1. THE EASTERN FRONT
Essential Questions:
• What was the Battle of the Atlantic?
• Why was the Battle of Stalingrad important?
• Why was the North Africa campaign important?
• What was the Italian campaign?

2. The U.S. and Britain
After Pearl Harbor Churchill

and Roosevelt meet
Churchill arrived at the White

House in December 1941
They spent the next three

weeks working out war plans
Churchill convinced

Roosevelt that Germany and
Italy posed more of a threat to
Japan
 Churchill argued that Hitler
should be attacked first

3. The Battle of the Atlantic
After Pearl Harbor Hitler ordered

submarine attacks on America's east
coast
German aim was to prevent food

and resources from reaching Great
Britain and the Soviet Union
If he cut the lifeline to

England, Churchill would be forced
into submission
In the first 4 months of 1942, Germans

sank 87 ships off the Atlantic coastline
To protect themselves American and

British ships organized themselves into
convoys
Escorted by battleships and planes


4. The Battle of Stalingrad
Germans had been fighting in the

Soviet Union since June 1941
The bitter cold had stopped them

in their tracks outside of Moscow
and Leningrad
When spring came German tanks

began moving
Hitler hoped to capture Soviet oil

fields in the Caucasus Mountains
He wanted to wipe out Stalingrad

Luftwaffe bombed the city nightly

For weeks the Germans attacked

Stalingrad, conquering it house
by house

5. The Battle of Stalingrad
Winter set in and the Soviets saw this

as an opportunity to bring in more tanks
Soviet army closed around Stalingrad,

trapping the Germans and cutting off
their supply line
In January 1943 the German

commander surrendered
 Two days later his starving troops
surrendered
In defending Stalingrad the soviet

soldiers lost a total of 1,100,000 soldiers
 More than all American deaths
during the entire war
It was a turning point in the war

 After this battle the Soviet army
began moving westward towards
Germany

6. North Africa
While Stalingrad raged Stalin urged

Roosevelt and Churchill to launch a
“second front” in Western Europe
 Stalin felt it would divert German
troops from the Soviet front
Roosevelt and Churchill believed they

didn’t have enough troops to launch an
invasion across the English Channel
Instead they launched Operation Torch

 An invasion on Axis-controlled North
Africa
 Led by American General Dwight D.
Eisenhower
In November 1942 Allied troops landed in

Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers, in North
Africa
 They chased the German Afrika Korps,
led by General Erwin Rommel, the
“Desert Fox”
 Finally in May 1943 the Afrika Korps
surrendered

7. Unconditional Surrender
Roosevelt, Churchill,

and Stalin met in
Casablanca and
agreed to only accept
the unconditional
surrender of the Axis
powers
Meant Axis nations

would have to accept
whatever terms of
peace the Allies
dictated

8. The Italian Campaign
After North Africa the question

arose of where to strike next
Americans argued for sending a

fleet over the English Channel
Churchill, however, argued it

would be better to first attack Italy
The Italian Campaign began well

capturing Sicily in the summer of
1943
Stunned by the capture of Sicily

the Italian government forced
Mussolini to resign
Italians cheered that the war was

over

9. The Italian Campaign
Hitler was determined to stop the

Allies in Italy rather then fight on
German soil
Battle of Anzio “Bloody Anzio”

Lasted four months until the end

of May 1944
Left 25,000 Allied and 30,000 Axis

casualties
Effort to liberate Italy did not

succeed until 1945
Germany itself was ready to

collapse
The Allies turned their attention

to Fortress Europe