Patton’s troops on the front lines in France.
#BOMBERS IN WORLD WAR 2 DRIVERS#
But the Red Ball Express, the truck convoy of mostly Black drivers were responsible for delivering essential goods to General George S. There were several African American units that proved essential in helping to win World War II, with the Tuskegee Airmen being among the most celebrated. Black servicemen rarely saw combat and were largely relegated to labor and supply units that were commanded by white officers. The same discriminatory Jim Crow policies that were rampant in American society were reinforced by the U.S. Although more than 1 million African Americans served in the war to defeat Nazism and fascism, they did so in segregated units. World War II exposed a glaring paradox within the United States Armed Forces. Plans for the “Final Solution” were introduced around the time of the Soviet offensive, and over the next three years more than 4 million Jews would perish in the death camps established in occupied Poland.Ī tank and crew from the 761st Tank Battalion in front of the Prince Albert Memorial in Coburg, Germany, 1945. The other half of Hitler’s strategy was the extermination of the Jews from throughout German-occupied Europe. Hitler’s conquest of the Balkans was a precursor for his real objective: an invasion of the Soviet Union, whose vast territory would give the German master race the “Lebensraum” it needed. Stalin: Operation Barbarossa (1941-42)īy early 1941, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had joined the Axis, and German troops overran Yugoslavia and Greece that April. under the Lend-Lease Act, passed by Congress in early 1941. With Britain’s defensive resources pushed to the limit, Prime Minister Winston Churchill began receiving crucial aid from the U.S. The Royal Air Force (RAF) eventually defeated the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) in the Battle of Britain, and Hitler postponed his plans to invade. To pave the way for an amphibious invasion (dubbed Operation Sea Lion), German planes bombed Britain extensively beginning in September 1940 until May 1941, known as the Blitz, including night raids on London and other industrial centers that caused heavy civilian casualties and damage. Hitler now turned his attention to Britain, which had the defensive advantage of being separated from the Continent by the English Channel. France was subsequently divided into two zones, one under German military occupation and the other under Petain’s government, installed at Vichy France. On June 14, German forces entered Paris a new government formed by Marshal Philippe Petain (France’s hero of World War I) requested an armistice two nights later. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated by sea from Dunkirk in late May, while in the south French forces mounted a doomed resistance. With France on the verge of collapse, Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini formed an alliance with Hitler, the Pact of Steel, and Italy declared war against France and Britain on June 10. In fact, the Germans broke through the line with their tanks and planes and continued to the rear, rendering it useless. Three days later, Hitler’s troops crossed the Meuse River and struck French forces at Sedan, located at the northern end of the Maginot Line, an elaborate chain of fortifications constructed after World War I and considered an impenetrable defensive barrier. On May 10, German forces swept through Belgium and the Netherlands in what became known as “blitzkrieg,” or lightning war. On April 9, 1940, Germany simultaneously invaded Norway and occupied Denmark, and the war began in earnest. Among the estimated 45-60 million people killed were 6 million Jews murdered in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler’s diabolical “Final Solution,” now known as the Holocaust. Over the next six years, the conflict would take more lives and destroy more land and property around the globe than any previous war. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in September 1939 drove Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II. Rising to power in an economically and politically unstable Germany, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, rearmed the nation and signed strategic treaties with Italy and Japan to further his ambitions of world domination. The instability created in Europe by the First World War (1914-18) set the stage for another international conflict-World War II-which broke out two decades later and would prove even more devastating. African American Servicemen Fight Two Wars.Toward Allied Victory in World War II (1943-45).