HIST103: World History (1600–Present)

European Theater

Soviet Winter and Spring Offensives

Soviet advances from August 1943 to December 1944.

In the north, a Soviet offensive in January 1944 had relieved the siege of Leningrad. The Germans conducted an orderly retreat from the Leningrad area to a shorter line based on the lakes to the south.

In the south, in March, two Soviet fronts encircled Generaloberst Hans-Valentin Hube's German First Panzer Army north of the Dniestr river. The Germans escaped the pocket in April, saving most of their men but losing their heavy equipment.

In early May, the Red Army's 3rd Ukrainian Front engaged the German Seventeenth Army of Army Group South, which had been left behind after the German retreat from the Ukraine. The battle was a complete victory for the Red Army, and a botched evacuation effort across the Black Sea led to over 250,000 German and Romanian casualties.

In April 1944, a series of attacks by the Red Army near the city of Iaşi, Romania, was aimed at capturing the strategically important sector. The German-Romanian forces successfully defended the sector throughout the month of April. The attack aimed at Târgul Frumos was the final attempt by the Red Army to achieve its goal of having a springboard into Romania for a summer offensive.

With Soviet forces approaching, German troops occupied Hungary on March 20, as Hitler thought that the Hungarian leader, Admiral Miklós Horthy, might no longer be a reliable ally.

Finland sought a separate peace with Stalin in February 1944, but the terms offered were unacceptable. On June 9, the Soviet Union began the Fourth strategic offensive on the Karelian Isthmus that, after three months, would force Finland to accept an armistice.

Soviet Summer Offensive

One of the Armia Krajowa soldiers defending a barricade during the Warsaw Uprising.

Operation Bagration, a Soviet offensive involving 2.5 million men and 6,000 tanks, was launched on June 22 and was intended to clear German troops from Belarus. The subsequent battle resulted in the destruction of the German Army Group Center and over 800,000 German casualties, the greatest defeat for the Wehrmacht during the war. The Soviets swept forward, reaching the outskirts of Warsaw on July 31.

Soviet Fall and Winter Offensives

After the destruction of the Army Group Center, the Soviets attacked German forces in the South in mid-July 1944 and, in a month's time, cleared the Ukraine of German presence.

The Red Army's 2nd and 3rd Ukrainian Fronts engaged German Heeresgruppe Südukraine, which consisted of German and Romanian formations, in an operation to occupy Romania and destroy the German formations in the sector. The result of the battle was a complete victory for the Red Army and a switch of Romania from the Axis to the Allied camp.

In October 1944, General der Artillerie Maximilian Fretter-Pico's Sixth Army encircled and destroyed three corps of Marshal Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky's Group Pliyev near Debrecen, Hungary. This was to be the last German victory on the Eastern front.

The Red Army's First, Second, and Third Baltic Fronts engaged German Army Group Center and Army Group North to capture the Baltic region from the Germans. The result of the series of battles was a permanent loss of contact between Army Groups North and Center and the creation of the Courland Pocket in Latvia.

From December 29, 1944, to February 13, 1945, Soviet forces laid siege to Budapest, which was defended by German Waffen-SS and Hungarian forces. It was one of the bloodiest sieges of the war.

Warsaw Uprising

American troops disembarked in the surf at Omaha Beach on D-Day, 6 June 1944.

The proximity of the Red Army led the Poles in Warsaw to believe they would soon be liberated. On August 1, they rose in revolt as part of the wider Operation Tempest. Nearly 40,000 Polish resistance fighters seized control of the city. However, the Soviets stopped outside the city and gave the Poles no assistance, as German army units moved into the city to put down the revolt. The resistance ended on October 2. German units then destroyed most of what was left of the city.

Allied Invasion of Western Europe

On "D-Day" (June 6, 1944), the Western Allies, mainly Britain, Canada, and the United States invaded German-held Normandy. German resistance was stubborn, and during the first month, the Allies measured progress in hundreds of yards and bloody rifle fights in the Bocage.

An Allied breakout was effected at St.-Lô, and German forces were almost completely destroyed in the Falaise pocket while counter-attacking. Allied forces stationed in Italy invaded the French Riviera on August 15 and linked up with forces from Normandy.

The clandestine French Resistance in Paris rose against the Germans on August 19, and a French division under General Jacques Leclerc, pressing forward from Normandy, received the surrender of the German forces there and liberated the city on August 25.

Operation Market Garden

Four British paratroopers moving through a shell-damaged house in Oosterbeek during Operation Market Garden.

