World War II News
By: Isabella Sheehan & Thomas Wiggins
Miracle At Dunkirk By: Isabella Sheehan
At the time the success of the mission was highly unlikely. The British Army, joined by some French and Belgian forces, would have to fight their way to the small port of Dunkirk, defend the town from Germans, and hope that they could hold on long enough for ships from England to come to pull them off the beach.
Another fateful decision, this time on the part of the Germans, now helped their rescue. On May 24, Hitler, for reasons that are still unclear, ordered his tanks to halt their pursuit of the retreating forces. In England the call went out for any available boats to help with the rescue. On May 26 an unbelievable fleet set sail. Motorboats, sloops, fishing boats, yachts, ferries, barges and every other variety of boat imaginable poured out of the Thames River and the ports that lined the English Channel, to make their way across the Channel and rescue the struggling troops.
The operation, code-named Dynamo, continued until June 4. At its beginning, the British thought they would be lucky to rescue 50,000. In the end, approximately 340,000 British, French and Belgians were snatched from the shore. 40,000 were left behind and killed or captured.
Japanese Internment in the United States By: Thomas Wiggins
On February 19th, 1942, two months after the attack at Pearl Harbor President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which forced some 120,000 Japanese-American citizens to be evacuated from the West-Coast and be relocated to Internment Camps.
The United States established ten interment camps located in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. These camps were rural farms located across the country. Rumors spread fueled by race prejudice, of a plot among Japanese-Americans to sabotage the war effort. In early 1942, the Roosevelt administration was pressured to remove persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast by farmers seeking to eliminate Japanese competition, a public fearing sabotage, politicians hoping to gain by standing against an unpopular group, and military authorities.
These camps lasted all throughout the war. After the war some Japanese-American citizens of were allowed to return to the West Coast in 1945, and the last camp closed in March 1946. The relocation of Japanese-Americans into internment camps during World War II was one of the most flagrant violations of civil liberties in American history, but in 1988, Congress awarded restitution payments to each survivor of the camps.
Adolf Hitler By: Thomas Wiggins
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in Austria. He rose to German political power through the National Socialist Works Party also well known as the Nazi party. Hitler was able to rise to such great power as Germany went through their Great Depression due to the war debts from World War One. During the Depression Germany was open to anything that would boost their economy and even extremist options. Hitler was appointed the German Chancellor in 1933 after Paul von Hindenburg’s death. Hitler used his position at Chancellor to form a de facto legal dictatorship over Germany. Hitler ran campaigns like anti-smoking, dietary restrictions and encouraged Germans to keep their bodies pure of any intoxicating or unclean substances. In 1938, Hitler, along with several other European leaders, signed the Munich Agreement. The treaty ceded the Sudetenland districts to Germany, reversing part of the Versailles Treaty. As a result of the summit, Hitler was named Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1938. This diplomatic win only whetted his appetite for a renewed German dominance. On September 1, Germany invaded Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Hitler is responsible for the start of World War Two and the Holocaust, the mass genocide of Jews. Hitler’s awful Nazi party ruled over Germany for 1938 to 1945. By early 1945, Hitler realized that Germany was going to lose the war. The Soviets had driven the German army back into Western Europe, and the Allies were advancing into Germany. On April 29, 1945, Hitler married his girlfriend, Eva Braun, in a small civil ceremony in his Berlin bunker. Around this time, Hitler was informed of the assassination of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Afraid of falling into the hands of enemy troops, Hitler and Braun committed suicide the day after their wedding, on April 30, 1945. Their bodies were carried to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were burned. Berlin fell on May 2, 1945. Five days later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.
Nazi Recruiting Posters By: Isabella Sheehan
This is one of many examples of a Nazi recruitment poster. Hitler relentlessly tried to convince young men that if they weren’t fighting in the army, they were lazy and useless. He glorified the life and duties of a Nazi soldier to entice young men to join the army.