Today we continued presentations.
All of this happened after D-Day.
VJ day went first.
-It was the victory over Japan on August 15, 1945. The reasons for bombing Japan were because they ignored the Potsdam Ultimatum. It was basically us telling Japan that we had this weapon that could destroy them and they ignored them. So we dropped a bomb and they still didn’t surrender. So, we dropped another one and they finally surrendered. Between the two nuclear bombs we fire bombed 67 cities. The placed that the two bombs were dropped were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The reasons that they surrendered were because of the bombs that we dropped and the fact that Russian was invading Manchuria. The plutonium bomb was the ‘big man’ and the uranium bomb was the ‘little boy’. The little one was the one dropped on Hiroshima and the big one was dropped on Nagasaki. The big bomb exploded and the little one like imploded.
The allied powers were very happy at the end of the war. Japan was not doing well. They had a lot of their colonies taken away and they had a lot of land that was destroyed. The Japanese head their Emperor’s voice on the radio for the first time and he was explaining why they surrendered. Then a lot of people starved to death.
VE day
-It was the end of the war in Europe on May 8th, 1945. The German Army surrendered and Hitler committed suicide a few days before. The concentration camps were discovered by the Allied soldiers during the last months of the war. The sailors of the navy found out about the end of the war. The king and queen appeared 8 times on the balcony of Buckingham palace. Churchill gave and impromptu speech from the ministry of health building.
The Yalta conference
-The people involved in this were the U.S. FDR, Britain, Winston Churchill, and Russian, Joseph Stalin. Stalin was the strongest because Roosevelt was dying of a heart condition and Churchill was the leader of a dying empire. They all met in the Black Sea port city of Yalta. They were discussing the postwar administration of Europe. Roosevelt wanted to build up a new relationship with Stalin so the Soviet Union would trust them more. Before FDR died he was trying to talk Stalin into befriending the U.S. They never did find that trust. Harry Truman replaced Roosevelt when he died. Clement Attlee replaced Winston Churchill. Stalin broke his agreement by handing control of his European countries. He allowed the European countries to become communists.
Germany was to be split into four areas. GB, France, U.S., and S.U. would all rule one part of Germany. Berlin was also to be split as well. We got Stalin to allow free elections, but he didn’t do that. He allowed them to become communist. The Soviet Union promised to get in the war three months after Germany surrendered. They decided that there would be another conference in San Francisco to decide about the League of Nations.
The Potstand they just decided to split Germany into four sections.
D-Day
-The invasion of Normandy.
-They practiced for the invasion. They would take ships to like California and practice getting out and laying down and crawling. We were aiming for the Atlantic wall. It was just a whole bunch of people and stuff. Hitler told Rommel to go in there and make it stronger for the invasion. They landed on Omaha Beach on June 6th, 1944. D-Day was nicknamed operation overlord. There was an air assult of British and Amerians. There were also other attacks on the German wall to distract them. We wanted to make Hitler think that we were attacking at a different place.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the General. He never saw any action but he was greatly respected by everyone. He enrolled in the military even though his parents didn’t believe in militarism. He planned and carried out the invasion of Normandy. They had to have a full moon and the Spring tide was essential. They needed the full moon because that is when the water was the deepest. There was fog and it was windy so the high seas were prevented.
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