Allied paratroopers attempted a fast advance into the Netherlands with Operation Market Garden in September but were repulsed. Logistical problems were starting to plague the Allies' advance west as the supply lines still ran back to the beaches of Normandy. A decisive victory by the Canadian First Army in the Battle of the Scheldt secured the entrance to the port of Antwerp, freeing it to receive supplies by late November 1944.

German Winter Offensive

American soldiers took up defensive positions in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge.

In December 1944, the German Army made its last major offensive in the West, known as the Battle of the Bulge. Hitler sought to drive a wedge between the Western Allies, causing them to agree to a favorable armistice, after which Germany could concentrate all its efforts on the Eastern front and have a chance to defeat the Soviets.

The mission was doomed to failure since the Allies had no intention of granting an armistice under any conditions. At first, the Germans scored successes against the unprepared Allied forces. Poor weather during the initial days of the offensive favored the Germans because it grounded Allied aircraft.

However, with clearing skies allowing Allied air supremacy to resume, the German failure to capture Bastogne, and the arrival of the United States Third Army, the Germans were forced to retreat back into Germany. The offensive was defeated but was the bloodiest battle in U.S. military history.

Italy and the Balkans

During the winter, the Allies tried to force the Gustav line on the southern Apennines of Italy. Still, they could not break enemy lines until the landing of Anzio on January 22, 1944, on the southern coast of Latium, named Operation Shingle. Only after some months was the Gustav line broken, and the Allies marched towards the north of the peninsula. On June 4, Rome fell to the Allies, and the Allied army reached Florence in August, then stopped along the Gothic Line on the Tuscan Apennines during the winter.

Germany withdrew from the Balkans and held Hungary until February 1945. Romania turned against Germany in August 1944, and Bulgaria surrendered in September.

Pacific Theater

Central and South West Pacific

USS Princeton was on fire east of Luzon on October 24, 1944, after being hit with a Japanese armor-piercing bomb.

The American advance continued in the southwest Pacific with the capture of the Marshall Islands before the end of February. 42,000 U.S. Army soldiers and Marines landed on Kwajalein atoll on January 31. Fierce fighting occurred, and the island was taken on February 6. U.S. Marines defeated the Japanese in the Battle of Eniwetok.

The main objective was the Marianas, especially Saipan and, to a lesser extent, Guam. The Japanese in both places were strongly entrenched. On June 11, Saipan was bombarded from the sea, and a landing was made four days later; it was captured by July 9. The Japanese committed much of their declining naval strength in the Battle of the Philippine Sea but suffered severe losses in both ships and aircraft. After the battle, the Japanese aircraft carrier force was no longer militarily effective. With the capture of Saipan, Japan was finally within range of B-29 bombers.

Guam was invaded on July 21 and taken on August 10, but the Japanese fought fanatically. Mopping-up operations continued long after the Battle of Guam was officially over. The island of Tinian was invaded on July 24 and saw the first usage of napalm. The island fell on August 1. General MacArthur's troops invaded the Philippines, landing on the island of Leyte on October 20.

The Japanese had prepared a rigorous defense and then used the last of their naval forces in an attempt to destroy the invasion force in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, October 23 through October 26, 1944, arguably the largest naval battle in history. The battle saw the first use of kamikaze (suicide) attacks.

Throughout 1944, American submarines and aircraft attacked Japanese merchant shipping, depriving Japan's industry of the raw materials it had gone to war to obtain. The effectiveness of this stranglehold increased as U.S. Marines captured islands closer to the Japanese mainland. In 1944, submarines sank three million tons of shipping while the Japanese were only able to replace less than one million tons.

Sino-Japanese War

In April 1944, the Japanese launched Operation Ichigo, whose aim was to secure the railway route across Japanese-occupied territories of North East China and Korea and those in South East Asia and to destroy airbases in the area that serviced USAAF aircraft. In June 1944, the Japanese deployed 360,000 troops to invade Changsha for the fourth time.

The Operation involved more Japanese troops than any other campaign in the Sino-Japanese war, and after 47 days of bitter fighting, the city was taken but at a very high cost. By November, the Japanese had taken the cities of Guilin and Liuzhou, which served as USAAF airbases from which it conducted bombing raids on Japan.

However, despite having destroyed the airbases in this region, the USAAF could still strike at the Japanese main islands from newly acquired bases in the Pacific. By December, the Japanese forces reached French Indochina and achieved the purpose of the operation, but only after incurring heavy losses.

South East Asia

In March 1944, the Japanese began their "march to Delhi" by crossing the border from Burma into India. On March 30, they attacked the town of Imphal, which involved some of the most ferocious fighting of the war. The Japanese soon ran out of supplies and withdrew, resulting in a loss of 85,000 men, one of the largest Japanese defeats of the war. The Anglo-Indian forces were constantly re-supplied by the British Royal Air Force.