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Technological and Scientific Advances
The Office of Scientific Research and Development was created to bring scientists into the war effort. With the office’s support, two new technologies for locating submarines underwater, radar and sonar, were developed. These were imperative to the ability to counteract the extensive German reliance on submarines. The Manhattan Project was an intensive program started in 1942 to develop an atomic bomb as quickly as possible.
War in the Pacific
The Japanese invaded the Philippines, which had been a U.S. protectorate, on December 8, 1941, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack destroyed a large portion of the U.S. naval fleet. In an attempt to fight off the Japanese, U.S. and Filipino troops fought and lost the Battle of Bataan (which lasted for 99 days). After the battle, the Japanese forced 76,000 Filipino and American prisoners to march 66 miles to a prison camp. During the march, called the Bataan Death March, captives were beaten, shot, stabbed, or beheaded. Only 54,000 prisoners made it to the camp, and many more died afterward of starvation or disease.
Most of the battles that the United States fought early in the war were in the Pacific, against the Japanese navy. At first, Allied troops lost these naval battles. But then, the Battle of Midway (1942) became the turning point in the naval war in the Pacific when U.S. Allied troops commanded by Admiral Chester Nimitz defeated the Japanese. After Midway, troops in the Pacific began to use the strategy of island-hopping. This strategy allowed the U.S. Navy to attack certain strategic islands in the Pacific, winning territory back from the Japanese; with each island captured, the Allied forces moved closer to the Japanese mainland.
Victory in Europe
In the spring of 1944, the Allies gathered a force of nearly three million British, American, and Canadian troops in England, planning to attack Normandy, a region in northern France, to begin the process of liberating Europe from the Nazis. The invasion, which began on June 6, 1944, was called D-Day. It was the largest amphibious invasion (land–sea–air) in history. Allied success in the battle allowed for the liberation of France, and eventually Allied forces surrounded Berlin. Hitler committed suicide, and, about a week later, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 (Victory in Europe Day).
Liberation of the Concentration Camps
It was the Soviets who first encountered one of Hitler’s death camps when they entered Majdanek in Poland. They found a thousand starving prisoners, the world’s largest crematorium, and a storehouse containing 800,000 shoes. American troops later liberated similar concentration camps including Auschwitz in Poland and Dachau in Germany.
Victory in Japan
Once the Allies had taken control of all the islands and the sea around Japan, Allied leaders considered a land invasion of Japan, which they knew would become a desperate struggle because Japan still had a huge army that would defend every inch of its homeland. The geography of Japan (volcanic islands) also made this invasion sure to have a huge casualty count for any invading military. J. Robert Oppenheimer, an American scientist, had been leading the Manhattan Project, which was successful in creating the first atomic bombs. President Roosevelt died in April 1945, so newly-inaugurated President Truman was left with the decision of whether to drop atomic bombs on Japan. He determined that doing so would save American lives that would be lost in a land invasion. The United States dropped bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and the resulting devastation was unlike anything that had been seen in history. The aftermath led to the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945 (Victory in Japan Day) and the end of the war.
