33 Victory in the European Theater

Victory in the European Theater

Despite the fact that a Japanese attack in the Pacific was the tripwire for America’s entrance into the war, Roosevelt had been concerned about Great Britain since the beginning of the Battle of Britain. Roosevelt viewed Germany as the greater threat to freedom. Hence, he leaned towards a “Europe First” strategy, even before the United States became an active belligerent. That meant that the United States would concentrate the majority of its resources and energies in achieving a victory over Germany first and then focus on defeating Japan. Within Europe, Churchill and Roosevelt were committed to saving Britain and acted with this goal in mind, often ignoring the needs of the Soviet Union. As Roosevelt imagined an “empire-free” postwar world, in keeping with the goals of the Atlantic Charter, he could also envision the United States becoming the preeminent world power economically, politically, and militarily. (2)

Map highlighting major events of the second world war and their locations in Europe. Image text is as follows: a) World War II in Europe: World War II began in Europe on 1 September 1939 with Germany invading Poland. U.S. involvement started on 11 Dec. 1941, only four days after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, when Germany and Italy unexpectedly declared war on the U.S. British Prime Minister Churchill met with President Roosevelt I Washington, D.C. 22 Dec. 1941 - Jan 1942, and decided to defeat Germany first. b) North Africa The Americans wanted to invade continental Europe in 1943, but the idea was deemed premature and was cancelled in favor of an Allied invasion of French North Africa. Operation TORCH consisted of three task forces which landed on 8 November 1942. Moving east, these forces linked up with General Montgomery's Eighth Army in April 1943, becoming 18th Army Group under the overall command of General Alexander. By 12 May 1943 this unit had forced the surrender of all Axis forces in North Africa. c) Normandy Landing: Roosevelt and Churchill decided at the Trident Conference (May 1943) to conduct a major cross-Channel invasion of Europe in June 1944. General Eisenhower's flank, the U.S. Seventh Army landed in southern France (Operation DRAGOON) on 15 August 1944. d)Italian Landings: Operation HUSKY, the invasion of Sicily, began on 9 July q1943, and after that island was cleared, the mainland of Italy was assaulted on 3 September 1943. Allied forces continued to slog their way up the Italian peninsula until 2 May 1945. Amphibious operations at Salerno and at Anzio were attempts to outflank the German in Italy. e) The Breakout: The breakout from the Normandy beach head took place in July 1944, and the offensive continued using General Eisenhower's broad front strategy. Attempts to broach the German Siegfried Line blunted the Allied offensive. The Germans then launched an offensive - the ensuing fight being the Battle of the Bulge -through the thinly held Ardennes Forest in December 1944. The Allies halted the German offensive in January 1945 and continued the attack crossing the Rhine River in March 1945 and encircling the Ruhr area in April 1945. This resulted, along with the Soviet pressure from the east, in the German collapse and surrender on 8 May 1945.
European theater in World War II, 1942-1945.Figure 11-11: Ww2-europe-overview by the US Government is in the Public Domain .

Timeline

Sept 1939
  • Germany Invades Poland. 1 Sept
  • Great Britain & France declare war on Germany, 3 Sept
1940
  • Germany invades Denmark & Norway, 9 Apr.
  • Germany invades Low Countries, 10 May
  • Italy declares war on Great Britain & France, 10 June
  • France signs armistice with Germany, 22 June
  • 1st peacetime draft law in U.S. history, Sept.
  • Battle of Britain, July–10 Oct.
  • Wavell’s 1st Libyan offensive, 9 Dec–7 Feb., 1941
1941
  • Rommel’s 1st offensive, 31 March
  • Germany invades Greece & Yugoslavia, 6 Apr.
  • German airborne assault on Crete, 20 May
  • Germany invades U.S.S.R., 22 June
  • U.S.S.R. & Great Britain sign mutual aid pact, 13 July
  • Seige of Leningrad, 8 Sept.–Jan. 1944 700,000 deaths estimated
  • U.S. declares war on Japan after attack on Pearl Harbor, 8 Dec.
  • Germany & Italy declare war on U.S., 11 Dec.
1942
  • Battle of Stalingrad, 23 Aug.–2 Feb. 1943
  • Battle of El Alamein, 23 Oct.
  • Allied troops land at Morocco & Algeria, 8 Nov.
1943
  • Battle of Tunis, 7 May
  • Axis forces in N. Africa surrender, 13 May
  • Battle of Kurak, 4 July&1 Aug.
  • Allies land at Sicily, 10 July
  • Italians secretly surrender, 3 Sept.
  • Allies land at Salerno, 10 July
  • Allies land at Anzio, 22 Jan.
1944
  • Allies invade Normandy, 6 June (D-Day)
  • Soviets push Germans into Poland, mid-July
  • Paris liberated, 25 Aug.
  • Polish Resistance revolts against Germans in Warsaw, Aug.&Oct.
  • Battle of the Bulge, 16 Dec.&7 Feb. Last significant German offensive
June 1945
  • Yalta Conference, 4–11 Feb.
  • Soviets launch attack on Berlin, 16 April
  • Hitler commits suicide 30 Apr. Germany surrenders, WWII in Europe ends 7 May

