaders mark 75th anniversary of D-Day landings

Western leaders and World War II veterans gather in UK’s Portsmouth to join in D-Day commemoration.

D-Day commemorations - Reuters

(Left to right) French President Emmanuel Macron, Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May, Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth, US President Donald Trump with wife Melania, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau [Carlos Barria/Reuters]

Published On 5 Jun 20195 Jun 2019

US President Donald Trump has joined European leaders in Portsmouth, on Britain’s southern coast, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings of World War II.

Trump is concluding his state visit to the United Kingdom by marking the anniversary of the departure of more than 150,000 troops from British shores, heading for the beaches of Nazi-occupied northern France.

The soldiers who stormed those beaches in 1945 were drawn from a wide coalition of nations, and the US president joined British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau along with other leaders for the ceremonial military parade on Wednesday morning. 

“There was concern that the controversy following Donald Trump’s visit might disturb or overshadow the events here, which mark a sacrifice shared by so many nations,” said Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker, reporting from Portsmouth.

“But others felt it was important to show the US president some of the strength and history of multilateral relations. The relationship, particularly between Britain and the United States, predates Mr Trump, of course, and many hope it will endure long after his time in office.”

Video Duration 02 minutes 26 seconds 02:26

Neave Barker’s D-Day walk-and-talk

Watch: Neave Barker reports from Portsmouth

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Invasion

In the early hours of June 6, 1944, waves of allied troops set off from Portsmouth and the surrounding area to begin the air, sea and land assault on Normandy that ultimately led to the liberation of Western Europe from the Nazis.

By that time, Soviet forces had been fighting Germany in the east for almost three years and Kremlin chief Josef Stalin had urged British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to open a second front.

The invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord and commanded by US General Dwight D Eisenhower, remains the largest amphibious assault in history and involved almost 7,000 ships and landing craft along an 80km stretch of the French coast.

Shortly after midnight, 24,000 paratroopers were dropped. Then came the naval bombardment of German positions overlooking the shore. Then the infantry arrived on the beaches.

Mostly American, British and Canadian men, some just boys, waded ashore as German soldiers tried to kill them with machine guns and artillery. Survivors say the sea was red with blood and the air boiling with the thunder of explosions. More than 4,000 of the invading soldiers were killed that day, with estimates that between 4,000 and 9,000 Germans died.

Line upon line of white crosses honour the dead in cemeteries across northern France. Even the codenames of the sectors of the invasion – Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword – can draw tears from veterans.

Proclamation

“Seventy-five years ago this Thursday, courageous Americans and British patriots set out from this island towards history’s most important battle,” Trump remarked in London on Tuesday.

Video Duration 02 minutes 36 seconds 02:36

Queen stresses shared values as US President Trump visits UK

Queen Elizabeth stresses shared values as US President Trump visits UK (2:37)

“They stormed forward out of ships and aeroplanes risking everything to defend our people and to ensure that the United States and Britain would forever remain sovereign and forever remain free.”

The 16 countries attending the commemorations have agreed on a proclamation to “ensure that the unimaginable horror of these years is never repeated”.

“We will act resolutely, with courage and tenacity, to protect our people against threats to our values and challenges to peace and stability,” the proclamation said.

On Wednesday evening, 300 veterans who took part on D-Day, all now older than 90, will leave Portsmouth on a specially commissioned ship and retrace their 1944 journey across the English Channel, accompanied by Royal Navy vessels and a lone wartime Spitfire fighter plane.

Meanwhile, in Normandy, British air assault troops, French army paratroopers and D-Day veterans will recreate the airborne landings. There will be further D-Day memorial events on Thursday in northern France.

Wednesday’s event coincides with the last day of Trump’s state visit to Britain, during which he called for NATO allies to spend more on defence, saying they had no choice but to spend at least two percent of GDP on their militaries.

World War II

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Second World War" and "WWII" redirect here. For other uses, see The Second World War (disambiguation), WWII (disambiguation), and World War II (disambiguation).

World War II

in the

Clockwise from top left:

German Stuka dive bombers on the Eastern Front in December 1943Australian Ordnance QF 25-pounder guns during the First Battle of El AlameinAtomic bombing of NagasakiUS naval force in the Lingayen GulfRaising a flag over the ReichstagSoviet troops in the Battle of Stalingrad

Date 1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945[a]

(6 years, 1 day)

Location

Major theaters:

EuropePacificAtlanticIndian OceanSouth-East AsiaChinaJapanMiddle EastMediterraneanNorth AfricaHorn of AfricaCentral AfricaAustraliaCaribbeanNorth and South America

Result

Allied victory

Fall of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan

Allied military occupations of Germany, Japan, Austria, and Korea

Beginning of the Nuclear Age

Dissolution of the League of Nations and creation of the United Nations

Decolonisation of Asia and Africa and decline of European international influence

Emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as rival superpowers and beginning of the Cold War (see Aftermath of World War II)

 

Participants

Allies Axis

Commanders and leaders

Main Allied leaders:

Soviet Union Joseph Stalin

United States Franklin D. Roosevelt

United Kingdom Winston Churchill

Republic of China (1912–1949) Chiang Kai-shek

Main Axis leaders:

Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler

Empire of Japan Hirohito

Fascist Italy (1922–1943) Benito Mussolini

Casualties and losses

Military dead:

Over 16,000,000

Civilian dead:

Over 45,000,000

Total dead:

Over 61,000,000

(1937–1945)

...further details

Military dead:

Over 8,000,000

Civilian dead:

Over 4,000,000

Total dead:

Over 12,000,000

(1937–1945)

...further details

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Campaigns of World War II

Europe

PolandPhoney WarWinter WarDenmark and NorwayFrance and BeneluxBritainBalkansEastern FrontFinlandSicilyItalyLaplandWestern Front (1944–1945)

Asia-Pacific

ChinaPacific OceanFranco-Thai WarSouth-East AsiaBurma and IndiaSouth West PacificJapanManchuria and Northern Korea

Mediterranean and Middle East

North AfricaEast AfricaMediterranean SeaAdriaticMaltaYugoslaviaIraqSyria–LebanonIranItalyDodecaneseSouthern France

Other campaigns

AtlanticArcticStrategic bombingAmericasFrench West AfricaIndian Ocean Madagascar

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World War II

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World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries, including all of the great powers, fought as part of two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. Many participants threw their economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind this total war, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and the delivery of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war.

World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in history, resulting in an estimated 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, massacres, and disease. In the wake of the Axis defeat, Germany and Japan were occupied, and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders.

The causes of World War II are debated, but contributing factors included the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Spanish Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War, Soviet–Japanese border conflicts, the rise of fascism in Europe, and European tensions in the aftermath of World War I. World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland. The United Kingdom and France subsequently declared war on Germany on 3 September. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union had partitioned Poland and marked out their "spheres of influence" across Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, in a military alliance with Italy, Japan and other countries called the Axis. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, and the fall of France in mid-1940, the war continued primarily between the European Axis powers and the British Empire, with war in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz of the United Kingdom, and the Battle of the Atlantic. On 22 June 1941, Germany led the European Axis powers in an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front, the largest land theatre of war in history.

Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with the Republic of China by 1937. In December 1941, Japan attacked American and British territories with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific, including an attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor which resulted in the United States and United Kingdom declaring war against Japan. The European Axis powers declared war on the United States in solidarity. Japan soon captured much of the western Pacific, but its advances were halted in 1942 after losing the critical Battle of Midway; later, Germany and Italy were defeated in North Africa and at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. Key setbacks in 1943—including a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland, and Allied offensives in the Pacific—cost the Axis powers their initiative and forced them into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and pushed Germany and its allies back. During 1944 and 1945, Japan suffered reversals in mainland Asia, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key western Pacific islands.

The war in Europe concluded with the liberation of German-occupied territories and the invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the Fall of Berlin to Soviet troops, Hitler's suicide, and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the refusal of Japan to surrender on the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (issued 26 July 1945), the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August. Faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese archipelago, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, and the Soviet Union's declared entry into the war against Japan on the eve of invading Manchuria, Japan announced on 10 August its intention to surrender, signing a surrender document on 2 September 1945.

World War II changed the political alignment and social structure of the globe and set the foundation for the international order of the world's nations for the rest of the 20th century and into the present day. The United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts,[1] with the victorious great powers—China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—becoming the permanent members of its Security Council. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century-long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia. Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion. Political and economic integration, especially in Europe, began as an effort to forestall future hostilities, end pre-war enmities, and forge a sense of common identity.

Start and end dates

See also: List of timelines of World War II

Timelines of World War II

Chronological

Prelude

(in Asiain Europe)

1939194019411942

194319441945 onwards

By topic

Diplomacy

Declarations of war

EngagementsOperations

Battle of Europe air operations

Eastern FrontManhattan Project

United Kingdom home front

Surrender of the Axis armies

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It is generally considered that, in Europe, World War II started on 1 September 1939,[2][3] beginning with the German invasion of Poland and the United Kingdom and France's declaration of war on Germany two days later on 3 September 1939. Dates for the beginning of the Pacific War include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937,[4][5] or the earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria, on 19 September 1931.[6][7] Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously, and the two wars became World War II in 1941.[8] Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935.[9] The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939.[10] Others view the Spanish Civil War as the start or prelude to World War II.[11][12]

The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945 (V-J Day), rather than with the formal surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945, which officially ended the war in Asia. A peace treaty between Japan and the Allies was signed in 1951.[13] A 1990 treaty regarding Germany's future allowed the reunification of East and West Germany to take place and resolved most post–World War II issues.[14] No formal peace treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union was ever signed,[15] although the state of war between the two countries was terminated by the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, which also restored full diplomatic relations between them.[16]

Background

Main article: Causes of World War II

Aftermath of World War I

World War I had radically altered the political European map with the defeat of the Central Powers—including Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire—and the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, which led to the founding of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the victorious Allies of World War I, such as France, Belgium, Italy, Romania, and Greece, gained territory, and new nation-states were created out of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman and Russian Empires.

