Conference in Tehran

 In November 1943, the first meeting of the Big

Three was held.
 The first major agreement was reached between
Britain and the United States to open a second front
in Europe to ease pressure on the Soviet Union to
fight the Nazis on the Eastern Front.
 The second agreement was the support of the Soviet
Union in the fight against Japan, but the condition
was the successful defeat of Germany.
 Iran and Turkey were discussed in details, and they
agreed to support the Iranian government, while
providing support to Turkey if they go to war.
 There was also talk of Operation Overlord, which
was to begin in May 1944.
 The Yugoslav partisans were given full Allied support,
and the Allied support for the Yugoslav Chetniks was
stopped.
 According to Soviet reports, German agents plan to
assassinate the leaders of the Big Three at the Tehran
Conference.
 Operation Overlord
 By May 1944, the invading forces were ready.
Thousands of planes, ships, tanks and landing
craft and more than three million soldiers
awaited the order to attack.
 General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of
this huge force, planned to attack the coast of
Normandy, in the northwest of France.
 The Germans knew an attack was coming. But
they did not know where it would be launched.
 Codenamed Operation Overlord, the invasion
of Normandy was the largest amphibious attack
in history.
 The invasion began on June 6, 1944 - known
as Dan D.
 On the first day of the fighting alone, about
2,700 American soldiers were killed on the
beaches of Normandy.
 The liberation of Europe

 Within a month of D-Day, more than a million

additional troops had landed.
 Then, on July 25, the Allies drilled a hole in
the German defense near St. Louis.
 The Third Army of the United States, led by
General Patton, prevailed.
 A month later, the Allies marched
triumphantly to Paris.
 By September, they had liberated France,
Belgium and Luxembourg.
 Then they looked at Germany.
 Defeat of Germany in the East
 While the Allies were fighting in the West,
the Soviets continued to suppress Hitler
on the Eastern Front, launching an attack
on Belarus in June 1944. It was the
beginning of the end.
 Stalin managed to destroy 80 percent of
Hitler's front and easily entered
Lithuania, Romania and Poland, which he
crowned with a victory in the offensive
on Minsk.
 By the end of August, Operation
Bagration had been a huge success.
 Stalin liberated Eastern Europe from
enemy occupation.
 Yalta Conference
 Held near Yalta in the Crimea, February 1945.
 Meeting of the Heads of Government of the United States, the
United Kingdom and the Soviet Union to discuss the post-war
reorganization of Germany and Europe.
 The three states were represented by Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin.
 Agreements have been reached on:
 Divide Nazi Germany into 4 occupation zones after its
capitulation (zones were given to the USA, Great Britain, USSR
and France)
 forcing Germany to pay repayment to allied countries,
determined by the reparations committee
 USSR to go to war against Japan
 the creation of the United Nations Peacekeeping Organization
(UN)
The historical significance of this conference lies in the fact that
it enabled a faster defeat of Japan and Germany.
 Defeat of Germany
 As Allied forces moved toward Germany from the
west, the Soviet army advanced toward Germany
from the east.
 Hitler now faced war on two fronts. In desperation,
he decided to launch a counterattack to the west.
 Hitler hoped the victory would divide American and
British forces and shatter their supplies.
 On December 16, 1944, German tanks broke
through the American defenses along the front in
the Ardennes.
 Although taken aback, the Allies eventually pushed
the Germans back.
 Hitler's Ardennes offensive was his last attempt to
suppress the opponent. The end was near.
 Defeat of Germany
 At the end of March 1945, the Allies crossed the Rhine
to enter Germany. In mid-April, the circle around Berlin
was closed.
 About 3 million Allied troops approached Berlin from
the southwest.
 Another six million Soviet soldiers marched from the
east. By April 25, 1945, the Soviets had surrounded the
capital and bombed it with artillery fire.
 As Soviet grenades fired over Berlin, Hitler was
preparing for his end in an underground bunker.
 He committed suicide on April 30, not accepting
defeat.
 On May 7, 1945, General Eisenhower accepted the
unconditional surrender of the Third Reich.
 The surrender was officially signed on May 9 in Berlin.
 After almost six years of fighting, the war in Europe is
over.
 The capitulation of Japan and the
end of the war
 Although the war in Europe was over, the allies were
still fighting the Japanese in the Pacific.
 In March 1945, after a month of fierce fighting and
heavy losses, the U.S. Marines captured Iwo Jima, and
in April U.S. troops moved to Okinawa.
 The Japanese waged a desperate struggle. However, on
June 21, one of the bloodiest land battles in the war
ended. The Japanese lost 100,000 troops and the
Americans 12,000.
 After Okinawa, the next stop for the Allies had to be
Japan.
 Advisers to the new President Truman informed him that
an invasion of Japan by the Allies could cost half a
million lives.
 Truman had to decide whether to use a new weapon -
the atomic bomb, developed as part of the Manhattan
Project.
 The capitulation of Japan and the end of

the war
President Truman warned the Japanese, saying
that if they did not surrender, they could expect "a
rain of doom from the air."
 Japanese did not respond to this.
 Then, on August 6, 1945, the United States
dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a Japanese
city of nearly 350,000 inhabitants. Between 70,000
and 80,000 people died in the attack.
 Three days later, on August 9, another bomb was
dropped on Nagasaki, a city of 270,000. More than
40,000 people were killed immediately.
 Thousands more died from radiation.
 The Japanese finally surrendered to General
Douglas MacArthur on September 2.
 With the surrender of Japan, the war ended.