Wartime Diplomacy

Franklin Roosevelt entered World War II with an eye toward a new postwar world, one where the United States would succeed Britain as the leader of Western capitalist democracies, replacing the old British imperial system with one based on free trade and decolonization. The goals of the Atlantic Charter had explicitly included self-determination, self-government, and free trade. In 1941, although Roosevelt had yet to meet Soviet premier Joseph Stalin, he had confidence that he could forge a positive relationship with him, a confidence that Churchill believed was born of naiveté. These allied leaders, known as the Big Three, thrown together by the necessity to defeat common enemies, took steps towards working in concert despite their differences.

Through a series of wartime conferences, Roosevelt and the other global leaders sought to come up with a strategy to both defeat the Germans and bolster relationships among allies. In January 1943, at Casablanca, Morocco, Churchill convinced Roosevelt to delay an invasion of France in favor of an invasion of Sicily. It was also at this conference that Roosevelt enunciated the doctrine of “unconditional surrender.” Roosevelt agreed to demand an unconditional surrender from Germany and Japan to assure the Soviet Union that the United States would not negotiate a separate peace and prepare the former belligerents for a thorough and permanent transformation after the war. Roosevelt thought that announcing this as a specific war aim would discourage any nation or leader from seeking any negotiated armistice that would hinder efforts to reform and transform the defeated nations. Stalin, who was not at the conference, affirmed the concept of unconditional surrender when asked to do so. However, he was dismayed over the delay in establishing a “second front” along which the Americans and British would directly engage German forces in western Europe. A western front, brought about through an invasion across the English Channel, which Stalin had been demanding since 1941, offered the best means of drawing Germany away from the east. At a meeting in Tehran, Iran, also in November 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met to finalize plans for a cross-channel invasion. (2)

The Invasion of Europe

Preparing to engage the Nazis in Europe, the United States landed in North Africa in 1942. The Axis campaigns in North Africa had begun when Italy declared war on England in June 1940, and British forces had invaded the Italian colony of Libya. The Italians had responded with a counteroffensive that penetrated into Egypt, only to be defeated by the British again. In response, Hitler dispatched the Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel, and the outcome of the situation was in doubt until shortly before American forces joined the British.

Although the Allied campaign secured control of the southern Mediterranean and preserved Egypt and the Suez Canal for the British, Stalin and the Soviets were still engaging hundreds of German divisions in bitter struggles at Stalingrad and Leningrad. The invasion of North Africa did nothing to draw German troops away from the Soviet Union. An invasion of Europe by way of Italy, which is what the British and American campaign in North Africa laid the ground for, pulled a few German divisions away from their Russian targets. But while Stalin urged his allies to invade France, British and American troops pursued the defeat of Mussolini’s Italy. This choice greatly frustrated Stalin, who felt that British interests were taking precedence over the agony that the Soviet Union was enduring at the hands of the invading German army. However, Churchill saw Italy as the vulnerable underbelly of Europe and believed that Italian support for Mussolini was waning, suggesting that victory there might be relatively easy. Moreover, Churchill pointed out that if Italy were taken out of the war, then the Allies would control the Mediterranean, offering the Allies easier shipping access to both the Soviet Union and the British Far Eastern colonies. (2)

D-Day

The camera faces the backs of sixteen soldiers in combat gear in LVCP (Higgins boat). Several of the young men look over the bow of the boat to access the fighting occurring near the shoreline.
American soldiers preparing to land on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe on June 6, 1944.Figure 11-12: Approaching Omaha by Army Signal Corps is in the Public Domain .

