2. From D-Day to the Fall of Berlin
• Battle for Normandy - summer
1944
• Falaise Gap
• Liberation of Paris
• Operation Market Garden - Sept.
1944 - Ploy to end the war before
the Russians got to Berlin
• The Battle of the Bulge - German
counteroffensive
• Russian attack on Berlin (300,000
Soviet troops)
• Hitler commits suicide in Bunker
• Russians and Americans meet
3. Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the
Planned Invasion of Japan
• From these bases Americans
could fly and return with
bombers to bomb Tokyo
• Men fought to the death and
very few prisoners
• Kamikazes active
• Fire bombing of Tokyo
after islands taken
• Invasion of Japan estimated
to take 1 million American
casualties
4. The Manhattan Project
• American plan to develop
nuclear weapons
• Run by Robert Oppenheimer
• Developed three bombs in 1945
“Trinity”, “Little Boy” and “Fat
Man”
• “Little Boy” a uranium bomb
was detonated over Hiroshima
• “Fat Man” a plutonium bomb
was dropped on Nagasaki
5.
6. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, VJ Day
• U.S. President Harry S. Truman
decides to drop Atomic bombs on
Hiroshima 6 Aug. 1945 and Nagasaki 9
Aug. 1945
• Almost 100,000 died instantly in
Hiroshima
• Aug. 8 Soviets declare war on Japan
• Aug. 9 almost 70,000 killed in Nagasaki
• Radiation kills many more
• Emperor goes on air to tell Japanese they
must do the unthinkable and surrender
• Aug. 15 V.J. Day
• Soviets fight on until Aug. 30 in
Sakhalin Islands
