Allon Posen

The Second World War

New Weapons of War

 Airplanes
o Strategic bombers
o Fighters
 Tanks
 Motorized Artillery

Yalta Conference, Feb 1945

 Stalin, Churchill and FDR agree:

o Liberated European nations should have democratic, independent governments
o Germany would be divided into four zones, each occupier would take $20 billion
in reparations
o USSR would get eastern Poland, Poland would take some of eastern Germany
o A United Nations Organization would be created
o Soviets would attack Japan in Manchuria

The Potsdam Conference, July 1945

 Stalin, Truman, and Attlee agree:

o Germany was to be split, disarmed
o Nazi party would be abolished and leaders tried for war crimes
o USSR would attack Japan within three months
 They failed to:
o Draw up a peace treaty with Germany
o Agree on a frontier between Germany and Poland
o Did not confirm agreement to allow democratic elections in Eastern Europe
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The San Francisco Conference 1945

 The United Nations was created

 General Assembly
o Each country gets one vote
o Resolutions must be voluntarily respected
 Security Council
o 15 members, of which 5 are permanent (USA, USSR, UK, France, China)
 9 Countries, including all permanent members are required to pass a
resolution
o Resolutions have power of law and can be enforced

Island Hopping across the Pacific

 Japanese “Victory Disease” after early victories, December 1941-August 1942

 Battle of Midway
o Japanese lost 4 aircraft carries and 296 aircraft
 “Island Hopping” toward Japan
o B-29 Super fortresses began bombing Japan in March 1945
o ¼ of all Japanese houses destroyed
o Japanese industrial capacity exhausted

The Atomic Bomb

 Nuclear fission research

o Based on research in the 1920’s-1930’s
o Fission discovered in Germany 1938
o German research began in 1939
 Albert Einstein convinced FDR to begin research in atomic bomb technology
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The Manhattan Project

 Major General Leslie Groves assigned to nuclear development in September 1942

o Appointed J. Robert Oppenheimer as director of research
 Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico
 Two types of bomb
o U-235
 Never tested
 “Little Boy” used on Hiroshima
o U-238
 Tested on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico
 “Fat Man” used on Nagasaki

The Atomic Bombs

 Japan’s government was split between “war group” and “peace group”
 President Truman authorized the use of A-bombs
o Hiroshima – August 6, 1945 (“Enola Gay” was the bomber that attacked) City
chosen mainly because intact and the weather was good on the particular
day
 73,000 people dead, rising to 138,000
o Nagasaki – August 9, 1945
o 40,000 killed, rising to 48,000.
 Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945

The Consequences

 Devastation in Europe and Japan

 55 million dead
o 30 million were civilians
 Germany and Japan occupied
 War crimes tribunals
o Nuremburg
o Tokyo