A direct assault on Nazi Germany’s “Fortress Europe” was still necessary for final victory. On June 6, 1944, the second front became a reality when Allied forces stormed the beaches of northern France on D-day. Beginning at 6:30 a.m., some twenty-four thousand British, Canadian, and American troops waded ashore along a fifty-mile piece of the Normandy coast (Figure 11-12). Well over a million troops would follow their lead. German forces on the hills and cliffs above shot at them, and once they reached the beach, they encountered barbed wire and land mines. More than ten thousand Allied soldiers were wounded or killed during the assault. Following the establishment of beachheads at Normandy, it took months of difficult fighting before Paris was liberated on August 20, 1944. The invasion did succeed in diverting German forces from the eastern front to the western front, relieving some of the pressure on Stalin’s troops. By that time, however, Russian forces had already defeated the German army at Stalingrad, an event that many consider the turning point of the war in Europe, and begun to push the Germans out of the Soviet Union.

Nazi Germany was not ready to surrender, however. On December 16, in a surprise move, the Germans threw nearly a quarter-million men at the Western Allies in an attempt to divide their armies and encircle major elements of the American forces. The struggle, known as the Battle of the Bulge, raged until the end of January. Some ninety thousand Americans were killed, wounded, or lost in action. Nevertheless, the Germans were turned back, and Hitler’s forces were so spent that they could never again mount offensive operations. (2)

Confronting the Holocaust

The Holocaust, Hitler’s plan to kill the Jews of Europe, had begun as early as 1933, with the construction of Dachau, the first of more than forty thousand camps for incarcerating Jews, submitting them to forced labor, or exterminating them. Eventually, six extermination camps were established between 1941 and 1945 in Polish territory. Jewish men, women, and children from throughout Europe were transported to these camps in Germany and other areas under Nazi control. Although the majority of the people in the camps were Jews, the Nazis sent Roma (gypsies), gays and lesbians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and political opponents to the camps as well. Some prisoners were put to work at hard labor; many of them subsequently died of disease or starvation. Most of those sent to the extermination camps were killed upon arrival with poisoned gas. Ultimately, some eleven million people died in the camps. As Soviet troops began to advance from the east and U.S. forces from the west, camp guards attempted to hide the evidence of their crimes by destroying records and camp buildings, and marching surviving prisoners away from the sites. (2)

Yalta and Preparing for Victory

The last time the Big Three met was in early February 1945 at Yalta in the Soviet Union. Roosevelt was sick, and Stalin’s armies were pushing the German army back towards Berlin from the east. Churchill and Roosevelt thus had to accept a number of compromises that strengthened Stalin’s position in eastern Europe. In particular, they agreed to allow the Communist government installed by the Soviet Union in Poland to remain in power until free elections took place. For his part, Stalin reaffirmed his commitment, first voiced at Tehran, to enter the war against Japan following the surrender of Germany. He also agreed that the Soviet Union would participate in the United Nations, a new peacekeeping body intended to replace the League of Nations. The “Big Three” left Yalta with many details remaining unclear, planning to finalize plans for the treatment of Germany and the shape of postwar Europe at a later conference. However, Roosevelt did not live to attend the next meeting. He died on April 12, 1945, and Harry S. Truman became president.

By April 1945, Soviet forces had reached Berlin, and both the U.S. and British Allies were pushing up against Germany’s last defenses in the western part of the nation. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945. On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered. The war in Europe was over, and the Allies and liberated regions celebrated the end of the long ordeal. Germany was thoroughly defeated; its industries and cities were badly damaged.

