1100 Ch. 26 • World War IInow agreed that Germany must end the war. As Soviet tanks drew near on the
night of April 28—29, 1945, Hitler married his longtime mistress, Eva Braun,
in the depths of a fortified bunker in central Berlin. Then they committed
suicide on April 30 as the rumble of Russian tanks could be heard above.
Joseph Goebbels poisoned his six children, shot his wife, and killed himself.
Admiral Karl Donitz, to whom Hitler had delegated authority, surrendered to
the Allies on May 8, 1945. The Reich that Hitler had once bragged would last
for a thousand years lay in ruins twelve years after its creation.
The Defeat of JapanThe German collapse in North Africa, Russia, and Eastern Europe now
allowed the Allies to turn their attention more fully to the war in the Pacific.
The sheer scope of Japanese military operations, spread from the Aleutian
Islands southwest of Alaska to the South Pacific, put Japan on the defen
sive. Troops and supplies poured into the Pacific from the United States,
which had speedily reconstituted its fleet after the Pearl Harbor disaster.
Victory in the Battle of the Coral Sea (May 1942), which turned back
Japanese ships carrying troops to the southern coast of New Guinea, pro
tected Australia from possible invasion. A month later, the American fleet
and torpedo bombers inflicted a major defeat on the Japanese navy at the
Battle of Midway, an island almost a thousand miles northwest of Hawaii
(see Map 26.3), sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers.
In August 1942, an American offensive had begun against Guadalcanal,
one of the South Pacific Solomon Islands. Guadalcanal fell on February 8,
1943, the first of the Japanese wartime conquests to be recaptured. Ameri
can assaults in New Guinea and far north in the Aleutian Islands also suc
ceeded. General MacArthur’s forces began driving the Japanese from New
Guinea in January 1943, completing the task early in 1944. The Ameri
cans then adopted the strategy of driving Japanese forces from one island
to another, “leapfrogging” through the Pacific. Gradually, the U.S. navy
gained control of the seas, its submarines picking off Japanese supply ships.
Hard-earned summer victories brought U.S. troops within 1,400 miles of
Tokyo. In October 1944, MacArthur’s forces attacked the Philippines,
defeating the Japanese fleet and the demoralized Japanese troops. There,
the Japanese first used kamikaze tactics, suicide missions flown by pilots
who crashed their planes into American ships.
The American capture of the island of Iwo Jima on March 27, 1945,
brought U.S. planes to within 700 miles of Japan. On Okinawa, the next
stop, piles of bleached human bones could still be seen on the beaches a
decade after the war’s end. Saipan and Guam provided bases from which
American long-range bombers could reach Japan. American “super fortress”
bombers showered Japanese cities with incendiary bombs that turned
wooden buildings into fiery death traps. One attack destroyed 40 percent of
Tokyo within three hours. American forces prepared to invade the southern