The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930

To prevent a future world war, the League of Nations was created during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The organisation's primary goals were to prevent armed conflict through collective security, military and naval disarmament, and settling international disputes through peaceful negotiations and arbitration.[17]

Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I,[18] irredentist and revanchist nationalism emerged in several European states in the same period. These sentiments were especially marked in Germany because of the significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all its overseas possessions, while German annexation of other states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of the country's armed forces.[19]

Germany

The German Empire was dissolved in the German Revolution of 1918–1919, and a democratic government, later known as the Weimar Republic, was created. The interwar period saw strife between supporters of the new republic and hardline opponents on both the right and left. Italy, as an Entente ally, had made some post-war territorial gains; however, Italian nationalists were angered that the promises made by the United Kingdom and France to secure Italian entrance into the war were not fulfilled in the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy, repressed socialist, left-wing and liberal forces, and pursued an aggressive expansionist foreign policy aimed at making Italy a world power, and promising the creation of a "New Roman Empire".[20]

Adolf Hitler at a German Nazi political rally in Nuremberg, August 1933

Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, eventually became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933 when Paul Von Hindenburg and the Reichstag appointed him. Following Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler proclaimed himself Fuhrer of Germany and abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a massive rearmament campaign.[21] Meanwhile, France, to secure its alliance, allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired as a colonial possession. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Territory of the Saar Basin was legally reunited with Germany, and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, accelerated his rearmament programme, and introduced conscription.[22]

European treaties

The United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front in April 1935 in order to contain Germany, a key step towards military globalisation; however, that June, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions. The Soviet Union, concerned by Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of Eastern Europe, drafted a treaty of mutual assistance with France. Before taking effect, though, the Franco-Soviet pact was required to go through the bureaucracy of the League of Nations, which rendered it essentially toothless.[23] The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August of the same year.[24]

Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno Treaties by remilitarising the Rhineland in March 1936, encountering little opposition due to the policy of appeasement.[25] In October 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Rome–Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy joined the following year.[26]

Asia

The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese Communist Party allies[27] and new regional warlords. In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Empire of Japan, which had long sought influence in China[28] as the first step of what its government saw as the country's right to rule Asia, staged the Mukden Incident as a pretext to invade Manchuria and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.[29]

China appealed to the League of Nations to stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations after being condemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two nations then fought several battles, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until the Tanggu Truce was signed in 1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, and Chahar and Suiyuan.[30] After the 1936 Xi'an Incident, the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on a ceasefire to present a united front to oppose Japan.[31]

Pre-war events

Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)

Main article: Second Italo-Ethiopian War

Benito Mussolini inspecting troops during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War was a brief colonial war that began in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war began with the invasion of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia) by the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia), which was launched from Italian Somaliland and Eritrea.[32] The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and its annexation into the newly created colony of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI); in addition it exposed the weakness of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia were member nations, but the League did little when the former clearly violated Article X of the League's Covenant.[33] The United Kingdom and France supported imposing sanctions on Italy for the invasion, but the sanctions were not fully enforced and failed to end the Italian invasion.[34] Italy subsequently dropped its objections to Germany's goal of absorbing Austria.[35]

Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

Main article: Spanish Civil War

The bombing of Guernica in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, sparked fears abroad in Europe that the next war would be based on bombing of cities with very high civilian casualties.

When civil war broke out in Spain, Hitler and Mussolini lent military support to the Nationalist rebels, led by General Francisco Franco. Italy supported the Nationalists to a greater extent than the Nazis did: altogether Mussolini sent to Spain more than 70,000 ground troops and 6,000 aviation personnel, as well as about 720 aircraft.[36] The Soviet Union supported the existing government of the Spanish Republic. More than 30,000 foreign volunteers, known as the International Brigades, also fought against the Nationalists. Both Germany and the Soviet Union used this proxy war as an opportunity to test in combat their most advanced weapons and tactics. The Nationalists won the civil war in April 1939; Franco, now dictator, remained officially neutral during World War II but generally favoured the Axis.[37] His greatest collaboration with Germany was the sending of volunteers to fight on the Eastern Front.[38]

Japanese invasion of China (1937)

Main article: Second Sino-Japanese War

Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during the Battle of Shanghai, 1937

In July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese imperial capital of Peking after instigating the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China.[39] The Soviets quickly signed a non-aggression pact with China to lend materiel support, effectively ending China's prior co-operation with Germany. From September to November, the Japanese attacked Taiyuan, engaged the Kuomintang Army around Xinkou,[40][unreliable source?] and fought Communist forces in Pingxingguan.[41][42] Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best army to defend Shanghai, but after three months of fighting, Shanghai fell. The Japanese continued to push the Chinese forces back, capturing the capital Nanking in December 1937. After the fall of Nanking, tens or hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants were murdered by the Japanese.[43][44]

In March 1938, Nationalist Chinese forces won their first major victory at Taierzhuang, but then the city of Xuzhou was taken by the Japanese in May.[45][unreliable source?] In June 1938, Chinese forces stalled the Japanese advance by flooding the Yellow River; this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese to prepare their defences at Wuhan, but the city was taken by October.[46] Japanese military victories did not bring about the collapse of Chinese resistance that Japan had hoped to achieve; instead, the Chinese government relocated inland to Chongqing and continued the war.[47][48]

Soviet–Japanese border conflicts

Main article: Soviet–Japanese border conflicts

Red Army artillery unit during the Battle of Lake Khasan, 1938

In the mid-to-late 1930s, Japanese forces in Manchukuo had sporadic border clashes with the Soviet Union and Mongolia. The Japanese doctrine of Hokushin-ron, which emphasised Japan's expansion northward, was favoured by the Imperial Army during this time. With the Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol in 1939, the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese War[49] and ally Nazi Germany pursuing neutrality with the Soviets, this policy would prove difficult to maintain. Japan and the Soviet Union eventually signed a Neutrality Pact in April 1941, and Japan adopted the doctrine of Nanshin-ron, promoted by the Navy, which took its focus southward, eventually leading to its war with the United States and the Western Allies.[50][51]

European occupations and agreements

Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured just before signing the Munich Agreement, 29 September 1938

In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming more aggressive. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria, again provoking little response from other European powers.[52] Encouraged, Hitler began pressing German claims on the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a predominantly ethnic German population. Soon the United Kingdom and France followed the appeasement policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and conceded this territory to Germany in the Munich Agreement, which was made against the wishes of the Czechoslovak government, in exchange for a promise of no further territorial demands.[53] Soon afterwards, Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia to cede additional territory to Hungary, and Poland annexed the Zaolzie region of Czechoslovakia.[54]

Although all of Germany's stated demands had been satisfied by the agreement, privately Hitler was furious that British interference had prevented him from seizing all of Czechoslovakia in one operation. In subsequent speeches Hitler attacked British and Jewish "war-mongers" and in January 1939 secretly ordered a major build-up of the German navy to challenge British naval supremacy. In March 1939, Germany invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it into the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a pro-German client state, the Slovak Republic.[55] Hitler also delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania on 20 March 1939, forcing the concession of the Klaipėda Region, formerly the German Memelland.[56]

German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (right) and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, 23 August 1939

Greatly alarmed and with Hitler making further demands on the Free City of Danzig, the United Kingdom and France guaranteed their support for Polish independence; when Italy conquered Albania in April 1939, the same guarantee was extended to the Kingdoms of Romania and Greece.[57] Shortly after the Franco-British pledge to Poland, Germany and Italy formalised their own alliance with the Pact of Steel.[58] Hitler accused the United Kingdom and Poland of trying to "encircle" Germany and renounced the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact.[59]

The situation reached a general crisis in late August as German troops continued to mobilise against the Polish border. On 23 August, when tripartite negotiations about a military alliance between France, the United Kingdom and Soviet Union stalled,[60] the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany.[61] This pact had a secret protocol that defined German and Soviet "spheres of influence" (western Poland and Lithuania for Germany; eastern Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia for the Soviet Union), and raised the question of continuing Polish independence.[62] The pact neutralised the possibility of Soviet opposition to a campaign against Poland and assured that Germany would not have to face the prospect of a two-front war, as it had in World War I. Immediately after that, Hitler ordered the attack to proceed on 26 August, but upon hearing that the United Kingdom had concluded a formal mutual assistance pact with Poland and that Italy would maintain neutrality, he decided to delay it.[63]

In response to British requests for direct negotiations to avoid war, Germany made demands on Poland, which only served as a pretext to worsen relations.[64] On 29 August, Hitler demanded that a Polish plenipotentiary immediately travel to Berlin to negotiate the handover of Danzig, and to allow a plebiscite in the Polish Corridor in which the German minority would vote on secession.[64] The Poles refused to comply with the German demands, and on the night of 30–31 August in a confrontational meeting with the British ambassador Nevile Henderson, Ribbentrop declared that Germany considered its claims rejected.[65]

Course of the war

For a chronological guide, see List of timelines of World War II.