The victorious Allies set about determining what to do to rebuild Europe at the Potsdam Summit Conference in July 1945. Attending the conference were Stalin, Truman, and Churchill, now the outgoing prime minister, as well as the new British prime minister, Clement Atlee. Plans to divide Germany and Austria, and their capital cities, into four zonesU—to be occupied by the British, French, Americans, and SovietsU—a subject discussed at Yalta, were finalized. In addition, the Allies agreed to dismantle Germany’s heavy industry in order to make it impossible for the country to produce more armaments. (2)

Japanese forces won a series of early victories against Allied forces from December 1941 to May 1942. They seized Guam and Wake Island from the United States, and streamed through Malaysia and Thailand into the Philippines and through the Dutch East Indies. By February 1942, they were threatening Australia. The Allies turned the tide in May and June 1942, at the Battle of Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway. The Battle of Midway witnessed the first Japanese naval defeat since the nineteenth century. Shortly after the American victory, U.S. forces invaded Guadalcanal and New Guinea. Slowly, throughout 1943, the United States engaged in a campaign of “island hopping,” gradually moving across the Pacific to Japan. In 1944, the United States, seized Saipan and won the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Progressively, American forces drew closer to the strategically important targets of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. (2)

The Pacific Theater and the Atomic Bomb

First phase: From 7 December 1941, until June 1942, the Japanese successfully attacked the Pacific Fleet's base at Pearl Harbor, took Wake Island and Guam, invaded and conquered the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya, and seized the British base of Singapore. They conquered Burma thereby cutting off China from all overland routes to the western allies, and seized the Netherlands East Indies and British Borneo, thereby securing a much-needed source of oil. The Japanese advance came to a halt with the American victories at the Battle of Coral Sea (May 1942) and the Battle of Midway (June 1942). Second Phase: The second phase in the Pacific War was one of relative stalemate. From June 1942 until late-1943, neither side could muster the land, sea or air power required to take the offensive and seize the initiative from the other. The Battle of Guadalcanal was an example of this stalemate. Third phase: The third phase, from mid-1943 until September 1945, can be characterized as the period of the Allied offensives. Two drives were under American control; general Douglas McArthur's Southwest Pacific Campaign and Admiral Chester Nimitz's Central Pacific Campaign. MacArthur's drive was characterized by a series of Army amphibious operations up the Solomon Island chain and along the northern coast of New Guinea, with the Philippine Islands as the ultimate objective. Nimitz's strategy was designed to move directly toward Japan and to draw the Imperial Japanese navy into a decisive fleet engagement as happened at the Battles of the Philippine Sea (June 1944) and Leyte Gulf (October 1944). MacArthur's and Nimitz's campaigns merged into one for the invasion of the Philippines. Afterwards, the Central pacific campaign continued with the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. During the latter stages if the war the Army Air Force, operating out of the Mariana Islands and flying the B-29 Superfortress, had begun to fire bomb the cities of Japan. These raids culminated with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. Japan surrendered to the Allies on 2 September 1945.
Pacific theater in World War II, 1941-1945.Figure 11-13: Ww2-asia-overview by US Military Academy is in the Public Domain .

Timeline

Sept 1941
  • Japanese invade Pearl Harbor, 7 Dec.
  • U.S. declares war on Japan, 8 Dec.
  • Japanese invade the Philippines, 10 Dec.
  • Hong Kong surrenders, 25 Dec.
  • Japanese take Singapore, 15 Feb.
  • Battle of Java Sea, 27–29 Feb.
  • Netherlands East Indies falls to Japan
  • U.S. troops on Bataan force to surrender, 9 Apr.
  • Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo, 18 Apr.
  • Battle of Coral Sea, 6–8 May
1942
  • Battle of Midway 3–6 June
  • Japan seizes Attu & Kiska in Aleutians, 7 June
  • Guadalcanal Campaign, 7 Aug. 1942– 9 Feb. 1943
1943
  • Buna captured, 22 Jan.
  • “Island hopping” in Solomon Islands begins, 30 June
  • Lae falls, 4 Sept.
  • Boughanville invaded, 1 Nov.
  • U.S. takes Taruwa & Makin, 20–23 Nov.
1944
  • Operations on Kwajalein 31 Jan.–4 Feb.
  • Inv. of Eniwetok, 17–20 Feb.
  • Admiralty Islands invaded, 29 Feb.
  • Amphibious assault at Hollandia, 22 Apr.
  • Invasion of Saipan, 15 June–9 July
  • Battle of the Philippine Sea, 18–19 June
  • Tojo resigns, 18 July
  • Invasions of Morotai & Palau Islands, 15 Sept.
  • MacArthur lands in Philippines, 20 Oct.
1945
  • Allies land on Luzon, 9 Jan.
  • Invasion of Iwo Jima, 19 Feb.–26 March
  • Okinawa bombed, 24–27 March
  • Roosevelt dies. Truman becomes President, 12 Apr.
  • Invasion of Mindanao, 17 Apr.
  • Okinawa captured, 21 June
  • Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, 6 Aug.
  • Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, 9 Aug.
  • Japan agrees to surrender, 14 Aug.
  • Japan surrenders aboard U.S.S. Missouri, 2 Sept.

