German tanks entered Stalingrad in August 1942.
After the failure to take Moscow, Hitler’s next target was the oil fields in the Caucasus region of the Soviet Union near the Caspian Sea. Capturing the oil fields would cut off most of the Soviet army’s fuel supply, which Hitler hoped would lead to the final German victory. Hitler was also determined to gain control of the city of Stalingrad, an important industrial and transportation center on the Volga River.
The attack went well at first, with the Germans capturing large areas of territory. The Battle of Stalingrad began August 23, 1942, and lasted for months. It turned out to be one of the bloodiest in history. The Soviet troops were determined not to let the city fall, defending every building in fierce street fighting, often involving hand-to-hand combat. One German officer wrote, “The street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses.”5
Conditions inside the encircled city were terrible. General Friedrich Paulus, the German commander, told Hitler by radio January 24, “Effective command no longer possible … further defense senseless. Collapse inevitable. Army requests immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops.”6 Yet Hitler still refused to allow surrender. “Surrender is forbidden,” he replied. “Sixth Army will hold their positions to the last man and the last round …”7
A week later the German Sixth Army surrendered. More than 90,000 German soldiers were sent to prison camps, where most died of starvation, mistreatment, or disease. Only 5,000 survived the war. Hitler was furious at his army’s failure, and the Battle of Stalingrad proved to be the turning point on the Eastern Front.
MORE GERMAN DEFEATS
In November 1942 the British defeated the German army at El Alamein in Egypt, and Allied troops landed in Morocco and Algeria. Axis forces were now being attacked from two directions. The war in North Africa ended with the German and Italian surrender in May 1943.
On the Eastern Front, the Germans managed to recover a little after the disaster at Stalingrad. But in July 1943, they were decisively beaten at the Battle of Kursk. It was the last major strategic attack Germany was able to launch in the East.
During the battle Hitler received news that the Allies had landed in Sicily. Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III removed Benito Mussolini from office at the end of July, although he was later rescued on Hitler’s orders and installed as head of a German-protected state in northern Italy. In early September Italy made peace with the Allies, even though the country was still defended by German troops. Hitler ordered troop reinforcements in southern Italy that slowed the Allied advance.
Following their success at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese captured the British possessions of Malaya and Singapore in early 1942, along with the Philippines. Japan also conquered the Dutch East Indies and occupied Burma, threatening British territory in India. The Japanese Empire now covered an enormous area of Asia and the Pacific, with massive supplies of natural resources. Japanese Emperor Hirohito remarked that, “The fruits of victory are tumbling into our mouths too quickly,”8 but the advance continued into the Pacific islands. After the naval battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, both sides claimed victory, but Japan was stopped for the first time.
Japan first used suicide pilots, known as kamikazes, in October 1944 in the Philippines. Pilots would crash their planes, loaded with explosives, into enemy ships. At the Battle of Okinawa, more than 1,000 kamikaze pilots sank or heavily damaged Allied ships.
A kamikaze attack heavily damaged the USS Bunker Hill in June 1945.
In June 1942 the Japanese decided to strike a final blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet, as they originally planned at Pearl Harbor. This time the target was Midway Island in the North Pacific, where the Japanese hoped to lure the Americans into a trap. Japan ended up losing four aircraft carriers and hundreds of planes, as well as suffering more than 3,000 casualties. The Battle of Midway was to prove a turning point in the Pacific war. Farther south, Allied forces attacked the Japanese-occupied island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. Japan was finally defeated there in early 1943 after a long campaign.
