Five Major Battles That Finally Brought Hitler To Defeat
I-* *:
IATTLE OF NORTH AFRICA:
lie British attacked at El Ala
nein Oct. 23, 1942, advanced
,500 miles into Tunisia, met
Ulied forces which had land
id in Algeria. Axis was driv
infrom Africa by May, 1943.
BATTLE FOR STALINGRAD:
Hitler in 1942 aimed at Stal
ingrad. After a bloody four
month siege, the Russians en
circled the Nazis, caused
330,000 casualties, kept driv
ing west to invade Poland.
BATTLE OF ITALY. The Allies
landed in Sicily July 10, 1943,
on Italy's toe Sept. 3. Other
forces invaded at Salerno,
then at Anzio. Rome was tak
en June 4, and Yanks and
British continued northward.
BATTLE OF FRANCE, II: Invad
ing Normandy June 6, 1944,
Eisenhower's Anglo - Ameri
cans broke through to Brit
tany, Paris,. Belgium, trap
ping Nazi armies. Other forces
crushed from southern France.
BATTLE OF GERMANY: With
Yanks and British hitting from
France and the lowlands, and
the Russians attacking from
Poland, the battle of Ger
many began in early Sept.,
1944. It was last Nazi stand.
Item borders. That could mean hut one thing
At dawn Sunday, June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered
i forces over the line and declared war on Russia
He gave a long list of causes: He disapproved of
le Soviets’ Finnish and Baltic acquisitions; he ac
ised Russia of conducting a long campaign of
ibotage against the Reich; he saw a deep-laid Com
unist scheme to encircle Germany; he charged re
lated frontier violations. Now, he said, he could
ferate no more.
^The task is to safeguard Europe and thus save
L” he proclaimed.
tie was joined immediately by Italy and by Ro
inia, now thoroughly under his thumb. Three
later Finland formally joined the “crusade.”
But Churchill threw aside the traditional distrust
his Conservative party for Russia and in a ring
g address declared Britain would give all help
issible to the Soviets. “Russia’s danger,” he said,
s our danger, and the danger of the United
Wes.”
president Roosevelt only two days before had
it a special message to Congress calling its atten
n to the “ruthless” sinking by a submarine of
i American merchant ship “Robin Moor,” and as
king “the government of the German Reich may
assured that the United States will neither be
imidated nor will it acquiesce in the plans for
rid domination which the present leaders of Ger
ny may have.”
Iiose were strong words; now, with Russia in the
r, a declaration was issued on his behalf assail
“Communistic dictatorship” as “intolerable,” but
ming the ^vay for aid to the Soviets under the
id-Lease Act, passed in March, which permitted
President to send war supplies to nations fight
!the Axis. On Saturday, June 21, American Com
nists had opposed aid to Britain and had as their
gan “The Yanks Are Not Coming.” On Monday
i slogan was changed. It was “The Yanks Are
(Coming Too Late.”
In one day the entire Axis front, from the Baltic
the Black Sea, was moving forward. One prong
ive into Lithuania from East Prussia; another
ided for Grodno, about 150 miles northeast of
irsaw; another, in southern Poland, raced toward
i Bug River north of Lwow; still another crossed
l Prut into Bessarabia.
three million men in six armies under Germany’s
nerals von Falkenhorst,. von Leeb, von Bock and
» Rundstedt, Finland’s Mannerheim and Roma
ns Antonescu, went into the drive. Out of her
900,000 population, Russia had a potential of
bps 15,000,000 soldiers with a million and a half
ones added every year. But many military men
had closely watched Russia’s tough struggle
h little Finland in the winter of 1939 were con
ted she lacked the . leadership, training and
pment to halt the modern, mechanized force
g hurled against her.
THE tfAZIS ARE SNOWED UNDER
IE experts seemed to be right. The Nazis tore
across Russian-occupied Poland and kept right
going. Tanks sliced through at two points on a
r. then turned inward for the lunge to the
and, aided by infantry, the clean-up. This
the famous pincer movement.
it-Litovsk fell in two days; Cernauti in two
; Novgorod, Velikie Luki, Gomel, Dnepro
sk in two months,
toiost daily the world heard, from the Nazis, of
m armies being encircled and annihilated,
somehow the Reds seemed able'to fall back. If
‘P were trapped, they fought until the situation
hopeless, then dissolved into guerrilla
ps which harried German supply lines, exposed
ammunition dumps, burned stores, wrecked trains,
and ambushed isolated soldiers.
The Russians were under orders to scorch their
earth. Burning fields and villages marked the path
of the Nazi advance. Before they evacuated cities,
the Soviets carefully planted time bombs and de
layed-action mines that blew up in the invaders
faces. When the Nazis took Kiev, they removed 10,
000 mines. Then, five days later, large numbers of
additional mines went off to start fires that de
stroyed 20 blocks in the heart of the city.
On October 3 Hitler announced: “The enemy has
been hit so hard that he never again will rise." It
appeared he might be right. On October 19 Stalin
announced a state of siege for Moscow. The Ger
mans were less than 70 miles away. On October 21
the Nazis announced that Leningrad was encircled,
and foreign correspondents in Berlin were invited
to go witness its fall. The great naval base at Sevas
topol also was besieged.
Civilians in Moscow were armed with anti-tank
and machine guns. The approaches to the city were
made into one vast mine field.'But many government
officials moved to Kuibyshev on the Volga, 550 miles
away.
