The End of the War

Taught by: [Imperator]



Sections in order

1. Italy Surrenders
2. Germany Surrenders
3. Japan Surrenders
4. The Holocaust
5. The Aftermath



Italy Surrenders

Politically, the end of the war in Italy is rather complex. On July 24, 1943, Mussolini was thrown out of power and arrested by the Italian king. Italy then quickly joined the Allies on September 3, 1943. In the meantime, an Elite German Special Forces Unit rescued Mussolini in a daring operation and Hitler put the Italian dictator in control of a puppet nation in the Northern half of Italy. Militarily though, the bloody Italian front closed on May 2, 1945 when the German commander of the 10th Army, Heinrich Vietinghoff, surrendered unconditionally to the allies after being totally surrounded with his back to the Gulf of Venice. Mussolini then fled Italy and attempted to escape to Switzerland but was caught by Italian partisans and shot. His body was later to be mutilated and burned by vengeful Italian citizens.




Germany Surrenders

As Soviet forces finally captured the bombed out ruins of Berlin, Hitler and his wife, Ava Braun, prepared to take their own lives. On April 30, 1945, both were found dead by German officers inside Hitler’s bunker. Both had taken cyanide and Hitler, as an extra precaution, then shot himself in the head. Before his death, Hitler had named Admiral Donitz of the Kriegsmarine to be his successor. For two weeks more, Donitz desperately tried to hold off final defeat and moved German refugees away from the brutal Soviets and into the safety of American and British lines. Finally on May 8, 1945, Donitz could no procrastinate no longer and Germany surrendered unconditionally.




Japan Surrenders

On August 6, 1945, a B-29 bomber with the name “Enola Gay” dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. The bomb exploded and instantly killed multiple thousands, setting the final death toll at 80,000 people with 100,000 injured. The Japanese government, though stunned, still refused to surrender. The American response was another B-29 by the name “Bockscar” that dropped a second atomic bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” on Nagasaki. Casualties were fewer than Hiroshima but still appalling with 35,000 dead and 60,000 wounded. Finally the Japanese decided to surrender and non too soon. Had Japan not surrendered after Nagasaki, the U.S. air force would have used its plans to bomb seven more major cities with nuclear weapons still more powerful than those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On August 14, 1945, the Emperor of Japan broadcast a radio message to the Japanese people announcing his surrender to the allies. Japan then formally surrendered on September 2 aboard the American battleship USS Missouri.


U.S. fighters fly in formation celebrating Japan's surrender. The USS Missouri lies on the left.




The Holocaust

Adolf Hitler’s hatred of the Jewish race began years before he was in any way involved in the politics of Germany when he was turned away from an art school on account that he could not draw people. Several of the decision makers were Jewish and young Adolf decided that they were at fault and the reason why he had failed to gain entry to the school. As Hitler continued to struggle to find work in a very chaotic and poverty stricken Germany, he increasingly released his frustrations by blaming his bad fortune on the Jewish race. Once Hitler had ascended to become the Führer of Germany, he began turning this hatred into violence. First Jewish businesses were shut down, synagogues desecrated, and the Jews were forced to wear the yellow Star of David at all times while in public.

As the months wore on, they were stripped of more and more basic rights and freedoms until Hitler instituted “The Final Solution” for the Jewish race. All Jews in the German occupied countries were to be rounded up and thrown into concentration camps where the strong and healthy were worked to death while the weak and young were slowly starved or burned in crematories. For years, this massacre continued without the allied powers finding out, such was the effort made by the Germans to cover their tracks. The brutality displayed by the Nazis was so horrible that German soldiers forced by their superiors to torture and murder Jews would be mentally left in shambles. Some would never recover from their own, terrible ordeal.

Most concentration camps were located in Poland while some others were spread throughout Germany, France, Austria, and Hungary. The worst of these camps would leave their infamous names permanently stamped in history and in the minds of their few survivors. The worst concentration camp “Auschwitz” was alone the end for millions of lives. Located in Poland, Auschwitz was divided into three sections. The first, also called Auschwitz, was the main administration center and ran most functions of the camp. Birkenau, was the extermination camp where most of the slaughter occurred. Then all around Auschwitz were many smaller work camps for the healthy prisoners where only 65,000 out of 405,000 Jewish slave laborers survived. In mid January 1945, the camp guards and prisoners began to be evacuated as the advancing Soviet armies forced their way deeper into German occupied territory. By January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by the advancing Soviet armies but only the sick and weak had been left in the camp. The rest had been moved deeper into Germany on so called “death marches” where prisoners had to run for miles and miles (42 miles were covered in one day according to Night by Ellie Wiesel) with no rest except in the evening. Thousands of Jews died during these movements. The overall death toll of Auschwitz is almost impossible to quantify with estimates running from 1.5 million to even as high as 4 million according to some Nazis who worked the camps.

An astounding 7 million Jews and other minorities were massacred during the Holocaust before the last concentration camps were finally over run by the advancing allied armies.

For further reading on this topic, I highly recommend Night by Ellie Wiesel.




The Aftermath

The human death toll of World War II is impossible to quantify exactly citing the immense numbers of people involved in the fighting and the sheer physical area covered by the conflict. However, estimates put the number as high as 50 million people dead. Numbers of wounded are even less clear.

With the war over, Nazi and Japanese war criminals that had been captured could go on trial for their crimes against humanity. The trials for Nazi war criminals were held in Nuremberg, Germany and trials for the Japanese criminals in Tokyo, Japan. However, not all those guilty were caught. Many Nazis managed to escape to Argentina and live the rest of their lives in exile. On occasion, some of these former Nazis would be brought forth and given trials many years after the end of World War II. A select few are still believed to be living in Argentina even today.


Nuremberg Trials in 1946.

The use of the atomic bomb on Japan would have more far reaching effects than just the death of thousands. It would usher in the nuclear age that would become the centerpiece of the coming Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Russia decided it too needed nuclear bomb capabilities. In 1948, Russia tested its first atomic bomb and the nuclear arms race was on.

Germany too would be very changed. The country was split into two new nations along the borders of the allied occupation zones (Great Britain, France, and the United States) and the Russian occupied areas. The allies combined their zones and set up a democratic government in West Germany with its capital at Bonn while the Russians put in place a communist regime in their zone and created East Germany with its capital in Berlin. But Berlin also was divided along occupation lines. Although the city was deep inside East Germany, the allies were in control of the western half of Berlin (part of West Germany) and the Russians in control of the eastern portion. It would take until 1991 before the two parts of Germany were finally reunited into a whole Germany.




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