See also: Diplomatic history of World War II

War breaks out in Europe (1939–1940)

Main article: European theatre of World War II

Soldiers of the German Wehrmacht tearing down the border crossing into Poland, 1 September 1939

On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland after having staged several false flag border incidents as a pretext to initiate the invasion.[66] The first German attack of the war came against the Polish defenses at Westerplatte.[67] The United Kingdom responded with an ultimatum to Germany to cease military operations, and on 3 September, after the ultimatum was ignored, Britain and France declared war on Germany,[68] followed by Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada. During the Phoney War period, the alliance provided no direct military support to Poland, outside of a cautious French probe into the Saarland.[69] The Western Allies also began a naval blockade of Germany, which aimed to damage the country's economy and the war effort.[70] Germany responded by ordering U-boat warfare against Allied merchant and warships, which would later escalate into the Battle of the Atlantic.[71]

Soldiers of the Polish Army during the defence of Poland, September 1939

On 8 September, German troops reached the suburbs of Warsaw. The Polish counter-offensive to the west halted the German advance for several days, but it was outflanked and encircled by the Wehrmacht. Remnants of the Polish army broke through to besieged Warsaw. On 17 September 1939, two days after signing a cease-fire with Japan, the Soviet Union invaded Poland[72] under the pretext that the Polish state had ostensibly ceased to exist.[73] On 27 September, the Warsaw garrison surrendered to the Germans, and the last large operational unit of the Polish Army surrendered on 6 October. Despite the military defeat, Poland never surrendered; instead, it formed the Polish government-in-exile and a clandestine state apparatus remained in occupied Poland.[74] A significant part of Polish military personnel evacuated to Romania and Latvia; many of them later fought against the Axis in other theatres of the war.[75]

Germany annexed the western and occupied the central part of Poland, and the Soviet Union annexed its eastern part; small shares of Polish territory were transferred to Lithuania and Slovakia. On 6 October, Hitler made a public peace overture to the United Kingdom and France but said that the future of Poland was to be determined exclusively by Germany and the Soviet Union. The proposal was rejected,[65] and Hitler ordered an immediate offensive against France,[76] which was postponed until the spring of 1940 due to bad weather.[77][78][79]

Finnish machine gun nest aimed at Soviet Red Army positions during the Winter War, February 1940

After the outbreak of war in Poland, Stalin threatened Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania with military invasion, forcing the three Baltic countries to sign pacts that stipulated the creation of Soviet military bases in these countries. In October 1939, significant Soviet military contingents were moved there.[80][81][82] Finland refused to sign a similar pact and rejected ceding part of its territory to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union invaded Finland in November 1939,[83] and the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations.[84] Despite overwhelming numerical superiority, Soviet military success during the Winter War was modest,[85] and the Finno-Soviet war ended in March 1940 with some Finnish concessions of territory.[86]

In June 1940, the Soviet Union occupied the entire territories of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,[81] and the Romanian regions of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the Hertsa region. In August 1940, Hitler imposed the Second Vienna Award on Romania which led to the transfer of Northern Transylvania to Hungary.[87] In September 1940, Bulgaria demanded Southern Dobruja from Romania with German and Italian support, leading to the Treaty of Craiova.[88] The loss of one-third of Romania's 1939 territory caused a coup against King Carol II, turning Romania into a fascist dictatorship under Marshal Ion Antonescu with a course set firmly towards the Axis in the hopes of a German guarantee.[89] Meanwhile, Nazi-Soviet political rapprochement and economic co-operation[90][91] gradually stalled,[92][93] and both states began preparations for war.[94]

Western Europe (1940–1941)

Main article: Western Front (World War II)

German advance into Belgium and Northern France, 10 May – 4 June 1940, swept past the Maginot Line (shown in dark red)

In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to protect shipments of iron ore from Sweden, which the Allies were attempting to cut off.[95] Denmark capitulated after six hours, and Norway was conquered within two months[96] despite Allied support. British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the resignation of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who was replaced by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940.[97]

On the same day, Germany launched an offensive against France. To circumvent the strong Maginot Line fortifications on the Franco-German border, Germany directed its attack at the neutral nations of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.[98] The Germans carried out a flanking manoeuvre through the Ardennes region,[99] which was mistakenly perceived by Allies as an impenetrable natural barrier against armoured vehicles.[100][101] By successfully implementing new Blitzkrieg tactics, the Wehrmacht rapidly advanced to the Channel and cut off the Allied forces in Belgium, trapping the bulk of the Allied armies in a cauldron on the Franco-Belgian border near Lille. The United Kingdom was able to evacuate a significant number of Allied troops from the continent by early June, although abandoning almost all their equipment.[102]

On 10 June, Italy invaded France, declaring war on both France and the United Kingdom.[103] The Germans turned south against the weakened French army, and Paris fell to them on 14 June. Eight days later France signed an armistice with Germany; it was divided into German and Italian occupation zones,[104] and an unoccupied rump state under the Vichy Regime, which, though officially neutral, was generally aligned with Germany. France kept its fleet, which the United Kingdom attacked on 3 July in an attempt to prevent its seizure by Germany.[105]

London seen from St. Paul's Cathedral after the German Blitz, 29 December 1940

The air Battle of Britain[106] began in early July with Luftwaffe attacks on shipping and harbours.[107] The United Kingdom rejected Hitler's peace offer,[108] and the German air superiority campaign started in August but failed to defeat RAF Fighter Command, forcing the indefinite postponement of the proposed German invasion of Britain. The German strategic bombing offensive intensified with night attacks on London and other cities in the Blitz, but failed to significantly disrupt the British war effort[107] and largely ended in May 1941.[109]

Using newly captured French ports, the German Navy enjoyed success against an over-extended Royal Navy, using U-boats against British shipping in the Atlantic.[110] The British Home Fleet scored a significant victory on 27 May 1941 by sinking the German battleship Bismarck.[111]

In November 1939, the United States was taking measures to assist China and the Western Allies and amended the Neutrality Act to allow "cash and carry" purchases by the Allies.[112] In 1940, following the German capture of Paris, the size of the United States Navy was significantly increased. In September the United States further agreed to a trade of American destroyers for British bases.[113] Still, a large majority of the American public continued to oppose any direct military intervention in the conflict well into 1941.[114] In December 1940 Roosevelt accused Hitler of planning world conquest and ruled out any negotiations as useless, calling for the United States to become an "arsenal of democracy" and promoting Lend-Lease programmes of aid to support the British war effort.[108] The United States started strategic planning to prepare for a full-scale offensive against Germany.[115]

At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact formally united Japan, Italy, and Germany as the Axis powers. The Tripartite Pact stipulated that any country, with the exception of the Soviet Union, which attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all three.[116] The Axis expanded in November 1940 when Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania joined.[117] Romania and Hungary later made major contributions to the Axis war against the Soviet Union, in Romania's case partially to recapture territory ceded to the Soviet Union.[118]

Mediterranean (1940–1941)

Main article: Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of World War II

Soldiers of the British Commonwealth forces from the Australian Army's 9th Division during the siege of Tobruk; North African campaign, September 1941

In early June 1940, the Italian Regia Aeronautica attacked and besieged Malta, a British possession. From late summer to early autumn, Italy conquered British Somaliland and made an incursion into British-held Egypt. In October, Italy attacked Greece, but the attack was repulsed with heavy Italian casualties; the campaign ended within months with minor territorial changes.[119] Germany started preparation for an invasion of the Balkans to assist Italy, to prevent the British from gaining a foothold there, which would be a potential threat for Romanian oil fields, and to strike against the British dominance of the Mediterranean.[120]

In December 1940, British Empire forces began counter-offensives against Italian forces in Egypt and Italian East Africa.[121] The offensives were highly successful; by early February 1941, Italy had lost control of eastern Libya, and large numbers of Italian troops had been taken prisoner. The Italian Navy also suffered significant defeats, with the Royal Navy putting three Italian battleships out of commission by means of a carrier attack at Taranto, and neutralising several more warships at the Battle of Cape Matapan.[122]

German Panzer III of the Afrika Korps advancing across the North African desert, April-May 1941

Italian defeats prompted Germany to deploy an expeditionary force to North Africa and at the end of March 1941, Rommel's Afrika Korps launched an offensive which drove back the Commonwealth forces.[123] In under a month, Axis forces advanced to western Egypt and besieged the port of Tobruk.[124]

By late March 1941, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact; however, the Yugoslav government was overthrown two days later by pro-British nationalists. Germany responded with simultaneous invasions of both Yugoslavia and Greece, commencing on 6 April 1941; both nations were forced to surrender within the month.[125] The airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete at the end of May completed the German conquest of the Balkans.[126] Although the Axis victory was swift, bitter and large-scale partisan warfare subsequently broke out against the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, which continued until the end of the war.[127]

In the Middle East in May, Commonwealth forces quashed an uprising in Iraq which had been supported by German aircraft from bases within Vichy-controlled Syria.[128] Between June and July, British-led forces invaded and occupied the French possessions of Syria and Lebanon, with assistance of the Free French.[129]

Axis attack on the Soviet Union (1941)

Main article: Eastern Front (World War II)