The Pacific Campaign

During the 1930s, Americans had caught glimpses of Japanese armies in action and grew increasingly sympathetic towards war-torn China. Stories of Japanese atrocities bordering on genocide and the shock of the attack on Pearl Harbor intensified racial animosity toward the Japanese. Wartime propaganda portrayed Japanese soldiers as uncivilized and barbaric, sometimes even inhuman, unlike America’s German foes. Admiral William Halsey spoke for many Americans when he urged them to “Kill Japs! Kill Japs! Kill more Japs!” Stories of the dispiriting defeats at Bataan and the Japanese capture of the Philippines at Corregidor in 1942 revealed the Japanese cruelty and mistreatment of Americans. The “Bataan Death March,” during which as many as 650 American and 10,000 Filipino prisoners of war died, intensified anti-Japanese feelings. Kamikaze attacks that took place towards the end of the war were regarded as proof of the irrationality of Japanese martial values and mindless loyalty to Emperor Hirohito.

Despite the Allies’ Europe First strategy, American forces took the resources that they could assemble and swung into action as quickly as they could to blunt the Japanese advance. Infuriated by stories of defeat at the hands of the allegedly racially inferior Japanese, many high-ranking American military leaders demanded that greater attention be paid to the Pacific campaign. Rather than simply wait for the invasion of France to begin, naval and army officers such as General Douglas MacArthur argued that American resources should be deployed in the Pacific to reclaim territory seized by Japan.

In the Pacific, MacArthur and the Allied forces pursued an island-hopping strategy that bypassed certain island strongholds held by the Japanese that were of little or no strategic value. By seizing locations from which Japanese communications and transportation routes could be disrupted or destroyed, the Allies advanced towards Japan without engaging the thousands of Japanese stationed on garrisoned islands. The goal was to advance American air strength close enough to Japan proper to achieve air superiority over the home islands; the nation could then be bombed into submission or at least weakened in preparation for an amphibious assault. By February 1945, American forces had reached the island of Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima was originally meant to serve as a forward air base for fighter planes, providing cover for long-distance bombing raids on Japan. Two months later, an even larger engagement, the hardest fought and bloodiest battle of the Pacific theater, took place as American forces invaded Okinawa. The battle raged from April 1945 well into July 1945; the island was finally secured at the cost of seventeen thousand American soldiers killed and thirty-six thousand wounded. Japanese forces lost over 100,000 troops. Perhaps as many as 150,000 civilians perished as well. (2)

Dropping the Atomic Bomb

All belligerents in World War II sought to develop powerful and devastating weaponry. As early as 1939, German scientists had discovered how to split uranium atoms, the technology that would ultimately allow for the creation of the atomic bomb. Albert Einstein, who had emigrated to the United States in 1933 to escape the Nazis, urged President Roosevelt to launch an American atomic research project, and Roosevelt agreed to do so, with reservations. In late 1941, the program received its code name: the Manhattan Project. Located at Los Alamos, New Mexico, the Manhattan Project ultimately employed 150,000 people and cost some $2 billion. In July 1945, the project’s scientists successfully tested the first atomic bomb.

In the spring of 1945, the military began to prepare for the possible use of an atomic bomb by choosing appropriate targets. Suspecting that the immediate bomb blast would extend over one mile and secondary effects would include fire damage, a compact city of significant military value with densely built frame buildings seemed to be the best target. Eventually, the city of Hiroshima, the headquarters of the Japanese Second Army, and the communications and supply hub for all of southern Japan, was chosen. The city of Kokura was chosen as the primary target of the second bomb, and Nagasaki, an industrial center producing war materiel and the largest seaport in southern Japan, was selected as a secondary target.

The Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber named after its pilot’s mother, dropped an atomic bomb known as “Little Boy” on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. Monday morning, August 6, 1945. A huge mushroom cloud rose above the city. Survivors sitting down for breakfast or preparing to go to school recalled seeing a bright light and then being blown across the room. The immense heat of the blast melted stone and metal, and ignited fires throughout the city. One man later recalled watching his mother and brother burn to death as fire consumed their home. A female survivor, a child at the time of the attack, remembered finding the body of her mother, which had been reduced to ashes and fell apart as she touched it. Two-thirds of the buildings in Hiroshima were destroyed (Figure 11-14). Within an hour after the bombing, radioactive “black rain” began to fall.

Approximately seventy thousand people died in the original blast. The same number would later die of radiation poisoning. When Japan refused to surrender, a second atomic bomb, named Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. At least sixty thousand people were killed at Nagasaki. Kokura, the primary target, had been shrouded in clouds on that morning and thus had escaped destruction. It is impossible to say with certainty how many died in the two attacks; the heat of the bomb blasts incinerated or vaporized many of the victims.

Landscape of a city flattened to almost nothing. A river runs through the middle of the desolation. Only about a dozen buildings are standing.
Destroyed Hiroshima with autograph of “Enola Gay” Bomber pilot Paul Tibbets.Figure 11-14: Hiroshima autograph Tibbets by US Navy is in the Public Domain .

The decision to use nuclear weapons is widely debated. Why exactly did the United States deploy an atomic bomb? The fierce resistance that the Japanese forces mounted during their early campaigns led American planners to believe that any invasion of the Japanese home islands would be exceedingly bloody. According to some estimates, as many as 250,000 Americans might die in securing a final victory. Such considerations undoubtedly influenced President Truman’s decision. Truman, who had not known about the Manhattan Project until Roosevelt’s death, also may not have realized how truly destructive it was. Indeed, some of the scientists who had built the bomb were surprised by its power. One question that has not been fully answered is why the United States dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki. As some scholars have noted, if Truman’s intention was to eliminate the need for a home island invasion, he could have given Japan more time to respond after bombing Hiroshima. He did not, however. The second bombing may have been intended to send a message to Stalin, who was becoming intransigent regarding postwar Europe. If it is indeed true that Truman had political motivations for using the bombs, then the destruction of Nagasaki might have been the first salvo of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. And yet, other historians have pointed out that the war had unleashed such massive atrocities against civilians by all belligerents—the United States included—that by the summer of 1945, the president no longer needed any particular reason to use his entire nuclear arsenal. (2)

The War Ends

Whatever the true reasons for their use, the bombs had the desired effect of getting Japan to surrender. Even before the atomic attacks, the conventional bombings of Japan, the defeat of its forces in the field, and the entry of the Soviet Union into the war had convinced the Imperial Council that they had to end the war. They had hoped to negotiate the terms of the peace, but Emperor Hirohito intervened after the destruction of Nagasaki and accepted unconditional surrender. Although many Japanese shuddered at the humiliation of defeat, most were relieved that the war was over. Japan’s industries and cities had been thoroughly destroyed, and the immediate future looked bleak as they awaited their fate at the hands of the American occupation forces.

The victors had yet another nation to rebuild and reform, but the war was finally over. Following the surrender, the Japanese colony of Korea was divided along the thirty-eighth parallel; the Soviet Union was given control of the northern half and the United States was given control of the southern portion. In Europe, as had been agreed upon at a meeting of the Allies in Potsdam in the summer of 1945, Germany was divided into four occupation zones that would be controlled by Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States, respectively. The city of Berlin was similarly split into four. Plans were made to prosecute war criminals in both Japan and Germany. In October 1945, the United Nations was created. People around the world celebrated the end of the conflict, but America’s use of atomic bombs and disagreements between the United States and the Soviet Union at Yalta and Potsdam would contribute to ongoing instability in the postwar world. (2)

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