The Interwar Years and World War II (^) ‹ 191
In October 1942, the British Eighth Army under General Bernard Montgomery halted
General Rommel’s forces at the Battle of El Alamein, 70 miles west of Alexandria, Egypt,
and began a victorious drive westward. In May 1943, Germany’s Africa Korps surrendered
to the Allies. In November 1943, Allied forces under General Dwight Eisenhower’s com-
mand landed in Morocco and Algeria and began a drive that pushed all Axis forces in Africa
into Tunisia. Seven months later, all Axis forces had been expelled from Africa.
Allied victories in Africa enabled them to advance steadily northward from the
Mediterranean into Italy and precipitated the overthrow of Mussolini and the signing of an
armistice by a new Italian government. Germany responded by treating its former ally as
an occupied country. German resistance made the Allied campaign up the Italian peninsula
a long and difficult one.
Allied Victory (1944–1945)
On “D-Day,” June 6, 1944, Allied forces under Eisenhower’s command launched an auda-
cious amphibious invasion of German-held France on the beaches of Normandy. The grand
assault took the form of an armada of 4,000 ships supported by 11,000 airplanes. By the
end of July, Allied forces had broken out of Normandy and encircled the greater part of
the German army.
By late August, Paris was liberated, and Hitler’s forces were on the retreat. Germany
seemed on the point of collapse, but German defensive lines held, and the British people
were exposed to a new threat: long-range V-2 rockets fired from the German Ruhr
rained down on them for seven months more. The last gasp of the German army came
in December 1944 with a sudden drive against thinly held American lines in the Belgian
sector. In what has come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge, the Allies checked the
German attack and launched a counteroffensive.
In early 1945, Allied troops finally crossed the Rhine River into Germany. In May, they
successfully defeated German forces in the Battle of Berlin. On May 1, it was announced
that Hitler was dead, and on May 7, the German High Command surrendered uncondi-
tionally. In the Pacific, the long and deadly task of retaking the Pacific islands was averted
by the dropping of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities: one on Hiroshima on August 6,
1945, and another on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Japan surrendered unconditionally on
September 2.
Assessment and Aftermath of World War II
World War II was even more destructive than World War I, and civilian casualties, rather than
military deaths, made up a significant portion of the 50 to 60 million people who perished in
the conflict. Many of Europe’s great cities lay in ruins from repeated aerial bombings.
Vast numbers of Europeans were displaced and on the move. Some were trying to get
back to homes they were driven from by the war, while others whose homes were destroyed
simply had no place to go. Russian prisoners of war were compelled, many against their
will, to return to the Soviet Union, where they were greeted with hostility and suspicion
by Stalin’s regime; many were executed or sent to labor camps. Between 12 and 13 million
Germans were moving west. Some were fleeing the vengeance of Soviet troops, while others
were driven from their homes in the newly reconstituted Czechoslovakia and other Eastern
European countries, and from East Prussia, which had been handed over to Poland.
The war also produced a new power structure in the world. The traditional European
powers of Great Britain, France, and Germany were exhausted. Their overseas empires22_Bartolini_Ch22_181-194.indd 191 27/04/18 1:56 PM