European theatre of World War II animation map, 1939–1945 – Red: Western Allies and the Soviet Union after 1941; Green: Soviet Union before 1941; Blue: Axis powers

With the situation in Europe and Asia relatively stable, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union made preparations for war. With the Soviets wary of mounting tensions with Germany and the Japanese planning to take advantage of the European War by seizing resource-rich European possessions in Southeast Asia, the two powers signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941.[130] By contrast, the Germans were steadily making preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union, massing forces on the Soviet border.[131]

Hitler believed that the United Kingdom's refusal to end the war was based on the hope that the United States and the Soviet Union would enter the war against Germany sooner or later.[132] On 31 July 1940 Hitler decided that the Soviet Union should be eliminated and aimed for the conquest of Ukraine, the Baltic states and Byelorussia.[133] However, other senior German officials like Ribbentrop saw an opportunity to create a Euro-Asian bloc against the British Empire by inviting the Soviet Union into the Tripartite Pact.[134] In November 1940, negotiations took place to determine if the Soviet Union would join the pact. The Soviets showed some interest but asked for concessions from Finland, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Japan that Germany considered unacceptable. On 18 December 1940, Hitler issued the directive to prepare for an invasion of the Soviet Union.[135]

German soldiers during the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Axis powers, 1941

On 22 June 1941, Germany, supported by Italy and Romania, invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, with Germany accusing the Soviets of plotting against them. They were joined shortly by Finland and Hungary.[136] The primary targets of this surprise offensive[137] were the Baltic region, Moscow and Ukraine, with the ultimate goal of ending the 1941 campaign near the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, from the Caspian to the White Seas. Hitler's objectives were to eliminate the Soviet Union as a military power, exterminate Communism, generate Lebensraum ("living space")[138] by dispossessing the native population[139] and guarantee access to the strategic resources needed to defeat Germany's remaining rivals.[140]

Although the Red Army was preparing for strategic counter-offensives before the war,[141] Operation Barbarossa forced the Soviet supreme command to adopt a strategic defence. During the summer, the Axis made significant gains into Soviet territory, inflicting immense losses in both personnel and materiel. By mid-August, however, the German Army High Command decided to suspend the offensive of a considerably depleted Army Group Centre, and to divert the 2nd Panzer Group to reinforce troops advancing towards central Ukraine and Leningrad.[142] The Kiev offensive was overwhelmingly successful, resulting in encirclement and elimination of four Soviet armies, and made possible further advance into Crimea and industrially developed Eastern Ukraine (the First Battle of Kharkov).[143]

Soviet civilians leaving destroyed houses after a German bombardment during the Battle of Leningrad, 10 December 1942

The diversion of three quarters of the Axis troops and the majority of their air forces from France and the central Mediterranean to the Eastern Front[144] prompted the United Kingdom to reconsider its grand strategy.[145] In July, the UK and the Soviet Union formed a military alliance against Germany[146] and in August, the United Kingdom and the United States jointly issued the Atlantic Charter, which outlined British and American goals for the post-war world.[147] In late August the British and Soviets invaded neutral Iran to secure the Persian Corridor, Iran's oil fields, and preempt any Axis advances through Iran toward the Baku oil fields or India.[148]

By October, Axis operational objectives in Ukraine and the Baltic region were achieved, with only the sieges of Leningrad[149] and Sevastopol continuing.[150] A major offensive against Moscow was renewed; after two months of fierce battles in increasingly harsh weather, the German army almost reached the outer suburbs of Moscow, where the exhausted troops[151] were forced to suspend their offensive.[152] Large territorial gains were made by Axis forces, but their campaign had failed to achieve its main objectives: two key cities remained in Soviet hands, the Soviet capability to resist was not broken, and the Soviet Union retained a considerable part of its military potential. The blitzkrieg phase of the war in Europe had ended.[153]

By early December, freshly mobilised reserves[154] allowed the Soviets to achieve numerical parity with Axis troops.[155] This, as well as intelligence data which established that a minimal number of Soviet troops in the East would be sufficient to deter any attack by the Japanese Kwantung Army,[156] allowed the Soviets to begin a massive counter-offensive that started on 5 December all along the front and pushed German troops 100–250 kilometres (62–155 mi) west.[157]

War breaks out in the Pacific (1941)

Main article: Pacific War

Following the Japanese false flag Mukden Incident in 1931, the Japanese shelling of the American gunboat USS Panay in 1937, and the 1937–38 Nanjing Massacre, Japanese-American relations deteriorated. In 1939, the United States notified Japan that it would not be extending its trade treaty and American public opinion opposing Japanese expansionism led to a series of economic sanctions, the Export Control Acts, which banned U.S. exports of chemicals, minerals and military parts to Japan and increased economic pressure on the Japanese regime.[108][158][159] During 1939 Japan launched its first attack against Changsha, a strategically important Chinese city, but was repulsed by late September.[160] Despite several offensives by both sides, the war between China and Japan was stalemated by 1940. To increase pressure on China by blocking supply routes, and to better position Japanese forces in the event of a war with the Western powers, Japan invaded and occupied northern Indochina in September 1940.[161]

Japanese soldiers entering Hong Kong, 8 December 1941

Chinese nationalist forces launched a large-scale counter-offensive in early 1940. In August, Chinese communists launched an offensive in Central China; in retaliation, Japan instituted harsh measures in occupied areas to reduce human and material resources for the communists.[162] The continued antipathy between Chinese communist and nationalist forces culminated in armed clashes in January 1941, effectively ending their co-operation.[163] In March, the Japanese 11th army attacked the headquarters of the Chinese 19th army but was repulsed during Battle of Shanggao.[164][unreliable source?] In September, Japan attempted to take the city of Changsha again and clashed with Chinese nationalist forces.[165][unreliable source?]

German successes in Europe encouraged Japan to increase pressure on European governments in Southeast Asia. The Dutch government agreed to provide Japan with some oil supplies from the Dutch East Indies, but negotiations for additional access to their resources ended in failure in June 1941.[166] In July 1941 Japan sent troops to southern Indochina, thus threatening British and Dutch possessions in the Far East. The United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western governments reacted to this move with a freeze on Japanese assets and a total oil embargo.[167][168] At the same time, Japan was planning an invasion of the Soviet Far East, intending to capitalise off the German invasion in the west, but abandoned the operation after the sanctions.[169]

Since early 1941 the United States and Japan had been engaged in negotiations in an attempt to improve their strained relations and end the war in China. During these negotiations, Japan advanced a number of proposals which were dismissed by the Americans as inadequate.[170] At the same time the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands engaged in secret discussions for the joint defence of their territories, in the event of a Japanese attack against any of them.[171] Roosevelt reinforced the Philippines (an American protectorate scheduled for independence in 1946) and warned Japan that the United States would react to Japanese attacks against any "neighboring countries".[171]

The USS Arizona was a total loss in the Japanese surprise air attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Sunday 7 December 1941.

Frustrated at the lack of progress and feeling the pinch of the American–British–Dutch sanctions, Japan prepared for war. Emperor Hirohito, after initial hesitation about Japan's chances of victory,[172] began to favour Japan's entry into the war.[173] As a result, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe resigned.[174][175] Hirohito refused the recommendation to appoint Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni in his place, choosing War Minister Hideki Tojo instead.[176] On 3 November, Nagano explained in detail the plan of the attack on Pearl Harbor to the Emperor.[177] On 5 November, Hirohito approved in imperial conference the operations plan for the war.[178] On 20 November, the new government presented an interim proposal as its final offer. It called for the end of American aid to China and for lifting the embargo on the supply of oil and other resources to Japan. In exchange, Japan promised not to launch any attacks in Southeast Asia and to withdraw its forces from southern Indochina.[170] The American counter-proposal of 26 November required that Japan evacuate all of China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with all Pacific powers.[179] That meant Japan was essentially forced to choose between abandoning its ambitions in China, or seizing the natural resources it needed in the Dutch East Indies by force;[180][181] the Japanese military did not consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil embargo an unspoken declaration of war.[182]

Japan planned to seize European colonies in Asia to create a large defensive perimeter stretching into the Central Pacific. The Japanese would then be free to exploit the resources of Southeast Asia while exhausting the over-stretched Allies by fighting a defensive war.[183][184] To prevent American intervention while securing the perimeter, it was further planned to neutralise the United States Pacific Fleet and the American military presence in the Philippines from the outset.[185] On 7 December 1941 (8 December in Asian time zones), Japan attacked British and American holdings with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific.[186] These included an attack on the American fleets at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, as well as invasions of Guam, Wake Island, Malaya,[186] Thailand, and Hong Kong.[187]

The Japanese invasion of Thailand led to Thailand's decision to ally itself with Japan and the other Japanese attacks led the United States, United Kingdom, China, Australia, and several other states to formally declare war on Japan, whereas the Soviet Union, being heavily involved in large-scale hostilities with European Axis countries, maintained its neutrality agreement with Japan.[188] Germany, followed by the other Axis states, declared war on the United States[189] in solidarity with Japan, citing as justification the American attacks on German war vessels that had been ordered by Roosevelt.[136][190]

Axis advance stalls (1942–1943)

U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill seated at the Casablanca Conference, January 1943

On 1 January 1942, the Allied Big Four[191]—the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and 22 smaller or exiled governments issued the Declaration by United Nations, thereby affirming the Atlantic Charter,[192] and agreeing not to sign a separate peace with the Axis powers.[193]

