World War II Causes of the Allied Triumph - Admission/Application Essay Example

World War II: Causes of the Allied Triumph As Germany, under Adolf Hitler, contravened the Treaty of Versailles by annexing the Rhineland, Austria and the Sudetenland, Great Britain and France submitted to a policy of appeasement, hoping to achieve “peace in our times” (Chamberlain,127). The German invasion of Poland in 1939 set off World War II. The major Allied powers were Britain and France while the major Axis powers were Germany, Italy and Japan. Germany initially concluded a non-aggression pact with the USSR, but launched a surprise invasion against the latter in 1941, termed Operation Barbarossa.

This put the USSR into the Allied camp. By June 1940, Germany occupied France. Only Britain held out against the German blitzkrieg. Isolationist public opinion kept America neutral. However, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Act of 1941, by which America provided military aid to Britain, becoming “the great arsenal of democracy” (Roosevelt, 130). Lend-lease was also extended to the USSR. In the face of aggressive Japanese expansion in Asia, America clamped a trade embargo on Japan.

This was followed by the American freeze of Japanese assets in the US (petroleum embargo). In response, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on 7 December, 1941 inflicting heavy casualties on America. America entered the war on the side of the Allied powers. The tide of the War began to turn, with the Allies slowly gaining the upper hand. Instead of acceding to the Soviet request to start a Second Front in Western Europe, in order to relieve German pressure on the USSR, Britain and America moved to defeat Germany in North Africa, going on to capture Italy in September 1943.

Simultaneously, the USSR rolled back the German invasion decisively at the Battle of Stalingrad, “widely considered the bloodiest battle in human history” (133). A major cause of the Allied triumphs was the contribution of the American war economy, which ended the Great Depression and supplied vast quantity of munitions to the Allies. American women, idealized as “the mythical ‘Rosie the Riveter,’” became new sources of labor. Stalin conceded that “Without American production, (the Allies) could never have won the war” (134).

In June 1944, the Allies finally set in motion Operation Overlord, the code name for the invasion of Normandy. D-Day was 6 June 1944 and the German defences were breached by nightfall. Paris is liberated by August. On 8 May, 1945, the German Chief-of-Staff, General Jodl, signs Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies. The following day is celebrated as V-E (Victory in Europe) Day. By pursuing the strategy of Island Hopping, or bypassing strongly fortified Japanese islands in favor of encircling and cutting them off from support, the American forces advanced rapidly across the Pacific towards Japan.

With the capture of the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, America firebombed Japan in preparation for the invasion. However, the Manhattan Project, America’s top-secret program to develop atomic weapons, reached fruition. President Harry S. Truman said, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world” (137). Faced with the Japanese obstinate resistance to surrender and the prospect of American causalities in an invasion, authorized the . The Big ThreeHarry S. Truman