Then Hitler ran into Russia’s great ally, the
force that had beaten Napoleon: Winter. Snow
storms and freezing nights slowed the offensive in
the north and central fronts and stalled the Nazis
virtually before the gates of Moscow. In the south
their armor clanked to the city of Rostov, the
“gateway to the Caucasus,” and ground to a stop.
In the numbing Russian winter, the Soviets put
runners on their rolling stock and camouflaged
their troops in white. They sent phantom-like guer
rillas behind the Nazi lines to slash at the invaders,
suffering miserably in the frightful cold for which
they had neither training, clothing nor adequate
equipment.
The experts who had predicted Russia’s finish in
three months were wrong. The Soviets were not
beaten yet.
THE UNITED STATES PREPARES
AMERICA was well started on the path to pre
paredness when Hitler invaded Russia. Draftees
were swarming into Army camps, under the Selec
tive Service Act passed in September, 1940, which
provided that they receive a year’s training. For a
while they maneuvered with broomsticks and pre
tended that trucks were tanks, because much of the
output of the growing U. S. war arsenal was being
shipped to supply depleted Britain.
In January, President Roosevelt introduced a new
phrase—“the four freedoms”—as America’s objec
tive for “everywhere in the world.” They were
“freedom of speech and expression,” “freedom of
every person to worship God in his own way,” “free
dom from want” and “freedom from fear.”
In July, he announced American occupation of
Iceland as vital to the defense of the western
hemisphere. Then in August he sailed out on the
Atlantic for a secret rendezvous with Winston
Churchill. • U. S. diplomatic and military leaders
were in the party, and out of it came the “Atlantic
Charter,” with an eight-point program for a peace
that would strip Germany of her war gains and
permit “all peoples to choose the form of govern
ment under which they will live.”
The Nazis continued to attack American shipping
—which, however, was flying the flag of Panama
to get around the Neutrality Act designed to keep
U. S. vessels out of waters in the war zones. Roose
velt grimly announced the new world would do
everything in its power to crush the Nazis.
The President’s moves caused a mixed reaction
in America. Many persons endorsed them fully—
some thought they did not go far enough. Others—
“isolationists”—argued that his steps would lead to
hostilities and that the U. S. lesson of World War I
was to remain aloof from “Europe's age-old quar
rels.” The debate often became bitter. Isolationists
were accused of pro-Axis sympathies; those advo
cating a stronger stand against Hitler were accused
of “war-mongering.”
In September the sinkings multiplied. The U. S.
destroyer Greer—'“minding its own business,” the
President said—was attacked by a submarine off
Iceland. The Nazis claimed the U-boat had been
attacked first. Roosevelt ordered the Navy to “shoot
on sight” thereafter, and promised the destruction
of Nazis raiders found in U. S. waters. Amid much
debate, Congress increased the training period of
draftees from one year to 30 months and repealed
parts of the Neutrality Act to permit U. S. merchant
ships to mount guns and steam into the war zones.
Oddly, these steps ostensibly were taken to
strengthen the country against possible attacks from
Europe. Americans generally overlooked, or mini
mized, trouble brewing in the Pacific.
The Japanese, once they had won bases in French
Indo-China, had squeezed the Petain government
into permitting total occupation. In August the U. S.
State Department was certain the Nipponese
planned to invade the Indian Ocean area to isolate
China and block out Britain. At that time Roosevelt
warned the Japanese ambassador, Naokuni Nomurai,
that further Nipponese aggressions would be fol
lowed by U. S. “Steps” to safeguard her security.
In November, Saburo Kurusu joined Nomura in
Washington to try to reach a settlement. They
asserted America was attempting to “encircle”
Japan and decried the Lend-Lease aid being given
China. Secretary of State Hull outlined a “proposed
basis for agreement” which would end aggressions
in the far east and result in the withdrawal of
Nipponese troops from China and Indo-China. But
instead of taking troops out of Indo-China the Nip
ponese sent more in.
On December 6, the State Department reported
that Roosevelt had sent a personal appeal to Japan’s
Emperor Hirohito in an effort to avert hostilities.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, the Japanese
gave their answer.
"REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR"
IT was a quiet Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor
* on the little island of Oahu, T. H., where America’s
Pacific fleet had headquarters.
Seamen and soldiers slept peacefully in their
barracks or in the holds of their mighty ships.
Others already on duty were performing the many
routine chores that keep a great fleet and its base
in peacetime trim.
In the harbor eight battleships, many cruisers,
destroyers and smaller ships were moored in rows
or tied up in drydock. Scores of warplanes stood
on nearby airfields
At 7:55 planes marked with the rising sun
zoomed over the coastline and dropped bombs.
The blast awakened the entire island.
Flames and black acrid smoke shot up from the
harbor. The pounding rose to a shattering cres
cendo until fire and smoke enveloped the shipping,
the docks, the oil-covered-waters and the airfields.
Machine gun bullets sprayed down on plane han
gars and on servicemen running from their bar
racks. A Navy chaplain praised the Lord and
passed the ammunition to try to fend off the at
tackers.
A battleship captain fell, his stomach ripped open
by a shell fragment. He refused to be carried to
safety and died on his flaming bridge. A bluejacket
saw his 10 battery mates shot down by a strafing
plane but kept their five-inch anti-aircraft gun go