During 1942, Allied officials debated on the appropriate grand strategy to pursue. All agreed that defeating Germany was the primary objective. The Americans favoured a straightforward, large-scale attack on Germany through France. The Soviets were also demanding a second front. The British, on the other hand, argued that military operations should target peripheral areas to wear out German strength, leading to increasing demoralisation, and bolster resistance forces. Germany itself would be subject to a heavy bombing campaign. An offensive against Germany would then be launched primarily by Allied armour without using large-scale armies.[194] Eventually, the British persuaded the Americans that a landing in France was infeasible in 1942 and they should instead focus on driving the Axis out of North Africa.[195]

At the Casablanca Conference in early 1943, the Allies reiterated the statements issued in the 1942 Declaration and demanded the unconditional surrender of their enemies. The British and Americans agreed to continue to press the initiative in the Mediterranean by invading Sicily to fully secure the Mediterranean supply routes.[196] Although the British argued for further operations in the Balkans to bring Turkey into the war, in May 1943, the Americans extracted a British commitment to limit Allied operations in the Mediterranean to an invasion of the Italian mainland and to invade France in 1944.[197]

Pacific (1942–1943)

Map of Japanese military advances through mid-1942

By the end of April 1942, Japan and its ally Thailand had almost fully conquered Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, and Rabaul, inflicting severe losses on Allied troops and taking a large number of prisoners.[198] Despite stubborn resistance by Filipino and U.S. forces, the Philippine Commonwealth was eventually captured in May 1942, forcing its government into exile.[199] On 16 April, in Burma, 7,000 British soldiers were encircled by the Japanese 33rd Division during the Battle of Yenangyaung and rescued by the Chinese 38th Division.[200] Japanese forces also achieved naval victories in the South China Sea, Java Sea, and Indian Ocean,[201] and bombed the Allied naval base at Darwin, Australia. In January 1942, the only Allied success against Japan was a Chinese victory at Changsha.[202] These easy victories over the unprepared U.S. and European opponents left Japan overconfident, as well as overextended.[203]

In early May 1942, Japan initiated operations to capture Port Moresby by amphibious assault and thus sever communications and supply lines between the United States and Australia. The planned invasion was thwarted when an Allied task force, centred on two American fleet carriers, fought Japanese naval forces to a draw in the Battle of the Coral Sea.[204] Japan's next plan, motivated by the earlier Doolittle Raid, was to seize Midway Atoll and lure American carriers into battle to be eliminated; as a diversion, Japan would also send forces to occupy the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.[205] In mid-May, Japan started the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign in China, with the goal of inflicting retribution on the Chinese who aided the surviving American airmen in the Doolittle Raid by destroying Chinese air bases and fighting against the Chinese 23rd and 32nd Army Groups.[206][207] In early June, Japan put its operations into action, but the Americans, having broken Japanese naval codes in late May, were fully aware of the plans and order of battle, and used this knowledge to achieve a decisive victory at Midway over the Imperial Japanese Navy.[208]

U.S. Marines during the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the Pacific theatre, 1942

With its capacity for aggressive action greatly diminished as a result of the Midway battle, Japan chose to focus on a belated attempt to capture Port Moresby by an overland campaign in the Territory of Papua.[209] The Americans planned a counter-attack against Japanese positions in the southern Solomon Islands, primarily Guadalcanal, as a first step towards capturing Rabaul, the main Japanese base in Southeast Asia.[210]

Both plans started in July, but by mid-September, the Battle for Guadalcanal took priority for the Japanese, and troops in New Guinea were ordered to withdraw from the Port Moresby area to the northern part of the island, where they faced Australian and United States troops in the Battle of Buna–Gona.[211] Guadalcanal soon became a focal point for both sides with heavy commitments of troops and ships in the battle for Guadalcanal. By the start of 1943, the Japanese were defeated on the island and withdrew their troops.[212] In Burma, Commonwealth forces mounted two operations. The first, an offensive into the Arakan region in late 1942, went disastrously, forcing a retreat back to India by May 1943.[213] The second was the insertion of irregular forces behind Japanese front-lines in February which, by the end of April, had achieved mixed results.[214]

Eastern Front (1942–1943)

Red Army soldiers on the counterattack during the Battle of Stalingrad, February 1943

Despite considerable losses, in early 1942 Germany and its allies stopped a major Soviet offensive in central and southern Russia, keeping most territorial gains they had achieved during the previous year.[215] In May, the Germans defeated Soviet offensives in the Kerch Peninsula and at Kharkov,[216] and then launched their main summer offensive against southern Russia in June 1942, to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus and occupy the Kuban steppe, while maintaining positions on the northern and central areas of the front. The Germans split Army Group South into two groups: Army Group A advanced to the lower Don River and struck south-east to the Caucasus, while Army Group B headed towards the Volga River. The Soviets decided to make their stand at Stalingrad on the Volga.[217]

By mid-November, the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad in bitter street fighting. The Soviets began their second winter counter-offensive, starting with an encirclement of German forces at Stalingrad,[218] and an assault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow, though the latter failed disastrously.[219] By early February 1943, the German Army had taken tremendous losses; German troops at Stalingrad had been defeated,[220] and the front-line had been pushed back beyond its position before the summer offensive. In mid-February, after the Soviet push had tapered off, the Germans launched another attack on Kharkov, creating a salient in their front line around the Soviet city of Kursk.[221]

Western Europe/Atlantic and Mediterranean (1942–1943)

American 8th Air Force Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombing raid on the Focke-Wulf factory in Germany, 9 October 1943

Exploiting poor American naval command decisions, the German navy ravaged Allied shipping off the American Atlantic coast.[222] By November 1941, Commonwealth forces had launched a counter-offensive, Operation Crusader, in North Africa, and reclaimed all the gains the Germans and Italians had made.[223] In North Africa, the Germans launched an offensive in January, pushing the British back to positions at the Gazala line by early February,[224] followed by a temporary lull in combat which Germany used to prepare for their upcoming offensives.[225] Concerns the Japanese might use bases in Vichy-held Madagascar caused the British to invade the island in early May 1942.[226] An Axis offensive in Libya forced an Allied retreat deep inside Egypt until Axis forces were stopped at El Alamein.[227] On the Continent, raids of Allied commandos on strategic targets, culminating in the disastrous Dieppe Raid,[228] demonstrated the Western Allies' inability to launch an invasion of continental Europe without much better preparation, equipment, and operational security.[229][page needed]

In August 1942, the Allies succeeded in repelling a second attack against El Alamein[230] and, at a high cost, managed to deliver desperately needed supplies to the besieged Malta.[231] A few months later, the Allies commenced an attack of their own in Egypt, dislodging the Axis forces and beginning a drive west across Libya.[232] This attack was followed up shortly after by Anglo-American landings in French North Africa, which resulted in the region joining the Allies.[233] Hitler responded to the French colony's defection by ordering the occupation of Vichy France;[233] although Vichy forces did not resist this violation of the armistice, they managed to scuttle their fleet to prevent its capture by German forces.[233][234] The Axis forces in Africa withdrew into Tunisia, which was conquered by the Allies in May 1943.[233][235]

In June 1943, the British and Americans began a strategic bombing campaign against Germany with a goal to disrupt the war economy, reduce morale, and "de-house" the civilian population.[236] The firebombing of Hamburg was among the first attacks in this campaign, inflicting significant casualties and considerable losses on infrastructure of this important industrial centre.[237]

Allies gain momentum (1943–1944)

U.S. Navy SBD-5 scout plane flying patrol over USS Washington and USS Lexington during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, 1943

After the Guadalcanal campaign, the Allies initiated several operations against Japan in the Pacific. In May 1943, Canadian and U.S. forces were sent to eliminate Japanese forces from the Aleutians.[238] Soon after, the United States, with support from Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islander forces, began major ground, sea and air operations to isolate Rabaul by capturing surrounding islands, and breach the Japanese Central Pacific perimeter at the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.[239] By the end of March 1944, the Allies had completed both of these objectives and had also neutralised the major Japanese base at Truk in the Caroline Islands. In April, the Allies launched an operation to retake Western New Guinea.[240]

In the Soviet Union, both the Germans and the Soviets spent the spring and early summer of 1943 preparing for large offensives in central Russia. On 5 July 1943, Germany attacked Soviet forces around the Kursk Bulge. Within a week, German forces had exhausted themselves against the Soviets' deeply echeloned and well-constructed defences,[241] and for the first time in the war, Hitler cancelled an operation before it had achieved tactical or operational success.[242] This decision was partially affected by the Western Allies' invasion of Sicily launched on 9 July, which, combined with previous Italian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini later that month.[243]

Red Army troops in a counter-offensive on German positions at the Battle of Kursk, July 1943

On 12 July 1943, the Soviets launched their own counter-offensives, thereby dispelling any chance of German victory or even stalemate in the east. The Soviet victory at Kursk marked the end of German superiority,[244] giving the Soviet Union the initiative on the Eastern Front.[245][246] The Germans tried to stabilise their eastern front along the hastily fortified Panther–Wotan line, but the Soviets broke through it at Smolensk and by the Lower Dnieper Offensive.[247]

