World War, part II

Source: Actual English Magazine

Standard: American Accent

Language level: Basic

Important information, the both Second World War part I and part II use the same podcast, just update it after the part I. Did you like this post, please pass this information for friends twit or share on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, among others.

Word War part II

THE PACIFIC THEATER

1941 also marked another important episode in the chronology of the war with the inauguration of the Pacific Theater. Eyeing the British and French Colonies in Southeast, Asia, the Japanese Emperor Hiroito aligned himself with the Axis Powers. The United States obviously did not look too favorably on the Japanese expansionism. When the Japanese Imperial Arm occupied Indochina in July 1941, the US announced embargos of fuel and strategic materials to Japan. Japan’s response came on December 7 with the treacherous surprise attack against the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The aggressive act demanded an immediate response from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had been reelected president the year before with the promise that he would not drag the US into the war. The US President had to abandon his stance on political isolationism, declare war on Japan, and form a major coalition with the Allied Powers finally giving in to the repeated appeals of Winston Churchill, who curiously enough had become the British Prime Minister the year before due to his stance as a leader in the war against Germany.

In 1942, the tide began to turn and the Allied Powers won significant victories. Between October and November, the British waged the Second Battled of El Alamein in Egypt and successfully prevented the Nazis from taking control of the Suez Canal, a strategic path to the Middle East. It was also in this same year in July that the Battle of Stalingrad, a bloody campaign, would drag on until the following years. At risk was not only an important industrial center and access route to the Caucus region, but the city was also the namesake of the Soviet leader. The success of this and other military actions, such as the Battle of Kursk in July 1943, were vital for the Red Army to be able to reach Berlin.

Shortly after Kursk, with the triumph of the North African Campaign, the Allied Forces succeed in invading Italy. The advance of the enemy troops into their territory and the rising opposition to Mussolini, not only with the general populace but also within the government, forced the Italians to surrender. The Allied troops were able to take Rome on the 4^th of July in 1944, just two days later Operation Overlord was launched – the invasion of Normandy on D-Day in France, which would culminate in the liberation of Paris on August 25.

THE END OF WAR?

1945 sealed the destiny of the soldiers. Mussolini was captured and executed on April 28. Defeated, Hitler committed suicide two days later as The Red Army were advancing on Berlin, after having liberating several Nazi concentration camps and have revealed to the world the horrors of the Holocaust. Equally tragic would be the demonstration of the destructive power of the atomic bombs dropped by the Americans over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the 6^th and 9^th of August, and which eventually forced the surrender of Japan.

These two dark chapters in the history of mankind would become emblematic of the Second World War. There is, nevertheless, another event that may not seem so dramatic or reflect the brutal and deadly character of the conflict, but does, however, illustrate its impact on the course of world history –the division of Germany into four administrative zones controlled by the Allies – which in practice would become two (capitalist and communist). With the bipolarization o the world, expressed in the image of the Berlin Wall in the German Capital, came the pronouncement that the cease-fire would not be the end of the hostilities.

As Norman Davies observes, “if 1918 can be seen as the beginning of a hiatus in the middle of a major conflict, the same happened in relation to 1945. There are excellent reasons to consider the Cold War a continuation of unfinished business from the Second World War. In this case, it should be seen as Europe’s “75 year war” (1914-1989)…This could very well be the framework adopted by the historians of the future.

These are slave laborers in the Buchenwald concentration camp near Jena: many had died from malnutrition when U.S. troops of the 80^th Division entered the camp. Pvt. H. Miller, Germany, April 16, 1945.