World War II: The War in Europe, 1941-1943

Chapter 8. War in Africa and Europe
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor woke the “sleeping giant.” Americans could not wait to go after and defeat Japan. However, FDR and America’s greatest ally Great Britain led by Winston Churchill believed that the real threat to the United States was Hitler’s Germany. While FDR did not publicly proclaim it, he took a “Europe First” strategy and relegated the Pacific War to a “Second Place” status in strategy and support.
 
The United States spent much of the first few years of war preparing to invade and liberate Europe from Hitler’s grasp and offering assistance to the Allies in war materiel and food. This meant, that for the majority of America’s involvement in the war, 1941-1945, American boots were not on the ground in Europe. Part of the reason for this, was that the United States was not in immediate threat from invasion from Germany. A second reason for this was the importance the Western culture of America placed on life. FDR did not want to risk American life until he was sure that the United States would win.
 
The Allies believed their best chance in defeating the Axis Powers was in In North Africa. In May 1942, the Axis Powers controlled Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Vichy France, the Nazi Germany collaborationist France, controlled Morocco and Algeria. Italy controlled Tunisia. Great Britain controlled Egypt and with it the Suez Canal.  The Allies wanted to defeat Italy, turn the Vichy France North Africa over to the Allies, and secure that the Suez Canal would not fall under the Axis Powers.
 
From June 11, 1940 – May 13, 1943, the Axis and Allies fought over North Africa. Great Britain provided the leadership and most of the manpower, with the Free French and the United States assisting. In 1940, Mussolini declared war on Britain and France and the Italians attacked Egypt. After initial losses, the English counterattacked and captured 130,000 Italians. Hitler sent General Ernst Rommel and the German Afrika Corps. Over the next years, the Germans and the British alternated between advancing and retreating.
 
After the United States joined the war, in November, 1942, American General Dwight D. Eisenhower landed his forces in Morocco and Algeria. After initially fighting, the Vichy French agreed to not fight against the Allies. Eisenhower was victorious at Oran, Algiers, and Casablanca. The Americans and British coordinated their attacks against the Axis Powers and encircled the Germans and Italians in Tunis. On May 12, 1943, 250,000 German and Italian troops surrendered. Of the victory, Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
 
The Battle of the Atlantic
The United States of America fought World War II in America, Hawaii,  Europe, Africa, in the Pacific Islands, Asia, and on the oceans. A key part of this war was winning control of the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was the passageway for soldiers and war materiel and food from the United States to Great Britain and then onto Europe. As an island country, Great Britain was dependent on imports. During the war, it required more than a million tons of imports per week to survive and fight. The Allies used Great Britain as a staging ground for the invasion of Europe. Without control of the Atlantic, there would be no Allied victory. The Battle of the Atlantic was essential in winning the war. It pitted the English Navy and American merchant ships against the Germany Navy, which primarily consisted of surface warships and their very successful submarines, known as U-boats.
 
Germany had great naval successes in the first years of World War II.  U-boat crews called June 1940-February 1941 “The Happy Time.”  U-boat crews hunted their prey in "wolf packs," attacking shipping as a team. U-boat crews sunk over 500 Allied ships. The British lost the French fleet, the fourth strongest in the world, when Germany conquered France in the summer of 1940. Germany had decoded British messages, and U-boat crews were able to estimate where Allied ships were. Radar still had not developed enough to aid the Allies to see where the U-boats were. After America joined the war, the Germans sent five U-boats to the east coast of America. In less than a month from January 13 to February 6, 1942, U-boats had destroyed 156,939 tons of shipping without loss.
 
By mid-1942, Allies had developed strategies that eventually won the Battle of the Atlantic over the next year. The Royal Navy used the convoy system to accompany merchant ships across the Atlantic. Allied warships protecting merchant ships could defend against the U-boats. Allies developed radar to see underwater, using this new technology on ships and in airplanes. In 1942, Allies captured the Enigma, the German secret code machine used by the U-boat commanders. Allies knew when and where U-boats were sent out to sea, and it was easier to hunt them.
 
The Eastern Front
The country that experienced the most deaths in World War II was the one most responsible for destroying the battle-hardened and technically capable German Army. Adolf Hitler shocked Joseph Stalin when he launched a war against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The Germans and Soviets had signed a non-aggression pact, but Hitler just used that to avoid a two-front war. After Germany conquered France in six weeks, he fully believed he would quickly take Russia. Over the next six months, German Armies advanced on an 800-mile front east. Once winter set in, however, and the Russians regrouped, Germany saw devastating losses at the Battles of Stalingrad, Moscow, Leningrad, and in the long retreat back to Germany. Throughout the war, the Soviet Union fought 75-80% of German forces.
 
The Jupiter Complex
The Axis and Allied Powers introduced a new way of fighting in World War II: massive aerial bombing. Germany was first to begin this tactic, hitting civilian locations in Poland, the Low Countries, France, and then Britain. But as the war continued, the Allies used its superiority of industry and technology to inflict massive damage on the enemy. A British historian named this war strategy the “Jupiter Complex,” because as the Roman god reigned lightning on humans, the Allied war machines reigned bombs. As soon as it could, the Americans and British ran non-stop bombing raids over Axis positions. Americans bombed during the day and the British bombed at night.
 
Once the war turned in favor of the Allies, the devastation wrought on the Axis Powers was hard to fathom, but it is also important to note it would have immediately stopped if Germany would have surrendered. Instead, Hitler seemed intent on fighting until Germany was obliterated. Total war dead from bombing is as follows:

Allies:                         749,940 – 1,305,029
Axis:                           790,509-1,693,374
China:                         260,000-351,000
Germany:                    353,000-635,000
Soviet Union:              51,526-500,000
United States:             79,265 airmen/personnel
Poland:                        50,000
France:                        67,000
 
 
The Tehran Conference, November 1943
By November, 1943, it was clear the Allies would defeat the Axis Powers in Europe. The Russians were chasing the Germans in retreat, albeit slowly and with great casualties. The British, Americans, and Free French had won North Africa, and the invasion of Italy was underway. The Allies had the upper hand in the Battle of the Atlantic. American superiority in war materiel production was affecting every front of the war, as it supplied Allies with arms, food, clothing, and all war materiel. To plan the rest of the war, the “Big Three,” which were Great Britain’s Winston Churchill, the United States’ FDR, and the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin, met it Tehran, Iran.
 
At the Tehran Conference and two later meetings, negotiations and decisions among these three leaders spelled disaster for much of the post war world. Churchill had a complete and correct understanding of Communist Soviet Union’s and Stalin’s ruthlessness. He tried in vain to educate FDR. FDR, however, as historian Paul Johnson writes in A History of the American People, “tended, like many intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals of his time, to take the Soviet Union at its face value – a peace-loving People’s Democracy.” FDR distrusted his American advisors who reported negatively about Stalin. Stalin had, in fact, been responsible for the murder of tens of millions of Russians and was one of the world’s most brutal dictators. FDR, though, surrounded himself with pro-Communist and pro-Stalin advisors, notably his ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph Davies, and his personal advisor, Harry Hopkins. FDR represented the strongest power, and Churchill had to go along with his decisions.
 
At Tehran, the Big Three decided a number of items. Great Britain and the United States would open a Western Front, as soon as possible. (Churchill wanted the largest invasion to go through the Balkans to save Eastern Europe from Stalin. FDR disagreed). After the war, the Big Three agreed on the following: The Soviet Union would take eastern Poland and Poland would take a portion of eastern Germany, America would leave Europe two years after the war, the Soviet Union would hold free elections in all the countries they occupied, and then would withdraw.