On 3 September 1943, the Western Allies invaded the Italian mainland, following Italy's armistice with the Allies and the ensuing German occupation of Italy.[248] Germany, with the help of fascists, responded to the armistice by disarming Italian forces that were in many places without superior orders, seizing military control of Italian areas,[249] and creating a series of defensive lines.[250] German special forces then rescued Mussolini, who then soon established a new client state in German-occupied Italy named the Italian Social Republic,[251] causing an Italian civil war. The Western Allies fought through several lines until reaching the main German defensive line in mid-November.[252]

German operations in the Atlantic also suffered. By May 1943, as Allied counter-measures became increasingly effective, the resulting sizeable German submarine losses forced a temporary halt of the German Atlantic naval campaign.[253] In November 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and then with Joseph Stalin in Tehran.[254] The former conference determined the post-war return of Japanese territory[255] and the military planning for the Burma campaign,[256] while the latter included agreement that the Western Allies would invade Europe in 1944 and that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan within three months of Germany's defeat.[257]

Ruins of the Benedictine monastery, during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Italian Campaign, May 1944

From November 1943, during the seven-week Battle of Changde, the Chinese forced Japan to fight a costly war of attrition, while awaiting Allied relief.[258][259][260][unreliable source?] In January 1944, the Allies launched a series of attacks in Italy against the line at Monte Cassino and tried to outflank it with landings at Anzio.[261]

On 27 January 1944, Soviet troops launched a major offensive that expelled German forces from the Leningrad region, thereby ending the most lethal siege in history.[262] The following Soviet offensive was halted on the pre-war Estonian border by the German Army Group North aided by Estonians hoping to re-establish national independence. This delay slowed subsequent Soviet operations in the Baltic Sea region.[263] By late May 1944, the Soviets had liberated Crimea, largely expelled Axis forces from Ukraine, and made incursions into Romania, which were repulsed by the Axis troops.[264] The Allied offensives in Italy had succeeded and, at the expense of allowing several German divisions to retreat, on 4 June Rome was captured.[265]

The Allies had mixed success in mainland Asia. In March 1944, the Japanese launched the first of two invasions, an operation against Allied positions in Assam, India,[266] and soon besieged Commonwealth positions at Imphal and Kohima.[267] In May 1944, British and Indian forces mounted a counter-offensive that drove Japanese troops back to Burma by July,[267] and Chinese forces that had invaded northern Burma in late 1943 besieged Japanese troops in Myitkyina.[268] The second Japanese invasion of China aimed to destroy China's main fighting forces, secure railways between Japanese-held territory and capture Allied airfields.[269] By June, the Japanese had conquered the province of Henan and begun a new attack on Changsha.[270]

Allies close in (1944)

American troops approaching Omaha Beach during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944

On 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day), after three years of Soviet pressure,[271] the Western Allies invaded northern France. After reassigning several Allied divisions from Italy, they also attacked southern France.[272] These landings were successful and led to the defeat of the German Army units in France. Paris was liberated on 25 August by the local resistance assisted by the Free French Forces, both led by General Charles de Gaulle,[273] and the Western Allies continued to push back German forces in western Europe during the latter part of the year. An attempt to advance into northern Germany spearheaded by a major airborne operation in the Netherlands failed.[274] After that, the Western Allies slowly pushed into Germany, but failed to cross the Rur river in a large offensive. In Italy, Allied advance also slowed due to the last major German defensive line.[275]

German SS soldiers from the Dirlewanger Brigade, tasked with suppressing the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation, August 1944

On 22 June, the Soviets launched a strategic offensive in Belarus ("Operation Bagration") that almost completely destroyed the German Army Group Centre.[276] Soon after that, another Soviet strategic offensive forced German troops from Western Ukraine and Eastern Poland. The Soviets formed the Polish Committee of National Liberation to control territory in Poland and combat the Polish Armia Krajowa; the Soviet Red Army remained in the Praga district on the other side of the Vistula and watched passively as the Germans quelled the Warsaw Uprising initiated by the Armia Krajowa.[277] The national uprising in Slovakia was also quelled by the Germans.[278] The Soviet Red Army's strategic offensive in eastern Romania cut off and destroyed the considerable German troops there and triggered a successful coup d'état in Romania and in Bulgaria, followed by those countries' shift to the Allied side.[279]

In September 1944, Soviet troops advanced into Yugoslavia and forced the rapid withdrawal of German Army Groups E and F in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia to rescue them from being cut off.[280] By this point, the communist-led Partisans under Marshal Josip Broz Tito, who had led an increasingly successful guerrilla campaign against the occupation since 1941, controlled much of the territory of Yugoslavia and engaged in delaying efforts against German forces further south. In northern Serbia, the Soviet Red Army, with limited support from Bulgarian forces, assisted the Partisans in a joint liberation of the capital city of Belgrade on 20 October. A few days later, the Soviets launched a massive assault against German-occupied Hungary that lasted until the fall of Budapest in February 1945.[281] Unlike impressive Soviet victories in the Balkans, bitter Finnish resistance to the Soviet offensive in the Karelian Isthmus denied the Soviets occupation of Finland and led to a Soviet-Finnish armistice on relatively mild conditions,[282] although Finland was forced to fight their former ally Germany.[283]

General Douglas MacArthur returns to the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte, 20 October 1944

By the start of July 1944, Commonwealth forces in Southeast Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges in Assam, pushing the Japanese back to the Chindwin River[284] while the Chinese captured Myitkyina. In September 1944, Chinese forces captured Mount Song and reopened the Burma Road.[285] In China, the Japanese had more successes, having finally captured Changsha in mid-June and the city of Hengyang by early August.[286] Soon after, they invaded the province of Guangxi, winning major engagements against Chinese forces at Guilin and Liuzhou by the end of November[287] and successfully linking up their forces in China and Indochina by mid-December.[288]

In the Pacific, U.S. forces continued to press back the Japanese perimeter. In mid-June 1944, they began their offensive against the Mariana and Palau islands and decisively defeated Japanese forces in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. These defeats led to the resignation of the Japanese Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo, and provided the United States with air bases to launch intensive heavy bomber attacks on the Japanese home islands. In late October, American forces invaded the Filipino island of Leyte; soon after, Allied naval forces scored another large victory in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history.[289]

Axis collapse and Allied victory (1944–1945)

Yalta Conference held in February 1945, with Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin

On 16 December 1944, Germany made a last attempt on the Western Front by using most of its remaining reserves to launch a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes and along the French-German border to split the Western Allies, encircle large portions of Western Allied troops and capture their primary supply port at Antwerp to prompt a political settlement.[290] By 16 January 1945, the offensive had been repulsed with no strategic objectives fulfilled.[290] In Italy, the Western Allies remained stalemated at the German defensive line. In mid-January 1945, the Red Army attacked in Poland, pushing from the Vistula to the Oder river in Germany, and overran East Prussia.[291] On 4 February Soviet, British, and U.S. leaders met for the Yalta Conference. They agreed on the occupation of post-war Germany, and on when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan.[292]

In February, the Soviets entered Silesia and Pomerania, while the Western Allies entered western Germany and closed to the Rhine river. By March, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine north and south of the Ruhr, encircling the German Army Group B.[293] In early March, in an attempt to protect its last oil reserves in Hungary and to retake Budapest, Germany launched its last major offensive against Soviet troops near Lake Balaton. In two weeks, the offensive had been repulsed, the Soviets advanced to Vienna, and captured the city. In early April, Soviet troops captured Königsberg, while the Western Allies finally pushed forward in Italy and swept across western Germany capturing Hamburg and Nuremberg. American and Soviet forces met at the Elbe river on 25 April, leaving several unoccupied pockets in southern Germany and around Berlin.

Ruins of the Reichstag in Berlin, 3 June 1945.

Soviet troops stormed and captured Berlin in late April.[294] In Italy, German forces surrendered on 29 April. On 30 April, the Reichstag was captured, signalling the military defeat of Nazi Germany,[295] and the Berlin garrison surrendered on 2 May.

Major changes in leadership occurred on both sides during this period. On 12 April, President Roosevelt died and was succeeded by his vice president, Harry S. Truman. Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans on 28 April.[296] On 30 April, Hitler committed suicide in his headquarters, and he was succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels. Total and unconditional surrender in Europe was signed on 7 and 8 May, to be effective by the end of 8 May.[297] German Army Group Centre resisted in Prague until 11 May.[298]

In the Pacific theatre, American forces accompanied by the forces of the Philippine Commonwealth advanced in the Philippines, clearing Leyte by the end of April 1945. They landed on Luzon in January 1945 and recaptured Manila in March. Fighting continued on Luzon, Mindanao, and other islands of the Philippines until the end of the war.[299] Meanwhile, the United States Army Air Forces launched a massive firebombing campaign of strategic cities in Japan in an effort to destroy Japanese war industry and civilian morale. A devastating bombing raid on Tokyo of 9–10 March was the deadliest conventional bombing raid in history.[300]

Atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.

