so World War one was not the war to end all wars like everyone wanted it to be there was in fact a World War II and in this video we're going to look at it straight in the face so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked let's get to it now in the last video I mentioned all the precipitating factors that led to the war so here let's just jump straight into the fight there were essentially two theaters of the war there was the European theater and the Pacific Theater when I say theater of war maybe you don't know that terminology but it's not that hard to understand basically it means that there were two stages upon which the events of World War II unfold at one stage here and one stage here so the war essentially began in the Pacific Theater first and for that we have Japan to think since the last part of the 19th century in the early Decades of the 20th century Japan had risen to dominance in the Eastern World driven by policies of aggressive expansionism Japan had won victories against China and then against Russia and then gobbled up many territories in Southeast Asia because Japan was also gripped by fascist leadership there was a natural Affinity between them and Germany and Italy but anyway the war on the Pacific essentially began in 1937 when the Chinese and Japanese forces clashed over the Japanese seizure of Manchuria by the way if you want help reviewing for all of this and for the national exam come coming up then check out my AP Euro review pack which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a five on your exam in May Link in description anyway over in the European theater of World War II the war was triggered by Adolf Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. Now You Might Recall from the last video that Britain and France have been abiding by the policy of appeasement with regards to Hitler's expansionism across Europe but the invasion of Poland was the last straw and with that Britain and France declared war on Germany and baby you got another world war on your hand now once the war started there were two opposing signs the Allied Powers included Britain France and the Soviet Union and then later the United States would join as well the Axis powers essentially included Germany Italy and Japan and the truth is early in the war the Axis power seemed to be dunking on the Allied Powers profoundly and no small part of said dunking was due in the European theater to Hitler's method of attack known as blitzkrie it literally means lightning War because when the Germans showed up it was like and we're dead it was called this because it was a tactic designed to crush an enemy at an incredible speed using a combination of air power tanks and ground troops German forces plowed through the Enemy Lines and then went on to terrorize as the civilian populations of these countries not only did this work in Eastern European countries like Poland Yugoslavia and Greece but it also worked in the West too in 1941 Hitler invaded France with these same tactics and they were positively dazed by the Nazi attack it wasn't long before France fell to Germany and Mussolini over in Italy rushed to France as well to grab a piece of that sweet French pie now the northern part of France was under direct occupation by Germany while a Nazi puppet government known as Vichy France was established in the south then in June of 1941 Hitler turned his sights on the Soviet Union you may remember in the last video I talked about the non-aggression pact that Hitler signed with Joseph Stalin the leader of the Soviet Union it was an agreement that they would not attack each other but Hitler never really intended to honor this pact it was just an agreement to buy him some time to conquer the rest of Europe without interference from those pesky Soviets but in 1941 Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa in which he sought to conquer the Soviet Union which he needed for all the natural resources bound up in that land Hitler won some early victories in this campaign But ultimately the Soviets rallied and made any further gains very difficult in fact Hitler's troops got so bogged down that they were stationed there through winter which case Hitler had bothered to consult Napoleon on he would know that was a bad idea anyway Germans were able to hold some Soviet territory but they were never able to fully conquer case in point the siege of Stalingrad during this campaign Soviet civilians and Military endured brutal conditions but would not surrender and ultimately the Germans endured three quarters of a million casualties and were never able to control the Soviet stronghold so all that to say the Axis powers in particular Germany came out strong in the beginning but eventually the tides began to turn now by 1940 the only real threat to Hitler that was left on the continent was Britain like no other western state was opposing him and under the leadership of prime minister Winston Churchill the British people rallied to the cause Hitler assumed that bombing campaigns aimed at British civilian populations would so demoralized the British that they would beg their government to surrender but those bombing raids had the opposite effect thanks to the bulldoggish tenacity of Churchill he organized the resistance and gave moving speeches that roused the British people to continue the resistance now I said that Britain was standing alone but that's not entirely accurate more accurately Britain was the only Western Country that had officially declared war on Germany that was continuing the resistance but there was another Western Country who was Undeclared in war that was handily supporting the British cause namely the United States after World War One Americans essentially turned to an isolationist Nation with regard to European conflicts they just needed a little me time after the great European War however U.S President Franklin D Roosevelt could see that if Britain fell to the Germans and that would be a bad situation for the United States so the U.S had been supplying the British with weapons of war through their Cash and Carry program and their destroyers for basis programs Etc so even though the United States wasn't officially a belligerent in the war it was clear to the whole world where their sympathies LED this loyalty was abundantly clear to Japan who realized that America's friendship with Britain would eventually bring the industrial giant into the war and they wanted to prevent it and so on December 7 1941 Japanese planes bombed the U.S naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and with that kind of aggression the United States declared war on Japan Germany went ahead and declared war on the United States and now we're in and thanks to the Fantastic industrial capacity of the United States factories of all kinds were transformed almost overnight into factories for producing weapons of war the amount of planes and guns and tanks and everything else the U.S was able to muster in a short amount of time had a significant effect on the war additionally a joint British U.S Invasion of France on D-Day proved a turning point for the war in the West after having deceived the Germans into thinking that the invasion was coming from another place on June 6 1944 the British and Americans executed the largest amphibious invasion in world history on the beaches of Norman and though they suffered heavy casualties for the effort eventually they were successful in liberating France from Nazi occupations the tide began to turn in Eastern Europe thanks to the all-out effort from the Soviet Union as I already mentioned in the siege of Stalingrad the tide of War changed in the Pacific Theater at the Battle of Midway in which American forces dominated the Japanese Navy and then engaged in an island-hopping campaign to cut off Japanese supply line ultimately the Allies closed in on Berlin more and more and Hitler moved his anti-semitic hind Parts into a bunker still casting blame on the Jews for all the misfortunes that Germany had suffered hiding down on his bunker instead of admitting defeat he committed suicide instead and on May 7 the German government surrendered it became known as VE day or victory in Europe day in the European theater it was close but in order to talk about how the Pacific Theater was closed we need to talk about some new technology that was employed in this war now after the war was over everyone counted their debt and realized that more people had died in this war than any other War World War One not being accepted and a large part of that death toll was the new and devastating War technology employed and I'll tell you about two of first was the introduction of incendiary bomb these were bombs that were casing a Wood housing that were meant not only to explode but to start fire in the firebombing of Tokyo carried out by the U.S Air Force 16 square miles of Tokyo were burned in the fire and a hundred thousand people were left dead and then British and American planes did the same thing to Dresden and Germany and though only about a quarter of that number died there it was still absolutely devastating but perhaps the most devastating technology introduced in World War II was the atomic bomb this was a bomb created by the Americans that was able to destabilize atoms and release the destructive energy that came as a result of that destabilization a single nuclear bomb was capable of delivering the explosive force of about 20 000 tons of dynamite and so in order to close the Pacific Theater of War the United States dropped two of these bombs on Japan pan one in Hiroshima and the other in nagasak and between the two of these bombs both cities were destroyed and somewhere between a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand were killed several days after the second bomb was dropped Japan surrendered in what became known as VJ Day or victory in Japan now don't get me wrong it was great that the war was over but in truth the introduction of nuclear weapons is going to cause a lot of trouble going forward but for that we'll have to wait for Unit Nine Okay click here to keep reviewing for Unit 8 of AP European History click here to grab my AP Euro review pack which will help you get an A in your class and a five on your exam in May I'll catch you on the flip-flop I'm larouche