The World War II Multimedia Database

Hitler never trusted the professional army officers. His disdain came about because of the poor generalship in World War I that killed millions of German soldiers. He was always worried that the Army would attempt a coup de état and try to take over the government.

In 1934, as a result of the Night of Long Knives, he removed the SA, essentially a gang of thugs that had brought him to power, and killed their leader, Ernst Röhm. In exchange for removing the SA, the Army signed an oath of allegiance to Hitler.

The cultural difference between the western notion of an honorable surrender and the Japanese notion of fight to the death was a big contribution to the ferocity of the Pacific War.

The Japanese economy had been operating at full capacity since 1931. But the decentralized production, with home production of many components, could not compete with the assembly lines of the West. The Japanese High Command believed that the war would be short, and the military production could be converted to home production after the war was over. Unlike the Western powers, Japan waited until 1944 before mobilizing their home population for total war.

The American public largely ignored the war crimes trials in Tokyo and throughout Asia in 1946-1948. Unlike the charismatic Nazi leadership, who were infamous throughout Europe, the Japanese leadership was not well known. That was due in part to the Allied propaganda, which did not want to criminalize the Emperor.

In August 1945, the Japanese situation was desperate. The major cities were devastated by atomic or conventional attack, and the casualties numbered in the millions. Millions more were refugees, and the average consumption was below 1200 calories a day. The fleet was lost, and the merchant shipping could not leave home waters or sail from the few possessions still held without braving submarine or mine attack.

Allied planners had seriously underestimated the strength and effectiveness of Japanese Forces. Allied opinion held that they could not shoot straight, since many Japanese were nearsighted.

The seeds of the Pacific War were planted in 1853. In that year, feudal Japan came to an end. Fifty two years later, she would stand in front of the world as a major power. The transition from feudalism to a modern government would be a time of massive social, political, and technological evolution. This evolution would forever alter the way the world thought about Japan, and started to dig the chasms over which the Pacific War would start.

On June 15, 1944, the first B-29 raid flew from China to strike at a factory in Japan. This was the precision target bombing that the United State Army Air Forces (USAAF) had practiced for years. This policy would be abandoned shortly for area bombing of civilian targets.

Even before the Marianas were secure, the Seabees were building airfields for the big B-29 heavy bombers. These bombers started flying from Guam, Saipan and Tinian in August 1944 against precision targets in Japan.

Italy was a unique blend of old and new at the start of World War II. Her ancient capital of Rome had been the center of the largest Empire antiquity had ever seen, but she had unified her ancestral lands in a great civil war just fifty years before Benito Mussolini was asked to form a government.