In May 1945, Australian troops landed in Borneo, overrunning the oilfields there. British, American, and Chinese forces defeated the Japanese in northern Burma in March, and the British pushed on to reach Rangoon by 3 May.[301] Chinese forces started a counterattack in the Battle of West Hunan that occurred between 6 April and 7 June 1945. American naval and amphibious forces also moved towards Japan, taking Iwo Jima by March, and Okinawa by the end of June.[302] At the same time, a naval blockade by submarines was strangling Japan's economy and drastically reducing its ability to supply overseas forces.[303][304]

On 11 July, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. They confirmed earlier agreements about Germany,[305] and the American, British and Chinese governments reiterated the demand for unconditional surrender of Japan, specifically stating that "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction".[306] During this conference, the United Kingdom held its general election, and Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister.[307]

The call for unconditional surrender was rejected by the Japanese government, which believed it would be capable of negotiating for more favourable surrender terms.[308] In early August, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Between the two bombings, the Soviets, pursuant to the Yalta agreement, invaded Japanese-held Manchuria and quickly defeated the Kwantung Army, which was the largest Japanese fighting force.[309] These two events persuaded previously adamant Imperial Army leaders to accept surrender terms.[310] The Red Army also captured the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. On the night of 9–10 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced his decision to accept the terms demanded by the Allies in the Potsdam Declaration.[311] On 15 August, the Emperor communicated this decision to the Japanese people through a speech broadcast on the radio (Gyokuon-hōsō, literally "broadcast in the Emperor's voice").[312] On 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered, with the surrender documents finally signed at Tokyo Bay on the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, ending the war.[313]

Aftermath

Main articles: Aftermath of World War II and Consequences of Nazism

Ruins of Warsaw in 1945, after the deliberate destruction of the city by the occupying German forces

The Allies established occupation administrations in Austria and Germany, both initially divided between western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, respectively. However, their paths soon diverged. In Germany, the western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union officially ended in 1949, with the respective zones becoming separate countries, West Germany and East Germany. However, in Austria occupation continued until 1955, when a joint settlement between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union permitted the reunification of Austria as a neutral democratic state, officially non-aligned with any political bloc (although in practice having better relations with the Western Allies). A denazification program in Germany led to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg trials and the removal of ex-Nazis from power, although this policy moved towards amnesty and re-integration of ex-Nazis into West German society.[314]

Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war (1937) territory. Among the eastern territories, Silesia, Neumark and most of Pomerania were taken over by Poland,[315] and East Prussia was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union, followed by the expulsion to Germany of the nine million Germans from these provinces,[316][317] as well as three million Germans from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. By the 1950s, one-fifth of West Germans were refugees from the east. The Soviet Union also took over the Polish provinces east of the Curzon line,[318] from which 2 million Poles were expelled;[317][319] north-east Romania,[320][321] parts of eastern Finland,[322] and the three Baltic states were incorporated into the Soviet Union.[323][324]

Defendants at the Nuremberg trials, where the Allied forces prosecuted prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity

In an effort to maintain world peace,[325] the Allies formed the United Nations, which officially came into existence on 24 October 1945,[326] and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 as a common standard for all member nations.[327] The great powers that were the victors of the war—France, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States—became the permanent members of the UN's Security Council.[328] The five permanent members remain so to the present, although there have been two seat changes, between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in 1971, and between the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before the war was over.[329]

Post-war border changes in Central Europe and creation of the Communist Eastern Bloc

Germany had been de facto divided, and two independent states, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany),[330] were created within the borders of Allied and Soviet occupation zones. The rest of Europe was also divided into Western and Soviet spheres of influence.[331] Most eastern and central European countries fell into the Soviet sphere, which led to establishment of Communist-led regimes, with full or partial support of the Soviet occupation authorities. As a result, East Germany,[332] Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Albania[333] became Soviet satellite states. Communist Yugoslavia conducted a fully independent policy, causing tension with the Soviet Union.[334]

Post-war division of the world was formalised by two international military alliances, the United States-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.[335] The long period of political tensions and military competition between them, the Cold War, would be accompanied by an unprecedented arms race and number of proxy wars throughout the world.[336]

In Asia, the United States led the occupation of Japan and administered Japan's former islands in the Western Pacific, while the Soviets annexed South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.[337] Korea, formerly under Japanese rule, was divided and occupied by the Soviet Union in the North and the United States in the South between 1945 and 1948. Separate republics emerged on both sides of the 38th parallel in 1948, each claiming to be the legitimate government for all of Korea, which led ultimately to the Korean War.[338]

David Ben-Gurion proclaiming the Israeli Declaration of Independence at the Independence Hall, 14 May 1948

In China, nationalist and communist forces resumed the civil war in June 1946. Communist forces were victorious and established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, while nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan in 1949.[339] In the Middle East, the Arab rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the creation of Israel marked the escalation of the Arab–Israeli conflict. While European powers attempted to retain some or all of their colonial empires, their losses of prestige and resources during the war rendered this unsuccessful, leading to decolonisation.[340][341]

The global economy suffered heavily from the war, although participating nations were affected differently. The United States emerged much richer than any other nation, leading to a baby boom, and by 1950 its gross domestic product per person was much higher than that of any of the other powers, and it dominated the world economy.[342] The Allied occupational authorities pursued a policy of industrial disarmament in Western Germany from 1945 to 1948.[343] Due to international trade interdependencies, this policy led to an economic stagnation in Europe and delayed European recovery from the war for several years.[344][345]

At the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, the Allied nations drew up an economic framework for the post-war world. The agreement created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The Bretton Woods system lasted until 1973.[346] Recovery began with the mid-1948 currency reform in Western Germany, and was sped up by the liberalisation of European economic policy that the Marshall Plan (1948–1951) both directly and indirectly caused.[347][348] The post-1948 West German recovery has been called the German economic miracle.[349] Italy also experienced an economic boom[350] and the French economy rebounded.[351] By contrast, the United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin,[352] and although receiving a quarter of the total Marshall Plan assistance, more than any other European country,[353] it continued in relative economic decline for decades.[354] The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and material losses, also experienced rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era.[355] Japan recovered much later.[356] China returned to its pre-war industrial production by 1952.[357]

Impact

Main article: Historiography of World War II

Casualties and war crimes

Main article: World War II casualties

Further information: List of war crimes committed during World War II

World War II deaths

Estimates for the total number of casualties in the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded.[358] Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians.[359][360][361] Many of the civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass bombings, disease, and starvation.

The Soviet Union alone lost around 27 million people during the war,[362] including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths.[363] A quarter of the total people in the Soviet Union were wounded or killed.[364] Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses, mostly on the Eastern Front and during the final battles in Germany.[365]

An estimated 11[366] to 17 million[367] civilians died as a direct or as an indirect result of Hitler's racist policies, including mass killing of around 6 million Jews, along with Roma, homosexuals, at least 1.9 million ethnic Poles[368][369] and millions of other Slavs (including Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), and other ethnic and minority groups.[370][367] Between 1941 and 1945, more than 200,000 ethnic Serbs, along with gypsies and Jews, were persecuted and murdered by the Axis-aligned Croatian Ustaše in Yugoslavia.[371] Concurrently, Muslims and Croats were persecuted and killed by Serb nationalist Chetniks,[372] with an estimated 50,000-68,000 victims (of which 41,000 were civilians).[373] Also, more than 100,000 Poles were massacred by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the Volhynia massacres, between 1943 and 1945.[374] At the same time, about 10,000–15,000 Ukrainians were killed by the Polish Home Army and other Polish units, in reprisal attacks.[375]

Bodies of Chinese civilians killed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Nanking Massacre in December 1937

In Asia and the Pacific, the number of people killed by Japanese troops remains contested. According to R.J. Rummel, the Japanese killed between 3 million and more than 10 million people, with the most probable case of almost 6,000,000 people.[376] According to the British historian M. R. D. Foot, civilian deaths are between 10 million and 20 million, whereas Chinese military casualties (killed and wounded) are estimated to be over five million.[377] Other estimates say that up to 30 million people, most of them civilians, were killed.[378][379] The most infamous Japanese atrocity was the Nanking Massacre, in which fifty to three hundred thousand Chinese civilians were raped and murdered.[380] Mitsuyoshi Himeta reported that 2.7 million casualties occurred during the Sankō Sakusen. General Yasuji Okamura implemented the policy in Heipei and Shantung.[381]

Axis forces employed biological and chemical weapons. The Imperial Japanese Army used a variety of such weapons during its invasion and occupation of China (see Unit 731)[382][383] and in early conflicts against the Soviets.[384] Both the Germans and the Japanese tested such weapons against civilians,[385] and sometimes on prisoners of war.[386]

The Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers,[387] and the imprisonment or execution of thousands of political prisoners by the NKVD, along with mass civilian deportations to Siberia, in the Baltic states and eastern Poland annexed by the Red Army.[388]

The mass bombing of cities in Europe and Asia has often been called a war crime, although no positive or specific customary international humanitarian law with respect to aerial warfare existed before or during World War II.[389] The USAAF bombed a total of 67 Japanese cities, killing 393,000 civilians, including from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and destroying 65% of built-up areas.[390]

Genocide, concentration camps, and slave labour

Main articles: The Holocaust, Nazi concentration camps, Extermination camp, Forced labour under German rule during World War II, Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany, Nazi human experimentation, and Gulag

Schutzstaffel (SS) female camp guards removing prisoners' bodies from lorries and carrying them to a mass grave, inside the German Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945

Nazi Germany, under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, was responsible for the Holocaust (which killed approximately 6 million Jews) as well as for killing 2.7 million ethnic Poles[391] and 4 million others who were deemed "unworthy of life" (including the disabled and mentally ill, Soviet prisoners of war, Romani, homosexuals, Freemasons, and Jehovah's Witnesses) as part of a program of deliberate extermination, in effect becoming a "genocidal state".[392] Soviet POWs were kept in especially unbearable conditions, and 3.6 million Soviet POWs out of 5.7 million died in Nazi camps during the war.[393][394] In addition to concentration camps, death camps were created in Nazi Germany to exterminate people on an industrial scale. Nazi Germany extensively used forced labourers; about 12 million Europeans from German-occupied countries were abducted and used as a slave work force in German industry, agriculture and war economy.[395]

The Soviet Gulag became a de facto system of deadly camps during 1942–43, when wartime privation and hunger caused numerous deaths of inmates,[396] including foreign citizens of Poland and other countries occupied in 1939–40 by the Soviet Union, as well as Axis POWs.[397] By the end of the war, most Soviet POWs liberated from Nazi camps and many repatriated civilians were detained in special filtration camps where they were subjected to NKVD evaluation, and 226,127 were sent to the Gulag as real or perceived Nazi collaborators.[398]

Prisoner identity photograph taken by the German SS of a Polish Catholic girl who died in Auschwitz. Approximately 230,000 children were held prisoner and used in forced labour and Nazi medical experiments.

Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, many of which were used as labour camps, also had high death rates. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East found the death rate of Western prisoners was 27 per cent (for American POWs, 37 per cent),[399] seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.[400] While 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from the United States were released after the surrender of Japan, the number of Chinese released was only 56.[401]

At least five million Chinese civilians from northern China and Manchukuo were enslaved between 1935 and 1941 by the East Asia Development Board, or Kōain, for work in mines and war industries. After 1942, the number reached 10 million.[402] In Java, between 4 and 10 million rōmusha (Japanese: "manual labourers"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in Southeast Asia, and only 52,000 were repatriated to Java.[403]

Occupation

Main articles: German-occupied Europe, Resistance during World War II, Collaboration with the Axis Powers, and Nazi plunder

Polish civilians wearing blindfolds photographed just before their execution by German soldiers in Palmiry forest, 1940

In Europe, occupation came under two forms. In Western, Northern, and Central Europe (France, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and the annexed portions of Czechoslovakia) Germany established economic policies through which it collected roughly 69.5 billion reichsmarks (27.8 billion U.S. dollars) by the end of the war; this figure does not include the sizeable plunder of industrial products, military equipment, raw materials and other goods.[404] Thus, the income from occupied nations was over 40 percent of the income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which increased to nearly 40 percent of total German income as the war went on.[405]

Soviet partisans hanged by the German army. The Russian Academy of Sciences reported in 1995 civilian victims in the Soviet Union at German hands totalled 13.7 million dead, twenty percent of the 68 million persons in the occupied Soviet Union.

In the East, the intended gains of Lebensraum were never attained as fluctuating front-lines and Soviet scorched earth policies denied resources to the German invaders.[406] Unlike in the West, the Nazi racial policy encouraged extreme brutality against what it considered to be the "inferior people" of Slavic descent; most German advances were thus followed by mass executions.[407] Although resistance groups formed in most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper German operations in either the East[408] or the West[409] until late 1943.

In Asia, Japan termed nations under its occupation as being part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, essentially a Japanese hegemony which it claimed was for purposes of liberating colonised peoples.[410] Although Japanese forces were sometimes welcomed as liberators from European domination, Japanese war crimes frequently turned local public opinion against them.[411] During Japan's initial conquest, it captured 4,000,000 barrels (640,000 m3) of oil (~550,000 tonnes) left behind by retreating Allied forces; and by 1943, was able to get production in the Dutch East Indies up to 50 million barrels (7,900,000 m3) of oil (~6.8 million tonnes), 76 per cent of its 1940 output rate.[411]

Home fronts and production

Main articles: Military production during World War II and Home front during World War II

Allies to Axis GDP ratio between 1938 and 1945

In Europe, before the outbreak of the war, the Allies had significant advantages in both population and economics. In 1938, the Western Allies (United Kingdom, France, Poland and the British Dominions) had a 30 percent larger population and a 30 percent higher gross domestic product than the European Axis powers (Germany and Italy); if colonies are included, the Allies had more than a 5:1 advantage in population and a nearly 2:1 advantage in GDP.[412] In Asia at the same time, China had roughly six times the population of Japan but only an 89 percent higher GDP; this is reduced to three times the population and only a 38 percent higher GDP if Japanese colonies are included.[412]

The United States produced about two-thirds of all the munitions used by the Allies in World War II, including warships, transports, warplanes, artillery, tanks, trucks, and ammunition.[413] Though the Allies' economic and population advantages were largely mitigated during the initial rapid blitzkrieg attacks of Germany and Japan, they became the decisive factor by 1942, after the United States and Soviet Union joined the Allies, as the war largely settled into one of attrition.[414] While the Allies' ability to out-produce the Axis is often attributed[by whom?] to the Allies having more access to natural resources, other factors, such as Germany and Japan's reluctance to employ women in the labour force,[415] Allied strategic bombing,[416] and Germany's late shift to a war economy[417] contributed significantly. Additionally, neither Germany nor Japan planned to fight a protracted war, and had not equipped themselves to do so.[418] To improve their production, Germany and Japan used millions of slave labourers;[419] Germany used about 12 million people, mostly from Eastern Europe,[395] while Japan used more than 18 million people in Far East Asia.[402][403]

Advances in technology and its application

Main article: Technology during World War II

B-29 Superfortress strategic bombers on the Boeing assembly line in Wichita, Kansas, 1944

Aircraft were used for reconnaissance, as fighters, bombers, and ground-support, and each role developed considerably. Innovations included airlift (the capability to quickly move limited high-priority supplies, equipment, and personnel);[420] and strategic bombing (the bombing of enemy industrial and population centres to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war).[421] Anti-aircraft weaponry also advanced, including defences such as radar and surface-to-air artillery. The use of the jet aircraft was pioneered and, though late introduction meant it had little impact, it led to jets becoming standard in air forces worldwide.[422]

Advances were made in nearly every aspect of naval warfare, most notably with aircraft carriers and submarines. Although aeronautical warfare had relatively little success at the start of the war, actions at Taranto, Pearl Harbor, and the Coral Sea established the carrier as the dominant capital ship (in place of the battleship).[423][424][425] In the Atlantic, escort carriers became a vital part of Allied convoys, increasing the effective protection radius and helping to close the Mid-Atlantic gap.[426] Carriers were also more economical than battleships because of the relatively low cost of aircraft[427] and their not requiring to be as heavily armoured.[428] Submarines, which had proved to be an effective weapon during the First World War,[429] were expected by all combatants to be important in the second. The British focused development on anti-submarine weaponry and tactics, such as sonar and convoys, while Germany focused on improving its offensive capability, with designs such as the Type VII submarine and wolfpack tactics.[430][better source needed] Gradually, improving Allied technologies such as the Leigh light, hedgehog, squid, and homing torpedoes proved effective against German submarines.[431]

A V-2 rocket launched from a fixed site in Peenemünde, 21 June 1943

Land warfare changed from the static front-lines of trench warfare of World War I, which had relied on improved artillery that outmatched the speed of both infantry and cavalry, to increased mobility and combined arms. The tank, which had been used predominantly for infantry support in the First World War, had evolved into the primary weapon.[432] In the late 1930s, tank design was considerably more advanced than it had been during World War I,[433] and advances continued throughout the war with increases in speed, armour and firepower.[434][435] At the start of the war, most commanders thought enemy tanks should be met by tanks with superior specifications.[436] This idea was challenged by the poor performance of the relatively light early tank guns against armour, and German doctrine of avoiding tank-versus-tank combat. This, along with Germany's use of combined arms, were among the key elements of their highly successful blitzkrieg tactics across Poland and France.[432] Many means of destroying tanks, including indirect artillery, anti-tank guns (both towed and self-propelled), mines, short-ranged infantry antitank weapons, and other tanks were used.[436] Even with large-scale mechanisation, infantry remained the backbone of all forces,[437] and throughout the war, most infantry were equipped similarly to World War I.[438] The portable machine gun spread, a notable example being the German MG 34, and various submachine guns which were suited to close combat in urban and jungle settings.[438] The assault rifle, a late war development incorporating many features of the rifle and submachine gun, became the standard post-war infantry weapon for most armed forces.[439]

Nuclear Gadget being raised to the top of the detonation "shot tower", at Alamogordo Bombing Range; Trinity nuclear test, New Mexico, July 1945

Most major belligerents attempted to solve the problems of complexity and security involved in using large codebooks for cryptography by designing ciphering machines, the most well known being the German Enigma machine.[440] Development of SIGINT (signals intelligence) and cryptanalysis enabled the countering process of decryption. Notable examples were the Allied decryption of Japanese naval codes[441] and British Ultra, a pioneering method for decoding Enigma benefiting from information given to the United Kingdom by the Polish Cipher Bureau, which had been decoding early versions of Enigma before the war.[442] Another aspect of military intelligence was the use of deception, which the Allies used to great effect, such as in operations Mincemeat and Bodyguard.[441][443]

Other technological and engineering feats achieved during, or as a result of, the war include the world's first programmable computers (Z3, Colossus, and ENIAC), guided missiles and modern rockets, the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear weapons, operations research, the development of artificial harbours and oil pipelines under the English Channel.[444] Penicillin was first developed, mass-produced and used during the war.[445]

See also

World War II portal

World portal

Lists of World War II topics

Opposition to World War II

Outline of World War II

Lists of World War II military equipment

Notes

 While various other dates have been proposed as the date on which World War II began or ended, this is the time span most frequently cited.

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