Alan Axelrod - Complete Idiot’s Guide to American History

Under Lieutenant General Jonathan M. Wainwright, the Filipino-American forces held out until May 6, 1942, when they surrendered and were subject to unspeakable brutality at the hands of Japanese captors.

Desperate for a counterstrike against Japan, the Army Air Force approved the plan of Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle (1896-1993) to take 16 B-25s aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet and launch, on April 18, 1942, a surprise bombing raid on Tokyo. This attack was the closest thing to a deliberate suicide mission American military personnel ever undertook during the war. Everyone well knew that the twin-engine bombers could not carry sufficient fuel to return to any American base. Even if they had had enough fuel capacity to return to the Hornet, the bombers, not designed for carrier flight, would have been unable to land. The plan was to ditch the planes in China, find safe haven among Chinese resistance fighters, and somehow, find a way to return home. Miraculously, most of the bomber crews were, in fact, rescued, and while the damage to Tokyo was minor, the psychological effect was great. The attack shocked the Japanese, who were forced to tie up more fighter aircraft at home, and American morale was given a terrific boost.

for all its horror, World War 11 is recalled by many Americans as an almost magical time, when the nation united with single-minded purpose in a cause both desperate and just—a struggle, quite literally, of good against evil. Everyone pitched in to produce the materials of war, and women joined the work force in unprecedented numbers as the men were inducted into the armed forces.

Activity on the home front also had an ugly side. On February 19, 1942, responding to pressure from West Coast politicians, FDR signed Executive Order 9066. The order required all Japanese-Americans living within 200 miles of the Pacific shores—citizens and resident aliens alike—to report for relocation in internment camps located in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. Military officials feared sabotage, but non-Japanese farmers in the region feared competition even more and were eager to get rid of their Japanese-American neighbors.

In 1941, Northern Africa was held by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (1891-1944), known as the “Desert Fox,” whose Afrika Korps was seemingly invincible. The British and Americans agreed to conduct a North African campaign, defeat the Germans there, and then attack what Britain’s great wartime prime minister Winston Churchill called the “soft underbelly of Europe.” Forces under British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery and American generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton decisively defeated the Germans and Italians in North Africa by May 1943, and an Italian invasion was launched.

While the Germans began to lose to their grip on Africa, U.S. forces also started to turn the tide in the Pacific. During May 3-9, 1942, the navy sunk or disabled more than 25 Japanese ships, blocking Japan’s extension to the south and preventing the Japanese from severing supply lines to Australia. However, the Japanese soon returned to the offensive by attacking the island of Midway, some 1,100 miles northwest of Hawaii. Marshalling a task force of 200 ships and 600 planes, the Japanese counted on the element of surprise to achieve a rapid victory. But, unknown to them, American intelligence officers had broken Japanese codes, and the navy had advance warning of the task force.

The battle commenced on June 3, 1942, and U.S. aircraft, launched from the Hornet, Yorktown, and Enterprise, sank four Japanese carriers. Reeling from this blow, the Imperial Navy withdrew their fleet, but the Americans gave chase, sinking or disabling two heavy cruisers and three destroyers, as well as destroying 322 planes. Although the U.S. Navy took heavy losses—the carrier Yorktown, a destroyer, and 147 aircraft—Midway Island remained in American hands, and the Japanese were never able to resume the offensive in the Pacific.

After suffering defeat at Midway, the Japanese turned their attention to mounting a fullscale assault on Australia. They began by constructing an airstrip on Guadalcanal in the southern Solomon Islands. In response, on August 7, 1942, a U.S. task force landed Marines at Guadalcanal, where the Japanese resisted for six months. Guadalcanal was the beginning of a U.S. strategy of “island hopping”: a plan to take or retake all Japanese-held islands, thereby gradually closing in on the Japanese mainland itself. The campaign promised to be a very long haul. Guadalcanal, having taken six hellish months to conquer, was fully 3,000 miles from Tokyo.

The next step was to neutralize the major Japanese air and naval base at Rabaul, on the eastern tip of New Britain Island, just east of New Guinea. Under General MacArthur, U.S. and Australian troops attacked through the Solomons and New Guinea. When the Japanese rushed to reinforce their position on the islands of Lae and Salamaua, on March 3-4, 1943, U.S. B-24 Liberators and B-17 Flying Fortresses attacked troop transports and their naval escorts with devastating results. The Battle of the Bismarck Sea cost the Japanese 3,500 men; the Allies lost only five planes. The defeat was a severe blow to the Japanese presence in the southwest Pacific. By the end of 1943, Rabaul had been neutralized, severing some 100,000 Japanese from any hope of supply, support, or reinforcement.

In the central Pacific, U.S. forces moved against Tarawa and Makin islands. Makin quickly fell, but Tarawa was defended by veteran Japanese jungle fighters, and the battle, begun on November 20, 1943, was extraordinarily costly to both sides.

By mid-May 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to postpone crossing the English Channel to invade France until the “soft underbelly” of Europe had been penetrated via an invasion of Sicily from North Africa. On July 9-10, 1943, British and American forces landed in Sicily, and the Italian army crumbled before them. German resistance was a different matter, however, and costly fighting ensued. The invasion of Sicily culminated in the fall of Messina to the Allies on August 17, 1943.

By this time, Benito Mussolini had been overthrown (July 25, 1943) and was saved from arrest only by a German rescue mission. The Italian government, now under Marshal Pietro Badoglio (1871-1956), made secret peace overtures to the Allies while the Germans dug in on the Italian peninsula and awaited an invasion.

On September 3, 1943, British and U.S. forces left Messina and landed on the toe of the Italian boot. The Fifth U.S. Army, under General Mark W. Clark (1896-1984), landed at Salerno, and within a month southern Italy fell to the Allies. The Germans evacuated the key city of Naples on October I but then greatly stiffened their resistance, struggling to hold After Badoglio’s government signed an armistice with the Allies and, on October 13, declared war on Germany, Hitler installed Mussolini as head of a puppet regime in northern Italy.

For the balance of 1943, the Allied armies in Italy were stalemated. On January 22, 1944, 50,000 U.S. troops landed at Anzio, just 33 miles south of Rome, but were pinned down by German forces. Not until June 4, 1944, did Rome fall to the Allies. From this point on, the Germans steadily retreated northward. On April 28, 1945, Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured by Italian anti-Fascists, then shot and hung by the heels in a Milanese public square.

Although U.S. forces entered Europe through Italy, fighting on the continent was more widespread. The Soviets, who suffered the heaviest casualties of the war and who had been devastated by a surprise German invasion begun on June 22, 1941, were fighting back with a vengeance. The Battle of Stalingrad (present-day Volgograd), fought from July 17 to November 18, 1942, resulted in the loss of 750,000 Soviet troops, but also 850,000 Nazis. This battle turned the grim tide of warfare on the Eastern Front. In the meantime, British Royal Air Force (RAF) bombers and U.S. Army Air Corps bombers pummeled industrial targets throughout Germany. At sea, the Battle of the Atlantic had raged since early 1942. From January to June, German U-boats sunk three million tons of U.S. shipping. However, the development of longer-range aircraft and more advanced radar systems led to effective defenses against U-boats, and by the spring of 1943, the U-boat threat had been greatly reduced.